The First World War in Italian and Russian Futurism: F.T. Marinetti, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velimir Khlebnikov

This article focuses on Russian Futurist poets Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velimir Khlebnikov and their reaction to the First World War comparing them to F.T. Marinetti. While in the first months after the beginning of the war Mayakovsky wrote some poems and articles full of patriotic feelings, Velimir Khlebnikov, who a few years before had called to a 'sacred war' against 'the German race', was absorbed in computations in order to discover the 'laws of Fate' which would help humankind in avoiding future wars. Mayakovsky soon abandoned his initial patriotic pro-war feelings and wrote a huge poem: 'War and the Universe'. Khlebnikov published a series of poems which he later assembled into a 'supersaga' "War in a Mousetrap". In spite of these ideological differences, it is possible, however, to find certain affinities with Marinetti's declarations and conception of the war which are discussed in the article.