Futurists believe that the rapid development of industry, science and transportation in the twentieth century fundamentally changed the spiritual outlook of the human world. Machine and technology, speed and competition have become the main characteristics of the times. Therefore, they claim to pursue the future, advocate complete separation from the past, deny all previous cultural achievements and literary traditions, and advocate new forms in theme and style to conform to the spirit of the times of machines and technology, speed and competition. They feel that machinery has conquered space and time, and power has become the master of the world. Only urbanization, industrialization and high speed can reflect the new spirit of the times. Marinetti pointed out in the Manifesto of Futurism: "The latest scientific inventions have made people's sensibility very acute. In fact, we can't help replacing the old feelings with new ones. New feelings must be expressed in new forms. " This new form of expression is futurism. They imagine leading art from negative decadence to active competition, from symbol to reality, from the past to the future. This is the origin and significance of futurism.
Futurists advocate support and praise the beauty of machinery and speed. It is believed that everything in the world should be centered on power, and mechanics, mechanical movement and high speed are the most commendable. Futurists claim that "the light of the world only spreads at a new beautiful speed" and that "a speeding car is much more beautiful than the Statue of Victory in Samodra." "The beauty of life is developed along the function of machinery, the beauty of color and the line of action." "We are going to sing about the night tremors of arsenals and shipyards under strong light, smoky railway stations, factories hanging from clouds with ash ropes, and the fast flight of adventurous postal ships, institutions and planes." In short, speed has become a new religion worshipped by futurists. They should replace artistic beauty and natural beauty with mechanical beauty, and represent love with mechanization. Therefore, the noise of machinery, the boiling of electricity, the harassment and turmoil of modern city life, and the destructive power of bombs have become the source of inspiration for futurists.
Futurists despise all cultural heritage and advocate denying the past and undermining the spread of art. marinetti declared: "To destroy museums and close libraries, Venice will be blown to pieces, and all historical sites in Italy will be razed to the ground." Russian futurists advocate abolishing the language of Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Tostai and replacing it with street slang.
They also deny the difference between justice and injustice in war, blindly and enthusiastically eulogize war, and think that only war is the only way to save human society. Futurists claim that "war is the best hygiene." "War is what liberates modern racial spirit from the corrupt fermentation of past theories and the narrow shelter of all individuals." Because of blindly advocating war and violence, during the First World War, western futurists just catered to the needs of imperialist aggression and expansion policies, making Italian futurism an official art, and most futurist writers acted as trumpeters of fascism, and Mussolini became their idols.
In literary creation, he advocates "free writing" and "imaginative imagination", opposes the logical structure of sentences, and likes to piece together with a series of nouns or infinitives.
The artistic image created by futurists is a mixture of exaggerated naturalism, chemical or mathematical formulas fabricated out of thin air and meaningless acoustics. Their poems are just the arrangement of words that do not constitute sentences, or paintings by onomatopoeia, mimicry and printing. In this way, literary creation becomes an individualistic word game that only the speaker can understand.
Western futurists are mostly followers of imperialism, militarism and fascism. Marinetti is the representative of the futuristic right wing. In his article Futurism and Fashion, he publicly declared that there is a blood relationship between Futurism and Fascism.
Only in Russia, under the influence of the workers' movement, some futurists used poems to praise the violent revolution, destroy Russia's autocratic system and praise the revolutionary struggle of the working people, and some directly participated in the October Revolution of 19 17. Mayakovski, a great poet, is an outstanding representative of the world, and he should belong to "revolutionary futurism". 1930 After Mayakovski's death, Russian futurism gradually declined, while the sequela of western futurism still existed, which had a far-reaching impact on avant-garde literature and absurd drama in European and American modernism.