Take, for instance, some of the propositions regarding the technic of the literature of the future:
1. Use only the infinite form of the verb, because only the infinite mood gives the sense of the continuity of life.
2. Abolish the use of the adjective so that the noun standing alone may speak for itself with all its force. The adjective implies modification, an arrest of judgment, meditation, and is, therefore, opposed to the human vision dynamic, to the force and energetic flow of human thought.
3. Abolish the adverb, which is a superfluous refinement, a fastidious hampering of human expression.
4. New punctuation: Adjectives and adverbs and conjunctive phrases being suppressed, punctuation goes with them naturally, in the varied continuity of a living style which creates itself without the use of absurd commas and periods. To accentuate certain movements and indicate their directions, certain mathematical and unusual signs will be used.
5. Abolish the “I” from literature, that is to say, psychology; replace the “I,” the ego, by the matter, the essence of which must be appreciated by intuitions. Heretofore the matter, the real substance of a book or a poem, has been obscured by the intervention of the ego of the writer, by the persistent “I” of the author, who is too much pre-occupied with himself and filled with prejudices and conceits in his own supreme wisdom. In short, writers use the subjects of the works as vehicles to exploit themselves.
(Here the Futurists certainly put their finger on one of the weak spots in literature.)
6. Revolution in typographical appearance: Suppress the ornaments, fancy initials, &c., &c., of the presented printed page, which impede rather than assist the natural flow of expression. “We will employ on the same page three or four inks of different colors, and twenty different characters, if necessary: for example, italics to express rapid sensations; capitals for violent; &c., &c. New conception of the graphic printed page.”
All of which sounds wildly extravagant, but in sum and substance it simply means the death of the, let us say, Henry James style and the apotheosis of the front page of the modern sensational journal.