sitting in a car;
And petrol is the perfect wine, I lick it and absorb it,
So we will sing the praises of man holding the flywheel of which the ideal
steering-post traverses the earth impelled itself around the circuit of
its own orbit.

Yes, it would be a rollicking catch. I wish there were space to finish
the song, or to detail all the other sections in the Declaration.
Suffice it to say that Futurism has a gratifying dislike both of
Liberal politics and Christian morals; I say gratifying because, however
unfortunately the cross and the cap of liberty have quarrelled, they are
always united in the feeble hatred of such silly megalomaniacs as these.
They will "glorify war--the only true hygiene of the world--militarism,
patriotism, the destructive gesture of Anarchism, the beautiful ideas
which kill, and the scorn of woman." They will "destroy museums,
libraries, and fight against moralism, feminism, and all utilitarian
cowardice." The proclamation ends with an extraordinary passage which I
cannot understand at all, all about something that is going to happen to
Mr. Marinetti when he is forty. As far as I can make out he will then be
killed by other poets, who will be overwhelmed with love and admiration
for him. "They will come against us from far away, from everywhere,
leaping on the cadence of their first poems, clawing the air with
crooked fingers and scenting at the Academy gates the good smell of our
decaying minds." Well, it is satisfactory to be told, however obscurely,
that this sort of thing is coming to an end some day, to be replaced by
some other tomfoolery. And though I commonly refrain from clawing the
air with crooked fingers, I can assure Mr. Marinetti that this omission
does not disqualify me, and that I scent the good smell of his decaying
mind all right.

I think the only other point of Futurism is contained in this sentence:
"It is in Italy that we hurl this overthrowing and inflammatory
Declaration, with which to-day we found Futurism, for we will free Italy
from her numberless museums which cover her with countless cemeteries."
I think that rather sums it up. The best way, one would think, of
freeing oneself from a museum would be not to go there. Mr. Marinetti's
fathers and grandfathers freed Italy from prisons and torture chambers,
places where people were held by force. They, being in the bondage of
"moralism," attacked Governments as unjust, real Governments, with
real guns. Such was t