Zang Tumb Tumb - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

"Zang Tumb Tumb" is a sound poem

Sound poetry

Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging between literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words"...

and concrete poem

Concrete poetry

Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on....

written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet and editor, the founder of the Futurist movement, and a fascist ideologue.-Childhood and adolescence:...

, an Italian futurist

Futurism (art)

Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...

. It appeared in excerpts in journals between 1912 and 1914, when it was published as an artist's book in Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

. It is an account of the Battle of Adrianople

Battle of Adrianople (1913)

The Battle or Siege of Adrianople or Siege of Edirne was fought during the First Balkan War, beginning in mid-November 1912 and ending on 26 March 1913 with the capture of Edirne by the Bulgarian 2nd Army....

, which he witnessed as a reporter for L'Intransigeant

L'Intransigeant

L'Intransigeant was a French newspaper, founded in July 1880 by Henri Rochefort. Initially representing the left-wing opposition, it developed towards the right during the Boulangism affair and became a major right-wing newspaper by 1920s. The newspaper was vehemently anti-Dreyfusard, reflecting...

. The poem uses Parole in libertà, (words in freedom) -creative typography

Typography

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...

- and other poetic impressions of the events of the battle, including the sounds of gunfire and explosions. The work is now seen as a seminal work of modernist art

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

, and an enormous influence on the emerging culture of European avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

print.

"[The] masterpiece of Words-in-freedom and of Marinetti’s literary career was the novel ‘Zang Tumb Tuuum’... the story of the siege by the Bulgarians of Turkish Adrianople in the Balkan War, which Marinetti had witnessed as a war reporter. The dynamic rhythms and onomatopoetic possibilities that the new form offered were made even more effective through the revolutionary use of different typefaces, forms and graphic arrangements and sizes that became a distinctive part of Futurism. In ‘Zang Tumb Tuuum; they are used to express an extraordinary range of different moods and speeds, quite apart from the noise and chaos of battle.... Audiences in London, Berlin and Rome alike were bowled over by the tongue-twisting vitality with which Marinetti declaimed ‘Zang Tumb Tuuum.’ As an extended sound poem it stands as one of the monuments of experimental literature, its telegraphic barrage of nouns, colours, exclamations and directions pouring out in the screeching of trains, the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire, and the clatter of telegraphic messages" Caroline Tisdall & Angelo Bozzola

The birth of futurism

According to Marinetti, futurism was born as a direct consequence of a 1908 car crash in which, attempting to avoid two cyclists, he crashed his Bugatti

Bugatti

Automobiles E. Bugatti was a French car manufacturer founded in 1909 in Molsheim, Alsace, as a manufacturer of high-performance automobiles by Italian-born Ettore Bugatti....

and went flying head over heels into a ditch. The experience led directly to the first futurist manifesto, which achieved an extraordinary coup-de-theâtre when he persuaded the editor of Le Figaro
Le Figaro
Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...

to publish the entire manifesto on the front page, February 20th, 1909. Amongst a series of exhortations to replace the 'pensive, immobile' traditional literature with 'exalt[ed] movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness... the slap and the blow with the fist.' and 'want[ing] to glorify war - the only cure for the world', the piece includes the famous quote;

"We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace."

In a slightly later manifesto, contemporaneous with Zang Tumb Tuuum, Marinetti sets out a vision of modern book design which would provide the template for what would become known as the artist's book, in direct contrast to the French tradition of Livre d'Artiste.

"I call for a typographic revolution directed against the idiotic and nauseating concepts of the outdated and conventional book, with its handmade paper and seventeenth century ornamentation of garlands and goddesses, huge initials and mythological vegetation, its missal ribbons and epigraphs and roman numerals. The book must be the Futurist expression of our futurist ideas.. even more: My revolution is directed against what is known as the typographic harmony of the page, which is contrary to the flux and movement of style." Marinetti, Typographic Revolution, 1913,

Fascism and futurism

Whilst Marinetti was a strong supporter of violence, the oft-repeated links with Italian fascism remain problematic. He organised a punch-up between futurists in Milan

Milan

, September 1914 to support Italy's entry into the war, and in a similar demonstration in May 1915 both he and Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

were arrested. The same year Marinetti published the futurist compilation Guerra sola igiene del mondo (War the only world hygiene, 1915) -a polemic to encourage Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

to enter World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

- his pro-war views mirroring a widespread view amongst European intellectuals at the time.

