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Mafarka il futurista
Mafurka il futurista racconta la vicenda di un re africano che, con il solo sforzo di volontà, partorisce un figlio gigantesco e divino. Di netta derivazione nietzschiana l'opera costituisce un dirompente esempio di applicazione letteraria del futurismo, ed è stata stigmatizzata fino a tempi recenti per il suo contenuto maschilista. La presente edizione riproduce il testo integrale dell'opera che valse al suo autore un celebre processo per oltraggio al pudore.
327 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1909
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About the author
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
184 books81 followersFilippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian ideologue, poet, editor, and founder of the Futurist movement.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
January 5, 2012
Mafarka the Futurist has been my favorite novel for years. English speaking readers are privileged to have such a fine translation (with notes) available of an unfortunately obscure piece of literature. I suspect the bulk of negative reviews are from people who, much like a previous poster admitted, haven't actually read Mafarka the Futurist. It's a shame too, as they're missing out on an entertaining and important piece of literature (from a significant historic figure, no less), marginalized by contemporary critics and modern historians.
Mafarka is as shocking as it is hysterical. Marinetti leaves little to the imagination with his sometimes unorthodox prose (though Mafarka contains a much more tradition narrative and overall style than many of his later works). The frank depiction of violence and debauchery in his heavily stylized turn of the century Egypt may be off-putting to modern readers accustomed to the sensitivity of modern writers - ironic, as Marinetti himself always considered his work exemplative of the artistic future of the world. That being said, it's a unique and highly entertaining romp through a world unlike our own, perhaps unlike anyone's but the denizens of Marinetti's mind.
If you can look past the distracting bullet points of online reviewers about the symbolic and often fantastic elements of the plot you'll find an engrossing and absolutely thrilling read - unlike anything else in print, from Marinetti's time or our own.
Mafarka is as shocking as it is hysterical. Marinetti leaves little to the imagination with his sometimes unorthodox prose (though Mafarka contains a much more tradition narrative and overall style than many of his later works). The frank depiction of violence and debauchery in his heavily stylized turn of the century Egypt may be off-putting to modern readers accustomed to the sensitivity of modern writers - ironic, as Marinetti himself always considered his work exemplative of the artistic future of the world. That being said, it's a unique and highly entertaining romp through a world unlike our own, perhaps unlike anyone's but the denizens of Marinetti's mind.
If you can look past the distracting bullet points of online reviewers about the symbolic and often fantastic elements of the plot you'll find an engrossing and absolutely thrilling read - unlike anything else in print, from Marinetti's time or our own.
December 3, 2023
at first i was kind of taken aback by this, because of how seemingly non futurist it is. stylistically it comes across as far more conventional than you might expect from the guy who said 'it is imperative to destroy syntax'. the most unusual thing about the style is the way he will create chains of unusual metaphors linked together, and often applied to unexpected things, but the grammar and syntax never really do anything too crazy.
the setting is unexpected too - we find ourselves in an exoticised premodern africa, of no clear place and time, although it's probably northern africa because it's clearly an islamic culture and there are both arabs and black africans present. a lot of the descriptions of the black africans especially are essentially exoticist pornography, which perhaps isn't surprising given the implicit futurist approval of colonialism, but it's far more overt here than anything in any of the manifestos. a lot of the early part of the book is about mafarka consolidating his power as king and fighting various battles, which reminded me a little of the Tain, in the brutal violence and grotesque imagery. there's a particularly bizarre and memorable sequence where thousands of rabid dogs are unleashed on mafarka's city by his enemies, and a catapult launches a ball of them onto the battlements is:
"A dreadful din broke out on the promenade from a formless mass, lashed together with ropes, and made up of a hundred bound and howling beasts, A terrible missile, whose outer layer of shredded, bleeding flesh had protected the inner kernel. It broke like an egg, letting the baying dogs flow out."
