Penguin Collected

For Whom the Bells Toll Hamlet Manifesto of Futurist Architecture André Breton — Selected Poems Ernest Hemingway

PENGU I N COLLECTED William Antonio Shakespeare Sant’Elia

a Penguin Special

André Breton

Penguin Collected A Selection of Texts from the Penguin catalogue

Penguin Books

Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia First published by Penguin Books 2013 Copyright Š 2013 Penguin Books and the authors Made and printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd London, Fakenham and Reading Set in Garamond ISBN: 978-1-84391-372-6 All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.

Contents

7

For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway

15 The Tragedy of Hamlet—Prince of Denmark Hamlet

William Shakespeare

27

Manifesto of Futurist Architecture Antonio Sant’Elia

37

Selected Poems André Breton

For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway

For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

— John Donne

Chapter 26 It was three o’clock in the afternoon before the planes came.

The snow had all been gone by noon and the rocks were hot now in the sun. There were no clouds in the sky and Robert Jordan sat in the rocks with his shirt off browning his back in the sun and reading the letters that had been in the pockets of the dead cavalryman. From time to time he would stop reading to look across the open slope to the line of the timber, look over the high country above and then return to the letters. No more cavalry had appeared.

At intervals there would be the sound of a shot from the direction of El Sordo’s camp. But the firing was desultory.

From examining his military papers he knew the boy was from Tafalla in Navarra, twenty-one years old, unmarried, and the son of a blacksmith. His regiment was the Nth cavalry, which surprised Robert Jordan, for he had believed that regiment to be in the North. He was a Carlist, and he had been wounded at the fighting for Irun at the start of the war.

I’ve probably seen him run through the streets ahead of the bulls at the feria in Pamplona, Robert Jordan thought.

You never kill any one that you want to kill in a war, he said to himself. Well, hardly ever, he amended and went on reading the letters.

9

For Whom the Bell Tolls The first letters he read were very formal, very carefully written and dealt almost entirely with local happenings.

They were from his sister and Robert Jordan learned that everything was all right in Tafalla, that father was well, that mother was the same as always but with certain complaints about her back, that she hoped he was well and not in too great danger and she was happy he was doing away with the Reds to liberate Spain from the domination of the Marxist hordes. Then there was a list of those boys from Tafalla who had been killed or badly wounded since she wrote last. She mentioned ten who were killed. That is a great many for a town the size of Tafalla, Robert Jordan thought.

There was quite a lot of religion in the letter and she prayed to Saint Anthony, to the Blessed Virgin of Pilar, and to other Virgins to protect him and she wanted him never to forget that he was also protected by the Sacred Heart of Jesus that he wore still, she trusted, at all times over his own heart where it had been proven innumerable—this was underlined—times to have the power of stopping bullets.

She was as always his loving sister Concha.

This letter was a little stained around the edges and Robert Jordan put it carefully back with the military papers and opened a letter with a less severe handwriting. It was from the boy’s novia, his fiancée, and it was quietly, formally, and completely hysterical with concern for his safety. Robert Jordan read it through and then put all the letters together with the papers into his hip pocket. He did not want to read the other letters.

I guess I’ve done my good deed for today, he said to himself. I guess you have all right, he repeated.

“What are those you were reading?” Primitivo asked him.

“The documentation and the letters of that requeté we shot this morning. Do you want to see it?”

10

For Whom the Bell Tolls “I can’t read,” Primitivo said. “Was there anything interesting?”

“No,” Robert Jordan told him. “They are personal letters.”

“How are things going where he came from? Can you tell from the letters?”

“They seem to be going all right,” Robert Jordan said.

“There are many losses in his town.” He looked down to where the blind for the automatic rifle had been changed a little and improved after the snow melted. It looked convincing enough. He looked off across the country.

“From what town is he?” Primitivo asked.

“Tafalla,” Robert Jordan told him.

All right, he said to himself. I’m sorry, if that does any good.

It doesn’t, he said to himself.

All right then, drop it, he said to himself.

All right, it’s dropped.

But it would not drop that easily. How many is that you have killed? he asked himself. I don’t know. Do you think you have a right to kill any one? No. But I have to. How many of those you have killed have been real fascists?

Very few. But they are all the enemy to whose force we are opposing force. But you like the people of Navarra better than those of any other part of Spain. Yes. And you kill them. Yes. If you don’t believe it go down there to the camp.

Don’t you know it is wrong to kill? Yes. But you do it? Yes. And you still believe absolutely that your cause is right? Yes. It is right, he told himself, not reassuringly, but proudly. I believe in the people and their right to govern themselves as they wish. But you mustn’t believe in killing, he told himself.

You must do it as a necessity but you must not believe in it.

If you believe in it the whole thing is wrong.

11

For Whom the Bell Tolls But how many do you suppose you have killed? I don’t know because I won’t keep track. But do you know?

Yes. How many? You can’t be sure how many. Blowing the trains you kill many. Very many. But you can’t be sure. But of those you are sure of? More than twenty. And of those how many were real fascists? Two that I am sure of. Because I had to shoot them when we took them prisoners at Usera.

And you did not mind that? No. Nor did you like it? No. I decided never to do it again. I have avoided it. I have avoided killing those who are unarmed.

Listen, he told himself. You better cut this out. This is very bad for you and for your work. Then himself said back to him, You listen, see? Because you are doing something very serious and I have to see you understand it all the time.

I have to keep you straight in your head. Because if you are not absolutely straight in your head you have no right to do the things you do for all of them are crimes and no man has a right to take another man’s life unless it is to prevent something worse happening to other people. So get it straight and do not lie to yourself.

But I won’t keep a count of people I have killed as though it were a trophy record or a disgusting business like notches in a gun, he told himself. I have a right to not keep count and I have a right to forget them.

No, himself said. You have no right to forget anything.

You have no right to shut your eyes to any of it nor any right to forget any of it nor to soften it nor to change it.

Shut up, he told himself. You’re getting awfully pompous.

Nor ever to deceive yourself about it, himself went on.

All right, he told himself. Thanks for all the good advice and is it all right for me to love Maria?

Yes, himself said.

Even if there isn’t supposed to be any such thing as love in a purely materialistic conception of society?

12

For Whom the Bell Tolls Since when did you ever have any such conception? himself asked. Never. And you never could have.

You’re not a real Marxist and you know it. You believe in Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. You believe in Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Don’t ever kid yourself with too much dialectics. They are for some but not for you. You have to know them in order not to be a sucker. You have put many things in abeyance to win a war. If this war is lost all of those things are lost.

But afterwards you can discard what you do not believe in. There is plenty you do not believe in and plenty that you do believe in.

And another thing. Don’t ever kid yourself about loving some one. It is just that most people are not lucky enough ever to have it. You never had it before and now you have it. What you have with Maria, whether it lasts just through today and a part of tomorrow, or whether it lasts for a long life is the most important thing that can happen to a human being. There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow.

Cut out the dying stuff, he said to himself. That’s not the way we talk. That’s the way our friends the anarchists talk. Whenever things get really bad they want to set fire to something and to die. It’s a very odd kind of mind they have. Very odd. Well, we’re getting through today, old timer, he told himself. It’s nearly three o’clock now and there is going to be some food sooner or later. They are still shooting up at Sordo’s, which means that they have him surrounded and are waiting to bring up more people, probably. Though they have to make it before dark.

13

I wonder what it is like up at Sordo’s. That’s what we all have to expect, given enough time. I imagine it is not too jovial up at Sordo’s. We certainly got Sordo into a fine jam with that horse business. How does it go in Spanish?

Un callejón sin salida. A passageway with no exit.

I suppose I could go through with it all right. You only have to do it once and it is soon over with. But wouldn’t it be luxury to fight in a war some time where, when you were surrounded, you could surrender? Estamos copados. We are surrounded. That was the great panic cry of this war. Then the next thing was that you were shot; with nothing bad before if you were lucky. Sordo wouldn’t be lucky that way.

Neither would they when the time ever came.

It was three o’clock. Then he heard the far-off, distant throbbing and, looking up, he saw the planes.

14

The Tragedy of Hamlet—Prince of Denmark Hamlet William Shakespeare

The Tragedy of Hamlet—Prince of Denmark Hamlet William Shakespeare

Act 1, Scene 1 Dramatis PersonĂŚ

King Claudius Brother to the late King Hamlet Hamlet Prince of Denmark.

Son of the late King Hamlet and Queen Gertrude Polonius

Father of Ophelia and Laertes, Councillor to King Claudius

Horatio

Friend to Hamlet

Laertes

Son to Polonius

Courtiers Voltimand Cornelius Rosencrantz Guildenstern Osric A Gentleman A Priest Officers Marcellus

A soldier

Bernardo

A soldier

Francisco

A soldier 17

The Tragedy of Hamlet— Prince of Denmark Reynaldo

Servant to Polonius

Players Two Clowns/ Grave-diggers Fortinbras

Prince of Norway

A Captain

In Fortinbras’s army

English Ambassadors to Denmark Queen Gertrude

Widow of King Hamlet now married to Claudius

Ophelia

Daughter to Polonius

Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers, and other Attendants Ghost of Hamlet’s Father Scene 1.

Elsinore. A platform before the castle.

Francisco at his post. Enter to him Bernardo Bernardo Who’s there?!

Francisco Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.

Bernardo Long live the king!

Francisco Bernardo?

Bernardo He. Francisco You come most carefully upon your hour.

18

The Tragedy of Hamlet— Prince of Denmark Bernardo ‘Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.

Francisco For this relief much thanks: ‘tis bitter

cold, and I am sick at heart.

Bernardo Have you had quiet guard?

Francisco Not a mouse stirring.

Bernardo Well, good night. If you do meet Horatio and

Marcellus, the rivals of my watch, bid them

make haste.

Francisco I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who’s there?

Horatio

Enter Horatio and Marcellus Friends to this ground.

Marcellus And liegemen to the Dane.

Francisco Give you good night.

Marcellus O, farewell, honest soldier: Who hath

relieved you?

Francisco Bernardo has my place.

Give you good night.

Exit Marcellus Holla! Bernardo!

Bernardo Say,

What, is Horatio there?

Horatio

A piece of him.

19

The Tragedy of Hamlet— Prince of Denmark Bernardo Welcome, Horatio: welcome, good. Marcellus.

Marcellus What, has this thing appear’d again to-night?

Bernardo I have seen nothing.

Marcellus

Horatio says ‘tis but our fantasy, And will not let belief take hold of him. Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us: Therefore I have entreated him along With us to watch the minutes of this n ight;

That if again this apparition come,

He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

Horatio

Tush, tush, ‘twill not appear.

Bernardo

Sit down awhile; And let us once again assail your ears That are so fortified against our story What we have two nights seen.

Horatio

Well, sit we down, And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.

Bernardo Last night of all, When yond same star that’s

westward from the pole

Had made his course to i llume that part of

heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,

The bell then beating one,—

Enter Ghost

Marcellus Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!

Bernardo In the same figure, like the king that’s dead.

Marcellus Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

20

The Tragedy of Hamlet— Prince of Denmark Bernardo Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.

Horatio

Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.

Bernardo It would be spoke to.

Marcellus Question it, Horatio.

Horatio What art thou that usurp’st this time of night,

Together with that fair and warlike form

In which the majesty of buried Denmark

Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!

Marcellus It is offended.

Bernardo See, it stalks away!

Horatio

Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!

Exit Ghost

Marcellus ‘Tis gone, and will not answer.

Bernardo How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale:

Is not this something more than fantasy?

What think you on’t?

Horatio

Before my God, I might not this believe Without the sensible and true avouch Of mine own eyes.

Marcellus Is it not like the king?!

Horatio

As thou art to thyself: Such was the very armour he had on When he the ambitious Norway combated; So frown’d he once, when, in an angry parle,

He smote the steeled pole-axe on the ice.

‘Tis strange.

21

The Tragedy of Hamlet— Prince of Denmark Marcellus Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,

With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

Horatio

In what particular thought to work I know not; But in the gross and scope of my opinion, This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

Marcellus

Good now, sit down, and tell me,he that knows, Why this same strict and most observant watch So nightly toils the subject of the land, And why such daily cast of brazen cannon, And foreign mart for implements of war; Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task Does not divide the Sunday from the week; What might be toward, that this sweaty haste Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day: Who is’t that can inform me?

Horatio

That can I; At least, the whisper goes so.

Our last king, Whose image even but now appear’d to us, Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway, Thereto prick’d on by a most emulate pride, Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet— For so this side of our known world esteem’d him— Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal’d compact, Well ratified by law and heraldry, Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror: Against the which, a moiety competent Was gaged by our king; which had return’d

22

The Tragedy of Hamlet— Prince of Denmark

To the inheritance of Fortinbras, Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant, And carriage of the article design’d, His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras, Of unimproved mettle hot and full, Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there Shark’d up a list of lawless resolutes, For food and diet, to some enterprise That hath a stomach in’t; which is no other— As it doth well appear unto our state— But to recover of us, by strong hand And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands So by his father lost: and this, I take it, Is the main motive of our preparations, The source of this our watch and the chief head Of this post-haste and romage in the land.

Bernardo

I think it be no other but e’en so: Well may it sort that this portentous figure Comes armed through our watch; so like the king That was and is the question of these wars.

Horatio

A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.

In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets: As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse: And even the like precurse of fierce events, As harbingers preceding still the fates 23

The Tragedy of Hamlet— Prince of Denmark

And prologue to the omen coming on, Have heaven and earth together demonstrated Unto our climatures and countrymen.— But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!

Re-enter Ghost I’ll cross it, though it blast me.

Stay, illusion!

If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, Speak to me: If there be any good thing to be done, That may to thee do ease and grace to me, Speak to me.

Cock crows If thou art privy to thy country’s fate, Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O, speak!

Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life Extorted treasure in the womb of earth, For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, Speak of it: stay, and speak!

Stop it, Marcellus.

Marcellus Shall I strike at it with my partisan?

Horatio

Do, if it will not stand.

Bernardo ‘Tis here!

Horatio

‘Tis here!

Marcellus ‘Tis gone!

Exit Ghost We do it wrong, being so majestical, To offer it the show of violence; 24

The Tragedy of Hamlet— Prince of Denmark

For it is, as the air, invulnerable, And our vain blows malicious mockery.

Bernardo It was about to speak, when the cock crew.

Horatio

And then it started like a guilty thing Upon a fearful summons. I have heard, The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat Awake the god of day; and, at his warning, Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, The extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine: and of the truth herein This present object made probation.

Marcellus

It faded on the crowing of the cock.

Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long: And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

Horatio

So have I heard and do in part believe it.

But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill: Break we our watch up; and by my advice, Let us impart what we have seen to-night Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life, This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.

Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it, As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

Marcellus Let’s do’t, I pray; and I this morning know

Where we shall find him most conveniently.

Exeunt 25

Manifesto of Futurist Architecture Antonio Sant’Elia

Manifesto of Futurist Architecture Antonio Sant’Elia No architecture has existed since 1700. A moronic mixture of the most various stylistic elements used to mask the skeletons of modern houses is called modern architecture. The new beauty of cement and iron are profaned by the superimposition of motley decorative incrustations that cannot be justified either by constructive necessity or by our (modern) taste, and whose origins are in Egyptian, Indian or Byzantine antiquity and in that idiotic flowering of stupidity and impotence that took the name of neoclassicism.

These architectonic prostitutions are welcomed in Italy, and rapacious alien ineptitude is passed off as talented invention and as extremely up-to-date architecture. Young Italian architects (those who borrow originality from clandestine and compulsive devouring of art journals) flaunt their talents in the new quarters of our towns, where a hilarious salad of little ogival columns, seventeenthcentury foliation, Gothic pointed arches, Egyptian pilasters, rococo scrolls, fifteenth-century cherubs, swollen caryatids, take the place of style in all seriousness, and presumptuously put on monumental airs. The kaleidoscopic appearance and reappearance of forms, the multiplying of machinery, the daily increasing needs imposed by the speed of communications, by the concentration of population, by hygiene, and by a hundred other phenomena of modern life, never cause these self-styled renovators of architecture a moment’s perplexity or hesitation. They persevere obstinately with the rules of Vitruvius, Vignola and Sansovino plus gleanings from any published scrap of information on German architecture that happens to be at hand. Using these, they continue to stamp the image of imbecility on our cities, our cities which should be the immediate and faithful projection of ourselves.

29

Manifesto of Futurist Architecture And so this expressive and synthetic art has become in their hands a vacuous stylistic exercise, a jumble of illmixed formulae to disguise a run-of-the-mill traditionalist box of bricks and stone as a modern building. As if we who are accumulators and generators of movement, with all our added mechanical limbs, with all the noise and speed of our life, could live in streets built for the needs of men four, five or six centuries ago.

This is the supreme imbecility of modern architecture, perpetuated by the venal complicity of the academies, the internment camps of the intelligentsia, where the young are forced into the onanistic recopying of classical models instead of throwing their minds open in the search for new frontiers and in the solution of the new and pressing problem: the Futurist house and city. The house and the city that are ours both spiritually and materially, in which our tumult can rage without seeming a grotesque anachronism.

The problem posed in Futurist architecture is not one of linear rearrangement. It is not a question of finding new mouldings and frames for windows and doors, of replacing columns, pilasters and corbels with caryatids, flies and frogs. Neither has it anything to do with leaving a faรงade in bare brick, or plastering it, or facing it with stone or in determining formal differences between the new building and the old one. It is a question of tending the healthy growth of the Futurist house, of constructing it with all the resources of technology and science, satisfying magisterially all the demands of our habits and our spirit, trampling down all that is grotesque and antithetical (tradition, style, aesthetics, proportion), determining new forms, new lines, a new harmony of profiles and volumes, an architecture whose reason for existence can be found solely in the unique conditions of modern life, and in its correspondence with the aesthetic values of our sensibilities.

30

Manifesto of Futurist Architecture This architecture cannot be subjected to any law of historical continuity. It must be new, just as our state of mind is new.

The art of construction has been able to evolve with time, and to pass from one style to another, while maintaining unaltered the general characteristics of architecture, because in the course of history changes of fashion are frequent and are determined by the alternations of religious conviction and political disposition. But profound changes in the state of the environment are extremely rare, changes that unhinge and renew, such as the discovery of natural laws, the perfecting of mechanical means, the rational and scientific use of material. In modern life the process of stylistic development in architecture has been brought to a halt. Architecture now makes a break with tradition. It must perforce make a fresh start.

Calculations based on the resistance of materials, on the use of reinforced concrete and steel, exclude “architecture” in the classical and traditional sense. Modern constructional materials and scientific concepts are absolutely incompatible with the disciplines of historical styles, and are the principal cause of the grotesque appearance of “fashionable” buildings in which attempts are made to employ the lightness, the superb grace of the steel beam, the delicacy of reinforced concrete, in order to obtain the heavy curve of the arch and the bulkiness of marble.

The utter antithesis between the modern world and the old is determined by all those things that formerly did not exist. Our lives have been enriched by elements the possibility of whose existence the ancients did not even suspect. Men have identified material contingencies, and revealed spiritual attitudes, whose repercussions are felt in a thousand ways. Principal among these is the formation of a new ideal of beauty that is still obscure and embryonic, but whose fascination is already felt even by the masses.

31

Manifesto of Futurist Architecture We have lost our predilection for the monumental, the heavy, the static, and we have enriched our sensibility with a taste for the light, the practical, the ephemeral and the swift. We no longer feel ourselves to be the men of the cathedrals, the palaces and the podiums. We are the men of the great hotels, the railway stations, the immense streets, colossal ports, covered markets, luminous arcades, straight roads and beneficial demolitions.

We must invent and rebuild the Futurist city like an immense and tumultuous shipyard, agile, mobile and dynamic in every detail; and the Futurist house must be like a gigantic machine. The lifts must no longer be hidden away like tapeworms in the niches of stairwells; the stairwells themselves, rendered useless, must be abolished, and the lifts must scale the lengths of the façades like serpents of steel and glass. The house of concrete, glass and steel, stripped of paintings and sculpture, rich only in the innate beauty of its lines and relief, extraordinarily “uglyâ€? in its mechanical simplicity, higher and wider according to need rather than the specifications of municipal laws. It must soar up on the brink of a tumultuous abyss: the street will no longer lie like a doormat at ground level, but will plunge many stories down into the earth, embracing the metropolitan traffic, and will be linked up for necessary interconnections by metal gangways and swift-moving pavements.

