Movements
Futurism
Futurism is an avant-garde movement of the early twentieth century that proclaimed a decisive break with the classical tradition and the cult of the future, of technology, speed, urbanism, and 'the word as such'. The Futurists destroyed established syntax, orthography, and versification, experimented with the sound and graphic form of the poem, and shocked the public with manifestos. The movement was founded by the Italian Filippo Marinetti. In Ukrainian literature Futurism was developed by Mykhail Semenko, who in 1914 inaugurated Ukrainian Futurism ('quero-futurism'), rejected the cult of the Kobzar for the sake of modern art, and founded groupings (Aspanfut, Nova Generatsiia). Ukrainian Futurism was distinguished by urban imagery, formal experiment, and the search for a 'dynamic' word. Semenko became one of the tragic figures of the Executed Renaissance — he was shot in 1937.
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Meaning, origins and distinction — side by side.
Distinction
Two currents of early modernism, opposite in orientation. Symbolism turns away from the material world toward the otherworldly and mysterious: the word-symbol hints at the ineffable, the music of the verse weighs more than direct sense, and a cult of beauty, longing and mystical presentiment prevails. Futurism, by contrast, rebels against the past and aestheticism, extols the city, the machine, speed and the future, shatters syntax and language, and shocks. Symbolism leads upward, to the eternal and ideal; Futurism rushes forward, to technology and the noise of the present.
