Before the advent of industrial revolution changes in social order, culture and beliefs were always smooth, slow, imperceptible and without break. But with the initiation of industrial revolution the changes were so abrupt, quick and sudden that the most sensitive class, the class of writers, poets and artists, found themselves in a cultural wilderness, in a social chaos and a vacuum. Their immediate reaction to such a situation was in varied ways. Some filled the vacuum with political doctrines, some with religious dogmas and some with new literary cults like ancestral cult, primitivism, utopianism, modernism and futurism. Ezra Pound regarded ancestral wisdom, that might be of India, China or any part of the world, as a collective human heritage which should be revered, loved, preserved and recreated.
For Yeats myths and legends of past were as valid as historical facts. They sprang from what he called “people’s book” that is folk literature and culture. Eliot recreated folk songs by embedding their allusions in his poetry. For many writers and poets the ancestral heritage was a debt which they owed to their ancestors. This debt should not be written off as a bad debt, but should be repaid. Long before Yeats, Ezra Pound and Eliot, there were many writers who, as a reaction to the massive industrialization and resultant mechanistic culture, became anti-civilization, anti-modernization and anti-progress. They turned to cultural primitivism, to nature not that of Wordsworth, but nature in its crude form.
They romanticized people who lived in the laps of crude nature and civilization, has yet not destroyed their innocence and human nobility. Hence a new term of “Noble Savage” was added to the dictionary. They were so obsessed with the idea of noble savage that they brought specimen of primitive man from Haiti who was object of their curiosity and respect.
In reaction of these writers a new group of writers and artists emerged who advocated complete break from past, from established rules, traditions and conventions. One should discover fresh ways of looking at man’s position in the universe. Writers and poets should discover new forms, new subjects, and new styles so that they can keep up with mechanistic age. They were known as modernists.
Then came the futurists, another rebel group of writers and artists, who not only rejected ancestral heritage but believed in destroying all the relics of past. They declared in their manifesto:
“We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind. We will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice”.
This movement originated in Italy in 20th century. Its protagonist was Filipo Marinate. He proposed and published manifesto of futurists and expounded a new cult known as “Speed cult”:
“After the destruction of the antique good and antique evil, we create a new good, speed, a new evil, slowness.”
He sang hymns to dynamism, machine and speed. He glorified war and scorned women. For him poetry was a violent attack on unknown forces to reduce and prostrate them before man.
Futurist movement gained more popularity in Russia than in its birthplace. The Russian Futurists rejected symbolism, mysticism and the cult of pure beauty. They ridiculed people’s taste as such title of their play was “A slap in the face of public taste”. They also rejected great Russian writers of their past like Pushkin, Dostoievski and Tolstoy. They developed new vocabulary to cleanse themselves of filth and slime of the writers of their past.
Though the protagonist of futurist movement Merinette propagated destruction and glorified violence and war, yet he was regarded by many of his followers as a revolutionary. According to them he opened doors to a vision of a new world of Nietzchean superman. But Eric Fromm places him close to Mussolini and still closer to Hitler: “He lacked the essential criterion of the revolutionary spirit, love of life”
All these movements and cults were outbursts of intellectualism and intellectual gimmickry. Man is destined to live with his inner duality that is living simultaneously in past as well as present. Past is always super imposed on his present. The present moment we live in is unique and there is no substitute for it. And on this moment rests our whole past, all past generations and their culture and we must live with duality.
