A Stab in the Ear : Poetics of Sound in Futurism and Dadaism

The Futurists produced most conspicuous, creative, and diverse figures of sound in the Polish avant-garde.

The book is a comparative study of the Polish Futurists’ works presented against the backdrop of European literary practices of the time (Dadaism, Italian and Russian Futurism) and the Polish literary tradition (folk poetry, Young Poland).

S´niecikowska examines variations on symbolist “musicality,” traces similarities between Polish Futurist word formation and Cubo-Futurist experimentation, compares Dadaist and Futurist concepts of onomatopoeia, analyses applications of Marinetti’s “words in freedom.” The study also deals with uses of glossolalia and echolalia as well as sound-semantic concepts that employ pure nonsense and parody.