after all this warring and conquering the point of the book becomes a little clearer. mafarka, saddened by the death of his brother, sets about manufacturing a son without the "support and stinking collusion of the woman’s womb", and the resulting being is a 10 feet tall semi mechanical creature called gazourmah, the sleepless hero. gazourmah proceeds to fly into the air, conquering the sun and presumably destroying the world, which is a pretty futurist thing to do. i don't think i can seriously recommend this on its merits as a novel but it's interesting to have a book direct from marinetti's brain in a way that the manifestos aren't - all the racist and sexist stuff here comes across very much as marinetti's unfiltered hangups put directly onto the page, whereas the manifestos had contributions from others and were also mainly propounding a specific political and artistic programme.
the setting is unexpected too - we find ourselves in an exoticised premodern africa, of no clear place and time, although it's probably northern africa because it's clearly an islamic culture and there are both arabs and black africans present. a lot of the descriptions of the black africans especially are essentially exoticist pornography, which perhaps isn't surprising given the implicit futurist approval of colonialism, but it's far more overt here than anything in any of the manifestos. a lot of the early part of the book is about mafarka consolidating his power as king and fighting various battles, which reminded me a little of the Tain, in the brutal violence and grotesque imagery. there's a particularly bizarre and memorable sequence where thousands of rabid dogs are unleashed on mafarka's city by his enemies, and a catapult launches a ball of them onto the battlements is:
"A dreadful din broke out on the promenade from a formless mass, lashed together with ropes, and made up of a hundred bound and howling beasts, A terrible missile, whose outer layer of shredded, bleeding flesh had protected the inner kernel. It broke like an egg, letting the baying dogs flow out."
after all this warring and conquering the point of the book becomes a little clearer. mafarka, saddened by the death of his brother, sets about manufacturing a son without the "support and stinking collusion of the woman’s womb", and the resulting being is a 10 feet tall semi mechanical creature called gazourmah, the sleepless hero. gazourmah proceeds to fly into the air, conquering the sun and presumably destroying the world, which is a pretty futurist thing to do. i don't think i can seriously recommend this on its merits as a novel but it's interesting to have a book direct from marinetti's brain in a way that the manifestos aren't - all the racist and sexist stuff here comes across very much as marinetti's unfiltered hangups put directly onto the page, whereas the manifestos had contributions from others and were also mainly propounding a specific political and artistic programme.
February 17, 2022
Per certi versi la summa e l'acme dell'opera di Marinetti. Un romanzo sperimentale, coraggioso, totalmente sfacciato e spudorato, ambientato in un'Africa favolistica, surreale e senza tempo che mischia elementi subsahariani, nordafricani e mediorientali con nonchalance sfruttata come pretesto per esprimere a parole l'energia e la carica rivoluzionaria del Futurismo. Non si segue un vero e vero sviluppo narrativo tradizionale quanto piuttosto le avventure del re africano Mafarka e le sue imprese e disavventure in un coacervo di elementi, episodi e linguaggio che ne sancirono la censura di ampi passaggi nel 1910 e portarono Marinetti ad un leggendario processo per le accuse di oscenità. Difficilissimo da categorizzare anche solo in senso letterario, vi sono elementi erotici - per non dire esplicitamente pornografici - splatter, avventurosi, umoristici, grotteschi e per quanto anacronistici e riduttivi elementi che oggi definiremo tendenti al fantasy, alla fantascienza e allo steampunk il tutto scritto in un linguaggio lirico, frenetico e pomposo nella tradizione del Marinetti pù celebrato. Non esiste alcuna etichetta adeguata per caratterizzarlo: è Marinetti.
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March 17, 2023deeply cursed
May 9, 2022
"Io sono il grande Pdor, figlio di Kmer..."
