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

[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..." :)