In this hand-drawn word-poem by the founder of the Italian Futurist movement, letters, words, numbers, and abstract lines explode across the surface of the page, interspersed with Marinetti’s famously bellicose onomatopoeic declamation, “Zang tumb tuuuuuuuuuuuum.” Like the Futurist painters, writers associated with the movement, including Marinetti, were concerned with finding a style that appropriately reflected the speed and acceleration of life in the early 20th century and the growing militarism in Europe. To that end they conceived parole in libertà (words in freedom), a style of composing words on a page that frees them from the scaffolding of linear syntax and standardized typography in order to energize all the reader’s senses. Exaggerated in form and exuberantly arranged, the various elements of Vive La France are clearly intended to be seen, shouted out, and experienced rather than merely read.