Want to read
November 25, 2020Leggo le recensioni qui sotto e penso:
"Inglesi, gente che andava nuda a caccia di marmotte quando noi già s'accoltellava un Giulio Cesare"
(Guzzanti)
"Inglesi, gente che andava nuda a caccia di marmotte quando noi già s'accoltellava un Giulio Cesare"
(Guzzanti)
January 9, 2015
Reading the reviews below, I thought I should overcome my disappointment at this book to point one or two things to prospective readers: there is indeed a lively tradition bent on seeing futurism, Marinetti and Mafarka in particular as mouth-pieces of the most repugnant, reactionary misogyny, which at first sight it would be hard to deny:
Eager to depart from the decadent canon represented by D'Annunzio or Sartorio, the author vocally rejected women and their veneration as a suitable subject matter for avant-garde art. The concern with unity and coherence characteristic of those movements lead them to translate their disregard for traditional female figures of art (love poetry, nude paintings, etc.) into a "practical" demand for "scorn for women" as worded in the founding manifesto of futurism. It comes therefore as no surprise to find in the titular Mafarka's struggles a vociferous rejection of the "debilitating" and pacifying effects of romantic love, and of what Marinetti conceives as its only harbinger: women.
A closer examination of the futurist corpus and history, as well as quick survey of the feminist histories concerned with the movement, will reveal a much more complex and ambivalent position. To keep it short and sweet I will stick to Lucia Re's excellent reading (here taken from her essay on Benedetta Cappa, "Impure Abstraction: Benedetta as visual artist and novelist") but there is a wealth of litterature on the issue (most notably Barbara Spackmann and Cinzia Blum-Santini) :
The first futurism (between 1909 and 1914) to which Mafarka clearly belongs, despite blatant and brutal misogyny, later attracted many women, and many feminitsts among those. This Re identifies as a resulting from its rejection of women as a subject of representation, and its ultra-virilist emphasis on homo-sociality and masculine bodies. Freed from the male gaze women in futurism in particular, and in the avant-gardes in general, where no longer committed to objectification and otherness, as they were in pure abstraction or in symbolist painting for example, and could become actors and producers of art.
I would add that Marinetti's love for the grotesque (see his "Roi Bombance") must be understood as mitigating his pronouncements, as should the performative character of his movement. Paradoxically, futurism had many progressive effects on Italian society, before its insecure attention-seeking left it but a rotting puppet in the hands of the Fascist regime. The liberation of woman as an artist, the collapsing of the frontier between popular and high culture, or the recognition of the public sphere as a space for performance, are but a few examples.
Unfortunately, all those qualities do not suffice to make Mafarka a worthwhile read: I really wanted to love the book, but there is rather little to salvage here.
As Re mentions, futurist stylistic devices prove more suited to poetry or short prose than to long and constructed fictions like novels. There, boisterous emptiness of many futurist proclamations is generally mitigated by their social, political or cultural context. Here, Marinetti abstracted his tale by placing it in some orientalist wet-dream, which leaves his reader with little of interest save for the monolithic, obsessional, bumptious portrayal of a theme that was by then already old and treated much better elsewhere: vitalism.
At his best Marinetti make some interesting uses of the metaphora continua and inject some theatrical forms in his novel, or practice a strange exercise of africanized "subcreation" complete with names, gods and geography (and it might be as a pre-Robert E Howard Sword & Sorcery this book should be read) ;
But about halfway through, I've had to force myself to go on...
Eager to depart from the decadent canon represented by D'Annunzio or Sartorio, the author vocally rejected women and their veneration as a suitable subject matter for avant-garde art. The concern with unity and coherence characteristic of those movements lead them to translate their disregard for traditional female figures of art (love poetry, nude paintings, etc.) into a "practical" demand for "scorn for women" as worded in the founding manifesto of futurism. It comes therefore as no surprise to find in the titular Mafarka's struggles a vociferous rejection of the "debilitating" and pacifying effects of romantic love, and of what Marinetti conceives as its only harbinger: women.
