janecek gerald zaum the transrational poetry of russian futurism

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The T ransrational Poetry of Russian Futurism

E Gerald J ara,tek

• 1996

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SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS .

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Acknowledgements

Research for this book was supported in large part by grants in 1983, 1986, and 1989 from the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Information Agency, and the US Department of State, which administers the Russian, Eurasian, and East European Research Program (Title VIII). .tt

In addition, I would like to express my gratitude to the fol-lowing institutions and their staffs for aid essential in completing this project: the Fulbright-Bayes Senior Scholar Research Program for further suppoit for the trips in 1983 and 1989, the American Council of Learned Societies for further support for the trip in 1986, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the British Library; iri Moscow: to the Russian State Library, the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, the Gorky Institute of World Literature, the State Literary Museum, and the Mayakovsky Museum; in St. Petersburg: to the Institute of Russian Literature-Pushkin House, the Saltykov-Shchedrin Public Library, and the Russian Museum; to the following kind and generous colleagues and friends: Alexander Ocheretyansky, Peter Mayer, Vadim Kreyd, Vladimir Markov, Richard Kostelanetz, Andrey Monastyrsky, John E. Bowlt, Nina Gourianova, M. L. Gasparov, Juliette Stapanian, Howard Aronson, Ludmilla Yevsukova, Walter Comins-Richmond, and Mark Konecny for information, materials, and moral support while I was attempting a serious investigation of "nonsense"; to Boris Gasparov for valuable critical comments on an earlier draft

v

. . . n a fuller treatment of of the manuscript and for ~~sistmg o able and tireKhlebnikov than I originally mtended; tol t~. capLibrary at the

. terlibrary loan staff of Margarent . mg . less m f ff' . tly processing the literally

. . f K tucky or e 1c1en Umversity o en uests needed to complete countless and often obscur~ loanh req of the last decade; to

h' · t durmg t e course ~::arc~o~~i:u:::;fe~an Diego State University Press,.th~ un~

ry . . ted editor one always dreams of havmg; an derstandmg, m~eres h careful attention to reading the finally to my wife, Susan, w ose. nsistencies and infelicities

proot~s el~mi'tnhaeteenddm:~:ne::::' ~:~~nger able t~ perceive them. ata 1mem

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l I

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"Ein Zeichen sind wir, deutunglos" - Holderlin "Mnemosyne" [1803], Zweite

Fassung (1951:195)

"The heart has its reason of which the reason knows nothing ... " -Pascal, Pensee 477 (1961:164)

" ... the unpronounceable heart of speech" -Pete Spence (1988:5)

"It is admittedly tempting to suppose that there must be some limit to the degree of repugnancy that is admissible in literature; and certainly there is a point beyond which language can only tum into nonsense. But then nonsense can be literature too, and sometimes is-a warning that, if there is a limit to be placed, it may be worth insisting that it should be placed at some remote point."

-George Watson (1969:75)

"Nam neponyatnoe priyatno, neob"yasnimoe nam drug" [For us the incomprehensible is pleasant, the inexplicable our friend]

- Aleksandr Vvedensky (1980:128)

"Nonsense explores the interaction of pattern and freedom, as a

theme about both life and art." -Wendy Steiner (1982:132)

"All verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleam5 of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a com-

pletely incommunicable intuition." 5

-Northrop Frye (1957:83)

"What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." -Ludwig Wittgenstein, [1921] (1974:74)

• vii'

Dedication:

To all who work to keep human nature indeterminate

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Contents

Preface I xi

Introduction: Definitions and Background I 1 Zaum: A Definition Viktor Shklovsky: On Poetry and Transrational Language

1) A Wellspring of Sweet Sounds 2) "Muki slova" -The Trials of a Poet 3) From Historical Poetics to Psychophysiology:

Veselovsky, Wundt, Zelinsky, Wm. James 4) Children's Babble, Language Learning, and Folklore 5) Speaking in Strange Tongues

Other Factors 6) Philosophy and Linguistics 7) The Fourth Dimension, Intuition,

and Cubism

1 Kruchonykh: "Dyr bul shchyl" I 49

2 From "Dyr bul shchyl" to Victory Over the Sun 171

3 Competing Early Zaumniks: Lotov, Bolshakov, Gnedov, Podgaevsky, and Others I 97

4 Victory Over the Sun I 111

5 Khlebnikov and Zaum I 135

6 1914: Stock-Taking I 153

• ix

x Contents

7 Enter Another Linguist and Some Ar~sts: Kruchonykh, Alyagrov, Rozanova, Fllonov, Malevich, Stepanova I 181

8 Parallel Developments, 1915-1919 I 205 Italian Futurism Dadaism Russian Symbolism

9 zaum in Tillis, 1917-1921 I 223 Kruchonykh Terentev Iiya Zdanevich

10 The Debate Over Zaum in the 1920s I 291 The Formalists LEF Various Others Tufanov Oberiu

11 Conclusion I 343

Bibliography I 357

Index I 410

......

PREFACE

As one who cannot pass by a superscript for a note without wanting to know what it says and who at the same time resents the interruption if it is merely to give a page reference, I have chosen the parenthetical method for citations, keeping the notes to a minimum. References to the bibliography will be made in the body of the text by author, date, and page, e.g., (Bely 1910:232). Brackets will be used to enclose titles and dates which are not meant as references to the bibliography. They will also be used to indicate archival sources not listed in the bibliography, e.g., [RGALI 1334-1-25] is Rossiisky Gosudarstvenny,1r Arkhiv Literatury i Iskusstva Fond 1334 Op. 1 ed./ delo 25; IRLI=Institut russkoy literatury i iskusstva (Pushkinsky dom). They will also be used to enclose translations of words or phrases given first in Russian or the original Russian of words or phrases given first in translation, e.g., mysl' [thought], significance [znachenie]. Finally, brackets will be used to indicate my interpolations in a quotation, usually to give the original Russian of some word, and will be placed around three dots to indicate that this is my ellipsis and is not the punctuation of the original.

All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. Since the book is aimed at an English-speaking audience, reference will be made wherever possible to sources available in English translation. If the reference is to a source in English translation, then the translation is from there.

Unless otherwise indicated, italics and other forms of emphasis in quotations are given as in the quoted source.

Transliteration: A modified form of the Library of Congress will be used (exceptions: ia=ya, iu=yu;' omitted in proper nouns in the text but retained in the bibliography and transliterated quotations; r [i-kratkoe]=y; -skii=sky; -yy will be contracted to-y; e will be rendered as yo, but after sibilants). ' ·•

xi

INTRODUCTION:

DEFINITIONS AND BACKGROUND

ZAUM: A DEFINITION

Zaum' (pronounced: ZA-oom, i.e., in two syllables) is a Russian Futurist neologism used to describe words or language whose meaning is "indefinite" [neopredelennoe] or indeterminate. Zaum' is arguably the most prominent, unique feature of Russian literary Futurism, a feature which distinguishes it even from Italian Futurism, and it is easily its most provocative feature, the value and purpose of which was and still is much disputed and much doubted. The term has been variously translated as "trans-mental," "transrational," "trans-sense," "mctalogical," or" nonsense" language. Perhaps the cleverest and best .!l rendering is Paul Schmidt's "beyonsense" (Khlebnikov 1985:113). The basic root of the word, urn, is a noun that means "mind, wit, intellect" and is the Russian word that would be used in such phrases as" a man of great intellect," "in one's right mind," "to lose one's mind," "to be at wit's end." It refers to the locus of normal mental activity of a rational, logical sort. The adjective from the noun (umny) means "intelligent, witty." In a prefixed form, razum, it means "reason, logic, intellect." However, the addition, instead, of the prefix za- introduces an element of uncertainty. This prefix has been characterized as "among the most productive and versatile of Russian prefixes, and it has the widest semantic role" (Mickiewicz 1984:374). Readers wanting an exhaustive survey of its usage can consult Mickiewicz's fine study, but my present purpose is to define the word zaurn' for English-speaking readers so I can u.se it as a term hereafter. When attached to a noun, za- is roughly equivalent to the Latin prefix trans-; hence Zarnoskvorech' e is the district of Moscow "beyond the Moscow River," that is, on the opposite side of the river from the Kremlin and the center of the city. Thus in a topographical sense it means "beyond, on the other side of," and by extension "outside of" or "beyond the bounds of." It is a matter of escaping from or going beyond the limits of a ·tocale, in this case of something like rational, intelligible discourse. At the same time, the negative connotations of"nonsense" are avoided in the Russian, which

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2 Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism

[ ot intelligent, stupid] and bezumny also has at its disposal neuthmny In -cut geographical denotation, de-[ d · ane] za has a ra er c ear 'fy h'ch rna 'ms. . - ti that"itisalmostimpossibletospeci w I

spite BeaU JOUr's con ten on . ust be understood in zaum" of the many senses of the p:efix z~ m when the prefix is combined (1972:13). Rather, the uncerta~nty en ~rs ation but instead with an abnot with a precise topographical d:sr ndaries of which are unclear stract notion like mind o~ re.aso~, t e tl oucharacterizes the root um as and open to dispute. Mtckte~tcz ap y · · t" (1984:370). How-

d ting to dtverse semantic mpu "highly a~commo a d the observation that in numerous Russian ever, to thts must be ad de d . s that suggest a more concrete expressions the word um is use m w~y E li'sh For instance, to "lose I th · perhaps the case m ng · sense of p ace an IS . e" or in a closer equivalent, to one's mind" or to "go ~raRzy, ~o ~~~~soyti· c'uma" literally to "step (or · d" tn usstan IS , "go out of your mt~ . d " s if it were an elevated place such as a go) down from one s mm ' a ld descend from. Beau jour (:13) notes a platform or throne that o~e cou. ression "um zarazum zashol" possible ~'rigin ~f the comage ~~ t~;~~nd) reason," thatis,"to beat (literally: the mmd went ~eyo h t ~ e the mind and reason are not wit's end"). It is interestmg t a er d behind and outside reason.

d d the mind can move aroun , , th equate ' an d . . ts adjectival form to modify e noun

At first the term was us;91~ I but later the coinage zaum' was ar-language: zaU~ny :~~I6a·2d} In addition to the two components rived at (Kruc any . · . · 1 d substantivization by the addialready ~iscussed, ~Is .nou[;u~~~:wicz defines this palatalization, tion of fmal palatahza~wn f 11 . "B making a second noun from which he refers to a~ a Jer, as o ow~~rallzing, abstract, nominalizing, the same root, the !er acts as a ge dicative connotation (urn> urn')" evaluative agent With a strong rre, assume he means that um' is a (:373). By "predicative co~otahon I d ' the result. He identi-

f . that um Is the agent an um product o um, t.e., . 'th efix za- added to an unstressed, fies a series of folk com~~e~ WI lat~~zation of the final consonant is monosyllabic root, t? ~ IC pa( I' [rubbish], zavist' [envy], zavod' added to form a femmme noun zava . [backwater], zakip' [boiling point], etc.) and concludes.

. f a stylization here: a very complex concept, sig-We have somethmg o d' f db a vestige of another term (jazyk), nailed by a trur;catedi~ J~ :~~o';ial~m. Etymologically, our neologism poses as a harm ess, s p . th tits "root" is a truncation of an adjecdiffers from the above group m a a verb or as sometimes, on tive (zaumny]} and is not based, as usually, on ' a noun. (:373)

Although Mickiewicz ?oe~ not tak;b}O:a~~~t~t~!~f~!~f~~:~~e~:~!~~ za- prefixes a noun, adJechv~or ve f . a verb as it does in most of ing of the prefix itself. Za- w en pre Ixmg ,

.-

Introduction: Definitions and Background 3

the folk coinages, can mean "beginning of the action" or, with a verb of motion, "brief entrance into an area." These additional meanings of za- are weak or absent in nominal prefixations, but they become reactivated in the form zaum' by the preponderance of verbal derivations in analogous folk coinages, thus introducing not only an element of folk stylization, but also an additional element of semantic uncertainty or polyvalency, albeit a weak one. Mickiewicz notes one other interesting result of the addition of the "jer" to zaurn': it produces a shift of stress from the main root urn to the prefix za-. "This accentological shift transfers the attention from the basic morpheme or the main carrier of the lexical meaning to what was formerly the secondary morpheme and now governs the semantic unit," in the process "shortening the u vowel" (:381), thus strengthening the element of "beyond" vis-a-vis the element of "mind."

Since zaurn' is a succinct, specific term, and none of the possible English translations is either succinct or wholly satisfactory, I have decided to use the Russian word itself throughout. However, since the apostrophe indicating final palatalization is meaningless to a reader who does not know Russian and potentially confusing, it will be dropped hereafter, as will the italics. I will also use one further extension of the term, zaumnik (plural: zaumniks), to refer to practitioners ofzaum.

The origin of zaum as a self-conscious phenomenon is easy to pin- • point: Kruchonykh's poem "Dyr bul shchyl" (Pomada, 1913). The only equivocation might be on whether some of Khlebnikov's earlier experiments are to be classified as zaum, in which case, depending on which poem or form one chose, the date might be put as early as 1906-08 (see Ch. 5).

Why write about zaum? On one hand, it was part of a major trend in all the arts of the first decade of the century back to "the basics," that is, a re-examination of the fundamental principles of each art form and of art forms in general. In that respect, zaum can be and has been considered an equivalent in language to abstractionism, and a zaum poem by Kruchonykh an equivalent to Malevich's "Black Square." In addition, zaum can be said to exist at the limits of language, and therefore an examination of it is one way of getting at the roots (and limits) of human language itself. This will become clearer subsequently. What might seem to be a minor episode in Russian avant-garde poetry has very broad implications and a historical scope that ranges from Plato to current theories of language and literature (e.g., Deconstructionism).

This study will begin with a survey of ideas and discussions in the Russian context that might be taken as leading to zaum. A detailed history of zaum practice and theory in its leading practitioners will form the main part of the book. Finally, a ch!lpter surveying the discussion of zaum in the 1920s after it ceased to be an active phenom-

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enon, and a discussion of later development~ and conclusi~ns, w.ill round the study out. Overriding these is an obvious chronological-~Istorical design. My intention is to cover the work of all the zaummks, with major focus on the work of Kruchonykh a~d briefer treatments of Khlebnikov and of lesser figures such as Zdanevich, Tufanov, Alyagro.v, Gnedov, Terentev, Bolshakov, Lotov, and even the za~m works wntten by avant-garde painters such as Rozanova, Malevich, s.tepanova, Filonov, and Boris Ender. A few zaumniks have already re~eived some study, e.g. Terentev (Sigov 1987; Bogomolov 1990), Zdanevich Ganecek 1982; Janecek/Riggs 1987), and Tufanov (~ikolskay~ 1987). Numerous studies have already dealt with zaum m Khlebmkov to some extent. It has been convincingly argued that, while using t~e same ~erm, zaumny yazyk, Khlebnikov did not intend to create an mdeterm~nat~ language (Brik 1975:229; Lonnqvist 1987; Grigorev 1986:.241; Sohvetti 1988; Douglas 1987:166 ff.; et al.) as Kruchonykh clearly did= ~d therefore by our definition he is not a true zaumnik; however, his Influence on the process of its development in ~c~ony~h "_Vould seem to hav.e been great and we cannot avoid considenng h1m, 1f only for companson purposes (see Ch. 5). On the other hand, certain other poets such as Kamensky, Aseev, A. N. Chicherin, and Petni~ov, characterized as zaumniks by some because they empl~y neolo?tsms and are to v~~ing degrees difficult to comprehen.d, neit~er ~nte zaum by our definition nor contribute anything origmal to Its history and are therefore not studied here. I would also like to point out the existence of four article-length surveys of zaum, two in German (Ziegler 1984; 1990) and two in Italian (Marzaduri 1983a, Lanne 1983), and Lawtons encyclopedia article (1985).

The reader should not expect to find definitiv~ or per~aps .eyen definite interpretations of poems here nor express~ons of dtss~tlsfaction from this writer for his failure to find uneqUiv~cal solutions to interpretive puzzles provided by zaum poems.1!'e arnval at such solutions immediately places the given works outside the r:alm of zaum and therefore on the periphery of this book. I instead will be advancing the view that indeterminacy of meaning in the given texts -and by implication in other texts as well-is a positive featur~. If one has the firm conviction that clarity and monovalency of meanmg are the only proper goal of language, then one can expect to find my book and its arguments misguided. However, I would hope ~a~ many reader~ have an open mind on this subject and would be wtlhng to entertam ~he notion that indeterminacy in human affairs has a value worth consid-

ering. f 1 'f' . f In an earlier article (1986), I proposed a system o c assi Icatlon or types of zaum as a tool for critical analysis .. Sin~e.I ha~e use~ it as a descriptive means in this study, let me o~tl_me 1t m bnef ~gam her~. The basic principle is that dislocations [sdvzgz] that produce mdetermi-

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nacy can o~cur on a variety of linguistic levels, ranging from the pho~ehc to vanous aspects of semantic construction. Dislocations prod ucmg effects most characteristic of zaum occur mainly on the level of phonemes, morphemes, and syntax. Hence, what we will refer to as "phonetic zaum" is a situation in which letters are presented in combinatio~ that do no~ form recognizable morphemes. "Morphological zaum. us.es recognizable morphemes (roots, prefixes, suffixes) in new ~ombmat.IOns "_Vhere th~ resultant coinage is to some significant extent mdetermmate m ~eamng. Of course, some new coinages can be perf~ctly cle_:r and e~sily und,;rstood, and these would not qualify as zaum. Fmally, synta~tJc zaum results when each word in a passage is a standard word m a standard form, but the syntactic relationships be~ween the words are grammatically incorrect, shifted, or garbled. SubJect and verb, or an adjective and the noun it presumably modifies, may not agree; case relationships may be distorted; division into phrases, clauses, and sentences may be uncertain, perhaps because necessary_ punctuation has been omitted. These types, though they rarely o~cur m p~re for~, are basic to our study and will be exemplified and discussed m detail. When we move beyond these linguistic units into areas. wher~ semantics plays an increasing role, however, we add to the picture Import~nt considerations of external reference. Such pheno~e~a.as absu~dity, parody, humor, automatic writing, surrealism,~ ~tyhstic I~pro~nety, and so on, may well have significant elements of md.etermmacy m them, but they involve complex judgments based on a v1ew of reality rather than on straightforward linguistic standards and our system cannot be successfully extended to cover them, though the general term "suprasyntactic zaum" is suggested as a collective label for t~ese. Indeed, the precise mix of dislocations in any giverr zaum text Is usually complex and multi-leveled, and often it extends bey?nd the types define~. The proposed classification is merely a convement way to charactenze some of the devices present in a zaum text as a basis for further discussion.

VIKTOR SHKLOVSKY: ON POETRY AND TRANSRA TIONAL LANGUAGE.

. An excellent place to begin a discussion of the roots of zaum is VIktor Shklovsky's article "On Poetry and Trans-sense Language" (1916; 1919a; 1990:45-58; Eng. trans.1985), which lays out what an educated Russian i~tereste? i~ the p~enomcnon would identify as its likely ~ource~ at the time of Its mcept10n. The article was begun in 1913 in Immediate reaction to Kruchonykh' s "Declaratiqn of the Word as Such " !nd it~ first ~ariant, ti.tle~ "On zaum language," bore the inscriptio~: I dedicate this to the first I~vestigator of this question, the poet Alcksey

Kruchonykh. The stone rCJicted by the builders has become the cor-

l\\1\\l\1


ou h his survey is brief, not exhaustive, and nerstone" (199?:488). Alth g notes to 1985, 1990), it nevertheless prorife with techmcal errors ~see£ !oration of those sources. Along vi des us with a useful outh~de or an ex~ditional factors not covered by the way' we will also consi er some a

Shklovsky.

. . emorial language-using humans have probably From time Imm h~t the would like to express in words and

sensed the gap between w ~· . doubtless due to the fact that what they are able to exprefss. lis Is pen·ences have a considerable

. d th kinds o comp ex ex emotiOns an o er . th h. h I·s not J·ust pre-verbal, but f th erbal m em w IC .

element o e non-v. bl I deed the non-verbal arts exist precisely inherently non-verbahz~ e. n hat e~ist outside the verbal realm. ~us to convey human expene~c~s t t who must naturally be particumany writers, and especia y yoe s: 1" as ects of language, have exlady sensitive to the so-called fmh~sica b ~een what they "hear" in

d te awareness o t IS gap e . presse an acu th bl put into a correspondmg poem. their mind's ear and what£ e~ ar~ a ~ith a quotation from a poem by Shklovsky's article there ore egms (1814-1841)· Russia's great Romantic poet, M. Lermontov .

If at a marvelous special moment . In your long-mute soul you happen t.o dtscover A yet unknown and virginal wellsprmg Full of simple and sweet sounds, Do not listen to them closely, nor give yourself to them, But draw the veil of forgetfulness over them: Through measured verse ~nd icy ':"ords y will never convey thetr meanmg.

ou "Ne ver' sebe" [18391

h ects·1) there are beauti-The idea contained in this exlcerf~t t as twt i~ ~~~mseives, and 2) it is dif-

1 d · ing in the sou o m eres d fu soun s ans h . , caning" [znachenie] in wor s. ficult or impossible to convey t eir m

1) "A Wellspring of Sw:~~ s;l;::~spiration first takes the form of vague Many poets repor a . . ble words but have a certain rhythm

sounds that are not yet reco~u~a d. tly refers to Schiller's statement or sonic patternin§. S~klovs ~ m o~~~ tion has at first no definite or made to Goethe: With me t e c . p ical state of mind precedes ~lear obj~ct;.this c~mes lat~~:f~~l~:~~~the poetic idea" [March 18, It, and this, m me, IS only t 53· Sch.ll 1877·154). Shklovsky comments: 1796](Shklovsky1985:18n. ' I er ·


In this I think that poets have fallen victim to a lack of precise terminology. There is no word for inner sound-language, and when one wants to speak about it, the term" music" turns up as a description of certain sounds which are not words; in this particular case not yet words, because they eventually emerge in a wordlike manner. (:18)

What is translated as "sound-language" is the Russian neologism zvukorech', which might alternately be translated" sound-speech," since rech' focuses not on language as a system, but on its active production, pronunciation, the process of emitting words (or, in this case, vocal sounds). Earlier in the article, Shklovsky had raised the question whether speech sounds without definite meaning were expressive for everyone or only selected individuals, such as poets (:5-6). If sound-language can act directly on the emotions "outside of or separately from meaning," on what could this be based? We should distinguish two aspects to sound in language: 1) the auditory phenomenon, and 2) the articulatory phenomenon.

There is only one reference (fasteven 1914:25)1 in the whole discussion surrounding zaum to Cratylus, where Plato considers the nature of linguistic signs, their mode of representation, and the relationship between verbal sounds and meaning. Cratylus maintains that names are "natural and not conventional" (Plato II1:41), Hermogenes , insists that they are purely conventional, while Socrates takes a middle position, maintaining that language has both natural and conventional elements. Socrates argues that language in its best and most effective expression does, in naming, "show what each thing is like" (:85). In this view, it is the kinesis of articulatory movements, rather than the acoustic product, upon which the "meaning" of individual sounds is based. Indeed, those sounds whose articulations are expressive in themselves, notably most of the ones singled out by Plato (r, i, s, z, 1, g), are the ones whose semantic interpretation tends to produce agreement Ganecek 1985:174). Socrates therefore finds some objective basis for Cratylus' position.

In tae Russian sphere, the first to speak about the emotional qualities of specific sounds seems to have been the great classic poet M. V. Lomonosov (1711-1765) in his "Short Guide to Eloquence" [Kratkoe rukovodstvo k krasnorechiyu, 1748], where he ascribes emotional qualities to the vowels and consonants. For example, the vowels e, i, jat' , and yu are suitable "for the depiction of tenderness, affection, sad or small things," whereas o, u, andy are for" frightening and strong things: anger, envy, fear and sadness" (1952:241; for a detailed consideration of Lomonosov's use of sounds see Kjetsaa 1976).

The only statement by a Russian Symbolist that Shklovsky mentions is by Vyacheslav Ivanov on Pushkin's "The Gypsies," in which Ivanov discusses the prevale.nce of the vowel u "now muffled and pen-


. ast now colorful and wild, now sultry sive, recedi~g into the di~~n~, ~1909:148). As with Pla~o, Ivanov s~es and evocatively melan,~ 0 .Yd. bl ingredient of artistic creativimitation (mimesis) as an m tspensa e

ity" (:252). 1 . h' . portant and controversial book But, in fact Andrey Bey m IS Im s issues relevant to poetic

Symbolism (Simvolizm, 1910a)f ~lso ~.dte~;;.e Magic of Words" [1909] language and zaum. In one o Its a 2~~;~, trans. Cassedy 1985:93-110), ("Magiya slav" 1910a:429-48l ~18-ff , t! matter of word creation. For Bely picks up w~erehivano.v ~ tO~J·u~ng mechanism based on sound: Bely, the word ls at eurgtca c

. . . . d ace. But every word is a sound Sound is the objecttvtzat!On of tl~~ ani ~ptory of consciousness lies in the

. . th' lse The ongma vtc before tt ts any rng e . . d there is recreated a new world

. f und symbols For m soun ] B creatiOn o so . · 1 lf t be the creator ofreality. [ .. · Y within whose boundanes I fee myse do m [thunder] I am creating a

. h · und of thun er gro ' . calling the fng tenmg so (g ) And b creating this sound, it is as tf I sound that imitates thunder rrr . . y ed ·94-95)

b . m· g to recreate thunder ttself. (Cass Y· were egmn

. d of word creation is preferable to more According to Bely, thts metho f II created word I can penetrate

. d . "With a success u Y ratwnal proce ures. f phenomena than I can through the

d ply into the essence o . far more ee . h " (·95) At the same time, It opens new process of analytical thoug t · ·

vistas:

. . . ion is a striving toward the future. This is The goal of hvmg communtchat b s'tgns of communication, cause

d hen t ey ecome why abstract wor s, w t to something that has already

. . b tw en people to rever communtcatlOn e e I" imaginal speech, on the other

. . th st When we hear tvrng, . extsted m epa · . . . 'th the fire of new creations, that ts, hand, it kindles our tmagrnatlOn w~ And a new word construction is with the fires of new word constr~c.ttt~ns~f new acts of cognition. (:%-97). always the beginning of the acqutst ton

. . e is a sign of life, like a seed A word bursting out of Its pr~Ious u~:! a certain violence, playfulbursting out of its hull, and t IS re~u · ht add was character-ness, a "healthy ~arbarism" t:~t:~;~~, ':~ ;eg Symb;lists. istic of the Futunsts, but n~ P. S b r m ''Lyric Poetry and Experi

In a note to another arti~le m, ym 0 ts ~ 2_73 , Bel remarks: "the t" [1909] ("Lirikaiekspertment ;Cassedy.22 ) hYf. t' im-

men . . . ent not only from t e Igura Ive capacity to gam aesthetic enJoym und of the word independent age of the war~ but also from the very ~oin artists of the word" (Bely of its content ls ~xtremely deve;::n' s novel Hunger, where the herp 1910a:578). ~e po~nts to Knut ~ ali and is haunted by the meaningimagines a gul wtth the name ay · t d out by Shklovsky 1 d "kuboaa " an example also pom e ess wor '


(1985:9-11). Shklovsky notes that the word is attractive to the novel's hero precisely because he can make it mean whatever he wants. Bely then refers to "the theory of a certain Frenchman" (unidentified) in which the vowels refer to spiritual actions, the consonants (m, I, v, f) refer to matter, and others (t, d, s) serve as connecting links between the two realms (Bely 1910a:578).2

Shklovsky quotes from an article by psychologist Dr. B. P. Kiterman, "The Emotional Meaning of a Word" (" Emotsional'ny smysl slova," 1909). Kiterman maintains that in addition to a logical and psychological meaning, the word also has a "powerful" emotional factor to be considered in it. He identifies three major sources of this emotional impact. The first is sound: "Sounds in themselves, sound combinations, as physical sound waves connected with physiological acts, sometimes serve as the element determining the emotional impact of the word" (:165). In this area there are three main modes. Some words are onomatopoetic; that is, they attempt to duplicate natural sounds, and their impact is dependent solely on their external form, their sound composition. Following Wundt, Bourdon, and Kussmaul, pe locates another mode in articulation:" the imitativeness, the depictiveness of a word is contained in the movements of the speech organs and in other mimetic and pantomimic gestures accompanying them" (:165). And then there are" associations" connected with sound combinations (he gives the example from Bourdon that the sounds jaja and zaza are sug-, gestive of tenderness and affection to the French), but Kiterman points out that such associations "are to a significant degree dependent for their development on the sound forms themselves" (:166). Presumably, because words with the associated meaning already have those sounds in them, the relationship is therefore reciprocal.

In the first area of emotional impact, Kiterman identifies two paths of action: 1) sound sensations, and 2) the motor or kinetic impressions that arise under the influence of the sound sensations, the relative impact of which would be expected to differ depending on individual nervous systems. Thus acoustic properties, oral articulation, and emotional import are effectively united. Kiterman maintains that speech sounds are as much sounds as are musical tones and have a similar capacity to produce a "neuro-psychic response." In support of this, he delves briefly into sound-color synaesthesia where, according to ~ Fechner, a=white, e=yellow, o=red, and i=black.3 The second major factor in emotional impact are those associations that result from the word's usage, that is, its contextual and stylistic references, such as the differing associations with kon' and loshad' (stallion, horse). The third factor is the emotional impact of the object or phenomenon referred to by the given word.

Additional theoretical support in this area is mustered by Shklovsky's reference to Maurice Grammont's book, Levers francais, . '


ses moyens d'expression, son harmonie [2nd ed. 1913]. Shklovsky simply says that the author "concluded that each sound evokes its specific emotions or range of emotions" (:7). Although Grammont richly illustrates this point, we should not miss a note of circumspection that Shklovsky does not repeat, though it was contained in the Russian translation of Grammont's introduction which appeared in the same issue of Poetika: "In general, all sounds in a language, vowels and consonants, can take on expressive meaning only when the meaning of the

' word in which they occur itself supports it; if the meaning of the word in this regard does not do so, then the sounds remain inexpressive" (Grammont 1967:206-7; Poetika 1916:60).

Shklovsky filled his article with examples of situations where ordinary people, as well as poets, respond to the sounds of words above and beyond their meaning, even when the meaning itself is unknown or unimportant to the person involved. He refers to Mr. Micawber's "relish in [a] formal piling up of words" [Dickens, David Copperfield III, Ch. 52]. Satin in Gorky's The Lower Depths [Na dne [1902), Act I] comes up with the neologism" sikambr" and other barbarisms to express his disgust with" all human words." The servant Valentin in Goncharov' s The Servants of the Old Days [Slugi starogo veka [1888], I] collected incomprehensible words of foreign origin and organized them according to sound instead of meaning (e.g constitution and prostitution, numizmat and kastrat [numismatist and castrate]) without ever feeling the need to know what they meant. Goncharov in the same work notes that simple people are "moved to tears by holy books in Church Slavonic although they understand nothing or only understand' other words' like my Valentin," and that sailors would sit listening for hours enraptured by similar readings as long as they were read sonorously. Chekhov in "The Peasants" likewise describes old peasant women being brought to tears by Church Slavonic words ashche [if] and dondezhe [until]. A merchant wife in Ostrovsky's play Bad Days [Tyazholye dni [1863], Act II, Sc. 2) is frightened just by the sound of the words metall [metal] and zhupel [spook]. In The History of My Contemporary [Istoriya moego sovremennika [1908], I, Ch. 20], Korolenko describes how a high school teacher of German whips himself and his class into an ecstasy by having them rhythmically chant the declension of "der gelb-rote Papagei."

Shklovsky also refers to poets fascinated by the sounds of words, irrespective of their meaning. Vyazemsky as a child enjoyed going to the wine cellar to read the euphonious names on the labels and particularly liked the name Lacrima Christi. We have already quoted Schiller to the effect that the lyric impulse usually came first in the form of inchoate sounds, of "sound patches not formed into words" (Shklovsky 1985:16). Shklovsky describes the process of transformation as follows:


Sometimes the patch approaches someti . comes clear and coincides with , mes It recedes, then finally it be-cide to speak a "trans-sensibl a so;~rous word. The poet does not deceals itself under the k fe wor ' usually the trans-sensibility con-

mas o some often decept · that poets themselves have to admit that ~ Ive apparent content so tent of their own verses. (:16) ey do not understand the con-

In addition to Schiller Shklo k Calderon, Byron Blok a'nd S llvspy sdohmewhat ~bscurely identifies

' ' u y- ru omme With th' 'd n. 49), and we can easily add oth R . 1s 1 ea (:16, see and Mayakovsky. He concludes~~ ~~~fn P?ets, such as Mandelstam is~ Romantic poet Juliusz Stowack~ C18~9~1~~~): p~phecy by the PolWill one day write poetry onl f th o t e effect that poets

Noting that poets do no/co% 1 e. sake of the s~u~ds (:24). images with words Shkl k ~ am about medtatmg concepts or the impossibility of ~edia:; !ets~~~ts out~"t~ey do complain about words. And not for nothin do the ons an .spmtual experiences with ate sounds with words" (: 1~. Y complam that they cannot medi-

2)"M k' l II u 1 s ova -The Trials of a p t "C · out words languish in the poet' oel · dertam thoughts [mysliJ with-

. s sou an cannot be adu b t d . an Image or a concept" (Shklovsk 19 . m rae mto non-verbal "thoughts" h' h Y 8S.3). There are assumed to be

w IC cannot be conve t d . verbal sign. This idea is echoed b r e . Into an adequatt; Lermontov, such as V Zh k { other Russian poets besides (Otryvok)" [18191), A. Fe~ (18~0-~;;2 ~~ (1783-185~, "Nevyrazimoe ~· ~yutchev (1803-1873, "Silentium" ['l83~D\~~shkl zaryoyu" [18441), Mtly drug, ya znayu" [18821) N d , ~ S. Nadson (1862-1887,

the word" from this Ia· t . a son~ hnes. about "suffering over title to an article by A ~ ~;::;, ~~~~r the dt:cusstOn as an epigraph and

Gornfeld' t' I. f . e trst published in 1899 ["Muki slova"J • s ar tc e ocuses on the f ·

He asks: "Is what we have here a reaso~s or these creative torments. for embodying a read tho ht matter of ma~equacy of formal means bility of finding a suitfble f~r~ s~:~o:oy m~slt 1.- or does the impossithe content?" (1927:26-27). In his first ce~tam hght also on the state of ers' statements-referring to or quoti~ect~on, he.s~rveys various writems by Lermontov T g, m addlhon to the above poOdoevsky, Kireev~k ~u~.h~:'t a:~hiet, similar remarks by Pisemsky, Golenishchev-Kutuz~v Mer y hk o~, Baratynsky, A. K. Tolstoy, Sully-Prudhomme G t'h Dez ovs y, Lvov, Apollo of Corinth h , oe e, ostoevsky and Gl b U k ' eroes-on the problem off d' ' e spens y, or their

~heir thoughts. The word "~~u~~~~~ adequate verbal expression for In which somethin h b g ere refers to a mental gray area called a "thought, gut as t deenf' f?rmed definite enough that it can be t ' no c mite enough to hav . d ory verbal expression Mysl' II e acqutre a satisfac-

. genera y corresponds to the words

•


"thought" or "idea" in English, if you allow enough latitude in both Russian and English for ideas that may be inchoate, pre-verbal, or non-verbal. As Dal defines it, however, it is "any unitary action of the mind, reason, intellect [uma, razuma, razsudka], a representation of what is in the mind; an idea'' (II:365), thus a product of and closely related to urn. An etymologically related word is smysl, which can be translated as" meaning, sense, purport" and is the Russian word used in the phrase "common sense." Another commonly used word for "meaning," znachenie, is derived from the word znak, "sign." In many contexts the two are synonymous, but because of the differing derivations, while smysl refers to the outcome of thinking as a comprehensible idea that makes sense or is logical, znachenie refers more specifically and concretely to the signification process and its outcome in a verbal "signifier." Both Russian words are usually translated as "meaning," but to maintain a certain consistency I will translate smysl as "meaning" and znachenie as "significance" wherever possible (though in the plural znacheniya will have to be translated as" meanings"). Mysl' floats somewhere between or outside them and at times even seems to be a synonym for zaum. Nevertheless, its down-to-earth translation will consistently be" a thought." There is a similar problem with chuvstvo [feeling] and oshchushchenie [sensation]. The former may be one of the five" senses," but it is also akin to" emotion," while the latter is close to the idea of "perception, impression." When necessary, I will give the

Russian in brackets. Gornfeld points out that" our whole system of Schellingism is satu-rated with thoughts about the inexpressible" (:32), thereby revealing certain roots in the philosophy and aesthetics of Romanticism. At approximately the same time as Odoevsky in his Russian Nights [1844], Ivan Kireevsky was also, as Gornfcld puts it, "defending the right to 'hyperlogical' cognition [giperlogicheskoe poznanie]" (:33; Kireevsky [Letter to Khomyakov, 15 July 1840] 1861 1:90-91). In the typical situation, the poet is experiencing a new sensation. "This is a state of incomplete inspiration, when the poet is already quivering in the creative grip of some new feeling which is searching for a formulation, but is still incapable of finding a verbal expression for it" (Gornfeld:38). Such a view places the poet at the vanguard of human experience and innovation. The struggle with one's material and with the cliches of one's artform leads to the creation of new, if still inadequate, forms of expression and embodiments of new, if still inadequately expressed, thoughts (:89, 95-96). "A search for the word is a search for the truth" (:72).

In the latter part of his essay, Gornfeld redefines mysl' to give it a more explicit relationship with the word [s!ovo](:56-57). He recognizes the two usual sides in the dispute on this issue, in which some say that a perfectly clear insight may not be able to be converted into words, while others insist that if something is clearly understood it can be


clearly expressed. Rather, he says "the truth. of these two extremes; com lete cla~i i Is some':~at to the side nite [ neopredelennoe] and refative" (·5~ ~a co~cept ~hat Is rather indefimany poets do not in fact wish to b.e . om eld di~cuss~s the fact that recognizing that apparent clarity is !ei~~ec~ly clea~ m their expression, destroys the sense of newness and t usi~ ":hich, at the very least, vision. mys ery at IS part of their original

In the final analysis, Gornfeld remains . . . fore the fact, as he will after the fact (see conservative, reJecting be-a':ay from traditional verbal means (:6~) . 13), any at.tempts to break this as a challenge· to find a . The Futunsts would take

f · new means of expre · 1

or the new world that th f sston, a new anguage they were limited to ,ey sawd or oresaw. They would not feel that

mun ane expres · , (Gornfeld:41; Goethe 1901:375_76) but swns, . as Goethe was poems that went "beyond the . 'd, were free to mvent words and

G mm.

ornfeld's essay, in addition to .. Shklovsky's stimulatedare f providmg some material for fessor of philolo F D B sronse rom the Petersburg University pro-Word" (1900), p~lished i~ ~s~:~v (1857

-1

920), "St~u?gle with the tion, presumably required prof . JOr [ournal of the Mzmstry of Educaof Russian educated society e~I~na ~~ding for a broad spectrum Gornfeld's views but r . . a yus ov generally agrees with all, that Gornfeld ;oo cl~ olvides several correctives. He thinks, first of "

se Y equates thought and 1 . words, content and form (·212) B ty hk _anguage, or, mother stract ideal in which a wo;d :

11 ha us ?v pomts out that the ab-

t d WI ave a smgle fixed "f ml

cep e meaning is unattainable in livin ' '. um ~r y acdepart from the initial co t . g languages, which Will always

ncre e meamng [smysl] of

that" sound image" which we call a word F connection between a word and "t . :. urthermore, there is no direct ception of that small group of so I ~I s:fmflcance [zn~chenie], with the exof language" leads to a con t ;~ e on~matopoetlc words ... The "life tween form and content t sthan es~uctmn of the original relations be-. , o e creation of neologisms f II . mstances, it is true _to the f . f ' ma Y,- m rare , ' ormatiOn o new word (U h6 '"" a new concept is established, a word in its old si . ~ rsc p; .. ng): When even turn out to be a hindrance to th gmflcance [znacheme] may a hindrance if it corresponds to a def~~tgh~ and language also can be such able to the expression of a Iru e, own content and is not adapt-

new content. (:214)

Gornfeld seems to prefer attem ts to limits of already existing vo ~ 1 express new meaning within the going beyond those limits hca u ary, while Batyushkov allows for

0 h w en necessary

n t e nature and goals of poetic la . different emphasis The d"ff"

1 . n?uage, Batyushkov also has a

· . I ICU ty IS not In findi d emotional response but in f d" ng wor s to name an ' m mg a way to produce an equivalent


. ader (·219) In artistic speech the choice of emotional response m}~e re d . tl . f the accurate communication words must be made ~ndepoe~h=~ Jeo ree of 'emotionality'". (:221). of content and accordmg t f g ing that the denotative feaBatyushkov is only one ste~ ~~~. r~: s=~ emotional expression and tures of words interfere WI exr I. de Batyushkov concludes:

bn t dorsomehowputtoones . "bl must be o 1 era e d th lm of what is inexpressi e "In freeing a thought fro~ the wor ~t ~:~in essence and as a condi-in words ~ust.be taken mto a~~'::-b the creator and the reader-to tion for active, mdependent ef ~- tl y This is the highest stage of its feel the content of the poetry tree y.

evolution': (:227_). h t f poetic expression would appear to The dtscussion on t e na ur~ 0

Ovs anike>-'Kulikovsky l909b, be fairly heated (for another v~e7 s:stanfe someone's reaction that esp.:100-04). Ba~y~shkov ~~~ c;e~:nce to po~ts' statements about the Gomfeld was gtvm~ too . h ht that the poets were exaggeratdifficulty of expressmg their t oug s, eem more difficult than it was ing as a pose so as to ;ake ;he p:~~: ~ore important (:222). While and thus to make t emse ;~s hen zaum was already on the horiGomfeld, in a l~ter e~say wr\:~a~ of clarity, particularly if it is delibzon, expresses tmpattence wt . 1 ar ues for a nco-Romantic emcrate (1912:24-26), Batyushko~ act~ve yf e!.otion which inevitably re-

. th d" ect commumca ton o ' . phasis on e tr f . d finiteness The roots of this em-quir~s a certain level o~ se~~e;~:o~ Humboldt's theories and their phasts are to be foubnd m W~ others in the Russian context. elaboration by Pote nya an

. p h hysiology· Veselovsky, Wundt, 3) From Historical Poettcs to syc op 1

·. reference to the I Shklovsky makes on y passmg

Zelinsky, Wm_. ames. . . N Veselovsky (1838-1906)(:23), probably work of the ht~rary cnttc ~- ·. "ns of poetry in Three Chapters from to Veselovsky s vxew of e ongx "k. 1898]s· Historical Poetics [Tri glavy iz istorich:skoy poett t, .

. d e and words] the guiding role In the oldest combination [o~ mustc, anc I" d the melody and the po-th h" h onststcntly norma tze

went to rhy m, w tc c I "th "t The role of the last element [the etic text which developed _a ong WI i~~ the most modest: it consisted text] could be considere~ m the be!tions ~ few meaningless, con tentless of exclamations, expresstons of em th ' 1 dy From this kernel a text

th b f the beat and e me 0 • words, c carers

0 f history· thus even in the

with content developed _in thlel slow ~o~f~eo voice an~ movement (ges-. 1 word the emotwna e emcn d th

pnmeva hich inadequately expresse e ture) supported the element of content, w. t would result impression of the object; a fuller expressiOn of the contcn from the development of the sentence. (1940:200-01)


In this primitive condition of "syncretism," as Veselovsky called it, verbal, musical, and kinetic components were not clearly distinguished, but formed an undifferentiated whole.6 Shouts of unclear denotative, but strong emotional, content where echoed in emotive gestures. What might originally have been an involuntary emotional response to an external stimulus becomes repeated, ritualized, and given a rhythmic form as a way of dealing with or defusing the intensity of strong emotional experiences. Only gradually do the components of this syncretic whole develop autonomy and independent form. So it is unclear to Shklovsky whether poetry emerged first as a formalization of inarticulate vocal exclamations, or language emerged first and was then formalized into poetic works.

Shklovsky also refers to the theories of the German psychophysiologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), especially to what Wundt called Lautbilder (sound-pictures):

Under this term Wundt groups words which express not an acoustic, but rather an optical or other notion, but in such a way that between this notion and the choice of sounds of onomatopoetic words a certain correspondence is felt. In German, for example, timmeln torkeln (to stagger) and in Russian karakuli (badly written, smudged words).

Previously, such words would have been explained thus: after th~1 pictorial clements of words disappeared, the meaning of words became linked solely to their sounds; finally this gave the words their sensual tonality. But Wundt principally explains the phenomenon thus: that in the pronunciation of these words the organs of speech make equivalent movements. (Shklovsky:8-9)

Shklovsky sees this as Wundt's attempt to draw Lautbilder closer to gestural language.

Wundt's theories and writings were actively discussed in Russian circles at the tum of the century, and some writers in the previous section refer to him (Kiterman:165; Bely 1910a:467-511 passim, 572-73; 1910b:247-49). However, it is the articles by the Polish-Russian classical scholar and popularizer, F. F. Zelinsky (1859-1944) which form the basis of Shklovsky's own comments.7

In a footnote to the above passage, Shklovsky refers directly to a key article by Zelinsky:

F. F. Zelinsky's experiment is interesting: it gives another explanation for the origin of sound-pictures. "And then I'll tilisnu you with a knife on the throat," Dostoevsky's fellow camp inmate says in Notes from the House of the Dead [1860), II, Ch. 4. Is there a similarity between the articulatory movement of the word til.fsnut' and the movement of a knife sliding over


and cutting into the human body? No, but this articulatory motion describes as well as possible every instinctive state of the facial muscles during the specific feeling of pain in the nerves experienced by us when we imagine a knife sliding along the skin (but not stuck into the b.ody); ~e lips are rigidly drawn apart, the throat constricted, the teeth grttted; thts permits the use of only the vowel i and the tongue consonants t, I, s, whereby the selection of them and not of the voiced so~ds d, r, ~ involves a certain sound-imitating element. Consequently Zelmsky defmes sound pictures as words whose articulation requires the general mimicry of the face in order for these words to express the feeling evoked (F. Zelinsky ,"Wilhelm Wundt and the Psychology of Language" [1901 ], from The Life of Ideas, Vol. II, St. Petersburg, 1911, pp. 185-86).

Zelinsky's article is a detailed, laudatory survey of the main ideas in the first volume ofWundt's V6lkerpsychologie, Die Sprache {1900, 2nd ed. 1904, 3rd ed.1911; Russ. trans.1912a). After putting the subject in a historical context for the general Russian reader in which he mentions Humboldt, Schleicher, Steinthal, Lazarus, and Paul (Zelinsky 1911:151-60), Zelinsky outlines the features ofWundt's theories, where "for the first time psychology, and furthermore exp~rin:ental ~s~~~ology, i.e. the most solid system and the one most nch m posstbdthes,

meets with linguistics" (:160-61). In his first three chapters, which Zelinsky finds to be "the most

original" (:164), Wundt discusses: 1. Expressive Movements (Ausdrucksbewegungen), 2. The Language of Gest~res (Gebiirdensprache), and 3. Expressive Sounds (Sprachlaute). Expresstve mov.ements can ~e divided into three groups: "first, internal movements, 1.e. changes m respiratory organs and blood circulation; sec~n~, mimetic movements made by the face muscles; and finally pantomtmtc movements, the organs for which are mainly the hands, but to some extent also t~e .legs and other parts of the body" (Zelinsky:16~). Affects can be. diVtded into two elements, feelings {chuvstva) and tdeas {predstavlemya), and the former into two aspects, sensation {oshchushchenie], which is neutral, and feeling {here we would probably prefer" emotion" in English), which is an accompanying evaluative reaction to the sensation, whether positive or negative. Sensation is quantitative, while feeling is qualitative. Ideas also accompany affects, "are lasting and produce a sense of the fact which caused the affect" (:166). These three aspects of affect (sensation, feeling, idea) correspond to the three types ~f movement (internal, mimetic, and pantomimic). Every sensation {stimulus) produces a change in internal state (increased or decreased pulse, more or less rapid breathing, etc.), accompanied by particular involuntary muscular movements of the face that indicate the emotional response of the subject. Out of these can be created a "language of gestures," but for this an intention to communicate is essential.

\ I ...


. Zelinsky digresses briefly on theories of "expressive movements" m Spencer a~d Darwin.8 Fo~ Spencer, all psychological phenomena are neurologtcal, and affect 1s a neurological impulse scattered from the neural centers to the periphery. The most delicate muscles (those of. the face) respond most readily. On the other hand, some of these miscellaneous movements serve to satisfy the affect (e.g., in anger, move~ents t~ destroy the object of the anger) and therefore become associated wtth, and serve as an expression of, the emotion itself. Wun~t, however, insists that expressive movements are not purely phystcal, but psychophysical:

at the begi~ing of development stands not a mechanical (automatic), nor ev~n an Involuntary movement, but an instinctive movement (Tnebbewegung) mediating between both and which has in time produced both the involuntary movement (by way of the development of consciousness).and the automatic ~ovement (by way of mechanization, i.e., by shuttmg off the so-called htgher neurological centers).(Zelinsky:168)

, Zelinsky .indicates that Wundt himself recognizes that this . psycho-p~ys1c~l monad" cannot be deduced from the physical realtty of the sttuahon, but is simply posited as a given. In fact, any attempt to explain psychological phenomena in physical terms has a miraculous leap of human development hidden in it.

Automatic movements can be subdivided into two subcategories ~eflex .movements and accompanying movements (Mitbewegungen)~ The ftrst are produced by direct excitation of the sensory nerves· the

second, on the contrary, by virtue of the so-called coordination of m~vements, automatically accompany any other movement, which can in tum belong to any ~f the three categories." This distinction permits us ~,o separate e~presstve movements into those which are "central" and a w~ole sene~ of accompanying movements produced by the central

ones (:169). It 1s on the latter that the psychology of language is based. Th~s an unpl~as~nt taste produces central movements of the mouth destgned to ehmmate the bad stimulus and additional movements of ~he nearby facial muscles which have an expressive capacity. The same lS true of pantomimic motions of the whole body. And such expressive movements not only express an affect; they can actually produce it in th~ a~sence o~ an ~ctual stimulus, since they are so closely associated Wtth 1t to begm wtth (see also William James below).

The language of gestures has as its purpose to communicate with ano~er. A person under the influence of an affect does not experience ~ destre to co?'municate, but is in the grip of the affect itself. Only after It. has l?osed 1ts hold to a significant extent does the desire to communtcate 1t arise. Zelinsky points out that

•


pantomimic movements serve to express i~~a.s, whi_le internal and mimetic movements express feelings; thus the mttml basts of the language of gestures lies in ideas, the basis of the language of sounds_-in feelin~s. I must note that this parallelism is not drawn by Wundt htmself, but ~~ a natural conclusion from his theory, and a conclusion, I think, of some m-

terest and importance. (:177-78)

There are three areas where this can be investigated: in animals and primeval humans, in infants, and in some aspects of developed speech. There are three categories of animal sounds o~ thre~ successive levels of development: 1) tones that convey the m~enstt~ of an affect; 2) moderate expressions with qualitative aspects m whtch t~e tone is modified by articulation, as in the sounds of most dom~stlc animals; and 3) those cases in which expressive sounds develop mto two separate groups, one for intense and another f~r moderate aff~cts, as in dogs, apes, and songbirds. In humans, the_ ftrst ~evelo~ed 1~to

g, While the second is the basis for language m whtch articulation

son . rf "initially expressed only feelings and_ i~ part~cular thetr q_ua 1 Ies, as opposed to tone, which expressed thei~ mte~stty; yet there IS no doubt that in human speech it expresses precisely Ideas, where U:e expresse,~ of feelings to their full extent is' the voice,' i.e., the modulatiOn of tone

(:179). k Th Finally we come to the Lautbilder mentioned by Shklovs Y· . ese are elements of developed language which are ne.ither exc~a~a~ons (i.e., remnants of primitive cries), nor onomat~poehc s~und nr~~tatwns (i.e., approximations of natural sounds), but sound pictures.

B these [Wundt] understands words which-as in German tummeln, t:,keln, wimmeln, etc.- express not auditory, but visual or other ideas, but express them in such a way that we feel a certain si~ilar!ty ~tween ~e very acoustic selection of sounds and the correspondmg tdea; m Russtan we could include such words as baybak [marmot, sluggard], balab~lka [chatterbox], karakuli, tilisnut', skhlizdit' [sic, to backslide], etc., the maJority of which are non-literary and can be multiplied ad libitum: In Wundt's opinion, sound imitations and sound pictures to~ether c~nstttute one category, and he develops a special original and mterestmg theory about

them. (Zelinsky:181-82)

An infant, in exercising its vocal apparatus by making ':ar~ous miscellaneous meaningless sounds, is building up a close associatiOn betwee~ articulations and the sounds that result from them, so that when _It comes time for the child to imitate adult language, he or she has bUilt up the necessary experience to perform an imitation with some success. This observation leads to a key statement:


This skill has become so solidified that, in thinking about a word, we do not at all think about its articulation; but nevertheless it is the direct re~ult of enervation of the motor nerves. The sonic physiognomy of the word IS merely a consequence of its articulation. This articulatory movement of the tongue and lips belongs without doubt to the mimetic movements; as the mimetic gesture develops in general from mimetic movements, so a special sound gesture develops from articulatory movements. Now it is easy for us to apply to this denominator both sound imitations and sound pictures: they are all imitations, but the organ of imitation will not be sound directly, but a "simulatory" sound gesture.

Once one accepts this theory, the area of expressive sounds and their progeny in language is significantly broadened; it is broadened still more by adding related phenomena, which Wundt calls "sound metaphors." By these he means those relationships between pairs and groups of words which can be explained by a simulatory change in the sound gesture. One can relate this to such correlates as kryaknut' [quack, grunt] and kriknut' [cry, shout], but they are not the strongest element: there are more interesting cases. It has long been noted that in the huge majority of languages the names otets [father] and mat' [mother] form correlates in which the hard, explosive sounds in the name for father (t, r and related sounds) corresp_ond to the soft, nasal sound in the name for mother (n, m). [ ... T]h~re ts th~ possibility of imagining a language (or series of languages) whtch constst exclusively of sound pictures or sound metaphors which .h

w~uld correspond to the simulatory and symbolic gestures of the optitic [s1c]language developed above; generating from this language (or these ~anguages) those we already know will become comprehensible if we take mto account the conditions of sound change [ ... ], conditions which fundamentally distorted primitive words and obscured their initially clear psychological character. (:182-83)

In this ~assage we find at least Khlebnikov' s program for zaum. Zehn~ky then ~onsiders objections to this theory, several of which

Wundt htmself ratses. Wundt points out that sound imitations and sou~d picture~ are usually found in relatively recent words and are r~lahvely few m num?~r in the .tot~l word pool of a language. Zelinsky htmselfhas some addthonal objections. He finds Wundt's position that the sounds produced are merely the result of mimetic articulatory gestures to be somewhat overstated and imprecise. For Zelinsky, mimetic movements are related not, as for Wundt, to the idea of a word, but rather "to the feelings which these ideas awakenJn us" (:186). Zelinsky further expl~ins that, since ideas expressed by pantomimic gestures are _automatically accompanied by mimetic facial movements, there is an mterpenetra~ion ?f the language of gestures into the language of words, and, whlle th1s link may be elusive, "nevertheless we have here ~ot a 'chance or arbitrary association,' but a completely natural and Inevitable one" (:187). •


In summation of Wundt, Shklovsky adds:

Perhaps the extracts quoted below will cast a slightly different li~t on the question. We have literary evidence which does not merely give examples of sound-pictures but also allows us, as it were, to be present ~t their creation. It appears to us that the closest neighbors to onomatopoetic words are "words" without concept and content that serve to express pure emotion, that is, words which cannot be said to exhibit any imitative articulation, for there is nothing to imitate, but only a concatenation of sounds and emotion-of a movement in which the hearer participates sympathetically by reproducing a certain mute tensing of the speech organs. (:9)

As examples he gives Hamsun' s "Ylayali," Satin's "sikambr" from

Gorky's Lower Depths, among others. Later in his article, Shklovsky makes brief reference to a book by

the Petersburg actor-director-pedagogue Yuri Ozarovsky ~1868-1924~, The Music of the Living World (1914),_ wh~re Ozarovsky dtscu.ss~s h1; theory that "the timbre of the votce 1s depend~nt ~n. mtmtcry (Shklovsky:20). Ozarovsky describes how, in 1_902 while gtvmg a course in mimicry at the Imperial Drama School usmg the method of F. Del Sarte (1811-1871), he observed that the s~udents: wh_en asked to add phrases that seemed appropriate to the gtven mtmebc movements or positions, said them with more" genuine timbre" t~an was usually the case during lessons in declamation (:113). ~ccordmg to the theory ~e then developed, "Even the slightest word ts a product of the br~m, and the least tremor of soul found in the most elementary exclamation is not any longer just a pure emotion, but is also som~thi~g from r~ason, from thought (the pure appearance of pure emotion.ts only mtmicry)" (:110). This mimicry, by which he means the baddy stat_e that automatically and involuntarily occurs in correspondence wtth an emotion, produces changes in the disposition of the sp~ech ap?aratus, which in turn produces subtle but significant changes m the timbre of

the voice.9 •

The connection Ozarovsky had noted between timbre and mtm-icry leads Shklovsky immediately to William James ~1842-1910) ~nd his thesis" that each emotion is the result of some baddy state (a smking heart is the cause of fear, and tears ar~ the ca~se of s?rrow)." On this basis "one might say that the impresston whtch the timbre of the voice summons up in us may be explained thus: when we ~ear, w_e reproduce the mimicry of the speaker and therefore we expenence hts emotions" (Shklovsky:20). James' apparently paradoxical the~is w_as originally stated in his Psychology, Briefer Course (1~91:375-76)_. Hts pomt is that the nervous system and physical reflexes mv~luntanly_ react to stimuli immediately, producing bodily changes, while the mmd may perceive the reason for these changes only moments later (if at all). In


other words, radically stated in James' terms, "the emotion here is nothing but the feeling of a bodily state, and it has a purely bodily cause" (:378). Furthermore," a disembodied human emotion is a sheer nonentity" (:380), and there is "no 'mind-stuff' out of which the emotion can b~ constituted" ~:379). In other words, the bodily state is not an expressiOn of the emotion, but the reverse. The wide variety of emotions is a result of subtle differences in bodily states.

