M2 Ljubomir Micić
Manifest Zenitizma (1921)
In Zagreb in 1921 the Serbian artist and poet Ljubomir Micić (1895–1971) published the ‘Manifest Zenitizma’ in the first issue of Zenit (Zenith), his international art magazine. A fascinatingly paradoxical character, Micić was an anarchist nationalist who wanted to declare the Balkan Peninsula a separate continent and create a new Balkan art movement that embraced the contradictions of its history and geography, situated between the East and the West. At the same time, he argued that Zenitizma was a universal art, one rooted in Expressionism, Dadaism, Futurism and Constructivism, and that it transcended class and national boundaries.
The manifesto also promoted the artist’s idea of a Balkan superman, a ‘barbarogenius’, who would revive Europe’s ailing culture. In this respect Zenitizma can be seen to connect to Italian Futurism, which also promoted Nietzschean philosophy. Indeed, when Micić was threatened with imprisonment for communist sympathies, the leader of the Italian Futurists, F. T. Marinetti, helped him to escape, and Micić moved to Paris where he continued to promote his dream of a barbarian avant-garde.
An interesting side note is a protest by Micić and his brother, the poet Branko Ve Poljanski, in 1926 against the Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore (uncle of Swadeshi exponent Abanindranath Tagore: see M1). The Bengali poet was giving a lecture in Belgrade when the duo threw leaflets in the air and shouted, ‘Down with Tagore, Long Live Gandhi!’ They objected to Tagore’s seemingly pro-Western, anti-Swadeshi stance in India’s independence struggle, as opposed to Gandhi’s grass-roots approach.
You cannot ‘understand’ zenitism
unless you feel it.
The electricity we do not ‘understand’
but feel is perhaps the supreme
manifestation of the spirit –
Zenitism?
We are naked and pure.
Forget hatred – sink into the naked depths of Yourself!
Dive and fly to your own heights!
ZENITH
Fly above the criminal, fratricidal Present!
Show your astral being to the visionary eyes of Superlife!
Listen to the magic of our words, Listen to Yourselves!
There – on Šar mountain – on the Urals – stands
THE NAKED MAN BARBAROGENIUS
Fly above the Šar mountain, above the Urals and the Himalayas –
Mont Blanc – Popocatepetl – above Kilimanjaro!
We are now floating high, high above the bodily spheres of the Globe.
Break, binding chains! Fall, suburbs of large and plague-ridden
West European cities! Shatter, glass of gilded palaces
– tall towers – National Stock Markets and Banks!
Return to your fat bellies, fat war profiteers!
Hide your bought concubines deep in your dirty pockets!
Have you no shame!?
And you, blind mothers and you, stupid fathers, selling your innocent daughters for money!
And you, you black underground spiders, spinning your webs around pure souls
Have you no shame, you drunken lodges!?
You – merchants of souls – art and culture – you lie the most!
Against you – for Man!
Bolt your doors West – North – Central Europe –
The Barbarians are coming!
Bolt them, bolt them, but
We shall still enter!
We are the children of arson and fire – we carry Man’s soul.
And our soul is combustion.
Combustion of the soul in the creation of sublimity.
ZENITISM
We are the children of the Sun and the Mountains – we carry Man’s spirit.
And our spirit is the life of cosmic unity bound by Love.
We are the children of the South East barbaro-genius.
It is coming … It is coming …
THE RESCUE CAR
Hot-blooded horses’ hoofs hitting
the ground galloping to a savage rhythm.
Underground channels rumble
Crammed hospitals moan
City churches – streets and cathedrals
celebrate Easter
1921.
Moscow pours blood.
Far away bells of assumption thunder.
cutting through space of sinful and colorful streets
where war battalions of fratricides once passed.
---------------------------------------
Oh mortuary music of those gray battalions!
Oh bloody burials of attack trumpets!
Oh dull thuds of men’s bodies
remember:
!Man is your brother!
!Man is your brother!
The sun spurts.
Astral bodies of the universe dance
Floating up there in the endless circular spheres
of the new planet
** Alpha and Pons **
And the red-colored crosses
on the milky panes of the yellow car
have hoisted high their visionary flag of Redemption
and sing the Eastern Slavic song of Resurrection.
Countless crosses of our defeated land tremble.
The wooden gallows above our skulls are falling.
Bloody ropes snake above the fratricidal Black Peak.
And through big cities cars with red crosses rush
EAST
SOUTH
WEST
The yellow rescue car hurtles
carrying a hidden corpse – Man.
Man is dying everywhere.
The Sun has fallen into my soul
into the limitless space of All-love.
The red glass crosses shattered –
Man has died in the yellow car.