A closer examination of the futurist corpus and history, as well as quick survey of the feminist histories concerned with the movement, will reveal a much more complex and ambivalent position. To keep it short and sweet I will stick to Lucia Re's excellent reading (here taken from her essay on Benedetta Cappa, "Impure Abstraction: Benedetta as visual artist and novelist") but there is a wealth of litterature on the issue (most notably Barbara Spackmann and Cinzia Blum-Santini) :
The first futurism (between 1909 and 1914) to which Mafarka clearly belongs, despite blatant and brutal misogyny, later attracted many women, and many feminitsts among those. This Re identifies as a resulting from its rejection of women as a subject of representation, and its ultra-virilist emphasis on homo-sociality and masculine bodies. Freed from the male gaze women in futurism in particular, and in the avant-gardes in general, where no longer committed to objectification and otherness, as they were in pure abstraction or in symbolist painting for example, and could become actors and producers of art.
I would add that Marinetti's love for the grotesque (see his "Roi Bombance") must be understood as mitigating his pronouncements, as should the performative character of his movement. Paradoxically, futurism had many progressive effects on Italian society, before its insecure attention-seeking left it but a rotting puppet in the hands of the Fascist regime. The liberation of woman as an artist, the collapsing of the frontier between popular and high culture, or the recognition of the public sphere as a space for performance, are but a few examples.
Unfortunately, all those qualities do not suffice to make Mafarka a worthwhile read: I really wanted to love the book, but there is rather little to salvage here.
As Re mentions, futurist stylistic devices prove more suited to poetry or short prose than to long and constructed fictions like novels. There, boisterous emptiness of many futurist proclamations is generally mitigated by their social, political or cultural context. Here, Marinetti abstracted his tale by placing it in some orientalist wet-dream, which leaves his reader with little of interest save for the monolithic, obsessional, bumptious portrayal of a theme that was by then already old and treated much better elsewhere: vitalism.
At his best Marinetti make some interesting uses of the metaphora continua and inject some theatrical forms in his novel, or practice a strange exercise of africanized "subcreation" complete with names, gods and geography (and it might be as a pre-Robert E Howard Sword & Sorcery this book should be read) ;
But about halfway through, I've had to force myself to go on...
August 19, 2017
Moralism and bigotry should not be the lenses through which one reads this book. It is a masterpiece for the incredible metaphors and craftsmanship in playing with words. Much closer to a poem than a novel, it showcases Nietzschean misogyny and brutality, certain settings are willingly and rightly disturbing in order to point to a higher level of self, devoid of lowly passions, sentimental cravings, needs. The author and the book went on trial in 1910 for obscenity; the Italian edition by Mondadori contains an appendix with Marinetti's lawyers defence debates. It is a masterpiece of legal oratory well worth reading.
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July 23, 2010I'm not actually reading this book... I'm perusing it for a paper I'm writing on futurism and reproduction. Marinetti writes about a guy who hates women so much that we wants to have his own child without them. So he makes one. In the shape of an airplane.
February 6, 2024
Este libro lo compré porque decía que era una novela futurista. No se muy bien a que se refería, solo al final aparece algo así cuando Mafarka, un rey guerrero, creo a su hijo. Estuvo bien, pero hay novelas mejores
February 1, 2013
Orientalist chauvinism and schmalz wrapped up in one tiresome whole. Seemed as if Marinetti (here, at least) fancied himself the 20th-century incarnation of Nietzsche, but missed the mark entirely.
May 7, 2024
Read this book as part of my research into futurism and I truly wish I hadn't. The other reviews seem to be ignoring the despicable first chapter, typically described as a 'mass rape' scene, but that severely undermines how truly disgusting this scene is. The women are described in an insanely disrespectful way, a common theme throughout the book, and the men are only lightly scolded for what they've done - and only because raping women is a distraction from war.
This book was continuously gross in its descriptions of relationships and bodies and the writing is just plain bad.
At times the outlandishness did make me laugh, some of the things that Marinetti came up with are so unfathomably insane, but in all cases i was laughing at the book (and the author) not because of it.
