Sunday, February 26, 2006

[Poem] Marinetti, F. T. - To my Pegasus

This poem was first publish 1908 in the volume The Sensual City. It's translated by Elizabeth R. Napier and Barbara R. Studholme and taken from Marinetti, F. T. (2002) Selected Poems and Prose New Haven and London: Yale University Press

To my Pegasus


Vehement god of a race of steel,

space-intoxicated Automobile,

stamping with anguish, champing at the bit!

O formidable Japanese monster with eyes like a forge,

fed on fire and mineral oils,

hungry for horizons and sidereal spoils,

I unleash your heart of diabolic puff-puffs,

and your giant pneumatics, for the dance

that you lead on the white roads of the world.

At last I release your metallic reins…You leap,

with ecstasy, into liberating Infinity!…


At the sound of the pound of your voice…

see how the setting Sun hounds

your bounding steps, accelerating its bleeding

palpitation along the horizon…

It’s galloping there, down in the woods…look!…


What is the matter, handsome demon?…

I’m at your mercy…Take me!

On the ground deafened despite its echoes,

under the sky blinded despite its golden stars,

I go fueling my fever and my desire

with sword blows right in the nose!…

And from moment to moment, I straighten my back

to feel winding round my quivering neck

the cool downy arms of the wind.


It’s your alluring distant arms that draw me!

this wind, it’s your engulfing breath,

fathomless Infinity absorbing me with joy!…

Ah! Ah!…suddenly the gangling black windmills

seem to be running

on their whaleboned canvas wings

as if on gigantic legs…


Now the Mountains get ready to throw

cloaks of drowsy coolness no my flight…

There! There! look! at that sinister curve!…

Mountains, O monstrous Cattle, O Mammoths

trotting heavily along, arching your huge backs,

you are outrun…drowned…

in the maze of mists!…

And dimly I hear

the whirring of your colossal legs

pounding the road in their seven-league boots…


Mountains with cool cloaks of azure!…

Beautiful rivers breathing in the moonlight!…

Shadowy plains! I pass you at full gallop

on this racing monster…Stars, my Stars,

do you hear his bounds, the sound of the pound

of his brazen lungs endlessly exploding?

The bet is on…with You, my Stars!…

Faster!…faster still!…

And no respite, and no rest!

Release the brakes!…You can’t?…

Smash them then!…

Let the engine’s pulse centuple!


Hurrah! No more contact with the filthy earth!…

At last, I break loose and fly freely

over the intoxicating abundance

of Stars streaming in the great bed of the sky!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ett utdrag ur Paul Virilios "Speed and Politics" som kanske kan vara av intresse:

"In 1921, Marinetti metaphorizes about the armored car: the overman is over-grafted, an inhuman type reduced to a driving - and thus deciding - principle, an animal body that disappears in the superpower of a metallic body able to annihilate time and space through its dynamic performances. Vain attempts have been made to fit Marinetti´s works into various artistic and political categories; but Futurism in fact comes from a single art - that of war and its essence, speed. Futurism provides the most accomplished vision of the dromological evolutionism of the 1920s, the measure of super-speed! In fact, the human body huddling in the "steel alcolve" is not that of the bellicose dandy seeking the rare sensations of war, but of the doubly-unable body of the proletarian soldier. Deprived, as he has always been, of will, he now requires physical assistance from a vehicular prosthesis in order to accomplish his historical mission, Assault."

Anonymous said...

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I have two blogs my self

http://www.fascistart.blogg.no/

And:

http://www.korporatisme.blogspot.com/

I will study yours closely when I find the time!