4) Children's Babble, Language Learning and Folklore. For lack of access to mankind at the dawn of civilization, empirical studies of the developme~t of lan?uage _have focused primarily on the development of language m a typtcal child. One foundation for this is the Haeckelian assumption of _biogenesis (Haeckel 1896, esp. Ot. XV) extended by Sp~ncer,_ Da:':m, and others into the sphere of culture, namely, that children mdtvtdually (ontogenetically) retrace the steps the human race took.(phylogene_tically~ in developing language (see, e.g., Letourneau 1895.1~). Many, mcludmg Wundt and Zelinsky, disagree with this hypothests because of the obvious fact that children are born into a cultural environment in which they are surrounded by, and proceed to learn, an already fully developed language, whereas primitive man would have been only at some early stage in the process of creating such a language (Zel~n.s~y 1911:179-80). In any case, the study of child- " hood language ac~mstbon became very active in the latter part of the l~th ce~tury and mcluded a number of studies and reports by Russtans (Stmonovich _1880; Aleksandrov 1883; Blagoveshchensky 1886).

Sechenov, for mstance, when he discusses language, tends torelate what he says to the child. In Reflexes of the Brain [first ed. 1866] he sp~lls o~t the connection between hearing, muscular reflexes, and children s speech in concrete terms:

\the hearing ~f the new-born child is approximately in the same state as, say, the hean~g of a Russian peasant in the society of Englishmen. In both cases a long time passes before they learn to listen to words. In the case of the child this state is expressed in the fact that it begins to babble. To put it another way, reflexes from the organ of hearing to the muscles of the breast larynx, tongue, lips, cheeks, etc. (i.e., muscles participating in speech), hith~ erto ~nc~ordina~e~, begin to assume definite shape. [ ... ] Essentially it ~onsists m association of sensations caused by the muscles of speech dur~ng_ c~ntr~ction with aural sensations induced by the sounds of the mdtvtdual sown speech·. (1965:50-51)

This _refle~ is developed at such an early age that we would have to constder 1t subconscious or preconscious, where it remains for most ~eople even in adulthood. Nevertheless, the muscular reflexes continue to function even during the silent thinking processes of adults,


though in more or less inhibited form, depending on the indivi~ual (:74). Thus zaum might be seen as a way of bringing to the conscw~s surface this subconscious muscular reflex by eliminating ~e automatic association of given musculo-acoustic speec~ reflexes wtth ~xpressed thoughts, thereby allowing us to focus attentiOn on the phystcal sensa-

tions themselves. · . . Child psychology is mentioned by Shklovsky in con~:ctwn wtth a

book by the English psychologist J_ames S~lly (1842-1923~. James Sully (Ocherki popsikhologii detshJa [Studres ofChtldhood Q895)1) mcludes many interesting examples of' zaum speech' among children" (Shklov~ky:13) · Sully in his Chapter V, "The Litt_le Lin?uist,'~ carefully d~scnbe~ th~ language development of the typtcal ~hdd, us~ng ob~ervatwn~ of mdtvidual children by a variety of mvesttgators, mclu?mg J?arwm, often from their own families, as the children learn thetr native language. (The Russian translation overtly substitutes specific Russian exa~ples at one point (1901:174) to allow Russian readers to relate the dts~ussion to their own language.) Sully accompanies these with suggestions

of a phylogenetic relationship. The child's first sounds are instinctive cries "springing out of cer-

tain congenital nervous arrangements b~, which_ feeling ~c~s upon the muscular organs" and are expressive of changtng conditions of fe~ling, pain, pleasure" (Sully 1895:134-35/ 1~01:1~8). These become ~Ifferentiated into "a rich variety of expressiOns. I~an:~ of ~bout five months engage in babbling or "impulsive phonation, which covers virtually all the sounds later needed for langu~ge, but which c~nn?t be called speech, since there is no reason to bel_Ieve that _the :hdd ts attempting "to use a sound intentionally as a stgn of an _td~a (:13~-37 I 160). Yet a certain pleasure can be observed in the chtld s exercise ?f this phonative function (:138/161-62). In the second half-year certam of these sounds have become expressive of specific moods and marked off to convey, say, the important feeling of h~nger. "True language-sounds significant of things grow out of tlus ~pontan~us expressive articulation" (:140/164),as when da ac~ompanied by,pomting indicates wonder at the appearance of a new object. These are spontaneous and not imitative," but tend to become f~xed as linguistic. si~s when recognized by others (:141/165-66). At this same age, a child. IS

apt to imitate eagerly any sound you ch~ose to produce bef_ore him. [ ... ]And this same impulse leads the chtld b~yond t~e servile adoption of our conventional sounds to the mvention of new or onomatopoetic sounds" (:143-44/168 [Russ.: "new sounds based on sound imitation"]). As Sully notes, the ~wo sources of. or_igi~al child language-expression of states of feeling and sound ImitatiOn-are commonly seen as the basis for the development of human language

in general.


Before long the child begins to identify and attempt to repeat specific words, usually with varying success, depending on the difficulty of the articulations or combinations required. The explanation for this difficulty is that at this stage the child is not freely vocalizing but attempting the much more complex operation of matching a sound heard with the articulatory movements needed to produce the same sound, which requires "the formation of some definite neural connexion between the auditory and the motor regions of the speech-centre" (:154/ 180). Here certain laws of simplification and sound substitution seem to apply, and examples given of childish approximation may have been taken by Shklovsky to be a form of zaum [biscuit=bitchic, umbrella=nobella, elephant=etteno (:150); chatterbox=jabberwock [!] (:152)/ Russ.: pryanik=pachik, skameyka=timeyka, Astrakhan'=atoro (:176)], though in fact we should not consider them such.

Shklovsky then shifts to children's folklore to provide examples "more interesting for a Russian reader" and "because of their mass-culture features" (:13-14). Thus we enter into an area very important for Futurism and zaum. He quotes (faultily) four choosing-up rhymes [pribau tki dlya zhrebiya l from E. A. Pokrovsky' s book Children's Ga_mes, J>_rincipally Russian (1887:56-58). As Sully indicates is typical of ch_tldren ~ ~anguage, these tend to be characterized by vigorous rhythnuc qualtties and rhyme, while the meaning is obviously less impor- ,, tant. Pokrovsky puts it this way: "in the majority of cases they are little thought out, but instead they are almost always made into rhymes and verses with an emphasis on humor and concerned hence with the satisfaction and merriment of the players" (:54). Some elements of counting are typically present at the beginning, often in distorted form (perv_o-drugo,, o~iyan-dr?,giyan, elsewhere pervinchiki-druginchiki [ =approximately first-next ]) and a vague narrative subject, but the rhymes and rhythms are often filled in with hardly intelligible words. Shishel (possibly related to shish [fig (vulgar)]) appears paired with vyshel [he went out] in a number of examples for this reason. Often the initial ~aunts have a foreign origin. One commentator attributes the meanmgless words "eniki beniki" to a Hebrew origin (Faccani:72). Other examples have an obvious French origin, doubtless long since forgotten and unrealized by the children who now use them.

There is a notable enjoyment of sounds for their own sake, with rhyth~ a_nd rhyme to make them suitable for their purpose and easy t~ re~at~ ~~the memory. Their incomprehensibility and/or exotic origtn ts mcidental or even perhaps contributes to the enjoyment. Shklovsky quotes Zelinsky about his experience as a school teacher of Latin and the fun his young pupils had repeating the mnemonic poems for rules of Latin grammar (Zelinsky 1905 II:30-31; Shklovsky:13).

Shklovsky also refers to an example from Gorky of a child's tendency to store a poem "in twQ ways: as words and also as what I would


5) Gork in Chapter 10 of his aucall patches of sound" (Shklovsk]yd:1 · "b ~~w his mother attempted tobiography,My Childhood [1913' escn es . . to teach him grammar by having him memonze a poem.

Bolshaya doroga, pryamaya doroga, Prostora ne malo beryosh' ty u Boga. Tebya ne rovnyali topor i Iopata, Myagka ty kopytu i pyl'yu bogata.

Big road, straight road, You take a lot of space from God. You've not been smoothed by pick or shovel, You're soft to hoof and rich in dust.

Gorky describes misreading sev;ral w~r~~~:~!~ ~: ~~:t~;r~~;~ for rovnyali, and. kopyta for. kopJ u) :na~tomatically made them when and tried to avoid these miSta es, e reciting from memory:

d il distorting them, putting in I hated these effusive lines and s~rte andgr·lreally liked it when the be

d" g but inappropnate wor s, similar soun m . f 11 meaning until finally they came out: witched verses were depnved o a .

Doroga, dvuroga, tvorog, nedoroga, Kopyta, popy-to, koryto · · ·

[Road, two-horned, c~ttage cheese, inexpensive

Hoofs, priests/tested, trough ... ] (Gorky 1962 IX:109-10)

f folklore not exclusively for children, also contain Other genres o . .' . d This is the case in particular

semi-intelligible or unmtelligt?le wo~·\ are made more frightening for magic spells and incanta.tionsl w ~~ge In adult folklore, there are and effective by their mys~en~s a;g hildren such as "Pervenchiki," counting rhymes exactly hke tthos~ or c rried' granddaughters while . h" h dmothers and eir unma f m w IC gran . . . . 1 holding out various numbers o away leisure hours sittmg m a Circ ~ ted out A number of

h .l t · g to avoid bemg coun · fingers w I e rym . u ose but a more com-Pokrovsky's child~en's rhr~e~ a;e ~~~~~~~~ i;'his Legends of the Ruspletely zaum one Is supp Ie y . sian People (1841):

Pervenchiki Druzhenchiki Tryntsy Volyntsy Popovy

Firsties Nexties [fhreesies] Volynians] The priest's

Introduction: Definitions and Background 25·

Ladantsy Tsyken' Vyken'

(I, bk. 2:77)

Incense [fut-tut-um] [Out-urn]

Sakharov also provides, in his section on black magic, some fascinating witches' chants. When witches are flying to Bald Mountain, they chant the internationally famous "A.b.r.a.k.a.d.a.b.r.a" (1, bk. 2:45-46; see Higgins 1987:175 for succinct historical background on "abraxas," a word "in no known language"). Each sound of this "word" is supposed to release a soul from hell. Upon their arrival, the witches chant:

Kumara Nikh, nikh, zapalam, bada. Eshokhomo, lapasa, shibboda.

Kumaga. A.a.a.- o.o.o.- i.i.i.- e.e.e.- u.u.u.-ye.ye.ye. La, Ia, sob, li, li, sob, lu, lu, sob!

Zhunzhan. [ ... ] (:46)

Since, as Sakharov points out, "there is almost no possibility of making any sense of these words" (:46), a transcription suffices. They ere- • ate a certain poetic quality and incantatory dynamics without straining powers of invention or requiring much sublety.

Composed along similar lines is the following Charm Song of the Watersprites [Rusalki]:

Shivda, vinza, kalanda, minogama!10

Iyda, iyda, yakutalima, batama! Nuffasha, zinzama, okhyto, mil Kopotso, kopotsam, kopotsama! Yabudala, vikgaza, meyda!

Io, ia, o-io, ia tsok! io, ia, patstso! io, ia, pipatstso! [ ... ] (:47)

At least in the way Sakharov has punctuated them, these songs would appear to be composed of individual, isolated words, as in a rhythmically designed list without syntax. While the words do not contain sound combinations difficult for a Russian to pronounce, their morphology usually makes them seem strange, like words from a .foreign language, rather than neologisms in Russian (e.g., batama, galemo, shono).

A similar example occurs in Blok' s translation of Rutebeuf' s medieval play "Le Miracle de Theophile" in the scene where Saladin summons the devil with the incantation:

•


Bagagi laka Bashage Lamak kagi ashabage

Karrelios Lamak lamek bashalios, Kabagagi sabalios,

Bariolas. Lagozatkha kabiolas, Samagak et framiolas,

Garragia! (Blok 1961:275)

The play was staged in Petersburg in December, 1907, but not published until1915 in the miscellany Strelets [The Archer].

"Unknown sounds" are also an important part of ecstatic speech, to which Shklovsky devotes considerable attention in his article and to which the Futurists themselves made occasional reference. Though the texts of such speech may greatly resemble the examples from folklore just cited, their genesis from shamanism and religious sects is some-

what different.

5) Speaking in Strange Tongues. The impression that poetic inspiration is a kind of temporary madness caused by the intervention of the spirit world goes back to ancient time~. The derivation ?f the_ ~ord "inspiration" as well as its Russian equtval~nt vdokh~ove~te testifies to this link. The madness which takes possess10n of the msptred poet and makes him or her the voice of God plays an important part in religious rituals from primitive times and often results in the ~rod~cti?n of so~gs and poems in a mysterious, secret language. In hts Hzstoncal Poe~tcs, Veselovsky quotes from Plato's Phaedrus and Ion on the subJect 0Jeselovsky 1940:340-41; Plato III:151, 1:107-08; also Shklovsky 1914:1~).

Ecstatic speech occurs then in two main forms, both connected wtth religious rituals: shamanic chants and glossolalia. Stra~gely, Shklo~sk~ does not refer to the chants of Siberian shamans, desptte the Futunsts obvious interest in them as we will see later. Rather, he refers to D. Konovalov' s Religious Ecstasy in Russian Mystical Sects [Religiozny ekstaz v russkom sektantstve] (1908)Y Konovalov's valuable book was known to the Futurists, but it explicitly focused on Russian sects, thus excluding consideration of shamanic practices, which ~re non-Russian. Ho~ever contact with shamans was nevertheless hkely to have been dtrect.' Even today Siberiar shamans come to Moscow and other major cities to minister to all levels of Russian society, so we may comfortably assume a familiarity on the part of the Futurists with this folk institution and its practices. Konovalov gives only one example of a shamanic chant, the following brief quotation of a series of" meaningless" Chukcha shaman words: "kotero, tero, muro, koro, poro" (:189), significant nevertheless for its striking similarity to some of


Kruchonykh's zaum word creations (see Ch. 4). . Glossolalia traces its main origins to the moment in the Bible when,

fifty days after Christ's resurrection (Pentecost), there was a great wind, the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles in the form of tongues of fla~e, and they "began to speak in foreign tongues, even as the Holy Spmt prompted them to speak." Jews speaking widely differing languages from "every nation under heaven" gathered, and when the apostles spoke to them, each "heard them speaking in his own language" (Acts, Ch. II). Since then the capacity to speak in unknown tongues, usually as a result of a trance or religious ecstasy, has been taken as a sign of special, privileged contact with the divine spirit, and :'speaking in tongues" was a means for the Holy Spirit to manifest ttself overtly through a human agent gifted to serve as such a conduit. There are, of course, pre-Christian and non-Christian versions of the phenomenon (e.g., oracles and shamanism), but in the Christian sphere glossolalic manifestations in pentecostal sects have a particular le:gitimacy because of their direct association with the events described in '0e Acts o( the Apostles. Similarities to natural languages are likely to be ei~her accidental or attributable to non-spiritualistic causes (subconsclO~s recollections, imitations of foreign words present in the language environment, etc.). In general, glossolalic expressions are intended to be highly meaningful, perhaps even prophetic, but undecipherable. As one_ Russi~n critic points out (Orlov 1877), however, what usually ... occurs Is precisely the converse of what happened in Acts Ch. II, where the apostl~s were understood by foreign listeners even though the apostles did not know the languages of their listeners. In the case of sectant glossolalia, usually neither the speaker nor the listeners understand the ecstatic speech and no meaningful communication occurs.

Russia~ mystica} s~cts were already a subject of interest among the_ S~~bohsts. Bely s first novel, The Silver Dove (1909), describes the ~cbvibes of one such sect of flagellants in great detail, though glossalalia Is not a feature of their practice (see also Ivask 1970, 1976). Bely's important book on sounds is entitled Glossaloliya (1922). And Vyacheslav Ivanov in an essay in By the Stars [Po zvezdam] (1909) sees the Russian folk as i_nvested with "met~physical form-energy" descending from ~eav~n m the Second Commg: "These mysterious signs seem to me mscnb~d on the brow of our people as His mystical name: 'a likening to Chnst'- energy of His energy, living soul of His life" (:330). Alexander Dobrolyubov (1876-1943?) even organized a sect himself and wrote poe~ry using f~lk chants and spells (Grossman 1981, 1983). Blok also was mterested m sects and at one point in 1908 considered following Dobrol~ubov's lead (Grossman 1983:xii; Blok 1965:131).

S~klo~sky, With some exaggeration, says: "The phenomenon of speak~ng m tongues is extraordinarily widespread and may be said to be umversal among mystical sects" (1985:19). He then quotes four ex-


amples of glossolalia from Konovalov. Rather than limiting ou~ view to Shklovsky's somewhat inaccurate presentation, let us look duectly at Konovalov, who provides extensive factual material often based on government legal investigations of sect activities in the 18th and 19th

centuries. . , In Chapter III, "The Period of Speech Functton Arousal,

Konovalov describes glossolalia as a part of a period of release of tension after the highpoint of ecstatic sectant dancing in which the p~ysical excitation, instead of involving the entire body, becomes locahz~d in the speech organs. Spasms of the respiratory apparatus re~ult m "spasmodic cries" that are mixed with "fragmented, but articulate sounds, words and phrases" (:158). As the general physical arousal declines in the later stages, the vocal organs come to the fore and produce'' genuine automatic speech ('the living word; or 'living w:at~r,' as the sectants call it), which consists of the involuntary pronunciation of articulate sounds of human sp~ech" (:158). There are two types:

1) "Incomprehensible wards" (glossa) not existing in any human language, if one does not count chance correspondences (i.e., pure neologisms, new ward formations), or words borrowed (in correct or distorted fo~m) from other languages, foreign by comparison with the usual colloqutal language of the sectants and incomprehensible to them iforeign language glossa), and 2) Utterances consisting of words and expressions of a language native to ar known and understood by the sectants (e.g., Church Slavonic). (:159)

We are concerned only with the first type. An important point emphasized by Konovalov is that glossolalia

was valued precisely because it was incomprehe~sible (:160-~1). ~e group dynamic here and the conditions under whtch glossolaha arises in individuals are less relevant for our purposes than the glossolalic texts that Konovalov supplies and that may have served as models for

zaum. Sergey Osipov, a flagellant glossolal of the 18th century, is recorded

as having uttered:

rentre fentre rente fintrifunt nodar lisentrant nokhontrofint (:167; Shklovsky:l9)

His contemporary, the Moscow flagellant Varlaam Shishkov, said:

nasontos lesontos furt lis natrufuntru natrisinfur kreserefire kresentrefert cheresantro ulmiri umilisintru gerezon drovolmire zdruvul dremile cherezondro fordey kornemila koremira uzdrovolne korlemire zdrovolde fanfute eshechere kondre nasifi nasofont meresinti feretra

(:167; first line Shklovsky:19)


When Shishkov was questioned further, he provided the following interpretations of the above "foreign speeches":

"zdruvule dremile" is "ne dremli, chelovek" [do not be drousy, man]; "uzdrovolne" is "bud' zdrav, chelovek, v zapovedyakh Bozhiikh" [be healthy, oman, in God's precepts]; "kreserefire" is "krestnoe znamenie na sebe nosi" [carry the sign of the cross on yourself]; "kresentrefert" is "vstrepenis' serdtsem k Bogu" [lift up your heart to God], etc. (Konovalov:253)

Konovalov notes that the interpretation is based on" whatever syllable in the glossa reminded [Shishkov] of a Russian word by sound similarity" (:253).

Melnikov-Pechersky (Na gorakh [In the Mountains], 1875-81, Pt. 3, Ch. 4) provides an example from a prophet in the "Ship of God's People" run by a Colonel Dubovitsky:

Savishrai samo, Kapilasta gandrya, Daranata shantra Sunkara purusha Mayya diva lucha.

(Melnikov 1909 V:95; Konovalov:167-68; Shklovsky:21, and 1915:8)

(It is useful, but unusual, that stresses were marked on many of the words to g.uide ac~urate pronunciation.) The members of the Ship were under the ImpressiOn that the words were "in Indian," and Konovalov comments:

Indeed some of these words sound completely Sanscrit, e.g. purusha (=scrt. purusa-person, man, husband), diva (dfva, instr. case of the stem divsky, day), mayya (maya- art, magic force, illusion, or maya- name of one of the Asuras, an adept at magic, and maya, instr. case of aham, I), samo (from sama-smooth, identical, similar), while others, e.g. darana-ta, savishrai, sunkara, are very reminiscent of Sanscrit words. (:168; see also Toporov 1988:160-64 and 1989)

Her~ we may have an example of an ancient or foreign prayer dimly and mcorrectly recalled or garbled as children might, according to Sully. A clearer case of this is:

Khristos [Christ] nekrata ne tan fan tan fatison tintis' tintis'

I I

'I' 'I'


naim frison domino (:171)

which seems to have a French-Latin flavor. Or is it Greek? Konovalov reports an instance in which a man who worked in the libr:ry o~ the Moscow Seminary heard the Greek Orthodox Easter anthem Khnstos anesti" in church and transcribed it as follows:

Khristos aneste aknetro fonaton fonaton pantis antis kin tis mimosti (?) zaekhal za mino [Russ.: stopped by for ... ] (:171)

A transcription of the Greek original, with lines divided to match the above version, would read:

Khristos anesti Eknckron thanato thana ton patisas Ke tis en tis mnimasi Zoin harisamenos.

[Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and giving life to those in the grave.]

We can note a tendency toward regularization of phonetic patterning in the librarian's version. His transcription is strikingly like other examples, and one may wonder whether a major influe~ce may not have been Greek Orthodox prayers and hymns heard by s1mple folk as occasional parts of Russian Orthodox services, such as this ~aster anthem, or the Easter Gospel which might be sung or read m several languages in sequence.

For comparison with Russian examples, Konovalov (and Shklovsky) also presents glossolalic texts of En?lis~ and German sects. Certain similarities in all these texts emerge, mamly m the area of sound patterning, which is generally greater .than e~en the most ~ichly patterned traditional poems. One can pos1t that 1f the speaker 1s not constrained by the conventional need for semantic and syntactic structure, then repetition of patterns and combinations is facilitated.

As a related topic, Konovalov describes in brief how phenomena similar to glossolalia, such as verbigeratio (:246), may result from mental illness. One hysteric woman babbled like a child:" zozo, rna nounou,

Introduction: Definitions and Background 31 •

patapan, tatata, petite femme" (:190). Others were reported to speak in their own invented language, and one declared (as Kruchonykh was to do) that she 'Knew all languages, but when asked· to demonstrate ~his produc7d "a series of syllables strung together without any meanmg and whtch were absolutely unintelligible" (:190). Organic trauma can produce aphasic spasms that result in incomprehensible utterances, such as "macassi, coussi cassa" (:193). Referring to Melnikov's novel In the Mountains (1875-81, Pt. 3, Ch. 4), Konovalov further points out that among the Russian folk one standard sign of yurodstvo {being a Holy Fool] was considered to be that the individual uttered incomprehensible words. A famous example of this is the nineteenth century Holy Fool I. Ya. Koreysha's saying: "Bez pratsy ne bendy kalalatsy," which has been translated "No work no kololatsy" (Chernyshevsky 1953:137).

In Konovalov' s book, there are extensive examples of glossolalia from speakers of various native languages to serve as illustrations of already existing" zaum" texts and models for the creation of new ones. That the book was known directly and used by the Futurists is demonstrated by Kruchonykh's quotations from Varlaam Shishkov's above gloss~lalic sp~ch in Explodity [Vzorval'] (1913f:n.p.) and The Three [Troe] (1913F27) whtcl~ are both more accurate and more extensive than Shklovsky' s.

OTHER FACTORS

. 6) Philosophy and Linguistics. The Futurists, in contrast to the Symbolists, were not philosophically oriented in a formal way and rarely ref~rred t~ other sources. As mentioned before, Plato's Cratylus was cunously tgnored, as were the Stoics who interested themselves in linguistic ambiguity, defining amphiboly as" diction which signifies two or more things in the strict prose sense of the terms and in the same language" (Stock 1908:20). Chrysippus maintained that "every word is naturally ambiguous on the ground that the same person may understand a word spoken to him in two or more ways" (Gould 1970:69). The natural ambiguity of words is an important feature of Humboldt's views (considered below), and deliberate ambiguity is a significant feature of zaum. Amphiboly became a keystone of A. N. Chicherin's Constr~ctivist program, and he refers explicitly to Chrysippus on the matter m one of Kruchonykh's major theoretical works (Kruchonykh 1924:53).

The second half of the eighteenth century initiated a renewed concern ':ith ~he origin of language that turned into a flood of works by the mtd-nmeteenth century largely based on pure speculation and fancy. Among prominent early contributions to this flood were essays by Jean-Jacqu:s Rousseau ~d Johann Gottfried Herder, both of whom presented vanants of the onomatopoetic theory.

.•.


But the most influential book, certainly in the Russian sphere, was Wilhelm von Humboldt's iiber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts (1836; Russ. trans. 1859; Eng. trans. 1971). It is constantly mentioned by Russian writers on the subject, including many we have already mentioned (Gornfeld, Batyushkov, Bely) and others (Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky 1900:89), who usually make reference to the famous statement: 11 Alles Verstehen ist daher immer zugleich ein Nicht-Verstehen" (1836:LXXX; "vzaimnoe razumenie mezhdu) razgovarivayushchimi v to-zhe vremya est' i nedorazumenie" (1859:62); "V syakoe ponimanie est' vmeste s tern neponimanie" OvsyanikoKulikovsky:89). The complete passage in which this statement is contained is as follows:

Only in the individual does language attain its final distinctness. Nobody conceives in a given word exactly what his neighbor does, and the ever so slight variation skitters through the entire language like concentric ripples over the water. All understanding is simultaneously a noncomprehension, all agreement in ideas and emotions is at the same time a divergence. In the manner in which language is modified by each individual there is revealed, in contrast to its previously expounded potency, a power of man over it. It can be construed as a physiological effect (if we want to apply the expression to intellectual power); the power emanating from man is purely dynamic. In the influence exerted upon him lies the principled structure of language and its forms, whereas in the reaction proceeding from him reposes a principle of freedom. For in man a certain something may arise whose reason no rational process is capable of isolating from preceding conditions; furthermore, we would misconstrue the nature of language and thus injure the historical veracity of its origin and transformation, were we to exclude the possibility of such inexplicable phenomena from

it. (1971:43, ita!. by G.J.)

Everywhere Humboldt (1767-1835) maintains the dynamic nature of language and that every individual possesses unique language, which remains to some extent beyond the complete comprehension of any other individual. In this mysterious dynamic interaction between an individual, unique language, and the language of the surrounding society lies a principle of human freedom and progress for the whole society. Elsewhere in the book, Humboldt looks into the relationship between sound and meaning (:192-93; Russ.:278-79). Sound and sense are seen as intersecting and interacting in the process of articulation, which is guided by a posited "intimate linguistic sense" [innere Sprachsinn]. This rather vague relationship had been elucidated earlier in the book in more specific physiological terms:


The indissoluble bond connecting thought, vocal apparatus, and hearing [auditory perception] to languages reposes invariably in the original arrangement of human nature, a factor that defies further clarification. The coincidence of the sound with the idea thus becomes clear. Just as the idea, comparable to a flash of lightning, collects the total power of imagination into a single point and excludes everything that is simultaneous, the phonetic sound resounds in abrupt sharpness and unity. Just as the thought engages the entire disposition, the phonetic sound is endowed with a penetrating power that arouses the whole nervous system. ,This feature, distinguishing it from all other sensory impressions, is visibly based upon the fact that the ear is receptive to the impression of a motion, especially to the sound of a true action produced by the voice (which is not always the case for the remaining senses). (:34; Russ.:48-49)

Since the production of speech sounds involves articulatory movements, those movements become part of the sensory package of speech production in the speaker and also indirectly in the listener, who at other times is a speaker himself and therefore also automatically associates the same motions with the sounds, but as a listener does so only passively. Thus we have sound, motion, and meaning collected in a lightning-flash unity that arcs between two humans and which "reproduces the evoked sensation simultaneously with the object represented" (:35). Humboldt admits that the "character of this connectioncan rarely be stated completely" (:52). Rather, he provides a threefold schema of possible relationships: 1) the onomatopoetic, in which the articulated sounds are meant to imitate natural, inarticulate sounds; 2) indirect imitation, in which sounds are chosen that, "inherently and in comparison with others, produce for the ear an impression similar to that of the object upon the soul. For example, 11 stand," 11 steady," and "stare" [stehen, stcitig, starr; Russ. stoyat', stoyky, stavka, stan (:77)] give the impression of fixity; the Sanscrit li, "melt" or" disperse," [Russ. lit'] suggests melting away; and "not," "gnaw," and "envy" [ nicht, nagen, Neid] imply a fine and sharp severance (:52; the Russ. trans. substitutes equivalents in the text and gives the Germ. examples and an explanation in a footnote). But Humboldt recognizes the "great dangers" of turning this into a broad principle valid for ail languages. Finaily, 3) "designation [is] based on phonetic similarity in accordance with the relationship of the concepts to be designated" (:53), that is, by analogy. Words with similar meanings are given similar sounds, thus linking them by sound association, but the character of the sounds themselves is irrelevant.

Humboldt maintains the great value of individual subjectivity as the source of creative growth and progress in language, yet for him the goal remains "the complete clarity of a concept" as crystaJlized in the word (:llkHe is able to strike a delicate, complex balance here in

I


the following way: "The comprehensibility of words is something completely different from the understanding of unarticulated sounds and includes much more than the mere reciprocal production of sounds and of the indicated object" (:37). The process is mediated by a variety of additional factors, including the common denominator of human nature, the active participation of two individual humans, and the shared entity of an existing language. The linguistic sense is described as" an instinctive presentiment of the entire system which the language needs in its individual structure" (:48) in which every element is intuitively related to the whole system, but on an unconscious level, in a certain sense "beyond the mind" as in zaum.

Humboldt's theories had a marked impact on Russia at the turn of this century largely because of his influence on one of the great Ukrainian-Russian linguists, A. Potebnya (1835-1891). Potebnya's most famous work, Thought and Language (Mysl' i yazyk [1862, 1892,1913,1922, 1926, 1976]), was the subject of active discussion in the first decade of this century. It presents a theory of language based expressly on Humboldt, who is mentioned in the second paragraph and quoted frequently and at length thereafter.

Potebnya rejects both the conscious-invention and divine-origin theories of language development, pointing out, as Herder had, that "in presupposing the existence of inventive thought prior to language, it would be simultaneously necessary to presuppose the word also, since for the invention of language an already prepared language would be necessary" (1976:37). Totally new words, those not dependent on previous linguistic history, are possible only at the dawn of language development, whereas now they must follow patterns already laid down by the so-called "internal form" of words, which is essentially their etymology. Here there is room for "folk etymology," in which the actual historical etymological origin may be so deeply buried as to be unknown to a speaker, but where a kind of ad hoc etymology is based on analogy with evidently similar forms or roots. Because the dawn of language creation is beyond our view, only an investigation of contemporary language processes can provide a key to the primeval processes (:71).

Among other German psycholinguists who play an important role in his discussion of this area, Potebnya quotes H. Lotze as follows:

Nature links the organs of breathing with the vocal organ and makes possible the transfer to the external world of the most imperceptible qualities of aimless soul excitations by depicting them in sounds ... Thus, in the animal kingdom there appear sounds of suffering and pleasure which are more lacking in definite indication of objects and actions than the crudest gestures, but as a expression of even hidden movements of soul they are incomparably richer than any other means that living beings could have chosen for mutual communication. (:99)

-I Introduction: Definitions and Background 35

Potebnya develops this idea:

Even articulate sound, the external form of human speech, is physiologically equivalent to these phenomena and similarly depends on soul-exciting feeling that initially is also involuntary, though it then becomes an obedient tool of thought. [ ... ]The voluntary and conscious use of words necessarily presupposes the involuntary and unconscious. Our consciousness never goes farther than observation of the means by which we pronounce a sound, to which, however, we relate passively, as to a ready-made fact independent of us. At a certain stage of development it evidently depends on our will whether to pronounce the sound or not; but when we pronounce it, in our consciousness there is only our goal, that is the image of the needed sound and, connected with it, the vague memory of the general feeling accompanying the motions of the organs needed to realize this goal. The action of the will is evident here only in changing the goal, in changing the impetus which leads to its fulfillment and which in itself remains outside consciousness. (:99-100)

A cry of fright is an externalization of emotion which helps us to deal with the emotion; articulate sounds are similar externalizations of emotion, but submitted to human thought processes. In the latter category, Potebnya distinguishes two types of articulate sound, exclamations and words, as such, representing respectively the "language of feeling and the language of thought" (:1 05). "In tone the language of exclamations, like mimicry, which in many instances, in contrast to the word, an exclamation cannot do without, is the sole language comprehensible to everyone" (:105-06). It communicates directly, without having to be converted into a "thought" or meaning, the exact content of which would vary among individuals and even in the same individual from one day to the next. The word, however, despite its internal variability, does retain a certain objectivity because of its fixed external form (its sounds). Finally, "the exclamation ceases being itself as soon as we direct our attention to it; therefore, in remaining itself, it is incomprehensible" (:107). If the speaker turns it into an object of contemplation, then it automatically loses its emotional content, which is its only content. It has no meaning in the sense that a word has meaning. However, it is in human nature to turn such phenomena into objects of contemplation, and, therefore, while some exclamations remained such (cries of pain, pleasure, surprise, joy, sorrow), others, evidently related to impressions of sight and sound, became the roots for words (:110).

The word, then, in Potebnya's (and Humboldt's) view, has three aspects, not just two (sound and meaning): 1) content, i.e., the original perception or emotion that, say, produced an involuntary exclamation; 2) the external form, i.e., the sounds produced in connection with the content which become objectified by being externalized; and 3) the

fl


internal form, which is "the relationship of the content of thought to consciousness; it shows how a person's own thought is presented to him" (:115). That is, a careful analysis of a word's etymology will provide the key to what it is about a given phenomenon or object that first struck the human observer and caused him to produce an exclamation. Initially these relationships are subjective, but they become objectivized in the "internal form," the origins of which may not be consciously appreciated or may be lost in pre-history, but are the foundation of a language's growth and development. It is the role of art, then, of poetry especially, to revitalize or reestablish the important links that are the basis of internal form. "Art is the process of objectivizing the primeval givens of spiritual life" (:195).

Among those from whom Potebnya's book eventually produced a response was Bcly, who in a review article (1910b), found Potebnya's methodological approach in many ways faulty, but nevertheless had high praise for his perceptiveness in appreciating that "the word is a work of art" independent of thought (:256). Bely also emphasized the value Potebnya places on "irrational" features of verbal creativity. This receives perhaps more emphasis in Bely's account than it does in Potebnya' s book, even though, as in Humboldt, subconscious processes are noted as playing a role in linking sound and meaning. (Potebnya does not use the word "irrational" [irratsional'ny] to characterize them.) Bely sees as the "meaning of all of Potebnya's work" the attempt to "reveal'the irrational roots of personality' in the creation of words," and argues that he has" proved the irratiot;tality of the word itself, that condition of every expression" (:246).

Potebnya' s ideas, along with similar theories by A. Veselovsky, were also propagated by their students and disciples (who include Gornfeld and Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky) in a serial called Problems of the Theory and Psychology of Creativity, published in Kharkov beginning in 1907 and continuing until1923. In his discussion of why communication is difficult, Gornfeld reviews the path from Goethe, Humboldt, and other German linguists (Lazarus, Lotze, et al.) through Potebnya, referring to familiar themes and beginning with a quote from Flaubert probably drawn from the Maupassant story "Solitude": "We live in a desert-nobody understands anybody" (1906:15; Maupassant 1941:659).

F. Batyushkov, however, finds it necessary to disagree with the position held by Humboldt, Potebnya, and Gornfeld that the word is a condition of thought, "for more precisely it is only a conditional form of thought, a form necessary for fullness of consciousness, but scarcely exhausting the possible means of expressing the process of thinking and not to be equated with thought" (1900:211). He ends his article with a footnote on a recent article by Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, "Toward a Psychology of Understanding" ("K psikhologii ponimaniya," 1900),


in which the latter traces the familiar path from Goethe and Humboldt ' to Potebnya's book as a preface to a discussion of differing views on the possibility of communication via language as expressed in Tyutchev's poem "Silentium" ("An uttered thought is a lie") and Maupassant's story "Solitude" (1884), a story also referred to later by P. D. Uspensky (1911: 168; 1970: 198). Goethe had asked himself the question whether it was possible for two humans to fully understand each other. By turning to Spinoza, he concluded definitely no: "no one understands another" (Goethe 1969: 309; Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky 1900: 88-89). This brings Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky immediately to Humboldt's statement about every understanding being also a misunderstanding, and thence to Potebnya, who is reported to have regularly discussed the Tyutchev poem in his lectures (see Potebnya 1894:162, 1905:34, 1976:313, 559). In comparing the Tyutchev poem with Maupassant's story, Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky concludes that Tyutchev retained the "illusion" of possible communication, while Maupassant's hero suffers from having lost this illusion.

7) The Fourth Dimension. Intuition, and Cubism. Most important for the deveiopment of zaum is the the rise of Cubism, Primitivism, Rayism, Suprematism, and of abstract art in general. A group of Russian avant-garde artist-theoreticians were actively involved in these movements, and the zaumniks were an intimate part of this group. Of especial significance are two early books by P. D. Uspensky (standard English spelling: Ouspensky), The Fourth Dimension (1909) and Tertium Organum (1911).12 In fact, Tertium Organum can be used in the same way as Shklovsky' s article on zaum as a guide to the important ideas and formative sources in this particular, somewhat narrower sphere.

Taking his cues mainly from C. H. Hinton, Uspensky describes the fourth dimension atemporily as the next dimension of space. In looking for clues to hyperspace, Hinton and others had tried to understand and depict the fourth-dimensional realm by drawing analogies to the other three dimensions,. in particular by describing an imaginary two-dimensional world with two-dimensional beings who try to imagine our three-dimensional world without being able to experience it directly. Certain phenomena that appear perfectly normal from a three-dimensional perspective look very different or seem irrational or unrelated when viewed from two dimensions (Uspensky 1970:30). This investigation takes on a mystical, spiritual quality that it does not necessarily have in other, more purely mathematical views. In The Fourth Dimension (Chetvyortoe izmerenie, 1909), Uspensky summarizes Hinton's view in the following way. The fourth dimension is assumed to exist, but our imperfect powers of perception make it inaccessible to the senses. However, by special effort and training it is possible to develop the capacity to achieve a higher consciousness, that is, conscious-

•


ness of how things actually are, not merely how they appear to our senses. This would be like seeing a cube from all sides at once, rather than only from one side and distorted by perspective. The goal therefore is to achieve true, or at any rate greater, objectivity by the elimination of the "personal element" (i.e., by avoiding the illusion of perspective). The result is true perception. "It is very likely that Hinton wants to say that the elimination of the self in concepts leads to the development of intuitive capacities, i.e., the development of direct cognition" (Uspensky 1909:10)_13 The psychological concept of intuition introduced here is Uspensky's contribution. If The Fourth Dimension gives us the current state of thinking on the subject with only glimmers of new ideas from Uspensky, Tertium Organum presents a full-fledged program with clear new elements. Uspensky's attention to language emerges for the first time briefly in Chapter VI when, in developing the analogy of a two-dimensional world, he adds a psychological viewpoint:

We should experience considerable difficulty in explaining anything to the plane [i.e. two-dimensional] being; and it would be very difficult for him to understand us. First of all it would be difficult because he would not have the concepts corresponding to our concepts. He would lack "necessary words."

For instance, "section"- this would be for him a quite new and inconceivable word; then" angle"- again an inconceivable word;" centre"still more inconceivable; the third perpendicular-something incomprehensible, lying outside of his geometry. (:59/51)

Uspensky admits the inadequacy of the analogical approach to this question and proposes instead to attack the problem "by studying our consciousness and its properties" (:69/61). He points out:

The content of emotional feelings, even the simplest-to say nothing of the complex- can never be wholly confined to concepts or ideas, and therefore can never be correctly or exactly expressed in words. Words can only allude to it, point to it. The interpretation of emotional feelings and emotional understanding is the problem of art. (:73/64)

Uspensky links the concepts of intuition, poetry, the language of the future, and the vanguard of human psychic evolution, all on the basis of principles related to the fourth dimension; that is, the way beyond the merely rational is through art (poetry in particular), and this breakthrough could be accomplished by a form of higher intuition which would lead to the creation of a new language of the future. The importance of the word "intuition" (intuitsiya) is weakened in later editions by the substitution of a vaguer term like" a higher form of psychic life"


(:73-74/ 65-66; also :197/168,208-09 /178-79), though a few instances of "intuition" are allowed to remain (:209/178, 236/204). Nevertheless, the important concept of a form of direct cognition which unifies knowledge on a supra personal, extra-logical level is fully retained. Uspensky describes the four stages of consciousness (sensation, perception, concept, higher intuition) as comparable to the sequence of dimensions. Thus higher intuition is seen as corresponding to the fourth dimension (:74/ 66); and he explicitly relates them to Kant's idea that the concept of space is an a priori category, that is, that" space with its characteristics is a property of our consciousness" (:73/66). It is here that art enters into its important role:

The artist must be a clairvoyant: he must see that which others do not see; he must be a magician: must possess the power to make others see that which they do not themselves see, but which he does see.

Art sees more and farther than we do. [ ... I]t sees vastly more than the most perfect apparatus can discover; and it senses the infinite invisible facets of that crystal, one facet of which we call man. [ ... A]nd therefore concerning certain sides of life art alone can speak, and has the right to speak. (:145/121)

This Nco-Romantic notion was closer to the Symbolist ethos than to the Futurist orientation, but the Futurists nevertheless adopted the visionary elements, including the role of the artist as seer of the future. Intuition gives the artist the power to pass beyond the limits of three-dimensional logic and glimpse the fullness of that "beyond." Here we might also add Uspensky's dictum that" All art is just one entire illogicality" (:223/193). This brings us to the second important aspect of Uspensky's "Third Tool" (tertium organum), alogism or the absurd. He notes that "the axioms of logic are untrue even in relation to emotions, to symbols, to the musicality and the hidden meaning of words [to say nothing of those ideas which cannot be expressed in words]" ( :223 I 193; bracketed portion not in 1911 ed.). "This higher logic may be called intuitive logic-the logic of infinity, the logic of ecstasy" (:236/204). Axioms of the new logic might therefore be:" A is both A and Not-A, or Everything is both A and Not-A, or Everything is All" (:236/205). These formulations seem to have been suggested by Plotinus' essay "On Intelligible Beauty" quoted later in the book (:253/222). But even such axioms of higher logic are also "not essentially true":

[I)t is impossible to express super-logical relations in our language as it is presently constituted.

The formula, "A is both A and Not-A" is untrue because in the world of causes there exists no opposition between "A" and "Not-A." But we cannot express their real reli,jltion. It would be more correct to say:


A is all. But this also would would be untrue, because 11 A" is not only all, but

also an arbitrary part of all, and at the same time a given part. This is exactly the thing which our language cannot express. It is to

this that we must accustom our thought, and train it along these lines. (:240/208)

This surely would encourage advanced artists of the word to use their intuitive powers to search for a new language beyond the bounds of logic.

The book ends with an extensive survey of supporting statements by and about mystics quoted at length and usually from English-language sources. These range from Lao-tze, Plotinus, Vedanta, and Muslim writings to Oement of Alexandria, Jacob Bohme, Blavatsky, Mabel Collins (Edward Carpenter is a later addition), and Lodyzhensky (1912). The chapter on mysticism from William James' Varieties of Religious Experience [1902] is quoted extensively in the 1910 Russian translation, as is Max Muller's book Theosophy or Psychological Religion [1893]. As Charlotte Douglas points out (1986:186), James' book is one source for yet another possible influence on the rise of zaum, namely yoga, and in particular Vivekananda' s book Raja-Yoga, which was available in a Russian translation of 1906. James gives the following quote from Vivekanada' s book: 11 [The yogi teaches] that the mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason [prevoskhodyashchie razum], a superconscious state, and that when the mind gets to that higher state, then this knowledge beyond reasoning comes [bez posredstva razuma]" Games 1958:306-07 /1910:389; Vivekananda 1953:614). Finally R. Hucke's Cosmic Consciousness (1901) is presented in Uspen5ky's final chapter (also James 1958:306-07 /1910:387-89) as an example of the new literature on higher consciousness which synthesizes all past attempts to deal with this subject.

Another very important proponent of intuition is Henri Bergson, whose philosophy was extremely influential at the time (see esp. Beck, Rusinko, Curtis, Livshits (1977:80-81, 191-92)). For Uspensky, reality is essentially timeless, fixed, and simultaneously present from the higher vantage point. For Bergson, on the contrary, the illusion is of fixity, of constant categories artificially subdividing reality into manageably stable, comparable units of time and matter; whereas true reality is in eternal flux in which no one moment is comparable to another, no bit of matter the same as another. Reason cannot deal with this condition; only intuition can. In both Uspensky and Bergson, intuition gains us access to a greater reality than reason, but those realities are opposed, one maximally stable and fixed, the other maximally fluid and changing. Bergson's view of intuition is much less mystical or exclusive than

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Uspensky' s. For Uspensky it is a special power given only to specially endowed, clairvoyant individuals, beyond everyday life, something to be developed and aspired to. But for Bergson, as Rusinko puts it, "the poet ... is a 'seer' in the literal, not the Symbolist, sense of the word, and his perception is not mystical or visionary, but a refinement of normal perception, characterized by increased precision, clarity, and intensity" (:506). This shift away from the mystical is an important facet of Post-Symbolism, Acmeism as well as Futurism.

For Bergson thought and language both dissociate "each change into two elements-the one stable, definable for each particular case, to wit, the Form; the other indefinable and always the same, Change in general." And in language "Forms are all that it is capable of expressing" (1983:326). Although he does not present any specific recommendations for releasing language from its formal limitations, in one place he provides a truly remarkable picture:

When a poet reads me his verses, I can interest myself enough in him to enter into his thought, put myself into his feelings, live over again the simple state he has broken into phrases and words. I sympathize then with his inspiration, I follow it with a continuous movement which is, like inspiration itself, an undivided act. Now, I need only relax my attention, let go the tension that there is in me, for the sounds, hitherto swallowed up in the sense, to appear to me distinctly, one by one, in their materiality. For this I have not to do anything; it is enough to withdraw something. In proportion as I let myself go, the successive sounds will become the more individualized; as the phrases were broken into words, so the words will scan in syllables which I shall perceive one after another. Let me go farther still in the direction of dream: the letters themselves will become loose and will be seen to dance along, hand in hand, on some fantastic sheet of paper. I shall then admire the precision of the interweavings, the marvelous order of the procession, the exact insertion of the letters into the syllables, of the syllables into the words and of the words into the sentences. The farther I pursue this quite negative direction of relaxation, the more extension and complexity I shall create; and the more the complexity in its tum increases, the more admirable will seem to be the order which continues to reign, undisturbed, among the elements. Yet this complexity and extension represent nothing positive; they express a deficiency of will. (:209)

With this last sentence, Bergson would seem to part company with the zaumniks. Yet the path of negation leads to vital indeterll1inacy: "negation is but one half of an intellectual act, of which the other half is left indeterminate" (:289). If, to use Bergson's example, you say "This table is not white," you have removed an affirmation without putting anything in its place, leaving

1the statement open-ended or indetermi-


nate. Removing a definite meaning from a word by fragmentation or distortion might serve the same purpose, though Bergson cannot be said to suggest this. The problem for Bergson is that negation "takes account only of the replaced, and is not concerned with what replaces" (:294), thus focusing on what is not, rather than on what is. But language is always faced with this difficulty, since it deals in fixed concepts which by their very fixity fail to do justice to fluid reality. "It is the essence of reasoning to shut us up in the circle of the given. But action breaks the circle" (:192). Consciousness cannot be equated with the intellect: "the state of consciousness overflows the intellect; it is indeed incommensurable with the intellect, being itself indivisible and new" (:200).

Bergson's influence has been studied in relation to Malevich (Douglas 1975b, 1975c, 1980, 1984, 1986) and is relevant to other Russian avant-garde artist-theoreticians, such as Matyushin and Nikolay Kulbin (Douglas 1980,1984, 1986). Moreover, Matyushin and Kulbin were able to read French and thus were able to serve as conduits for writings from Europe which had yet to be translated into Russian for their lesseducated Futurist colleagues. Kulbin also read German, and his early medical-psychological works (e.g., 1907) show a professional familiarity with the theories of Wundt, James, Spencer, et al. Benedikt Livshits described Kulbin' s lectures of 1912 as involving a process of emptying "his box of Bergsonian, Ramsesian and Picasso discoveries" and making "fleeting" references to Bergson (Livshits 1977:80-81, also :191-92).

In the Russian context it is possible in fact to identify a whole "intuitivist" trend in late Symbolist/ early Futurist art focused on Kulbin, but including Kandinsky, Vladimir Markov (Waldemars Matvejs (1877-1914)), Olga Rozanova, and others centered around the Petersburg group Union of Youth.14 Kulbin called for "liberating art, literature and music from conventional patterns, replacing these with the 'intuitive principle"' (Bowlt 1976a:12), and painted several"intuitive works," but generally failed to articulate a specific program involving intuition. Although Kandinsky avoided the term "intuition," he nevertheless developed a full-fledged theory of art on a comparable basis, using instead the term "inner necessity."15

Markov developed a theory from primitivist and oriental sources that seems independent of Bergsonian (though possibly not Uspenskian) influence. His essay, "The Principles of the New Art," published in April and June 1912 in Nos.1 and 2 of The Union of Youth, begins: "Where concrete reality, the tangible, ends, there begins another world-a world of unfathomed mystery, a world of the Divine. Even primitive man was given the chance of approaching this boundary, where intuitively he would capture some feature of the Divineand return happy as a child" (Bowlt 1976a:25/Soyuz molodyozhi I:5). This "world of unfathomed mystery" is accessible through "the intui-


tive faculties of the spirit" (Bowlt :25). Moreover, the element of childish playfulness is an important idea in connection with zaum, particularly when contrasted with the profound meaning usually sought with high seriousness and taken as a measure of greatness in art. Markov frees the artist from the need to be" serious." This allows him to broaden the base for acceptableness in art. He asks the question: "Why does the art of so many peoples bear the character of apparent absurdity [neleposti], coarseness, vagueness, or feebleness?" (:31). He is careful not to characterize all non-European art in this way, however, noting that much of it is "very refined and delicate," but there are some peoples who "profoundly loved the simple, the naive [naivnogo] and apparently absurd [nelepogo na vid]" (:32).

Mikhail Matyushin (1861-1934) also developed relevant theories. According to All a Povelikhina (1976:68), he was the first Russian artist to introduce the problem of the fourth dimension of space, beginning in 1911. The timing would suggest that the impulse was related to Uspensky's publications. In 1912-13 he wrote an unpublished article "The Sensation of the Fourth Dimension" and" other pieces on the same subject" (Povelikhina:70). In 1912, he met Mayakovsky, Kruchonykh, and Malevich for the first time in Moscow (Kovtun 1974:40). In early 1913 Hylaea joined forces with the Union of Youth (Matyushin 1976:140-43). In addition, Matyushin reports on the presence in their group of a mathematics teacher, S. Myasoedov, who "used to tell us that in their famil¥Jall the Myasoedovs would speak to each other in their own invented language" 1976:143). Henderson suggests that Myasoedov may have played a role analogous to Princet for the French Cubists as a conduit for non-Euclidean mathematics among the Russians (1983:265). Matyushin notes that although they had heard of Italian Futurism, they knew "little" about it, but followed news of the new art emanating from France (:143).

Even if most of Matyushin's writings did not see print at the time, they were surely read and discussed by his Futurist associates. His one important early publication was an article "On the Book by Gleizes and Metzinger Du Cubisme," which was dated March 10, 1913, and published in Union of Youth No. 3 (March 1913):25-34.16 Though it slightly postdates the rise of zaum, it is certain to reflect knowledge and discussions at the end of 1912.

Matyushin' s article consists almost entirely of alternating selections from Tertium Organum and Du Cubisme in Russian translation. He quotes the latter extensively, in the process manipulating it in interesting ways. Gleizes and Metzinger do not mention the fourth dimension, though they do refer to non-Euclidean scientists and to Riemann's theorems (1964:8; Henderson trans.:371 ); but in the passage:

0 •


"If the artist has conceded nothing to common standards, his work inevitably will be unintelligible to those who cannot, with a single beat of their wings, lift themselves to unknown planes" (:14), by translating the French plan [plane] as izmerenie [dimension], in fact ending his whole article with this word, Matyushin not only establishes a link to Uspensky but adds a kind of emphasis and specificity of his own, "rejecting Gleizes and Metzinger's subtlety in favor of an outright statement" (Henderson 1983:266). This corresponds to Matyushin's emphasis in his opening paragraph:

In essence no one yet has presented such important words about the process of world perception and the evolution of the human soul. Whereas, following the revelation of the universal human soul- blazing up with a wonderful fire of divinely creative thought now here and now there-we sense the advancing regal moment of the passage of our consciousness into a new phase of dimension, out of three-dimensional into four-dimensional. (Henderson :368)

In conjunction with quotations from Uspensky on higher intuition, on the artist as clairvoyant, and on Hinton's visions of the fourth dimension, the effect was to give Russian Cubism a greater mystical and irrational emphasis than was generally true of its French manifestation (see Henderson:266-68 and Douglas 1974b for other details).

With the exception of this shift in emphasis, the.major points in Du Cubisme were conveyed accurately by Matyushin's excerpts. These include the idea that reality goes beyond academic visual conventions; that imitation of nature is not an adequate goal for art (Gleizes and Metzinger call it "the only error possible in art" (1964:3)); that art is autonomous and its own raison d'etre; that the artist must avoid the commonplace; that art nevertheless, while it may be initially difficult for the average person to understand because of its newness, is not meant to be unintelligible and this is" only a consequence, merely temporary, and by no means a necessity" (1964:14). The artist is to create by his own activity a dynamic forum in which the spectator will also then actively participate, and this is accomplished by maintaining a certain degree of indefiniteness, indeterminacy: "The diversity of the relations of line to line must be indefinite [inde.finiejbeskonechno ]" (:9). (Note that the Russian beskonechno literally means "endless" or "infinite" rather than "indefinite" or "undefined.") It would appear that the artist should leave out certain determining features or leave gaps so that the viewer might fill them in, providing resolutions to the question posed by the given image, as in a Gestalt.

If for Gleizes and Metzinger the sense of higher reality may be created by moving around the object and presenting it in a synthetic view (1964:15),


The process for the Russian adherents of hyperspace philosophy was not so direct. The development of the ability to visualize objects from all sides at once was only the first step toward the desired "higher consciousness." And this higher consciousness with its" fourth unit of psychic life" (higher intuition) would have to be attained before man's perception could increase to include a fourth dimension of space. In contrast to the Cubists with their matter-of-fact geometric approach, the Russian follower of Ouspcnsky had to transform his own consciousness radically. (Henderson 1983:268)

Such theories have more obvious relevance for the painter than the poet, yet their extension into the verbal sphere was a natural development at the time, given the close relationship, often in the same person, between work in visual art and in verbal art. And even if, as it would tum out, Uspensky did not himself approve of zaum ("it is no merit in an author to invent new words, or to use old words in new meanings which have nothing in common with the accepted ones- to create, in other words, a special terminology" [1921] (1970:xiii) ), Kulbin, Matyushin, and other Union of Youth members certainly did approve of it, thus creating a congenial atmosphere for its development as a verbal parallel to similar developments in the Russian brand of Cubism.

While it would not be safe to claim that, with all these contributing factors outlined above, zaum could not help but appear, nevertheless they provide a firm basis for its development, and the precise mix of such factors may explain why it made a strong appearance in Russia, rather than somewhere else in Europe.