Truly terrible.
I hate Mafarka. I hate his stupid metal bird hybrid son. I hate this entire book. I hate Marinetti, and i hate the Futurists.
This book was continuously gross in its descriptions of relationships and bodies and the writing is just plain bad.
At times the outlandishness did make me laugh, some of the things that Marinetti came up with are so unfathomably insane, but in all cases i was laughing at the book (and the author) not because of it.
Truly terrible.
I hate Mafarka. I hate his stupid metal bird hybrid son. I hate this entire book. I hate Marinetti, and i hate the Futurists.
March 8, 2025
Read this for a writing project and will need some serious mind bleach next. This is a protofascist, unbelievably orientalist, porny, hyper-convoluted, adjective-heavy nightmare blend of misogyny, racism, and male power fantasy (see Spackman 1996 for the fascist connections), and every single overwrought paragraph eroticizes the king's--and then his son's, the airplane's--subjection of literally all matter, forever feminine. The first chapter has an extended scene of a mass rape of Black women, which, mind you, is bad, we're told, since that activity saps the soldiers of their stamina for war. The ideas don't really get better until the airplane boy destroys this ugly world at the end. Ugh.
October 1, 2022
El futurismo se ha quedado viejísimo. Parece un romanticismo faltón, malhablado y con el YO del autor muy pasado de rosca. O sea, un hijo tonto del romanticismo. Pero no sabe uno nada de vanguardias e imagina, benevolente, que esta novela debió ser cosa muy sorprendente y novedosa. La trama (sigue uno benevolente y acepta que hay trama) no tiene importancia. La forma, los efectos especiales, los recursos literarios de la novela, que es donde estaría el intríngulis de la cosa, son increíblemente parecidos a lo que se encuentra en las películas de coches, tiros y explosiones. En vez de latinas en bikini y shorts hay esclavas negras desnudas. En lugar de coches rugientes y relucientes hay caballos rugientes y relucientes. Junto a esto, hay muchos muertos, mucha sangre y mucho sexo gratuito (la editorial Renacimiento, tomando el rábano por las hojas, lo editó en su colección "Pompadour") y, sobre todo, están los imprescindibles protagonistas masculinos requetealfas, ultraviolentos y megasexuales, tan atormentados y tiernos. Leer Mafarka y ver Fast & furious son una y la misma cosa. Entiende uno que los pioneros merecen honor y reconocimiento. Sea. Espero que algún día Vin Diesel recoja el Oscar Honorífico a toda su carrera.
July 26, 2024
Just a big ball of what the fuck.
A sword and sorcery hyperviolent misogynist fever dream.
Mafarka rises to power as a warlord in a premodern fantasy Africa.
During Mafarka's ruthless conquest, Mafarka's brother dies of rabies.
Mafarka goes mad and builds an immortal airplane son he names Gazourmah.
Gazourmah rises into the air, conquers the sun and then flies to Mars leaving behind the Earth to collapse into apocalypse.
A sword and sorcery hyperviolent misogynist fever dream.
Mafarka rises to power as a warlord in a premodern fantasy Africa.
During Mafarka's ruthless conquest, Mafarka's brother dies of rabies.
Mafarka goes mad and builds an immortal airplane son he names Gazourmah.
Gazourmah rises into the air, conquers the sun and then flies to Mars leaving behind the Earth to collapse into apocalypse.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 12, 2022
A brutal, transgressive, and surreal masterpiece from one of futurism’s most influential figures.
February 4, 2023
KSKS
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 12, 2025
I came to this book looking for more clarity on Futurism, and left sourly disappointed.
The entire work reads like a drug-addled fever dream. As someone who enjoys magical realism, that isn’t a bad thing on its own. However, the story is uninteresting and meandering, while all of the characters serve as nothing more than symbols. As such, there is no cohesive progression to draw the reader in, and I was left pushing through the book just to see what next bizarre scenario would play out. As you can imagine, that grows old quickly.