In 1918 he formed the Partito Politico Futurista (Futurist Political Party) which, despite being 'anti-clerical, anti-monarchist, nationalist and... left-wing' was quickly absorbed into Mussolini's Fasci di combattimento, making Marinetti one of the first members of the nascent Fascist Party

Italian Fascism

Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...

. He proceeded to walk out of a Fascist Congress in 1920, citing his 'disgust' at the reactionary politics, leading to a withdrawal from politics for three years. Marinetti continued to support fascism, however, becoming increasingly conservative as he continued to attempt to influence Fascist policies. Whilst continually failing to talk Mussolini into adopting futurism as the official state art, he did manage to persuade Il Duce to refuse entry to the Degenerate Art

Degenerate art

Degenerate art is the English translation of the German entartete Kunst, a term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany to describe virtually all modern art. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were...

touring exhibition organised by the Nazis

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

into Italy in 1938, and in the same year publicly protested against anti-semitism.

"Futurism's complex pas de deux with Fascism is, in the end, reducible to the story of the ups and downs of the friendship between the two leaders, Marinetti and Mussolini." While the careers of both were interwoven, the poet and the dictator "were also in tension and sometimes even in open conflict," Schnapp says, "so we shouldn't fall into the trap of reducing Futurism to Fascism or vice versa." Jeffrey Schnapp, Stanford University quoted in Smithsonian Magazine

The book

The book is a 228 page softback which includes foldout pages as part of the poem. The poem opens with Corrections of Proofs & Desires ;

'No poetry before us

with our wireless imagination

and words in freedom LOOOng live

Futurism finally finally finally finally finally finally finally

Poetry being BORN

and ends with Bombardment;

'1 2 3 4 5 seconds siege guns split the silence in unison tam-tuuumb sudden echoes all the echoes seize it quick smash it scatter it to the infinite winds to the devil

'In the middle these tam-tuuumb flattened 50 square kilometers leap 2-6-8 crashes clubs punches bashes quick-firing batteries. Violence ferocity regularity pendulum play fatality

'...these weights thicknesses sounds smells molecular whirlwinds chains nets and channels of analogies concurrences and synchronisms for my Futurist friends poets painters and musicians zang-tumb-tumb-zang-zang-tuuumb tatatatatatatata picpacpampacpacpicpampampac uuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

ZANG-TUMB

TUMB-TUMB

TUUUUUM

In keeping with a number of early artist's books, the book also contains essays and manifestoes, including the Manifesto tecnico della letteratura Futurista (technical manifesto of futurist literature) (11 May 1912) 'which was to revolutionize poetic techniques and contemporary prose' and includes the lines;

'We must destroy syntax by placing nouns at random as they are born'

'We must abolish the adjective so that the naked noun can retain its essential colour.'

The book is an unsigned, unnumbered mass-produced paperback that depends exclusively on industrial typography for its visual impact, making it one of the very first artist's books to eschew some form of craftsmanship. The book originally cost 3 lire

Lira

Lira is the name of the monetary unit of a number of countries, as well as the former currency of Italy, Malta, San Marino and the Vatican City and Israel. The term originates from the value of a Troy pound of high purity silver. The libra was the basis of the monetary system of the Roman Empire...

International promotional tours

Marinetti promoted his ideas by continually travelling across Europe giving recitations; as well as giving 'riotous soirées' throughout Italy, he travelled to Russia in 1910 and 1913, Paris 1912 and 1914, Berlin and Brussels in 1912, and London in 1911, 1912 and 1914. This last recital, on June 12, 1914, became notorious when, during a performance of The Battle Of Adrianople with CRW Nevinson on drums, a group of disgruntled vorticists

Vorticism

Vorticism, an offshoot of Cubism, was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century. It was based in London but international in make-up and ambition.-Origins:...

, including Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Lewis

Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...

, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was a French sculptor who developed a rough hewn, primitive style of direct carving....

and Jacob Epstein

Jacob Epstein

Sir Jacob Epstein KBE was an American-born British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British citizen in 1911. He often produced controversial works which challenged taboos on what was appropriate subject matter...

interrupted the performance, jeering and shouting to protest at Marinetti's co-opting of vorticists' signatures to an English translation of the Futurist Manifesto. On another occasion at the Lyceum Club, 1911, Marinetti challenged an Irish journalist to a duel after a perceived slight against the Italian Army

Italian Army

The Italian Army is the ground defence force of the Italian Armed Forces. It is all-volunteer force of active-duty personnel, numbering 108,355 in 2010. Its best-known combat vehicles are the Dardo infantry fighting vehicle, the Centauro tank destroyer and the Ariete tank, and among its aircraft...

