Poets From Italy

"Le forze della penna sono troppo maggiori che coloro non estimano che quelle con conoscimento provato non hanno."

"Ogni giusto re primo servatore dee essere delle leggi fatte da lui."

"Per lo primo colpo non cade la quercia."

"Sempre non può l' uomo un cibo, ma talvolta desidera di variare."

"WE MUST INVENT FUTURIST CLOTHES, hap-hap-hap-hap-happy clothes, daring clothes with brilliant colours and dynamic lines. They must be simple, and above all they must be made to last for a short time only in order to encourage industrial activity and to provide constant and novel enjoyment for our bodies."

"The author [Balla] wrote 'Macchina typografica', [his first work for theater, never performed] placed us in geometric order [during a rehearsal in the Salon of Serge Diaghilev, 1916] and with the unfailing grey-rectangular walking stick, directed out machine-like movements and the gestures that we each had to carry out in order to represent the spirit of the single pieces of a rotary newspaper press. I was assigned a 'STA' to be reiterated violently with an arm gymnastically. I felt as if I were in the courtyard of a training barracks. Balla, needless to say, reserved for himself the hissings the onomatopoeias, the most delicate verbalizations, that emerged from his lips intermingled with that memorably Piemontese 'neh' and the uncorking of bottles of Frascati by the incorrigible, bearded Semenoff, which turned everything into an extremely intelligent and amusing grotesque."

"Balla (former art teacher of Boccioni and Severini) flabbergasted us because, not content with being involved in a Futurist campaign, as you can well imagine him doing, he launched himself into a complete transformation. He rejected all his works and all his working methods. He started work on four pictures of movement (one painting was 'Girl running on a balcony'), which were still realist but incredible ahead of their time.. .He confided this to Aldo Pallazzeschi: 'They (Balla's former pupils Boccioni and Severini) did not want anything to do with me in Paris and they were right: they have gone much further than I, but I will work and I too will progress.'"

"Further developing his first synthesis of a speeding automobile, Balla has arrived at the first plastic complex. This has revealed to us an abstract landscape of cones, pyramids, polyhedrons, spirals of mountains, rivers, lights, shadows. In short, there is a deep analogy between the essential force-lines of speed and the essential force-lines of a landscape."

"Using complex, constructive, noise-producing abstraction, that is, the Futurist Style. Any action developed in space, any emotion felt, will represent for us the intuition of a discovery."

"We [Futurists, Balla and Depero ], seek to realize this total fusion in order to reconstruct the universe by making it more joyful, in other words by an integral re-creation. We will give skeleton and flesh to the invisible, the impalpable, the imponderable and the imperceptible. We will find abstract equivalents for all the forms and elements of the universe, and then we will combine them according to the caprice of our inspiration, to shape plastic complexes which we will set in motion."

"Futurism, as it has developed over six years, has solidified and surpassed Impressionism, has proposed plastic dynamism, atmospheric modeling, and the interpenetration of planes and states of mind."

"As a result we shall have the necessary variety of clothes, even if the people of a given city lack the imagination themselves. The happiness of our Futurist clothes will help to spread the kind of good humour aimed at by my great friend PaIazzeschi in his futurist 'Manifesto against Sadness'."

"We want Futurist clothes to be comfortable and practical Dynamic Aggressive Shocking Energetic Violent Flying (i.e. giving the idea of flying, rising and running) Peppy Joyful Illuminating (in order to have light even in the rain) Phosphorescent Lit by electric lamps."

"And we must invent dynamic designs to go with them and express them in equally dynamic shapes: triangles, cones, spirals, ellipses, circles, etc."

"Use materials with forceful MUSCULAR colours – the reddest of reds, the most purple of purples, the greenest of greens, intense yellows, orange, vermillion – and SKELETON tones of white, grey and black."

"WE MUST DESTROY ALL PASSÉIST CLOTHES, and everything about them which is tight-fitting, colourless, funereal, decadent, boring and unhygienic. As far as materials are concerned, we must abolish: wishywashy, pretty-pretty, gloomy, and neutral colours, along with patterns composed of lines, checks and spots."

"They [ Boccioni and Severini ] did not want anything to do with me in Paris and they were right: they have gone much further than I, but I will work and I too will progress."