My effort was further impeded by the pacing. Marinetti chooses to dedicate an impressive number of pages to events that could easily have fit into a single paragraph while retaining all their motifs. These scenes, such as the ships wrecking in the penultimate chapter, were no doubt very impressive in his mind, but completely kill the pace.
As such, while the book was interesting, it ironically enough commits a sin in the eyes of futurism - it is dull, and at times painfully slow.
The entire work reads like a drug-addled fever dream. As someone who enjoys magical realism, that isn’t a bad thing on its own. However, the story is uninteresting and meandering, while all of the characters serve as nothing more than symbols. As such, there is no cohesive progression to draw the reader in, and I was left pushing through the book just to see what next bizarre scenario would play out. As you can imagine, that grows old quickly.
My effort was further impeded by the pacing. Marinetti chooses to dedicate an impressive number of pages to events that could easily have fit into a single paragraph while retaining all their motifs. These scenes, such as the ships wrecking in the penultimate chapter, were no doubt very impressive in his mind, but completely kill the pace.
As such, while the book was interesting, it ironically enough commits a sin in the eyes of futurism - it is dull, and at times painfully slow.
April 2, 2023
E' la prima volta che do un giudizio su un libro mentre lo sto ancora leggendo...dopo appena 30 pagine.. è la prima volta che mi capita...Sublime.. è prosa che diviene poesia
E frattanto, laggiù, lontanissimo, davanti alle cupe montagne di Bab-el-Futuk, i fumi delle caldaie dei veleni si torcevano, rosei, come serpenti favolosi, sbarrando nell’alto cielo i loro occhi di stelle ingenue.
Lo leggerò molto lentamente, sperando che non finisca...
E frattanto, laggiù, lontanissimo, davanti alle cupe montagne di Bab-el-Futuk, i fumi delle caldaie dei veleni si torcevano, rosei, come serpenti favolosi, sbarrando nell’alto cielo i loro occhi di stelle ingenue.
Lo leggerò molto lentamente, sperando che non finisca...
December 17, 2015
Ce livre odieux quoique brilliant est incontestablement l’oeuvre d’un esprit fort malsain. Marfarka est en meme temps un exposé brilliant des idées du mouvment futuriste et un roman philosophique dans la tradition d’Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra. Étant donné que le movement futuriste est à la base Nietzscheen, le choix du genre convient parfaitement aux objectifs de l’auteur. Ce roman va déplaire fortement à ceux qui aiment la littérature comme telle.
Dans le preface, Marinetti réitere les points principaux de son Manifeste Futuriste. L’art doit promouvoir la guerre et la vitesse. Il doit s’opposer à tout ce qui est femin. Il faut que les artistes rejettent tous les éléments des tendances artisitiques qui ont précédé le mouvement le futuriste. Dans une dixaine d’années un nouveau mouvement devra survenir qui balayera le terrain à nouveau.
Mafarka est noble dans un pays musulmane de l’Afrique du Nord qui chasse un Sultan qui semble etre inapte à resister à une invasion d’un pays noir. Mafarka réussit à emporter une victoire face aux envahisseurs noirs grace à son intelligence et force morale.
Alors, Mafarka doit prendre les mesures nécessaires pour avoir un héritier. Cependant il tient mordicus à engendrer sans la collaboration d’une vulve pour son que son fils soit le produit uniquement d’une volonté male. Mafarka decide de construire un oiseau rapace mécanique qui s’appelle Gazourmah. Gazmourmah tue Mafarka et par en guerre contre les forces de la nature qu’il vainc haut la main. Le roman est donc une fable Nietzschéene impeccable.
Le problème est que le roman est d’une grossièreté démesurée. Le chapitre qui a pour titre “le Viol des Négresses” est peut-etre le plus offensif mais Marinetti va trop loin dans bien des places. Mafarka est bel et bien une oeuvre importante mais tellement detestable.
