In 1911 he issued a volume entitled "Electric Poetry" ("Poesie elettriche"), whose futurist cover was the only futuristic feature it had. There is no humming, puffing, whirring to convey that steam-and-gasoline-engine modernity which it should have in order to justify the name. Its lines are too refined, too pussy-foot, too pathetic, too tender-minded for that. Were it not for the perfect equality of the sexes to-day we would be tempted to say they had a feminine quality. Daintiness does not express it; neither does unvirile. There is none of this quality in his next production--the "Hymn on the Death of Sergio." "Neve" ("The Snow") appeared in 1914; "Rarefazione" ("Rarefactions") in 1915. The latter is a weird collection of childish figures designed by the poet and commented upon by him to such effect as to demonstrate a state of latent infantilism. In the same year he published a volume entitled "The Inauguration of the Spring" ("L'Inaugurazione della Primavera"), which contains most of Govoni's best work in poems. His last book, a series of short stories, "La Santa Verde" ("The Ardent Saint"), adds nothing to his fame. Most of them are insignificant, colorless, reliefless, purposeless. An attempt has been made by champions of Corrado Govoni to show that "Base rivals, who true wit and merit hate" are forming a cabal to prevent his getting his deserts. Fiumi, his last champion, does not materially advance his claim. Such, in all their diversity, are the Futurists. There is no common formula which describes them. They have a programme which, like that of the Socialists, must from its very nature lack specificity. They are not very definitely organized and many who enrolled under their banner in the enthusiasm of youth soon deserted the cause. But meanwhile they got sufficient inspiration and impetus to throw off the shackles of tradition and to taste the pleasure of exploration. More often they get purged of a kind of literary preciosity which makes for their well-being and usefulness. The programme of the Futurist is of little importance in itself, but it is of great importance as a symptom of tendencies now agitating the minds of the younger generation in Italy. It may be that their efforts will constitute the small end of the wedge by which Romanticism and Verism shall be burst asunder like the Dragon of Bel's Temple. CHAPTER V GIOVANNI PAPINI AND THE FUTURISTIC LITERARY MOVEMENT IN ITALY In one of his "Appreciations"--depreciations would be the more fitting word--Signor Papini says he seems to have read or to have said that in every man there are at least four men: the real man, the man he would like to be, the man he thinks he is, and the man others think he is. He is sure to have read it, for he has read widely. Undoubtedly he has also said it, for he has made a specialty of saying things that have been said before--even that he has said before.