Notes

1Kruchonykh mentions Plato once (1913j:33), but without indicating any specific works, and it is doubtful he actually read him (Markov 1968:398).

2for a detailed study of Bcly's sound orchestration and use of colors in his poetry and prose, sec Steinberg (1982). See Janecek (1974) for a study of sound structure in Bcly's novel Kotik Letaev. In the present context, one might note that in Bcly's novel Petersburg, which first appeared in serialized form in the almanac Sirin in 1913-14, the mad revolutionary Dudkin is tormented by "the meaningless word enfranshish" (Eng. trans. 1978:58), which later in the retrograde form of Shishnarfne emerges from Dudkin' s voicebox to take on the haunting identity of an alter-ego. "Shish" (fig [vulgar gesture]) was a favorite word of Kruchonykh' s. 3While there is significant agreement on speech sound and meaning correspondences based on articulation, correspondences between speech sounds or musical pitches and colors prqduce radically different results. Recall that in


"Voyelles" Rimbaud had: "A Black; E white; I red; U green; 0 blue" [1871]. This may have been a purely arbitrary connection on Rimbaud's part (David Antin, quoted in Perloff 1981:294). For musical pitches, one need only compare the opinions of Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin to uncover a similar lack

~ of agreement (Delson 1971:400-01). Rene Ghil's (1862-1925) Traite du verbe (1887) is another important work

on this subject in the Russian context. He makes reference to Helmholtz's work (1877; Eng. trans. 1948), but his main source for such associations is G. H. von Meyer's Les Organes de la Parole ([1880]1885; Eng. trans. 1883). In addition, Ghil traces the meaningfulness of certain sounds back to Marin Mersenne' s Harmonie Universelle (1636) and to Boiste (1765-1824). Ghil played a prominent rol~ in Russian Symbolism, contributing regular articles and reviews on French poetry to The Balance [Vesy] in the years 1904-09, and his book was certainly read by all the Symbolists (see Donchin 1958:53-58; Douglas 1984:158-59). Since Roman Jakobson (1921:47) quotes from Mallarme's preface to Ghil's book, it may have come under discussion in Futurist circles as well. For a very interesting look at Ghil' s theories and their influence on Cubism and Futurism, see Robbins (1981).

4The Gornfeld article first appeared in 1899, but was republished in 1906 (where it was dated 1900), 1922, and 1927 in unchanged form. Since the 1927 edition is the most accessible, references in the text will be made to that edition.

5Tri glavy iz istoricheskoy poetiki was originally published in the Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniya in 1898 and simultaneously as a separate brochure. It was subsequently included in Volume I of Veselovsky' s posthumously published collected works in 1913. Finally, an edition ofVeselovsky's writings under the title Istoricheskaya poetika, edited by V. Zhirmunsky, was released in 1940 and included this work. For the sake of convenience, the 1940 edition will serve as reference.

6Veselovsky refers later (1940:250-52, 629) to works by Ludwig Jacobowski (1891) and Charles Letourneau (1894), among others, where similar theories are presented. Letourneau's work was available in a Russian translation (1895), which was referred to also by Bezpyatov (see below). Mention can be made of a Russian school textbook, Kolosov's Theory of Poetry (1878:24-25) which also presents similar views on sound and meaning in folk poetry.

7V6lkerpsychologie, Vol. I (Die Sprache, 1900) Ch. 3, IV: 1, contains the passage referred to above by Shklovsky, but the first German word in the Shklovsky paraphrase is misspelled. It is either bummeln (to stroll, bum around) or wimmeln (to swarm). Shklovsky' s timmeln must have been based on a similar passage in F. F. Zelinsky's article on Wundt's theories. Zelinsky has tummeln, torkeln, wimmeln (:181), but the first word is not found in Wundt. The fact that it is an actual German word (to put in motion) may have caused Zelinsky not to no-

~ I

~~ I

I~


tice the mistake. Shklovsky's garbling of Zelinsky's mistake and his borrowing of the latter's Russian examples (karakuli, tilisnut') suggest that Shklovsky' s source on Wundt is the Zelinsky article and that he did not consult Wundt's work directly.

SShklovsky does not mention Darwin or Spencer in connection with zaum, but their works were known and much discussed in Russia at the turn of the century. On Darwin's influence in Russia, see Vucinich 1970:104-08, 1989, and Douglas 1984:153-54. For Darwin's theories on the origin of language, see The Descent Of Man (1874:esp. 101-05); for Spencer: 1900:318 ff. Darwin disputes the theories ofF. Max MUller, whose writings were also known and discussed in Russia (Baudouin 1904:544; Potebnya 1905:418-25; Bely 1910a:573, 621; MUller esp.1884 II:366 ff., 1887:189 ff.). The main works by Darwin, Spencer, and MUller were available in Russian translations soon after their original publication.

90zarovsky began to lecture and publish on this theory in 1903-04 (1914:114) and in Dec.1912 began editing a section of the Petersburg journal Teatr i iskusstvo titled "Golos i rech"' [Voice and Speech] which focused on these issues. Contributions by V. V. Chekhov and E. M. Bezpyatov (a series of articles on "voice gestures"), and by Mishchenko, S. V. Volkonsky, and related books by Volkonsky (1913b) and L. Shcherba (1912) added arguments and evidence to the discussion.

10In his essay "The poetry of exorcisms and curses" [1906], Blok quotes similar lines as an example of "secret words and strange magic songs consisting of incomprehensible words" used to ward off rusalkas:

Ai, ai, shikharda kavda! Shivda, vnoza, mitta, minogam, Kalandi, indi, yakutashma bitash, Okutomi mi nuffan, zidima ... (Blok 1962 V:59)

11Prior to its publication as a separate book, Konovalov's work was serialized in Bogoslavsky Vestnik in 1907-08, which Markov claims is Kruchony kh' s source (Markov 1968:202, 398).

12-fhe English translation (1920/1922; reprinted in 1970) was made from the second Russian edition of 1916, which contains two chapters added since the first edition (Chapters XI and XV). Much of the remainder is identical to the first Russian edition (1911), but there are a number of other additions, omissions, and changes. In our discussion I will be working directly from the 1911 Russian edition so as to avoid any anachronisms, but since it is generally unavailable, while the English translation is readily available, references will be made to and translations drawn from the latter whenever possible. Any differences between the two will be duly noted. In his" Author's Preface" to the English translation, Uspensky states:" after a very attentive review of the book

I' l'

48 Zaum: The Transrational Poetry oifR . usszan Futurism

I could find only one w auth . ord to correct" ("xv) W

onzed for those passages that . . e may therefore consider it to b well Citar . correspond to th . . e . Ions m the text will b f e ongma11911 edir and then to the 1911 . e Irst to the English transla . Ion as 199/ 1911 d·r Russian edition, thus (:199/170) . . tiOn (when used)

. . e I IOn p. 170. It should b . Is. 1970 (Eng. trans) editJon is identical n t e mentioned that the 1931 B~ . . p.

been printe~ from th: 0:;i~:11;~:;e:~t to the 1911 edition, havi;~~~~:~:~; A Russian National Lib

after 254 and may have beenr:; copy of the 1911 edition is missing th thus causin her e source for the microfi! e pages (·248) H g to say that the fold-out chart m used by Henderson · · owever su h h was not p rt f th '

it differs f th c a c art was included betwee a o at edition I rom e later edition and En I" h n.pages260and 261, though

g Is translation.

l3J'he Russian edition of Th . ~ of 1910 It . e Fourth Dimension cam . in . . was later Incorporated into A N. e out 10 1909, bearing a date

rekvised and abbreviated form as that b ewk';fodel of the Universe (1931/1971) wor ed from the ori . 1 R . oo s Chapter II On . (1983·245) gma ussian edition whi h ·. ce a gam, I have

. . , c was unavailable to Henderson

14t)ee Bowlt (1976b) f,

D k or an excellent hist f ya onitsyn (1966 Ch 7) ory o Union of Youth a t• .. · · c IVlties; also

tSK d" an Insky apparent! f tent and Fo " y Irst used the term in print . . 19/16 ·19 rm (BowltjLong 1980:115) F . m_J911m his article "Con-

a. -23. A full d 1 • or a translation of th · ta . d . y eve oped presentat· Is text see Bowlt

me m "On th S . . IOn of Kand· k , rized) in Kandins~y'~~:~~:~ in bArt (Painting)," whichl~a: :e~e~:es is con-

1911, and then published inc;9~ Kulbin in ~etersburg, December ;9s:~~a-see Henderson (1983·240-41) .. On Kandmsky and the fourth d" . 1, · . Imenswn,

16A com I . pete English translation of th" (1983:368-75). Later in 1913 Is text can be found in H d pear in two separate v . a complete translation of Du Cub· el1 erson M erswns, one in Jul b zsme would a -. oscow and in November the full y Y.the poet Maximili~n Voloshin fn

Sister-in-1 · verswn by E N" aw, m Petersburg under his "Zh '". ·. Izen, Matyushin's

uravl 1mprmt.

Chapter One

~

KRUCHONYKH: "DYR BUL SHCHYL"

Kruchbnykh credits David Burliuk, the great initiator and self-styled "Father of Russian Futurism," with suggesting the idea of zaum to him. In a 1959 statement written to answer a question by Nikolay Khardzhiev about when zaum originated, Khardzhiev reports that Kruchonykhanswered:

At the end of 1912 D. Burliuk somehow said to me: "Write a whole poem of 'unknown words [nevedomykh slav]."' And I wrote "Dyr bul shchyl," the five-line poem which I included in the book I was then preparing, Pomada (it came out in the beginning of 1913). In this book it was said: a poem of words not having a definite meaning. In the spring of 1913, on the advice of N: Kulbin, I (and he, too!) put out Declaration of the Word as Such (in it Kulbin had added his own small bit), where for the first time zaum language was proclaimed and a fuller characterization and foundation was given for it. (Khardzhiev 1975b:36)

With this suggestion of Burliuk's and the resultant poem, "Dyr bul shchyl," written in the same month (Kruchonykh 1923d:38), we can begin the official history of zaum. Certain earlier poems of Khlebnikov, most notably "Zaklyatie smekhom" [Incantation by Laughter] and "Bobeobi pelis' guby" [Bobeobi Sang the Lips] of 1908-1909, and Kruchonykh's own alogical contributions to the collection worldbackwards [mirskontsa] of 1912 are obvious immediate antecedents, but Burliuk precipitated a decisive crystallization of the concept of zaum and its attendant theoretical underpinnings.

Kruchonykh's first published literary works, Old-Fashioned Love (1912) and A Game in Hell (1912a, with Khlebnikov), while they hav:e certain parodistic features bordering on the absurd, contain nothing that would hint at the imminence of zaum. Kruchonykh's contributions to worldbackwards (1912b), however, show a striking advance in the direction of loosened logic and syntax. The striking disorder of this miscellany would appear to be mostly Kruchonykh's reponsibility,

49

.1>

50 Zaum: The Transrational Poetry o+Rus . F . 'J szan u tunsm

though Khlebnikov is given e u . . nu~ber ?f other contributin ~rt~~!dhng ?n t~e cover, and there are a the Irrational, and this ex g . · ~e title Itself leads one to ex" e 1984a:7~-83). Kruchonykh'slfi~~!:twn Is ~ull~ satisfied (see Jan!e~ prose ptece titled "Journey Ov r~ contnbutwns are six poems and a come progressively more dis"o:ted e Whole. World." The poems bebyb~eir sloppy appearanceJ(miscei~~ntactically, a fact emphasized ru . r-stamp lettering in lines that neous upper and lower case margtns to the right or left, and severa~e not ~arallei, no justification of !he second of these (see Janecek 19 a o~t-stzed letters hand-applied) til us. 3) creates a hilariously buries 84a ftg. ~.or Compton 1978 colo; c~u;sy, barely literate effort at ve;.~i~i~s~?ctatton between the present o ~ poet as a soul brought to earth . a ton and Lermontov' s image ~ustc of heaven. One can under ta d by an angel to pine and recall the ~ze a public inclined to take sue~ e~o:;'h~ such poems might scandaimgs or as deliberate attacks on the a s etther as serious poetic offer-

A later poem in the set . p ntheon of Russian poetry Is nearly d "d ·

seems to be a series of disconnected edvm of poetic structure and

.REPAGOriT TEMniT

tLENIE

MOIITES' MOLites' OHNEuMeR

chEbRETS TrAVa DuKH

SLINyaLa

SENO TLENIE

UGaSLIOchi RAZNOPLETENY

ne PoBEDiT ZHizn

war s and phrases:

a turnip bums it's getting dark

rotting

pray pray he did not die

thyme grass spirit

faded

hay rotting

. eyes extinguished vanwoven life will not conquer

ProshLa KHOLErA-the plague has passed

~er~ the syntax becomes so fra me mg, m ~~realm of syntactic za~rn, nt~ry that we are, practically speak-words Is m normal, if occasionall w ere each word or small grou of of thought is either absent or so ~~~~~~t~dard, Russian, but the thr~ad

The final item, , A Joum tp tea as to appear garbled. ey Over the Whole World,. , Is a more am-

Kruchonykh: "Dyr Bul Shchyl" 51

bitious effort of five pages of unpunctuated, chaotic prose script. To Markov it "seems to be an exercise in automatic writing" (1968:43). It begins simply enough, except for the lack of punctuation and capitalization, but becomes gradually more disjointed:

I traveled for a long time and spent time in 10 countries they received me badly everywhere but I brought out many impressions went to persia and india from india I brought 2 poods of sugar wanted to grab more and an arab kid but forgot shallowness they say I don't remember and I rejoice I'm not a stone then I left the women here have pestilential [ moryavye] faces perfumed as if with manure no doubt I didn't make it out but got hands dirty left for chagodubia pretended to be a buddha and let my moustache down and a flower handkerchief but there's no place for me someone is always stopping in and whispering don't forget to tear out teeth I was astounded only then we on the way when not poorly and [etc.]

Were one to punctuate this, it would not seem quite so abnormal, though it has undeniable elements of stream of consciousness, ellipses, and unaccountable shifts of thought.

In early 1913 perhaps the most famous Futurist collection, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, appeared containing the eponymous manifesto, written in December of the previous year, and one additional poem l:;>y Kruchonykh. The lines in the manifesto that come closest to 3!

heralding the arrival of zaum were contributed apparently by Khlebnikov (Kruchonykh 1932:45):

We order respect for the right of poets: 1) To increase the dictionary in volume by arbitrary and derived words

(yV ord- innovation), 2) To have an invincible hatred for the language which existed before

them. (:3)

and the concluding sentence:

And if there are still even in our lines remnants of the dirty marks of your "Common Sense" and "good taste," nevertheless in them already stir for the first time the Lightnings of the New Coming Beauty of the Self-Suffi

cient (self-centered) Word. (:4)

The principles proclaimed here, by the admission of the writers themselves, are only vague concepts awaiting fuller development in the future. This is reflected in the uncertain content of Khlebnikov's neologism samovitoe, introduced in parentheses at the very end. Emphasis in lexical innovation would seem to be directed toward morphological ("derived") coinages. •


K~uc~onykh's one poem here, like most of the previous ones, is uncaptta~tzed and almost entirely unpunctuated, and would appear to be a sequence of disjointed stanzas. However, these are followed by an "author's note":

the world is drawn

in artistic externality it

is also expressed in that way: instead of 1-2-3 the events are arranged 3-2-1 or 3-1-2 thusitalsoisinmy

poem

from the end

In oth~r words, the events described have been shuffled by the author, a ra~e n~stance of a deliberately employed and revealed compositional dev~c~ m ~r~chonykh. But by saying "3-2-1 or 3-1-2," he is carefully avotd~ng gtvmg us the precise key to the order of events. Indeed, they are still so~ewhat di~ficult to unravel. It seems safe to say that the story descnbes an .offtcer who takes up with a redheaded coquette ~amed Polya (Paulme), they have a rendezvous in a field, his mother Intervenes and embarrasses the coquette, the officer is knifed by an~ther ~an, who is perhaps another of the Polya's lovers, and the offt~er dtes. The references to eyes looking east and the number eight mtght suggest a term at hard labor resulting from the killing, and the whole poem may then be a prisoner's confession of a crime reminisc.ent ~f Dostoevsky's Notes from the House of the Dead. If this interpretation Is accurate, then indeed the order of the seven stanzas might be something like 5-6-7-4-~-1-3 or 4-3-5-6-7-2-1. The ambiguity of certain stanzas, however, remams. The compositional device used here is not ~ merely mechanical one in which, say, the poem was written out first m normal chronological order and then the pieces were literally shuffled to pl.ace them in a random order. If that were the case, it would be posstble to reassem~le ~em in pr~per order at the end. Important pieces of the puzzle are mtsst~g. There Is enough for a fairly clear picture to emerge, but the gestalt Is by no means completely firm. Some elements of ~e story ~emain intriguingly unresolvable. I am inclined on this ba~ts .to co~tder the poem a little masterpiece of indeterminacy, desptte Its deliberateness of composition.

This then brings us to the official initiation of zaum.

"Dyr bul shchyl" remains Kruchonykh's most famous or, perhaps more accurately, notorious poem. It became a symbol of the Futurist mo~ement and, for its critics, of Futurism's wildest excesses, a poem whtch, as Kruchonykh later noted, "was, they say, much more famous than I myself" [1924, RGALI fond 1334-1-27:2]. At the same time, it


represents a step never taken by Marinetti and Italian Futurism and only subsequently by the Dadaists.

As it first appeared in Pomade in March of 1913 (Kruchonykh says January (1923d:38)), it was No. 1 of three poems intr~du~ed by the phrases: 113 poems/ written in/ their own language/ 1~ dtffers from others:/ its words do not have/ a definite meaning" [Ftgure 1]:1 !he key words here are sobstvenom [their o~] and ?P'e~elyonag? [ deftmte ], the first indicating that the language m question IS the ~nvate property of either the poems or, by extension, their author and 1~ not shared by the public at large, and the second in~icatin~ tha~ i~ this l:u'guage meaning, even for the author, is indetermmate, mdeftmte, deh_berately undefined and undefinable. The root meaning of apredelyonny mvolves predel [lim'it, boundary, end] and therefore c~rries a spatial ,~onn~tation and along with the prefix o- [around] basically means to put hmits around." The Latin roots to 11 define" and 11 determine" also convey the concept of end or limit, finitude, and termination. In other. w~rds, this language intends to do without or go be!o~d [za-] the hmtts ~f definiteness, thus carrying a spatial metaphor similar to the term zaum , which had not yet surfaced. . . .

The poem that followed this scrawled Introduction h~s. receiVed considerable critical attention. One interesting a~pect of ~Is 1~ t~e fact that, when cited, the poem is almost always mtsquoted. ~~sIs perhaps in part due to a lack of rigor among Russian literary cntics at the time when it comes to precision of citation; but the fact that the poem is in zaum, and thus cannot be referred to an internalized standard for spelling and word usage, compounds the problem and ~r~v~nts typesetters and copy-editors from picking up errors. If the cnhc Is quoting from memory, then the difficulty of correctly rec~lling 11no~sense" adds to the likelihood of misquotation. Kruchonykh himself revised the spe~ling of the second line in subsequent publications to 11 ubeshchur," omitting the fourth letter, and those who quote that much of the poem usually use the revised spelling (e.g., Arvatov 1923a:82), but ofte;' ~ake other changes as well. While in some instances Kruchonykh s h~ographed texts might leave one occasionally uncertain abo~t spellmg or spacing, in the present instance there are ~nly two potentially problematic places. The vowel in the first word ~s ~o~ewhat.smudged ~t the bottom, making one uncertain whether It Is 1 or y. Kruchonykh s own later citations in print establish it as y (e.g., 1916a:16 [there he places a space between u and beshchur!]). And the dista~ce between sh and shch in the second line might suggest two words Instead of one. The rest is quite clear and unambiguou~. .

Initial reaction to the poem was predictably negative. Bryusov comments:

I

Fig. 1: A. Kruchonych, "Dyr bul shchyl," Pomade, 1913.


Of course, we can in noway sympathize with reducing speech (also following the example of the Italian Futurists) to interjections and meaningless [bezsmyslennym] combinations,of sounds, as for example in J. Gant

d'Orsaille: A-a! A~a! Green branchy branches A-a! A-alA-a! Oo-oo-oo!!!

-or in V. Khlebnikov: Bobeobi sang the lips ...

-or even more so in A. Kruchonykh: Dyr-bul-shchyl ...

first of all because these combinations of sounds, besides the fact that they are absolutely "not expressive," are in addition extremely unpleasant to the ear. (1913:129)

Sergei Bobrov, at the time an ally of the Petersburg Ego-Futurists, quips:

-is it really not yet clear that this is simply a hick scribbler occupied with "creativity" out of desperate boredom. Or his illiterate daubing, for which he proposes the invention of all sorts of "bul shchur dur's" [sic] as a cure for" gnoseological isolation," as if by combining letters as though without system we could achieve a situation in which thought uttered would cease being a lie.3 (Of course, this is true in the sense that collective ageement is '' arrived at by the fact that no one understands anything). (1913:8)

Another Ego-Futurist critic, M. ;Rossiyansky (L. Zak), after quoting the poem, comments that this is:

like a musician who while shouting: "true music is a combination of sounds: long live the self-centered sound!" demonstrates this theory by playing on a soundless piano. The Cubo-Futurists do not create combinations of words, but combinations of sounds, because their neologisms are not words, but comprise only one element of the word. The Cuba-Futurists, who rose in defense of the "word as such," in reality are driving it out of poetry, are turning poetry into nothing. (1913) (LawtonjEagle:138; Markov

1967:90}

A Petersburg critic, I. Ignatov, gives a lightly ironical evaluation: "If all this is expressed in Russian by the one word 'pomade,' then obviously the author's' own language' is much more complicated than Russian" (1913:2). Another, V. Burenin, takes vigorous issue with Bryusov's moderately positive general view of Futurism. Wildly misquoting "Dyr" along with Khlebnikov's "Bobeobi" and two examples from Mayakovsky, Burenin comments that the Futurists are either "brazen clowns fabricating this rubbish [akhineyu] for the sake of mockery


or pitiful Poprishchins who ive bi h . . tal disease" and they h g

1 rt to this rubbish because of men-

h ave on y one purpos . "t t emselves by any ava .1 bl e. o attract attention to tal I I a e means l ] In th . .

ent ess dullards and benighted d ·b · . e maJority they are asks: "Pardon me Mr Br b' cru e, razen Ignoramuses." He then

. ' . yusov, ut what greate • · , one achieve in gibberish?" (1913:S). r expressiveness can

Shershenevich after givin K h misquoting the poe' m g rue onykh' s introduction and slightly , comments:

The Cubofuturists maintain that the d . the concept of this self I bl wor Is only sound, i.e., they narrow

-va ua e poesic [p ] . zero. They begin to cr t b' . oeznogo matenal, reducing it to

ea e com matwns of d own initial principle that oetry . . ~~un s and contradict their

Tasteven remarks: p Is a combmatiOn of words. (1913:74)

But if these impressionistic depictions f . . and automobiles have on! a su .. o .the n~tse of trams, aeroplanes relationship do such verseye ~erftcial hnk With modernity, then what

xpenments by the · 1. turism like the famous "k ks. k . maxima Ists of Russian Fu-shyl, ubeshchur" have t u't?I ;m,mukt~kuk"orthenotorious"dyrbul kum" is closer to mod ~ I th. automatic question arises why "kuksi

ermty an the mo t b · sonnets of Mall arm-< th f d s o scure and Incomprehensible

. ""' e oun er of Symb r . anses about the correspond be o Ism. An automatic question . ence tween theor d . . Ism. (1914:22) Y an ·creativity in Futur-

In a later passag T e asteven refers to th " 1 . Kruchonykh" in which "modernit h e g oom.y dissonances of

By contrast, Khlebnikov in a I!tt a: c~mpletely disappeared" (:34). made this comment: "Dyr bul h he~ o . ruchonykhof Aug.31,1913, passions" (1940:367). s c Y quite calms the most disparate

And then there is a mild criticism fr mous S. Khudakov, whose actual id fto~ th~ l~ft b.y the pseudony-

en I y Is still m dispute:

Among the number of books that h and Lotov'sRecord are the on! avhe come out, Kruchonykh's Pomade . p y ones w ere the word b . b In omade the tenderly sentimental . . h egms to e free, but the indefiniteness of the t d spmt c aracteristic of the author and . en ency to make the w d If

give this book the right t b k . or se -valuable do not o eta en senously. (1913:142)

?ne cannot help thinking that the ch . . tenderly sentimental" is mad 'th aracten.zatiOn of Kruchonykh as

criticism for being to e WI tongue m cheek. In any case this K o conservative is un · . ' ruchonykh. Ique m the literature on

Some later scholars still continue to maintain that th . e poem Is mean-


ingless and/ or unrelated to the Russian language (E. Brown 1973:60; Fauchereau 1975:37; Sola 1990:585; White 1990:252). Florensky holds a similar view but also admits: "Personally I like this 'dyr bul shchyl': there is something forest-like, brown, rough-hewn, dishevelled which jumps up and gives out 'r I ez' in a creaking voice like an unoiled door. Something like Konyonkov's carvings" (1986:151).• In another kind of formulation, Revzin states:" for constructing a poem in zaum the poet chooses not just any permissible combinations, but, as a rule, those which are avoided in natural speech" (1962:21).

Immediate negative reactions were countered by Kruchonykh's claim that "in this five-line poem there is more of the Russian national (character] than in all the poetry of Pushkin" (Kruchonykh/Khlebnikov 1913:12). He was of the opinion that "the sounds y and shch are not found in other languages" (McVay:577). For European languages this is apparently true at least of y (Shcherba 1912:70). It is somewhat surprising to find that no one except Tomashevsky (1959:182) and Scholz (1968:482) has noted the violation of the Russian phonological system in the very first line: the spelling of shchyl indicates that the initial sibilant is followed by a "hard" y instead of the "soft""i required by both orthographic and phonological rules of Russian. Tomashevsky nevertheless considers that "these are all sounds which by pronunciational features do not go beyond the limits of Russian." Muravyov, Glazkov, ~ Grygar, and Myasnikov, by "correcting" the spelling to i, are also in effect implying that Kruchonykh has violated the rule (see note 2). However, in Ukrainian (Kruchonykh grew up in Ukraine) this combination is not a problem phonologically. Markov describes the poem as beginning "with energetic monosyllables, some of which slightly resemble Russian or Ukrainian words" (1968:44), perhaps having this in mind. Mickiewicz characterizes the poem as "prespeech-like 'ur-Russian' word gestures (Lautgebt'irden)" with a "primitive, pounding, single beat" because of the predominance of unvoiced plosive fricative monosyllables (1984:389). Kruchonykh later describes the sounds of the poem as having a "Tartar tinge" (1925b:28; Markov 1968:391). Nilsson, who has submitted the poem to its most thorough analysis to date, has uncovered possible links to Turkic languages:

"Bul", for instance, is the root (and imperative case) of the Tartar verb, "bul'', meaning "to become". "Dyr" is a variant of the usual copula 3. pers. sing. and "bu" a demonstrative pronoun in several Turkic languages, including Tartar. On the other hand, certain sounds and sound combinations do not correspond to the phonemic structure of Turkic languages (the same is true of Russian). (1979:146-47)

In addition, Nilsson points out that the two roots discussed are also meaningful in Russian, as Arvatov had earlier noted: "they are per

•


ceived as a series of roots, prefixes, etc., with a definite sphere of semantic character (bulyzhnik [cobblestone], bulava [mace], bulka [bun], bultykh [plop], dyra [hole], etc." (Arvatov 1928:132). We could continue this series with shchel' [crack, slit, chink], ubezhdat' [convince], obeshchat' [promise], ubezhat' [run away]; shchur [pine-finch; tribal ancestor], shchurit' [squint]; skumekat' [reckon], skumbriya [scomber, mackerel (not of Russian origin, however)], kum [god-parent], skumlivat'sya [become god-parents]. Vy is the pronoun "you" (pl.) or the prefix vy- (roughly: "out-"); so is the preposition "with" or the prefix so- ("con-").

Perceiving the words of the poem as fragments falls into line with the Cubist practice of using word pieces as parts of paintings in collage-like compositions, sometimes with evident origins as scraps of newsprint, labels, or signs. Picasso and Braque began to paint or sten~il in words on their paintings in 1910-11 and to use bits of newspaper m 1912. Rosenblum (1973) has analyzed the multiple, sometimes scatological suggestiveness of this technique, a technique that would immediately have appealed to Goncharova, Larionov, Shevchenko, Kruc~onykh, et al. It can be found in Russian art as early as 1912, includmg some of the illustrations for worldbackwards (Janecek 1984a:81-82), though rarely did the Russians achieve the refined cleverness of Picasso, opting instead for a more primitive, graffiti-like look.

As Nilsson notes, "this poem consists mainly of combinations of sounds which look very much like syllables and words of an 'ordinary' language," thus inclining the reader to attempt to decode it "by means of the code which seems closest to hand, i.e., the poet's own language" (:141). But the reader will ultimately be left with various inconclusive possibilities. There are perhaps three words which could stand on their own as Russian words: dyr [noun, gen. pl. of dyra, hence "of~oles"], vy [pronoun "you" nom. pl.] and so [preposition "with"], but tf we attempt to create a semantic or syntactic structure with them, we do not get very far. Bul would have to be interpreted by its form as a noun. Suffice it to say that none of the various interpretations of the root bul suggested above (or others that could be added from either Russian or Ukrainian) make for a logical or satisfying combination with "of holes." So that approach fails immediately. The sequence "vy so bu" also fails to submit to decoding.

However, one has the impression that Russian roots or word fragme~ts are present, r~ising the question whether we have before us phonetic or morphological zaum. Do we have recognizable morphemes here? A significant problem arises when one is not sure whether the given" morpheme" is a root, prefix, or suffix. For example, vy, if treated as an independent word can only be the pronoun "you," but if seen as a fragment ~ould be t~e prefix "out-." Prefixes are often polyvalent and semantically ambiguous when examined in isolation from a root (we have discussed za- earlier) but become relatively fixed when asso-


dated with a root. Is it proper to refer to vy as a ~orpheme i~ it could be either the pronoun or the prefix? The same applies to so, whtch co~ld be either a preposition or a prefix. It is interesting to note that function words (pronouns, prepositions, particles) as opposed t_o conte~t wor~s (nouns and verbs) are inflexible and not ~menab~e to t~ovation. Dtstort them and they totally lose their function, their place tn the syntac-tic structure. . ..

The crux of the matter, therefore, involves the deftnition of _roots and ultimately their etymology. Dyr appears to have only one I~ter-

retation ("hole"), but what about bul? For one thing, it is not entirely ~ear whether it is Russian, Tatar, or Ukrainian. If we _exclude ?ther languages besides Russian, we find that it. does not ex~st ~ an mdependent word in Russian, but only in a v~nety, of ~ombm~h~ns. Clo,sest to the base form is the onomatopoetic bul, with vanahons bulk, bul'bul', bul'bukh, and bul'kan'e [gurgling], all having to _do with ~e sound of water either being poured from or into somethmg or bem_g penetrated by an obiect, say, a stone, hence bultykh [plop!]. But there Is another constellation of words based on the shared concept of "har~, round head": bulava, bulka, buldygajbulyga [callus, cudgel], bulyz~mk. Interestingly, one not hitherto noted is buldyr' [var. voldyr', a regional word for a blister or swelling from a bump (see also Kruchonykh 1976:90)], which combines the first two words of ~ruchonykh's poem . in reverse order with the substitution of a palatahzed r. That no one has noticed this word indicates it is not foremost in a Russian reader's set of associations, but this does not exclude the possibility th~t Kruchonykh had it in mind. As we will see later, the results of this study of bul are reminiscent of the analyses of roots conducted by Khlebnikov. .

For the third word, the only evident interpretation of shchyli~ a~ a distorted form of shchel'. As already pointed out, the orthographtc mdication of a "hard" shch is a violation of Russian phonology. We can obtain an i sound in the root by shifting stress as in adjectival derivatives shchelevoy or shchelinny or shchelisty, reducing the unstressed vowel in the first syllable to i. But words derived from the ~oot s~chel' hav~ a palatalized l, with the single exception of shchelo:vma, dtsc~ver~d tn Dal as a variant of the nounshchelina [crack]. Desptte these dtstortions, this interpretation seems appropriate i~ the _context ~f the first line.s We seem to have a series of roots dealing With phystcal shapes or at least general outlines of shapes: hole-round-slit. Holes tend to be rounded· therefore hole and round are related by shape and could be comple~entary if the concept of round bun or bump is used for bul according to the comparison: "empty round space" /"filled ro~nd space." On the other hand, "hole" and "slit" are related as perforatwns or voids, the latter clearly long and narrow, the former ~robably not, again a similarity f contrast pairing. Furthermore, there Is a progres-


sio~ of dis~ortio~ from a recognizable word in an oblique case or stnpped of Its desmence (dyr) to a naked root which does not exist as a wor? indep~ndently and has two possible etymologies (bul), to a formatw~ th.at Is at best a distorted root containing a non-Russian sound combmatwn (shchyl). All of this is quite abstract.

The next line, containing a trisyllabic word" of shaggy appearance" (Markov 1968:44), is again a case of comparison/ contrast, an ever-present phenomenon at the heart of poetic structure. The first line ~as three monosyllables; the second line is one trisyllable. The first hne appears to be a series of nouns; the second line might be derived from a ve.rb. There are many monosyllabic Russian nouns, but only a few Russian verbs have monosyllabic forms. Secondly, the first two syll~bles of ubeshshchur (or ubeshchur), ube-, begin only verbs (or nouns den~e~ from ~ese ver~s: ubeg [secret departure, flight], ubezhdenie [a ~onvtction, ~ehef], ubezhzshche [hideaway]). However, the word changes Its nature midway through. The expected zh shifts to its voiceless partner sh (a natural sound shift at the end of a word or before another voiceless consonant, shch), and this serves to introduce what appears ~o be~ new root, shchur (possibly shchurka [finch], which later turns up m Umversal War (1915)(Stapanian 1985:27, 32)). The word ends, then, looking less like a verb than a noun. Another, more hidden shift of roots also suggests itself- ubezh-chur! [flee-fain!)- which makes sense as an excl.amatio~ to ward off evil in earnest or as part of a children's game. This requires, however, that the shift of roots occur within the phoneme sh:h, another kind of violation of Russian phonology. But Kruchonykh s subsequent removal of sh, with the evident understanding ~at sonically it is already included in the letter shch, may indicate that mdeed he had in mind to locate the root shift within the letter shch. Such a sdvig is an excellent analogue in poetry to the visual shifts and dislocations of Cubist painting.

The third line contains a single monosyllable with only the few possible derivations given above. If we take the most likely of these to be skumlivat'sya, where the stress is on the first syllable, as opposed to skumekat', where it is on an absent second syllable, then in addition to the contrast in number of syllables with the second line we also have a semantic contrast: a verb meaning to enter into a rel;tionship rather than to avoid one, as in "flee-fain." These last two interpretations base themselves solidly on Russian folk lexicon and roots as was favored by the Futurists.

With skum, a shrinking process begins. While there is a return in the next line to three monosyllables, each of them is of only two letters, a consonant and a vowel. Further parallels to the first line are the fact that vy is a recognized word, and bu may be seen as a truncated form of bul (Nilsson 1979:145). This process continues in the last line where the first two "words" are consonants from the first line stri;ped of

l ,-._


their vowels, though as liquid continuants they are alr~ady quasi-syllabic and utterable without an expressed vowel. The fmal ez, characterized by Markov as "a queer, non-Russian-sounding syllable" (1969:44), receives the following commentary by Nilsson:

If the poem had been written by an Italian futurist, the interpretation of this pronounced reduction of the poem's sound structure would be rather easy. The poem could be read as an interesting illustration of the [ ... ] idea of Marinetti and Soffici: the final goal of art is to lose itself in life, the sounds of poetic language become congruent with the sounds of life. The first sound of the last line, "r", could, for instance, represent the roar of engines, the concluding" ez" the howl of the steam-whistle, well-known futurist sound symbols. Between them stands the liquid "I", which perhaps could be interpreted as a symbol of man (the Church-Slavonic name for the letter "I" is [ ... ]"!judi" [people] [ ... ]. (:145)

However, Kruchonykh and Khlebnikov rejected on principle th~ ~talian onomatopoetic orientation. On the ot~er h~nd, the ~asc.uhmz~tion of the words, a principle close to Mannetti s heart, Is evident m this first part of the triptych: all but the words in the fourth ~ine end in consonants, thus making them masculine in Russian, desptte the fact that several of them (dyr[a], bul[ka], shch[el']) are apparently truncated ... feminine words. And the words in the fourth line are probably to be considered neuter.

Taken as pure sound poetry (i.e., without presumed semantic or referential content), the poem presents an interestingly structured artifact, and Nilsson has studied this facet of the poem thoroughly (:143-45). He points out that the five lines with their symetrically arranged syllable count resemble a Chinese o~ Japanese sho.rt poem of the tanka or haiku variety. Such oriental poetic forms were m vogue at the time in Russia as well as the West. While this is an interesting development, it relates more to formal arrangements of the text than to the nature of the language used, though concentration, ~uggest~veness, and ellipsis are among the features shared by s~ch bnef poetic st~uctures. After noting the" reduction of the phonemic structure of the lmes after the third line," Nilsson continues:

The three monosyllables of similar phonemic structure in the first line suggest energy and strength. The initial consonants change from dental to labial to palatoalveolar and the vowels from ly I to I ul and back to I y j again. An oral rendering thus requires full exploitation of the speech apparatus and a constant changing from one position to another. It reminds one of the "speech mimic" to be found in, for instance, Pasternak's poetry from this period.

The second line continues and varies the energetic impression of the •

-tt 1'f071l fDfo* kilL lie CfJ op10 tlA 10/.A e 11 '1~/iH6wf ~ J /,( K.

Jno [6-cAo w if du~ ~t.,(. fM~H

J;i a, ca A< a e :Co.. jlOc l"ajt

CaeM CillO ell ( JL«l!f" M.OA Q

a AID

Fig. 2: Parts 2 and 3 of the "Dyr bul shchyl" triptych, Pomade, 1913.


orthographically impermissible letter y, could be'the beginning of several Russian words: itak [and so, thus], itog [sum, result], itogo [total], and the nationalities ital'yantsy [Italians], itel'meny [Iteb:ne:f¥l: tribe on Kamchatka]. It further suggests a Caucasian language (e.g., Ossetian), Moldavian, or a Siberian language (e.g., Chukchi) where the vowel y is common. The req1ai.nder of the poem, in normal though somewhat fragmentary Russian, supports this latter connection: "I will not dispute [I'm] in love/ black tongue [or: language]/ it was also with the wild tribes [i.e., th~ wild tribes (llso had it]." Here we unexpectedly encounter a rhyme (vlyublyonfplemyon [in love/tribes]. Were one to extend the erotic interpretation from the first poem, as would seem appropriate, given the overt reference to love, one might also add the friction and rubbing of "frat" and the frontal contact of "fran" to a picture that suggests the sex act itself and its internationality and agelessness.6

The third poem returns to nearly pure phonetic zaum, but in contrast to the first poem, vowels are emphasized (for 17 consonants there are 18 vowels, 9 of which are a). In Russian the standard ratio of vow., els to consonants is approximately 2:3, and a, the most frequent vowel, accounts for one in three vowels Ganecek/Riggs 1989:225). A majority of the words end In open syllables (8 of 12), and five of these are a, suggesting feminine gender, in contrast to the masculine emphasis of the first poem.

As a sound composition,.this poem is carefully structured like the first, but in a different way. The arrangement of the vowels by syllables is:

a"" a ae a a au ae iyu u au oa

a

that is, a patterning by pairs (two "ae"s and "au"s, as well as two individual vowels, "i" and "o," in mid-line position as the first vowel in bisyllables). If we move the last word up to the end of the preceding line, we have two balanced couplets. Consonantal patterning is paired to some extent, particularly in the second half of the poem. We also have a few sonic pairings of whole words, mostly with inversion: mae-saem, bau-dub, dub-radub, mola-al'. In contrast to the first poem, there is a certain thickening rather than thinning of sonic texture as the poem progresses, and a certain word-building, as ra combines with dub to form radub, and sa and mae combine to become saem.

There are several recognizable morphemes in the poem. The most obvious of these is dub [oak] .. This has a humorous echo in the next •


·first one. Not three monosyllables with a heavy accent on each of them but one three-syllabic word where the reader is free to place the accent on any syllable or all of them. The previous consonants appear in new combinations and in a new order. There is a symmetric variation of the vowels,fromjy 1-/u/-/y/ (first line) to juj-jej-juj (second line). The lonely "skum" of the third line closes the first part of the poem, introducing three new consonants while keeping the dominating vowel of the preceding lines, the "dark" I uj. In the fourth line reduction and transformation set in. "Bu" reads as a reduction of "bul" while "vy" could pass as a transformation of "dyr". The complex sibilants of the first and second lines (" shch" -" shshch") are reduced to a simple" so". In the concluding line all that remains of" dyr" is "r" and of "bul" likewise only the last letter "1". The energetic "shchyl" is reduced to a hissing "ez". (:144-45)

In this analysis, the poem appears as a highly structured composition, more so than the majority of poems, which have to contend with semantics and syntax, and therefore almost inevitably with compromises in the sonic sphere. Instead, Kruchonykh is free to trace an abstract musical path "from energetic and complex sound combinations of the first lines to the simple sounds of the last one" (Nilsson:145). The end of the poem is something like a dying echo of the beginning. The semantic level, or what we have been able to discern of it, traces a similar path from relatively suggestive individual Russian roots to mere letters or phonemes. Both of these patterns can be situated also in the general pattern of contrast within similarity, or progressive development (decay?) accompanied by a notable recursiveness.

We can also add to the picture Perloffs observation that the three visual units of the poem on the page-namely, the introductory statement, the poem itself, and the rayist drawing by Larionov below the poem-further underscore the triplicity we have noted in the poem's structure. While Perl off emphasizes the visual similarities of the three u~its, which announce "that poetry is to be read in a new way, that its visual representation is itself a significant part of its ecriture" (1986:123), we can also mention the obvious contrasts between the units, one a passage of only somewhat idiosyncratic prose, the second a poem of "indefinite" meaning, and the third a drawing of somewhat indefinite representationality. Perl off sees the last as a" nonrepresentational" "grid of diagonal lines and curves" (:123), but can one not make out a nude woman reclining at a 45 degree angle? Does the poem too then have an erotic meaning (hole/ crevice=vagina, bul=breasts)? As we will see, th~s is supported by the second and third parts of the triptych. One might also read in the drawing a bird taking flight. It is interesting, further, to note the gestalt effect in the drawing: once one has discerned an object, it is next to impossible to ignore its presence thereafter. In the poem, however, the indeterminacy remains strong.


Putting all these factors together, can we arrive at a definitive interpretation of this poem? If by that we mean a paraphraseable content, then we must be satisfied with the indefiniteness obviously intended. We are presented with a highly structured artifact, the sound content of which is harsh rather than lyrical, aggressive and masculine rather than gentle and cultured. Its physical appearance is also crude and unaesthetic. The poem's significance is partly contained in that very contrast with the cultural norm, with the expected elegant lyricism of Symbolist poetry. The words are projective, more like a loud curse than an intimate love lyric, and draw on extensive vocal-mimetic resources. There is no observable syntax to the poem. It is not therefore far-fetched to compare it to an abstract painting in· which composition is the most obvious organizing feature rather than subject. There are shapes that give tension and dynamism to the picture without univocally suggesting definite objects (a circle may be the sun, the moon, a ball, a porthole, but it still contrasts with a square and a triangle), and there are colors that can suggest emotions and spatial layers independent of shapes and objects. The lack of syntax in the poem might be compared to a lack of representational setting in a painting. There may be some discernible objects in it, but they do not find themselves in a recognizable context (e.g., in a landscape or room interior). The pieces fit together not on the discursive-representational level, but on the abstract-compositional level, and are comprehensible only on that level. ..

It is rather odd that although "Dyr bul shchyl" was expressly only the first of a cycle of three poems, literally no one, including Markov and Nilsson, has said anything at all about the other two contained on the next page [Figure 2]. Only Ignatov (1913:2) even quotes the entire cycle; Chukovsky quotes the first line of No.2 (1914:25,1922:31), Ziegler quotes the third poem but does not comm,ent on it (1986:80), and Tolic quotes the third poem with only the comment that "It is built on the model of a children's counting rhyme" (1991 :70). Admittedly, after the shock of the first, the other two seem less dramatic.

No. 2 begins, as in the first poem, with a series of three monosyllables, none of which is especially Russian-sounding. The phoneme f is not a native Russian sound (except as a devoiced v), and words beginning with "f' are invariably of foreign origin. Therefore "frat" appears to be without Russian roots of any kind, in contrast to all the words in the preceding poem. It seems to suggest only the French frotter, frottage [to rub, rubbing] and may have entered Kruchonykh's mind through art school terminology. "Fran," differing from the first word only in the final consonant (and visually even less), suggests a truncated "front" [military or weather]. The near repetition perhaps suggests stuttering or several unsuccessful attempts to reproduce a difficult foreign word. The third word, "yt," although it begins with the


word rad~b which inco~orates it but forms a coinage that suggests :aduga [rambow]. Radub 1s so close to raduga that the "incorrect" endmg of the word comes as a shock to one's expectation. The humor is supported by the antithetical nature of these two natural phenomena, one earthbound and very solid, the other heavenly and ephemeral. Ta could be the fe~. ~g. ~om. o~ tot [that]. Mae presents an interesting example of amb1gu1ty m that Interpretation depends on whether one reads th~ thi~d letter as. e or yo with the dieresis omitted as is usually the case m pnnted Russian, and therefore with the stress on the first or second syllable, respec.tively. If the former, then we might have ti:te prep. sg. of may [Ma!']; If the latter, then we might have mayo [mine] as m ~he folk exclamation yo, yo, mayo [my-oh-my]. Siyu could be "this" as m the expression siyu minutu [this minute, right away]. Mola is gen. sg. of mol [breakwater], or the less common direct equivalent mola with ~~e sam~ meaning (Dal II:340). Al' is possibly the colloquial variant of tlt [or] with a bit of an expectation of a negative choice of alternatives. . The p~eval~nce of non-tense vowels, especially solfeggic a (in the

first two lmes, If the two bisyllabic words are stressed on the first syllable, then all the stressed vowels are a), the absence of hard consonants or clusters, and the hints of pleasant, safe (harbored) things all suggest~ ge~tle song, possibly a lullaby ("bau" hints at bayu-bayushkibayu, wh1c~ Is the standard refrain of a Russian lullaby). A conclusion of the erotic theme would suggest the relaxation and tenderness that sets in after the climax of the sex act. Thus this poem contrasts with the first poem in the cycle, which is aggressive, harsh, and more like a ~urse .or c?nj ura tion. Yet a certain cyclical structuring of the whole work Is mamtamed by the return to phonetic zaum, in contrast to the second poem, which is largely non-zaum. With the return of phonetic zaum comes a return to triplicity of words per line. Thus the tripartite structure already seen within the first poem of the triptich is reflected in the entire cycle.

Before us is a very well structured artifact. Triplicity predominates. But each of the three poems has its own character, thereby continuing and developing the initially observed principle of comparison and contrast. It would be difficult to find even among the best examples of more traditional poetry a better made poem. At the same time, its crude humor and under-the-surface sexual suggestiveness never fail to make an impression, once the initial dismay has passed.

Notes

1

I would like. to draw the reader's attention to the orthography of this passage, or rather to Its heterography. At this point in Russian history, orthographic reforms were being publicly discussed, but an official decision would not be reached until1918. Kruchonykh here and elsewhere uses a mixture of old or-


thography and his own version of a new orthography which could be tern~.ed either intentionally substandard or forward-looking. His innovation consi.sts in dropping the second n in napisannyya, sobstvennom, and opredel~nago,. wh1~ in careful pronunciation would be articulated and is therefore still retamed m standard spelling. Its omission here is thus a mark of substandard us~ge and would profile the writer as only semi-literate, a fact that would certamly not have gone unnoticed by Kruchonykh' s contemporaries and which contributes to his image as a primitive.

?fhus Shershenevich has "ubeshchur" and "Ri ez" (1913:74), Tasteven gives "Dyr bul shyl/Ubeshchur" (1914:22). Shklovsky had first given the following garbled combination of two separate poems: "Go, osneg kand dyr bur shi~" (1915:8), then corrected this to Tasteven's spelling (1916:14). Chukovsky, m the later version of his essay on the Futurists, also gives "shyl," adds some hypenation, gives the fourth line as "vy-sko-bu," and runs the last line together into one word "rlez" (1922:27, 42), as does Predtechensky (1926:5), who is probably quoting from Chukovsky. Zakrzhevsky (1914:121), Lvov-Rogachevsky (1924:283), and Paperny (1972:347) also run the last line together. Khodasevich has "dyr-byl-shchur" ([1914a] 1990:159). Ignatov has "shyl" (1913:2), Ivnev's memoirs have "Dyr bul shchir" (publ. posthumously 1981:126), as do Ozerov's (1990:53, 59), Lunacharsky has "Dyr-bul-shchyr" ([1923] 1967 V:358, corrected in the editorial notes:682), Mindlin .has " "Dyr-bul-shchir" (1979:113-114, reprinted in 1987:339), and Muravyov giVes "shchil" (1987:97), as do Glazkov (1966:148), Pomorska (1968:86), Grygar (1973:77), Grigorev (1991:11), Meylakh (1991:374), Sukhoparov (1992:9), ~d Myasnikov (1975:342), who misquotes several other items as well. S. Volodm has: "Dyr, bul, shyr" (1923:27); Ivanov-Razumnik has: "Dyr, bul~ shchur" (l921:17); Gornfeld has: "Dyr bul shchur'' (1922a:43/1927:186); Zh1rmunsky has "Dyr Bul Tyl- Ubeshchur" (1928:343). · .

Aseev has "Dyr, bul, shura" (1929:10), but Moldavsky (1986:203), m recalling a conversation he witnessed between Kruchonykh and Aseev on Oct. 30, 1963, reports:

Aseev with contrived perplexity asked Kruchonykh: "Why did you think all this up?" "Dyr, bur, shchil [sic)?" "But I always thought it was: 'dyr, bur, shir'," said Nikolay

Nikolaevich [Ascev). "No, it needs to be 'shchil' ." "Why did you write this?" "To provide new phonemes ... "

Along with other misquotations, Tretyakov adds an exclamation point to "Skum!" (1923:3). David Burliuk, probably working from memory over a de

•


cade later in New York, comes up with "Dyrbulshchol" and in a completely fanciful way treats it as an abbreviation which he interprets as "Dyroy budet litso schastlivykh olukhov" [fhe face of happy dolts will be a hole] (1924:4), based not only on misspelling the last word, but on running all three words together and then redistributing word boundaries! Elsewhere he interprets it as "Dyroy budet urodnoe litso schastlivykh slukhov" [fhe monstrous face of happy rumors will be a hole] (1929-30) (Kovtun 1976:194). Perhaps the wildest misquotation is achieved by the very negatively disposed critic V. Burenin: "Dyr-bud-pzylf Ubelitsur/Skum/Vy-so-bu/R-d-za" (1913:5). One suspects here a certain malicious deliberateness; alternately, perhaps the typesetters could not read Burenin' s hand writing. Second only to this is Yuri Annenkov' s: "Dyr, bul, shchil/Ubeshchur / R, I, poets ... " (1966 I:142). The almanac Svitak No. 3, 1924, contains misquotations .by two· separate authors: "raJ, ez" (Nikitina:144) and "dyr byl ubeshchur" (Iv. Rozanov:190-1). When Khlebnikov's essay "Our Fundamentals" was published in Liren' (1920), the poem was referred to as" dyrbul' shchel"' (:31). This was carried over into the Sobranie sochineniy V (1933/1972) as "dyr bul shchel" (:235), but fi~al!y corrected in Tvoreniya (1986:627). Even Bryusov, who is among the few to spell all the words correctly, for some reason feels the need-as did Lunacharsky, N. Rozanov (1914:21 ), and later Deych (1969:278)- to put dashes between the separate words on each line (1913:129). However, this may be justified by the fact that Kruchonykh himself does this on occasion (1973:269, 493) and himself has misspellings probably attributable to typesetters ("tsyl" 1973:493). Fauchereau has "Dir bul shchil" and ''rr ll ez" (1986:498), Otizhevsky has "r J zz ... " (1~6~a:1~3) an~,"r I z~,-" (1963b:83), Mathauser has "r e ez" (1964:63). Mtck1ew1cz has r l aez (1984:389). Evtushenko, in a poem in praise of "incomprehensible poets," gives "dyr ... bul ... shchir" without identifying the author (because he is well known?) (1985:9).

Other recent misspellings are to be found in Epshteyn: "dyr bur shil" (1989:223,224); Radov: "dyr byr shchyl" (1990:9, Radov indicated in a letter to me that this was the fault of the typesetters); and Brodsky: "dyr~bul-shcher" (1991:180) .

. When Bobrov refers to "izobretenie vsyakikh 'bul shchur dur' ov"' (1913:8), he IS no doubt distorting intentionally to make fun of Kruchonykh.

Bowra (1949:13) provides a reasonably good transliterated version but insists on commas between the first three words. '

A completely correct version of the entire poem can be found in R~ssiyansky, Redko, Chukovsky's essay in its first version (1914:150), B. Mtkhaylo:sky (~939:~73, in one line), Stepanov (1954:780), Tomashevsky (195_9:181, m one lme w1th a comma between "bu" and "r''), Revyakin (1974:319), Gengk (1975:50): Barnes (1978:64), Nilsson (1979:139; 1983:103), Weststeijn (1979:405), B. Zelmsky (1983:23), Lauhus (1983:41), Ziegler (1984:359), Lawton (1985:530) and Florensky (1986:142).

3A reference to Tyutchev's poem, "Silentium" [1830].


"'The Antinomy of Language," from which this quotation is drawn, is a section of a larger work, At the Watershed of Language [U vodorazdelov mysli], which was written by Florensky in the early 1920s based on a series of lectures he gave in 1916-17, but it was published only in 1986.

sLater, inMyatezh I (1920b n.p.) Kruchonykh provides a precise decoding which

supports this interpretation:

e DYR(a)-BUL(ava)-SHCHYL(')

also thereby narrowing the interpretation of "bul" to" a mace," which.strength~ ens the image of masculine aggression and shifts the sexual meanmg away from something possibly suggestive of breasts toward a weapon more sugges

tive of a phallus.

6An abbreviated version of this analysis of the triptych "Dyr bul shchyl" was presented at the conference "Russian and Ukrainian Avant-garde Poetry 1910-1990'' in Kherson, USSR, October, 1990, and published by V. Khazan (1991). Several comments by the audience were helpful in clarifying certai~ points in the text. A factor was the possiblity of associations with things_Ukralnian, given Kruchonykh's origins in the Kherson area, for example, a hnk be-

th "Shh ,. th ~ tween "dyr" and the Varangian/Kievan hero Dir, and at ~ ur IS e Bird of Happiness in Ukrainian folklore. In particular I would hke to thank Daniil Chkonia for his suggestions about the erotic interpretation of the sec

ond and third parts of the triptych. The theses of the same conference also include a paper by A. Zhurba and

M. Razinkova which interprets "Dyr bul shchyl" using data from A. P. Zhuravlyov's studies of sound-color associations. Whatever the merits of Zhuravlyov' s work. the application of it to Kruchonykh seems to me not pro

ductive in the given instance.

Chapter Two

FROM "DYR BUL SHCHYL" TO VICTORY OVER THE SUN

The remaining poems in Pomade (Kruchonykh 1973:53-70) are a return to less radical means of expression and have no zaum in them. Nor do two other lithographed books that came out simultaneously with Pomade in February-March, 1913, Hermits [Pustinniki] and Half-Alive [Poluzhivoy]. In other words, zaum was only one of Kruchonykh's poetic styles, and it did not entirely supplant his other orientations.

By Marc}l, 1913, Kruchonykh was in Petersburg actively collabo-rating with the Union of Youth group. The third issue of Union ofYouth !• (March, 1913), containing four poems of his, one of which was in phonetic zaum, appeared at roughly the same time as Pomade did in Moscow, thus introducing zaum to both capitals simultaneously.

The first poem would appear to be similar to those in worldbackwards in having the collage-like feel of disjointed fragments strung together:

I

TY ANUT KONEY ZAMETILty

kak ZLYKH KONEY nosili KOPYTY

ITY VSKRIQIAL zAZHAtyy

DOBRO VEZUT

KIDAYTE KHATY NE BEDNY NE BOGATY

KONETS VEZUT STARO

ROGATYI

The disconnected syntax and the spaced layout of the lines give the impression that this is a sket~h for a poem, where the rhymes and some

71

jneesetodd

Highlight


phrases have been noted down, but where there are gaps that await further work or inspiration from the poet. The final result is an example of syntactic zaum in which all the words are standard Russian words (with the possible exception of ROGATYI, which may be taken as an intentional misprint) joined in short, syntactically correct, but often incomplete word groupings (syntagmas). These, however, fail to form complete sentences or thought sequences The gaps are such that it is difficult to fill them in even provisionally.

