Victor Erlich
THE POLITICS OF RUSSIAN FUTURISM
Let me begin by citing two totally incompatible proposi–
tions: "Italian futurism is an
ars vivendi,
while Russian futurism is
solely concerned with art. Italian futurism is a social movement;
Russian futurism is an upheaval in art." So wrote the avant garde
poet and critic, Vadim Shershenevich (incidentally one of the few
Russian futurists who welcomed Marinetti to Moscow in 1914) in a
pamphlet, "The Green Street." Only two years later, in 1918,
N. Punin, writing in the short-lived Kom-Futuristjournal,
The Art of
the Commune,
intoned, "Russian futurism is not only an artistic move–
ment but an entire worldview which bases itself upon Communism
and ultimately leaves it behind."
Clearly, one's view of the relationship between the futurist
revolution in Russian art and revolutionary politics depends, to
paraphrase a common saying, on what futurist newspapers you
read. More seriously, it hinges on one's sense of the chronological
and substantive scope of the phrase "Russian futurism ." For the mo–
ment, I would like to construe this scope rather broadly. Few will
deny that the innovative thrust of Russian futurism found its fullest
and most characteristic expression in the cubo-futurist offensive of
1910-1915. Yet it would be wrong to ignore the post-1917 vicissitudes
of the Russian futurist or neofuturist movement, if for no other
reason but that to do so would be to lose sight of the achievement
and the fate of the best known and most resonant poet of Russian
futurism, Vladimir Mayakovsky.
Let us return to the launching. It is a matter of record that at its
inception Russian futurism presented itself primarily as the revolution
of the word.
In
its initial rationale, the Russian equivalent of
parole in
libertti
loomed larger than the mimetic or thematic emphases in Ma–
rinetti's 1909 manifesto . It also loomed larger than his much-quoted
call to overhaul poetic language in order to reflect and celebrate the
new realities and to capture the dynamism of the new technological
civilization.
In
the early manifestoes of the Russian cubo-futurists,
Editor's Note: This article was first presented as a talk given at a symposium on
futurism at Yale University, in April 1983.
