 The cover of the first edition of BLAST was bold and shocking to its potential readership in 1914. BLAST was the shortlived journal of the Vorticism movement. It had two editions, the first published on 2 July 1914, and the second a year later.
BLAST was edited and largely written by Wyndham Lewis with contributions from other Vorticists. The first edition was printed in folio format, with the oblique title BLAST splashed across its bright pink soft cover. Inside, Lewis used a range of bold typographic tricks to engage the user. In many respects it bore a striking resemblance to the typographically naive newsletters produced by Apple Macintosh users in the late 1980s.
The opening 20 pages of Blast One, contains the Vorticism manifesto written by Lewis, with assistance for Ezra Pound, and signed by Lewis, Edward Wadsworth, Ezra Pound, William Roberts, Helen Saunders, Lawrence Atkinson, Jessica Dismorr and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Whilst David Bomberg and Jacob Epstein chose not to sign the manifesto, although their work was featured.
The manifesto is primarily a long list of things to be 'Blessed' or 'Blasted'. It starts:
1. Beyond Action and Reaction we would establish ourselves.
2. We start from opposite statements of a chosen world. Set up
violent structure of adolescent clearness between two extremes.
3. We discharge ourselves on both sides.
4. We first first on one side, then on the other, but always for the
SAME cause, which is neither side or both sides and ours.
5. Mercenaries were always the best troops.
6. We are primitive Mercenaries in the Modern World.
7. Our Cause is NO-MAN'S.
8. We set Humour at Humour's throat. Stir up Civil War among
peaceful apes.
9. We only want Humour if it has fought like Tragedy.
10. 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.
 The second war number number of blast featured on of Lewis's vorticist wood cut on the cover. The first edition of BLAST also contained articles by Pound, Rebecca West, Gaudier-Brzeska and Ford Madox Hueffer's poem The Saddest Story, better known by its later title The Good Soldier. The first edition also contained many illustrations in the Vorticist style by Jacob Epstein, Lewis and others.
The second edition contained a short play by Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot's poems Preludes and Rhapsody of a Winter Night.
Another article by Gaudier-Brzeska entitled Vortex (written from the Trenches) further described the vorticist easthetic. It was written whilst Gaudier-Brzeska was fighting in WW I, a few weeks before he was killed.
References
- BLAST 1 and 2 reprinted in reduced format by Black Sparrow Books (1982), ISBN 0876855214 and ISBN 0876855230
- Gingko Press (http://www.gingkopress.com/_cata/_lite/wl-blas1.htm) description of their facsimile editions.
External links
- WWI anthologies (http://www.lib.byu.edu/~english/WWI/anthologies/manifesto.html)
- B Daly pages on Vorticism (http://users.senet.com.au/~dsmith/vorticism.htm)
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