MAINSTAY OF ITALIAN FUTURISM—MARINETTI’S “WORDS-IN-FREEDOM”

BARATTIN, Dino, et al. Parole in Libertà: Libri e Riviste del Futurismo nelle Tre Venezie. Monfalcone: Edizioni della Laguna, [1992]. Oblong octavo, original bright yellow stiff paper covers bound with two sets of industrial nuts and bolts. $450.

First edition of this exhibition catalogue of Italian Futurism, focusing on Marinetti’s concept of “words-in-freedom,”-bold typographic arrangements of poems devoid of adjectives, adverbs, finite verbs, and punctuation.

The use of typography as a visual element in its own right was first realized by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, whose parole in libertà, or “words-in-freedom,” contained no adjectives, adverbs, finite verbs, punctuation—nothing that would slow it down. It was mostly a collage of nouns, a form of Futurist poetry intended to be an uninterrupted sequence of rapid-fire images. “In his founding manifesto of Futurism in 1909, Marinetti proclaimed the absolute need for society to participate in the complete transformation of Italian culture, which was anachronistic in light of the breakthrough advancements in science, technology and communication. With this first manifesto and the subsequent Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature (1912) and Destruction of Syntax-Imagination without Strings (1913), in which he gave birth to his theory of ‘words-in-freedom,’ Marinetti outlined the principles of a ‘visual-sensory’ poetry. Among his goals was the re-creation of the experience of immediacy and to this end he exalted the destruction of syntax, the abolishment of punctuation, the use of mathematical symbols to express rhythm, onomatopoeia, the introduction of the weight, sound and smell of objects and the use of color and innovative typography and their arrangements to give greater expressive force to the words and forms, the result being ‘a simultaneous vision in which the viewer understands the general meaning of the work at first sight.’ It was this literary concept of words-in-freedom which the Italian Futurist artists sought to interpret in their paintings” (Adler & Conkright). This illustrated catalogue of the 1992 exhibition of parole in libertà, organized by Edit Expo in Portogruaro, Italy, contains critical essays by Dino Barattin, Marino De Grassi, and Maurizio Scudiero. Text in Italian.

Fine condition, with only lightest soiling to covers.