"The Rhine, with two long branches, stretches out and loses itself among inlets and hills, the boats of tourists and of industry smoke, white, black, and gray, and small, small, seem almost not to move; the silver clear, transparent water, calm and ordered, contrasts with all the rest.. ..the water gurgles, the sides of the boat are covered in spray, many people greet each other, white handkerchiefs are waved from on high, the hotels, the flags, the inscriptions, the hills and the pointed tips of the bell towers, everything seems unreal, untouchable."

"Villages and valleys pass by [Balla viewed during his train voyage to Düsseldorf in July 1912] and with my friend the binoculars [field glasses] I stare into the closest windows; semi-undressed people who wash themselves, bedding on balconies, clean almost empty rooms, a stupendous white shoulder of a women who, with a nude arm opens a door and goes inside."

"It will interest artists because, in it, I have made a special study of the way of walking of this girl, and, in fact, I have succeeded in giving the illusion that she is in the process of moving forward."

"In the evening I study a fair.. ..if you could see the pomp and luxury of the merry-go-round and the stands and booths. Everything is decorated in Baroque-style, all gold and silver; there are mirrors, fabrics, and electric lightning. By night the whole thing is fantastic and rowdy. First of all I shall make a small picture and some drawings for illustrations."

"Che l'uomo il suo destin fugge di raro."

"Natura il fece, e poi roppe la stampa."

"Bene è felice quel, donne mie care, Ch'essere accorto all'altrui spese impare."

"Ingiustissimo Amor, perché sì raro Corrispondenti fai nostri desiri? Onde, perfido, avvien che t'è sì caro Il discorde voler ch’in duo cor miri?"

"Quel che l'huom vede Amor gli fa invisibile E l'invisibil fa vedere Amore."

"Che per amor venne in furore e matto, d'huom che si saggio era stimato prima."

"Le donne i cavallier, l'arme, gli amori, Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto."

"Che quant' era più ornata, era più brutta."

"Né spegner può, per starne l'acqua, il fuoco, Né può stato mutar, per mutar loco."

"Quanto più su l'instabil ruota vedi Di Fortuna ire in alto il miser uomo, Tanto più tosto hai da vedergli i piedi Ove ora ha il capo, e far cadendo il tomo."

"Ordina l'uomo e Dio dispone."

"But in a farther age shall rise along The banks of Po two greater still than he; The world which smiled on him shall do them wrong Till they are ashes, and repose with me. The first [Ariosto] will make an epoch with his lyre And fill the earth with feats of chivalry: His fancy like a rainbow, and his fire, Like that of Heaven, immortal, and his thought Borne onward with a wing that cannot tire; Pleasure shall, like a butterfly new caught, Flutter her lovely pinions o'er his theme, And Art itself seem into Nature wrought By the transparency of his bright dream."

"I found that I had an affinity with writers like Ariosto and Tasso, at least to the extent of loving their poetry. (“Those allegories of Ariosto and Tasso were in some ways very futuristic with those fantastic voyages-they were almost like science fiction without the science.”) Of course they didn't really have science to use. But they had a similarly disciplined imagination."

"No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide."

"To avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it."

"Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman."

"Because, to despise money, one must have plenty of it."

"A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience."

"Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be "lifelong"? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?"

"La difficoltà di commettere suicidio sta in questo: è un atto di ambizione che si può commettere solo quando si sia superata ogni ambizione."

"The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies."

"The thing most feared in secret always happens. I write: oh Thou, have mercy. And then? All it takes is a little courage. The more the pain grows clear and definite, the more the instinct for life asserts itself and the thought of suicide recedes. It seemed easy when I thought of it. Weak women have done it. It takes humility, not pride. All this is sickening. Not words. An act. I won't write any more."

"Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism."

"Nothing can be added to the rest, to the past. We always begin afresh. One nail drives out another. But four nails make a cross."

"The act—the act—must not be a revenge. It must be a calm, weary renunciation, a closing of accounts, a private, rhythmic deed. The last remark."

"The world, the future, is now within you as your past, as experience, skill in technique, and the rich, everlasting mystery is found to be childish you that, at the time, you made no effort to possess."

"It is not that things happen to each of us according to his fate, but that he interprets what has happened, if he has power to do so, according to his sense of his own destiny."

"The problems that agitate one generation are exstinguished for the next, not because they have been solved but because the general lack of interest sweeps them away."

"We like to have work to do, so as to have the right to rest."