. Largely as a result of these tours, and the ease in which his publications including Zang Tumb Tumb could be distributed and disseminated, Futurism was better known than Cubism before World War I, and in England at least had become a synonym by the English Press to simply mean any forward looking trends in modern art.

Influence

The poem inspired Luigi Russolo

Luigi Russolo

Luigi Russolo was an Italian Futurist painter and composer, and the author of the manifesto The Art of Noises . He is often regarded as one of the first noise music experimental composers with his performances of "noise concerts" in 1913-14 and then again after World War I, notably in Paris in 1921...

to start experimenting with noise music, and is quoted in his Manifesto in 1913, later published in his book The Art of Noises
The Art of Noises
The Art of Noises is a Futurist manifesto, written by Luigi Russolo in a 1913 letter to friend and Futurist composer Francesco Balilla Pratella...

in 1916. Sections were reproduced in Cabaret Voltaire, the first journal published by Dada

Dada

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

.

The innovative use of typography has influenced a number of artists including Balla

Balla

Balla is a village in County Mayo, Ireland on the N60 National secondary road, the main road between Castlebar and Claremorris. The economy of the village survives mainly on passing trade, from the busy N60 which carries over 7,000 vehicles through the village every day. The village is to be...

, Carra

Carlo Carrà

Carlo Carrà was an Italian painter, a leading figure of the Futurist movement that flourished in Italy during the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to his many paintings, he wrote a number of books concerning art. He taught for many years in the city of Milan.-Biography:Carrà was born in...

, Boccioni, Hugo Ball

Hugo Ball

Hugo Ball was a German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists.Hugo Ball was born in Pirmasens, Germany and was raised in a middle-class Catholic family. He studied sociology and philosophy at the universities of Munich and Heidelberg...

and Dada

Dada

, the Russian futurists, the Vorticists

Vorticism

including Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Lewis

Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...

, Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire

Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....

, Blaise Cendrars

Blaise Cendrars

Frédéric Louis Sauser , better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss novelist and poet naturalized French in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the modernist movement.-Early years:...

, Max Jacob

Max Jacob

Max Jacob was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.-Life and career:After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, France, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career...

, El Lissitsky and Jan Tschichold

Jan Tschichold

Jan Tschichold was a typographer, book designer, teacher and writer.-Life:Tschichold was the son of a provincial signwriter, and he was trained in calligraphy...

. The emphasis on what has since become known as concrete poetry

Concrete poetry

has proved a durable and lasting influence on the development of 20th century art.

'...all in all, Futurist "art" [painting] was a blind alley. Instead, we can see that what Futurism did was to reassign leadership in the visual arts from painters to designers. Anyone who has admired a poster and found fine art wanting is in touch with the spirit of Marinetti.... In fact, Futurism was more like a marketing campaign than an artistic movement. Their fascination with and exploitation of mass media anticipated and influenced advertising in the 20th century.' Stephen Bayley

Current value

A copy of the book in reasonable condition was valued at around £2000 ($3000) in 2009, with an inscribed copy selling for £2600 in London, May 2008. This is in stark contrast to its value (and reputation) for many years after World War II; a copy was bought by the Tate 30 years ago for £65, and as recently as 1993 a copy was sold in London for £250.

Copies can be found in numerous public collections, including the Tate

Tate

-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...

, MOMA

Moma

Moma may refer to:* Moma , an owlet moth genus* Moma Airport, a Russian public airport* Moma District, Nampula, Mozambique* Moma River, a right tributary of the Indigirka River* Google Moma, the Google corporate intranet...

, V&A, British Library

British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

, & the Penn Library.

Homages

The ZTT Records

ZTT Records

ZTT Records is a record label founded in 1983 by NME journalist Paul Morley, record producer Trevor Horn, and businesswoman Jill Sinclair. The label's name was also printed as "Zang Tumb Tuum" and "Zang Tuum Tumb" on various releases....

label and the Swedish 80s new wave

New Wave music

New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...

pop act Zzzang Tumb were named in homage to the poem.

External links

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