The Life and Death of a Futurist Poet: Speculations on The Hairy Ape

Abstract

ABSTRACT What might O’Neill have made of futurism, the Italian movement that had been creating a sensation in the artistic world since 1909? The Hairy Ape perhaps provides the answer. In that play O’Neill arguably transformed Marinetti’s prose “Manifesto of Futurism” into a dramatic text that presented futurism as destructive, misogynist, and inherently bound to fail. An intertextual examination suggests that one might profitably read The Hairy Ape as O’Neill’s negative answer to Marinetti’s ideas about poetry and art. If the futurists had a free rein, O’Neill seems to imply, they would reduce cultural life to a new level of primitiveness. This, in turn, suggests a critique of the futurists’ affinity with fascism.