The manifesto, issued simultaneously in French and Italian, was published in "Le Figaro" on 20th February 1909 and caused an immediate stir. There followed a series of manifestos on society ("Uccidiamo it chiaro di luna") ("Let us kill the moonlight"), on painting, music, sculpture, literature, lust, the theatre, tactilism, etc., written by painters, musicians, sculptors, but always under Marinetti's influence. The Futurist movement of artists and writers lingered on into the 1940s but had already split by 1915, when Marinetti welcomed World War I as the most beautiful Futurist poem so far, published a collection of poems entitled Guerra Sola Igiene del Mundo (War the Only Hygiene of the World), and joined the Italian army as an officer. Marinetti joined the Fascist Party in 1919 and praised it as a natural extension of Futurism in his book Futurismo e Fascismo (Futurism and Fascism, 1924) In the "Manifesto tecnico sulla letteratura futurista" ("Technical manifesto on futurist literature"), Marinetti, who was to reiterate and develop these ideas in the manifesto "Imaginazione senza fili e le parole in libertà" ("Imagination without strings and words at liberty'), pronounced himself in favour of the destruction of the traditional syntax, the abolition of adjectives and adverbs. It is interesting to note that for Thibaudet the futurist words at liberty are the poetic adventure par excellence, consequence of ihe poetry at liberty of the five of 1870 (Verlaine, Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Corbière) and of the verse at liberty of the free-verse symbolists (Mallarmé). It is of interest here to point out the historical links of these passages, on the one hand, and the importance, on the other, of the free-word placards as an example of plasticverbal research, which becomes plastic-phonic in futurist recitation, enunciated in Marinetti's manifesto "La declamazione dinamica e sinottica" ("Dynamic and synoptic declamation") (1916). Marinetti wrote important manifestos: "Manifesto dei Drammaturghi futuristi" ("Manifesto of the futurist dramaturges") (1911); "Lo splendore geometrico e meccanico e la sensibilitd numerica" ("Geometrical and mechanical splendour and numerical sensitiviy") (1914); Tattilismo" ("Tactilism") (1921); "Il teatro delta sorpresa" ("The theatre of surprise") (1921); "It teatro totale per masse" ("The total theatre for the masses"), etc. Many of these manifestos remain extremely fertile sources of ideas which have still to be developed. Marinetti died at Bellagio in 1944. Marinetti died at Bellagio in 1944.

Exercise n. 1 Read the poem and the 'Manifesto tecnico della letteratura futurista' and answer the following questions: