This grammatical analysis breaks down how adjectival structures are deployed in long metaphor, thus crafting a convincing rhetoric that started Modernism.
Emerging from an electrocuted, muddy ditch after a car accident in the winter of 1909, Filippo Marinetti realized that in his recklessness on the outskirts of Milan that there was something fascinating in the discovery of speed and new technology. He arrived home and penned the first Futurist manifesto, published on the front page of Le Figaro in 1909, and what would be the first of many manifestos detailing the grand narratives of twentieth-century art movements aimed at creating utopian worlds within the singular vision of the Modern world. Writing with distinct, visual descriptive language that incorporates single-adjectives and transitions into long, adjectival metaphors, Marinetti presents his political platform in narrative format, with a similarly convincing tone. Throughout the manifesto, Marinetti employs adjectival phrases and structures to create long metaphors, which illustrate the narrative of the manifesto and support his argument that Italy will survive if it casts away its antiquated history to embrace speed, technology, and war—the future.
The use of long metaphor through adjectival phrases is one of the primary ways Marinetti crafts a convincing argument in the manifesto about the need to abolish the museums, cemeteries, and antiquaries that he believes are holding Italy back from achieving progress. One such metaphor is, "Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color,” wherein Marinetti constructs the final two sentences to function adjectivally in describing the exclamation, “Museums, cemeteries!” The phrases “Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other” and “Public dormitories where you sleep side by side forever with beings you hate or do not know” are both noun phrases that function adjectivally as subject complements to “Museums, cemeteries!” Here, we are wholly convinced in the argument for the abolition of cemeteries because of the visually descriptive and distinct metaphor of the cemetery as a “public dormitory sleeping side by side forever with beings you hate or do not know,” which creates a deeply disturbing and disconcerting tone. This long metaphor furthers Marinetti’s argument in the manifesto that museums and reliquaries should be abolished from Italy because they are described in a way that is disgusting and makes a reader view them as unnecessary.
Another such long metaphor is found in the sentence fragment, “Indeed daily visits to museums, libraries and academies (those cemeteries of wasted effort, cavalries of crucified dreams, registers of false starts!),” wherein the phrase in parentheses is a long noun phrase functioning adjectivally describing the daily trips to museums, libraries, and academies. Describing these places as places of wasted effort, crucified dreams, and registers of false starts creates a sense of desperation and weariness, which is helpful in the construction of Marinetti’s argument against them in his manifesto because this descriptive language creates an emotional and psychological connection between the reader and the text. The adjectival structures, which are the foundation of the long metaphor, elicit emotional responses to the text within a reader, like anger and sadness, and these emotional responses help Marinetti use the manifesto to call the people of Italy to action.
Adjectival structures are the basis of The Futurist Manifesto; without them, Marinetti would not be able to construct the long descriptive, sensually-appealing metaphors that emotionally sway readers and connect them with his dramatic argument. This is important because when the manifesto was published in a prominent European newspaper directly at the turn of the century, those frustrated with European tradition and history and anxious to advance into the Modern world followed him; with the convincing argument crafted in The Futurist Manifesto, Marinetti founded Modernism.