A close reading of the first four lines gives us three provisional interpretions:

1: They were pulling the horses/you noticed/ as angry horses/ they were wearing hoofs

II: They were pulling the horses/you noticed/that they were wearing the hoofs of angry horses

III: They were pulling the horses/you noticed/how the hoofs were carrying the angry horses

None is entirely satisfactory, either logically or syntactically. Another possible approach is to assume that these lines are elliptical or incomplete. This possibility becomes more obvious in the remainder of the poem. The next two lines seem to form a sentence: "And you 1 cried out squ~ezed." ~en thcre.is the one-word line "goods," followed by what m1ght be 1ts syntactic completion "they transport the homed one[s]." The form rogatyi does not exist as such. Either it is a misprint for rogatyy, i.e., semicircle, or the "short i" is missing, and therefore this is the nom. sg. masc. "homed one"; or it is a phonetic spelling of the nom. pl. [unstressed e reduced to 1]"homed ones." This latter interpretation allows us to resolve the syntax in a relatively straightforward ma~er ~y making rogatyi the subject of vezut which requires a ~lural subJect: the horned ones are transporting goods." (The translation above unfortunately gives the impression that "horned ones" could be the obje~t of. transport, which is n~t a possibility in the Russian.) ~e remammg hnes each appear to be mdependent units:" throw [possibly: abandon] huts/ [they /we are] not poor, not rich/ the end they transport/ old." In contrast to dobro, with which it rhymes and forms a syntactic quasi-parallel, staro [old] cannot be both a noun and a predica~e nominative neut. sg. adjective, but only the latter. Therefore, despite ~he dec~ptive syntactic parallel (vezut dobro=vezut staro) the latter remams an mcomplete contruction, or at best a one-word nominal phrase: "it's old."

There is something in the syntactic sdvigi [dislocations, shifts] and the blurring of boundaries between man and animal here that is remi-

From "Dyr Bul Shchyl" to Victory Over the Sun 73

niscent of Khlcbnikov's earlier poem "Thicket" [Trushchoby, 1910], but Kruchonykh is more radical in his syn.tactic-semantic ~islocations than is the case either in the Khlebmkov poem or m most of Kruchonykh' sown earlier efforts in this sphere. H.ere the c~mponen~ are so disintegrated that one is completely unccrtam of the ~e~sage,, despite the presence of some synta~t~c ord~r. ,N_o large~ p1cture emerges from the collage-like juxtaposition of md1~1dual umts. In other words this is one of the best examples of syntactic zaum to date.

The last poem in the set, numbered "III" as was t~e preceding o.ne (a typo?), returns us decisively to the realm of phonetic zau~. As w1th the "Dyr bul shchyl" cycle, it has an introductory explanaho~ paraphrasing the other one: "(written in a lan.g~age of [my] own ~~;ention)." [Figure3] This poem is quoted by cnhcs almost as often as Dyr bul shchyl" (Rcdko 1914:217, 247; 1924:121; Kranikhfeld 1913:11~), but more often (though not always) without error, perhaps because 1ts f~rmations do not violate Russian orthography or phonology. All of 1ts words can be easily situated in a Russian context as pieces of recognized words or, in the case of osneg [osn- "found[-ation ]" / sneg "snow"] and batul'ba [bat- "father"/ -ul'ba "gul'ba" "uproarious merriment" and as a nominalizing suffix for other roots], can be seen as compounds of at least two roots or suffixes. This was true of "Dyr bul shchyl," of course but here the possibilities seem greater and more naturally Russian, though they fail to add up even to the provisional, abstract inter- 1

pretation possible for "Dyr bul shchyl." And structurally the poem has little of the patterning discovered in the "Dyr bul shchyl" cycle. There is no notable organization to the rhythm, nor .docs vowel an.d consonant distribution show any particular pattermng. In fact, th1s poem is remarkably resistant to interp~etation ~i~er semantically. or sonically, despite this reader's impressiOn that 1t Is a rather ~lcasmg and memorable creation. Whether this represents an advance m zaum technique I leave to others to decide. Kranikhfcld' s i~onic co~ment, after quoting the poem, is: "Here the poetry of Futunsm has mdecd attained the height of perfection accessible to it" (1913:112).

Kruchonykh' s contributions to the second Trap for Judges anthology (Sadok sudey 2, 1913:63-66), which also came out m March, are presented under the heading "Mutiny on the Snow" [Myatezh na snegu], with the subtitle: "Words with heavy bellies ct al." It is not entirely clear from the layout whether what follows is meant as a single poem or a short cycle [Figure 4]. The first part is laid ~ut as if it were pros~: but it begins with a sequence of simtlar words, Sa~cha krocha ~uga,. whose sonic qualities are in the foreground. The f1rst of them IS evidently zaum., but there are a number of analog,ous words d~ffcring o~ly in the third consonant (sarga [Kaz. sheep], sarga [hcmp-hke weavmg material], sarzha [serge], sanna [a drop-off in the terrain of a river bed],

IlL

ro OCH~f KAA.a

M P SA TY JibS A

CHHY AE KCE./1

BEP TYM"b .llAX

fH3

Fig. 3: A. Kruchonykh, "GO OSNEG KAYD," Union ofYouth No.3, 1913.

(ap~a. ~ ~Jra R&. Jt•IJ>O:tla Oll<tlpo•'\Jn. llft'a

.7Wt!>J1WT•'n})(~Jl()a..'no .. 'l& f"UJM'Httltyptd-'t:•Mr'J-a. NW.y6t.

aw&..,.Cy ~Hp-•.rr.;,-o•p•"l <'fl&J'" .... ~~~~.,. eJw. r.u••~ s 8 aao;-J• (,J.p.n. Mi ttlrrap.,.. ~1•~ u NUmecT'Ir ~ J'IIPIIO •rn .... ~uu• aa.

Jl-..,. .......... paca'Uf10 Df'l~

••n. ... , .......... eulia~O

l)lWf'lo

~ . ..., .... "'

Fig. 4: A. Kruchonykh, "Mutiny on the Snow," Trap for Judges

2, 1913.

•


sarna [wild goat]). The closest of these in phonetic composition, sarzha, suggests another fabric, parcha [brocade], which supplies the needed sibilant, though also a stress change. Krocha might be the verbal adverb from krotit' [to tame], and buga is a low place on a river bank or in a field likely to be covered by water. Thus there is a progression from indefinite to definite semantics in these three initial words. Stress placement here is not indicated, but in an unpublished poem of 1914 [Russian Museum fond 134 (Kulbin) ed. 77] the stresses are clearly marked on the first syllable of the two problematic words, and the syntax suggests that the words are both feminine nouns, evidently pestilential creatures analogous to the locust [saranchti].

Many of the remaining words in this introductory passage have recognizable roots but incorporate a sdvig in the middle of the word from one root to another. Thus vikhrol' appears to be a compound of vikhr' [whirlwind] and rol' [role], assuming the ris shared by both roots. In the background somewhere lurks an animal, the desman [vykhukhol']. While the first member of the compound is reasonably unambiguous, the second member is less so. Thus we have morphological zaum here. !fle next word, opokhromel, taken in isolation is comparatively easy to Interpret as an analogue to opokhmelit'sya [to take a drink the morning of a hangover], based on the verb khmelet' [get drunk], by substitution of the analogous verb khromet' [become lame]. Here it would mean something like "he recovered from lameness." The problem then bec?mes a syntactic one: the verb requires a masc. sg. subject, and one is gtv~n only two words later. :nat word, konepyt, is also relatively easy to mterpret by analogy with sledopyt [path-tester, pathfinder] as "horse-tester, horse-breaker," but it is separated from the verb by the standard word pyati [five], whose case and therefore relation to the syntactic context is unclear. In fact, none of the possibilities (gen., dat., prep.) is satisfactory. This causes whatever syntax was maintained up to this point to collapse and effectively to bar konepyt from assuming a ~osition a:' undis~utable subject of the sentence. Thus we have syntactic zaum tn the picture also. We might add that the layout as prose further heightens the expectation that one will encounter grammatical structure, an expectation less intense in previous lithographed or rubber-stamped texts where the layout itself is haphazard-looking. The rest of this "prose" passage continues this mix of types of zaum.

N~xt ~s a series of verse stanzas. It soon becomes apparent that each. hne Is at be~t an independen~ unit with no syntactic or logical relation to foregomg or following ones:

Udar nozh tok posinelo

A blow knife current it turned blue


zhivi live!

zhivyosh' umiraesh' you live you die (:64)

With the exception a few loose capitalized vowels in one stanza, however, there is no phonetic or morphological zaum in these stanzas. The zaum is syntactic, produced possibly by a compositional technique using chance, e.g., cutting up a text and shuffling the pieces to produce a random ordering. This is an example of syntactic zaum of a very advanced sort where, despite the presence of numerous coherent syntagmas, the effect is of complete incoherence and arationality, though the prevalence of aggressive verbs, weapons, and life-and-death references suggests an overriding image of violence and destruction. And there is little evident rhythmic or sonic organization. Thus the work represents a move toward nihilism in zaum technique. It is automatic writing or chance composition several years before the Dadaists and Surrealists "discovered" such techniques.

A Trap for Judges II opened with an untitled manifesto that spelled out in greater detail than" A Slap in the Face of Public Taste" the principles of the new verbal art of the Hylaea group of Futurists. The points most relevant to zaum are the following:

1. We ceased to regard word formation and word pronunciation accord- " ing to grammatical rules, since we have begun to see in letters only vectors of speech. We loosen up syntax.

2. We started to endow words with content on the basis of their graphic and phonic characteristics. [ ... ]

5. We modify nouns not only with adjectives (as was usual before us), but also with other parts of speech, as well as with individual letters and num

bers. [ ... ]

6. We abolished punctuation marks, which for the first time brought to the fore the role of the verbal mass and made it perceivable.

7. We understand vowels as time and space (a characteristic of thrust), and consonants as color, sound, smell. [ ... ]

12. We are enthralled by new themes: superfluousness, meaninglessness, and the secret of powerful insignificance are celebrated by us. [ ... ]

(Lawton/Eagle:53-54)


According to Livshits (1977:127-28), Kruchonykh participated actively in drafting this manifesto, but his precise contribution is unclear. Livshits explicitly identifies points 1 and 12 as Khlebnikov' s.

However, Kruchonykh emerges clearly as an individual theoretician in the "Declaration of the Word as Such" (Lawton/Eagle:67-68) [Deklaratsiya slova kak takovogo (Markov 1967:63-64)] which was dated April19, 1913. As the first thorough theoretical statement on zaum. it merits detailed consideration. Its eight points are numbered, but then are presented in the order 4-5-2-3-1-6-7-8. We will take the declaration by points in the order they are presented.

(4) THOUGIIT AND SPEECH CANNOT KEEP UP WITH THE EMOTIONS OF SOMEONE IN A STATE OF INSPIRATION, therefore the artist is free to express himself not only in the common language (concepts), but also in a personal one (the creator is an individual), as well as in a language which does not have any definite meaning (not frozen), a transrational language. Common language binds, free language allows for fuller expression. (Example: go osneg kaid etc.).

This is the first appearance in print of the term zaumny yazyk [transrationallanguage]. It is presented as an elaboration of the concept of a language "which does not have any definite meaning," the exact phraseology used to introduce "Dyr bul shchyl" in Pomade. "Definite meaning" is equated with being "frozen" or, more literally, "having grown cold or stiff." This is clearly based on Bely's thinking in "The Magic of Words" (1910a:429-48), where Bely uses the designation slovo-termin [word-term] for the once-living word that has become the fixed concept of common everyday usage. Bely's goal is to return to language its theurgic, mythopoetic power, while Kruchonykh's is to allow for a broader range of personal expression. It is significant that zaumny yazyk is characterized not as being without meaning, but as having meaning which is indefinite, or unfixed, or not frozen, i.e., still fluid. Kruchonykh' s relative emphasis is also noteworthy. He does not claim exclusive hegemony for zaum. but rather is interested only in freeing the artist from being forced to use "common language" in moments of inspiration. While for Marinetti a new language is required mainly to express the intense new experiences of modern life (views from an airplane or a speeding car, technological warfare, etc.), for Kruchonykh it is the intensity and speed of human emotion that require a new language. In this respect, Kruchonykh is closer to the age-old view that ordinary language is inadequate to express the depths of feeling or the heights of inspiration. Both poets recognize that the resulting artistic work will be difficult to understand, though they might disagree as to its goals.


(5) WORDS DIE, THE WORLD IS ETERNALLY YOUNG. The artist has seen the world in a new way and, like Adam, proceeds to give things his own names. The lily is beautiful, but the word "lily" [liliya] has been soiled and "raped." Therefore, I call the lily, "euy" -the original purity is reestablished.

Striking here is not an emphasis on modem expression, but on the restoration of Adamic language-precisely Bely's point, though Bely would not choose this way of going about it. Inherent in this situation, nevertheless, is an element of the modem, in that the world, eternally changing and progressing, provides man with new phenomena that must be dealt with linguistically, that must be named and characterized. Hence word-creation is necessary. But Kruchonykh is evidently interested more in the element of language entropy, in the fact that words lose their freshness and impact; they become automatized, transparent, artistically ineffective. Kruchonykh's invention of a new name for the lily was approved of by Khlebnikov in a letter to him of August 31, 1913 (Khlebnikov 1940 IV:367), and was subsequently used by Kruchonykh (1913-14) as the name for his own publishing enterprise. The three vowels of the name, when pronounced, produce a sliding articulatory progression from a tense front position of the tongue and oral cavity to a lax back position with lips rounded, to a tense ,back position with lips again relaxed, thus by articulatory gesture moving ;r.

along the shape of the flower into its depths and back out again. Furthermore, the middle cyrillic letter Y has a graphic shape closely approximating the shape of the flower itself. From a mimetic, iconic viewpoint it provides an objectively expressive name in Adamic language. We might add that the c~oscn sequence of vowels does not occur in Russian. Even the combinations eu and uy are not to be found in any Russian words·in any position(Toporov 1966:71,79).

(2) consonants render everyday reality, nationality, weight-vowels, the opposite: A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE. Here is a poem exclusively of vowels:

o e a i e e i a e e E

Of course, from a linguistic point of view, Kruchonykh is wrong here. Vowel qualities are no more universal than consonant qualities and vary among languages as do consonants (see, e.g., Shcherba 1912:50ff.), though since there are fewer vowels than consonants, the number of "-vowel variations will naturally be felt to be smaller and less signifi-cant. Markov has pointed out (1967:64) that this is not an arbitrary se-


lection of vowels, but the vowels in the first words of the "Our Father": Otche nash, izhe esi na nebesekh. This raises an interesting issue. If this poem is felt to be significant, is it because the Russian reader subliminally senses that it follows the vowel patterning of a very familiar text? This effect may be possible for the Russian reader, but it can hardly be applicable to the non-Russian (universal) reader, for whom the poem is only an abstract pattern of vowels arranged around central repetitions of e. (By the way, if only sound is taken into consideration, then the final vowel yat', rendered E above, is spurious, merely an orthographic distinction representing just another e; but this may be a clue in linking the pattern to the Otche nash where yat' occurs in precisely that position.) Perhaps the fact that this poem, presented as a" universal language" of vowels, is actually based on a specifically Slavonic rendition of a prayer was intended to be a joke on Kruchonykh' s part. On the other hand, he might have argued that the effectiveness of the prayer is based on its poetic qualities, in particular the arrangement of its vowels.

(3) a verse presents (unconsciously) several series of vowels and consonants. THESE SERIES CANNOT BE ALTERED. It is better to replace a word with one close in sound than with one close in meaning (bast-cast-ghast [lyki-myki- kyka]). If similar vowels and consonants were replaced by graphic lines, they would forDJ patterns that could not be altered (example:III-I-I-III). For this reason it is IMPOSSIBLE to translate from one language into another; one can only transliterate a poem into Latin letters and provide a word-for-word translation. The verse translations that exist at present are merely word-for-word translations; as aesthetic texts they are nothing more than coarse vandalism.

For Kruchonykh it is definitely preferable to sacrifice meaning to sound, rather than the reverse, as is usually the case. Inherent in this view is a shift in value away from lexical meaning toward meaning conveyed by pure sound.

(1) A new verbal form creates a new content, and not vice versa .. (6) INTRODUONG NEW WORDS, I bring about a new content WHERE EVERYTHING begins to slip (the conventions of time, space, etc. Here my view coincides with N. Kulbin's, who discovered the 4th dimension: weight, the 5th: motion, and the 6th or 7th: time ).I

This appears to contradict point (5), where language is invented to deal with or identify new realities. Instead, language is seen as theurgically producing a new reality, again a Belyan idea. The next point is also clearly drawn from Kulbin (1910:7):


(7) In art, there may be unresolved dissonances-" unpleasant to the ear"because there is dissonance in our soul by which the former are resolved. Example: dyr bul shchyl, etc.

After these dynamic principles, the final point seems rather lame and hackneyed:

(8) All this does not narrow art, but rather opens new horizons.

In the order in which they are presented, the statements in the "Declaration" flow smoothly from one to the next. If we were to place them in numerical order, however, they would be less effectively arranged, leading one to believe that the nu~be~ng is artificial and pe_rhaps intended merely as epatage (though It rmght reflect the order m which the statements were thought of or written down). In sum, the "Declaration" is a significant exposition of radical positions on poetry, some of which are controversial.

In the summer of 1913, Kruchonykh continued to produce books and collections. As listed in his bibliography, the first of these is Vozropshchem [Let's Grumble] (1973:73-92), consisting of four heterogeneous works of two pages each in which devices of prose and verse are mixed. The first of these, "Took a needle three streets long," is set 1.

in long, uneven, uncapitalized, unpunctuated lines of_rathe~ prosy f~ee verse. Aside from the main device of hyperbole evident m the first line, periodically there are lines or parts of lines set off in a larger typeface and semantic shifts that become increasingly frequent as the work progresses. The last line is a string of evidently ra_ndo_m co~sona~ts. The impression is of a surrealistic fantasy of growmg msamty which finally leads to complete incoherence.

The next item is a short drama piece that appears to be a sketch for the soon-to-be-written Victory Over the Sun. It begins with this introduction:

(i haven't been to the theater for a long time. the last time i sprained my right arm in running away from that honored retreat of mediocrity-the be-tinselled Art Theater (Moscow). New theater strikes at the nerves of habit and gives our new revelations in all the arts!

What follows is titled "Deymo," a neologism based on" act" and probably borrowed from Khlebnikov's Snezhimochka, [1908] [Snowhite (1989:157-70). The term was again used to identify the main sections of Victory. The play begins with a dialogue between "Two." The first says: "i didn't notice the ship even though it was right under my nose," to which the second replies:" the mast is broken but over the waves scurry


of logs/ forgot to hang myself and now a direct wind rushes (both exit)." Thence follows a soliloquy by a "woman" who appears on stage without any indication about this in the stage directions. Her speech is in syntactic zaum with a few word fragments thrown in (resk, nye). She is being interrupted, it turns out, in the following manner:

(a bed standing until now unnoticed by the wall rises up. a reader standing unnoticed by the table begins to recite quickly and in a high voice, his voice at times falls, slides, cuts through the preceding sentences:)

zyu tsyu e sprum redam

ugi tazh ze bin tsy shu

beregam amerik ne uvidet' shigunov tse shu begu

Th~ first line is pure phonetic zaum, the next three perhaps l(lPrphologtcal zaum, while the fifth is easily interpretable Russian with slight syntactic dislocations ["to shores of the americas not to see the shiftless"]. The last line is interpretable as "ts [cyrillic letter], chou [Russ./ Fr.: fancy dress bow], I run."

The woman continues her increasingly incoherent speech on the background of flying objects and "figures" crossing the stage "unnoticeably." After which "voices enter" to recite:

narrow not wide - a wire [provolka] breaks breaks falls -not to catch up not to catch up

the stallion left to get ... [b]itch

(enter someone not forced, someone not forced reads quickly,while at this time the actors exit-):

sarcha krocha bucha na vikhrol' opokhromel etc.

This incorporates the earlier poem "Mutiny on the snow." In an extremely concentrated and thoroughly innovative way this

little absurdist theaterpiece combines all levels of zaum in a brilliantly polyphonic (Sigov uses the term" colloidal" (1988:20)) and completely unprecedented fashion. Italian Futurist performances, which were to incorporate some of the same features of absurd ism and simultaneous recitation of nonsensical texts, were not produced until the spring of 1914, "though multiple performers may have been used in earlier readings" (Kirby:29). This work also highlights two important aspects of

From "Dyr Bul Shchyl" to Victory OVer the Sun 83

Kruchonykh's literary practice, namely: 1) his tendency to be brief, which contributes significantly to the impact of his zaum, the effectiveness of which would rapidly diminish if it were prolonged; and 2) his habit of working in several styles simultaneously, whether in the same poem, in the same collection of poems, or in the same period of creative activity- in other words, he rarely limits himself to one kind of zaum or even to zaum as a whole at any given moment.

The next item in the book, however, is an extended stretch (57 lines) of syntactic zaum that would appear to be a love poem, or perhaps more accurately a love plaint or lovers' quarrel, since there seems to be a considerable amount of disarray in the relationship with the woman in question. The disarray is also reflected by the constant shift in gender of the speaker, indicating that probably the poem is at least in part a dialogue. The poem ends with lines from a section of "Kup asa" (1913d) attributed to "N. Polikarpov" which parody the soundplay of Balmont.

At the end is a brief announcement that "in the next book it will be proved that [the Moscow Futurists] were the first to give the world poetry written in free, transratio1,1al, universal language."

The next listing in Kruchonykh's bibliography is the collection Explodity [Vzorval'] (1913£). The first "poem" in it consists of a single zaum word "belyamatokiyay" plus some miscellaneous letters and designs and is as much a visual artifact as a verbal one (see Janecek 1984:94-95 for discussion). This is Kruchonykh's longest zaum word to that point and so represents a new stage in zaum construction. Each of its six syllables is a Russian morpheme (some of which are complete nouns), or might be several possible morphemes, depending on where you choose to make morphemic divisions or which letters you choose to share between neighboring morphemes: bel- [white] -lyam[ka]- [strap] -yama- [hole, pit (noun)] -mat- [swear words (noun)] -tok- [flow, current (noun)] -ki-ya- (adjectival ending) -yay (imperative sg.). None of this adds up to a clear interpretation of the word as a whole. The other poems in the collection, while interesting in themselves, do not add significantly to the picture of zaum.

However, a noteworthy theoretical statement is also included:

Experience does not fit into words (frozen, concepts)-suffering over the word [ muki slova ]-gnoseological solitude Hence the drive toward zaumny free language (cf. my declaration of the word), toward such a means of expression a person runs at important moments. Here is an example by the flagellant V. Shishkov: nosoktos lcsontos futr lis natrufuntru natnisinfur kresercfire krescntre fert cheresantro ulmiri umilisantru- Here is an long expression of a worked-up soul-religious ecstasy.


I provide my poems in zaum language and universallanguage-mad,e of vowels:

Although Kruchonykh's citation of Shishkov is slightly inaccu,rate, it is the first evidence of his familiarity with Konovalov' s book on Russian sects (1908) as a possible external source of inspiration for zaum. Kruchonykh's reference to the phrase "muki slova," while it may be merely a reference to the Nadson poem which became proverbial, probably indicates an awareness of the discussion initiated by Gornfeld under that rubric (1899; 1906). The phrase "gnoseological solitude" [gnoseologicheskoe odinochestvo] is a strikingly unusual and unfuturist one for Kruchonykh, which may give away a deeper interest in mysti-cism than is usually assumed, though of course the reference to flagel- \ lant glossolalia and religious ecstasy fits into this picture as well. The statement is followed by a cascading sequence of syllables and letters with rhythmic repetitions to match the accompanying drawing, which looks like a Japanese house on a cultivated hillside Oanecek 1984a: Fig. 73), and subsequently one of Kruchonykh's most famous pronouncements Oanecek 1984a: Fig. 75): "on 27 april at 3 in the afternoon i instantaneously acquired to perfection all languages such is the contemporary poet i present my poems in the japanese spanish and hebrew languages." On the other side of the page, divided from this statement by a diagonal line are the lines:

IKEMINANI SINU KSI YAMAKHALIK ZEL

There is, I suppose, a vaguely Japanese quality to the first lines, reinforced by the look of Japanese calligraphy, but there is, of course, no l , in the sound system to account for the last words. The next page contains what would seem to be the "Spanish" poem:

BAKRA KA ZADAR LAPRA PIDar

Za MAL' Sl

KUVB DRAZDBAR

PA

which is about as Spanish as the previous poem is Japanese. The entire


collection ends with the one word "SHISH" [fig, vulgar gesture] done up to look like Hebrew writing Oanecek 1984a: Fig. 76, discussion:95-%). All this is nothing more than a put-on, at best an argument that the breakthrough to zaum allows the poet to create poems in languages unknown to him as easily as in those known to him.

Here, however, an important theoretical issue comes to the fore. If zaum is pure sound poetry whose expressive power resides in articulation, then it would be correct to claim that such poems are universally meaningful, regardless of the native language of the poet or the listener/reader. On the other hand, is a zaum word ever entirely free of association with words in one's native or other known languages? Is the zaumnik not influenced, at least subconsciously, by a native language, and does he not operate under an assumption that listeners will be similarly affected? How much of our sense of language is subconscious? This is a question raised, if not answered, by zaum.

Piglets [Porosyata] (1913h) involves as co-author a certain "Zina V. (11 years old)," who contributes three prose items with a certain fantastic, absurd element to them. Kruchonykh' s explicit contributions are a series of poems which also present a range of surreal stances but without even especially disjointed syntax. The one exception is a poem in pure phonetic zaum:

a gooscy spring

te gene ryu ri le lyu

tl'k tl'ko khomoro

re k pyukpl' , kr'd kryud

ntpr irkil' bipu

be

The title suggests that the poem is "bird talk," but Mathauser' s conclusion that "for us this is scarcely anything more than a naturalistic, a posteriori description of bird sounds" (1967:310) hardly does justice to the complexities presented and surely overestimates the articulatory variety that birds, much less geese, are capable of. One gets the impression that this poem is the result rather of taking some pre-existing


text and applying a mechanical collection or elimination pro~edure or, more likely, a combination of procedures to retain, say, only every second or third letter or pair of letters. There is a sense that this· is the shadow of a poem, like "Universal Language" was the shadow of a prayer. It should be noted that, however it was composed, it contains several consonant sequences unattested in Russian: tl'k, -kpl', kr' d, ntpr, though each of the two-consonant sequences contained within these is acceptable. One cannot help reading tl'k and especially tl'ko as a contraction of tol'ko [only]; and other words, such as ntrp [ =intetpretatsiya[?]: interpretation], also suggest lexical forms.

By the second half of 1913, Futurism was beginning to attract serious attention and even to be elaborately parodied (see Markov 1968:212-13). Thus, in the final section of Piglets, titled "Miscellaneous," Kruchonykh undertook to respond ad hominem to the authors of the parodistic Neo-Futurism published in Kazan (1913), to Chebotarevskaya's remarks in the Ego-Futurist collection Nebokopy [Sky-diggers] (1913:7-8), to "the first attempt to become oriented in the new futurist art" by A. Redko in the July issue of Russian Wealth, and in general to the Russian press. NetrFuturism focused on art, but did include a series of parodies of Futurist poetry (mainly Ego-Futurist). The closest it came to zaum was a send-up of Khlebnikov using easily decipherable neologisms.

Chebotarevskaya had described Kruchonykh as "the enfant terrible of the 'Slapists'" and the "young poet who laid claim to the role of 'extreme leftist' wherever he appeared." She was complimentary, but with reservations:

A. Kruchonykh is indisputably fertile, energetic, inexhaustible in the invention of various interjections and formations from them of a new Volapilk. The question is only whether Mr. Kruchonykh is talented enough for his talentedness to redeem all his -let's speak directlymischief-making.

She points out his inconsistency in limiting Russian to the masculine g~nder and then writing about "old-fashioned love" (even the title of which is feminine in gender).

In this she, the wife of the prominent Symbolist poet and novelist Fyodor Sologub, is being more moderate than the leader of the Petersburg Ego-Futurists, Ivan Ignatev, who in Vsegday [Alwayser] (1913:1-4) had attacked Kruchonykh and the Moscow Cuba-Futurists more sharply, making specific reference to the "Declaration of the Word as Such" and to Explodity:

Besides transrational, prerational and simply non-rational [zaumnogo, predumnogo i prosto neumnogo [literally: "not intelligent"]] languages, the


"poet of today" must ''instantaneously acquire" all languages of the globe. Alas, the Moscovites' illustrations for these theses do not withstand

the slightest criticism. Their Japanese (?) and Arabic (?) verses provide only the most dis

tant similarity in pronunciation of sounds, while the sole word written in Hebrew script, if one examines•it closely, can be read equally well from left to right and right to left-"shish."

Ignatev's article had also included strong suggestions ~hat the Moscovites were merely epigones of the Petersburg group, callmg them "lukewarm modernists." To this Kruchonykh responded without naming Ignatev, who in any case was writing under the pseudonym Ivey:

We Moscow bayachi budetlyane (more accurately-the sole ones in the world, since the Italians' and our own self-prodigalists' [samo-b!udistov] means do not justify their aims) first gave the world poems in zaum, universal and free languages.

We stunned the universe- and tomorrow alllispers will declare themselves also futurists [fitturistami] and will-be-ers [budushchnikamt], as they write illiterately, comparing themselves by this with policemen

[budochnikami]!

His use of the terms "bayachi budetlyane," the Khlebnikovian coinages meaning "poets-futurists," is meant to underline their independen.ce " and greater originality vis-a-vis the Petersburg grou? and ~ev.e~yamn, who borrowed the name futurist in 1911 from the Ita hans. Stgntftcantly, the development of zaum, specifically attacked by Ignatev, is turned by Kruchonykh into a proof of the M~scow gro~p's gr~ater.originality and importance. He throws in a fmal termmologtcal Jab by the paronomastic comparison of budushchniki to budochniki [policemen standing in guard booths].

Redko' s article, "At the Feet of the African Idol. Symbolism. Acmeism. Ego-Futurism" (in two install.ments: 1913 No. 6:317:32,_No. 7:179-99, the second of which is relevant), was indeed a conscientious attempt to make sense of the burgeoning literary avant-garde. His general reaction is:

In sum, Ego-Futurism is an intensification of all the old mystical quests characteristic of Symbolism. Here too is a particular emphasis on individualism, here too is a particular cult of chance, here too is a very particular cult of subconscious psychology. (:186)

Redko does not properly distinguish between Ego-Futurism and the Union of Youth group (:197), but Kruchonykh is extensively quoted


(the "Declaration," worldbackwards, "I am a priest" (:193, 197-98)) and taken seriously. Redko admits that this" cult of the incomprehensible" is to be found in such Symbolists as Blok, Sologub, and Bryusov, and he calls them zaumny.

The Ego-Futurists merely take to the limit the "zaum" element characteristic of all other-worldly quests. And they even do what other more careful writers do not do: they have decided on such doubtful neologisms as "zaumny" as opposed to "umny."

But, after all, clarity and daring in self-definition is not a fault but a virtue-in literature. (:194-95).

In a footnote he remarks that while Benois can point to recognizable achievements in Cubist painting,

The Ego-Futurists can only dream about a similar success in the realm of the word. Obviously the human word is too saturated with logic and psychological content and therefore is less amenable to" self-inspired" excursions into the realm of extra-thought and extra-logic, in general-of "zaum", in Mr. Kruchonykh's apropos expression. (:197)

When Kruchonykh adds that "unfortunately at the end of the article the worn-out populist [narodnik] bast-sandal is exhibited sincerely and completely out of place," he is evidently objecting to Redko's somewhat patronizing conclusion that Benois need not worry about being forced to admire this distorted African idol and the wild children who created it, since it is surely only a fleeting fashion for the" dirty brown beast" and will soon be replaced by other styles.

The first edition of Croaked Moon [Dokhlaya luna] appeared in August, 1913 (Markov 1968:119), and contained two short poems by Kruchonykh that on one page represent the polar extremes of zaum practice: a surreal sketch in rhymed stanzas with only a few syntactic dislocations ("The world ended"), and a poem of isolated vowels, this time a variation on the Nicaean Creed ("Heights (Universal Language)" (on the latter, see Mathauserova and Romportl (1969)).

Troe [The Three] was published in the first half of September, 1913 (Kapelyush 1976:168). The "three" of the title were Kruchonykh, Khlebnikov, and Elena Guro, tow hose memory the collection was dedicated. Kruchonykh's contributions were major: thirty-five pages of poetry and prose and his most extensive statement on poetic language to date, "The New Ways of the Word."

The poetry selections are characterized by a certain formal restraint dictated perhaps in part by the solemn nature of the occasion. "From

I


the Sahara to America" (:7-15) is the longest and most interesting of the works here by Kruchonykh and one of the riches~ exa.tnples. of alogism to be found in his output. The battery of effects ts qUite vaned and carefully employed. These range from long neologistic. compoun~s such as "vostronososedogrivykh" [sharpnosegraymaned], which are eastly deciphered and therefore not zaum, to various visual aspects. By appearance, the work appears to be a combination of prose and ~erse, yet there is no internal distinction between the two~ except th~t m ~h~ verse portions the line breaks tend to correspond wtth ~yntactic sdvzgz, while in the prose portions the sdvigi are not marked m any way. Although all the devices used in this work have been used by !<ruchonykh before, generally he had limited their ra~g~ to only~ ~ew m the course of a single work. The other poems are stmtlar to thts m style and content but are written in stricter verse forms. They seem masterful, polish:d and controlled, rather than ragged and experimental. Being thereby closer to Khlebnikov, they are somewhat less distinctively Kruchonykhian.

These poems are followed by one of the longest an? most complete theoretical manifestoes on the nature of poettc language Kruchonykh was ever to write,"New Ways of the Word (the language of the future, death to Symbolism)" (:22-37; Markov 1967:6~-73; Lawton/Eagle 1988:69-77). Here we will discuss only tho~ portions of it that deal specifically with zaum, the bracketed ~usstan _expressions being added from the original to keep the Russtan termmology ,.. clear. After the usual attack on conservative critics, Kruchonykh comes to this point:

Clear and conclusive proof of the fact that up to the present the word has been shackled is provided by it subordination to rational tlwught [smyslu]

until now they have maintained: "rational thought [mysl'] dictates laws to the word, and not vice versa."

We pointed out this mistake and provided a free language, transrational [zaumny] and universal [vselensky].

Previous poets arrived at the word through rational thought, we arrived at unmediated comprehension [postizheniyu] through the word.

In our art we already have the first experiments of the language of the future. Art marches in the avant-garde of psychic evolution.

At present there are three units in our psychic life: sensation; representation, concept (and the idea), and a fourth unit is beginning to take shape-"higher intuition" (P. Uspensky's Tertium Organum)._

(LawtonfEagle:70)

Most important among the new elements here is the direc~ referenc~ to Tertium Organum with its four-level schema of psychtc evolution (Uspensky 1911:61-66; 1970:69-74; also Henderson 1983:270-73), in

1 I I 1

I

I

I, I

~~


which "higher intuition" is seen as corresponding to the fourth dimension of space. Kruchonykh uses Uspensky's terms for each of the levels: oshchushchenie, predstavlenie (which might better be translated as "perception"), ponyatie and vysshaya intuitsiya. The program for creating a "language of the future," advanced here explicitly for the first time, is also drawn from Uspensky:

The emotional tones of life are best transmitted by music, but it cannot express concepts. Poetry endeavors to express both music and thought together. In art we have already the first experiments in a language of the future. Art anticipates [idyot v avangarde] a psychic evolution. (Uspensky 1911:65)

In the 1916 edition of Tertium Organum Uspensky had added to the last sentence the phrase: "and divines its future forms" (1970:73). A spiritualistic tone is notable especially in Kruchonykh's use of the mystically colored term postizhenie. This is not just" comprehension" in the everyday, logical sense, but a kind of higher, more complete, intuitive penetration into a hidden realm of thought, as in an understanding of the qtysteries of nature or the spirit, especially in combination with the adjective neposredstvennomu [unmediated, direct]. Thus Kruchonykh is linking zaum directly with Uspensky's spiritual program.

It is not entirely clear what Kruchonykh means by arriving" at unmediated comprehension through the word" in terms of a specific method or plan of action, except that "rational thought" [mysZ'] is not to be the determining factor. He goes on, however, to declare:"THE WORD IS BROADER THAN THOUGHT [SLOVO SHIRE SMYSLA]." This emphatically presented maxim is an extremely interesting formulation from a variety of viewpoints and could be taken as synonymous with the concept of zaum as a whole. Rephrased, it could be stated as: "There is more in the word than its dictionary definition." Hardly anyone would dispute that fact, but exactly what the" more" is, of course, is the main question. Kruchonykh seems not to make a distinction here between mysl' and smysl. Another possible reading of Kruchonykh' s maxim might be: "There are more possibilities in the word than are usually recognized or used." Beyond matters of lexical meaning as such are the more "poetic" factors of sound composition, articulatory expressiveness, rhythm, and intonation which influence the perception of "meaning" to a greater or lesser extent, consciously or subconsciously. If the lexical meaning of the word proves, as Humboldt indicates (1836:LXXX; 1859:62; 1971:43), to be inadequate to convey one's thought to another, then perhaps a fine-tuning of these other possibilities would do a better job, would create a more expressive, accurate "language of the future."


the word (and its components, the sounds) is not simply a truncated thought [mysl'], not simply logic, it is first of all transrational (irrational parts, mystical and aesthetic) ...

g 1 a d i at or sands words men [gladiatory i mechanl the thought is the same, but the words are different, and so much so that I would sooner say that laughers [smekhiri] and swordsmen [ mechanl share the same meaning [smysl] than say that swordsmen [mechari] and gladiators [gladiatory] do, because it is the phonetic composition of the word which gives it its living coloration, and the word is perceived and keenly affects you only when it has that coloratioJ;L

gladiators- it's dull gray foreign; swordsmen-it's bright colo~ful a~d conveys a picture of a mighty people armored in copper and-cham mad. (:71)

Provocatively Kruchonykh insists, as in earlier s~atements, that the _l~xical meaning of a word is less important than Its sound compo_sibon and cultural connotations. The neologisms mechar' and smekh1r' are formed by analogous morphology and to that. ext~nt ~re similar, b~t their roots are very different in meaning and Implication. Even their sound composition is not overly similar, only somewhat more so than mechari-gladiatory. The main point is thei~ Slavic ori~n, as ?pposed to the Latin "gladiator." Despite pretensions to umversahty, both Kruchonykh and Khlebnikov were Slavophiles, though this mig~t p~rhaps be qualified by saying that they objected to European lexical In

cursions, but not necessarily Asiatic ones. Kruchonykh tended to ~allow Khlebnikov's program of creating neologisms to replace foreign borrowings, making a point a few ~ines below of using_~~ ~oinage bayach' to replace the standard poez1ya [poetry] when cnhCizmg foreign borrowings in Lermontov.

Uspenskian "higher intuition" returns in the next passage:

Russian readers have grown used to emasculated words, and they see in them algebraic symbols that mechanically solve the problems of petty thinking [myslishek], meanwhile everything alive, superconscious in the. word, everything which connects it to its wellsprings, its sources of existence, goes unnoticed. (:71)

It is not surprising to find then that Kruchonykh follows this with the same lines from Fet and Tyutchev used by Shklovsky (see Introduction) which underline the inadequacy of language to fully express thought. Kruchonykh proposes:"Why not get away from rational thought [mys!i], and write not by means of word-concepts [slovami-ponyatiyami], but of words freely formed?" He then surveys those who have begun to follow the "new ways." The first of these are again the glossolalic sectarians, who, as a sign of true faith according to St. Paul, have gained a "revelation of things unseen." Kruchonykh

II

\


quotes Savely Rozhkov's namos pamos bagos and Varlaam Shishkov's gerezon drovolmire, etc., from Konovalov (1908:167), this time accurately. He is excited by the idea that simple folk can speak "in many foreign languages previously unknown to them."

Kruchonykh firmly declares that standard rational language is now inadequate to express modernity:

What is surprising is the senselessness [bessmyslennost'] of our writers striving so hard for meaning [gonyayushchikh za smyslom].

Wishing to depict the incomprehensibility [neponyatnost'], the alogicality of life and its horror, or to depict the mystery of life, they make recourse time and again to the same (as always, as always!) "clear neat" common language

this is the same as feeding a starving man cobblestones, or trying to catch small fish with a rotten n~t!

We were the first to say that in order to depict the new- the futureone needs totally new words and a new way of combining them. (:72)

Perhaps Kruchonykh is the first to advocate the use of "totally new words," but not the first to advocate a new way of combining them. Marinetti can claim priority in theory, though Khlebnikov may lay claim to priority in practice. Comparing new verbal techniques to the practice of Cubism ("irregular perspective generates a new 4th dimension"), Kruchonykh elaborates:

irregular structuring of a sentence (in terms of logic [mysli] and word formation [graneslovie]) generates movement and a new perception of the world and, conversely, that movement and psychological variation generate strange "nonsensical" [bessmyslennye] combinations of words and letters.

Therefore, we loosened up grammar and syntax; we recognized that in order to depict our dizzy contemporary life and the even more impetuous future, we must combine words in a new way, and the more disorder we introduce into the sentence structure the better. (:73)

It is not clear whether creative distortion generates a new perception of reality or a new perception of reality requires creative distortion in order to express itself. The first of these sentences seems to say the former, the second to indicate the latter. Specific techniques already in full use by Kruchonykh are advocated:

Irregularities in the speech are admissible: 1) grammatical irregularity-unexpected twist: a) lack of agreement in case, number, tense, and gender between sub

ject and predicate, adjective and noun: lake ran past white flying [probegal ozero bely letuchie]

From "Dyr Bul Shchyl" to Victory Over the Sun 93 .

b) elimination of the subject or other parts of speech, elimination of

pronouns, prepositions, etc. c) arbitrary word-novelty (pure neologism): he doesn't give a" shoot"

(A Trap for Judges, 1), dyr bul shchyl, etc. d) unexpected phonetic combination: euy, rlmktzhg ... (Let's Grumble)

[ ... ] e) unexpected word formation [illustrated by a Khlebnikov poem full

of neologisms ... ] 2) semantic irregularity: a) in plot development:

I forgot to hang myself [ ... ] (Explodity [ ... ]) b) unexpected simile:

the pokers crackle like fire ... (Worldbackwards) (:73-75)

Thus outlined, one after the other, are techniques for creating syntactic, morphological, and phonetic zaum. each with an example or two. "These categories do not exhaust all the possible irregularities and unexpected shifts: (that's why they are irregularities) one might note as well, for example, unusual meter, rhyme, typography, color, word order, etc." (:75)

Being the first to do something is by definition a matter of utmost importance for an avant-gardist. Thus Kruchonykh took great umbrage ' at the claim made by a critic writing under the nameS. Khudakov that Kruchonykh was preempted in zaum by Anton Lotov. The article in question, which came out in July, 1913, in the collection The Donkey's Tale and Target [Osliny kvost i mishen'], stated that Kruchonykh's Pomade and Lotov's Rekord were the only books so far "where the word was beginning to be free" (:142). However, while "in Pomade, the tenderly sentimental spirit characteristic of the author and the indefiniteness of the tendency to make the word self-sufficient does not allow it the right to be taken seriously," this right is clear in the case of Lotov, who has" clearly and definitely demonstrated these positions not theoretically, but in the works themselves, and has even gone further and shown the value of sound itself." It claims that Lotov's poems were "written in 1912," hence before Pom~de and before Kruchonykh produced any zaum.

Whatever one can make of the mysterious Lotov (see next chapter), it is clear that Khudakov's description of Kruchonykh's work as "tenderly sentimental" is a polemical shot from a rival avant-garde group. However, if one takes into consideration all the poems in Pomade with their amorous lyricism and not just "Dyr bul shchyl," Khudakov's description is not entirely unjustified. In response Kruchonykh inserted a counterattack between 1 d) and e) in the list of devices:


Here it is not going too far to mention those fine fellows from The Target who just the other day began appearing in print and who borrowed our speech now made only of vowels, now only of consonants, now of scattered letters and words, an~ who covered their tracks by referring to 1912 as the time when they wrote(?!} these imitations! (That's original!) (:74)

The practical portion of the article concludes with the statements:

Our goal is simply to point out irregularity as a device, to show the necessity and the importance of irregularity in art.

Our goal is to underscore the great significance for art of all strident elements, discordant sounds (dissonances} and purely primitive roughness. (:75)

In this way, the factors of Cubist dislocation [sdvig], dissonance, and primitivism join forces under the heading of "irregularity" [nepravil'nost'] as means of refreshing stale European art. The remainder of the article is mainly polemical. Kruchonykh characterizes previous "boring dragging narratives" as

sickening to the modem precipitous soul, which perceives the world keenly and directly (intuitively}, as though penetrating things and phenomena (the transcendental is in me and is mine} [ ... ].The irrational [irratsional'noe] (transrational [zaumnoe]) is conveyed to us as directly as the rational.

We do not need intermediaries-the symbol, the thought [myslz1-we convey our very own new truth, and do not serve as the reflection of some sort of sun (or a wood log?) (:75-76)

In passing, he makes a very rare reference to "the impoverished constructions of Plato, Kant, and other 'idealists,' where man stood not at the center of the universe, but behind the fence," but he does not give any further clues as to the extent of his familiarity with such philosophers.2 Further along Kruchonykh makes quotable claims of Uspensky-based clairvoyance ("We split the object open! We started seeing the world through to the core"), which in turn are supported by the use of alogism:

We learned how to look at the world backward, we enjoy this reverse motion (with regard to the word, we noticed that it can be read backward, and that then it acquires a more profound meaning [smysl].~ (:76)

In other words, creative distortion, even mechanically implemented (as in reading a word backward), opens the door to heightened perc~ption. Here, somewhat before the fact, is the theoretical origin of the


Formalist principle of defamiliarization [ostranenie] and the justification for all kinds of sdvigi. Dislocation and distortion jolt one out of the rut of routine perception and reaction, thus sharpening one's vision and thought. A zaum word is not there just to be recognized but is to be seen, felt, heard, and studied, because it is strange and new.

Of the remaining works by Kruchonykh from 1913 before we reach Victory Over the Sun, the only one that contains some new features is the last of three poems in Mares' Milk [Moloko kobylits], which appeared in February, 1914, though the poems were evidently written in the previous year. This poem, entitled "Song of a Shaman," is a column of single words all ending in o, all but one in ro:

Pesnya shamana

Kotero Pero [Pen] By a so Muro Koro Poro Ndoro Ro (:74)

Counting rhyme

Pero [Onesie] Nero Ugo Tero Pyato [Fivesie] So to Ivo Sivo Dub [Oak] Krest [Cross]

(Pokrovsky:57; Shklovsky 1985:14)

Here we have the first overt example in Kruchonykh's oeuvre of folk and shamanic sources of zaum. The links to glossolalic utterances, folk incantations, and especially children's counting rhymes (see parallel text) are palpable even without the guidance of the title, but they have been composed into a purified and concentrated poetic structure not usually characteristic of the sources. There is a neat reduction in the number of syllables, and there is consistent vowel and consonant repetition, but with enough variation to avoid monotony. Several of the words, especially "Ndoro," have a non~Russian (African?) flavor to them.

r In the course of 1913 and early 1914, other avant-garde poets also tried their hand at zaum. It is to these we now turn.

Notes

1Lawton/Eagle (:309) indicate that Kruchonykh was referring to Kulbin's essay "Free Art as Life's Foundation" Studio impressionistov (1910), but no references to higher dimensions arc made in that essay. Kruchonykh himself indi-

I '

I

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--------------------~~==============----)


cates that theses 3, 6, and 7 "correspond with the thoughts of N. Kulbin" (1913j:2), but this suggests a source in oral discussions, rather than a published one.

2Markov (1968:398) doubts that Kruchonykh ever read a line of Plato or Kant, and there is no reason to dispute this, certainly for the period in question.

Chapter Three

Competing Early Zaumniks: Lotov, Bolshakov, Gnedov, Podgaevsky, and Others

Among Kruchonych' s immediate competitors, the most mysterious was Anton Lotov. The identities of both the critic S. Khudakov, who introduced him, and the poet Anton Lotov himself are in dispute (see Markov 1968:184-85, 403). A recent Soviet publicatiop ascribes a rayist poem from Khudakov's article to Ilya Zdanevich, but without explanation (R. Duganov 1988:238). The prominent Russian art historian E. F. Kovtun thinks that the style of Khudakov's article suggests that Zdanevich wrote it (letter to the author May 1991). Zdanevich, always one of the most radical of avant-gardists, was closely associated with Larionov' scamp. On the other hand, upon his arrival in Paris .y.

in November 1921, Zdanevich gave a lecture entitled "Les nouvelles ecoles dans la poesie russe," in which he states that" at the end of 1912 the poets Lotov and Sergeev created rayist poems in a Moscow printing house, extraordinary compositions" (Marzaduri 1984:222-23)- thus taking no credit for them but suggesting rather the actual existence of these two poets. In later years Larionov was able to provide a handwrittel1 transcript of these poems for Benjamin Goriely, where they were described as 11 anonymous" though, as in Khudakov' s article, one is clearly marked 11 A. Semyonov" (Goriely 1966:40-42). This suggests, however, that Larionov might have been their author, but wished to conceal the fact. Several of the poems have zaum fee1tures, but they are interesting mainly for their visual properties (Janecek 1984a:151-54).

Lotov, reported to be the author of a book of poems Rekord in 1913, has been thought by various scholars to be possibly either Zdanevich (Khardzhiev in Khlebnikov1940:375), which has been explicitly denied by Zdanevich (Markov:403), or Larionov (Markov:403), or Konstantin Bolshakov (Khardzhiev 1976:47,80, where he indicates that his earlier opinion was based on inaccurate information from Kruchonykh and Kamensky). Lotov's book, supposedly published in 40 copies and described by Khudakov as already sold out (:140), has yet to tum up. Khudakov quotes three complete poems that were said to have been

97


written in 1912, hence before "Dyr bul shchyl." But there is no objective evidence to support this claim, which is obviously intended to give Lotov priority in the invention of zaum. The first of the three poems is as follows:

Ulichnaya melodiya II II II II II II II II

Ozzzzzzz o Kha durtan Esi Esi Sandal gada! Si Si Pa Nits

[Street melody] (hard signs]

[Rob a! ta ="at labor''] [Thou art Thou art] [Sandal guessed]

[Fa [Down]

Florensky (1986:152) has noted that "Kha dur tan" is a palindrome of ' "na trudakh" [at labor]. This poem is said to have been followed by musical notes omitted because of printing complications (:140). Interesting features are the opening string of hard signs with no sonic value, something Kruchonykh had not yet done, and the second line, which can be linked to a lithograph by Larionov o£1912 in which a humanoid' creature seems to be emitting the sounds "Ozz" (Janecek 1984a:81-82, Fig. 59). Kruchonykh usually avoided repetitions such as "Esi Esi" and "Si Si," but otherwise the poem is comparable to "Dyr bul shchyl."

The second poem, mostly of monosyllables in phonetic zaum, is titled "Melody of an Eastern City" (also quoted in Chizhevsky 1963:112-13). Reportedly this is followed in Rekord by three cycles: "Soldier Songs," "Flowering Fire," and "Hooligans:,'' the third poem quoted by Khudakov coming from this last cycle. It consists of seven lines of words composed entirely of consonants, such as: "Schtpr trg zhdrv" (:141). To date Kruchonykh had yet to use pure consonants for an entire poem. Khudakov mentions that "Mr. Lotov was very attracted by Marinetti, against whom he now energetically revolts." In Marinetti, strings of consonants are typically used for onomatopoetic effect, which is apparently not the case in the Lotov poem.

Evidence of Larionov' s (and Goncharova' s) other attempts to claim priority in avant-garde art is presented by Dyakonitsyn (:197), thus supporting the notion that the Khudakov /Lotov episode would have been in character for Larionov. Kruchonykh in Troe (:39) also criticizes Larionov for such tactics and could be taken as responding to Khudakov's phrase "tenderly sentimental" by calling Larionov's Rayism "saccharine" [slashchavy]. Whether Larionov was Khudakov and/ or Lotov or not, it is clear that he was at least the instigating force behind their publications.

Lotov was also the subject of several articles in the Moscow jour-

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Competing Early Zaumniks 99

nal' Teatr v karrikaturakh [Theater in caricatures] in the fall of 1913. The first describes a Futurist theater project for two plays by Lotov, "Bada-pu" and "Futu," the first a "tragedy from contemporary life" and the second a comedy. The rayist set is movable to various places in the auditorium and follows the actors around:

[ ... ] the spectators lie in the middle of the auditorium in the first act and are in a net up by the ceiling in the second. [ ... ] The language in many places in the play is beyond the bounds of the language of thoughts [za predelami yazyka mysley], consisting of free made-up sound irni tation. Weeping and laughter in the second play become dominant and it is a wild pantomime. (Sept. 8, No. 1:14; also Bow it 1991b:77-79)

Another unsigned article, "Poetry of the Futurists," in the same issue (:15) reports on Lotov' s book Rekord, giving almost verbatim the information found in Khudakov, quoting in full the poem "Street Melody" and another rayist poem also quoted by Khudakov. This piece is accompanied by two illustrations by Goncharova, "Portrait of the poetfuturist Anton Lotov," and "White linens."

And the Sept. 29, 1913 issue (No. 4:8) describes Larionov' s rayist set designs, stage actions, and text for Lotov's play "Pyl' ulitsy pyl" [Dust of the Street Hot]. There is to be simultaneous action on three stages, one behind the other: parlor, street, another apartment. The text is described abstractly:

Words and phrases are complex. They consist of four elements: the element of thought alone, the element of a responding thought, the element of the author's direction in the play, the element of the living word.

Phrases are composed in a similar way. Those words from which the new-theatrical-statement has been

composed will be printed in a separate libretto.

The layered sets will be moved upon the completion of each "psycho., logical moment," and" the words spoken at this time will have a double content- intersecting (their content of four elements will be multiplied by 2)." This project was apparently not actualized.

The connection between Lotov and Bolshakov indicated by Khardzhiev (1976:47, 80) finds support in an anonymous report in the Moscow weekly Stolichnaya rnolva (Oct. 7,1913, No. 331:5), which describes Bolshakov reading his play "Plyaska ulits" [Dance of the Streets]:

A characteristic, pure futurist trait of this play is that its hero-a certain young man-figures simultaneously in several guises. The sets are arranged so that through the room of a restaurant one can see the apartment of the hero, and through the apartment-the street ... At one and


the same moment the hero-his three guises-act immediately in all the places ...

The drama does not have a plot in the usual sense: it is something indefinite, diffuse, depicting the nightlife of the city. The play is dedicated toN. S. Goncharova.

Hence most of the elements of the play by Lotov are also present in the work by Bolshakov, including similar titles. Both of these works suggest a cabaret milieu such as The Pink Lantern, rather than a regular theater setting (see Bowlt 1990:47-48).

Several other publications in Teatrv karrikaturakh are noteworthy. Bolshakov published his one zaum poem in No. 16 (:21, Dec. 25). A provisional translation of the recognizably Russian words along with a transliteration of the zaum might read:

Springs.

Esmerami verdomi tribbles spring, The lisilay of fields eliiy aliels. Vizizami, vizami rushes silence, Kissing in the quieted verem of a trill,

5 Aksimeia oksami zisam out of sleep Aksimeia zosam aksimey will mistletoe out. Complaining caresses, velemi velom velena Lilalet alilovying velirni of a shoal ... Esmerami verdorni tribbles spring,

10 Akiel of overwing winglessness they sang! Esmerami verdomi tribbles spring, And the moons of moons rocked on columns, Knocking, dashing, the trolleys motleyed. "My dearest,

15 You've become a kept woman" ... A song of two words My friend. He sang. She looked out

20 From beneath her hat Like a blue foreigner A woman passing by ... If one turns around And runs,

25 To catch up To bend down slightly And looks into [her] face The moments are not to return ...

I,

Competing Early Zaumniks

Esmerami, verdorni tribbles spring, 30 And the moon will shadow circles upon circles,

On the column the many-brothered moon

101

This poem is rather romantic, lyrical, even musical, with a preponderance of 1' s, m' s, and v' s, and does not show any obvious resemblance to works attributed to Lotov except for the inclination toward repetition. The first line sets the tone of the poem by beginning with two mellifluous but obviously non-Russian words, followed by a verb-like coinage that suggests "utterance/ sounding," and concludes with the word "spring" (the season), a possible translation of which might be: "Spring tribbles esmerami, verdomi." There are no lines without at least one recognizable Russian word, and at line 12 the poem turns into straight Russian, except for the reprise of the opening line in line 29. The poem is also cited by Khudakov (:143) with words of praise, which is peculiar, given his criticism of Kruchonykh's poetry in Pomade as being "tenderly sentimental." Khudakov indicates moreover that he is "familiar with the poem from manuscript" (it had not yet been published in July). When Bolshakov included the poem in his book Serdtse v perchatke [A Heart in a Glove] (1913b:n.p.), he gave only the first eleven lines, marked stresses on the coined words, and made changes in a few words. By eliminating the encounter with the "foreign woman," he removed some of the motivation for the zaum. thus making it more mysterious. There is nothing else comparably radical .r in the other poetry Bolshakov published under his own name. In a review of this book, Shershenevich comments: "Of course, one can easily understand that 'Esmerami, verdomi' is instrumental case plural and can decipher the structure of all the lines, but all the same this is more verbal music than it seems and is attempting to be" (1914b:137-38).

Another odd occurrence is described in an earlie'r issue of Teatr v karrikaturakh (Oct.13, No. 6:15). The critic E. I. Ivanov reports receiving a review copy of a ragged little book of poetry by one "Luchezarets [Ray-shiner] Pepelli" full of poems of only vowels and various other kinds of zaum. Ivanov associates such activities with Larionov's group, possibly because of the connection between "luchezarets" and Larionov' s "luchizm" [rayism]. His comment is that any talentless madman can tum out such stuff; all he needs is pencil and paper. This may be a hoax or another mysterious zaumnik.

T11e Petersburg-based Ego-Futurists were less adventurous than the Moscow Cuba-Futurists when it came to verbal innovation. If they coined words to demonstrate the poet's power over language, they were usually easily decipherable, and indeterminacy was not a goal. The one apparent exception is Vasilisk (Vasily Ivanovich) Gnedov


(1890-1978), who arrived in Petersburg at the end of 1912 from Rostovon-Don for the purpose of "renovating literature and showing new ways" (Sigov 1987a:116; also 1991). 1913 saw the appearance under Ivan Ignatev's "Petersburg Herald" imprint of a series of Gnedov's poems and booklets, some of which have interesting quasi-zaum features to them. However, Zakrzhevsky's claim that his "insane poems" are more extreme than anything by Kruchonykh and are written "in a language of his own, comprehensible only to him" and "impossible to decipher" (1914:98-99) is overstated.

Gnedov's first book of poems, Gostinets Sentimentam [A Treat for the Sentiments], appeared in January, 1913, and consisted of four pages of poems full of unusual wordforms which Sigov characterizes as "not coinages like Khlebnikov's, but a 'fluidized' variation of folk speech" (1987a:117). Critics found these poems "idiotic," but they are generally not difficult to decipher. Some of the more obscure coinages were intended to be decipherable, as indicated by Gnedov's later explanation that Uverkhayu means uletayu vverkh [I am flying up and away] and that krylo is not the noun "wing," but a shortened form of krylato [wingedly] (:117;Gnedov 1913a:1). Without such glosses, however, these instances do look very much like morphological and syntactic zaum, respectively:

Uverkhayu lyoto na muravoy Krylo uverkhayu po zelyonke.

I upfly off flightly on the sward Wingly upfly off along the green balm.

Gnedov' s most famous work remains his "Poem of the End," which consisted of this title followed by a blank space and the printer's seal and date on last page of the booklet Smert' Iskusstvu ... [Death to Art! .. ], (1913b), which came out in April, a month after Kruchonykh's "Dyr bul shchyl." The poem was recited by Gnedov using a gesture that has been variously described (Markov 1968:80) and has been interpreted as signifying the end of poetry (Adamovich:211). It could be taken, particularly if Gnedov did indeed vary the gesture involved, as gestural zaum of a radically nihilistic sort. But this poem was only the fifteenth poem in the booklet, and the others are at least as interesting. Each consists of a title in one or two words and a one-line "poema." This latter term is standardly used in Russian poetry to indicate a long narrative poem and is therefore deliberately oxymoronic in the context. Nearly all the titles and words in the poems are coinages whose morphology is usually fairly obvious. For example:

Poema 1. STONG A Polynchaetsya- Pepel' e Dushu.

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The title appears to be a mixture of stog [stack [of hay]] and ston [groan], with the possible addition of stonoga [Ukr. woodlouse]. There are a number of Russian nouns ending in -nga, the closest being shtanga [barbell weight]. The compound hence suggests "a heap or weight of groans." The first word of the poem is a reflexive verb, present tense, with a number of interpretants: polyn'=wormwood, polynyat'=to goof off, polinyat'=to fade, linchevat'=to lynch. The second word, a coined derivative of pepel [ashes], indicates a state of being or becoming ash. The third word could be either a noun (ace. sg. dusha [soul] or dat. sg. dush [bath shower]) or a verb (lst pers. sg. dushit' [smother; spray with perfume]). Hence, there is some syntactic ambiguity. The expressive import of the poem, however, is rather clear: a moment of intense suffering, bitterness, and despair. The other poems in this work follow a similar pattern of morphological compounding and syntactic uncertainty that is intriguingly just beyond the bounds of rational analysis.

With "Poema 9" a shrinking process begins that, before it reaches the textlessness of No. 15, includes two one-cyrillic-letter poems (No. 11: POYUY. U-; No. 14: YU.). The shrinking process is interrupted, however, by a perfectly clear prosaic statement (No. 12: Moemu bratsu 8 let.- Petrusha. {!vfy brother is B. Petrusha.]). Nilsson has analyzed No. 11 as the prefix u- ["away"] and No. 14 as the first person singular present tense verb ending (-yu), a call for reader intuition to fill in the word stems and an affirmation of the poet's ego (Nilsson 1970). Jensen (1983:11-13) further notes that yu is the penultimate letter of the Rus- r.

sian alphabet as it is the penultimate poem in the book, coming before the letter ya (I, ego) in the alphabet and the "Poem of the End" in the book. In addition to its being a verb ending, yu serves as a noun ending (most commonly fern. ace. sg. or masc. dat. sg.), thus including both genders. In terms of articulation, the extremes of front glide (y) and back vowel (u) are combined. And it is the only letter that has this diphthong nature reflected in its graphic shape, which combines the opposites of the line and the circle or, in numbers, the 1 and the 0. Thus the associations this one letter arouses are rich and structured, despite its modesty of size.

Ignatev provided this booklet with a two-page manifesto introduction in which he noted Gnedov's inclination toward poetic concentration: "The word has approached the Limit. It is refined to perfection" (:1). Sigov sees this as a "collapse of 'massive' form" and notes that several of the one-line poems are related by title to previous full-length poems perhaps as distillations (Gnedov 1992:146), suggesting they could be decoded into full discursive statements. Of relevance also for zaum is Ignatev's comment:

[ ... ] each letter has not only sound and color, -but also taste, but also a dependence in meaning, .palpability, weight and spatiality inseparable


from other letters. For example, how much can be expressed by the one short bisyllable "Vesna" (Spring]. From the letter "s" we get an impression of sunniness, with the letter "a" -the joy of attaining the Long-awaited, etc.- a whole spacious poelll. (:2)

These impressions, which he admits in a footnote are personal, nevertheless closely resemble those suggested later by Balmont and Bely. In his advocacy of the expressiveness of individual sounds without the inventive freedom of zaum, however, Ignatev remains close to older Symbolist principles.

Gnedov' s other publications of 1913 are somewhat less radical, but all contain interesting verbal gymnastics worth studying further. In addition to various coinages and syntactic dislocations of the sort already discussed, there are poems consisting of long compounds that take up a whole line, e.g., lechgagrachichelenykh"koromysl" (Nebokopy [Aug.] 1913:n.p.). Sigov describes this as a situation in which "The structural unit of the building turns out to be not the word, but the line, understood as a primeval magma, unsubdivided and extended. The guessed-at 'words' are·given in length and flux" (Gnedov 1992:155). Generally the lines are made of recognizable morphemes strung together, but often, as in the example, the roots overlap, cree1ting indefiniteness. In the given word one can find lech'=to lie down, gaga=eider, gagara=loon, grach=rook, chicherone=cicerone, chicher=cold wind with rain or sleet, zelyonykh=green, koromyslo=dragonfly /yoke. Sometimes one is surprised to discover that a line breaks up into a normal sentence: Takikhuspeluvidet'idavno. [=Such ones I managed to see already long ago]. But the level of dislocation and indeterminacy remains high, nevertheless. And Gnedov holds the record for the longest such coinage, 36letters in the original: UgryadayLisitsypochuyut" dobyt'zasledyat'y. [;::: BeddownThefoxes-willsensetoobtainthey'llleavetracks]. Frequently he places hard and soft signs after vowels and short-i after consonants ,I in orthographically inappropriate places, and uses similar practices in texts that are laid out as prose (Sigov sees these as "stop-signs" equivalept to pauses (:155). The sound level of Gnedov's zaum is less gruff and more musical than Kruchonykh's, and evocations of nature play a significant role.

Sigov sees a direct imitation of Gnedov's run-together words in Terentev's poem "Endless toast" (Sigov 1987a:121; Terentev [1919] 1988:133). Gnedov, the longest-lived of the Futurists, continued to experiment in verse while living in obscurity, and his later poetry has been brought to light by Sigov (1991) and Khardzhiev /Marzaduri (Gnedov 1992). In his later years, Gnedov insisted that he never invented words (Gnedov 1992:20, where he pointed out the folk source of a seemingly zaum coinage, "bubaya"), that he was not a zaumnik and did not want to be grouped with Kruchonykh in this area (:191).

r L


In 1913, a little-known Futurist ally, Sergei Podgaevsky, published a series of booklets that are also written in quasi-zaum. Edem [Eden] (1913a) is an oneiric fantasy with some syntactic dislocations and bizarre, surreal imagery, but not any true zaum, while both Ship [Thorn] (1913b) and Biser [Pearl] (1913c) are long poems with a full range of zaum-like effects. Both of these latter works consist predominantly of one-word lines with little continuity and read like random assemblages of words, word fragments, and coinages. The imagery is mainly anti-aesthetic in Kruchonykh's best style. The concluding two pages from Thorn (:15-16), which Podgaevsky also included in his collage booklet Pisanka Futurista Sergeya Podgaevskogo [Writing by Futurist Sergei Podgaevsky] (1914), are typical:

ne not zhit' to live zhele jelly mepuzo m' belly zhele techot- jelly is flowing-tlenie. bit' rotteness. to beat me my nogi-pudts! legs-channel (?] deryot strips away fuzoi ... by trade ... bodanie butting kala- offeces-umozaklyuchenie deduction chush' nonsense osha rash, confus, vsir gaz vit gnid twi gna iskatelya seeker's pettt pettt a ardoi ... a ardo ... oydvd oydvd svemis' twist up bublikom into a pretzel v shi kh swish shut i khi. .. jest eress ... likom vopis' face wail.

Elsewhere there are sometimes greater doses of sound effect or phonetic zaum, or more morphological distortion, but the observable content is almost always very earthy and unabstract. While there is a significant amount of disjuncture, there is ultimately little ambiguity or even polyvalence. Podgaevsky shows a certain vitality, but not much

;r,


originality or range of technique or interests. As Bobrov put it in reference to the 1914 booklet: "he is trying to imitate ... Kruchonykh, but even for that simple task he is lacking" (1914:43). -

Yet other efforts at zaum appeared in Teatr v karrikaturakh the following year. A certain L. Frank published two similar poems called "In the Restaurant" (1914 No. 3:12; Bowlt 1990:48) and "Memories" (No. 6:7; Bowlt 1991a:302), the second of which runs as follows:

Es ver veri' Kalma veri Pakili .... !?! Furman ton, Argantili. Pshekoshi Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay .... ! 0, o, o, o, o, o, o, p Polikali, polimeli, veli, peli Tryn, bryn, bryn, tryn Shpok!!!! .... Zachem ty sidela na kresle spinkoy.

The last line is straight Russian [Why were you sitting in the armchair backwards], but the rest can stand on its own as uninteresting and repetitious sound effects. This is either amateurish zaum or, one suspects, a parody.

A negative though fairly thorough view of public opinion on the Futurists at this point is provided in an article in the Petersburg newspaper Birzhevye vedomosti, Nov. 26, 1913, by K. S. Barantsevich titled "Korova i teatr" [Cow and Theater] on a Futurist performance:

True, in all ages and among all peoples they didn't understand if1I1ovators to the extent that they even burned them at the stake, but at least something ought to be understandable,- but with the Futurists it is impossible to understanding anything or logically explain it. [ ... ]

The Futurists exert themselves to prove that the meaning [smysl] and force of true poetry is in words and only in words, and therefore (?) the true poet can use any words he wants, as long as he likes them, can create new verbs, nouns, can introduce idiosyncratic accents. [ ... ] so here are two rich rhymes for you: karova and teatr!

"You laugh," says Mr. Burliuk (the audience was indeed laughing), "but you are wrong, and I'll prove to you thatthese are wonderful rhymes! In both of them there are many vowels, a and o; these vowels are the

r Competing Early Zaumniks 107

tender beauty of poetry. Furthermore, both have a definite, weighty, threatening consonant r, which relates and rhymes these two words which seem completely unsuited to each other. [ ... ]

A forerunner of our Futurists, Ivan Yakovlevich Koreysha, of blessed memory, spoke not just one, but a whole five words, two of which are Polish: "bez pratsy, ne bendze kololatsy" [without work, there'll be no kololatsy], yet even so no one understood him; and if the audience gathered at the Futurists' lecture understood anything, it was only because the Futurists did not continually repeat all their "kololatsies," but gave speeches that at times were even sensible.

No, Messrs. Futurists, with made-up words, sound-imitations and announcements that the Egyptians stroked cats in order to obtain electric sparks you won't get far ... But nevertheless the audience is looking for newer and newer things, is dying for revelations ... Such is the audience these days! Hurry, Messrs. Futurists, think up something, be clever, or else you won't be able to touch even the tail of the glory you want to catch hold of. It will fly away! But meanwhile all your poetry is incomprehensible and ridiculous, like your "rich" rhymes: "korova and teatr."

This article captures the combination of critical irritation, inchoate comprehension (if not appreciation), and audience fascination that had developed around the Futurists by the end of 1913, with a particular focus on language.

A notable reaction dating from November of this year was most assuredly a parody of Futurism, Vsyodur' [Allfolly] (see Markov 1968:213-14), this time, in contrast to Necr-Futurism, concentrating particularly on zaum. The initial manifesto written by one Gleb Marev, however, contains only one relevant declaration: "Will the word, rotting in the saliva-filled chewer-sewer of Reason, grab the broom of immortality? Language in Poetry=O. The center of balance falls on all matter .... " The two poems that follow are each in zaum ranging from phonetic to syntactic. If, as seems likely, this booklet was intended to make fun of zaum, it is instructive to examine these poems more closely. The first, by "Vas. Naumov," is a combination of recognizable words, word fragments, and coinages, and ends in a series of pure vowels:

ZVUCHAI

Kovno zvoncheli Zapi medyai leli Kronu mryai nryuchi Aleli ali pneli Zovy zvali Nali nesshi ya


Vesshi zonti ya ki Preli zlyuty Dymei tvori Plono na o moi Kali kary ty Stu pen ne zaby vy Khladnykh sne nes i Nai i vo oi Uu io ii Oueuo ... o ... I. ..

The prevalence of liquid and nasal consonants and structured repetitions (e.g., zvoncheli -leli- aleli ali pneli- zvali- naZi- preli) give the poem a sonic prettiness that is quite musical, and, we would have to add, uncharacteristic of Kruchonykh, though not foreign to Khlebnikov, Kamensky, or Bolshakov. There are quite a number of recognizable words (prepositions "on," "about," "in"; conjunction "and"; particle "not"; pronouns "I," "you" sg. and pl.; adjectives "my,"" cold"; nouns "crown," "calls," "retribution," "sleep"; and verbs or verb derivations), plus a number of others that are very close to standard words (e.g., "zonti"=zonty=umbrellas). Others are fragments of words which can be completed in various ways: "Zapi" -vat' j-nat'syaj-rar=get drunk/ hesitate/lock; "NaZi" -vat'j-tso=pourjbe present; "zaby" -t'=forget; "nai"=the beginning of any synthetic superlative adjective. Of theremaining coinages, perhaps only one, "nryuchi," does not suggest any immediately obvious analog in Russian, though such participials as vonyuchiy [=stinking] and goryuchiy [=burning] are possibilities.

The second poem, by" Anat. Puchkov," is composed ofinore complex words and quasi-syntactic constructions and looks like a traditional poem (four rhymed quatrains), if you don't try to read it. Once you do, it turns out to be at least as opaque as the first. The initial stanza can serve to exemplify this:

ZHURCH DVIZHEU

Po zhel'zoy trukhavili trutno Shipeelsya lyudvy zaklyop Zachirikival pezvelo prut na Otvislistom kharkale nyob

Along with some ordinary words or unusual but recognizable ones (trukhavili=turned to trash, trutno=dronedly, zaklyop=rivetting, Zachirikival=began to chirp, prut=twig, Otvistlistom=loose-hangingish, kharkale=expectorator, nyob=palatej roof of mouth) are others that can be interpreted despite minor distortions (zhel[ezn]oy=iron, Shipe[e]lsya=was whispered, pe[re]zve[ne]lo=re-chimed lyud[o]v[it]y=


populated/crowded). This all adds up, however, to a rather strange statement that goes something like: "By the iron they trashed dronedly J Whispered a crowded rivetting/Began to chirp re-chimed the branch on/The loose-hangingish cough-outer of mouth roof." On the whole, there is no phonetic zaum and only rather limited morphological zaum. The sdvigi are mainly on the syntactic and semantic levels. In content and sound, this poem is cruder and more consonantal that the first, making it closer in tone to Kruchonykh' s standard manner. In fact, one would have to confess that were either of these poems to be placed among similar ones by Kruchonykh, they would not, I think, be perceived as parodies. This makes one observe that zaum is not necessarily easy to parody, if that was really the intention here. Markov more generally classes such efforts as "forgeries and hoaxes" (1968:212). Unsympathetic critics might well respond, though, that zaum is already a parody of poetic language to start with.

Yet another hoax/parody, this time revealed to be such by its perpetrator, Lev Gumilevsky, is described by an eye-witness, E. Efremov (1963). Its focus was an almanac published in Saratov by a fictitious group of "Psycho-Futurists" in the winter of 1914. This publication created a local sensation, was immediately sold out, and had to be reprinted. Judging by Efremov' s quotations, some of the poems contained at least bits of zaum, such as: "Zatirlikali lirlyuki, peremereferknuli ferlyuki, Perefergil' perefergul"' (:182), a sequence reminiscent of sec-tarian glossolalia (also see Ivanyushina 1995). ,1,

Notes

1According to normal orthographic rules, "hard" and "soft" signs indicate that the preceding consonant is pronounced unpalatalized (hard) or palatalized (soft), hence are used only after consonants. "Short-i" represents a y-glide (as in Eng. "yes" or "boy") and can appear only in word-initial position before a vowel or elsewhere only after a vowel.

Chapter Four

Victory Over The Sun

The creation and performance in 1913 of the Futurist opera Pobeda nad solntsem [Victory Over the Sun] (19311) is one of those nodal moments in the history of the Russian avant-garde in which the collaboration of several leading figures produced a concentrated stage piece taking less than an hour that had far-reaching significance. From his design for the backdrop of Act 1, Scene 1, and Act 2, Scenes 5-6, Malevich was to receive the inspiration upon which to build his Suprematism, the most radical form of Russian abstractionism. Matyushin' s music for the work that involved quarter-tones, sharp dissonances, deliberate noises, and other advanced new techniques. Kruchonykh's contri- .I>

bution was the libretto to the opera with a prologue provided by Khlebnikov.

As a result of a so-called "First All-Russian Congress of Wordwrights of the Future" on July 18-19, 1913, at Uusikirkko, Finland, involving Matyushin, Kruchonykh, and Malevich (Khlebnikov was not able to come from Astrakhan because he had lost his wallet (Matyushin 1976:149)), plans were made to produce Victory Over the Sun as part of an announced program:

1) To destroy "the pure, clear, honest, sonorous Russian language" emasculated and smoothed down by man because of "criticism and literature."

It is unworthy of the great "Russian people!" 2) To destroy the archaic movement of thought according to the law

of causality, toothless, common sense "symmetrical logic," wandering in the blue shadows of symbolism and to provide a personal creative vision of the genuine world of new people. [ ... ]

5) To aim at that bastion of artistic sickliness-the Russian theater and to transform it decisively. (Kruchonykh/Malevich 1913:606)

Other productions, all of which were referred to by the neologism deymo, 'were to be plays by Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov (for more

111

jneesetodd

Highlight


details see Markov 1968:141-47). Since Khlebnikov's play, Snezhimochka (Snowhite[1908]), uses the coinage deymo, we can attribute its invention to Khlebnikov.

Sources or models for Kruchonykh's Victory libretto have been traced by Marcade (1976:66-69) and Khardzhiev (1975b:36, 1987:165) to Symbolist drama (specifically Blok's Balaganchik [The Puppet Show, 1905] and Korol' na ploshchadi [King on the Square, 1906], and Bryusov' s play Zemlya [Earth, 1904]), and to folk and medieval drama (specifically the 1911 production of "Tsar Maximilian and his Son, Adolph," also under Union of Youth auspices). Marcade identifies a passage in Scene 6 which he interprets as Kruchonykh's answer to Bryusov's sun-worship; Sigov sees the opera as a mystery play referring to the ancient association of the sun with someone who has died, the victory thus being over death itself (1988:30); Khardzhiev finds some of the antics (e.g., a character pulling himself by the hair) and wordplay (hyperbole and metatheses) reminiscent of folk comedy and puppet plays (see also Enukidze 1993). But probably the strongest direct influence was from Khlebnikov' s Snezhimochka, which was to have been the third of the productions planned that summer, but was never staged (for more on Snezhimochka see Ch. 5). Although the folktale orientation of Snezhimochka, itself a take-off on A. Ostrovsky' s The Snow Maiden [1873] (Khlebnikov 1986:688) is not a notable feature of Victory, they share some of the same sources as well as their free use of language. Still, none of these influences can account for the truly revolutionary zaum character of Victory.

As a complex theater-piece, Kruchonykh's opera involved music, singing, acting, costuming, lighting, and stage design, all of which were innovative and interesting, but we will focus our attention on the text of the play and on those elements of the production immediately associated with it.

Clearly, the basic conception of how to proceed was already in Kruchonykh's mind before the Uusikirkko congress. Let's Grumble had included a "deymo," which we have discussed in Chapter 2. But the actual composition began at the Finland retreat:

Summer at Uusikirkko. The air is thick as gold ... I wander around the whole time and gulp

it down-imperceptibly wrote "Victory Over the Sun" (an opera) its development was helped by Malevich' s unusual voice and dear Matyushin' s "tender singing violin."

In Kuntsevo [suburb of Moscow] Mayakovsky was grabbing up railroad car buffers [shock-absorbers]-that's how the futurist drama was being born! (Kruchonykh Troe 1913:41)

One page of fragments of Matyushin's music for the opera was also included in Troe (:42). Later, in his memoirs Matyushin described the

.p

L

Victory Over The Sun 113

cooperative effort involved in the work:

We consulted each other about everything. Kruchonykh would revise the text whenever Malevich and I pointed out weak places to him. I then immediately changed those places which did not correspond to the general meaning. (Kapelyush 1976:167)

In the fall, Kruchonykh had to return to work as a teacher in Smolensk province and was able to get away to Petersburg for rehearsals only during breaks in the school schedule, thus delaying the originally planned November debut to early December. As late as November, he was sending textual revisions and clarifications to Matyushin, which were included by Matyushin in the final published version (Kapelyush:173-75). Immediately after the performances on December 3 and 5, 1913, in Petersburg, the full text of the play was published, and it is from this that we will work. The play has also been translated into English (seeK. Tomashevsky 1971:107-24), French (Marcade 1976), and German (Erbsloh 1976:37-57, rprt. in Sieg iiber die Sonne 1983:53-73).

A neologistic Slavophile theatrical terminology used in the script had been concocted by Kruchonykh and Khlebnikov and laid out in The Word as Such (1913:13). Thus "theater" was zertsog; "actor" was oblikmey, likomey, or likar', all based on the root lik [visage], though it is unclear why one coinage would not have sufficed, particularly since all three are masculine; the dramatis personae are osoby, a standard ' word, though not usually used in this context; the" troupe" is lyudnyak, the "prompter, soufleur" is zastenchiy, "drama" is deyuga. There are three terms for "act," deymo, sno, and zno, though the usual deystvie is perfectly Russian; the derivations of sno and zno are unclear.

The performances opened with Kruchonykh, in a black and white costume with a triangular mask (Gurevich:6), declaiming Khlebnikov' s Prologue, a marvelous tapestry of coinages addressed to the audience. Some of these are immediately interpreted for the listener; others are obscure enough to perhaps qualify as zaum. The purpose of the prologue is to announce to the audience that they are about to witness something quite out of the ordinary, and the very language in which the announcement is made exemplifies this extraordinariness. Since this introduction stands somewhat apart from the play and was authored exclusively by Khlebnikov, we will discuss it in the next chapter.

The opera is in two acts [deyma] divided into six "pictures" [kartiny]. Up to the last minute, there was a certain improvisatory element to the production, and K. Tomashevsky, who played the role of the Ill-Intentioned One, reports that even the opening lines were a last-minute inspiration by the author during one of only two rehearsals before the performance:


Finally the "trick" was found to open the "opera." The "trick" consisted of the following: Two Futurecountrymen came on stage. One of them said, "All is well that begins well!" The other one asked, "What about the end?" The answer was, "There will be no end!" After this exchange, the "Futurecountrymen" tore a paper curtain that was painted completely in Cubist style, and the opera began. (1971:96-97; 1938:140)

Tomashevsky reports that another "trick" was having the actors, for the most part, Tomashevsky included, student amateurs in it for the lark, "pronounce all the words with pauses between each syllable. It sounded like 'The cam-el-like fac-to-ries al-read-y threat-en us .. . "' (:96/ :140). The purpose of this, Matyushin explained in an article published soon after the performances, was so that "in that way, a word, alienated from its meaning, gave the impression of great strength" (Tomashevsky 1971:103; Matyushin 1914:156)

From the viewpoint of zaum, the opera is a survey of types of zaum ranging from phonetic to semantic in the framework of a fairly comprehensible satire on or reversal of bourgeois theater conventions. Beginning with the opening lines just referred to, we get a turning upside down of the usual scheme of things, the overriding image of which is expressed in the title of the work where the sun, the source of light and traditional symbol of life, rat'\ler than being victorious itself, is to be conquered; in a word, this is a heliomachy.

The opera's basic theme, man against the sun, is meant as the arch-image of the Futurist desire to transcend the merely present and visible. "The sun of cheap appearances," as Matyushin called it [1914:156], is the creator and symbol of visibility, and hence of the illusion of reality. It is Apollo, the god ofrationality and clarity, the light of logic, and thus the arch-enemy of all" singers of the future." [ ... ]The sun seduces man into involvement with the present; it feeds his passions and perpetuates his dependence on nature. In the sunless future there will be no such sentimentality [ ... ]

(Douglas 1974a:47)

There is also in this attack on the sun a parodistic assault on one of the favorite images of the Russian Symbolists (see Hansen-L<>ve 1985b:27-28). The sun as <:1 symbol is especially prominent in the poetry of Balmont, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and Bely. Along similar lines, Marinetti in his Tuons le clair de lune [1909] had attacked the sentiments connected with the moon, a comparison noted by Marcade (1976:71) and Khardzhiev (1987:165).

After the paper curtain is tom open, the first Futurecountryman continues his speech:


We are striking the universe We are arming the world against ourselves We are organizing the slaughter of scarycrows Plenty of blood Plenty of sabers

And cannon bodies [fodder (Erbsloh:41)]! We are submerging the mountains (:109)1

115

Thus the opera proper begins in the sphere of absurd bombast and militaristic adventurism characteristic of Marinetti.

The two Strongmen then sing a duet (rhymed in the Russian), the misogyny of which is also not unlike Marinetti:

We have locked the fat beauties In the house Let the various drunkards

Walk stark-naked there . We don't have the songs Sighs of prizes That amused the moldiness Of rotten naiads! ..

The first Strongman "slowly leaves," and the second continues:

Sun, you gave birth to passions And burned with an inflamed ray We will throw a dusty sheet over you And board you up in a concrete house!

The sun is presented as an undesirable anachronism whose only purpose is to inflame passions, and the dramatic conflict of the work is thereby revealed.

At this point gears shift. Nero-Caligula, "a figure of the eternal esthete who does not see 'the living' but only seeks 'the beautiful' (art for art's sake)" (Matyushin 1976:52), costumed to appear as a single person "with his single left arm held up and bent at a right angle," moves us from the future into the past. It should be noted that zaum can be reflected not only verbally, but also in a visual form. Lissitzky' s prouns are excellent exampl'es of this, as is the costume just described. We also here move from the realm of absurdity expressed in standard Russia,n to the first instance of phonetic zaum. Nero-Caligula says (threateningly):

Culn sum der He drove without any luggage


Last Thursday Roast and tear apart what I didn't finish roasting.

Realistically, one might have expected something latinate, but one gets instead something closer to French and German, with slightly scatological suggestiveness (Fr. culle, Russ. surna [horse's forehead, face (derog.)], der('mo) [crap]). Using a favorite device of David Burliuk's, Kruchonykh omits the preposition in the third line and uses the wrong grammatical case (prepositional instead of accusative) [Proshlom chetverge]. Nero-Caligula sings of eating a dog, a "whitelegged," a fried cutlet, and '~dead" potatoes, during which the second Strongman leaves. The last lines are a non sequitur: "Space is limited/ Print be quiet". The second of these [Pechat' molchat1 is interesting. Pechat' may be either "printed media," i.e., publishing, or a "seal" or "insignia." Use of the infinitive mol chat' conveys a tone of imperial command, to wit: "Publishers be silenced!" Khardzhiev sees this as one of several instances in which the censors failed to note a "dangerous" place (i.e., a refe.rence to censorship itself) because it was couched in such peculiar terms (1975b:38). The aria ends on three sibilant and scarcely singable letters, ZH SH CH, after which a Time Traveler arrives "in the wheels [sic!] of airplanes," which are affixed with papers saying" stone age," "middle ages," etc. The presence of a Time Traveler, borrowed no doubt from H. G. Wells, might serve to explain the presence of Nero-Caligula, but not his overlapping with the Futurian Strongman. Unmotivated entrances, exits, and overlaps contribute to the absurdity of the work.

Nero-Caligula reacts to this arrival with slightly imperial indignation: "It is impermissible to treat elders this way ... /Flighters are not bearable ... ". It is unexpectedly, but pleasingly, humble for the emperor(s) to use the term starik [old man, elder] in regard to himself/ themselves, but it is apt, given the presumed age difference between Nero-Caligula and the visitor. The coinage letel'bishche [£lighter] is rather extraordinary, but easily interpreted in the context (see Erbsloh:82). Presumably the Roman(s), not knowing the Russian word samolyot, would have had to invent a word for a flying machine upon first encountering one arriving from the future. The last word [terpya] is ambiguous in form-either ~he verbal adverb or a truncated third person present tense, as the elipsis suggests-so that who it is that cannot bear the flying machines is unclear.

The Traveler's opening lines contain several syntactic sdvigi:

- Drug vse stalo Vdrug pushki

The first word can be taken in at least three ways: 1) as the noun" friend" in the nominative case, which then does not agree with the verb stalo


[it became]; 2) as a contracted form of the adverb vdrug [suddenly], rendered in the English translation as "-Denly all became"; or 3) as the short form of drugoy [other] and the first word in the expression "one ... the other/ each other." Only the second alternative eliminates syntactic difficulties in the first line, but even so it leaves the syntax incomplete and in conflict with the second line, a situation not evident in the English translation ("Suddenly guns [cannons]"). In addition, any of the available interpretations still results in a non sequitur in the context.

The Traveler then breaks into a song marked by a series of semantic sdvigi.

- Ozerspit Mnogopyli Potop ... Smotri Vse stalo muzhskim Ozer tverzhe zheleza Ne ver' staroy mere

-Vzygral bur Katitsya pelenishch Skoree buromer

Ne ver' prezhnim vesam · Tebya posadyat na ikru Esli ne dostanesh' pustopyat

-The lake sleeps Plenty of dust Flood ... Look Everything became masculine The lake is harder than iron Do not trust old measurements

-The storm began to seethe The shroud rolls Quickly, storm-measurer

Do not trust former scales They will make you sit down on roe [put you on caviar] If you don't catch empty-heel

The only thing requiring comment here for those who do not know Russian is that" everything became masculine" is literalized in the song by the fact that the words ozero (n.), burya (f.) and pelenishche (n.) are made to be masculine words, as is the coinage pustopyat [empty-heel], which probably ought to be feminine. This emphasis on ma~culinity may be an imitation of Marinetti's misogyny, or perhaps a parody of

•


it. Kruchonykh mentions that the work was to have had one female role:

but in the process of directorial work, it was eliminated. This, it seems, is the only opera in the world where there is not a single female role! Everything was done with the aim of preparing for a masculine epoch to replace the effeminate Apollos and soiled Aphrodites. (1989:134)

There is visual humor when in the middle of the song Nero-Caligula raises a lorgnette to examine the iron of the wheels on the Traveler's vehicle. In addition to the Roman emperor(s) having a lorgnette, there is the actualization of a metaphor possibly implied in the song (lake/ wheel=round, hence: iron wheel=iron lake). Upset by this song, Nero-Caligula expresses further absurd indignation, decides to leave for the 16th century and therefore takes his boots off as he leaves. The Traveler then soliloquizes about traveling through all centuries, including the 35th, doing battle with the sun. His monologue include~ anumber of semantic sdvigi, such as: "l will ride through all centunes even though I have lost two baskets until I find the right pla:e for myse~f." He becomes rapidly more incoherent, then returns to hts song, whtch includes coinages (pugatey [threateners], pulyay [bullet! (imperative sg.)]). Finally shot at by a certain Ill-Intentioned One, he departs, shouting:" Garizon! Lovi snoyu/ Spnye .. . Z. Z. Z!" [Garrison! Catch yon own/ Seepeeuh Zuh Zuh Zuh!]. Aside from the absence of a guard of any kind, there is the ambiguous form snoyu, which the English translators have read as a distorted form of the possessive svoy [one's own] but might be a feminized form of the masculine noun son [dream/ sleep]. The contracted form spnye appears to be related to the adjective sypnoy, as in sypnoy tif[spotted fever], but might be related to the general root meaning of syp- [sprinkle/ scatter] or, more likely in the context, sp-/ syp- [sleep], especially since it seems to be followed by snoring sounds.

Evidently quite self-satisfied with the result of his attack, the_ Ill-Intentioned One recites a series of disconnected phrases in praise of himself, such as: "I erected a monument to myself -I'm not stupid," a probable reference to Horace's "Exegi monumentum" wi~h its f~mous Russian version by Pushkin (Scholle 1983:65), and endmg wtth the paronomasia: "Ya bez prodolzheniya i podrazhaniya" [I am without continuation and imitation].

At this point, a Squabbler [Zabiyaka] enters to sing:

- Sarcha sarancha Pikpit' Pit' pik

Ne ostavlyay oruzhiya k obedu za obedom Ni za grechnevoy kashey

Ne srezhesh'? Vzapuski - Lucost locust Lance drink Drink lance


Do not leave a gun for dinner at dinner time Nor during the buckwheat porridge course

Won't you cut it off? Chase each other

119

The favored coinage sarcha (from "Mutiny on the Snow" and the earlier Deymo) reappears here with a different continuation suggesting a paronomastic, if not etymological, link with the word for locust, and the sound play continues in the pair pik-pit' hardly evident in the literal translation. These three lines are repeated in the song, as the music provided with the original edition reveals, thereby giving them added attention. The III-Intentioned One reacts with hostility, and then some "enemies" enter the fray. One, probably the one played by Kruchonykh(Kovtun 1983:~5), comically pulls his own hair, a place in the work, along with the place where the III-Intentioned One argues with himself, that Khardzhiev identifies as examples of the influence of the folk puppet theater [balagan] (1975b:36).

Involved here is word/image play that confuses a head, a cabbage head, and a soccer ball. This is a particularly interesting passage, revealing much about the essentially poetic procedures involved. From the printed text it is not entirely clear who is speaking certain lines, but that would not have been a problem in tpe performance, so we will set it aside. Erbsloh (:47, 85-88) rightly points out that the pairing mech-myach (sword-ball) which forms the core of this development is an example of Khlebnikovian "internal declension," as described in his 1912 article "Teacher and Student" (Union of Youth 3:39-52; Khlebnikov 1986:584-91, 1987:277-87). The line in question, spoken by the Ill-Intentioned One, is: "Zakopal svoy mech ostorozhno v zemlyu i vzyavshi navy myach brasil ego" [I buried my sword carefully in the earth and taking a new ball I threw it]. Kruchonykh takes the process several steps farther by going beyond the level of language to the level of imagery (ball-bald head-soccer ball-(cabbage head)) in an elaborate metaphoric-metonymic complex (see Jakobson/Halle 1956:76-82; Erbsloh:87). A line preceding this one," Kichki v kapuste!" [Dogs (possibly also: crew, prows (Erbsloh:46)2) in the cabbage!], suggests the presence of a cabbage field in the vicinity. Thus the image of turning swords not into plowshares but into cabbage heads arises. The cabbage heads then become balls to be played with and bald human heads: "Obmorocheny ne mozhete razlichit' svoikh gladkikh golov i myacha rasteryalis' i prizhalis' k skameechke i mechi sami lezut so strakhu v zem' ikh pugaet myach" [Having fainted you can't distinguish between your

;!t


smooth heads and the ball you are confused and you hug the bench and swords by themselves go into the earth out of fear the ball frightens them]. On this virtuosic development the first "picture" ends.

The second "picture" takes place on a background of green shows and enemy warriors marching past, evidently in defeat, while the Ill-Intentioned One looks on with disdain. He then picks a fight with himself and at this point begins to remind one of Jarry's King Ubu in his overweaning pride and incompetence. A group of athletes and strongmen emerges to sing a song in semantic zaum. One particular stanza might even be read as an oblique political criticism:

Unexpectedly for them The sleepy-heads began to fight And raised so much dust It seemed Port-Arthur was being taken

The absurd and self-defeating military posturing of the Ill-Intentioned One, coupled with this reference to the Russians' embarrassing defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1905, introduces an element of social satire. The chorus that sings refrains in this scene is meant, according to Matyushin (1976:139), to parody sun-worshipping old-fashioned aesthetes (Erbsloh: 95, 100).

The scene ends with the disappearance of the sun and the arrival of total darkness. The third "picture" is consequently on a black background. Funeral attendants sing a two-quatrain song in semantic zaum. In the final scene of the first deymo, with a bravado reminiscent of Mayakovsky, the sun is reported captured and defeated, and a Day of Victory Over the Sun is declared. The act ends as One announces:

We become as strong as pigs Our faces are dark Our light comes from inside We are warmed by the dead udder Of the red dawn

~RNBRN

The rural, anti-aesthetic im~gery and the dark face of the peasant or the saint in an icon are victorious over the sun of enlightenment and culture, possibly also an indirect reference to Pushkin, the "sun" of Russian culture and a favorite target of Kruchonykh' s. "Our light comes from inside" suggests that native Russian culture, rather than artificially imposed European culture, now has the upper hand. The final consonant cluster suggests the root bran- [scold or, more likely, (de)fend]. Scholle, on the other hand, thinks that it suggests "onomatopoetic grunting" (1983:69, 1986:248).

Victory OVer The Sun 121

The second deymo, consisting of two" pictures," is lively to the point of chaos. The location is a "Desyaty stran" [Tenth Country] again employing the device of masculinizing a feminine noun strana. Here, by contrast with the norm, the house windows go inward like "pipes drilled through walls." Rapid repartees between Cowards and New Ones reveal that this is some future time and that the past has disappeared. An Elocutionist, again played by Kruchonych (Kovtun 1983:35), indicates the advantage of this: "With danger but without regrets and memories / Forgotten are mistakes and failures boring squeakingly into one's ear ... " A Fat Man begins an alogical song but is inter-

• rupted by the Elocutionist. In the final"picture" the Fat Man, an evident epicurean, complains

about the discomforts of the given location, which, it turns out, is below ground. The Fat Man, wanting to escape to pawn his watch, is advised not to by a Worker who rattles off a series of incoherent reasons. The sound of a propeller is heard as a Young Man runs in to sing a "petty bourgeois song" that begins in phonetic zaum, then shifts to semantic zaum made of cliche fragments strung together with other alogicallines, for example:

the homeland is perishing because of dragonflies

lilies sketched by a locomotive

and:

I am making my way quietly on the dark road on the narrow path a cow under my arm

Finally, the Strongmen return to sing in semantic zaum, which deteriorates into phonetic zaum, after which the airplane, whose propeller has been heard, crashes with one wing visible on stage. The spectators react with a mixture of morphological zaum and real words. The fallen aviator enters with a laugh to announce he is basically unharmed, and he sings a "military song" in phonetic zaum consisting almost entirely of consonants:

I I I krkr tip tlmt


kr vd t r krvubr dudu ra 1 kbi

zhr vida

diba

As Erbsloh suggests (:57), the repeated kr may be a reference to Kruchonykh, especially since those two letters also appear in Malevich' s design for the curtain in the opening scene. Erbsloh also suggests that the fragments du, ra, and k could be composed into the word durak [fool]. On the other hand, Scholle (1982:185) sees these sounds as reproducing machine or propeller noises, indicating that Marinetti's dream of a future where man and machine are closely identified has come to pass.

The Strongmen return to reprise the opening lines with a new ending:

all's well that begins well

and doesn't have an end the world will perish but for us there is no

end!

As in the earlier Deymo, all varieties of zaum are present, but, proportionally, absurdity predominates. This ranges from semantic zaum, i.e., alogical progressions of thought or imagery, to the larger theatrical situation: alogical progressions of events, entrances and exits, disjointed dialogues, grotesque costuming and sets. The result was a theatrical event as avant-garde as one could im~gine. Perhaps only Zdanevich later in his" dras" could be considered to have produced anything more radical, since they were mostly in phonetic zaum, whereas in Victory phonetic zaum is used sparingly (though perhaps for that reason more effectively).

There is no doubt that Victory Over the Sun was a very lively theatrical spectacle indeed. Its purpose was perhaps largely playful: to debunk bourgeois culture in the hackneyed image of the SUfi ( in part representing Pushkin and Symbolism) by turning it from a beacon to be worshipped into an enemy to be conquered. There are hints of an intent to satirize Marinetti as well. Elements of Russian bourgeois life


are especially targeted in the musical portions in which the songs are identified as "petty bourgeois" or "military." The work is also a parody of privileged, expensive, artificial high culture. As a self-designated "opera," its music, which consists of a number of aria-like set pieces, is notably of the low, popular, music-hall variety in shape and reference, yet it is simultaneously avant-garde and dissonant in actual realization. The fact that only a worn, out-of-tune piano could be supplied for the performances, while perhaps unintended, in the end helped intensify the effectiveness of the satire and make it more "futurist."

The cast, composed mostly of student volunteers, was on the point of mutiny during one of the rehearsals because they could not understand the work they were involved with, and when Matyushin was forced to step in with an explanation:

I remember Kruchonykh's words directed to me during one of therehearsals:

"Dear Matyushin, explain to the student-performers the essence of the incomprehensible words."

The problem was that the students performing the roles and the chorus had asked to have the content of the opera explained to them. Behind the verbal sdvigi they saw no sense and didn't want to perform without understanding. I said approximately the following:

"We don't always notice changes in language as we live in our own ,1,

time. The language and words are constantly changing. If the culture of a people is great and active, then it tosses away outmoded words and creates new words and word combinations."

Then I read a poem by the great eighteenth-century Russian poet Derzhavin and said:

"I think this poem by Derzhavin is as incomprehensible to you as our opera. I am intentionally placing you between two epochs, the new and the old, in order for you to have a sense of how much the means of expression changes. But to come to an agreement on anything-means to understand. In reading Lomonosov, Kheraskov, Derzhavin, you must come to an agreement on understanding, precisely as here, too, you must understand what the word is.

I read my favorite lines of Kruchonykh and explained the omissions:

Door fresh poppies I'll kiss all over puffs sunset boy puppy poet


years of infancy Strike knife current it turned blue live you live you die ...

[Sadok sudey II:63-64)

Then I explained that the old forms had become so accessible that even bureaucratic scribes know how to write poems in classical meters and that the previous method of narration and description was so distorted by unnecessary sentences and highfalutin words that in the present age it seems unnatural:

"Here is one example: recently I met an old man very cultured for his time and he began to tell me how he forgot his galoshes. He began with the spring planting in the south and what clothing they wore at the time when there were no galoshes, and the price of butter was very low."

This elicited noisy approval from my audience. I explained that the opera had a profound inner content, that Nero

and Caligula in one person was the figure of an eternal aesthete who did not see "the living," but was always seeking "the beautiful" (art for art's sake), that the time traveler is the bold seeker, poet, artist-clairvoyant, and that the whole Victory Over the Sun is a victory over the old romanticism, over the accustomed concept of the sun as "beauty."

This explanation succeeded with the students completely. They ap-plauded me and became our best helpers. (Matyushin 1976:151-52)

Earlier in the same memoir, Matyushin had also pointed out that the purpose of the work was "to indicate the defunct aestheticism of art." Matyushin adds that the "zaum words" of the Squabbler [" Sarcha sarancha ... Ne ostavlyay oruzhiya k obedu ... ] were a "hidden call to workers-not to put down their arms," which, it is no wonder, "was not noticed by the censorship" (:150), nor, it seems, by any workers.

Kruchonykh's explanation is along similar lines, but goes deeper, perhaps in hindsight:

The point of the opera is to destroy one of the greatest artistic conventions, the sun in the given instance. In men's minds there exist certain means of human communication which have been created by human thought. The Futurists wish to free themselves from this ordering of the world, from these means of thought communication, they wish to transform the world into chaos, to break the established values into pieces and from these pieces to create anew. (K. Tomashevsky:104)


But in another, perhaps more politically cautious assessment from 1932, Kruchonykh states: "The basic theme of the opera is a defense of technology, in particular of aviation. The victory of technology over cosmic forces and over biologism" (1989:134). According to him, the audience was especially impressed by the sounds made by the Coward and the Aviator and wanted them to be repeated, but the actors were too "shy" to oblige, while the chorus by the Grave-Diggers was accompanied by a steady roar from the audience (:134).

In one respect at least the work succeeded in its goals. The performances were sold out. The police, expecting a riot, were marshalled "in excessive numbers" to insure order. The audience, however, was mainly of the "fashionable and philistine bourgeois" sort with "very few members of the intelligentsia or students. There were no workers at all." As Tomashevsky further reports,

The opera was as easy to look at as it was interesting, and there were many intermissions. In other words, it was just this abstruse but interesting Futurism that the St. Petersburg public wanted, since they had a weakness for unusual sights. Kruchenykh was whistled and hissed at [ ... ]but the public was not angry; they shouted happy remarks at the actors, who swallowed them silently, without answering back. (:100)

An actor responded angrily only once, when the Elocutionist, played by Tomashevsky but whom the audience thought was Kruchonykh ·· with his face covered by a hood, pointed to the audience with the line "they are donkey's skulls."

Although the audience may have gotten out of the show what it had come for, critical reaction in the press was predictably negative. Even prior to the opening there was a negative pre-review in a Petersburg newspaper in which an anonymous critic described the content clearly but had to admit that he was able to come to this understanding only because of a "personal conversation" with Matyushin. He found the stage decorations "original but little comprehensible to the mind of an ordinary mortal" (b, Den' Dec. 1, 1913:6). Perhaps this only served to stimulate interest. After the opening, critic R. of the Peterburgskaya Gazeta described the" inhuman expressions" of the Prologue an:d the "endless nonsense" that "finally became boring" to the audience which then "helped the Futurists out" by shouting comments from their seats, the show ending in "a complete defeat for the Futurist-actors" (Dec. 4, 1913:5; see also Mgebrov 1939 II:282-83). Another writer from the same newspaper subtitled his article "On the Futurists": "In my opinion the real futurists are the public!" and he had his fictitious spokesman exclaim: "I w~m' t enter a house where there is a futurist" (Varlamov [Teatral], Dec. 8, 1913:13). Lyubov


Gurevich, the critic of the Moscow newspaper Russkie vedomosti, wrote:

There is a lack of creative energy, a lack of talent,- in such cases it is necessary to act by other means, by a stunningly wild inventiveness, intensified boldness, an insane release of the disconnected images and mental phantasmagorias wandering around in the human soul,- by means of everything that floats around and at times bursts forth in a person contrary to reason, conscience and higher taste. Hence words presenting in the futurists any hint of thought or dreams [ mechtu] are buried in the rocks of incomprehensible word combinations and sprinkled with a clumsy collection of crudely prosaic images. Here delirium is interwoven with conscious twaddle [pustosloviem]. Here one already senses at times the cynicism of lack of energy and ideas. Here the inflated and presumptuous human "I" is sticking its tongue out like a little boy at all non-admirers. (Dec. 13/26, 1913:6)

She was nevertheless able, probably with the help of the preview article mentioned above, to make out the basic idea that "the sun of the iron age will be smashed, we will be liberated from the law of gravity, but for many this feeling of liberation from the law which binds the world will be strange and unbearable." She sees such "violently anarchical fantasies" as a manifestation of the" far from new atheistic dogma that 'All is permitted."' Her report also describes rather more vociferous reactions from the audience than Tomashevsky recalls.

Perhaps to defend Futurism against such facile misunderstandings, Shklovsky gave a lecture at the Wandering Dog Cabaret on December 23, 1913, titled "The Place of Futurism in the History of Language," in which he laid out thoughts that became the basis of his first book, Resurrection of the Word (1914). Among these were the theories of Potebnya and Veselovsky, the need for renovation of language, the theory of the sdvig, Kruchonykh's "tight language" [tugoy yazyk] and Elachich's "spectrum of vowels" (1914). The audience was evidently small but vociferous (Parnis/Timenchik 1985:221).

Matyushin himself felt called upon to defend Victory immediately in an article of January, 1914. Each of the arts involved in the opera cut new paths to the future: "In the discovery [otkrytie] of the word and therefore the sundering of the word from meaning [smysla] is the word's right to independence, hence the new wordcreation (Discovery by the genius Khlebnikov)," in which the" old, effaced, trash-covered word, the boring word-meaning" is broken apart (1914:154).

in this seeming meaninglessness of words- the sound-sketch,- there are new signs of the future which are moving toward eternity and giving a


joyous consciousness of strength to those who are reverently listening to these signs and who, by looking into them, will become illuminated by the joy of discovered treasure [ ... ]. (:155)

Thus the Futurist Strongmen were able to "conquer the sun of cheap appearances and light the light inside themselves" (:156). While Matyushin finds Mayakovsky's Tragedy, which alternated with Victory at the Luna Park Theater, "an important and significant" play, by contrast with Victory, it is not innovative enough because it" does not tear the word away from meaning and does not make use of the self-valuable sound of the word" (:157).

As a result of Camilla Gray's and Vladimir Markov's pioneering books that dealt to some extent with Victory (1962/1986:158-59, 185-87; 1968: 144-47, resp.), scholarly interest in the work began to develop in the 1970s. Despite Markov's negative opinion(" After Mayakovsky's tragedy, Kruchenykh's opera [ ... ] reads like boring nonsense. The only interesting part is the prologue, written by Khlebnikov [ ... ]" (:144)), recognition of its key position in the history of the Russian avantgarde has become commonplace, and it has been described or mentioned in a number of recent scholarly articles Gadova 197$:130; Douglas 1975a:364; Bow It 1976b:179; Henderson 1983:272; Marzad uri 1983b, 1991b:89-101). Douglas, for instance, comments:

At times the grammar is deliberately confused or ambiguous; more frequently, what is puzzling is the illogicality of denotative meaning and imagery. Often the grammar skids crazily beyond l~gic to imprison tidy minds, which come to resemble the captured sun in its concrete prison. Kruchenykh's language, automatically associating one word with the next, is less discursive than expressive-it is poetic, abstract, almost devoid of narrative content. (1974a:48)

Elsewhere it is analyzed in more detail by Douglas (1980, 1981), Erbsloh (1976), Leach (1983), and Scholle (1983, 1986). Leach's observations, since they appear to be based on a knowledge of the work only in the Bartos/Kirby translation, have marginal value for a discussion of zaum. But as a person concerned actively with theater, Leach is able to offer some valuable insights from that perspective, such as the oft-forgotten fact that the text is only the starting point for a theatrical production, and the actor's reading of a line can drastically affect the meaning of the words; that silences on stage can be very significant, while they have little impact in a printed text; and that the visual aspects of the performance can be extremely important, as they certainly were in Victory. To exemplify the last factor he descibes the entrance of the Ill-Intentioned One:


His bulky body, sinister criss-cross mask and unmatching legs eloquently convey a clutch of ideas immediately, and his first action, guilefully and banefully eavesdropping and reacting to what he hears, further extends the audience's apprehension of the scene, so that finally when he does speak they do not need time to evaluate what he is, as a reader may. It is extremely difficult to obtain a true dramatic effect in the study, no matter how imaginative and experienced a reader is. (:102)

However, his suggestion that the meaning of the work may be "neither as private nor as obscure as has generally been thought/' with which one can generally agree, must nevertheless be understood in reference to the English version, which inevitably eliminates some of the polysemy of the original. By the way, it is an expressed goal of the German translation also to convey the original "in the most coherent language possible" (Erbsl6h:8).

Douglas points out that the characters are "one-dimensional personifications of qualities" and that their speeches are" often unresponsive to one another, the 'message' being directed primarily at the audience rather than at eliciting motivated action," yet "careful inspection reveals more than mere chaos. The effect is controlled, the madness methodical" (1980:37, 1981:72-73; also Erbsloh:61). On the language of the work Douglas observes:

The text is coolly absurd, a disengaged inanity that takes a curious sensual pleasure in the jingle of words, the play of cardboard violence, the refusal of rationality. It is the prattling idiocy induced by certain horror and no exit. The imagination runs loose, automatically associating one

• word with the next without regard for sense. (1980:42)

She notes that the future, as presented in the work, is certainly not unambiguously positive, though the Futurists are committed to it no matter what, and that Victory and Mayakovsky's Tragedy are" ultimately depressing. [ ... O]ddly, even in 1913 the Futurists darkly glimpsed the future" (:41 ). In this connection, she states that the language" twists beneath the pressure of strong emotion" and that "it is usually fear which triggers a character's transition from absurd speech to zaum" (:42). However, not all instances involve negative emotion, a case in point being the final "military" song of the pilot, who is clearly elated by his survival of the crash, though perhaps still shaken by it. Douglas's general characterization of Kruchonykh and Victory is also worth quoting:

The absurdity of Krucheny kh' s works was a very specific za um behavior; it was different from the seemingly absurd with a hidden message, an apparent lack of sense which disappears when the right key or keys are


found, different even from the "surreal" type of subconscious associations. This absurdity was a mindless, irresolvable condition meant only to reveal new and heretofore invisible realms, those" swans of other worlds." The breakdown of causality which will be found in Victory Over the Sun is an appeal to a higher cause, one that is implicit only in the form of the work itself. It is in this sense that it may be called "self-sufficient." (1980:29)

Erbsloh's analysis of all aspects of the work, based on a detailed consideration of the original text, which she translated into German, is the most complete to date and deals extensively with features of the language used. She points out significantly that the events of the play are almost entirely verbal and that the dialogues "tend toward lyrical monologues" (:66). She further brings to bear Vinokur's earlier observation (1923a) that Kruchonykh's zaum is not language as such, but "pure psychology, exposed individuation" (Erbsloh:90). This emotionally direct speech is best exemplified by the Pilot's song at the end, which consists of phonetic zaum. The characters, particularly the Time-Traveler who has just returned from the 35th century, demonstrate prophetically in action the language of the future sought by the zaumniks and described by Kruchonykh in his theoretical statements (:92). On the level of language, it becomes clear that the determining factor, or the dominant procedural device, is a strong focus on sound relationships and thought patterns based on them rather than on some ~ logic external to them. The juxtaposition of words is "motivated by sound analogy" (:84). This is a poetic orientation, rather than the prose orientation usually characteristic of drama.

In Victory Over the Sun, it is not easy to ascertain from the wording the attitude of a speaker to the object of his speech, which often exists only as an internal speech. On the contrary, the emotional accent of the wording is so inherent that it expresses the inner state of the speaker as 'pure' emotion independent of the given situation (:84).

Thus it has its own internal emotional and linguistic logic, which is less evident than that of ordinary lyric poetry because it does not feel compelled to impose an external, semantic, contextual logic on its patterns of development. The result is often a sliding over of suggestive relationships without pinning them down to specifics, an unacknowledged legacy of Symbolism. On the other hand, in contrast to the lyrical evocativeness and mood-setting of the Symbolist style, the events of Victory come as" a 'war' of words or phrases with each other," and hence this "language conflict" creates a conflict between the stage performers and the audience (Erbsloh:66-67, 69).

