The New Wave of Arts and Letters

"We want to demolish museums and libraries!" These fighting words come not from the mouth of a fanatic or a terrorist but rather from the pen of Italian poet Emilio Marietti. He, along with other artists and writers, wanted to destroy all that preserved traditional art and learning in Western Europe. These "futurists," who spurned the value of tradition, wanted to break completely free from the past. They wanted to fashion an entirely new civilization that would divorce itself from the serious moral and cultural crises of the late-nineteenth century.

Jarry's Europe was preoccupied with change. Developments in the sciences brought into question the role of a divine creator (particularly the work of Charles Darwin, which presented validation of the theory of evolution). Changes in communication (the telephone, the "wireless") and in transportation (the bicycle, the automobile) skewed traditional understandings of...