Essential McLuhan 198 We start from opposite statements of a chosen world. Set up violent structure of adolescent clearness between two extremes. We discharge ourselves on both sides. We fight first on one side, then on the other, but always for the SAME cause, which is neither side or both sides and ours. Mercenaries were always the best troops. We are Primitive Mercenaries in the Modern World. Our Cause Is NO-MAN’S. We set Humor at Humor’s throat. Stir up Civil War among peaceful apes. We only want Humor if it has fought like Tragedy. We only want Tragedy if it can clench its side-muscles like hands on its belly, and bring to the surface a laugh like a bomb. Wyndham Lewis, Manifesto To believe that it is necessary for or conducive to art, to “Improve” life, for instance—make architecture, dress, ornament, in better taste, is absurd. The artist of the modern movement is a savage (in no sense an “advanced,” perfected, democratic, Futuristic individual of Mr. Marinetti’s limited imagination): this enormous, jangling, journalistic, fiery desert of modern life serves him as Nature did more technically primitive man. There is violent boredom with that feeble Europeanism, abasement of the miserable “intellectual” before anything coming from Paris, Cosmopolitan sentimentality, which prevails in so many quarters. Wyndham Lewis, Blast
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