ErbslOh suggests a number of interpretations for the many places in the text that are difficult. However, these suggestions almost always


involve specifying two or more possible, but mutually exclusive, interpretations for a given word or coinage, none of which can be effectively excluded from serious consideration on the basis of the context because none of them makes any more or less "sense" than the others. A simple example not already discussed above involves the Second Strongman's line from the end of scene 2: "Kon' most ustroil v ukhe" (:12) [The horse set up a bridge in the ear]. Erbsli:>h, who also translates the last word as ear ["Ohr"], points out that depending on where the stress is placed on the word, we can have either "ear" [ukhe] or "fish soup" [ukhel One might object that in performance the actor would have to stress the word in one way or the other; but one must also not forget Kruchonykh's required manner of recitation by separate syllables, which might obliterate the stress differentiation. Even if, as here, the line is part of a song, it might still be possible to maintain ambiguity of stress. Nor is there a meter or rhyme scheme to provide any decisive information. And, most importantly, semantically and contextually either solution is equally possible an~ equally_ abs~rd. Kruchonykh proves himself to be a master at creatmg such sttuahons. They are examples in language of what Erbsli:>h calls "absolute Perspektivelosigkeit" (:107), comparing them to similar effects in Cubist art, but perhaps the more precise designation would be multiperspectivity. The simplest case, such as ukhe, produces an unresolvable double perspective, but other examples, such as myach/ mech, develop into more complex webs of shifting meaning. The multiple perspective of nearly any set of words in the opera develops into a complete lack of perspectival or contextual orientation.

We can add that the work in performance was doubtless the best example of a Gesamtkunstwerk of Cuba-Futurist visual and language arts, a work in which the visual aspects of the staging, costuming, and performance were perfectly matched by the dislocated, perspectiveless zaum of the text. Here we might mention the parallel case of Kandinsky's play "The Yellow Sound," published in German in Der Blaue Reiter [1912], as an example of a Symbolist Gesamtkunstwerk, though with a less fortunate theatrical history, since it was never produced and cannot now be reconstructed.3

Erbsli:>h also identifies another element that may play a significant role in the creation of zaum, namely, the involvement of in-jokes. When the Time Traveler says: "Pakhnet dozhdevym provalom" [It smells of a rain flop], she points to Matyushin's later remark: "We often used to say whenever there was any kind of failure: 'It smells of a rain flop'" (Erbsli:>h:83; Matyushin 1976:139). Here a conventional expression (pakhnet dozhdyom [it smells of rain] is deliberately distorted in fun by a small group of individuals and then used in an artistic work. For the group it has a special meaning; for others it must be taken at face value. This is, of course, a form of aesopian language common enough in the

,..

I

I .,


Russian context in earlier as well as later periods of censorship. . The absurdism which is a major part of this work is perhaps equally

difficult to assess. Nevertheless, as has been shown by the remarks even of hostile critics, certain things in the opera are reasonably clear. These include the meaning of the sun symbol and the outline of the action in regard to it. A certain amount of absurdity is also motivated by the element of time travel, with the resultant disorientation of the Time Traveler, and by parodistic goals. Kruchonykh is certainly one of the pioneers of absurdism in literature, the "first Dadaist, three years ahead of the appearance of the that movement in Western Europe" (Khardzhiev 1975b:36). He is, it is true, preceded by Jarry and Apollinaire (though the latter's "The Breasts of Teresias," while written in 1903, was not performed unti11917). And Victory pre-dates any comparable Italian Futurist experiments. Their sintesi were not published until1915-16, though some may have been performed as early as 1913 (Kirby:158,319-20). It seems unlikely that they were known by the producers of Victory prior to its composition.

However, there is an interesting remark by Kruchonykh in a letter to Matyushin dating from between October 5 and 13,1913, in which he says, "I am reading the futurists (futuristz)" (Kapelyush:171). The parenthetical reference in Latin script indicates without a doubt the Italians, rather than the Petersburg Ego-Futurists. If Kruchonykh could read any foreign languages (here French and Italian would be most relevant), he did a good job of keeping it a secret throughout his career. Among the Futurist documents he might have been reading is the manifesto "The Variety Theater" published in Lacerba on October 1, in which Marinetti praises the Music Hall for exalting" action, heroism, life in the open air, dexterity, the authority of instinct and intuition" (Apollonio:129). Most interesting, however, is the next line: "To psychology it opposes what I call'body-madness' (fisicofollia)," which Shershenevich translates into Russian as "sumasbrodnojizicheskim" (1914a:76), that is, the inclination to perform physically irrational, foolish acts. On this basis, "One must destroy all logic in Variety Theatre performances, exaggerate their luxuriousness in strange ways, multiply contrasts and make the absurd and unlifelike complete masters of the stage" (Apollonio:130). Could a copy of this issue of Lacerba have reached Kruchonykh in the Smolensk area a few days later, and could he have read it? Another and more likely source would be the set of Italian Futurist manifestoes published in the August double issue of the Moscow journal Maski, in a Russian translation by B. Shapotnikov. These included long excerpts from Marinetti's "The Enjoyment of Being Whistled at" and "Destruction of Syntax-Imagination without Strings- Words-in-Freedom," Valentine de Saint-Point's "Futurist Manifesto of Lust," and Russolo's "The Art of Noises" (1913 No. 7 I 8:29-48). A review of these also appeared in the September 29 issue of


Teatrv karrikaturakh (K. Kr ... 1913 No. 4:14). In any case, by then Victory had essentially already been created and was on its way to production.

A work possibly intended to compete with Victory, Lotov's Pyl' ulitsy pyl, was planned by Larionov and is described in the same issue of Teatr v karrikaturakh (n.a. 1913 No. 4:8), but it seems from the description to be less radical than Victory (see Chapter 3).

To complete the history of Victory Over the Sun, there was a studio performance by students of UNOVIS under the direction of Malevich in Vitebsk on Febrary 6, 1920. Lissitzky created costume sketches for an unrealized German electromechanical version of the opera, and these were published in an album in 1923 (Lissitzky-Klippers 1968: figs. 52-63). And there was a reconstructed performance in English in Los Angeles, 1980, one in Finland in 1987-88 (Tarkka 1989), and finally one in Leningrad by The Black Square Theater in 1990, directed by Galina Gubanova. This last production introduced a few changes, such as having all the lines spoken by a single actor-narrator, adding the line "The victory over the sun continues!" in several places, and a few other visual references to underscore the contemporary relevance of the subject. At a tour performance of this version in Kherson in October, 1990, I was interested to note that the audience, which included a number of children, found the work quite amusing; a woman next to me asked about the date of the first performance, and a Soviet colleague remarked in amazement at how prophetic of Soviet reality it was: "How could he have foreseen all this in 1913?"

Notes

1The English translation quoted will be that by Ewa Bartos and Victoria Nes Kirby from K. Tomashevsky (1971:107-24). However, some changes will be made silently so as to bring in a greater sense of verbal distortion. For example, in the quoted passage, Bartos and Kirby have" scarecrow" for the coinage pugaley, which I have changed to "scarycrow." On occasion, I will also insert the Russian for reference when it is necessary in order to appreciate a point in the original text, or will insert a reference to another translation where a relevant point is noted.

2Erbsltih infers a reference here to the Cossack river pirate cry" Saryn' na kichku!" (literally: "Crew to the prow!"~ as a preparation to attack. Douglas also catches this reference and elaborates:

Behind the meaning of a new phrase the memory of the old one may lurk, a shadow of rhythm or rhythm and sound." All hands on deck!" "Saryn' na kichku!" the evil-intender calls desperately, only it comes out "kichku v kapuste!" "Decks in the cabbage!" The galloping emo-

P'


tion bursts out in new images, as fresh and beyond logic as emotion and the situation itself. (1980:42, 1981:78)

3-fhe original music by Thomas von Hartmann and the set designs by Kandinsky were presented to the Moscow Art Theater, which declined to produce the play, and were lost during the Revolution (Kandinsky /Marc 1974:43).

The question of possible influence by Kandinsky's play on Victory is an intriguing one. Kandinsky's text was evidently completed as early as 1909 in Russian (he also wrote several other theater pieces). Since both Nikolay Kulbin and David Burliuk contributed to Der Blaue Reiter [1912], copies of it doubtless made their way to Kruchonykh's circle by the summer of 1913. In a letter on March 28, 1912, Kandinsky promised to send Kulbin a copy as soon as it came out (Kovtun 1981:408). And his letter of June 24,1912, to Hartmann indicates that Burliuk had already visited him in Germany (Khardzhiev 1976:17). Even if the original Russian text was not available, the German would surely have been understood (Kulbin had a medical education, Burliuk had studied in Munich). Among the significant points of similarity between the two workS are their "operatic" features (music, chorus, singing, static staging), the great importance given to visual-painterly effects (even using the term "picture" for scenes), the presence of giants, and even the presence in Kandinsky' s Picture 3 of "unintelligible words (a can be heard frequently, for example, Kalasimunafakola!)" (Kandinsky /Marc:219). By way of contrast, Kandinsky goes to great length to capture mystical, spiritual moods with shifting colorations and describes musical accompaniments that have fluid, soft edges, as opposed to Victory's sharp, angular effects. Kandinsky's text involves no dialogues and few other verbal elements, and these, with the exception of a single on-stage word "Silence!" (Picture 4), are given to an off-stage chorus or soloist. The mood of Kandinsky's work is intensely serious, brooding, even tragic, while Kruchonykh's is lively, scandalously burlesque, and in many places funny, if with an ultimately serious undertone and purpose. Finally, while Victory was eminently stageable and gains in impact by being staged, one wonders whether Kandinsky's effects are realizable in the theater (even with more modern technology) or are best left for the mind's eye and ear. For more on Kandinsky in this connection, see Melzer (1992:16-25, 41).

Chapter Five

Khlebnikov and Zaum

Of all the Russian poets who were involved in zaum, no doubt the greatest was Khlebnikov. His name has come up a number of times already in this connection, and it is now time to give his position in the development of zaum more detailed attention. While Kruchonykh first used the term zaumny yazyk in print, one should not ne.cessarily assume that it was he who invented it. He and Khlebnikov worked in close collaboration in 1912-13, and it is quite possible that it was Khlebnikov who coin~d the expression, or that they coined it together in private discussions. Certainly Khlebnikov approved of the term and used it himself throughout his subsequent career (though he evidently never used the term zaum' (Pertsova 1995:70)). What distinguishes Khlebnikov's conception of zaum from Kruchonykh's, however, was " his rather clear intention that zaum could be a new language of the future which would be better, more expressive and more functional than current language, as opposed to deliberately indeterminate in meaning. Rather, it would be more adequate to the task of communication than the standard language of his day. As we shall see, the general drift of his theory and practice bears this out, even if there are some coinages and places in his poetry that remain obscure. The point of distinction with Kruchonykh is that Khlebnikov did not intend these instances to be obscure; it is just that he failed to provide us with the necessary key, or we have lost it among manuscripts that perished during the poet's nomadic life. Recent scholarship, which brings archival sources to bear (e.g., Kiktev 1991, Pertsova 1995), adds nuance to this picture, but does not essentially alter it.

Even in his earliest poems, predating the rise of zaum, Khlebnikov coined words ?n a regular basis, but, as Vroon has noted:

Xlebnikov was undoubtedly aware of the difficulties i~erent in his creations. His poetry, unlike that of such peers as Krucenyx or Gnedov, is filled with compensatory mechanisms, clues which, though not in italics, readily present themselves to the curious cryptographer. There are two

135


basic types of keys, aside from direct translation, which the poet condescends to provide on occasion. The first, obviously enough, is the context. It most often alludes to the model or models in the standard literary language, and once that model is ascertained, one is well on the way toward positive semantic identification. The second is outright provision of models. One of the most striking things about the nongrammatical coinages is that only a handful of them occur in isolation, with no verbal formulae to which one may refer. In 98% of the cases the poet provides a model of some sort, most often within the immediate environment of the word. (1983:102)

This practice of providing models for interpretation by analogy is exemplified in one of Khlebnikov's earliest surviving poems:

I ya svirel v svoyu svirel' I mir khotel v svoyu khotel' Mne poslushnye svivalis' zvezdy v plavny kruzhetok. Ya svirel v svoyu svirel', vypolnyaya mira rok.

[Beginning of 1908] (1986:41)

And I whistled into my whistle And the world wished into its wishle Obedient to me the stars wound themselves into a fluid circleflow. I whistled into my whistle, fulfilling the world's fate.

The coinage khotel' is introduced in precise grammatical and morphological parallel to the standard word svirel'. Hence, if svirel' is something you use to make whistling sounds, then khotel' is something you use to make wishes. Precisely what this might be in concrete terms (what it might look like, how it might function) is another matter. It is, of course, something that does not exist yet, except perhaps in fairytales, but the coinage itself is quite specific and precise in its meaning.1 Using Vroon's method of analysis, this would be classified as a "grammatical" coinage because it "conforms to the laws of Russian word formation" (:29). Kruzhetok is even less problematic, but its meaning is also supported by the context. Over half of Khlebnikov' s coinages fall into this category, as do the words in his renowned "Incantation by Laughter" [1908-09], and they cannot be considered any more indeterminate than words already existing in the language.

Vroon' s two other main categories of coinage are "nongrammatical" and "a grammatical." In the case of "nongrammatical" coinages, they" employ legitimate formants- roots, prefixes, suffixes-but they violate the rules governing their combination" (:29). However, as mentioned above, for all but 2% of these a model is provided. It is perhaps only in the "agrammatical" category

jiiiil!''

Khlebnikov and Zaum 137

that the question of zaum indeterminacy seriously arises. These are coinages which "cannot be analyzed against the background of the language in its present or past state" (:30). Vroon notes that they "are the primary source of Xlebnikov' s notoriety, though they make up only about eighteen percent of all the coinages" (:146). Here, once again,

Xlebnikov not only provides large clusters of examples and models, but often translates the coinages in an attempt to demonstrate their viability and validity. In general, the more radical the type of coinage, the more likely the poet is to provide a key of some sort for deciphering the words. (Vroon:146)

The largest category of agrammatical coinages are "pseudo-derivational," involving compounds employing "pseudo-affixes," that is, segments that, while not being true morphemes in Russian, are treated as if they were. An example is lobzebro, where Khlebnikov took the model serebro [silver] and apparently analyzed it into ser [gray] and a non-existing suffix that designates "an object or phenomenon characterized by the given action or feature" (Vroon:149). Then by replacing ser with lobz- [Zobzat'=kiss] one creates a word meaning "something characterized by kissing," but with a suggestion of silveriness in the background. This is merely an extension of his general practice into spheres where existing principles of word creation are radically violated, but where the result is quite comprehensible if you make an effort to seek out the appropriate model.

More radical and unique to Khlebnikov is the process of coinage by "initial mutation" (:165), referred to also as a "language of the stars." In a number of places as early as 1913 he had elaborated a theory that the first consonant in a word controlled its meaning (Khlebnikov 1928-33 V:188, 191, 198-208). Thus boets [fighter] could be made into poets [one who fights by song] (Khlebnikov 1986:626), and bogach [rich man] could be made into mogach [power man] (:484) simply by changing the initial consonant. A similar process could occur with vowels, which were semanticized in relation to their use as inflectional endings-the famous "internal declension," first promulgated in 1912 (1986:585). Each of the consonants also had an abstract individual interpretation based on Khlebnikov's idiosyncratic analysis of groups of words that began with the same consonant. For instance, CH meant "hull," and L meant "the lessening of force in every given point produced by growth in its field of application" (1986:628-29). In such instances, the key is largely of Khlebnikov' s making, so he provides tables of explanation for use in interpreting the coinages. In cases of "sound-painting," he does the same (Vroon:181-83), while in onomatopoetic and "bird language" the context makes interpretation relatively straightforward.


It is perhaps only in the "language of the gods" that Khlebnikov's usual interpretive assistance is weak or absent. As Vroon notes (:188), Khlebnikov was sufficiently suspicious of this form of language, that when the water nymphs sing in "Night in Galicia" [Dec. 1913], they do so using Sakharov's book for a hymnal, as if they needed a reliable reference work. Vroon further notes the similarity between Khlebnikov's "language of the gods," sectarian glossolalia, and children's nonsense rhymes in their poetic structure. He concludes that for Khlebnikov "this form of transrational discourse was never intended to function on the same communicative plane as the other varieties of neological expression" (:188). Khlebnikov himself contextualizes such speech as either pre-lingual (children's babble) or supra-lingual (divine language, glossolalia) speech not supposed to be understood by humans (see also Pertsova: 62-63).

From the very beginning and consistently thereafter, the general thrust of Khlebnikov' s theories of language is toward discovering, or perhaps more accurately creating, a system of signs which would be iconic and internally consistent. The current language has in it much that appears arbitrary and inconsistent, and Khlebnikov exerts himself to show that this need not be so, nor was it originally so. His 1912 dialogue "Teacher and Student" (Eng. trans. 1987:277-87), in which among other things the aforementioned "internal declension" is presented, is only the earliest example of this lifelong preoccupation. Khlebnikov's is not a dry, scientific investigation, but a poetic process based in the national spirit of the Russian people wherein words are freely created:

And if the living language that exists in the mouths of a people may be likened to Euclid's geomeasure, can the Russian people not therefore permit themselves a luxury other peoples cannot attain, that of creating a language in the likeness of Lobachevsky' s geomeasure, of that shadow of other worlds? Do the Russian people not have a right to this luxury? Russian wisdomry always thirsts after truth-will it refuse something the very will of the people offers it, the right of word creation? Anyone familiar with life in the Russian village is familiar with words made up for a mere occasion, words with the lifespan of a butterfly. [1908] (1987:234)

In three essays of 1919-20-" Artists of the World!" "Our Fundamentals," and "On Poetry" (1987:364-69,376-91, 370-72)- Khlebnikov lays out in more thorough form his views on language, and in particular on zaum. Pieces of this consistently developed system also appeared sporadically in other essays after 1912 (1987:292-319). In" Artists of the World!" Khlebnikov proposes that graphic artists turn their talents to creating a universal alphabet in which the letters are iconic representa-


tions of the abstract spatial concepts he sees as inherent in the meaning of individual sounds: "In life it has always been true that in the beginning the sign for a concept was a simple picture of the concept. And from that seed sprang up the tree of each individ ualletter' s existence" (:367). As in earlier essays, he provides a list of his interpretations of these concepts and suggests that attention be given to his experiment "to convert beyonsense language [zaumnyyazyk] from an untamed condition to a domesticated one, to make it bear useful burdens" (:368), in other words, to turn it into a precisely functioning standard "language of the future" something like, one presumes, Esperanto or VolapUk.

In the second essay, "Our Fundamentals," he expands on these principles beyond just the creation of an alphabet. He would like to create a system of sound elements" resembling Mendeleev' slaw" (:376) and presents the following image of this "new universal language":

If two neighboring valleys are separated by a ridge of mountains, a traveler can do two things: blow up the wall of mountains or begin a long and circuitous journey around them. Word creation is the blowing up of linguistic silence, the deaf-and-dumb layers of language. By replacing one sound in an old word with another, we immediately create a path from one linguistic valley to another, and like engineers in the land of language we cut paths of communication through mountains of linguistic silence. (:377)

The goal of such language would be better, more efficient, more scientifically precise communication, and not indeterminacy or indefiniteness, as in Kruchonykh. This language is potentially as clear as, or perhaps even clearer than, the standard languages of the present. For Khlebnikov, "the wisdom of language has advanced beyond the wisdom of science" (:379). In the section of this essay devoted explicitly to zaumny yazyk (:382-85), he characterizes language as "playing with dolls: in language, scraps of sound are used to make dolls and replace all the things in the world," i.e., a word is a verbal sign that substitutes for a real object. In the case of zaum, such as his "bo beh o bee," "manch! manch!" and "chi breo zo," or Kruchonykh's "dyr bul shchyl," "we obtain words that do not belong to any particular language but that do say something; something elusive but real nevertheless." (It is interesting that he I umps together an example of his own "sound painting" [zvukopis'] and two examples of his "language of the gods" with Kruchonykh's poem, as if they were equivalent types oflanguage (for an interpretation of "bo beh o bee" see Vroon 1983:183; Shapir 1993).) However, he continues:

since they yield nothing directly to our consciousness (you can't play dolls with them), these free combinations, which represent the voice at play

t.

140 Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism4

outside of words, are called beyonsense. Beyonsense language means language situated beyond the boundaries of ordinary reason, just as we say "beyond the river" or "beyond the sea." Beyonsense language is used in charms and incantations, where it dominates and displaces the language of sense, and this shows that it has a special power over human consciousness, a special right to exist alongside the language of reason. But there does in fact exist a way to make beyonsense language intelligible to rea

son. (:383)

This last statement then leads to an explanation of how to interpret zaum ala Khlebnikov. Its two premises are:

1. The initial consonant of a simple word governs all the rest- it commands the remaining letters. 2. Words that begin with an identical consonant share some identical meaning: it is as if they were drawn from various directions to a single point in the mind. (:384)

Thus, as numerous times before, Khlebnikov lays down a logical principle by which zaum may be turned into an interpretable language, so that it can serve as a "universal language of the future, although it is still in an embryonic state" (:385).

At the same time, in the same essay he elaborates on a distinction between the "pJ.Ire" [chistoe] word and the "everyday" [bytovoe] word that makes the former seem somewhat mystical and symbolist in nature, while introducing an element of potential indeterminacy:

A word contains two parts: pure essence and everyday dross. We may even imagine a word that contains both the starlight intelligence of nighttime and the sunlight intelligence of day. This is because whatever single ordinary meaning a word may possess will hide all its other meanings, as daylight effaces the luminous bodies of the starry night. But for an astronomer the sun is simply another speck of dust, like any other star. And it is a simple, ordinary fact, a mere accident, that we find ourselves located so close to the sun in question. And our Sun is no different from any other star. Set apart from everyday language, the self-sufficient word differs from the ordinary spoken word just as the turning of the Earth around the sun differs from the common everyday perception that the sun turns around the Earth. The self-sufficient word renounces the illusions of the specific everyday environment and replaces self-evident falsehoods with a star-filled predawn. (:377)

The "everyday" meaning of a given word is only the most visible or obvious meaning, and each word may seem to be an independent fact of language, comparable to the physical observation that the sun ap-

... Khlebnikov and Zaum 141

pears to move around the earth; but the" pure" meaning contains hidden relationships perhaps accessible only to the intuitive poet, who understands the true relationship between the sun and the earth and the other stars (i.e., other words not immediately perceived to be in the same constellation). It does not necessarily follow that what is involved is polysemantics, as L5nnqvist suggests (1986:292), but it certainly involves a deeper understanding of word structure, sound symbolism, and the creative potential for building word-meaning relationships than is usually the case when people use their language. The "universe" of relationships in Khlebnikov' s image of such "starry language" [zvyozdny yazyk] is too complex for daily use and comprehension ("This self-sufficientword is outside daily life and uses" (Khlebnikov:1986:37)), but it is present in all words. If the limited, everyday use of words is "rational" [umno], then it is the poet's task to go beyond this to understand and use words transrationally [zaumno] (1986:37). This higher understanding may well involve quite abstract, even mathematical relationships evident only to the few which therefore seem indefinite or incomprehensible. But the logic of the star image suggests that this understanding and use, while it may be as complex as the universe itself, is also as orderly. A coinage like "khotel"' above is just a newly discovered star or planet in a solar system. It may or may not have an immediate use, but this is not vital to the principle.2

In the third essay, "On Poetry," Khlebnikov argues that zaumny yazyk is similar to incomprehensible magic spells and incantations that -seem to have a powerful effect on the soul: "there is no doubt that these sound sequences constitute a series of universal truths passing before the predawn of our soul" (1987:370), and" the magic in the word remains magic even if it is not understood, and loses none of its power'' (:371). The "even" in the second statement is significant: it is not "because of" but "in spite of" their incomprehensibility that they function. Yet, in a statement perhaps as close to Kruchonykh as he ever comes, Khlebnikov adds:

it is clear that we cannot demand of all language: "be easy to understand, like the sign on the street." The speech of higher reason, even when it is not understandable, falls like seed into the fertile soil of the spirit and only much later, in mysterious ways, does it bring forth shoots. [ ... ] In any case, I certainly do not maintain that every incomprehensible piece of writing is beautiful. I mean only that we must not reject a piece of writing simply because it is incomprehensible to a particular group of readers. (:371)

The presumption, however, remains that eventually the mysterious ways he refers to will be understood and systematized. His works and theories are experimental efforts in that direction. Any mysteries or

142 Zaum: The Transrational Poetry ofRussian Futurism

uncertainties are temporary, and the poet-seer's capacity to intuit the shape of this new language is the beginning of a process that will eventually lead to perfect clarity.

Thus, Khlebnikov did not intend his zaum to be, or at least to remain, indefinite. Many other scholars of Khlebnikov have come to the same conclusion (Gofman 1935; Markov 1962:7, 150, 1968:302-03; Schnitzer 1967:22; Brik 1975:229; Kostetsky 1975; Weststeijn 1979:408-09; Baran 1981, 1985; Ziegler 1984:361; Oraic 1985, 1989; Grigorev 1986:241; Mandelker 1986; LtJnnqvist 1987; Solivetti 1988, 1991; Milner-Gulland 1989:140; Douglas 1987:166 ff.; Lauhus 1990; Duganov 1990:112 ff.; Imposti, Lanne, Tolic 1991, et al.). While using the same term (zaumny yazyk) as Kruchonykh, Khlebnikov meant something different by it, or at any rate had different goals for it. The general goals of his work in other areas as well, e.g., his lifelong attempts to discover the mathematical laws of world history, demonstrate his need to find logic, order, and determinacy in the world, rather than a need to escape from such bounds. True, he too was dissatisfied with the limits of standard language and mundane thinking and wanted to expand their territory, but to do so he simply created a more capacious system, rather than arguing for at least the occasional need to escape from such systems. Most contemporaries did not make any such fine distinctions at all; and nearly all later scholars, if they separated Khlebnikov from Kruchonykh, did so on the basis of the fact that Khlebnikov, in his favor, took a sensible approach to zaum, while Kruchonykh went off the deep end. For example, Grigorev, in discussing Khlebnikov' s last unpublished dialogue, notes that for Khlebnikov "we all must become, so to say, zaumtsy, that is proponents of common sense" and that "in the triumph of the idea of such a transrational-rational language Khlebnikov made an invaluable contribution" (1991:18).

Yet this divergence of theoretical orientation with Kruchonykh is not necessarily immediately obvious in their poetic practice. Let us therefore examine a few selected examples of Khlebnikov' s literary works.

A useful work to select among Khlebnikov's pre-1913 writings is the short play Snezhimochka [1908] (1986:381-90) [ Snowhite (1989:157 -70)], because it is was arguably a model for Victory Over the Sun and was intended to be performed with it (Duganov 1990:193); therefore it provides us with a fruitful point of comparison with the latter. Khlebnikov' s version of the folktale of the Snow Maiden [Snegurochka] makes overt reference to the Rimsky-Korsakov opera on the subject (premier 1882), which in turn was based on A. Ostrovsky's 1873 play, and as in all these other versions Khlebnikov' s Snow Maiden melts in springtime, turning herself into a bed of flowers. But in other respects, Khlebnikov' s version is not so traditional.

....


Immediately noteworthy in Khlebnikov' s text are neologistic names of the many fantastic spirits, from Snezhimochka herself to the various Slezini, Smekhini, Nemini, etc. [Snowleens, Laffones, Dumbettes, etc. (1989:157)]. Since toward the end of the play all swear not to use foreign words, the author dutifully avoids them, and to label the three main divisions of the play he introduces the term deymo (though the usual deystvie [act] is no less Slavic). The dialogue also includes anumber of neologisms, mainly in the speech of the spirits, such as lyuboch, nezennykh, and muchoba, most of which are easily interpretable grammatical coinages. For intance, lyuboch can be taken as a portmanteau of lyub- [love] and svetoch [torch], which Schmidt translates as "light of love" (1989:157), and muchoba [sufferance], zvuchoba [soundance], and lechoba [curance, trans. G.].] are obvious analogues to khudoba [thinness]. A few give greater pause, such as nezennykh, which is apparently a "dialectal" form related to nezhny [tender], and nemvyannye, evidently related to nemoy [dumb/silent]. In no case, however, do they seem intended to be ambiguous, though they may contain several semantic references at once, e.g., lyuboch.

The dialogue style is a rather compact, elliptical folk distillate that requires close reading, but otherwise presents few problems. The closest thing to syntactic dislocation is the phrase I mne ne strashny nikto [But I'm not afraid of anybody], with its grammatically singular subject [nikto=no one] and plural predicate [strashny=are frightening (to me)]. But again there is no real ambiguity and only a slight violation of standard grammar.

If there are any difficulties, they are mainly on the levei of character and plot. For a short play, there is a bewildering number of personae whose appearances are brief and mercurial. Their lines are often short monologues (or choruses by one type of spirit or another) with not much dialogic continuity. Additional polyphonic complexity is created by a shifting of dialogues between members of three groups of characters: spirits, animals, and humans. Within the outlines of the traditional story line, Khlebnikov adds a few topical references, an overt Slavophile slant, and a dialectic between a richly populated forest-winter-spirit world and human denial of this world:" All that is just a way to keep uneducated people in the dark" (1989:158).

The multiplicity of episodic characters, rapid shifts in dialogue, and quicksilver plot developments are to some extent similar to what occurs in Victory, as are the shifts between dialogue, choral recitation, and song. But while this is all quite fanciful and innovative, it is kept within certain limits which do not extend to anything one might want to term absurdity or indeterminacy. Transitions may be abrupt and unexpected, but a thread of coherence is nevertheless maintained. Regardless, this is a strikingly original work.


The contrast between Khlebnikov' s orientation and Kruchonykh' s is most visible in Khlebnikov's prologue to Victory. Recall that Khlebnikov was expected to participate in the creation of the work in the summer of 1913 but was unable to come from Astrakhan. His prologue was added during the fall.

Some statistics on this text are revealing. It consists of slightly under 250 words, less than 90 of which are coinages. Of these, all but three are clearly nouns, demonstrating an almost exclusively nominal focus to Khlebnikov' sword-creation, at least here. The three adjectives are easily understood compounds constructed in a time-honored way by attaching an adverb to an adjectival form: chernotvorskiya [black-creating], groznoglagol 'nyya [threateningly-stating], skoroprorochashchiya [quickly-prophesy-ing]. There are a few similar compounds among the noun coinages, but the overwhelming majority are single root-suffix forms in which the root (sometimes prefixed) is clear, and the suffix is a recognizable one, though it is frequently a rare or unproductive one-e.g., sozertseben, a combination of sozertsat' [observe/contemplate] and -eben [model: moleben=pray-er service, Te Deum], hence meaning something like "a public observance." This stern, as appropriate for the context of a theatrical experience, is used to generate a series of other coinages as well: sozertsog and sozertsavel', both of which seem to be synonyms for "theater" ("Hurry to the sozertsog or sozertsavel' ,"the prologue bids the audience); sozertsal' "observer" (appearing in series with coined synonyms vidukh and glyadar', each with a root meaning to see or look, though with different suffixes, the last being quite easily understood, making the other two readily interpretable); and sozertsiny, an obvious analogue to smotriny [=brideviewing (by future in-laws)]. Several usually unproductive suffixes (-og, -a-vel', -eben,-ava) are given a particularly good workout by Khlebnikov, as he rattles off six to eight coinages for each, thus demonstrating the rich, untapped resources of Russian morphology. Because these suffixes are unproductive, they occur only in a few commonly used words, and it might be unclear even to a native Russian what the suffix itself actually means. So, as is his practice, Khlebnikov helps us out. Thus Zovavy pozovut vas [Callers will call you] and Minavy rasskazhut vam, kern vy byli nekogda [Passters will tell you about what you once were], in essence defining each new word. In other cases also, the context provides an adequate clue. Because the coinages are nearly all nouns, the rest of the sentence frames them in a clear syntactic context, often telling you what the nouns" do," as with zovavy and minavy. More often than not, they also occur in a series of similar coinages, and when a coinage with a different morphology occurs in such a series, it is assimilated to the conceptual pattern of the rest, as in "minavy, byvavy, pevavy, idun'i, zovavy, velichavy, sud'bospory i malyuty." Since we are immediately told what zovavy will do, we have a good idea what pevavy

,.

--itt

Khlebnikov and Zaum · 145

and idun'i will do, namely, sing to us and go before us. Most of the coinages are of this "grammatical type," to use Vroon' s

classification, but, while there are no a grammatical coinages that would resemble phonetic zaum, there are a few non-grammatical formations, such as ottudni [from-there-ers] and iduty [goers], and two monosyllables sno and zno whose analogue is probably dno [bottom], but whose relevant roots are somewhat ambiguous, most probably son [dream/ sleep] and znat' [to know], though they might be early examples of "starry language" in which the initial consonant is changed to produce a new root.

What about the meaning of the text as a whole? The number of coinages rattled off in rapid-fire succession does take one aback initially. But I think the listener or reader quickly gets the_point that this merry babble is a series of statements about what is going to be presented in the play to follow. The Futurist [Budetlyanin] who delivers the main speech is taking the role of a barker for a popular or folk-style theatrical which is meant to entertain and amaze. This much is clear, even if the individual statements are not entirely transparent, particularly at the speed in which they are likely to be delivered. What might in places seem like double-talk is at least funny to listen to:

Oblikmeny deebna v polnom ryazhebne proydut, napravlyaemye ukazuem volkhvom igor, v chudesnykh ryazhevykh, pokazyvaya utro, vechcr dccsk, po zamyslu mcchtakharya, scgo ncbozhitelya dein i deya dees'.

Provisionally translated:

Facechangers of the doance in full costumance will pass by, guided by a directed magus of games, in wonderful costumings, showing the morning and evening of dootles, according to the plan of the dreammaker, this heavcndweller of doings and doer of do's.

Careful analysis and some cross-referencing within the prologue help decode just about all the difficult passages.

Thus, except for the creation of an expectation that strange things are about to happen on stage and a new language is going to be used in the play, Khlebnikov's prologue does not reveal any of the zaum features or, for that matter, the subject of Kruchonykh's opera. Perhaps that is as it should be for an introduction meant to whet the viewer's appetite. But at the same time it demonstrates the more limited range of Khlebnikov's text.

The "supersaga" Zangezi [1922] (1986:473-504} is arguably the most complete synthesis of Khlebnikov' s language experiments to be found


within the confines of a single work and evidently represents the final stage of his thinking before he died that year. Its "stack of word planes" presents a full range of types of language, from standard expository prose to the language of the birds, the gods, the stars, and of soundscript.

Plane I provides a catalogue of birdcalls from the chaffinch to the standard cuckoo. While some of these may be original with Khlebnikov, they are just like calls given in typical bird guidebooks and are purely onomatopoetic, in the sense that they attempt to convey by alphabetic means the sounds specified birds make, e.g.,

Yellow Bun tina (quietly, from the top of a walnut tree) Kree-tee-tee-tee-tee-ee-tsuey-tsuey-tsuey-ssueyee. (1989:332)

Vroon notes that these are" accompanied by specific movements, and occasionally by moods" (1983:186) in the stage directions, and he is able to trace an instance where a bird guidebook that might well have been known to Khlebnikov provides variations in a tomtit's call, depending on its emotional situation. This suggests to Vroon that "the onomatopoetic principle at work in bird language, while appearing to be transparent, is complicated by semantic subsystems which must also be analyzed if we are to understand this form of zaum"' (:187). However, these subsystems, if one could establish them, would merely add greater nuance to the basic onomatopoetic situation; that is, to quote Vroon' s source in the case of the tomtit, "Its usual call is represented by a cautioning 'terrr' but in fear 'pink-pink'; tenderness is expressed by the syllables 'vyugi-vyugi"' (:187). In other words, this is a primitive animal code that can be observed empirically, and expert ornithologists such as Khlebnikov might know the code. Once scientifically studied, the code becomes clear and unambiguous to humans as well, so it should not be considered to be zaum, in my estimation. In his al1-e~compassing interest in language, Khlebnikov might have thought to find source material or confirmation of his design for a universal language in this natural sphere, but he seems not to have pursued it very far.

The language of the gods in Planes II and XI, on the other hand, provides us with something very much resembling genuine phonetic ~urn. Interestingly, the set of gods includes Chinese, Greek, Slavic, and Bantu figures who speak essentially the same language; that is, it is not differentiated by Khlebnikov along national lines. The gods evidently have their own single language, regardless of where they come from.

Their language is full of rhythmic and sonic patterning and sounds resembling children's nonsense counting rhymes or other folkloric speech, such as that of Sakharov's rusalkas and witches:

EROS

Mara-roma, Biba-bul'! Uks, kuks, el'! Rededidi dididi! Piri-pepi, pa-pa-pi! Chogi guna, geni-gan! Al',El',fl'! Ali, Eli, fli! Ek,ak,uk! Gamch', gemch', io! Rpi! Rpi! (1986:474)


Note that stress is marked by italicizing selected vowels to insure a specific rhythmic patterning. In many respects this language resembles bird language, but with few literal repetitions. At the same time, in its repetitiousness it does not resemble standard language, whether of everyday use or even in poetry. Vroon, who has given the matter detailed study, further notes: "Each line is a distinct phonological entity whose identity is largely a function of the repeating consonants. The variation from line to line in the selection of these repeating elements gives the impression that each sequence is a complete utterance" .• (1982:584). He suggests that possibly the gods are trying to utter their own names and those of other gods, "perhaps in an attempt to define their own essence. In a sense, each god is a word trying to pronounce itself" (:587-8). What is clear, moreover, given the expressly dialogic context in which the language of the gods is presented, is that "the utterances in question should be perceived as manifestations of language, even though there is no provision for translating them into Russian or any other 'natural' or 'sensical' language" (:586). Its patterns are such that one is not inclined to assume that there is a message encoded in the text which awaits deciphering, but rather that it is purely abstract sound poetry to be enjoyed for its musical properties," a form of universal gesturing in sound" (:590). Vroon rightly notes its similarity to glossolalia and children's babbling in its repetitiveness and that it was never intended to be referential at all, essentially not a language for humans any more than bird language is (see also Vroon 1983:188-92; Weststeijn 1983:34; Grygar 1986:343-4; Cooke 1987:88; Imposti 1991).

In this respect, it is instructive to compare the above example with Kruchonykh' s "Dyr bul shchyl" triptych, where one can find quite similar individual words in the first and third parts. While, as discussed in detail in Chapter 1, there is a notable triplicity of patterning in Kruchonykh' s work, as in this Khlebnikov example, there is no close repetition or paralleling of paired lines as here. Kruchonykh's pattern-

•

148 Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism4

ing is more sophisticated and disguised. At the same time, there are enough hints of association with real Russian to dispose a reader to explore the poems for meaning. Here, while one might be able to identify a possible Russian root or word on occasion, they occur in a patterned context which does not dispose one to conduct a search, e.g., Al'. El' Il'!/ Ali. Eli. Ili!, where both al' I ali and il' fili could be taken for the word "or," but seem not intended to be.

If the Language of Birds is an onomatopoetically based system, and the Language of the Gods seems not designed to be a language of communication at all, the Language of the Stars is a developed linguistic system which Khlebnikov presents as "the all-seeing sounds of a universal language" of the future (1989:342). Taken on its own terms, it is not a difficult system to follow, and, however personal and idiosyncratic the code may seem, Khlebnikov, as is his practice, provides the means for us to decode it.

As presented in Zangezi, essentially by the title character, we are introduced to starry language gradually, almost inductively. In Plane VI some Believers ask Zangezi: "Sing us some of your self-sounding songs! Tell us the story of L! Recite in beyonsense speech!" (1989:338, adapted). Obviously they have been exposed to Zangezi's beyonsense before. Moreover, they know at least some of the code of the Alphabet: "We know: L is the sudden halt of a falling point upon a transverse plane, R is the point that penetrates, that cuts like a razor through the transverse plane. R rips and resonates, ravages boundaries, forms rivers and ravines" (:338, adapted). They also know that Land Rare opponents, as are K and G. In Zangezi' s speech in Plane VII, these abstact relationships are made concrete by specific historical and verbal associations. The abstract meaning of L suggests coming to stasis, while R cuts through and disrupts, these interpretations evidently based on oral articulation. Lis then associated with words having this letter in them, such as sunlight, love, laziness, languor, which support Khlebnikov's interpretation of it. Similarly, R is associated with roaring, rasping, rapaciousness, etc. The opposition between L and R is then explored by a series of pairs of words, such as buryafbulka [storm/ bun], lugafrugan' [meadowsfcursewords], lazit' frazit' [climb/strike down], and golodfgorod [famine/city], where the opposition is displayed in evidence that Khlebnikov' s interpretation has the support of linguistic data already existing in Russian. The same is demonstrated with K and G.

In Plane VIII, under the heading of "songs of star-language," Zangezi moves from the inductive investigation of sound contrasts in Plane VII to the generation of a full range of sound-symbols. The consonants are first introduced in image equations, e.g., "the VE of curls around his face,/ the VE of branches on the pinetree trunk,/ the VE of stars, the night-world turning overhead" (1989:342). Encoded like this,


the given relationships seem puzzling. However, the key to them is provided immediately in the following section in" flyers" passing over Zangezi's listeners: "V means the revolution of one point around another (circular motion)," etc. Hence, circular configurations found in nature (curls, tree branches, stars) are symbolized by V (keep in mind that the cyrillic letter for V looks like a B). Whether Khlebnikov is creating this relationship or simply discovering it in the outside world is perhaps open to dispute. He is, at any rate, establishing it as a guiding principle in his own work. It is his own personal code, the "scientific" basis for which would make it universally applicable. The goal is dearly indicated by Zangezi:

Have you heard all I've said, heard my speech that frees you from the fetters of words? Speech is an edifice built out of blocks of space.

Particles of speech. Parts of movement. Words do not exist, there are only movements in space and their parts-points and areas.

You are not set free from your ancestral chains. (:344-45)

Having presented this principle of sound-symbolism, Zangezi then demonstrates its creative potential in two directions. In Plane IX he takes the root urn [mind, intellect] and gives it a series of 42 different prefixes, many of which are themselves generated by star-language sound-symbolism and result in non-grammatical or agrammatical coinages, e.g., V eum and Laum. However, lest we lose our way among these, a glossary is immediately provided. Thus, Veum is "the mind of discipleship and true citizenship, of a spirit of devotion" and Laum is "of great breadth, covering the greatest possible area, without banks or bounds, like a river in flood time" (1989:347-48). Even relatively easily understood grammatical coinages are helped along: Praum [pra- = great-, as in prababushka=great-grandmother] is interpreted as "the intellect of distant antiquity, the ancestor-mind" (:348, corrected). In Plane X, Zangezi then focuses on one sound-symbol, M, which is interpreted as related to power and ability: "See where M appears and enters the range of I-CAN, the land of MOG, the hold of the strongword MOGU [I can]" (:347). From this one sound he generates dozens of new words based on analogy with existing words, e.g., mogatyr' (analogue: bogatyr' =folk hero, such as Ilya Muromets ). Here he does not take time to decode specific coinages; however, the operative principles are obvious. As in mogatyr', a number of the coinages involve replacing B with M, turning the root bog [god] into mog [could], and like the relationship L/R, this is semanticized: "Now M has invaded the lands and holdings of Bog, destroying all fear of Him, achieving our necessary victory" (:349); that is, human language power will overcome the need for god-myths. This is literalized in Plane XII, when the gods return with their incomprehensible god-language and are driven away, seem-


ingly vanquished by the new Alphabet. Zangezi announces: "The power of our voices has terrified the gods" (:351).

The potency of the new language is then demonstrated by Zangezi ·on a higher and more complex level in Plane XIII. We are expected to rise from a presentation of the encoding-decoding process to a connected discourse in rhymed poetic form, in other words, a full-fledged statement using the new language:

Oni goluboy tikhoslavl', Oni goluboy okopad. Oni v nikogda uletavl', fkh kryl'ya shumyat nevpopad.

5 Letury letyat v sobesa Tolpoyu nochey ischezaev. Potokom krylatoy etoty, Potopom nebesnoy netoty. Leteli nezurnye stony,

10 Svoyo pozabyvshie imya, Leleyat' ego nekhotyai. Umchalis' v pustyni zoveli, V vsegdave nebes inogdava, Netava, zemnogo netava!

15 Letoty, letoty ines! (1986:486)

They are bright blue stilland, the sky full of bright blue eye-fall, never-never fleeing things whispering on irrelevant wings.

5 Ledglings in flight, seeking their selfland, flocking through darkness to vanishment. A swelling of heavenly neverings, a swirling of wing-welling overings. They have flown, fading and groaning,

10 forgetting their getting, their names, unwillingly lulled in their own unwantings. Cryers and callers, all whirled into wast~land, earth's own backward, the everlasting ever lost of heaven, into the goneness of here and the notness of now,

15 hovering haveless through star-frost and sea spray (1989:351-52)

Part of the idea is that not all these new words necessarily have referents in the external world, but they are perfectly capable of being used to name new phenomena as the future need arises. They are perhaps like names for new products that haven't been invented yet. Paul Schmidt's excellent translation is inevitably forced to interpret some


of the coinages in ways that are narrower and more determinate than the original, due to the lesser morphological capacities of English, thus giving the impression of greater clarity. But even there the "message" is· far from straighforward and clearcut. Presented in this way, without an interpretive statement from the author in the vicinity, such a text is close to being as opaque some of Kruchonykh's and open to the label of zaum by our definition as well as Khlebnikov's. A line like "Letoty, Ietoty ines" is as essentially indeterminate as "Dyr bul shchyl." It is noteworthy that Zangezi' s disciples request" something more down to earth," but when he seems to be obliging in Plane XIV, the crowd responds: "What a mad muddle!/ This is all a lot of gabble!/ This is vain bibble-babble" (1989:352,354), quite the usual critical response to zaum of any kind. Thus, Khlebnikov indicates in the poem itself that the average person is not ready for this, in spite of all the previous explanation.

Zangezi goes on in Plane XV to demonstrate soundwriting [zvukopis'], which can retroactively be used to interpret Khlebnikov's renowned "Bobeobi" by associations between sounds and colors (see Vroon 1983:183; for a thorough analysis, see Shapir 1993). This is followed by a scene in which an epileptic falls into a seizure and emits appropriately gruff sounds (XVI). Eventually Zangezi mounts a horse, recites a folk-style incantation .that contains counting-rhyme-like repetitious coinages, and rides into the city. His long monologues (XVIII, XIX), hoWever, are in standard Russian.

Khlebnikov's main goal, perhaps in all his poetry, but certainly in Zangezi, is to demonstrate the tremendous, hitherto untapped generative resources of (the Russian) language. The various "planes" of operation illustrated may not form a single, coherent code (Grtibel 1986:432), but they certainly demonstrate live resources for code-making of many types. It has also been called a "text with a dominant orientation toward an individual lexical code and with a dominant metalingual or glossary function" (Oraic 1986:141). In another view, which perhaps over-emphasizes his polysemantics,

The dim contours in Chlebnikov' s use of words do not come from a lack of confidence in the ability of the word to designate phenomena, but derive on the contrary from an exaggerated faith in the power of the word, an aspiration to fill the word to the breaking point with meaning. Chlebnikov compresses into the word multiple semantic nuclei and the reader is faced with alternative tracks to follow. Each semantic track is, however, quite possible to analyze; the puzzling feature arises from the simultaneity of these tracks, the overlapping of the various meanings. (L5nnqvist 1987:74)

.t>-

--


But Lijnnqvist soon adds that even in case of polysemic ~readings of Khlebnikov poems, the interpretations "are not muh1ally exclusive; on the contrary they superimpose themselves on each other into a complex whole" (:75). In this regard, Jakobson' s description of Khlebnikov' s coinages as "words seeking meaning" (1921:67) might rather be restated as "words with meaning seeking an object to apply it to." A word without an object may be considered indeterminate for the time being, but it is not intended to remain so, and once it finds its object it will cease to be indeterminate. Such is Khlebnikov's expectation for the future of his "zaum."

Notes

1Weststeijn adds an interesting nuance to the situation by noting that, while Khlebnikov's coinages are rationally derived, he "did not primarily intend to describe reality, but on the basis of and with the help of language was continually creating new literary worlds, which only secondarily had to do with reality" (1980:288). In other words, he was more interested in demonstrating the capacity of language to create new words than in putting that capacity to practical use by identifying a referent for each new coinage.

Zfor more on "starry language" in Khlebnikov, see Vroon (1983:168-81); Oraic (1985); Weststeijn (ed.) (1986:315, 464, where GrUbe! rightly objects to Oraic's use of the term "aleatorical" to characterize such language); and Pertsova (1995:53-60) ..

t~

t

I t ,,

I I I I I J

l I

Ch~pter Six

1914: Stock-Taking

It is not much of an exaggeration to say that "practically everything connected with 'zaumnyi jazyk' happened in one and the same year'' (Nilsson 1979:140). Indeed, practically aJI the parameters were put in place in individual works by Kruchonykh in 1913, and the year culminated with a major work displaying zaum in all its variations. Critics were immediately scandalized, but it took a bit more time for serious minds to muster something besides superficial attacks on or defenses of this peculiar development in Russian poetic language. We have already noted critical reactions to some specific works, but we sP.ould also discuss the more general reaction to zaum as a whole that began to take shape in 1914. These range from considerations of lan--ll guage pathology to those of traditional literary criticism.

The argument that zaum was a form of insanity did not take long to develop, since it was based on the immediate impression that people who write "nonsense" are mentally defective or unbalanced, a natural conclusion based on clinical experience. After all, mental disorders are frequently accompanied by language disorders, language being a sensitive reflector of mental states. In 1901, Freud had written: "There is no doubt that disturbances i~ the functions of speech occur more readily, and make smaller demands on the disturbing forces, than do those in other psychical activities" (Freud 1965a:274; Russ. trans.1910). A major Russian textbook on psychiatry described the stages of mental disorder as they were reflected in language as follows:

Changes in speech. In mental disorders they occur very frequently. They are reflected both in the very act of pronunciation (anartria) and in the lack of correspondence between pronounced sounds and concepts and ideas (aphasia and paraphasia), and in the very character of the speech expression. The first type of changes are physical disruptions accompanying the psychological symptoms of mental illnesses; the second type is

153

154 Zaum: Tlze Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism

in itself an expression of a mental state. [ ... ] At a certain level of motor arousal speech changes its tempo, becomes rapid, verbose (logorrhea), fluent, the patient scatters rhymes, sound play, and proverbs in and speaks in verse. At a great level of arousal we see that in conversation the thought is not completed, sentences break off midway, the speech subject constantly changes, narration is interrupted by singing, by side questions, asides to others. At a still greater level of arousal, speech loses meaning, turns into a sim pie collection of sentences into which proverbs and meaningless, constantly repeated phrases are inserted without need; at a further stage-correct sentence formation is disrupted, syntactic and etymological errors appear; then instead of words there appear fragments of words, and finally inarticulate sounds.

Four types of effects are listed: 1. stereotypia (repeating the same thing), 2. verbigeration (monotonous, uninterrupted gibberish), 3. jargon (specialized vocabulary, esp. in teenagers), 4. neologisms. The fourth is described thus: "Some patients speak only in a special language thought up by them (under the influence either of hallucinations suggesting to them certain words or of delirious ideas or ideosyncratic dissolution)" (Korsakov 1913:222-23). Thus Victory Over the Sun could be seen as a catalogue of mentally disordered speech.

On a more general social scale, Max Nordau's sensational book Degeneration (1895) had identified as one of the signs of social decay an inclination toward mysticism, which he saw as a mental disorder characterized by "the inaptitude for attention, for clear thought and control of the emotions," and which "has for its cause the weakness of the higher cerebral centers" (1895:536). Its impact on language is described as follows:

Language has no word for that which one believes he sees as through a mist, without recognizable form. The mystic, however, is conscious of

ghostly presentations of this sort without shape or other qualities, and in order to express them he must either use recognized words, to which he gives a meaning wholly different from that which is generally current, or else, feeling the inadequacy of the fund of language created by those of sound mind, he forges for himself special words which, to a stranger, are generally incomprehensible, and the cloudy, chaotic sense of which is intelligible only to himself; or finally, he embodies the several meanings which he gives to his shapeless representations in as many words, and then succeeds in achieving those bewildering juxtapositions of what is mutually exclusive, those expressions which can in no way be rationally made to harmonize, but which are so typical of the mystic. (:58)

Like-mi11ded rationalists might then easily identify zaum as an expression of a sick mind.

1914: Stock-Taking 155

In the fall of 1912 (see Ignatev "Ivej" 1913:1), a book by the psychologist N. Vavulin appeared under the title Bezumie. Ego smysl i tsennost' [Insanity. Its Meaning and Value (1913)]. In it, Vavulin discusses the nature of insanity and, following Lombroso and Nordau, associates various artistic practices with insanity. He cites a number of poems and other writings by mentally ill patients as examples of how their illnesses are reflected in literary form. The most striking of these is a piece by a girl of 16 suffering from dementia praecox, given by Vavulin exactly as she wrote it:

Dear aunt Zina. At o-n-c-e Good boy 20 him here (illegible) [I] looked at my hand and I think that I'll die as mama I know that Zina is time to know How to express better with signs or words I said everything it seems to me that I see in front of me myself, Well say begin Grisha, Lyuba, Betty, Mark she understood in what (crossed out word) Pushkin, Koltsov. No not I you, [I'm] sick in a fit of mental illness in vain. Not allowed to steal There is something to rejoice over. Savior, [I] never showed in what life in me myself whose hand, my, wrote didn't know for whom, but my heart told me for my boyfriend. But am I myself really (God) The animals understood which, but I will tum into a boy. But how to love her when she always, always always. But I want to prove that I am taller im Eve I adore you love adordrance [obozhemekha], to change will kill me, i.o. my mind it's smart dog since I have fallen in love with myself (phrase crossed out) Philosophy Martha, professor Abc de f g h i k m m no p y r s doctor God it's not hard for you to get better (:83, italics and punctuation as in the girl's text)

Vavulin comments that, despite the girl's lack of mental control and "the rapidity of all her mental processes, she was trying energetically to describe what she was experiencing." He adds that" fhe chaos of the language is a result of goalless thinking, and goallessness facilitates the appearance of chance associations, as in dreams" (:84). We might note that the constant shifts of syntax, miscellaneous references, the sudden appearance of the alphabet, and even of a coinage (obozhemekha, apparently a compound of obozhat' [adore] and pomekha [hindrance]) in Vavulin' s example are features soon to be used by Kruchonykh. Ivan Ignatev, leader of the Ego-Futurists, made reference to this work in a polemic against the Cuba-Futurists, the point being that the latter's declaration that "our experiences are too rapid to have time to be put into words" was noted by Vavulin as a feature of mental illness before the Cuba-Futurists thought of the idea.

Examples similar to Vavulin' s could be found in Starring (1903:151; Eng. trans. 1907:165-66) and Radin (1911:520-27). The Russian translation of Starring (1903), referred to by Konovalov (:252), does an admirable job of translating the wordplay and rhythmic patterning of the


original German examples into Russian equivalents that sound like folklore texts with a Khlcbnikovian slant.

On January 21, 1914, Doctor of Psychiatry E. P. Radin gave alecture in Petersburg titled "Futurism and Insanity" ["0 futurizme i bezumii"], which the journal Golas i rech' [Voice and Speech] reporting on the event characterized as "one of the first serious lectures on Futurism" (1914 No. 2:31). In the lecture, Radin compared the works of the Ego- and Cuba-Futurists with the deliria of the mentally ill. The anonymous reporter indicated that both are marked by "repetitiousness and sharp contrasts," and that "in many ways the Futurists would have to give the palm branch of leadership to the mentally ill" (:31). An earlier issue of the same journal had reported on a lecture by Kulbin in which he had presented his basic ideas at length but, at least according to the reporter, in a rather incoherent and ineffective way. Thereporter ended with the comment: "The human mind ~tm] is in no condition to follow the thoughts of the futurists further, since they have gone beyond [za] its limits" (Kh. 1913 No. 12:26).

Soon after his lecture, Radin published a booklet on the same subject, titled Futurism and Insanity: Parallels to the Creative Works and Analogies to the New Language of the Cubo-Futurists(1914). Markov is not generous toward Radin's book, calli11g his excursions into literary analysis "inept" and his ability to interpret paintings and drawings "limited, to say the least" (1968:226), but, as E. J. Brown indicates (1973:60), Radin raises some rather interesting questions about the boundary between zaum and the ravings of the mentally ill. Here it should be noted that none of the major zaumniks (Kruchonykh, Khlebnikov, Zdanevich, Tufanov) is known to have suffered from mental illnessKhlebnikov admittedly was an eccentric, but a brilliant one. Among the other Futurists who had some involvement with zaum, only Olimpov (Fofanov) and possibly Ignatev might be pointed to as persons with actual mental problems. The rest were quite sane. Thus there is no demonstrable link between an interest in zaum and mental illness. Quite the contrary. And this is generally recognized by contemporaries. The question was not whether these people were actually insane, but rather why they would choose to express themselves in ways that so closely resembled insanity.

