presentation copy, exuberantly inscribed
MARINETTI, Filippo Tommaso. Zang Tumb Tumb. Milan: Edizioni Futuriste di 'Poesia'. 1914.
8vo. Original printed wrappers, preserved in custom-made plum cloth slipcase; pp. 223, [3 (ads)], 1 folding plate, photographic portrait frontispiece by Emilio Sommariva; spine a little darkened and creased, front hinge very expertly repaired, light soiling to wrappers with small abrasion to lower cover, but generally very good. Provenance: presentation copy exuberantly inscribed by Marinetti 'A E. F. Paventa omaggio futurista' to fly leaf, with his signature 'FuturisMarinetti' bursting through the word 'Passatismo' (Tradition).
First edition, first issue with '18 miglaio' to rear. Marinetti's sound and concrete poem is a central text of Futurism, an avant-garde account of the Battle of Adrianople during the First Balkan War that is now seen as a seminal work of Modernist art. In Marinetti's furious rejection of the conventions of the livre d'artiste , with his experimental use of typography to express noise speed and sound, he invented an entirely new kind of artist's book that embodied the Futurists' insistence on action and iconoclasm.
The volume was inscribed by Marinetti as an ‘omaggio futurista’ (Futurist gift). The dedicatee, E. F. Paventa, was likely the author of Italian Technical Words and Phrases (London, 1921) and the translator of Preliminary Scheme of the Italian Penal Code (London, 1929), written by Fascist minister of justice Alfredo Rocco (1875-1935). It would seem subversively fitting that the writer of a staid technological book should be the recipient of a book that glorifies the machine, and that does so with such fury. Marinetti represents his own signature as a bayonet thrust into ‘Passatismo’ - tradition. Moreover, the English publication of Paventa’s works and the London provenance of our volume create an intriguing parallel.
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