Futurism in the Mirror of Croatian Translation

Marinetti’s Unpublished Manifesto

Abstract

Although Croatian literary critics have been interested in Futurism since its very beginning, the same cannot be said when it comes to the translations of Futurist works. This is even more surprising if we consider that a good part of the first issue of the unpublished Futurist journal Zvrk (‘spinning top’) was dedicated to the translation of the writings of some well-known Futurists, including Marinetti himself. The article, in addition to providing a panoramic view of the major critical works on Futurism and their reception in Croatia, highlights the importance of applying translation analysis in the study of Croatian and Italian literary and cultural bonds, such as in the case of Marinetti’s programmatic writing Il futurism, translated into Croatian as Futurizam by the founder of Zvrk, Joso Matošić, and intended for publication in the journal. The analysis reveals that the writing cannot be considered the original manifesto written by Marinetti for this occasion, but a version of two of his previously published articles known to and taken by Matošić as a prototext together with the version that the founder of the Futurist movement sent to Zvrk.