The decorative must be abolished. The problem of Futurist architecture must be resolved, not by continuing to pilfer from Chinese, Persian or Japanese photographs or fooling around with the rules of Vitruvius, but through flashes of genius and through scientific and technical expertise. Everything must be revolutionised.

32

Manifesto of Futurist Architecture Roofs and underground spaces must be used; the importance of the faรงade must be diminished; issues of taste must be transplanted from the field of fussy mouldings, finicky capitals and flimsy doorways to the broader concerns of bold groupings and masses, and large-scale disposition of planes. Let us make an end of monumental, funereal and commemorative architecture. Let us overturn monuments, pavements, arcades and flights of steps; let us sink the streets and squares; let us raise the level of the city.

I COMBAT AND DESPISE: 1. All the pseudo-architecture of the avant-garde, Austrian, Hungarian, German and American; 2. All classical architecture, solemn, hieratic, scenographic, decorative, monumental, pretty and pleasing; 3. The embalming, reconstruction and reproduction of ancient monuments and palaces; 4.

Perpendicular and horizontal lines, cubical and pyramidical forms that are static, solemn, aggressive and absolutely excluded from our utterly new sensibility;

5. The use of massive, voluminous, durable, antiquated and costly materials.

33

Manifesto of Futurist Architecture AND PROCLAIM: 1.

That Futurist architecture is the architecture of calculation, of audacious temerity and of simplicity; the architecture of reinforced concrete, of steel, glass, cardboard, textile fibre, and of all those substitutes for wood, stone and brick that enable us to obtain maximum elasticity and lightness;

2. That Futurist architecture is not because of this an arid combination of practicality and usefulness, but remains art, i.e. synthesis and expression; 3.

That oblique and elliptic lines are dynamic, and by their very nature possess an emotive power a thousand times stronger than perpendiculars and horizontals, and that no integral, dynamic architecture can exist that does not include these;

4.

That decoration as an element superimposed on architecture is absurd, and that the decorative value of Futurist architecture depends solely on the use and original arrangement of raw or bare or violently coloured materials;

5.

That, just as the ancients drew inspiration for their art from the elements of nature, we—who are materially and spiritually artificial—must find that inspiration in the elements of the utterly new mechanical world we have created, and of which architecture must be the most beautiful expression, the most complete synthesis, the most efficacious integration;

6. That architecture as the art of arranging forms according to pre-established criteria is finished;

34

Manifesto of Futurist Architecture

7.

That by the term architecture is meant the endeavour to harmonise the environment with Man with freedom and great audacity, that is to transform the world of things into a direct projection of the world of the spirit;

8.

From an architecture conceived in this way no formal or linear habit can grow, since the fundamental characteristics of Futurist architecture will be its impermanence and transience. Things will endure less than us. Every generation must build its own city. This constant renewal of the architectonic environment will contribute to the victory of Futurism which has already been affirmed by words-in-freedom, plastic dynamism, music without quadrature and the art of noises, and for which we fight without respite against traditionalist cowardice.

35

Selected Poems AndrĂŠ Breton

Selected Poems André Breton

Always for the First Time Always for the first time Hardly do I know you by sight You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window A wholly imaginary house It is there that from one second to the next In the inviolate darkness I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occurring The one and only rift In the facade and in my heart The closer I come to you In reality The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room Where you appear alone before me At first you coalesce entirely with the brightness The elusive angle of a curtain It’s a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the vicinity of Grasse With the diagonal slant of its girls picking Behind them the dark falling wing of the plants stripped bare Before them a T-square of dazzling light The curtain invisibly raised In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough until sleep You as though you could be The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you You pretend not to know I am watching you Marvellously I am no longer sure you know You idleness brings tears to my eyes A swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures It’s a honeydew hunt There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that

39

Selected Poems — André Breton

may well scratch you in the forest There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings Flaring out in the centre of a great white clover There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy There is By my leaning over the precipice Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion My finding the secret Of loving you Always for the first time

40

Selected Poems — André Breton

Freedom of Love

Translated from the French by Edouard Rodti My wife with the hair of a wood fire With the thoughts of heat lightning With the waist of an hourglass With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger My wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitude With the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earth With the tongue of rubbed amber and glass My wife with the tongue of a stabbed host With the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes With the tongue of an unbelievable stone My wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child’s writing With brows of the edge of a swallow’s nest My wife with the brow of slates of a hothouse roof And of steam on the panes My wife with shoulders of champagne And of a fountain with dolphin-heads beneath the ice My wife with wrists of matches My wife with fingers of luck and ace of hearts With fingers of mown hay My wife with armpits of marten and of beechnut And of Midsummer Night Of privet and of an angelfish nest With arms of seafoam and of riverlocks And of a mingling of the wheat and the mill My wife with legs of flares With the movements of clockwork and despair My wife with calves of eldertree pith My wife with feet of initials With feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinking My wife with a neck of unpearled barley My wife with a throat of the valley of gold Of a tryst in the very bed of the torrent 41

Selected Poems — André Breton

With breasts of night My wife with breasts of a marine molehill My wife with breasts of the ruby’s crucible With breasts of the rose’s spectre beneath the dew My wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of days With the belly of a gigantic claw My wife with the back of a bird fleeing vertically With a back of quicksilver With a back of light With a nape of rolled stone and wet chalk And of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinking My wife with hips of a skiff With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers And of shafts of white peacock plumes Of an insensible pendulum My wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestos My wife with buttocks of swans’ backs My wife with buttocks of spring With the sex of an iris My wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypus My wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeat My wife with a sex of mirror My wife with eyes full of tears With eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needle My wife with savanna eyes My wife with eyes of water to he drunk in prison My wife with eyes of wood always under the axe My wife with eyes of water-level of level of air earth and fire

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Selected Poems — André Breton

Less Time Less time than it takes to say it, less tears than it takes to die; I’ve taken account of everything, there you have it. I’ve made a census of the stones, they are as numerous as my fingers and some~ others; I’ve distributed some pamphlets to the plants, but not all were willing to accept them. I’ve kept company with music for a second only and now I no longer know what to think of suicide, for if I ever want to part from myself, the exit is on this side and, I add mischievously, the entrance, the re-entrance is on the other. You see what you still have to do. Hours, grief, I don’t keep a reasonable account of them; I’m alone, I look out of the window; there is no passerby, or rather no one passes (underline passes). You don’t know this man?

It’s Mr. Same. May I introduce Madam Madam? And their children. Then I turn back on my steps, my steps turn back too, but I don’t know exactly what they turn back on. I consult a schedule; the names of the towns have been replaced by the names of people who have been quite close to me. Shall I go to A, return to B, change at X? Yes, of course I’ll change at X. Provided I don’t miss the connection with boredom!

There we are: boredom, beautiful parallels, ah! how beautiful the parallels are under God’s perpendicular.

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Selected Poems — AndrÊ Breton

Postman Cheval We are the birds always charmed by you from the top of these belvederes And that each night form a blossoming branch between your shoulders and the arms of your well beloved wheelbarrow Which we tear out swifter than sparks at your wrist We are the sighs of the glass statue that raises itself on its elbow when man sleeps And shining holes appear in his bed Holes through which stags with coral antlers can be seen in a glade.

And naked women at the bottom of a mine You remembered then you got up you got out of the train Without glancing at the locomotive attacked by immense barometric roots Complaining about its murdered boilers in the virgin forest Its funnels smoking jacinths and moulting blue snakes Then we went on, plants subject to metamorphosis Each night making signs that man may understand While his house collapses and he stands amazed before the singular packing-cases Sought after by his bed with the corridor and the staircase The staircase goes on without end It leads to a millstone door it enlarges suddenly in a public square It is made of the backs of swans with a spreading wing for banisters It turns inside out as though it were going to bite itself But no, it is content at the sound of our feet to open all its steps like drawers Drawers of bread drawers of wine drawers of soap drawers of ice drawers of stairs Drawers of flesh with handsfull of hair 44

Selected Poems — AndrÊ Breton

Without turning round you seized the trowel with which breasts are made We smiled at you you held us round the waist And we took the positions of your pleasure Motionless under our lids for ever as woman delights to see man After having made love.

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Selected Poems — André Breton

The Spectral Attitudes I attach no importance to life I pin not the least of life’s butterflies to importance I do not matter to life But the branches of salt the white branches All the shadow bubbles And the sea-anemones Come down and breathe within my thoughts They come from tears that are not mine From steps I do not take that are steps twice And of which the sand remembers the flood-tide The bars are in the cage And the birds come down from far above to sing before these bars A subterranean passage unites all perfumes A woman pledged herself there one day This woman became so bright that I could no longer see her With these eyes which have seen my own self burning I was then already as old as I am now And I watched over myself and my thoughts like a night watchman in an immense factory Keeping watch alone The circus always enchants the same tramlines The plaster figures have lost nothing of their expression They who bit the smile’s fig I know of a drapery in a forgotten town If it pleased me to appear to you wrapped in this drapery You would think that your end was approaching Like mine At last the fountains would understand that you must not say Fountain The wolves are clothed in mirrors of snow I have a boat detached from all climates I am dragged along by an ice-pack with teeth of flame

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Selected Poems — AndrÊ Breton

I cut and cleave the wood of this tree that will always be green A musician is caught up in the strings of his instrument The skull and crossbones of the time of any childhood story Goes on board a ship that is as yet its own ghost only Perhaps there is a hilt to this sword But already there is a duel in this hilt During the duel the combatants are unarmed Death is the least offence The future never comes The curtains that have never been raised Float to the windows of houses that are to be built The beds made of lilies Slide beneath the lamps of dew There will come an evening The nuggets of light become still underneath the blue moss The hands that tie and untie the knots of love and of air Keep all their transparency for those who have eyes to see They see the palms of hands The crowns in eyes But the brazier of crown and palms Can scarcely be lit in the deepest part of the forest There where the stags bend their heads to examine the years Nothing more than a feeble beating is heard From which sound a thousand louder or softer sounds proceed And the beating goes on and on There are dresses that vibrate And their vibration is in unison with the beating When I wish to see the faces of those that wear them

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Selected Poems — AndrÊ Breton

A great fog rises from the ground At the bottom of the steeples behind the most elegant reservoirs of life and of wealth In the gorges which hide themselves between two mountains On the sea at the hour when the sun cools down Those who make signs to me are separated by stars And yet the carriage overturned at full speed Carries as far as my last hesitation That awaits me down there in the town where the statues of bronze and of stone have changed places with statues of wax Banyans banyans.

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Selected Poems — André Breton

Tournesol La voyageuse qui traverse les Halles à la tombée de l’été Marchait sur la pointe des pieds Le désespoir roulait au ciel ses grands arums si beaux Et dans le sac à main il y avait mon rêve ce flacon de sels Que seule a respiré la marraine de Dieu Les torpeurs se déployaient comme la buée Au Chien qui fume Ou venaient d’entrer le pour et le contre La jeune femme ne pouvait être vue d’eux que mal et de biais Avais-je affaire à l’ambassadrice du salpêtre Ou de la courbe blanche sur fond noir que nous appelons pensée Les lampions prenaient feu lentement dans les marronniers La dame sans ombre s’agenouilla sur le Pont-au-Change Rue Git-le-Coeur les timbres n’étaient plus les mêmes Les promesses de nuits étaient enfin tenues Les pigeons voyageurs les baisers de secours Se joignaient aux seins de la belle inconnue Dardés sous le crêpe des significations parfaites Une ferme prospérait en plein Paris Et ses fenêtres donnaient sur la voie lactée Mais personne ne l’habitait encore à cause des survenants Des survenants qu’on sait plus devoués que les revenants Les uns comme cette femme ont l’air de nager Et dans l’amour il entre un peu de leur substance Elle les interiorise Je ne suis le jouet d’aucune puissance sensorielle Et pourtant le grillon qui chantait dans les cheveux de cendres Un soir près de la statue d’Etienne Marcel M’a jeté un coup d’oeil d’intelligence André Breton a-t-il dit passe

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PENGUIN COLLECTED Four short extracts from a selection of widely recognised literary works by four of the most respected names in literature.