AVANGARDNI MANIFESTI I UBRZANjE KNjIŽEVNOSTI

Abstract

The paper explores the phenomenon of speed in literature as radically represented within the framework of avant-garde texts. The modernist acceleration of literature is immanent in the poetics of manifestos: their programmatic insistence on acceleration, their (meta)dis- cursive character, simultaneous production of narrative and poetic syntax, and questioning the possibility of writing. Such fourfold functioning of avant-garde discourse (producing the discourse and commenting on it, programmatic narration and pure narration), comparative to a four-stroke engine operation cycle, singularly dynamizes, accelerates both the manifesto discourse and the fictitious-poetic narration, therefore vigorously “revving the engine” of lit- erature. This is what the paper wants, to speak up about the speed of literature, about the avant-garde and modernist acceleration.