Dans le preface, Marinetti réitere les points principaux de son Manifeste Futuriste. L’art doit promouvoir la guerre et la vitesse. Il doit s’opposer à tout ce qui est femin. Il faut que les artistes rejettent tous les éléments des tendances artisitiques qui ont précédé le mouvement le futuriste. Dans une dixaine d’années un nouveau mouvement devra survenir qui balayera le terrain à nouveau.
Mafarka est noble dans un pays musulmane de l’Afrique du Nord qui chasse un Sultan qui semble etre inapte à resister à une invasion d’un pays noir. Mafarka réussit à emporter une victoire face aux envahisseurs noirs grace à son intelligence et force morale.
Alors, Mafarka doit prendre les mesures nécessaires pour avoir un héritier. Cependant il tient mordicus à engendrer sans la collaboration d’une vulve pour son que son fils soit le produit uniquement d’une volonté male. Mafarka decide de construire un oiseau rapace mécanique qui s’appelle Gazourmah. Gazmourmah tue Mafarka et par en guerre contre les forces de la nature qu’il vainc haut la main. Le roman est donc une fable Nietzschéene impeccable.
Le problème est que le roman est d’une grossièreté démesurée. Le chapitre qui a pour titre “le Viol des Négresses” est peut-etre le plus offensif mais Marinetti va trop loin dans bien des places. Mafarka est bel et bien une oeuvre importante mais tellement detestable.
December 21, 2015
I hesitate to call this a novel as it more precisely belongs in the category of manifestos disguised as novels. Regardless, here we see Marinetti's most expansive and belabored rendition of his new movement, in the form of mass rape, murder and pillage. A divinity allegedly emerges from this poorly executed screed of violence and war, yet for all its Nietzschean pretensions, Mafarka fails to approximate even the other pseudo-Nietzschean fiction of its era (see, for instance, D'Annunzio). What is important, or recognized by some as important in Marinetti's thin book, is its break with Naturalism, a recognition which is the equivalent of praising a fire for its intensity as it engulfs a museum. In sum, this hasty work of literary arson merits a mere nod for its formal contrivance, spite for its silly philosophical pretense and perhaps a serious explanation of Marinetti's Orientalism (a term I use here in the reciprocal sense that E.W. Said used it, to denote an "exchange").
November 11, 2014
Reseña: http://www.fabulantes.com/2014/11/maf...
"El 8 de octubre de 1910 se abría en la 3ª sección del Tribunal de Milán la causa contra un libro acusado de pornográfico, ofensivo, innecesario, un libro apocalíptico que albergaba un mensaje profético, un mensaje que adivinaba el renacer de un nuevo hombre y la destrucción de todo lo previo. Era ese libro Mafarka il futurista (1909-1910), la desproporcionada novela que Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (Alejandría, Egipto, 1876-Bellagio, Italia, 1944) había primero publicado en Francia y que un año después veía la luz en Italia entre las descalificaciones de sus adversarios y los vítores de sus entusiastas."
"El 8 de octubre de 1910 se abría en la 3ª sección del Tribunal de Milán la causa contra un libro acusado de pornográfico, ofensivo, innecesario, un libro apocalíptico que albergaba un mensaje profético, un mensaje que adivinaba el renacer de un nuevo hombre y la destrucción de todo lo previo. Era ese libro Mafarka il futurista (1909-1910), la desproporcionada novela que Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (Alejandría, Egipto, 1876-Bellagio, Italia, 1944) había primero publicado en Francia y que un año después veía la luz en Italia entre las descalificaciones de sus adversarios y los vítores de sus entusiastas."
November 11, 2013
I don't even know where to begin with this book. It's Marinetti's insane fantasy about man machines. The writing is so hilariously bad and over the top that you can't help but laugh as you page through it.
October 24, 2010
Umm, no.
July 7, 2015
This book is exactly what people have said it is. The only real surprise is that a book charged with being obscene has very little obscenity in it.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews