Presci: Futurist Manifesto of Lust - Elle Carroll

Having chafed at the misogyny present in F. T. Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurism, the French writer and artist Valentine de Saint-Point published her own Manifesto of Futurist Woman in response to Marinetti’s foundational document in 1912. In the manifesto, she outlined the characteristics and motivations of the ideal futurist female figure – an “Überwoman” immune to sentimentality – and began her thinking on the purpose and meaning of lust in futurism. One year later, she would publish Futurist Manifesto of Lust, a document dedicated to analyzing and activating lust from a futurist perspective. These manifestos would spur heated debate around the positioning of women in the futurist movement. Futurism, however, was not a movement de Saint-Point sought to align herself with, and less than two years after the publication of Manifesto of Futurist Woman, she claimed that she was not a futurist.

            de Saint-Point’s Futurist Manifesto of Lust operates around a single thesis, expressed plainly in both the opening and final sentences: lust is a force. She spends the entire essay advocating strongly on lust’s behalf, scorning the “moral preconceptions” she feels limit its boundless potential. She sees lust as “an essential part of life’s dynamism,” hindered by Christian moralizing and modesty. She calls it a virtue of a strong race and a powerful source of energy, likening it it to pride.

            For de Saint-Point, however, lust is a complex energy fraught with contradictions. She spends a signficant portion of her manifesto dissecting and elaborating on these contradictions and complications: how it is simultaneously the “painful joy of wounded flesh” and “the joyous pain of a flowering,” how it is “sensory” and “sensual,” how it is a force for creation and for destruction. As proof of its simultaneous creative and destructive nature, she states how it is “normal” for a victorious army to rape those they have conquered “so that life may be re-created.”

            Much of de Saint-Point’s manifesto explores lust through the lens of war. Futurists were champions of war, art, and war as art, and de Saint-Point shares in this thinking. She calls art and war “the great manifestations of sensuality,” and lust the “flower” of those manifestations. She places it in a historical context regarding war, stating that it fueled primitive man’s drive to conquest and glorious return. She goes on to say that her contemporary context is no different, as the lustful soldiers of yesteryear are the lustful businessmen of today. Lust’s status as “the magnificent exaltation of strength” and as the only way the “constantly battling energies” of soldiers (or businessmen) can be “unwound and renewed” remains unchanged across centuries.

            Towards the final third of her manifesto, de Saint-Point changes to declarative, first person plural statements, placing herself and her audience in the futurist movement and issuing a call to action. She implores her audience to “stop despising Desire” and instead despise the sentimental, nostalgic, and romantic elements that “disfigure” desire, including false modesty, cowardice, and moonlight duets. She views burying such a triumphant and renewing force under smug sentimentality as the greatest crime one can commit against lust. She implores her audience to shirk fragility and confront lust with the conscious intention of making it into a work of art. Lust is an “eternal battle,” and to engage in this battle is to make war and art.

            The manifesto closes with repeated insistences that lust is a force, albeit one that we can never fully possess. In the final moments, de Saint-Point writes that lust is the force "that one ever clutches at but never captures, and which the young and the avid, intoxicated with the vision, pursue without rest.” Lust not only compels soldiers to victory and glory in war, it is a battle in and of itself that one can never definitively win. It is in these final moments that we realize that de Saint-Point doesn’t merely believe that lust is the force that compels us to battle. She believes that lust is the battle itself.

Posted for Yiwei

I watched my tear drops suicide on the wooden floor, jumping from my eyes at about thirty inches hight— I bend over my whole body on mattress and facing down— focusing on a performance of grouped suicide tears. Never really remembered when was the last time I see my own tears— am I unable to produce enough tears for a 5-minutes cry?

-I wrote a small fairy tale about tears. A what? Fairy?  Tale? About Tears?

-     …

Once upon a time, there’s forest with all type of monsters,wether the ones you heard from ancient myths of the ones you never can imagine it actually exist on this blue planet, they are all here, willing to eat you up,er , sorry, meet you up.The only honored human being lives here safely, without being killed by thousand ways of thousands of creatures… is me. Nanny Emma found me was abandoned in the middle of the forest, right under the Verity— the god tree, the heart of the forest. All monsters were shocked by the truth that a human baby girl can actually shows up, again, safely. “She must be the child of the Queen Snow… It’s a miracle! ” they muttered. As I grow up, the only two people I can talk with are old Nanny Emma, and the witch. The witch flies to the places, and brings back her stories to me. Usually they are boring love stories of her had crash on someone while her traveling with her broom, but there was one I kept in my mind, the only one ever touches me… the story of Queen Snow.

Everyone in the forest knows about Queen Snow, however no one sees her, ever. Nanny Emma said that the forest was covered by the most pure and withe snow in the world, and it has a name — the kingdom of white; queen snow rules the kingdom and all her servants,  human-appearance fairies, those turned into monsters after she died, were loyal to her. “ The snow tastes like cotton candy!” “No! Like those white icings on top of finger cakes! ” The monsters told me. Once Queen Snow falls in love with a hunter, she invites him to her chamber, provides everything she has and hopes to have a child, as her heir, with him, the man that lies to her and fools her with the sweet illusions of their bright future. He is ,in fact the devil from the other world. The Fairy Hunter. The demon that wants to kill all the fairies in the kingdom. The story ends up with Queen Snow Sacrificing herself to save all her servants’ life, dies with her devil lover. The kingdom then is saved, but the snow has never appear in this land. it is just a forest since then, the terrifying life-taking dark forest…And all her servant? They now are monsters, with the haleness to the hunter.

“I want to see the snow.” I was touched by the story and asked the witch.

“Get ninety-nine tears to the Verity by the moon midnight, you will have one dream to become true.” She told me, with a strange bitter smile on her face, “ But no one ever gets that. Monsters don't cry for anyone. They don't have a heart.”

“So do I. How can I get that much tears? You know I can’t cry. Monsters stole my tears. Why would they need tears if they don't have a heart?” I asked curiously.

“Then you should ask them. They were the servant of Queen snow…if she ever exist?”

“Are they expecting to bring her back? With the tears?” I asked.

The witch kept herself in silent, ignoring my question.

“I want to see the snow…” I repeated to myself.

That day, I buries the tears I collected under the tree, as the forest witch warned me. She was trying to kill a white deer, in order to mix into poison to confuse the prince. That was really a beautiful white deer,as white as snow. It looked at me with its clear and tender big eyes that full of tears. These eyes formed a sharp contrast with the body in the blood. White confronted and blended with red. I turned away my eyes, could not bear to see it for one more second.

“Remember, you collect ninety-nine tears before the full moon midnight and then you can make a wish to the Verity! Otherwise the tree will think you are making a fool of him, you will pay your penalty!”

The witch grand her teeth, green eyes emit fierce light as the wolf - her knife stuck into the bone ofthe white deer, with blunt sound.

“Why must be ninety-nine tears?”I asked dully.

The witch looked at me like looking at a fool, said with contempt: “Silly girl, what’s the favorite of a tree? Water! Tears are the most sincere water.”She hardly pulled out the knife, then continued to dig into heavily.

The white deer was already dying, fell into the blood. The grass was irrigated with blood,

blossomed with blood flowers like the antlers, emitting sweet blood fragrance. Its eyes closed sadly, and it melt into a mass of dirt in the witch’s yellow and green fingers.

Hope the snow mountain goddess keep you clean soul. I prayed silently.

When I buried tears under the tree, I remembered the dying eyes of the white deer and its elegant antler, its snow white fur, like the snow....It was a pity that I never saw real snow. It was said that it was formed with the broken body of Queen Snow; the goddess fell in love with the hunter, while the hunter did not love her, but just cheated her with fine-sounding words, made use of her to attract animals in the forest then kill them. After knowing the truth, the snow mountain goddess cried her heart out. She stopped the hunter’s hunting by using her own body and life. At last, her appearance was broken like snows,only the crystal heart was frozen at the top of the snow mountain.

What a fascinating story.

“If I really can collect ninety-nine tears, please let me watch a snow.” I counted the tears I collected. They are now, Thirty three only, from all monsters that still have a wish to see the snow, remembering their master— Queen Snow.

“What are you doing?”

I turned my head. A boy was standing in the shadow of the truth tree, he was tall, his skin was shining with light of honey under the sunshine, with a dull look. His left hand held a ocean blue balloon, no, it was not a balloon, it was a dolphin, it was filled with unknown gas and expanded constantly, and even flied in the air and struggled; while his right hand held a golden compass, he looked around: “Here is the 30 degrees of north latitude, it should be here,does the longitude makes a mistake? ”

“Right.” I searched him with my curios eyes — He has two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Just like me. He has two arms and two legs. Just like me. He has a human-like out-looking. He is , just like, me… Who he is ?

He turned around and looked at me. He looked into my eyes, down to my heart, like he knows i am thinking about him.

“Is that a dolphin? Will it die without water?” I pointed the balloon over his head and asked.

“I don’t know.” He answered in a bad way and said like just remembered “What are you doing just now?”

“I am collecting tears...”

“En?”

“If I collected ninety-nine tears, I can make a wish to the tree to watch a snow!”

“Boring.” He left his mouth, “by the way, you haven’t told me where this place is?”

“This is a tree.”I raised my head and said ignorantly.

His eyes were shining, “That’s right!En, is there any treasure here?”He walked forward to my direction quickly, the dolphin turned a little and soured for protest.

“Treasure?” I scratched my head “I don’t know, there has moles that can speak, has flowers that can turn into candy, also has notebooks that can change human’s memory...are these treasures?”

“No.”The boy shake his head with disappointment and ready for leaving with his dolphin.

“Hey, please wait for a moment.” I caught up with him, “Can you give me a drop of tear? I really need it.” I care nothing about his treasure searching but his tears. He can cry. I need him crying in front of me.

“Why don’t you use your own tears?” he said badly.

“Because I cannot cry.”I looked down and twisted my shirt and said with embarrassment. On the night I was born, the devils held a party in the forest, they expressed their love and loyalty to their king with the crow’s black blood and bitter crying. On that day, all the animals in the forest heard the bitter crying.  “Nanny Emma said that I cannot cry because all my tear glands were borrowed by the devils, their tears were not sincere enough thus they deprived my tears for sacrifice.”

He sighed helplessly, fastened his dolphin on the truth tree then walked to me, sat down on the grassland and said: “Please sit down and listen to my story, maybe I can give you a drop of tear.” Gladly, I sit by his side.

“I come from the distant ocean,where people build houses with transparent shells, play in the stormy waves by grasping the shark’s fin,dye the stars under the sea with all kinds of colors with the squid's juices.It is a carefree country. Unfortunately, by accident, my mother ate the King Blue’s eye that nourishing in the shell,she thought it was delicious pearl, that was stupid. As a result,she was cursed by the king who could not find his eye after waking up, and changed into the dolphin.”

He pointed the dolphin on the tree, “I bribed the sailors, and found on their map that hidden in the ogre flower that the treasure of snow mountain goddess was hidden here, which is with incredible magic that can change my mother back into human being, thus I come here through a long trip and want to try with my last endeavor. I have already tripped for thousands of day and night. On my trip, no one gave me a berry, even a bottle of spring water. Until now, only you talked with me. what a lonely trip. ”

His head was drooping, his voice was low and bitter, like the absinthe made by mother Emma.It can be imagined that how did he get through this lonely trip without flowers and signposts, even the little girl wouldn't light a match for him.

“King Blue is really a naughty god...Don’t be sad. Let me find the treasure with you. I know the forest more than others you meet.”

Alas, I cannot get tear if I comfort him. What Im doing here? Why did I offer him a help? I should've been emotionless … weird guy. WEIRD ME.

“Ha Ha Ha,fool!” the boy jumped up and ran with his dolphin for a long distance.

“You believed the story that I made up!”

…I was astonished to stay on the spot.

What a bad guy!

Last night, I slept in the graveyard of elephant. The dying elephant came here at the midnight, lied down carefully and waited for the death. I think I can collect tears from them, there must be sadness at the end of life. While out of my expectation, all of them are optimistic, I discussed and sang with the elephant souls and laughed loudly.

At the end, I could not sleep for the noisy and prepared to find another place for sleeping.

The elephant souls were dusky and formed a smoke scree, I saw a fat dolphin flied in the smoke.

 Not again…

“You liar.”

I walked to him and glared at him. It is such a weird moment. I am pleased… to see him again. Not even angry…

He stopped his chewing of cake and looked at me with surprise, “Don’t you scare to come to the elephant graveyard?”

I sat beside him, “Why should I scare? They will not hurt me. Elephants are tender.”

“Once I saw an elephant threw a prosperous island in our country into the sky with its dozens of meters’ ivory.”

The boy’s back against a tombstone, looking at the sky, I did not know what he was thinking. “Our whales are such kind of animal. Died lonely in the deep ocean, huge body and fat become into nutrient and raised countless lives...once I visited a friend in the alga house on the seafloor, I saw their skeletons, clean and white, shining.”

I sighed: “What a tender and kind creature.”

The boy crossed his hands under his head, casually asked: “Where did the tears that you buried under the tree today come from?”

“Only one drop today, from a butterfly.” I rubbed my knees with hand, the night of the graveyard was a little cold, “Once she was the most beautiful flower, wear on the hair of the snow mountain goddess, the queen snow, thats what monsters call her. At last the goddess became snow. She stranded in the forest and became an ephemeral

butterfly. She told me the beauty and brave of the snow mountain goddess and her last sadness then she teared out. That tear was so beautiful, I saw the pure smile of the goddess through the tear.” I paused for a while, “I really want to collect ninety-nine tears as soon as possible that I can watch a real snow. I now have fifty… and i need 49 more, in two days. Mission impossble. ”

I immersed in my sad emotion but without a drop of tear. I turned my head and found the boy had already fallen asleep on the tombstone. Moonlight on his young eyes, let a person want to touch his eyebrows and his hair.

I also depended on the tombstone,looking at the moon indifferently. I thought that if the moon kept like this, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow would be the deadline? That’s terrible, why these elephant had no tears just like me? Did their tears also be deprived by the devils?

While gradually, the elephant souls also fell into sleep in the quiet graveyard, they became damp mist around the graveyard and the dying elephants. The dolphin flies in the cold moonlight, its body looked transparent sad as full of blue ocean waters. It tenderly glared at the sleeping boy and its eyes flashed with a wet light.

I was waked up for the coldness before the dawn coming.

The boy disappeared with his dolphin. I wear his old cloth which with a smell of alga. There were two glass bottles on the position that he slept, under the bottles was a yellow parchment, it said:“These are tears of mine and the dolphin, hope they can be of help. I will continue to find the treasure, bye.”

I held the two glass bottles, looked at the sunrise, the sun looked like a candy made from raspberry and the blood of Chinese pulsatilla root.

Under the splendid sunrise, I suddenly wanted to cry. I pray the snow mountain goddess for a drop of tear to make me have a response to this splendid landscape and strong emotion, to make my heart with a break to hold this down, the tear and the passed by boy. I feel my eyes are warm, somehow…the world i see now, seems cover with a mist…i never had this feeling before; what is that?

“Little girl, today is the last day, if you cannot collect ninety-nine tears before the midnight, you should prepare for the punishment of the Verity!”

The witch held her pointy hat with one hand,flied over my head with her flaring broom, and with sharp laughter, “Oh ha ha ha ha, I will go to the castle to make poison for the prince, he will look at me for his first sight after waking up and will fall in love with me! Fall in love with this beautiful witch in such a beautiful morning, what an incredible beautiful love!” Her cloak rustled and broken the dawn and disappeared in the distant mountains like a black dream.Watched her flying away, I did really feel anxious, like a flame spread to the skin from the heart.Today is the last day, while my tears haven't been collected.

I asked the cloud that becoming into fish in the deep gulf for tears, asked the crocodile who thought himself as frog for tears, asked for the girl who washed the invisible cloth by the river for tears, asked the ironsmith who made spears in the city for tears, asked the nobility in the throne for tears.I tell tender and sad stories for them, recited cantos of god for them, told them the remote sea, snow mountains on the cloud, the fire worm in the eyes of the bland people and the flower-de-luck in the chest...The language has no power to grasp time, the adjectives and adverbs are not true. My description is foams, the night also came cruelly.

Close to the midnight, I changed the flying carpet of Goblin with poem, and came to the truth tree and buried all the tears under the tree without counting and asked: “Can I make a wish now?”

One of the tree’s leaves fell down and fell in front of me. That are words: “There still lacks of one drop of water.”

What? Lack of one drop? But all the creatures are sleeping now, where can I find that damn tear?

I knelt down under the tree, the cold moonlight liked a shroud and slowly put on my feet.

The crashing moan suddenly came from the distant place. Thousands of elephants are growling.They are elephant souls in that graveyard. They are restless, or just growled to against the cold and loneliness of the night. They are growling for something.All of a sudden, rain has started.

“It’s raining! ” I cried, facing to the sky, letting the raindrops dropping onto my face. “what a bitter rain…”

“It’s not a rain, girl. They are tears of the elephant. Tears of their soul.” The Verity said.

I counted. Ninety-eight drops. Where am I able to find the last tear? In this last minute?

Abruptly, I remembered the boy and his tender eyes. He hold an ugly dolphin, kept going. And his tears, shining like diamond under the sunshine. He was so lonely, like a whale in the sea, and erosive by the time, leaving the smooth skeleton form an isolated island and swallowed by the waves and disappeared in the time river.

Many years later, the raven in the forest might talk about this boy with dolphin, it said that the boy went through our world with strange behaviors, he must be the servant of the devil. But no one knows his simple wish. There is no devil and darkness in his heart, he travels around the world just to save his mother from disaster. Last night, I saw a shining thing in the water bottom in my dream.

Now, I finally remembered its appearance. Its a heart. A bloody, shining and beating heart, held in the hand of the boy and give to the world.

Suddenly, something grasped my heart, something swarms in my chest. Warm, harsh and

irresistible.

It likes a monster hidden in my body but not controlled by myself, it goes up slowly through the nasal cavity to the eyes.

A drop of liquid slides down from my cheek and permeates into the soil under the tree.

“As you wished.”

In the darkness, the tree is shining.

The whole world is in silence without any sound. The time sees to be pinned in the glass bottle and becomes a stiff and beautiful sample.

The sky is silent like a enchantment, moon and stars are hidden, keep light to reach the right person.

Only the silent blue on the sky likes aurora. In the silence, there is light voice like countless souls talking with me. The tree leaves are absolutely still. I was deeply shocked by the silence and cannot move.

At the beginning, it was a little bit cold on my ear. Then even colder. I held out my hand, those white, glittering and cold things fall in my fingers and melt, I even cannot stare carefully and even sighing for it.

Snow, It’s snow!

I almost jumped. My wish finally realized, my pity finally is made up. I was in the miracle of the snow mountain goddess, saw her tender and resolute ruin and her strong despair and love. The universe only left with pure white light.

The snow becomes bigger and bigger, like the tide flooded the world. Land, ocean and the sky.Every animal looked upon the sky to watch this magic appearance with surprise and shock, I wonder where it comes from, and where it will die.

The still body of the white deer was buries without any bloody, its soul might have a good rest; the witch dressed on the silk skirt in the prince’s castle, smiled and sang with folk songs with kind face;in the graveyard, the elephant souls fired into smoke and disappeared into the sky;the mole get into the ground and had a beautiful winter dream, in his dream, he became very big and daunting, its mouth is full of nuts;while on the remote sea, the snow became into sparkling, a whale slowly sank into the sea, what it saw is the last snow in its life, “what a tender light”, it sighed. And the young boy with dolphin, he went forward under the snow, he is a traveler with thousands of miles and never stopped. He doesn’t know what is the treasure he looks for and don not know where it is. But he must go with his invisible cross. While the ugly dolphin, still flies in the snow.

Will there is one day, its double fins become into arms, its tail becomes toes, it can finally hug this stubborn, tender and lonely boy with deep emotion.

I looked upon and looked at this snow, the white melody which was born for me, the storm aroused by tears. I thought that though we cannot have a same night, a same journey and a same snow, is that certifies that we are not so distant from each other as imagined?

The young boy keeps going. His hair likes pigeon that wants to fly. The dolphin croup in the snow, it must be very cold. The young guy holds the silk thread on the dolphin stops its croup. He looks upon the sky, saw that emotionless face of the weird little girl he met. A smile came to his face. “She must be happy now. The snow is beautiful…” He nodded.While he smiles at an unknown direction in the snow. This smile belongs to his hometown, belongs to the wind and the night, belongs to the immigration fish, the setting sun and the oblivion. After the smile, he nods his head gently, answered gently and resolutely in his heart: Yes. 

The story is end and where is the future? In the tears. A wish for my emotions to come back.