An Older Future: Gabriel Alomar’s El Futurisme (1904)

2010 marks the anniversary of a slightly older, and less strident, Futurism than that made (in)famous by the Italian impresario, F. T. Marinetti. On June 18, 1904, the Mallorcan poet and journalist Gabriel Alomar delivered his lengthy lecture, El Futurisme, which subsequently achieved a certain prominence in European literary circles. Various scholars have squared off as to the extent of Marinetti’s indebtedness to the Catalan’s precedent. Yet El Futurisme need not be held hostage--whether nominally or notionally, politically or poetically--to its disparities from any other iteration of “futurism.” Aside from its importance to the fitful developments of twentieth-century Catalan and Spanish culture, and its unclassifiable resistance to various categorical imperatives (whether modernisme, noucentisme, or unreconstructed catalanisme), the text merits further consideration as a tract on its own terms. It is hoped that the present rendering--the first substantial translation in English--will at the very least afford Alomar’s writing more scholarly attention in the Anglo-American world.