Manifesto: A Century of Isms
edited by Mary Ann Caws
publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2000
isbn: 0-80326-407-0
price: $35
As Caws states in her breathless introduction, the arts manifesto, which first made its appearance in the late 19th century (about forty years after the Communist Manifesto) relies on an arrogant, overblown stance that was a "deliberate manipulation of the public view," as unquestioning about the value of the "new art" and as it was about the bankruptcy of the old.
During what Caws calls the "Manifesto Moment," from about 1909 when the Futurists first broke out to 1919 when Lyubov Popova wrote her "statement" for non-objective Suprematist Art, the manifesto had a "madness about it," but always, even when positing an "us" against a "them," invited the reader to become one of the new breed, a whole new way of looking at things from just the other side of the paradigm-shift (a strategy and optimism that has since been taken over by the technology industry).
The manifesto was not a symptom of a world "waiting to be born," but was at once a diagnosis of its narcolepsy and the crashing of speeding trains that would cure it forever.
In this anthology, Caws expands the definition of "Manifesto" to include milder statements of principles (from the Language Poets), poems (parts of Whitmans' "Song of Myself"), fragments from the writings of Cage, Duchamp and others that are more seminal moments than statements, Oscar Wilde's Preface to Dorian Gray, Poe's "The Philosophy of Furniture," one of the few writings of Jacque Vaché (Breton's early inspiration for Surrealism), Schwitters' offbeat "Cow Manifesto" and more.
Nitpickers will note certain important exclusions: Rimbaud's proto-Symbolist "Letter of the Seer," in which many of the tenets of movements from Surrealism to Beat and Language poetry were to be first found; the Brazilian concrete poets' "Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry," which was unique in mating a postcolonial agenda with an aesthetics program for "exportable" art; and Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," which if anything was the most concise, most ecstatic and yet most complete expression of the mores and methods of the Beat Generation.
Since the book contains visual as well as literary manifestos -- writings from Odilon Redon and James Ensor, not to mention Salvidor Dali's "Yellow Manifesto" -- an excerpt from Jan Tschichold's The New Typography, which outlines the relationship of type and paper-size to social consciousness, would have helped tie several strands together, such as the included manifestos for new architecture and new music (relying on experimental scores), not to mention the valuable, if not entirely satisfying, Lettrist manifestos.
The Vorticism section is adequate, though one misses Gautier-Brzeska's fabulous letter from the front (published in Blast 2), in which he described carving a sculpture out of the butt of a gun, a more charismatic, powerful piece than the Vorticist manifestos themselves authored by the noxious Richard Aldington, who ironed out Lewis and Pound's language (several of Lewis's Blast pages are included, typefaces intact).
Readers of Language Poetry will wonder why none of Bruce Andrews' famously propulsive essays (recently collected in Paradise & Method from the University of Alabama) are included, nor "The New Sentence" by Ron Silliman, which more than the writing of Nick Piombino and Michael Palmer satisfied several of the classic aims of the manifesto and was superlatively influential.
Since poetry has been included, a short poem like Ashbery's "And 'Ut Pictora Poesis' Is Her Name" would stand nicely beside O'Hara's "Personism" (which is included) as a brief, provocative statement of the New York School's aesthetic purposes that is both subverting of accepted literary values and -- perhaps too warmly -- inviting.
Nonetheless, most of the classics are here, including Whistler's "The Ten O'Clock," several essays by Apollinaire and Marinetti, the Dada Manifestos by Tzara, the Russian Futurists' "Slap in the Face of Public Taste," Pound's "A Few Don'ts by an Imagist," South American manifestos by Borges and Huidibros, Olson's "Projective Verse," and writings of Negritude by Cesaire and others (yes, it's quite male heavy).
This enormous book is the great companion to the Rothenberg/Joris two volume Poems for the Millennium, and in some ways a less fragmented portrait of world (though not Asian) Modernism. Though the scholarship seems often rather quickly written -- Caws is like the Harold Bloom of this material and seems to exhale introductions and scholarly editions at will -- it is a challenging, comprehensive read.
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