Radin had already written on the student generation, sex, mental disease, and decadent literature (1910, 1911, 1913). He had noted that speech disturbances were a characteristic feature of dementia praecox in youths where the sudden onset of inhibited higher psychical life (i.e., the ability to relate to reality) was accompanied by a focus on the "self-sufficient" [samodovlet;-ushchee] meaning given to words, resulting in "verbal anarchy" (1911:517-18). Here Radin was following in Nordau's footsteps and was influenced to make this connection to the decadent movement by Cesare Lombroso (1908 esp.:161-78), as had


Nordau himself. Lombroso, in describing "insane geniuses," had said: "They seize the strangest connections, the newest and most salient points; and here I may mention that originality, carried to the point of absurdity, is the principal characteristic of insane poets and artists" (:317). Instead of the pessimism of the decadents, however, Radin finds in the Futurists an energy and joyfulness which causes them "to live for the future by confirming it in the present" (:4). The essence of this new view was to be found in intuition and supersensible perception, which led in tum to a predilection for nonsense and to a focus on artistic form for its own sake. In terms of psychic development of the personality, Radin compares a mental disorder to a broken-up mosaic in which each of the individual pieces may be perfect, but the unity and harmony of the whole is absent because the unifying work of the personality is lacking. "The centers of consciousness, those regions of the cerebral cortex [ ... ]which control associations or the construction of our mental world are disrupted, weakened, and open up a larger field for the activities of the subconscious sphere" (:8). He points to Bergson and N. 0. Lossky, among others, as spokesmen for the intuitive approach. And he distinguishes the Ego-Futurists from the more "left wing" Cuba-Futurists by the fact that the latter engage in zaurn, which the former reject; and, while the former only give their Ego "a superhuman, deified aura," the latter "go further and place themselves in the center of the world" (:16).

One of the characteristics of insane thinking is "disruption of the law of association," that is, the tendency "to associate ideas which by content cannot be associated" (:19). Thus the word becomes dissociated from its normal meaning, leading" sick paranoics to concentrate on the word itself," and "verbal works are turned into a collection of disconnected and stylistically unpolished phrases and words" (:20). This condition is given the clinical term paraphasia. Examples are provided from mental patients, and Radin is not hard pressed to come up with examples from the Cuba-Futurists, specifically Kruchonykh and Khlebnikov, whose "whole language is produced from sound and script" (:21). Quoting a poem-list by Khlebnikov from" A Slap" (flyer version), he remarks: "Psychiatrists are quite familiar with the inclination toward new words (neologisms) among the mentally ill, but we have not yet encountered language so completely incomprehensible to the uninitiated" (:23). He discusses Khlebnikov's internal declension and then compares this to the writings of the 19th-century landowner-eccentric (Radin refers to him as mentally ill) Platon Lukashevich, with which they do indeed have much in common, down to a list of slavonicisms to replace hated foreign borrowings, one of which is even "gladiatory = mechary" (:25), used by Kruchonykh in "New Ways of the Word." Similar links are found with another" mentally ill" writer, Dmitry Martynov.


Radin notes that the tendency to wordplay and obsessive repetitiousness is characteristic not just of the insane, but of children up to a certain age. Thus it was natural for the Futurists to receive such writings into Futurist miscellanies. As examples similar to the mental patient Serenyi' s "iz-za sery syrost' i serost' i siren{' [because of gray dampness and grayness and lilacs], Radin quotes Kruchonykh's "mashi maslom maslenitsa ne zamazyvay glaz," and Khlebnikov's famous "Incantation by Laughter" and "Lyubklw," a two-page list of words and coinages based on the root "love." This extreme example provokes the question whether, if one allows oneself to doubt the Futurists' sincerity, one might not come to the conclusion that while the Symbolists at least cultivated an aristocratic good taste, the Futurists were suffering from a greater degeneracy of personality characterized by a preference for ugliness, squalor, general affectation, and hysterics (:45).

Is Futurism the result of mental illness? Radin concludes that there is insufficient evidence and that analogy is not proof, but:

The uniform point of departure- the region of the subconscious-leads to close contact between the creativity of the mentally ill and the Futurists.

To begin with, the concentration on the word without regard to content forces both to construct puzzles and permits risky experiments in the area of linguistics. In seeking out the laws of word formation, numbers and forms an antiquated, now purely academic [ sklwlastichesky] method is used.

Furthennore, on the basis of increased auto-suggestion there develops a pursuit of contrastive ideas and repetition.

Paraphasic disruptions of word combinations develop in the mentally ill, anarchy of words, syllables, letters ("zaum" language) in the Futurists. (:46-47)

Radin grants that among the Futurists there are talented poets and positive accomplishments (easily seen in comparison with mental patients): "intuitive penetralions into artistic innovations, idiosyncratic beauty of drawing and symbolism" (:47). But these are in danger of being undem1ined by excessive ego-centrism which leads, as it does in mental illness, loan inability to act with discrimination.

Operating on the word by purely academic methods, the Futurists depend on intuition. Mystics and intuitionists, they bring themselves close to spiritualism, theosophy, hypnosis, and the religious ecstasy of the flagellants. They are armored against self-criticism. Indeed, how, u~der such conditions, can one distinguish the talented from the talentless, the excellent from the second-rate, the absurd from the rational, if in place of reason and its critique there is mystical perception? Such is the situation of

L


the Futurists. But they, too, should be jolted from this improper position by our analogy and led to reflection ... (:47)

Radin, as Markov suggests, has not sorted out a few things here, such as how the Futurists' methods can be both" academic" and intuitive, and why it makes sense to discourage the intuitive approach if it is leading to "positive" results. Of course, the role of the subconscious in both creativity and some forms of mental illness was only just beginning to be explored by psychologists, so it is not surprising that there would be some confusion and apprehension about relying on it as a base of operation, rather than on the more readily acceptable" reason," toward which Radin is obviously predisposed. Nevertheless, he refrains from the easy conclusion, which Lombroso and Nordau would certainly have jumped to, that the Futurists are mentally ill. They are at most misguided and playing a psychologically dangerous game.

Surprisingly, Radin does not mention Freud, though Vavulin does in passing (:99, 101). Freud's "On Dreams" [1901] had been translated into Russian as early as 1904, but his other major works, The Interpretation of Dreams [1900], The Psychopathology of Everyday Life [1901] and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious [1905], did not begin to appear in Russian translation until 1910, along with the founding of the Russian branch of Freud's International Psychoanalytic Society (see Scott for background). However, while the relevant Freudian texts would have been available to Kruchonykh in Russian, his and other Russian Futurists' programmatic stance against Symbolist psychologism made them resist delving into this area. It was only beginning in 1915 that Kruchonykh began to take an interest in Freudian interpretation (Marzaduri 1983a:26). Thus, the Freudian influence was largely post facto and will be considered in more detail later. Freud would provide Kruchonykh with ammunition for the argument that much in zaum that might be superficially described as "sick" was a part of the processes of dream work and subconscious activity characteristic of the typical human psyche.

On the borderline of psychology and literary criticism is A. Zakrzhevsky's book Rytsari bezumiya [Knights of Insanity], (1914) based on his lecture of Dec. 17, 1913, at the Moscow Literary- Artistic Circle. Zakrzhevsky took upon himself a defense of Futurism on the grounds that it was individualistic, adogmatic, and rejected authority. While recognizing that some of its products were unsuccessful or immature, he felt it deserved attention (:12). It had a difficult task to perform:

to Futurism fell the superhuman task of creating out of darkness and chaos, creating from nothing ... In this is the absurdity [absurdnost'] of Futurism (in the ordinary logical sense), but in this, too, is its originality and ex-


traordinariness, for not one of the literary renaissances has yet dared to espouse the insane [ bezumnuyu] idea of universal destruction and creation from nothing. (:31-32)

In his introductory chapters he credits Marinetti, Nietzsche, and Whitman as modem models, then surveys Futurism, with particular emphasis on Ego-Futurism. "Gnedov, Ignatev and Kruchonykh can be called genuine knights of insanity who have not feared to take the means of fulfilling their programmatic goals to the point of genuine absurdity and authentic delirium" (:100-01). In presenting Kruchony kh' s zaum poems, including "Dyr bul shchyl," he concludes:

In all these noteworthy poems there is not a drop of sense [ smysla], but that is precisely what Kruchonykh set out to accomplish, since ordinary, logical sense is completely unnecessary to him. He discovered a new truth, that "irregular structuring of a sentence (in terms of logic and word formation} generates movement a.o.da. new perception of the world and, converse! y, that movement and psychological variation generate strange 'nonsensical' combinations of words and letters" (:121-22; for the quotation from "New Ways of the Word," see Lawton/Eagle:73)

Zakrzhevsky nevertheless compares Kruchonykh unfavorably to Mallarme:

Precisely in [Kruchonykh] there is much unpleasant playfulness and schoolboyishness, more than in other Futurists, and his poems produce an impression of a certain impudent nonsense [ vzdora]. ... Besides this, one must note that both Kruchonykh himself and his opponents- the Ego-Futurists- have assumed in regard to the cult of the word as such the same method as Mallarme, in whom in a similar way the word gradually drove feelings, ideas, logic and syntax out of his poems ... But Mallarme was talented and in his "zaum" writings there was taste, there was beauty, there was respect for the miracle of word-creativity, while in Kruchonykh, Khlebnikov and Mayakovsky, besides self-assurance and the desire to make fun of the reader, there is nothing ... (:123-24)

He predicts that "the path of Krudwnykh and Mayakovsky will lead them to Futurist Parnassianism [!] and the meaningless juggling of words" (:125). Further on he states that their works are "unexplainable without commentaries" (:132), it is "not possible to doubt" the influence ofMarinetti on Kruchonykh, and the latter's manifestoes are "only a weak copy of Marinetti's" (:134-35).

Roughly the same view is expressed by N. Rozanov (1914), who lumps all the Futurists under the Ego label and treats them as followers of Marinetti. He also considers "word-creation" to be nothing sur-

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prising, nor "a distinguishing feature of this new school," since Fet had already" given it a respected place in poetry" (:17). The main question is how it is done, and he points to such "crude places" in Kruchonykh as "Go osneg kayd" and "Dyr bul shchyl" as going too far (:21). To Kruchonykh's proposal to replace "lily" with "euy," he objects: "Is it necessary to say that replacing the melodious combination of sounds -liliya-by this coarse, unpronounceable word is sheer barbarity?" (:22).

Among the literati, one of the first to discuss zaum seriously from a literary standpoint was Vadim Shershenevich. He considered himself a Futurist at the time but was unsympathetic to this aspect of Cuba-Futurist practice. In his Futurizm bez maski [Futurism Without a Mask] (1913) he addresses the matter with a degree of theoretical seriousness not yet afforded it by non-partisans (on this book see Markov 1968:106-07, Lawton 1981:20). We have already quoted his reaction to "Dyr bul shchyl," in which he objects to reducing poetic material to mere sound. He continues:

In fact[ ... ] sound is one of the elements of the word, and the position that the word is equal to its sound contradicts the mathematical axiom that the whole cannot be equal to its parts. This incorrect understanding and omission of the individual state of the word (the word-aroma) leads the Cuba-Futurists to the following misunderstanding: "It is impossible to translate from one language into another. One can only transliterate a poem into Latin letters and provide a word-for-word translation." It is clear that for a foreigner even words written in the Latin alphabet will not acquire their individuality and will not produce those associations which the poet is counting on. For the foreigner the words will remain the sum of the letters and the aroma of the word will be lost. Besides that, how can one give a word-for-word translation of poetry written in a language in which the words do not have a definite meaning? (:74-75)

He does not allow for the possibility that sounds in themselves can be ex.pressive of some more generalized meaning that might be shared wtth other languages regardless of the denotative and connotative con~ent (or lack thereof) of the given words. Two pages later (:77) he obJects ~o the creation of neologisms to replace foreign borrowings into Russian, comparing this to Admiral A. S. Shishkov' s unsuccessful attempts along similar lines in the early nineteenth century. Thus, in essence he shares the relatively conservative views of his model, Marinetti. Nevertheless, he raises significant, challenging questions. Why go to the trouble of inventing new Slavonic variants for already common European borrowings? And what about the "aura" of a word, even a zaum word? Does it not resonate in a specific linguistic context, gain


richness by associative links to other words in the language, even if these links are only subconscious or unrecognized (perhaps even by the poet)? Yet one might challenge his contention that for a foreigner a transliteration is merely a string of letters, because even in that case foreigners would tend to create associations within their own language.

The literary critic Karney Chukovsky was "probably the first nonfuturist who paid any serious atteption to zaun~" (Markov1%8:220). By the end of 1913 he was lecturing on Futurism often and with great success. The essay that emerged from these lectures, "The Egofuturists and Cubofuturists" (1914), is an entertaining but also serious effort to deal with the subject. The bantering tone, which must have been the source of his popularity, is evident in the following:

But the Moscow Cubofuturists have nothing else to throw off. They have already thrown off from themselves: the letter yat', Kirpichnikov's grammar, logic, psychology, aesthetics, articulate speech,- in order to screech and chirp like animals:

-Sorcha [sic], krocha, buga na vikhrol'! .,... Zyu tsyu e spru m - Belyamatokiyay!

"This was how it was among the wild tribes," explains their apostle Kruchonykh. This is indeed a fashionable motto for all contemporary arts: "This was how it was among the wild tribes." The attraction toward the wildmru"'- toward the forest ru1imal, toward the most primitive of the primitive is the clearest trait of our age; to say about a work of art: "This was how it was among the wild tribes" now meru1s to justify it, to elevate it and surround it with a kind of aura. (:101)

He emphasizes the clement of crudity in Kruchonykh, by comparison with the Petersburg "romantics" (i.e., the Egofuturists), especially Severyanin. Kruchonykh revolts against the canons of outmoded beauty. "I believe this is not a pose, not a whim, but a fundamental, genuine feeline. Oishannm1y, dissymmetry, disproportion are truly attractive for them" (:115). However, these turn out nevertheless to be boring, even to the author. This is all Kruchonykh is capable of, and he falls flat even in an attempt to scandalize. With condescension, Chukovsky remarks:

But we will not titter over hi.m. That is too easy. If I had wanted to pamphletize, I would .. have compared him, for example, with the slack-jawed down/hanger-on from Turgenev's Sportsman's Sketches ["Lebedyru1"] who, you recall, made a career of such nonsense cries:

- Keskese zhemsa! - Nevugoryachepa! - Rrrokallio-o-on! (:118) 1


This is footnoted with the comment: "Not without reason does Kruchonykh boast that Turgenev, as a magician and sorcerer, had foreseen his arrival [Let's Roar, p. 9]." Instead, Chukovsky sees Kruchonykh as a grand symptom of the age: "Let others laugh at him, but for me there is prophecy in him, apocalypse, the finger of fate, for me he is so grandiose and threatening that I am prepared to call our whole age the age of Kruchonykh" (:118).

Chukovsky's comments related to zaum are mainly two: 1) that it is similar to sectarian glossolalia, and 2) that it is primitive and backward-looking rather than futuristic. In regard to the first point, he quotes several sectarian glossi (obviously drawn from Konovalov, though Chukovsky does not identify the source), including the Shishkov one (with footnote reference to the places where Kruchonykh quotes it), and he remarks: "You think this is Kruchonykh? Not in the least" (:121). He also refers to a new book by the psychology professor A. L. Pogodin, Yazyk kak tvorchestvo [Language as Creativity] (1913), which includes a chapter on ecstatic languag&, with the statement:

[Pogodin] shows that there is a level- the lowest- of ecstatic arousal when one can observe a passion for composing new, unheard-of words, and that these words among wild shamans, idiots, the mentally retarded, maniacs, skoptsy, beguny, pryguny [types of Russian sects] are almost always the same: they are characterized by the same general traits as all zaum speech. Too bad that on this occasion the professor did not include the Futurists. (:122)

Chukovsky' s second point is summed up in the following:

[A]fter all, this zaum language in essence is not even language; it is pre-language, pre-cultural and pre-historic, when the word was not yet nogoz [sic! in Gk. alphabet, later corrected to logos in cyrillic (1922:46)] nor was a person yet Homo-Sapiens, when there were no chats and conversations, but only howls and screeches, and isn't it strange that our futurists [budushchniki], so passionately enamored of the future, have chosen for their future-poetry the most ancient of ancient languages? Even in language they are also absorbed with tossing off all culture from themselves, with freeing themselves from millennia of history. (:122)

In other words, "their Futurum is Plusquamperfectum" (:122). He confesses, though, that Marinetti without motors, airplanes, and cars would no longer be Marinetti, while Kruchonykh without the same would still be Kruchonykh (:124), implying, it seems, that Kruchonykh's preoccupations are more fundamental than Marinetti's, and not merely concerned with subject matter.

In the same issue of Shipovnik, Chukovsky provides "Examples of

f,

164 Zaurn: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism

Futurist Works. A Tentative Anthology" (:137-54). Surprisingly, Kruchonykh figures in it only with "Dyr bul shchyl" (correctly spelled!)(:150). On the other hand, Lotov, Gnedov, and Khlebnikov figure quite prominent! y.

Another literatus, the Symbolist maftre Valery Bryusov made two substantial contributions to the discussion of zaum in the spring of 1914, the first in the March issue of the jouma1Russkaya mysl' and the second in the May issue. In March he presented a "Dialogue about Futurism" titled "Zdravogo smysla tartarary' ["To Hell with Common Sense"] in which five literati-a Furious Critic, a Moderate Critic, a Poet-Symbolist, a Moderate Futurist, and a Literary Historian-retire to a restaurant to discuss a public lecture by a Futurist-extremist. Various references in the course of the discussion make it clear that the extremist is Kruchonykh. The argument is interesting, therefore worth reviewing at length.

The Furious Critic begins by objecting that the lecturer obviously "wants to return us to the wild howl of troglodytes" (1975:418). The Moderate Critic responds that such extremes are not typical of the movement, but are natural in a "young school." He is surprised, however, by the paradoxical focus of so-called futurists not on modem machinery, such as among the Italian Futurists, but on "the life of primitive wild man" and on poems "composed only of vowels or only of consonants" (:419). The Symbolist adds that "the word is not adequate to an idea [ ... ], to mood, to feeling, to spiritual content in general. An idea can be expressed only in a symbol." The Moderate Futurist finds this so obvious as to be tautological and thinks that Symbolism looks at everything from the outside and" sees nothing from the inside" (:420). He is ultimately forced to exclaim: "Yes, all poetry [ ... ] of previous ages is not poetry" (:423). Compelled to show what exactly is so new about Futurism, he proclaims the free art of the word, the "word as such." The Symbolist points out that the Symbolists were first to establish a "cult of the word," to which the Futurist responds that the Symbolists nevertheless were content-oriented, "but we openly declare that plot, content and all ideas in poetry are rubbish. What are important are only words and their combinations" (:424). The Symbolist points out that Mallam1e preceded them in this, and he explains that a word is not simply a combination of sounds, but a whole myth containing many and varied associations. The Futurist responds:

Precise) y, in order to free the word from all these ideas of yours connected with it, we invent new words, we write in our zaumlanguage. This way we give freedom to words which have been dragged through marketplaces and poetry anthologies. Future poets must write in their own language. (:425)

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The Symbolist objects that this does not take into account the rules for language imbedded in the national spirit, that the result is "not words but merely letters printed on paper in a particular order." The Futurist says, "So what?" and recites Kruchonykh's all-vowel poem "Heights (Universal language)," commenting that this "exquisite" poem "says equally much to every reader, whether educated or uneducated, Russian or Chinese" (:426).

The Symbolist objects that if it is the forms of the letters that are expressing this, then the work is not a poem, but a picture; but if the focus is on the vowels, then the actual vowel sounds realized from the printed text would differ noticeably from one language to another; and if the focus is on the sounds produced in declamation, then each reader's voice would vary and produce variant realizations. The Futurist responds: "And what if we take into account all these ideas associated, as you say, with the word and we still go on to create a poetry of words?" "Then the Futurists would become Symbolists."

The Historian finally enters the fray by agreeing with the Futurist that indeed poetry is the art of words and of their careful combination, including concern for sounds, vowels, and consonants, but this truth is "esoteric" and should be kept from the "uninitiated" (:428). In history there are pendulum swings between emphasis on form and on content. Symbolism emphasized content, and now Futurism emphasizes form: "Its historic role, actually, is to maintain the absolute domination of 'form' [ ... ]in poetry and to reject all'content' in it" (:429). But this docs not mean that the Futurists are right:

Poems in which the necessary combination of words is achieved, in which "form" is perfected, will be alive, but deprived of genuine "content," of "essentiality." This would be like a living person deprived of all memories, knowledge, experience, character, of all spiritual content, in other words-a living machine. Such poems might be beautiful or not beautiful, forceful or not forceful, but they are absolutely unnecessary to people. They will be toys fit only for little children. (:429)

Only when they return to symbolism will the Futurists be able to achieve anything great. Having decided to end the dispute there, the discussants all have a drink.

This is the first treatment by an outsider to get at the issues involved in zaum. Bryusov naturally gives Symbolism the ultimate upper hand, but he allows for zaum as an extreme expression of formal experimentation historically justified in the context of a wave theory of alternating poles similar to that later developed by Chizhevsky and Jakobson. The pros and cons of zaum are identified and presented fairly and clearly, and its Achilles' heel is pointed out, namely, that it is childish and no one really needs it. Furthermore, it had yet to produce a


masterwork (Bryusov shows no sign of having seen or read Victory Over the Sun, however).

A particularly interesting question is raised in regard to the truest embodiment of a zaum work: is it in the written/printed text, is it in the sound system for whic,h the text stands, or is it in a performance of the text, perhaps by the author? As is rightly pointed out, the written text is a visual artifact until it is converted into a spoken text. The rules by which this is done are reasonably well agreed upon when it comes to normal language (how given words are pronounced, the effect of punctuation on segmentation and intonation, etc.), though individual recitations may differ within fairly wide parameters. But what about zaum? Do pronunciation rules apply (e.g., reduction of unstressed vowels), or is the text to be taken as purely phonetic? And what about intonation and pauses when it is difficult to tell where the sentence ends, what the syntax is, and even what is a noun and what is a verb?

However, one area that is perhaps not considered carefully enough by Bryusov is that of content. It is too simplistic to say that even phonetic zaum is" contentless." As we have seen in the Introduction, even individual sounds have had some expressive content ascribed to them.

Apparently to counteract the impression thatRusskaya mysl' was too liberal toward Futurism, in the same issue it published an article by Evgeniy Lundberg, "On Futurism," in which he bemoans the lack of talent and seriousness in the Futurists, espeCially the Moscow branch. He is able to speak positively about Severyanin and Guro, but such things as "pure neologisms" are nothing to him but tasteless babble. "Words are born and shine if beneath them shines the fire of large meaning [bol'shogo smysla]," but "words without meaning are dark and insignificant" (:23).

In Bryusov's second article on Futurism," A Year of Russian Poetry. April1913- April1914" (1914b), he notes the number of Futurist publications during that period (over forty) and comments that everyone was taking notice of the movement. He deals with zaum only in the remark: "Sometimes- they seek their own 'zaum' language, decisively breaking all ties with the reader and, consequently, destroying the very existence of poetry for others," followed by a quotation of two lines of Kruchonykh fromDokhlaya Luna: "e u yu/ i a o" (:29). His negative attitude is made clearer than it had been in his "Dialog" and can be summed up in two of his epigrams of 1913 (but published only in 1935):

"THE WORD AS SUCH" At a time when the Futurists are repeating to me

The meaning of" the word as such," how am I to answer? Dear boys, you have learned this all from me ...

Oh well! One can listen to a reasonable speech [rnzumnuyu rech'] again.


TO A FUTURIST. There is no meaning [smysl] in your poems, but they are pretty all the same. Thanks! But would it be a disaster- to add meaning to pretty words? (1935:453-54)

One of the more peculiar episodes in the literary relations of 1913-14 involves an attempt by the literary scholar and associate of the Futurists, Andrey Shemshurin (1872-1939), to reveal that Bryusov himself was at least a closet Futurist. In 1908, Shemshurin had published a book, V. Bryusov's Poetry and the Russian Language, in which he attempted to argue that Bryusov's poetic licenses were due to his defective sense of Russian. These included coinages, ambiguities, and even a list of instances when running words together (imposed on Bryusov' s text by Shemshurin) produce humorous coinages or nonsense (e.g., "Vedu mezh ekipazhey" = Mesheki pazhey [I lead between coaches = Mesheks[?] of pages]). Kruchonykh would later do the same thing to Pushkin and others by identifying various "kaki" (1918a and 1924). For Shemsurin these are serious faults showing a poor sense of language. The book is interesting perhaps only for identifying those aspects of Symbolist verbal invention that would irritate a conservative, literal-minded reader, defects soon to be noted among the Futurists. Bryusov's review of the book under a pseudonym (1908) successfully demolishes Shemshurin's points.

In his next book, Futurism in V. Bryusov's Poetry (1913), Shemshurin makes the belabored argument that qualities currently associated with Futurism are found in Bryusov; therefore he is a Futurist. Rather, as Markov points out (1968:226), he should more reasonably be arguing that these qualities (ambiguity, surprise, unusual epithets, complex syntax, and general lack of clarity) are shared by virtually all, even rather traditional poetry.

Nevertheless, there are some interesting points, particularly in connection with the sdvig. The term had been currently applied to what was happening in Futurist and Cubist painting, but Shemshurin appears to be the first commentator to apply the term to poetry. Naturally he begins by applying it to mechanical visual dislocations (double-strike printing, words cut into pieces), but he soon passes to a consideration of" a disruption of meaning in the very conceptualization, in the very word itself, so to speak" [razryv smysla v samom ponyatii, v samom, tak skazat', slove] (:6). Here he has in mind what we are calling morphological zaum, as in Khlebnikov's character names Morovaten', Snezhogi, Umnyaz', Negoli (:6, Trebnik troikh (1913:26, 30,31, 28)), about which he says:


Such combinations of letters cannot be considered words, because in these combinations the most important thing characterizing the word is absent: an impression or concept [predstnvleniyn ili ponyntiyn]. Even if one posits that the author of the poem on p. 28 knows what is designated by his "negoli," then such knowledge is not knowledge of the word, but knowledge of something extremely dependent on the memory: if the author did not concern himself with noting down precisely what the meaning of "negoli" was, then it could easily happen that his memory would betray him and he would forget what "negoli" means, and also the whole cycle of thoughts connected with this "negoli" in the poem. (:6-7)

Here we have the testimony of a sympathetic contemporary that at least some of Khlebnikov' s coinages are undecipherable, though perhaps only because the poet did not leave "notes" to aid interpretation. Shemshuri:n considers these to be slices of words in new compinations, comparable to Cubist compositions. Then he gives example~ of what we term syntactic zaum, i.e., dislocated or incomplete syntactic constructions. (Nowhere does he consider phonetic zaum, however.)

He raises the question of establishing the meaning of such coinages and constructions: "this possibility is very doubtful" pecause "in every resulting combination the main thing will always be lacking: the author's permission to consider as correct the meaning we have fixed our attention on at the given moment" (:9). In other words, the author deliberately prevents the reader from settling on a single interpretation. Yet indications from the Futurists are, he says, that readers are not free to interpret them as they choose: "Quite the opposite, they speak to us about a Dictionary and about 'not catching crows,' an activity essentially inseparable from interpreting poetry as one chooses" (:9). One of the chief distinguishing features of Futurism therefore is "this changeability of meaning, its movement or, better, itstransmigration [peredvizhcnie] to the extent that we move from one sentence to another" (:10-11). What he means by this is shown in the analysis of an example from Kruchonykh which is worth quoting in full:

Kruchonykh: "Pomada". M. 1913

Mesyats plyvuchi Raz vyglyanet Raz spryachetsya Rasprya -chu! 3

Razdiraet tuchi Glyanets Tu ode! oblakom pevuchim Khleb na stol vylozhen

shchi na

1914: Stock-Taking

Govoryat chto golaya zhenshchina Krasiva pri svete luny (Kruchonykh 1973:63)

The moon floating Once would look out Once would hide I'll hide -out!fStrife -choo! Tears the stormclouds apart Lustre The one it donned as a singing cloud Bread on the table laid out

cabbage soup on They say that a naked woman Is beautiful by the light of the moon

169

This example, by the way, is interesting because it provides an example of a sdvig which could be called "artistic" [artisticheskim]. Thus, at first glance to some it will seem that in the line where the word "khleb" [bread] is, there is a kind of misunderstanding from the viewpoint of word writing. This suggestion of misunderstanding is especially possible when reading the original which lies before me. What I have printed under the line in question seems in the original'to be written below, under the end of the line, due to lack of space, which is why there is an inclination to consider" shchina" a continuation of "vylozhen" [laid out]. In any case, a .11

sound combination of this sort is obtained: "vylozhenshchina." By virtue of the sonorousness of the letters zh, shch and n and the soundlessness of v, y and l, it turns out that the end of this group of letters, forming the word "zhenshchina" [woman], is foregroup.ded, or better, the end dislocates [sdvigaet] the beginning. Meanwhile, with further attention, what seemed a misunderstanding is explained, because here we are talking about shchi [cabbage soup] (food) and not at all about a woman. It's as if the author is exclaiming: here take your cabbage soup!

It's as if the sdvig is there and at the same tiii\e isn't. Thus one can say that it has a transmigratory character. I could stay with this example if the mechanism of the sdvig was based not on sound combinations, as we see here, but on meaning. (:11-12)

When he moves on to mechanisms based on meaning, he notes the role played by the absence of punctuation. In the given poem. the only punctuation is an exclamation point after "chu," where, Shemshurin remarks, it is unclear whether it applies only to that word or serves to end the whole sentence, thus creating syntactic ambiguity affecting the following lines as well. The subject of the verb "razdiraet" [tears apart] can then be either "rasprya" [strife) or "glyanets" [lustre], but not both. This is an insightful analysis. However, when he next considers several lines by Khlebnikov which contain such coinages as


leunnostey and devinnostey (Trebnik troikh:22), he claims that these II give each reader the opportunity to consider the real meaning f'zastoyashchiy smys~ to be just any one that comes into his head" (:13). What he actually means, as can be seen from his dissection of the latter word, is that there may be 11

a minimum of two meanings," i.e., the suffix-ost'can create a noun-object (opasnost' =danger,doverennost'=a warrant, power of attomey) or a noun describing a quality or state of an obiect tnnozhestvennost'=multiplicity,devstvennost'=virginity, etc.). Therefore in the line quoted, IIPlamen' devinnosteyvzord' [The flame of virginalities of glance]:

11 Devinnosti"- can be some kind of beings imagined by the poet. These beings can have eyes. The poet sings of the flame of the eyes of these beings imagined by him. That is one meaning. The second meaning can be the following: 11 devim1ost' 11

- is a quality of the glance of a sort like other human qualities: stinginess, generosity or something similar. This then means that the poet is speaking not about imagined beings, but about a common state of the human glance in general. (:13)

Shemshurin tends to exaggerate polysemy rather pedantically, as here, while in this case missing a more interesting association,nevinnost' [innocence], based on almost exact sonic equivalence, though a different root. After giving several more examples of syntactic/ semantic ambiguity or use of unusual epithets, he applies his critical skills to ferreting out such 11 futuristic" features (';dvig1) in Bryusov' s poetry, and does so at tedious length.

Shemshurin's motivation for this effort is rather unclear. As a literal-minded pedant, he seems to be claiming that such ambiguities are 1) a major feature of Futurism ("a major trait of Futurism is the sdvig,

11

:16), 2) a defect in good poetry, 3) to be found plentifully in Bryusov. Hence Bryusov is a quasi-Futurist and therefore a bad poet. Why only Bryusov should be seen in this way is unclear; one suspects there is an ax being ground for Bryusov's negative review of Shemshurin's previous book. In any case, it seems to have laid the groundwork for Kruchonykh' s later attempt to co-opt other writers, including even Pushkin, and consider them to be proto-Futurists and zaunmiks by demonstrating such II futurist" features of their works.

Another non-Futurist poet who reacted to zaum was Vladislav Khodasevich. In the context of a discussion of Severyanin's poetry in two separate articles of 1914, he makes his disdain quite clear:

There are no poets with significant gifts among the Moscow Futurists. One can find some decent lines in V. Khlebnikov, V. Mayakovsky and D. Burliuk. Others are either inaccessible to human understanding, since they write exclusively in the language of 11 dyr-byl-shchur" [sic], or they endlessly copy each other. (1990:159)


By contrast, he finds Severyanin' s neologisms a positive feature, giving a sense of immediacy and contemporaneity, though they are prone to age quickly (:160).

In the second article he further comments:

What do the Futurists call destruction of etymology? If it is the creation of new words from non-existent roots like the notorious "dyr bul shchyl," then these attempts are ridiculous, since such words evoke no concepts [predstavleniy] in us: they do not contain the soul of a word,meaning [smysla]. Here Futurism objects that poetry is not supposed to contain meaning, since it is the art of words, as painting is the art of colors and music is the art of sounds. But color smeared on a canvas without any meaning is not recognized by the Futurists themselves as art [zhivopis'yu ], which is evident if only from the fact that some of them paint pictures, while others do not. But anyone can smear paint on a canvas. Music is not at all an art of sounds meaninglessly piled on each other, but is a series of rhythmic forms inscribed by sonic means in which the move from one sound to another and to a third, etc., is determined by the motion of musical thought.

Here there is also an internal contradiction: a word deprived of content is a sound,-and nothing more. In that case, poetry, understood as the art of words, is an art of sounds. Consequently there is no poetry, there is music. Hence of course there is nothing further to talk about and the Futurists ought to be silent about poetry, since it doesn't exist. But they aren't silent, i.e. they feel that something is wrong here. But they insist on their position and dash back and forth between poetry and music. (1990:167-68)

Khodasevich is not willing to take into consideration that even pure phonetic zaum (and, as we have seen, 11 Dyr bul shchyl" is more than that) is not totally meaningless or con tentless and that language sounds differ from musical sounds in a number of important ways and have a definite place in the structure and sound system of a given language. Khodasevich's antipathy for Futurist poetics is also very clear from his correspondence (1990:502-03).

The critic A. Redko, who had already given serious consideration to Futurism in July, 1913 (see Ch. 2), was stimulated to reply to his own critics, who could not understand his attention to such "inconsequential" phenomena. His article in Russkoe Bogatstvo, No. 3, March 1914, begins by listing objections that Futurism was "a result only of the vanity of a given group of individuals who wanted to draw the attention of society to themselves," and that only this could explain their "proselytizing for new verbal revelations in a 'zaum' language comprehensible to religious feeling" such as represented by


Kruchonykh's "Go osneg kayd" (:217). Redko rejects this simplistic explanation, though he admits that egocentrism and scandal-mongering to attract attention are factors in the complete picture. However, he agrees that Futurism is an "elemental phenomenon [stiklliynoe yavlenie]" and" something deserving attention in its essence, in its internal basis, in those conditions of place and time which permitted this 'preposterous' phenomenon to be born and result in head-spinning success" (:218). The Futurists' success was preconditioned by the failure of modernism's mystical quest to produce meaningful results, thus precipitating a crisis of culture, or rather a struggle between mutually exclusive cultures. He reiterates his view that the Moscow Futurists represent a black "African," i.e., non-European, primitivistic culture, in opposition to "white" mystical modernism. The latter, as exemplified by Bryusov, fails in its mission because it submits its mystical vision to "the control of reason" and its experiences to analytical" d1ecking," thus leading to doubt and a sense of error (:227).

How ready the public, at least in France, was to accept extreme expressions in art is detailed by Redko in a lengthy description of the scandal surrounding the notorious painting done by a donkey's tail and exhibited at the 1910 Salon des Independents as if done by a certain Boronali under the title "And the sun fell asleep over the Adriatic." Despite the fact that the painting was provided with a vociferous, futurist-style manifesto, it at first failed to attract any notice, one critic even calling it "banal." Redko remarks: "The mysterious painting with a mysterious content inaccessible to any understanding razumeniyu]for there was nothing in it to understand,-not only did not seem extraordinary amid other examples of zaum delvings into the irrational, but even seemed 'banal'! A truly exquisite fact." (:237). In other words, in instances of" excursi into the realm of the irrational, of the logically indetenninate [irratsional'nogo, neoprede/imogo logicheskt], [ ... ]the poor viewer turns out to be incapable of distinguishing the work of human thought from the simple smearing of a donkey's tail" (:238).

He then considers Malevich's painting "Face of a Peasant" at the Union of Youth exhibit in November, 1913, and described in the catalogue as an example of "zaum realism." In his discussion he repeatedly uses the adjective zaumny ("zaumnoe, unconveyed structure of the peasant girl's soul," '"zaumnoe' feeling," '"zaumnoe' perception," "mystical zaumny portrait" (:247)), sometimes in quotation marks, sometimes not, but concludes, despite the reasonably evident shape of a woman's face in a kerchief, that:

This was a profound example of mystical painting. In the picture there was absolutely no (visible) content and for the non-mystic there was absolutely nothing; but for the mystic there remained asupernatural"something." and this "something" required recourse to powers of zaum perception. (:247)


In a long footnote to this discussion he draws a parallel to zaum language. He reviews Kruchonykh' s theory of letters, in which each letter holds a hidden meaning and each word is the total weight of these meanings, and concludes similarly:

Despite the a priori prejudice of the uninitiated, this zaum language turns out, in the experience of those who have tried it, to be very effective. True, it is not useful for ordinary understanding. But it is very useful for "religious" understanding [urazumeniya]. (:247)

In essence, regardless of a certain ironic tonality in some of his remarks, Redko takes the mystical dimension in both zaum painting and language seriously. At least he gives the Futurists the benefit of the doubt:

They are seekers of supernatural, other-worldly truth, and they seek this truth by carefully digging into the preposterous [nelepogo], creating a special" esthetic of the preposterous." This is the last place remaining to search for the key to other-worldly mysteries. The Symbolist-mystics tried to search elsewhere, but their searches have turned out to be unsuccessful. [ ... ] A special" esthetic of the preposterous" as such is being created, and this esthetic is turning out to be fruitful to the highest degree. (:248)

He describes artists now using chance procedures to produce works or selecting attractive parts of such works upon which to build a complete painting.

Nevertheless, for Redko this quest remains a modem disease which "human thought has been suffering from for the last twenty years" as a result of Symbolism. "Cubism-i.e. Futurism-has brought it to the level of caricature. This is what makes it interesting and perhaps beneficial" (:248). But the lesson of the donkey's tail is also to be taken seriously:

Here there is room for undeniable auto-suggestion and self-deception. In the picture, if one wished, a certain content was" felt," even though there was no content at all [ ... ]. Does not the tragic quest for the absolute resolve into the most trivial comedy of errors? We personally think that this is precisely what is happening. (:249)

If the work of a donkey's tail is indistinguishable from the work of a human artist, what is the latter's value, even as an expression of a mystical vision?

The editor and critic Henri Tasteven's book Futurizm (1914) is subtitled "(On the Way to a New Symbolism)," which indicates his orien-


ena which are subsumed under the concept of writing, and the acoustical phenomena which are subsumed under the concept of language" (Baudouin 1912:3). The two are physically separate with nothing in common and are linked only by the human psyche. This psychic link is accomplished by arbitrary association.

His analysis of the phoneme and the grapheme form an important basis for his critique of zaum:

Phonemes, as units of spoken/ aural language, uniting by simultaneity the performance of several physiological movements which are accompanied by feelings in the muscles, and by simultaneous perceptions of corresponding acoustic impressions, are divisible into more fragmentary living elements which can be divided no further: on one hand the sensations [predstavleniya] of individual movements (kinemes), on the other hand the sensations of individual acoustical impressions (acousemes). Meanwhile graphemes, as the simplest elements of written/visual language, usually cannot be further divided.

In general, a characteristic trait of phonemes can be considered their divisibility, a characteristic trait of graphemes their indivisibility. (:12-13)

In more modem tem1inology we would apply the term distinctive features to the kinemes and acousemes into which the phoneme is subdivided and link these with specific articulations, a process of analysis begun here by Baudouin that has subsequently been quite productive. He elaborates on the indivisibility of the grapheme later in the same work:

Even if they consist of several parts, it is nevertheless not possible to say that these individual parts separately are associated with individual "kinemes" and "acousemes" like indivisible oral elements. Thus, for example, <?ne cannot say that in the case of the grapheme Bb one of its parts is associated with a representation of the lip movement, another with the compression of the organs, a third with the raising of the soft palate and the closing from below of the nasal passage, a fourth with the sound-producing vibrations of the vocal cords, etc. (:94-95).

As is also clear from his encyclopedia article "Language," Baudouin gives primary importance to oral language: "written/visual language makes sense, is comprehensible only in cotmection with spoken/ aural language" (1904:36), and the use of the tem1s "letter" and" sound" must be strictly separated and not used interchangeably.

Benedikt Livshits had talked Baudouin into serving as chair of a Futurist evening on February 8, 1914 (see Pamis/Timenchik:226). Livshits describes him as storming out when he realized he had been duped into presiding over a Futurist "bedlam" (Livshits 1977:207), but


Shklovsky's version of the same event has Baudouin making an impassioned speech about linguistic politics in which he is quoted as saying: "precisely today [ ... ] one cannot divorce literature from life." And in Baudouin's classroom lectures he insists on "speech as a means of thought and communication" (Shklovsky 1966:100, 96). Thus, his notion of the phoneme is based on the principle that human communication occurs not via sounds per se, but via sounds that are signals, i.e., significant sounds that are distinguishable not only from non-significant sounds but also from other significant sounds. Therefore, he could be expected to object not only to "words as letters," but also to "words as sounds," and further to words divorced from meaning. Baudouin's two direct critiques of Futurist theories in February 1914, must be seen in this context.

In the first of his two articles, "The Word and the 'Word"' (1914a ), Baudouin make a distinction between genuine words and so-called "words" invented by the Futurists: "The wish to excel in something forces some people onto this path which replaces poverty of thought and absence of genuine creative talent with easy and worthless composing of new 'words"' (1963:241). Having quoted Kruchonykh's "Sarcha, krocha" from A Trap for Judges, 2 and misquoted Kruchonykh's citation of flagellant Shishkov (Baudouin says, "supposedly from the 'speech' of Shishkov") from "New Ways of the Word," Baudouin points out that this approach is fallacious because a polysyllabic word cannot even be pronounced with certainty since the stress is not known, and because "pronunciation with stress is possible only when the word is 'understood,"' he cites as an example the three stress possibilities of pugala [pUgala=scarecrow (gen. sg. or nom.-acc. pl.), pugAla=she frightened, pugalA=?], each a different word (sic). Nor can one decide on the pronunciation of some letters, since, as he pointed out in his 1912 monograph, graphemes do not adequately convey all the necessary information about phonemes (e.g., lev [lion] can be either lev or lyov). "In my lectures and writings I try to emphasize all the senselessness and impermissibility of such 'words' and thereby to reject the current opinion that' words' consist of' sounds' or 'letters."' ( :241) Kruchony kh and others insist, however, on referring to "sounds" and "letters," despite his having brought this issue to their attention in the 1912 book and elsewhere. He had finally even apprised them of their inadequate understanding of the matter on February 8 when, Shklovsky mentions, in the midst of his speech on language and politics there were" digressions on the theme of what language was, and what a phoneme was" (Shklovsky 1966:101).

This speech, if it did indeed touch on these points, occurred only after the appearance of the manifestoes being criticized. In fact, Baudouin's criticism of phonetic imprecision in zaum was to be dealt with in some Futurist quarters before too long. Moreover, stresses had


already been marked by Khlebnikov ("Bobe6bi pelis' guby" 1912) and sporadically by others.

Baudouin points out that coinages can be turned into "real" words by simply designating the referent; e.g., a dog or cat can be called "Kurtulbas" (his own coinage used as an example in a publication of 1912), and this routinely happens with things such as new medicines. In this case, the zaum disappears. And he ends this first article by giving a demonstration of his own capacity for zaum: "Karamenota selulabikha/ Keremenuta shyovele11ulaitiutamkunita chorchorpelita" (:242), concluding from this:

This can be pronounced loudly, in a whisper, with inspiration_ completely calmly, in a simple narrative or interrogative tone, etc., and each time produce a different impression and create a different mood.

But are these words? Is this really human speech? No, these are simply sortie excrescences coming from the human mouth or secretions which,. according to their verbal value, stand lower than wax figures which at least have reference to living people.

Various sounds and various sound combinations can come from the human body. But even if they come from the human mouth, and even if they correspond to the sounds and sound combinations of human speech,. they can compose words and word combinations only on the necessary condition that these words and word combinations are associated or linked in the human psyche with ideas of known meaning and also come under known morphological, structural forms characteristic of the language.

This perforce would exclude any formations of indefinite meaning, though not neologisms per se, as long as they made use of recognized morphemes and resulted in easily i.J,1terpretable words or words whose meaning was specified, as with the names of new products.

In his second article, "Toward the Theory of 'The Word as Such' and 'The Letter as Such"' (1914b), Baudouin attacks the foundations of Kruchonykh's and Khlebnikov's orientation by pointing out:

Poetry mainly acts on us not by its sonic side (no point in talking of "letters" at all), but only by the fact that with the help of words and their combinations it calls up in us contemplation of known pictures and the sensations of known experiences. Poetry and art"in general stand beside science with only the one difference that in science we become acquainted with the object by means of analysis and synthesis, while in art by means of direct action, by reflecting on and sensing both what is occurring in the external world and what is occurring inside us.

Of course, sounds alone, both musical ones and noises, can elicit in


us a definite, pleasant or unpleasant mood. After all, animals too react to the similar influence of sonic phenomena. But it is still a huge step from this to poetry. (1966:244-45)

Such a view, now considered old-fashioned and even incorrect, was in 1914 the generally accepted one against which the Futurists and later the Formalists directed their sallies.

Once again, in obvious frustration Baudouin he points out Kruchonykh' s confusion of letters with sounds, this time zeroing in on some specific abuses. He notes that poems of only consonants (e.g., N R M K J P T) are impossible to pronounce without adding vowels; that Kruchonykh' s poem "Universal Language," which the author describes as being "of only vowels," incorporates yod' (y+e=ye), technically a consonant; and that Kruchonykh makes a distinction between the letterse and yat', which represent the same sound and create a purely visual distinction. And again Baudouin refers the ignorant to his 1912 monograph where "the question is presented from the one permissible psychological viewpoint" (:244). However,

-----------------....

for those who can look into letters and then make of them any old combinations, christening them with the name of poetic works, for those who are renewing the "soiled and raped" word "lily" by the word "euy," "whicli restores its original purity" -all this is, of course, not obligatory. ,, Other supposedly new slogans of the Messrs. "Futurists" [ ... ] sound rather archaic. Such, for example, is the demand that poetry be in harmony with nature and elicit sympathetic reflective moods. This idea can already be found among our very distant ancestors.

We have learned from many previous poets about their responsiveness to the sound composition of certain words which produce in them a certain mood and even a certain understanding of these words independent of their objective meaning. But sound composition, not letter composition. (:244-45)

Interestingly, in his argument here that letters are not sounds, he has allowed the possibility of sounds being meaningful in themselves, independently of their "arbitrary" existence in given words that summon up "known pictures and sensations of known experiences." He recognizes that the striving to bring or restore harmony to the relationship between sound and meaning is an ancient one, and, therefore, while he might object to the Futurists' claim that this is an innovation, he cannot at the same time disallow such a striving, as he seems to be doing in the case of lily/ euy. Baudouin's inconsistency on the question of significant sounds reveals an uncertainty in even the most advanced of linguists, and this we can attribute to the effective way in which zaum raised the issue.


Notes Chapter Seven 1Someone must have later pointed out to Omkovsky that these words are really garbled French probably picked up by the retired lieutenant Khlopakov from his associations with French-speaking superiors: "qu'est-ce que c'est?" "J'aime ~a," "Ne vous goryache [=Russ.: something hot] pas" and "raccaillion" [rascalry?]. Only the last one remains in the 1922 version of the essay, where it is misspelled "rrrokalion" (:34), whereas Turgenev has "rrrrakaliooon" (1963 IV:1~91).

2f>ogodin provides a very thorough survey of most of the topics we have covered in the Introduction, especially in the area of theories of the origin of language, including discussion of a number of scholars we omitted. Among the topics covered are: internal speech, aphasia and speech disorders, mimicry and gesture, ecstatic and dream language, children's language, languages of primitive peoples, artificial languages, the image and the word, and 250 pages on theories of the origin of language from Plato's Cratylus to Humboldt, Potebnya, and Wundt. He ultimately concludes that speech "began at the moment when one person succeeded in conveying the meaning [znachenie] of a combination of sounds to an~ther person or group. Only then did language arise as a social phenomenon, as a tool of understanding" (:553). Thus, though seen as a combination of ideas, feelings, and sounds, language existed for Pogodin only when there was a fullness of communication.

31 have corrected this line to match the original. Shemshurin had: "Ryasprya chu!"

:J

J

Enter Another Linguist and Some Artists:

Kruchonykh, Alyagrov, Rozanova, Filonov, Malevich, Stepanova

Let's first pick up where we left off with Kruchonykh, before looking at how zaum immediately spread to some of his close associates, many of whom were leading avant-garde artists. Kruchonykh's works from 1914 to the beginning of the hectographic series of booklets in 1917 are relatively few, and some of these are only new editions of previous works. While they are individually interesting, they are more noteworthy for their visual properties than their verbal features (see Janecek 1984a:98-107). After the tremendous energy and path-breaking of 1913, a certain decline in momentum was probably inevitable. Having apparently reached the limits in all directions, where indeed could zaum go now? ~. L

None of Kruchonykh's publications of 1914 have much to add to a study of zaum, but the first item in Kruchonykh's bibliography for 1915, Taynye poroki akademikov [The Secret Vices of Academics] (dated 1916), a manifesto in the style of" A Slap in the Face," is filled out with examples that make it semi-serious critical attack on various effete elements of Russian Symbolism and Modernism in general. Included among the idols overturned is Pushkin himself for his "sleepy whistling": "all of 'Eugene Onegin' can be expressed in two lines: yonivoni se-i tsya" (1976:176). In contrast, Kruchonykh presents a laundry bill and says:

the style is higher than Pushkin's! indeed: in the eight lines in the bill we see such rare and sonorous letters of the sons of Rus as: y, shch, f, yu, zh . . . (and they are just as rare in the novel) in general here there are more sounds than in Pushkin and there are no sya-sya' s and te-te's, etc.

Here we see even numbers-which provides visual variety. And if a writer's style is defined by a quantity of words, then it must

be measured also by a quantity of letters- the letter is the same as a word (sound form and image.). (:176)

181


He equates the expressive value of the letter with the word, and he points out the monotony of sound among the Symbolists as opposed to the "wild slash" [liklwy rubke] of "Dyr bul shchyl" and other Futurist poems. There follows a survey of instances of indefiniteness or incomprehensibility in contemporary writing ranging from Khlebnikov to Remizov and Bryusov. He mentions Shemshurin's "large tome" about Futurism in Bryusov and explains:

Thus we have not a nasty personal invention, not an accident and not insanity,-no, this is simply the modern style.

A person now sees that the words existing before have died and he tries to renovate, tum inside out, to put on patches-in order to look rich and fancy ... [ ... ]

Poetry has reached a dead end and the sole honorable exit for it is not to use worn-out images epithets and words- to go over to zaum

language:

sarcha krocha buga navikhrol' opokhromel ...

(Trap for Judges II)

Completely unlike dead literature! Nothing here inhibits a person and no deals need to be made

with one's artistic conscience. Not wanting to create in antedeluvian language even less do

we want to be" among either those or these" and we sing as only we know how

bold and lively: Folk dance: kvab tarad pin pur kvara kuaba vabakr trbrk brktr

Should we go away into the desert to dream once we've found out what it is like and what the solitary do there?!. (181-82)

(From his earlier remarks, it is clear enough that the solitary desert dwellers, i. e., Modernists, engage in onanism.)

It I· ! f

fl'.·.· . I

Enter Another Linguist and Some Artists 183

This passage is notable for its attempt to justify zaum as in the "contemporary style," rather than as a departure from it, and it perhaps represents a momentary (and futile) attempt to create an alliance with at least a few elements of Symbolism. The "Folk dance" poem, which appears to be Kruchonykh's own and is published here for the first time, is an interesting sound composition of plosives and labials ending in two words with no vowels but only syllabic r's.

The second chapter of Secret Vices is a hymn by Kruchonykh to Elena Guro that contains the first instance of the coinage zaum' in what amounts to a brief poem:

ne vmeshchaetsya tvor' ni v byvshie zakony ni v bumagu: za yavnoyu prugvoy glyadit zaum' vershok bumagi otkryl Sibir' len' dikaya tatary i buyany (:187)

creat does not fit into either old laws or paper: beyond a clear harness looks zaum an inch of paper discovered Siberia wild laziness Tatars and ruffians

Thus the coinage zaum' is linked with another easily interpreted coinage (tvor', from tvorit' = to create) and the ordinary words len' (lazi- • ness) and Sibir' (Siberia). The succinctness of the coinage must have pleased Kruchcinykh.

In two short statements toward the end of the book, the artist Ivan Klyun links abstract art with the verbal: "Taking as our point of departure the straight line, we have come to the ideally simple form: straight and round (in the word-sound and letter). Simplicity of form is also conditioned by the depth and complexity of our tasks" (:192). And then Malevich declares that "reason [razum] is needed only for domestic use," that in a public lecture on Feb. 14, 1914, he renounced reason in art because it had forced art into a four-walled box, and that even the fifth and sixth dimensions are confining. "Flee while it's not too late" (:193). "The highest art work is painted or written when there is no mind [kogda uma net]" (:194).

At this point, Kruchonykh initiates the most brilliant series of bookworks of his entire career. Each of the three is unique and worthy of careful study both as art and literature. Their contributions to the development of zaum are of particular interest as instances where language approaches visual art and intertwines intimately with it. Of especial importance is his collaboration with Olga Rozanova (see l Guryanova 1989a, 1992, 1994).

The first of these, Zaumnaya gniga (1915a), was prepared in 1914


and published in 1915, though dated 1916 Oakobson 1985:2;Guryanova 1992:68-69). The "misprint" in the title creates a cross between "book" [kniga] and "nit" [gnida], or possibly "rot" [gnit1 (Markov 1968:334). Such "mistakes" introduced an element of chance that Kruchonykh and other Futurists preferred to let stand as interesting accidents (when they were truly accidental) or as deliberate expressions of carelessness and disrespect for the norms of high culture. Here we have something close to a pun, rather than true zaum, and it is obviously fully intentional, appearing, as it does, neatly typeset on the cover. Within the book, pages of two kinds alternate: those containing wonderful colored linocuts by Olga Rozanova with cubist designs of face cards or aces from a deck, and rubber-stamped pages of text by Kruchonykh which contain a few words or phrases that range over the various kinds of zaum. Some portions of the texts, as well as the linocuts, are unevenly imprinted, making them occasionally obscure. The text pages are as follows:

:2zhit'sya kruch onykh:

on

:3 chi tat' v zdravom ume vozbranyayu!

:5 .kishkanik, na dvore/ p' et pary

:6 shchyusel' byuzi nyabe kkhtots v sirmo tots ilk shundy pundy

:8 Evgen. Onegin v 2 stroch. ENI VONI SE I TSYA

:10 kharlami voyu sapul'nuyu protseday malen'kaya pu

:12otdykh

:13 y "yn chortok az"v gvozdyoy ri ginshdrv peplem nyuuioy

to live kruch onykh

he

reading with a healthy mind i prohibit!

a kishkanik [gutter of animals?] on the yard/ drinks steams

Eug. Onegin in 2 ll.

with maws i howl [?) go filter [speak through teeth) little pu

rest

[little devil) with [nail] with [ash]

I . klJ0···· f.·· •"/ L:, f'

I I I I I f

I

I

I \.


:15 doling aniirchii ryumka kon 'yaku

:17 sterilizovan revmya brodit

telo

:19 ukravshi vse ukradet i lozhku no ne naoborot

jigger of cognac

sterilized roaring wanders

a body

having stolen all he will steal a spoon too but not vice-versa

Here we have texts ranging from nearly pure phonetic zaum (:6) to mixtures of phonetic or morphological zaum and conventional words or phrases (:5, 10, 15), to syntactic zaum (:2, 17), to more or less normal language with absurd messages (:3, 19). Page 8 is, of course, a quote from Secret Vices of Academics (1976:176). There would appear to be no connection between the linocuts and the texts, nor, for that matter, any connection between the texts. As a counterpoint to the linocuts, which have a uniform theme and treatment of subject, the texts are discontinuous and fragmentary. Though their uniform means of presentation (rubber stamp in red ink of one to three short lines of text) makes them look similar, their content does not permit the construction of a ' unified whole. The visual unity of the work is in dynamic conflict with its verbal contents, as if the illustrations for one well-organized work were combined with miscellaneous fragments of eleven poems in several different languages. This could be taken as a form of suprasyntactic zaum that incorporates, even relies on, the illustrations and other visual factors to produce a major part of its effect.

Kruchonykh's next collaboration with Rozanova, Voyna [War] (1915b), is an imposing, quarto-sized work consisting of a typeset table of contents plus fifteen leaves, ten of which are full-page linocut illustrations by Rozanova and five are short poems by Kruchonykh in linocut. A unique feature of this work is that the table of contents is also in reality part of the text, since it includes caption-poems to four of the pictures. While the poems contain some zaum, the wartime insanity and atrocities described would serve to motivate such distortions of language. Here we cross paths with the Dadaists, whose impulses toward sound poetry and various forms of absurdity were similarly motivated. But when such distortions are clearly motivated by war-induced insanity, they would seem to be performing a representational function like onomatopoeia or stream of consciousness and would therefore not qualify as zaum by our earlier definition

Kruchonykh's other major work of this period and his only solo work of 1916, Vselenskaya voyna b [Universal War b], is similar to War in


that it consists of a typeset table of contents with poems and twelve handmade color collages, this time by Kruchonykh. Since this work has already been astutely analyzed (Stapanian 1985; Guryanova (1989a)1), I need only to summarize their conclusion that the zaum of the poems and the abstraction of the collages are closely related, and that "many of their features are neither arbitrary in form nor totally non-representational" (Stapanian: 26). As Kruchonykh states in his preface to the work, here "Zaum language (the first representative of which I am) extends its hand to zaum painting." These two works on war can be seen to represent uses of zaum and pictorial means to express the absurdity, destruction, and dislocation caused by World War I. Their artistic means are well motivated by nihilistic sentiments appropriate to the situation and shared by many.

