COSMIC FORCES…
By:
April 20, 2024
A (pro- or anti-) science-, mathematics-, technology-, space-, apocalypse-, dehumanization-, disenchantment-, and/or future-oriented poem published during sf’s emergent Radium Age (c. 1900–1935). Research and selection by Joshua Glenn.
We have a ring-a-ring-o’roses with spiral motions of cosmic forces increasingly more electrical moving higher higher toward the sun which is perhaps nothing more than the projection of psychic energies of a heart similar to the human heart, a heart of a Cosmic Titan, of whom we Futurists are the younger brothers — perhaps a sperm of this Titan has contributed to our conception in the uterus of our mother, in the same way as our sperms all over the world have thrilled and perhaps fertilized beings of unknown and lower worlds.
— Excerpt from the author’s review (in L’Italia futurista of 9 September 1917) of Bruno Corra’s Sam Dunn è morto: Romanzo futurista (Sam Dunn is Dead, 1917).
A brief novel that can be read as: as a parody of nascent science-fiction (published in 1915, it’s set in the late 1940s and early 1950s); an exercise in stretching imaginative capabilities to their limits, with no regard for traditional canons of taste or morality; or a proto-Fascist novel of Creative Heroism.
As by “Magamal” (the nom de pliume of Eva Amendola Kühn). Translation found in the 2015 International Yearbook of Futurist Studies — Special Issue: Women Artists and Futurism.
In 1916, Magamal joined the group of L’Italia futurista, a periodical published from 1916 to 1918 by Attilio Vallecchi in Florence.
I’m a little confused — Did Magamal write this passage, or did Corra?
Although some of Marinetti’s slogans give the impression that Futurism showed contempt for women, Eva and a group of other Futurist women repre- sented, at least until the feminist wave of the 1960s, the only literary and artistic movement that encouraged a female presence in Italian arts. Within this context, Eva Magamal was important for having contributed to the innovation of expres- sive codes. Her Words-in-Freedom, together with those of Emma Marpillero, Irma Valeria and Enrica Piubellini, are important examples of visual poetry. 62 In 1916, Magamal joined the group of L’Italia futurista, a periodical published from 1916 to 1918 by Attilio Vallecchi in Florence. The front page contained arti- cles about the war, but it was mainly an outlet for creative texts, manifestos, plays, reviews etc.63 L’Italia futurista had Maria Ginanni on its editorial board, regularly published contributions by Futurist women, and ran a column, Donna + Amore + Bellezza (Woman + love + beauty), in which the woman question was controver- sially debated. However, Magamal did not participate in this discussion, nor in the periodical’s sequel, Roma futurista. Like all Futurist women, Eva considered herself to be special, enterprising, ‘fast’, male, different from ordinary women:
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.