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try to disagree with it; but he has also tried to lead and persuade
it; to save it from itself. He has fed it out of his hand and the
arts have grown dull and complacent, like a slightly uxorious
spouse. The artist has at last been aroused to the fact that the
war between him and the world is a war without truce. That his
only remedy is slaughter. . . . The artist has been at peace with
his oppressors long enough. He has dabbled in democracy and he
is now done with that folly. We turn back, we artists, to the powers
of the air, to the djinns who were our allies aforetime, to the spirits
of our ancestors. It is by them that we have ruled and shall rule,
and by their connivance that we shall mount again into our
hierarchy. The aristocracy of entail and of title is decayed, the
aristocracy of commerce is decaying, the aristocracy of the arts is
ready again for its service. Modern civilization has bred a race
with brains like those of rabbits and we who are the heirs of the
witchdoctor and the voodoo, we artists who have been so long
the despised are about to take over control."
Some of these statements, which might be analyzed as indicating
"undemocratic attitudes", were a sort of war dance that preceded
the appearance of a Vorticist Manifesto through the medium of the
magazine Blast. This was a large, puce-colored magazine printed
on thick paper. It was about the size of a large city's telephone
book. The first of two numbers was published on April 20, 1914,
and contained many pages of large-type Manifestoes, Blasts and
Damns, mostly in capital letters.
LONG LIVE THE VORTEX proclaimed the revolutionaries.
BLAST FIRST (for politeness) England
Curse its climate for its sins and infections
Dismal Symbol, set round our bodies,
of effeminate lout within.
Victorian Vampire, the london cloud sucks
the town's heart.
2. OH BLAST FRANCE
1. pig plagiarism
Belly
Slippers