Letters are dancing, cast above the crosses
R S U C R
E C E A
Black flags, brothers, flutter in our souls
because
Man is dying everywhere …
* * * * * * * * * * *
It is magic, the word: Zenith!
Man, a brother and father to gods was born somewhere in the jungle.
Man created God, for he saw terrible storms and arrows, heard thunder and desired the Sun.
One magical and deep night he discovered Himself – Man
Man’s first weakness created God – the First Empire.
The first Egyptian and Greek culture (Greece and Macedonia are both in the Balkans!) – the Second Empire.
ZENITISM = THE THIRD UNIVERSE
A graphic picture of zenitism = an incarnation of the metacosmic bipolarity:
Man is the center of the macrocosmos – the Earth’s North Pole.
Zenith is the center of the metacosmos – the Universe’s North Pole.
Zenitism is a magical and electric interval between the macrocosmos and
the metacosmos – between Man and Zenith.
Man is thunder cast into space – on Earth.
We begin with Man.
Man is a victim. The victim is always central.
Man is tragedy. Tragedy is always sublime.
Man – Spirit – Metacosmos – Sun – Phenomenon – Zenith
ZENITISM = THE ORIENT OF AIRPLANE
SPIRITS
Zenitism is the idea of all arts.
Zenitist art must be an art of ideas – affinitive.
A Zenitist must create new things.
A Zenitist must create the new.
Zenitism is an artistic affirmation of the Allspirit.
Zenitism is the absolute supernatural individuation, the only creative one:
It must contain the artist + man.
Superman
It must incarnate the bipolar metacosmos
Phenomenon
Zenitism is more than spirit = the fourth dimension.
Zenitism is beyond dimensions = 0. or the tenth
dimension = Eternity.
Magical Zenitist word = radio station A
Man’s fluid feeling and jerk = radio station B
Manifestation = Radiogram.
A Zenitist word must be electrification
A Zenitist deed must be a radiogram.
This is not a gospel. This is a Manifesto.
The people of the future, who come after us, they will write the Gospel.
And they will come … they will come …
The future Man!
He will be the son of the Sun and the Zenith.
He will speak the Zenitist language.
All … all … will understand.
This is not a philosophy.
The philosophy of zenitism is in the making.
It is emerging … happening …
Zenitism is mysticism and there is no philosophy of mysticism.
There is
only the mysticism of philosophy – the mysticism of the New Art.
Zenitism is a revelation in the one hundred and twentieth century!!!
Expressionism, cubism, futurism – are dead.
We are an extension of their lineage – to higher ground!
We are their synthesis but as an arrow pointing upward, a reincarnation
– the plusexistence of their philosophical ideas;
The soul of souls of the dead of those who died but lived one hundred and
twenty centuries ago and yearned for the Zenith.
The soul of the souls of the nameless ones whose proud children we are.
Sons of creation – bonding – unification – travel
through Chaos – the sons of Original Sin.
Original Sin must have occurred, for that is how people came to know
Themselves.
There would be no Zenitism without Original Sin!
We who have discovered Ourselves – Man – we are Zenitists
You should be, too!
Our only thought is ZENITH – the highest incarnation of Allexistence.
Our path is only forward – above – over everything that has been.
Down with pale traditions, systems, and borders! Borders are for the limited!
We keep going … going
Traveling from chaos to create a Work.
Led by the mystical demigod
ANARCH
You come too, though woe unto them who stumble and are left by the way-
side.
We will not come back.
Poets! Brothers! Zenitists as yet unknown!
Awaken Man and exalt him!
Sing of flames, fire, the burning and thirst for Zenith!
Put a stop to Man’s fall. That will be our greatest work. That is the vertical line that will pierce the heavens above. And sunny blood, sunny blood shall flow.
Poets of Zenith! Sing of Man and not murderer!
Man is for Love and for Exaltation.
Above splintered human skulls, we extend our hands to all,
over all borders, to those who think like us: to people!
Even then, when the last Nonhuman dies,
then
in all the countries – in all the cities – on all the towers
ships – planes – palaces – court rooms – hospitals
– academies – insane asylums – seaports –
hang clean white flags and greet the Future Zenitist Man
then
in all the pavilions – churches – halls – theaters
– circuses – streets – roofs – railways – submarines
– army barracks –
in all the Zeniteums
sound your trumpets –
organs – tympani – drums – fanfares –
sing your hearts
sing … sing
THE ANTHEM OF ZENITISM
THE ANTHEM OF ZENITISM
Earth is for Man the Brother and not for Man the Murderer!
Zagreb in the Balkans, June 12, 1921.