DOI article:
Mina Loy, Aphorisms on Futurism
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31334#0026
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HE can compress every aesthetic principle in one line.
THE mind is a magician bound by assimilations; let him loose and the
smallest idea conceived in freedom will suffice to negate the wisdom of all
forefathers.
LOOKING on the past you arrive at “Yes,” but before you can act upon
it you have already arrived at “NO.”
THE Futurist must leap from affirmative to affirmative, ignoring inter-
mittent negations—must spring from stepping-stone to stone of creative
exploration; without slipping back into the turbid stream of accepted facts.
THERE are no excrescences on the absolute, to which man may pin his
faith.
TODAY is the crisis in consciousness.
CONSCIOUSNESS cannot spontaneously accept or reject new forms,
as offered by creative genius; it is the new form, for however great a period
of time it may remain a mere irritant—that moulds consciousness to the
necessary amplitude for holding it.
CONSCIOUSNESS has no climax.
LET the Universe flow into your consciousness, there is no limit to its
capacity, nothing that it shall not re-create.
UNSCREW your capability of absorption and grasp the elements of Life
—Whole.
MISERY is in the disintegration of Joy;
Intellect, of Intuition;
Acceptance, of Inspiration.
CEASE to build up your personality with the ejections of irrelevant minds.
NOT to be a cipher in your ambient,
But to color your ambient with your preferences.
NOT to accept experience at its face value.
BUT to readjust activity to the peculiarity of your own will.
THESE are the primary tentatives towards independence.
MAN is a slave only to his own mental lethargy.
YOU cannot restrict the mind’s capacity.
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THE mind is a magician bound by assimilations; let him loose and the
smallest idea conceived in freedom will suffice to negate the wisdom of all
forefathers.
LOOKING on the past you arrive at “Yes,” but before you can act upon
it you have already arrived at “NO.”
THE Futurist must leap from affirmative to affirmative, ignoring inter-
mittent negations—must spring from stepping-stone to stone of creative
exploration; without slipping back into the turbid stream of accepted facts.
THERE are no excrescences on the absolute, to which man may pin his
faith.
TODAY is the crisis in consciousness.
CONSCIOUSNESS cannot spontaneously accept or reject new forms,
as offered by creative genius; it is the new form, for however great a period
of time it may remain a mere irritant—that moulds consciousness to the
necessary amplitude for holding it.
CONSCIOUSNESS has no climax.
LET the Universe flow into your consciousness, there is no limit to its
capacity, nothing that it shall not re-create.
UNSCREW your capability of absorption and grasp the elements of Life
—Whole.
MISERY is in the disintegration of Joy;
Intellect, of Intuition;
Acceptance, of Inspiration.
CEASE to build up your personality with the ejections of irrelevant minds.
NOT to be a cipher in your ambient,
But to color your ambient with your preferences.
NOT to accept experience at its face value.
BUT to readjust activity to the peculiarity of your own will.
THESE are the primary tentatives towards independence.
MAN is a slave only to his own mental lethargy.
YOU cannot restrict the mind’s capacity.
14
