Push your philosophy like this year's look

[sovay]

When asked some years ago about my favorite Russian Futurist, I predictably blanked, but said that I thought I had imprinted weirdly on Aleksei Kruchonykh because of zaum—I discovered the Futurists through Victory Over the Sun (1913)—and because he looked in all the photographs I'd seen as though he were auditioning for the part of an eccentric clerk in a stage production of Dickens. Exhibit A, which I just ran into while looking as usual for something completely different:



Left to right, that's Kruchonykh, David Burliuk, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Nikolai Burliuk,¹ and Benedikt Livshits. Kruchonykh is twenty-seven; he would die in 1968, which I hope he found congenial in terms of the art of the time. I know almost nothing about his later life. There must be a biography somewhere. Anyway, I'm not saying that Mayakovsky's striped shirt and Livshits' flash tie don't have their fine points, but Kruchonykh looks like he just dropped in from his latest play or the last century or both. That makes me notice a person.

[edit] Velimir Khlebnikov beat me to the ghost poem. By more than ninety years, while they were both still alive. Sometimes I love history.

1. Okay, Tumblr thinks the figure at the top of the composition is Nikolai Burliuk; Wikipedia and this article think it's Vladimir. I don't suppose anyone has a source for the photo? I have not been able to trace it.

Comments

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Nnnno, not exactly Dickens? One of Trollope's (or even Thackeray's!) hopeful young men, who lives in lodgings in London with a congenial roommate and works as a clerk in a bank or office; somehow he ends up in Parliament, after marrying for love, bemused by the whole thing.

[He rows on week-ends, in good weather, and turned down Jerome K. Jerome's offer to accompany Harris, Jerome, and the dog on their notorious famous jaunt, in order to attend a charity fête where, by tirelessly arranging tables and chairs and draping bunting handsomely, he made a good impression on his beloved Phyllis's mother.]

[sovay]

One of Trollope's (or even Thackeray's!) hopeful young men, who lives in lodgings in London with a congenial roommate and works as a clerk in a bank or office; somehow he ends up in Parliament, after marrying for love, bemused by the whole thing.

Ah, see, I have never read Trollope: I don't know what his hopeful young men look like!

(In real life, his partner was Olga Rosanova, a Futurist artist; she died young of diptheria, leaving some really interesting work, including collaborations with Kruchonykh and other writers of the avant-garde. Again, I know more about her work than about her life. I can't tell if this is a lack of sources in English or research on my part.)

[gwynnega]

What a great photo. I'd never even heard of Kruchonykh. I am a big Mayakovsky fan.

[sovay]

What a great photo.

I like how everyone appears to have staked out an affectation—Burliuk's opera glasses, Livshits' pipe, Mayakovsky's shirt and everything about Kruchonykh—except for Nikolai Burliuk, who's just hanging out. Possibly that's his.

I'd never even heard of Kruchonykh. I am a big Mayakovsky fan.

He wrote the libretto for Victory Over the Sun, so he was one of my introductions to the Futurists! For me, Mayakovsky was a reference in Frank O'Hara's "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island."

(I have since read him. He's pretty great. I like the Russian Futurists in general a lot.)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

They look so young, and so very full of character.

[sovay]

They look so young, and so very full of character.

Yes. They look like they are trying themselves on and at the same time they look intensely like themselves. David Burliuk is the oldest of them and he's just the age of my brother, four years younger than I am now.

[vasma-pr.livejournal.com]

Zaum is one of the poles in the language quite contrary to stictly defined terms.
Among the futurists my favourite is Mayakovsty because of his early poetry. And I greatly enjoyed the One-and-a-Half-Shooter by Benedict Livshits as a book of memoirs about futurists

[sovay]

Among the futurists my favourite is Mayakovsty because of his early poetry.

That's fair. I can only read him in translation, but he's very good.

And I greatly enjoyed the One-and-a-Half-Shooter by Benedict Livshits as a book of memoirs about futurists

Yes! I've read those memoirs, under the title The One-and-a-Half-Eyed Archer. Roman Jakobson also has a set of memoirs and letters, collected under the title My Futurist Years, which I read before I knew who almost any of the poets and painters he referred to were.

[vasma-pr.livejournal.com]

I didn't read the book by Roman Jakobson. Mybe I'll find and read it the other day. As for the title of the book by Livshits, I translated it impromptu as I didn't know how it had already been translated into English.
In fact, Futurism is only one of trends in the literature of that very interesting period. My favourite is that of Acmeist poetry....

[sovay]

As for the title of the book by Livshits, I translated it impromptu as I didn't know how it had already been translated into English.

I wasn't criticizing your translation: I didn't know if there were others.

My favourite is that of Acmeist poetry....

I know Akhmatova, Mandelstam, and Kuzmin from that group; I think I'm not well-read in it otherwise. Talk to me about them?

[vasma-pr.livejournal.com]

- I know Akhmatova, Mandelstam, and Kuzmin from that group; I think I'm not well-read in it otherwise. Talk to me about them?

Well, about these poets I can talk for hours :) Unlike the futurists who rejected the culture of the past, the Acmeists tried to reflect its fullness. Unlike the symbolists they tried to give exact, true-to-life, weighty images. At the same time it was a striving to realize something that has not yet been realized in culture. Mandelstam once wrote: "You wish Pushkin, Ovid, Catullus, and you are not satisfied with the historical Pushkin, Ovid and Catullus..." :)