Page "Zang Tumb Tumb" Paragraph 2

" masterpiece of Words-in-freedom and of Marinetti ’ s literary career was the novel ‘ Zang Tumb Tuuum ’... the story of the siege by the Bulgarians of Turkish Adrianople in the Balkan War, which Marinetti had witnessed as a war reporter.

The dynamic rhythms and onomatopoetic possibilities that the new form offered were made even more effective through the revolutionary use of different typefaces, forms and graphic arrangements and sizes that became a distinctive part of Futurism.

In ‘ Zang Tumb Tuuum ; they are used to express an extraordinary range of different moods and speeds, quite apart from the noise and chaos of battle ....

Audiences in London, Berlin and Rome alike were bowled over by the tongue-twisting vitality with which Marinetti declaimed ‘ Zang Tumb Tuuum .’ As an extended sound poem it stands as one of the monuments of experimental literature, its telegraphic barrage of nouns, colours, exclamations and directions pouring out in the screeching of trains, the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire, and the clatter of telegraphic messages " Caroline Tisdall & Angelo Bozzola