Poem Analysis
Poem: Enrico Cavvacchioli
Poet: Let the Moon Be Damned, 1914
http://lchan.blogspot.com/2005/03/futurist-poetry.html
In the poem "Let the moon be damned" Enrico Cavvachioli referfs to his city has being in a fraught stage.This was a time where these cities were prone to diseases and many other chaotic things. People are starving, thirsty, and basically are suffering. Everyday there are many deaths, fever and disease, and no hope for the future.b Everything in this city is failing politically, socially, as well as economically. However, the poet changes the tone by talking about the future. He discusses all the different technology that is going to be invented to solve problems like this. Medical related machines to stop the diseases and food producing machines to stop the hunger. At the end of the poem the poet states"...The cold machine surpasses man/ in its perfection brutal and precise/ that day will come we rule the brute machine/ lords of the finite and the infinite/ and the moon be damned" which I believe means that one day we will be so advanced that we will actually be able to go to the moon and when that day comes all our problems of hunger and disease will be solved by machines.
Literary Devices
There are many literary devices in the poem "let the moon be damned" such as a paradox. An example of a paradox is "If you want to live go get a mechanical heart/inhale the red hot blasts of the furnaces..."This is a paradox because it uses concepts/ideas that are contradictory to one another. The poet says if you want to live, but actually you would die if you inhale the fire from the furnace. Also another literary device used in this poem is irony. A n example of irony in this poem is "Let the moon be damned."This is irony because the meaning implied by the sentence is actually different from the actual meaning. In this case the author doesn`t really want the moon to be damned he is just expressing how he feels. For instance, he actually feels that if they had more technology or machines they can be able to explore the moon. In a way he is warning the moon that people are coming and when they do the moon will be damned.