ALYAGROV

Zaumnaya gniga ends with two zaum poems by Alyagrov (Roman Jakobsop) [Figure 5] that have been interestingly analyzed by Vallier (1983, 1987) and Rudy (1987). They are also the subject of later comments by Jakobson himself (1985). According to Jakobson, the works date from mid-1914 (1985:1; Vallier 1987:303), and he calls them both "poems," though Vallier notes that the first looks like prose and, coming directly after the author's name, could be taken as a title or honorific such as might be found on a visiting card (:294). She also comments on the slightly larger letter YA in the author's pseudonym, which is the first-person singular pronoun and also the first letter of the author's real surname, hence a clue both to the subjective focus of zaum and to the author's real identity (:293). If one were to assume that the pseudonym was chosen to hide the fact that the author's surname was Jewish, the "secret" is hinted at in the poem which follows. But if there were any such pragmatic considerations involved, it is more likely that this student at Moscow University wanted to avoid trouble with university authorities that might arise because of his association with suspicious literary radicals like Kruchonykh. Indeed, Kruchonykh's importance for Jakobson at this time is reflected in the latter's remark that Kruchonykh "was in 1914 his closest interlocutor in talks and letters" (1985:1).

This first poem begins with long strings of letters containing sequences not to be found in normal Russian (e.g., mzgl-, -bzhv-, chtle-; -uo and -shchk are "marginal" combinations (see Toporov 1966)) and even a short word, kim, without a vowel. A reader is not even tempted .to find interpretants in Russian for such sequences because of their distance from recognizable morphology. However, Jakobson, the student linguist, is careful to indicate the stress placement in each word by italics. (Both of these practices look forward to Zdanevich' s "dras.")

c

Al15i1POB M3r1lbl6>Kayo AHX"bRHi.J:lpbiO 'ITJl3lltK XH cpsr Clan CKYnOJI34

a BTa6-.:nKKH Tbsrnpa J<aKaA3'tAH eepeett 'lepKHnhHHUa

JfiJ.Y~ RHMH apxaH MaHKaH apHRHK

aywaRHKH KKTa~HKH

KUT ~ TaK M HCKa~

apMRK

PA3C'DHHOCTb.

3TKK3TKa Taxa~ TKaH~ TUX

TKaHiSJ MaHTHK

a 0 OpWaT K.R.HT H TIOtC

TQKH MRK

TMRHT~ XHRKY WKRX

"---- aHM~ KbLKio

a11Ja3HKCiiO HaHeK yMeM TaHR MRHK-ywaT.R

He asaonoCTHe nepeAOBKUa nepe.nHKK ry6nHUJO cTon

TnSJK a saro nepena~Rc~

Fig. 5: Alyagrov, poems from A. Kruchonykh, Zaumnaya gniga (1916).


The situation begins to change, however, by the end of the first line, as a recognizable morpheme emerges (-polza [to crawl]), though it is a stem without the ending needed to make it a complete word. Vallier characterizes this as a process of going from the opacity of a consonantal mass to the limpidity of a vocalic a (:296), which is paralleled by moving from total absence of meaning to incipient meaning. The second line begins with the same a, which is already a standard word [=but] that might naturally begin a second clause. The second word is less strange than the initial words of the preceding line, but the hyphen breaks it so as to make it seem exotic and Eastern. The fact that it is the only capitalized word on the page suggests a proper name, such as a Central Asian one (e.g., Lake Issyk-Kul or the city of Alma-Ata), though the consonant string dlkn is improbable. Two recognizable morphemes surface (pra [older, great-, as in great-grandmother], kak [how]), and then with evreets we emerge into interpretable Russian with a coinage that Vallier convincingly sees as a compound of evrey [Jew] and evropeets [a European] (:297, 303). The last word in the line is the perfectly normal word chernil'nitsa [inkwell]. This word suggests a focus on the writing process itself. Vallier notices, moreover, that several letters that have hitherto been absent (e, ts) suddenly make a marked appearance in these final words, further emphasizing their arrival. Thus, these lines can be understood as a succinct study of language in all its aspects: phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and written. As such, it is a brilliantly constructed and highly self-conscious artifact.

If the first work is designed to illustrate the properties of practical language (prose), then the second goes one step further to illustrate the nature of poetic language. By contrast with the first, the second work, which is titled "Distraction" or "Scatteredness," is segmented by layout into lines. Many of the words are standard ones, though some are distorted in stress placement or spelling. However, there is little observable syntactic continuity in this mainly nominal sequence:

suffocated yankees lasso cancan pezent coat soul woman chinesewomin whale an' so lowering peasant coat !able quiet cloth is quiet clothery edging

In these early lines one notices in particular the sound repetitions: a in combination with n, k, and r. There is also a pattern of echoing a part of the last word in a line in the first word of the succeeding line: arkan I kankan, armyank I dushayanka, kitaykF I kit y tak; and also: udusha

-Enter Another Linguist and Some Artists 189

yanki / dushayanka. Yet all of this sound play (which continues in subsequent lines), there is no end-rhyme or meter.

Later there are two lines of zaum words that have been freely composed from earlier sonic material: tmyanty khnyaku shnyak/ anmya kyn'. Having experimented in the first eight lines with phonetic repetition linking meaningful words, Jakobson, Vallier notes, shifts in the second eight lines to experimentation "with the opposite, i.e., the dilution of words endowed with meaning'' (:300). The cluster khn here echoes the vowelless word in the first work, and Vallier (:299) has noticed that the only letter missing in the first work ,sh, appears finally in the first word of the second work, thus linking the two in this way as well. Finally, as the last three lines evolve further, signalled by an absence of italicization of stressed vowels and the introduction of a new set of consonants (v, p, g, b, l, ts) and the vowel u, we seem to circle back to the beginning of the poem with a last word that is almost a synonym of the first, both verbal adverbs meaning to choke or stifle. These lines seem less fragmentary (Vallier calls them "unmistakably discursive" (:299)) than preceding lines, and one notes a repetition of pered- in real words (peredovitsa = editorial, perednik_= apron) comparable to the earlier repetition of -yanki, which also underlines the circular structure. Vallier also notes the prevalence of multiples of four (:300), suggesting that Jakobson intended this to be his variation on "Dyr bul shchyl." But with all this patterning, the meaning nevertheless remains indeterminate. As Vallier puts it:

intelligible words emerge here and there, inserted in a phonetic texture consisting of truncated words, contracted syllables or completely invented sound sequences, with the result that meaning is dissolved and thrust toward the unconscious, where associations take shape which constantly refer elsewhere. Conceived in this way, the poem seems like a segment from inside a sound chain, which may well belong to language, but instead has been blurred or scrambled. (:298)

Perhaps this is what the title is referring to. However, the sound composition of the poem is quite elaborate and developed, leading us to conclude that for Jakobson this is what constitutes the difference between prose and poetry.

These works are two of several Jakobson produced at the time. The other of interest to us here is provided by Kruchonykh in Zaumniki (1922c:16) [Figure 6]. It is unclear from Kruchonykh' s lead-in ("Here is something from Alyagrov's poems") whether what he quotes constitutes one poem or perhaps as many as three. The recurrence of some words and techniques in the text below the large letters in the center suggests that we have a single work before us (as Jangfeldt presents it, 1992:115).

H a ropno ro KaK a ropuee nerKo •.• H MHea He6blsanoro Topa .•• - fOpT8HHblA r~K· •• ,rop 33KHQeJJH CTIAa•!...

CTHXH cnnow&'ua aayMHOM H3WKe HMeiOTCH rnaBHbiM o6pa30M y MeHR, H. 3AalleBH'Ia, AnHrposa,. 11. TepeHThCBa, BapcT H 0. PoaauosoA.

Bot ua ueH3A3HHb1X no9M P. AnHrposa: KT.&eCTb MfJI 3JI Jib HC" He 3p. 803 CJIOBOB OTnp. 6e3AH B03CJYOB TIO yM. Mq, lKJl. CDaC WKHH pnacn M08fH Til{ uynwKana ue t inn m II 'lto6 neT wy =neT 6au np~tBRaawbCH 6ann. 0 -nyAotJ>yt. I 6H8 CTKJJ CHM CKB3H8 aa6u. ron 6Hnn-oM (6o CK&oau. yuocH me-ucK. oeras. 6Hn JIHWb H38Jie~ CJIOBOB)

· B e!nTA! BenuqaAweT~ fpaHJJ.ioaapb!

KPY>KHTbCR U eHbiX OH .....

Jlet rpya 6eaonacu = Mipenu nycte.'IH X setwuna X car.t X CKBOJHH A H y ea Ha 6unn. aKa csrKa n& H3&eJl. Ksoam<a nonuuHnaH aneu~ naa A}lo>Ka-a N B . .ac 'leiiH HO CJie3 CTpCTpO'IH3 KOJib 8HTHTe3 uecen nerK MepTB netn& ...

Bot aayM& 0. Poaauoaoit ua ee KHHrH ,npeablwe acero.:

.A. I<.'JeMeHTHHI! Yoa>Kb at Mecta! TooA qapuuft'· xsapy:u: fopHT SlKMHCTO! ,lluaaa&e Mope YaaeT MapeM l1rpaa annet

Map9M '-lapeM' .. •

0 I{

K ·'leMy aeAeT aayMnLIA H3hlK? no H3biCKy, nanpHMep, P. 51Ko6coHa (.0 Ho#aeA·

llleii no9auu•, BblnycK I) pycCK3H no9JHR, 8 GaCTHO· CTH -B. XJie6HHKOB, ,c-rpeMHTcg K CBOeMy npeAeny -K 98£l>OHH'IeCKOMY CJIOBJ, K sayMHOit pequ•, T. e. 3BJ'13HHe, QlOifCTHK3, 9Blfl0HiiK3-fJ13BHO~, CMbiCJIOBOe 3narteuue---npurnywaetcH;

Fig. 6: Alyagrov, poems from A. Kruchonykh, Zaumniki (1922)


In contrast to the works from Zaumnaya gniga with their movement from small units of language to larger ones, Jakobson here focuses most notably on contraction. Periods after many words suggest that they are abbreviations of normal words, e.g., kt. = kotory [which], otpr. = otpravil [1/he sent], zhensk.= zhensky [women's], ostav.= ostavil [I/he left]. In this context other words without periods can also be looked on as abbreviations, e.g., mgl = mogla [she could], yas = yasno [clear]. The presence of other normal words (vest' [information], voz [cart], spas [saved], etc.) reinforces the impression that this is either a hurried notation to oneself or possibly a telegram, both of which tend to use abbreviations. On the other hand, there are words that cannot be so easily interpreted (rlasp, moagi), which appear to be either anagrams or phonetic zaum. They suggest that we are not likely to find a way to solve the riddle of the text, even if we could decide the meaning of most of the other words. Moreover, with the latter we do not get very far anyway. And the various other symbols always crop up in unaccountable places, such as the dagger between words that seem to mean "not" "you eat." Some words suggest substandard or dialectal speech (e.g., slovov = slov [of words], privyazash'sya = privyazhesh'sya [you will tie yourself to]). Perhaps the intriguing abbreviation bipl. may be the key to an interpretation, as it seems to stand for biplan [biplane], reinforced in the next line by the instrumental case abbreviated form bipl-om [by biplane]. The semantic field created by many of the other words (abyss, load, glass, flight, safety, sounds, tremors) would be in ., consonance with the description of an airplane flight, a favorite theme of the Futurists. The graphic play on Kruchonykh's name in the middle with words of praise (Gre!a!t, the Greatest! Grandee!) suggests that his verbal flights are being metaphorically invoked. (Though Kamensky was a pioneer Russian aviator, Kruchonykh is not known to have ever literally flown.) But any such interpretation is purely speculative and provisional, particularly since the poem ends with words that seem to say: "antithesis merry light dead noose ... "

Apparently all of Jakobson's futurist poems, which he indicated could "be still found among Moscow collectors of literary archives" Oanecek 1984a:181), have now been found and published by Jangfeldt (1992:114-17). The most radical of them, these highly premeditated, almost programmatic, linguistic experiments which we have just examined are certainly innovative works of verbal expression. However, it is apparent that Jakobson was more interested in them as linguistic entities than as works of verbal art; hence, they are merely a brief but fascinating episode in his career.


\ ROZANOVA

Olga Rozanova, noted primarily for her work in avant-garde painting, was also very interested in za1.,1m poetry (Guryanova 1989b:84), as were several other artists close to the Futurists (Filonov, Ender, Stepanova-see below). This was a natural development, since she collaborated closely in these years with Kruchonykh, who was also her companion. Archival evidence uncovered by Guryanova indicates that Kruchonykh took active part in the writing of some of her poems. Before her untimely death in 1918, Rozanova (luthored several poems that were published by Kruchonykh in his Tiflis autographic series, Balas, and Nestroch'e [both 1917]. Some of these poems and a few others were subsequently included by Kruchonykh in other, more readily available publications. Guryanova has appended what is probably the complete extant poems of Rozanova to her article 'on the artist (1992:99-107).

Of these, perhaps the most radical is:

Uch al by batal byt u a! on y

(Kruchonykh 1918g:13)

\.1. lnterestingly, a typescript of this poem is reproduced in From Painting

~· to Design (1981:102) with a title (an adjective evidently coined from the word" edge" or" trimming") and rather different contents and layout:

KROMKAYA.

UCH - AL - BY dAMAL - BIT - U

AL - ONY

may1916g.

Guryanova gives this and discusses an earlier variant titled "Caucasian etude" (1992:103-04), commenting that with this first title the poem is perceived as a sound imitation of Caucasian languages. Another variant had a neologistic title "Krymnaya" (Crimean), while with the final "zaum" title the poem moves away from onomatopoeia to being" selfsufficient, as a mysterious 'zero' of new art" (:91). In any case, in the poem we have fragments that can be Russian morphemes. There are even actual words (by= would, u =by, near), but two additional words


in the 1918 version (byt =everyday life, on = he) are different in the 1916 version (bit= he is beaten, ony =that one [archaic]). The variation in batalf damal may possibly be explained as misread handwriting (moreover, Ozhirenie roz [Obesity of Roses] (1918g) is not noted for its typographical accuracy). Or it may be a change deliberately made by Kruchonykh.

Another poerp., two lines of which are quoted by Kruchonykh as part of Rozanova's lines from his play Gly-gly (1918g:13), is not to be found in the excerpt of the play later given (:26-30); however, Guryanova is able to quote it from Kruchonykh's letter to Shemshurin Uuly 19, 1916): .

lefanta chiol mialanta immiol neulomae

samasmiett ae

chiggiol of unt avarenest

ichchiol at ta rest (Guryanova 1992:105)

This h~s very much the flavor of sectarian glossolalia, with its foreignsoundmg words and sound repetitions, but includes three rhymes. .r

Guryanova provides four other similar poems (:104-07) which are more intensely consonantal (e.g., "zbrzhest dzeban/ zhbzmets deksagatan"), but notes that Rozanova tends toward musical euphony, limiting her spectrum to 15-17 sounds as she would colors in her paintings (:93).

To these we can add a third poem. drawn from Balos and published by Ziegler (1984:363) as belonging to Rozanova:

Ball6s Kal6s Gal6s Val6s Sol va yuk chi Mal6s

The morphology here strongly suggests a Greco-Latin, rather than Russian, reference and is more repetitious than usual for Rozanova.

These poems appear to be mainly abstract sound compositions. But it is possible that they are distillations of some more usual poetic text, as procedures in the following poem suggest:


[Ispaniya] Vul'gark akh bul'varov Varvary gusary . Vul'e ara bit A raby bar arapy Tark gubyat tara

Alzhir sugubyat Anienno Gienno Gitana.

· Zhig i git tela Vizzhit tarantella Vira zhim rant' e

Antikvar Shtara Kvartomas Fantom.

Gel'ka negra metressa Grimasy Gremit Gimn Smerti

[1916]

[Spain] Vulgark ah of boulevards Barbarians hussars Vouleh arah beat But slaves bar arabs Tark they ruin tares

Algeria they particular Onandenna Gehenna Gitanes

Jig and git of body Screeches a tarantella Vira greasi rentier Antiquary Shtara Quartomas Phantom.

Helka a negro's maitresse Grimaces Thunders The anthem Of death

(Guryanova 1989c:30; 1992:99-100)

The patterns of association are almost entirely paronomastic, and continuity is based on such paronomastic links (e.g., bul'varov- Varvary gusary- A raby bar arapy). Despite the ostensible link to Spain, the foreign words are mostly French in origin (except for the tarantella, of course). Guryanova comments:

Resonant, "loud" nouns emerge like sound "landmarks": boulevards, hussars, arabs, Algiers, Spanish courtesan, tarantella, stock exchange speculator, antique dealer, phantom ("bul'vary, gusary, arapy, Alzhir, gitana, tarantella, rant'e, antikvar, fantom"). However, these nouns are forged into a single chain (not unlike the effect created by complementary tones in painting) by the zaum' derived from them, in which Rozanova tenderly "polishes" the texture of the sound. (1994:376)

Other poems Guryapova provides are Khlebnikovian in their sonic and imaginal complexity, but not really zaum. One poem appeared in one of the autographic booklets Kruchonykh did in the 1920s on materials from Khlebnikov's notebooks. It is prefaced by the line "Below the following zaum poem by 0. Rozanova from her book Prevyshe vsego [Much higher than anything else]":


A, Klementina Uvazh' ot mesta Tvoy chamy kvarum Gorit yakmisto! Divan' e more Uvaetmarem Igraezvaet

0

Ah, Oementine Respect from the place Your black quorum Bums how! Looking sea Blows off from the sea Plays calls

0 K

From the sea K

Marem Charem From the shore

(Kruchonykh 1922c:16 [see Figure 6 above], 1925c:8)

A definite-southwestern dialect (Ukrainian?) is conveyed, and the suspicion that this may be a love declaration addressed to a certain Oementine. Throughout these poems there is attention to rather gentle, lyrical sonic patterning that reminds one somehow of Elena Guro, who is sometimes considered a pre-zaumnik (Guryanova 1990:98), but is probably better considered an inventive nature poet.

FILONOV

Another artist who made a brief foray into zaum at this time was Pavel Filonov. His poem-play Propeven' o prorosli mirovoy [Canticle of World Flowering] (1915) maintains a peculiar mixture of language that is a challenge to penetrate.Kovtun describes the style as"' sdvig prose' with complex, multi-layered imagery and a clash of neologisms and archaisms close to the literary experiments of Khlebnikov" (1979:225). Indeed, Filonov was especially close to Khlebnikov at this time and greatly admired his work, as Khlebnikov in turn approved of Filonov' s poem, saying that it had "some lines that are among the best that have been written about the war" (Grygar 1988:94; Khlebnikov 1940:378). Certainly there is a similar focus on Slavic morphology with a strong folk-dialectal flavor. Matyushin describes the work this way: "As though having made contact with the great antiquity of the world, which had receded into a subterrestrial fire, his words emerged as a precious alloy, as joyous, shining pieces of life and out of them was born this book" ([1916] 1979:235). We might therefore expect to find little of the deliberate indeterminacy of Kruchonykh's zaum, but this turns out not to be the case. Grygar is right to call the work "a very interesting and original example of Russian 'transrational' poetry" (1988:75).

While no one has yet giveri the entire work a thorough examination, no doubt because of its complexities, several investigators have


commented on certain aspects in some detail. For example, the title has received some attention. It already provides a clue to Filonov' s use of language by including a coinage, Prvpeven', which is obviously related to the verb propet' [to sing to the end], hence something like "chant" or" canticle" (Bowlt 1984:15). Grygar also hears an echo of the words prvpoved' [sermon] and evenprorok [prophet] and therefore translates it as "prophesong," but this, I think, is going too far afield etymologically, even though all three roots do have to do with oral expression. Prorosli is also a coinage, meaning "something growing through or out," and is equivalent to rastsvet [flowering, flourishing], an important concept in Filonov' s theory of art. Both reflect his view that art is an expression of and participant in the organic development of the world (see Bowlt 1988). Mirovoy, stressed on the second syllable, conveys the idea of" all-encompassing," therefore" universal," something we all participate in. But let us attempt a more complete commentary of the work's zaum features.

It is in two parts, "The Song of Vanka the Keykeeper" and "Canticle about the Beautiful Deceased Woman" [prestavlenitsu, i.e., someone who has entered the other world]. The two parts share the same style and several characters, and the text is presented as a playscript with speeches by the characters but no stage directions. There is almost no punctuation, and therefore the syntactic divisions must be made by the reader on the basis of what can be made out from the forms of words. In addition, the text alternates between lines that are divided irregularly and passages laid out like prose, though there is no other evident distinction in style or structure between the two layouts. The lined passages are clearly enjambed in places; hence, line divisions cannot be relied upon to indicate syntactic units.

The first part opens with the Chorus Leader reciting (singing?):

materela penno-kruzhliva nogami sneginya zhelal'na tantsa protantsevan'em neulovlivym v oranzheree balerin zherebuyu metu nemnogo zhut'yu lyubimoyu venchit'

A provisional translation which interprets but does not attempt to duplicate the neologistic forms might read:

a snow-princess matured foamy-circling with legs desirable of dance by elusive dancing-out in a greenhouse of ballerinas to halo an in-foal mark a little by favorite horror

The new forms, such as kruzhliva [circling], sneginya [snow+ suffix of knyaginya =princess, wife of a prince], zhelal'na [from zhelat' =to wish

•

l

Enter Another Linguist and Some Artists 197 . for, desire], and neulovlivym [neulovimy = elusive, uncapturable], are rather transparent and easy to associate with a single root, hence a definite meaning. This is generally true throughout the work. Such coinages tend to follow morphological designs already provided by Khlebnikov, and the text could in fact be mistaken for a work by Khlebnikov, were it not for the constant syntactic complexities which are rare in Khlebnikov. For example, the first line of the passage begins with a verb that requires a feminine subject, which occurs at the end of the line, while the form penno-kruzhliva has to be either a predicate adjective of the same feminine subject or an archaic short-form modifier of the subject (i.e., the foamy-circling princess). Nogami in the instrumental case seems to indicate that the snow-princess is foamycircling with her legs, hence doing some kind of rapid dance, as is supported by the second line. Zhelal'na is, however, another short-form adjective like kruzhliva, rather than an expected verbal adjective (desiring) and therefore creates a syntac!ic parallel with the first adjective. The second word is in the expected genitive case after zhelat', but the following noun and adjective in the instrumental are problematic (a dance by means of elusive dancing-out? like dancing-out?). The "foamy" dancing of the first line might be responsible for such elusiveness, though. The third line is syntactically clear, if one assumes that ballerin is a genitive modifier of "greenhouse," as I have in the translation, but this is rather absurd, or at least puzzling. An alternate interpretation is that ballerin is instead a misplaced modifier of the dane- •· ing in the previous line (dancing of the ballerinas in the greenhouse). I have read the fourth line as an infinitive phrase in which there is poetic license in the form of word order inversion, but the syntactic relationship of the infinitive to the foregoing lines is unclear (she matured in order to halo the mark? she desired the dance to halo the mark?). This is, in other words, zaum on the borderline of the syntactic and suprasyntactic, where the syntax is loose enough to be ambiguous and/ or to create indeterminate ideas and images. The indeterminacy is supported by unusual conjunctions of words, such as "foamy-circling," "in-foal mark," and "favorite horror," which are syntactically unambiguous, but conceptually difficult or catachretic. An accumulation of such passages leaves one at a loss as to what is going on, even when short segments are relatively comprehensible.

The song of the Chorus Leader is then picked up by an Undervoice (Podgolosok] who sings:

chamtel char inot'moyu ozaryatel' tem'yu brosn raztsvetatel' adovo smoloy perv'yu golovnoy provalen v smradny rot chto khitronemo zhryot


blackbody of charms by other-darkness illuminator by darkness thrown

flowerer hellishly by tar by head firstness fallen through into the stinking mouth that sly-mutely chews

The first word, unless it is a misprint, is one of the more opaque of Filonov's coinages. There is a strong inclination to read it as charitel' [charmer] because the cyrillic letters for n and i are so similar, as are the soft and hard signs at the end. If the word is correct as printed, then the roots would seem to be chorny [black] in a dialectal variant and tel [body] (analogous to chistotel =greater celandine, i.e., "cleanbody"), though the combination charn-tel without a vowel at the hyphen would be an abnormal Russian compound. Similarly strange is the form brosn, which appears to be more a Kruchonykhian truncated word than a complete one (there are no Russian words that end with the cluster -sn); though here the root is doubtless bros [throw]. Similar later forms, e.g., mern =measured (:18), bledn =pale (:20), obratn = return (:23), suggest that these are unorthodox short-form adjectives. Although again the syntax is "sprung," the image of a "flowerer'' being thrown into the mouth of a monster is fairly clear. What this has to do with the snow-princess's dance in the first four lines is another question.

At this point Vanka the Keykeeper delivers a speech (song?) in which love, kissing, Eve, protest against God's ways, old age, and death all figure. As much as one can make out, Vanka seems to be a spokesman for Nikolai Fyodorov's philosophy with its rejection of sensuality, of concern for one's own body, and of happiness in favor of love for one's parents and all ancestors. At this point it becomes apparent that continuity of thought from one speech to the next is as problematic as that within speeches. With few exceptions, there is no real dialogue in the sense of response to another speaker's statements. This fact and the presence of singers and a chorus give the work a strong resemblance to the opera Victory Over the Sun, which doubtlessly influenced Filonov.3 (Filonov did the scenery for Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy, which was performed on alternate evenings with Victory.) Yet the range of Filonov' s devices is considerably more restricted and conservative than that found in Victory.

Among other characters who make speeches in succession are a Speaker, a Provocateur with a Spittled Face [s proplyovannym litsom], a Decayed Commander, an Old Prince, a Princess, and an Old.,German King. Surreal images of death, rotting, war, and eating predominate, reminding one of some of Kruchonykh's poerhs ofthis saii1e time. Sex and war are often equated as destructive forces. The Speaker says: "The dead are vivified by a female milked breast I give me a sphere I'll play

I I ) II

II I

I I

I


the moon off the side into the comer [pocket]." Vanka refers to Cain and Abel and to the Madonna of Czestochowa. The Old Prince mentions that the Bavarian king' s wife has been unfaithful, and he has taken arms against "dear France." The Old-German King's speech is particularly filled with violent militancy. Suddenly there is an actual continuous conversation:

Vanka: and are you killed with me? Princess: here I am with you Commander: I will be killing as many as were alive Princess: I being killed will love always Commander: I am falling to all devils into hell brimstone Provocateur: heh-hee Princess: Vanya! Our God at the door is wondrous gray white

There is talk of going to lvangorod (an image of heaven?), suggesting the possibility that Vanka (St. John?) is the key keeper of a more important realm. This part ends with a chorus and final song by the Undervoice that seems to be in praise of the Princess, a "proud beauty" who has "entrusted her body to the night."

The title of the second part suggests that the Princess has presented herself to God in heaven (prestavilas', hence she is a prestavlenitsa) and that the text is presenting the speeches made (at graveside?) in reaction to her death. A Song-Leader (Zapevatel', not Zapevalo who appears .t

in the first part and later in the second also [are these the same person?]) seems to be reflecting on the fact that she has entered the celestial realms and that on earth her body is rotting: "v olun' zvezdyanitsu v zov tayn tela tsaritsy" [into the moonround the starrealm to the call of mysteries of the tsaritsa's body]; but: "noch' [ ... J prodyryavlennaya 1 vyela prekrasnye glaza otrasli shchupal 'tsy moroznye'' [night [ ... J filled with holes I ate out the beautiful eyes of the outgrowth frost feelers]. The Undervoice adds similar but more earth-bound reflections. A Gravedigger, an After-Midnight Flame, Cupid, the Chorus, a Wench (baba), an Animal-Trapper, a young Hunter, a Soldier, a Rapist (who attempts to convince the wench to "love" him), a Wounded Soldier, and the Chorus-Leader make successive speeches. Then Vanka the Key keeper returns to pronounce a string of words and word fragments in which there is no observable syntax, even of the shifted sort previously seen:

gorbolob nozhav razlom rozh raznolik bezpar ryadim pobedno silonos lesnoy vesnam syol sil'ny rodil roitel' ratnago balovnya mol den' khren sobiraet zol von [ ... ] (:22)


humpbrow knify break of pusses varifaced steamless we array victoriously forcecarrier wooded to springs of villages strong gave birth swirler of military pets pier day horseradish gathers evil/ cinders away [ ... ]

That this further disintegration of expression might be intended to convey grief is supported by the fact that a subsequent character, the' Woman in Mourning, speaks in a similarly disjoin~ed manner, as do a Marker [OtmetchikJ and the Slaughterer Lyubimtsev [=of Lovers]. To this speech the Wench responds: "Woe to you deadsoul."

The most coherent speech is made near the end by a Devcherka [= girl, though not one of the usual variants of this word]:

the sixteenth spring neither life nor century the sixteenth time carried off Nightings by Dyings the heart arises large asks for confidence with honeyed dews with any crashing with quiet-calls involuntary from inside carefully (:24)

And the work ends with another speech by Vanka that moves from his previous disjointed manner to great~r co~erence: ~~ go~t' ~stami za vinom i khlebom vkhodit v nebo verkhushkam1 pen ya legok 1 ch1st. [the guest by mouth to get wine and bread enters the sky by peaks of song [and is] light and pure]. , .

It is probably safe to say, with Grygar, that there are two basic thematic clusters in this work: love and war, life and death" (1988:95-96), but at any given time it is diff~cult to say whic~ of thes~ the~es .is being referred to. Perhaps that Is the pomt, as It some!1mes ts m Khlebnikov, but in Filonov there are many fewer clues, of either a syntactic or a structural sort, to help us sort things out even provisionally. In this respect, the Canticle is more radical than Khlebnikov' s longer works, such as Zangezi, or even Victory Over the Sun, where it is not impossible to follow the general drift of the action. While granting that "[n]o less forcefully than Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh and Maiakovsky, Filonov refurbished the conventional lexicon, invented his own linguistic strata, and emphasized the acoustic value of the text," to what extent he also retained" its descriptive, philosophical meaning" (Bowlt 1984:15) is another question. Its zaum will, I think, continue to challenge us for some time to come.


MALEVICH

Beginning in March 1916, Kruchonykh, who had been drafted into military service, was based in the southern town of Sarykamysh. From there he wrote a series of letters to Malevich on his literary plans, prompting the latter to formulate to Matyushin Uune 1916] his own thoughts on zaurn, which are distinct from Kruchonykh's in several respects. Malevich had, of course, been intimately involved in the planning and creation of Victory Over the Sun in which zaum was a prime factor. Though Malevich considers Kruchonykh an ally and remains very supportive in general, he finds Kruchonykh's theories of the letter and the word as such unclearly articulated and not completely liberated from the past. "The word 'as such' must be reincarnated 'into something,' but this remains obscure" (Kovtun 1976:190). Evidently Malevich is not in favor of indeterminacy per se. His own ideas lean toward the quasi-musical and mystical:

[f]he letter is not a symbol for expressing things, but a sonic note (not a musical one). And this note-letter is perhaps subtler, clearer and more expressive than musical notes. The passage of sound from letter to letter passes more perfectly than from note to note.

*** Arriving at the idea of sound, we obtained note letters expressing

sonic masses. Perhaps in a composition of these sound masses (former , words) a new path will be found. In this way, we tear the letter from a line, from a single direction, and give it the possibility of free movement. (Lines are needed in the world of bureaucrats and domestic correspondence.) Consequently we arrive at a distribution of letter and sonic masses in space similar to painterly Suprematism. These masses will hang in space and will provide a possibility for our consciousness to move farther and farther away from the earth. (:191-92)

In the period 1912-14, just before his Suprematist breakthrough, Malevich painted a number of pictures that have been termed "alogical," such as "Cow and Violin," "An Englishman in Moscow," and "Woman at an Advertisement Column" (Kovtun 1974:38; Bowlt 1980:9), or directly as" zaum realism," such as "Morning in the Village after the Snowstorm" and "Portrait ofivan Kliun" (Douglas 1991:8), or "Zaum Composition" (Nakov 1991:17). A close reading of these paintings would, I think, provide interesting insights into an application of the notion of zaum to the visual arts, but that is beyond our present scope. In general, though, it appears that these pictures are not intended to be indeterminate, that is, not really zaum by our definition, but rather collages of disparate elements whose links are hidden. As Malevich put it in 1913: "We have come to reject reason, but we have rejected


reason because a different kind of reason has arisen within us, one which might be called transrational if compared with the one which we have rejected; it also has its own law, construction and meaning, and only when we have cognized it will our works be founded on the truly new law of transrationalism" (quoted from Kovtun 1974:40; also Douglas 1991:59). For true indeterminacy in space we would have to go to Lissitzky's prouns of1919-24.

However, Malevich, in addition to his paintings, also did write at least a few zaum poems and also an article, "On Poetry" [1919), which developed his thoughts on the subject (1968; Russ. text in Kuzminsky, Janecek, Ocheretyansky 1988:126-30). He considers the goal of zaum in poetry to be the same as abstraction in painting:

The poet fears to reveal his groan, his voice; fodn the groaning and the voice there are no things; they form pure, naked words, although these are not words as such, but are only contained in words by virtue of the letters. They have no substance, but there is the voice of the poet's being, true and pure, and the poet fears his very self. [ ... )

I consider the highest moment in the poet's service of the spirit to be that of his wordless dialect, when demented words rush from his mouth, mad words accessible neither to the mind, nor to reason.

The poet's dialect, rhythm and tempo divide the mass of sound into intervals and make clear the detailed gestures of the body itself. (1968:79, 81)

Combined here are the primeval voice gesture and sectarian glossolalia.

All words are merely distinguishing signs and nothing more. But if I hear a groan, I neither see nor sense in it any definite form. I recognize pain, which has its language-a groan-and in the groan I hear no word. (:75)

There is, in other words, a direct, wordless communication of feeling, as is intended in Malevich's Suprematist paintings (Douglas 1991:12).

The poem Malevich provides to illustrate his ideas is the following:

Ule Ele Lei Li One Kom Si An Onon Kori Ri Koasambi Mocna Lezh Sabno Oratr Tulozh Koalibi Blestore Tivo Orene Alizh

This is hardly a wild primal scream, but is rather more like a lyrical glossolalic text with a predominantly non-Russian character, though there are a few Russian particles and roots (li = whether, kom = lump, lezh- =be in a lying position). It is mainly phonetic zaum with no evi-

I. ,. ~ ''! ~!


dent interpretants or continuity from one word to the next except for the sound patterning. Perhaps because Malevich considers these lines to be the result of involuntary, internal intuitive forces, he concludes: "In this the poet has exhausted his lofty action; he cannot compose these words and no one can imitate him" (:82).

Elsewhere he is more explicit about the expressive intent of his zaum:

"Bumg, mumomng oloss, achki oblyg glamgly"- in your last oblyg lies a large mass of sound which can be developed and the final letters provide a strong hit, like a shell hitting a steel wall ... (as quoted by Terentev in Kruchonykh 1973:515)

Here indeed the combinations of b-u-m-n-g-1-y are quite massivesounding and heavy.

These and a few other similar passages of zaum (see Bowlt 1991a:184) seem to be fragments presented to illustrate Malevich's version of how zaum should be written, rather than independent poems. In contrast to Filonov, Malevich does not appear to have an original poetic gift.

STEPANOVA

While Varvara Stepanova is known primarily as a painter and designer, she too wrote zaum poetry, adding two unique dimensions to zaum practice. In 1918 she produced a series of color illustrations (tempera on paper) for zaum books titled Zigra ar, Globolkim and Rtni Khomle that were composed of abstract color compositions incorporating brushed-in zaum texts in color (see ill us. in Lavrentiev 1988:20-27; also From Painting to Design 1981:166-67, 177-79). The zaum is mainly phonetic but contains sporadic morphemes, e.g., "TRASFOR NA YU I 0 TE CHUARE I ZLIAR GIN'CH RA YU I LIMI A VISTR" (Lavrentiev:22), where one can pick out "o te" [= Oh those] and "rayu" [==heaven] and a few distorted Latinate words, e.g., tra[n]sfor[m]. These .,....I are lively visual artifacts which reveal the influence of Olga Rozanova in both their zaum and in their vibrant color, but are closer to Kruchonykh in their sonic and compositional muscularity. The effect was of a synthesis of color, shape, and language on an equivalent level of abstraction. The interplay of the verbal and the visualmakes these works significantly different from others in the zaum canon, with the possible exception of Te li le (1914). At this same time Stepanova had also written a book of so-called "objectless poems" [bespredmetnye stikhi] which were typewritten on graph paper in upper case, with colored lines in the margins around the poems (illus. Lavrentiev:19). These

' ~:


poems are less original than her other works and also than Kruchonykh's of the same period.

However, Stepanova's second unique contribution is her book Gaust chaba [1919], which consists of a series of zaum poems scrawled energetically and often diagonally in ink across vertically positioned newsprint with the addition of some collage pages of newsprint onto newsprint (Von der Fliiche zum Raum 1974 ill us. 71-85). Since each of the 54 copies was handmade individually, the lettering and layout of each copy do vary somewhat (compare Von der Fliiche No. 81 with Rudenstine No. 1090). Some of the poems done earlier in color compositions reappear here in black and white (e.g., the above poem). The relationship between the content of the zaum text and that of the newpaper articles upon which it is scrawled is evidently not significant, since in the case of two comparable editions, the newsprint background differs as does the script, leaving the relationship to chance. If it had turned out that each text had been inscribed on multiple copies of the same page of newsprint, we might want to look at the newsprint text also, but that is apparently irrelevant. The effect then is of violent graffiti on the wall of bourgeois order as represented by the newsprint without respect for the specific content of either, a clash between the free human hand and a rigid, mass-produced product of modem technology in a symbolic gesture of rejection that is quite powerful.

By the end of 1916, Kruchonykh, as he putit, "had rolled into Tiflis" (RGALI 1334-1-27:6 [1952]) and there began a distinct new stage in his literary career where in his own way he further freed the letter and the word from semantic gravity. However, before moving to Tiflis, let us examine some comparable developments elsewhere.

Notes

1The entire book is reproduced in color in Rudenstine (1981:458-60) but is mistakenly attributed to Rozanova, as has often been the case.

ZVallier (1987:303) reports that Jakobson pointed out to her that the word kitayanki [Olinese women] was a misprint for kitayaki, a coinage or deliberate distortion rather than a standard word, and that Jakobson was upset by this printer's error. Markov reports furthermore that Jakobson indicated that he "aimed at the newspaper ads" in these poems (Weststeijn 1986:542), an intriguing remark which is difficult to interpret unless some randomizing collage procedure was used.

3Another probable influence is Sologub's play Vanka The Keykeeper and the Page Zhean (1913). In Sologub, Vanka and the page become lovers of the Princess while the Prince is at war, but all survive the transgression when the Prince returns.

I

I I II

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Chapter Eight

Parallel Developments, 1915-1919

IT ALlAN FUTURISM

Partly because of lack of financial resources and also tighter control by the tsarist authorities on the theaters of Russia, Victory Over the Sun and Mayakovsky's Tragedy are the only major theatrical events of Russian Futurism until Zdanevich's Yanko was performed in St. Petersburg in 1916 (unless one were to include the various Futurist" evenings" and other shenanigans under the rubric of theater). It was, however, in the theatrical ;\rea that Italian Futurism made major avantgarde strides into the realm of zaum. The manifesto "The Futurist Syn- ~ thetic Theatre" by Marinetti, Settimelli, and Carra, January 11, 1915, contained a platform plank on alogism: "The Futurist theatrical synthesis will not be subject to logic, will pay no attention to photography; it will be autonomous, will resemble nothing but itself, although it will take elements from reality and combine them as its whim dictates" (Kirby: 200-01). By 1916, the Italians had produced and performed a number of so-called sintesi that contained zaumelements similar to those in Victory ranging from recitation of numbers and sounds in Balla's "Disconcerted States of Mind" and "To Understand Weeping," Carli's "States of Mind," and Depero' s "Colors," to suprasyntactic absurdities in Bocci~ni and Buzzi, to more elaborate concoctions by Settimelli and others (for texts see Kirby: 232 ff; see also Dashwood). Characteristic of all these is their brevity and concentration, in line with the Italians' emphasis on modern speed and synaesthesia. They cover the outer ranges of zaum (phonetic and suprasyntactic) well enough, but are not particularly concerned with the middle range (morphological and syntactic zaum). White argues that this may have to do ~ith the features of Italian itself, which lacks Russian's morphological nchness (1990:228ff.; see his Ch. 4 for a comparative study including the German Expressionists). And, with the exception of Depero's abstract "Colors," the plays are generally contemporary in costuming, setting, and situation, rather than futuristic. It is not clear whether,

205


despite Marinetti' s expressed lack of understanding and sympathy. for .zaum his contact with Russian Futurism in early 1914 and possible info~ation gained then about the very recent production of Victory might have influenced him or stimulated a new interest in the theatrical medium. In any case, the Italians did not produce anything co~plex and developed in the sphere of theatrical.zaum to ~om~are.wtth Kruchonykh' s opera, though, taken collectively, the Itahan smtest covered many, if not all, of the same bases.

DADAISM

On February 1, 1916, Hugo Ball opened the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, thus founding the Dada Movement. Although Dada shared many external features with Italian Futurism, the latter's praise for the "hygiene of war" was turned by the Dadaists into a protest against the absurdity of World War I. One form of escape from the absurdities to which European culture and scientific logic had led was sound poetry. The originator of this genre among the Dadaists was Ball himself, as he indicates in his diary for June 23, 1916:

I have invented a new genre of poems, "Verse ohne Worte" [poems without words], or Lautgedichte [sound poems], iJJ which the balance of the vowels is weighted and distributed solely according to the values of the beginning sequence. I gave a reading of the first one of these poems this evening. (Ball1974:70)

Here is the first stanza of the poem:

gadji beri bimba glandridi !aula lonni cadori gadjama gramma berida bimbala glandri galassass laulitalomini gadji beri bin blassa glassala !aula lonni cadorsu sassala bim gadjama tuffm i zimzalla binban gligla wowolimai bin beri ban o katalominai rhinozerossola hopsamen laulitalomini hoooo gadjama rhinozerossola hopsamen bluku terullal blaulala looo (Ball1963:27)

This performance continued with "Labada's Song to the Oouds" and "Elephant Caravan." As Ball describes his experience:

The heavy vowel sequences and the plodding rhythm of the elephants had given me one last crescendo. But how was I to get to the end? Then I noticed that my voice had no choice but to take on the ancient cadence of priestly lamentation, that style of liturgical singing that wails through all the Catholic churches of East and West.

Paraiiel Developments, 1915-1919 207

I do not know what gave me the idea of this music, but I began to chant my vowel sequences in a church style like a recitative, and tried not only to look serious but to force myself to be serious. (:71)

Ball's entry for the next day, June 24, contains the explanation:

Before the poems I read out a few program notes. In these phonetic poems we totally renounce the language that journalism has abused and corrupted. We must return to the innermost alchemy of the word, we muSt even give up the word too, to keep for poetry its last and holiest refuge. We must give up writing secondhand: that is, accepting words (to say nothing of sentences) that are not newly invented for our own use. Poetic effects can no longer be obtained in ways that are merely reflected ideas or arrangements of furtively offered witticisms and images. (:71)

This account contains a number of interesting contrasts with Kruchonykh' s .zaum. First of all, the performance aspects are thoroughly discussed (for more details see Ball:70-71; Richter:42-43; Motherwell:xixxx; Meltzer:62-65). By contrast, although Kruchonykh performed his .zaum poems many times, he nowhere, as far as is known, describes the experience, the purpose, or the audience reaction, except very briefly in regard to Victory. Although Ball was reading from texts placed on three music stands, the·manner of reading was to some extent spontaneous and improvised on the spot as he describes being carried away by the idea of liturgical chanting. And this last fact underlines the markedly musical features of the text, which carry the poet himself, and perhaps the audience as well, off into a quasi-glossolalic trance which results in a state of free association (Nilsson 1985:135). At the same time, he must "force" himself to remain serious to the end, because of the obviously humorous effect of the chanted nonsense.

The passages noted are similar to glossolalia, and they have an African sound (Nilsson 1981:309 also suggests Arabic and Finnish possibilities), underlined by the titles, the occasional appearance of such interpretable words as ".zanzibar" and "rhinozerossola," and the predilection for "negro music" at the Cabaret Voltaire. Kuenzli argues for an onomatopoetic interpretation of "Karawane" (Ball1963:28) as "not at all, as some Dadaists and critics claim, an arbitrary play of sounds," but rather as an effort "to evoke the sensation of hearing an elephant caravan" in which "Ball attempts to create an identity between the object, i.e., the natural noise, and the sound sequences of the poem." Kuenzli supports this view by interpreting much of the text along these lines. This is seen as Ball's way of creating an adamic language, a new sign system drawn from" a primal memory, 'primeval strata, untouched and unreached by logic"' (Kuenzli 1979:67; Ball 1974:71). The overall effect, however, is of pure sound not containing associations with a


European language. Instead, one is inclined to become immersed in the hypnotic flow of sound and rhythm and not attempt to interpret most of the words, given the general absence of recognizable morphemes. The meaning therefore is left mostly, if not entirely, "to the receiver's imagination- or intuition, that cornerstone of futurist poetics" (Nilsson 1981:312), though it could then be argued that this makes the meaning not indeterminate, but absent. At any rate, it is probably safe to call this phonetic zaum. Furthermore, the repetitions of words and parts of words are rhythmic and mainly paired, i.e., organized to suggest musical patterning or poetry rather than ordinary language. Such an abstract musical orientation is occasionally to be found also in Italian Futurism, but it is not especially prominent there. Ball's references to the "alchemy of the word" and keeping "for poetry its last and holiest refuge" suggest a Symbolist orientation toward language, i.e., a musical, theurgic orientation like Bely's, but Ball's evident satirical intent and the strong satirical element in Dada as a whole is absent in Symbolist theories. To Nilsson, the exoticism of these poems "still makes a rather artificial and mostly decorative impression" by contrast with Kruchonykh's "Dyr bul shchyl" (1981:316). In any case, Ball points to similar sources for his "original language": the language of "children, madmen, and the hypnotical spells of ancient magical texts" (Kuenzli 1979:69).

Nilsson found no references to a link between Ball's efforts and zaum (:310), but Raoul Hausmann has claimed that "nevertheless, Kandinsky was familiar with the 'innovations' of Khlebnikov and had recited the phonetic poems of Khlebnikov at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916 in the presence of Hugo Ball" (Hausmann 1965:21). Kandinsky would certainly have known Khlebnikov' s work, since they both appeared in A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (1913). Ball was in close contact with Kandinsky in Munich in 1912-13, reports on a talk by him on March 5,1916, gave a lecture on Kandinsky on April 7,1917 (Ball:55, 222-34), and was influenced by Kandinsky's iiber das Geistige in der Kunst [1912] and Der Blaue Reiter Almanach [1912/1914]. However, even though Ball usually gives due credit, he does not mention such a reading of Khlebnikov (see detailed notes by Middleton to Hausmann 1965:22-231). In any case, the resemblance between Ball's and Khlebnikov's poetic output is minimal. On the other hand, Kandinsky's own play, "The Yellow Sound," specifies one "unintelligible" word, Kalasimunafakola, not unlike one of Ball's. It might have served as a model, and Kandinsky could have suggested others to Ball in private. Moreover, in his essay "On Stage Composition," which precedes "The Yellow Sound" in the almanac Kandinsky, perhaps in reference to these words in Picture 3, but no doubt also to the off-stage choruses, explains:

Parallel Developments, 1915-1919 209

The word, independent or in sentences, was used to create a certain "atmosphere" that frees the soul and makes it receptive. The sound of the human voice was also used pure, i.e., without being obscured by words, or by the meaning of words. (Kandinsky /Marc:206)

For a discussion of possible connections between "The Yellow Sound" and Victory, see note 3, Chapter 4. It seems clear, however, that Kandinsky's immediate influence was greater in the German sphere, where it was overt, than in the Russian, where one has to posit it.

Early Cabaret Voltaire activities had included a performance on March 30, 1916, of the simultaneous poem "L' Amiral cherche une maison a louer'' by Richard Huelsenbeck, Marcel Janco, and Tristan Tzara (text in Motherwell:241). In this performance, each author simultaneously recited or sang a basically suprasyntactic zaum text in German, English, and French, respectively, accompanying himself on whistle, ratchet, or drum. Some phonetic zaum was also interspersed. The effect was to suggest that "language is just rhythmical noise" (Kuenzli:59). Other sessions involved the recitation of "bruitist poems," which "consisted of any noises the human vocal chords could produce" (Kuenzli:59), and Tzara's so-called "negro poems" with imitations of African languages.

According to Tzara's Zurich Chronicle (1915-1919), the first Dada Evening on July 14, 1916, which was set up to present Dada innovations in full force, included, in addition to Ball's "Gadji Beri Bimba," also the following: "51iterary experiments: Tzara in tails stands before the curtain, stone sober for the animals, and explains the new aesthetic: gymnastic poem, concert of vowels, bruitist poem, static poem chemical arrangement of ideas, 'Biriboom biriboom' saust der Ochs im Kreis herum (the ox dashes round in a ring) (Huelsenbeck), vowel poem a a o, i eo, a i "(' plus a "simultaneous poem for 4 voices simultaneous work for 300 hopeless idiots" (Motherwell:236-37; Huelsenbeck 1960:16). The printed program also mentions a poem by Huelsenbeck titled "Mpala Taso" (Ball:74).

The Berlin Dada Movement, initiate·d in February 1918 by Richard Huelsenbeck, also included, in addition to Huelsenbeck's own sound poetry efforts, the optophonetics of Raoul Hausmann. Hausmann, in his Courrier Dada (1958), traces the origins of this" great step by which total irrationality was introduced into literature" (Richter:118) to Justinus Kerner's book The Prophetess of Prevost [1840], Swift's Gulliver's Travels in the speech of the Laputians and Yahoos, to French comptines (counting rhymes), to poems by Paul Scheerbart ("Kikakoku!" [1897]), and to Christian Morgenstern's "Das grosse Lalula" [1905]. For Hausmann, "the poem is an act consisting of respiratory and auditive combinations, firmly tied to a unit of duration," which means that controlled time and breath "play a creative role in the performance of a


phonetic poem." This was expressed by letter size, thickness, and layout. Hausmann claimed that" the optophonetic and the phonetic poem are the first step towards totally non-representational, abstract poetry" (Richter:121). He did not discover until1920 that Ball had been doing similar things already, as had the Russians. While Hausmann's "phonetic poem" griin of May 25,1918 (Hausmann 1982:17), is visually profuse in the Italian Futurist manner, it is also mostly composed of recognizable German words, though without evident syntax. His two "poster poems" of that October, fmsllw and OFFEA (Hausmann 1982:18), are by contrast simple rows of letters and symbols in sequences that do not encourage attempts to pronounce them or to think of them as words. He reports simply letting the typesetter choose letters "as they came out of the box-just according to his own mood and chance" (Kuenzli:62). While the element of chance and the use of an intermediary are distinguishing factors, these works otherwise parallel Kruchonykh' s most nihilistic pages in the autographic series of the same time. The first of these poems by Hausmann did, however, apparently serve as the inspiration for the opening theme of Kurt Schwitters' Ursonate [1921-24] (Richter:120). On the other hand, other poems of 1918-20, such as kp'erioum, SOUND-REL and Seelen-Automobil (Hausmann 1982:34, 89, 101), are much more complex, with genuine zaum qualities (Hausmann 1972 and 1982). Similar typographical profusion will make its appearance in the work of Kruchonykh in 1919 as well, under the influence of the Russian Dadaist branch headed by Ilya Zdanevich (see next chapter).

Huelsenbeck's Dada Almanach (1920) includes the" African" sound poem,"Maori. TOTO-VACA" (by Tzara, though not identified), and another sound poem "ETYOMONS" by A don Lacroix from New York (:51-52), an elegantly typeset version of Ball's "Karawane" [1917] (:53), and several"Negro Songs" "found and translated by Tristan Tzara" (:141-43). With the exception ofthree "Maori" songs, Tzara's so-called "Negro Songs" contain only occasional quasi-African language, their exoticism being mainly confined to the proper names mentioned (for a complete collection of these poems see Tzara 1975:441-89). However, Tzara had apparently done some research into actual African languages in connection with these poems. Elsewhere, Tzara only occasionally employed zaum-like language below the suprasyntactic level (e.g., 1975:102,137). In the area of suprasyntactic zaum related to Dada, we should perhaps also mention the poetry of Hans Arp, especially the pre-Dada poem-grotesque "Kaspar is Dead," which dates back to 1912 (Lippard 1971:22-23). The poetry of Schwitters beginning in 1917 covers the full range of zaum shifts from the phonetic to the suprasyntactic, but concentrates especially on the latter (Schwitters 1993).

Such Dadaist efforts, developed in apparent ignorance of Russian zaum, are often less complex and less interesting than Kruchonykh's

T

)


poetry and in any event postdate his comparable works. The influence of Dada on the Russian scene was minimal. According to Abram Efros, its activities began to be known only in 1921 {1923:119) because of the war and the post-war blockade. The first notice of it in the Russian press was an article, "Dada," by RomanJakobson [Feb.1921] (1987:34-40), and the first significant selection of Dada manifestoes and poetry appeared in Russian with a preface by Efros in 1923, when zaum was virtually dead. In Efros' view, Dada did not compare favorably with Futurism: "The martyrdom of Khlebnikov relates to the je m'emfoutisme [sic] of Tzara as the genuine glossolalism of Russian zaum poetry to the sonic crackling of Dadaism" (:124). The Dadaists nevertheless shared with many of the Cuba-Futurists an anti-European emphasis heightened to intense scorn by the onset of the war, and this led them to seek artistic inspiration outside of Europe, the Dadaists looking south to Africa, the Russians looking south and east to the ethnic minorities within the Russian Empire and to primitive roots within Russian culture itself. The two groups also shared an antipathy for the hymns to modem warfare and its technology found in Italian Futurism. And there was a common element of linguistic playfulness (see Liede 1963 for a thorough investigation of this facet with emphasis on the Germans).

If there is anything in Dadaism that cannot already be found in some form in Russian zaum, it is perhaps Schwitters' Ursonate begun , in 1921 (see Hausmann 1958:63; Schwitters 1993:52-80), with its elaborately developed quasi-musical structure and recitational manner. Based on one of Hausmann's poems, "what in Hausmann's experiment was meant to be a radical critique of the cultural sign system becomes in Schwitters' work a polished, well-structured work of art" (Kuenzli:63). Though an interesting and unique artifact in the realm of sound poetry, it arrived on the scene rather late and had no evident impact on Russian zaum.

As another parallel development with a relationship to Cubism and possibly Paris Dada, mention should perhaps be made of the work of Gertrude Stein from 1910 on, with its syntactic and suprasyntactic zaum-like dislocations, but with a focus on repetitiveness (see esp; Stein 1972, 1980); however, even to this day her work is virtually unknown in Russia.

RUSSIAN SYMBOLISM

In 1915, one of the founders of Russian Symbolism, Konstantin Balmont, published a long essay-booklet, Poeziya kak volshebstvo [Poetry as Sorcery], where in an impressionistic manner he laid out his views on the magical powers and sources of poetry. His is the first extensive


modem Russian attempt to establish a link between verbal sounds and meaning, and it was based on many of the principles outlined in our Introduction. He presents an initial example:

Can one not hear in the Russian More, in the Latin Mare, in the Polynesian Moana, in the word Okean repeated by various peoples all the noises, all the extended huge sound of these watery masses, the measured volume of a great drone, and the mists of fogs, the greatness of the sea's silence? From mute silence to the organ sounds of the tides, from the voiceless quiet hidden in itself to the foamy flight of the lathered horses of Poseidon, all the full-ranged spectrum of colors is included in these three magical words-More, Moana, Okean. (:14-15)

He pursues this idea into the myths of the Romans, Aztecs, Mayans, Norsemen, Finns, and Egyptians. From the ancient Chinese he draws the precept: "The resonances of a word once said, trembling, sound through all the space of Eternity" (:34), and finds an echo of it in Edgar Allan Poe's dialogue"The Power of Words," in which Agathos asks Oinos: "And while I thus spoke, did there not cross your mind some thought of the physical power of words? Is not every word an impulse on the air?" (Poe 1938:442; Balmont 1915:35; emphasis as in Poe and Balmont). From Heraclitus Balmont draws the idea: "words are the shadows of things, their sound images," to which Democritus opposed the view: "words are living sculptures." Balmont finds these views not in opposition and concludes: "Each word is a shadow of first-thought [pervomyslt], one of the facets of thought, for human sensation and thought are always multifaceted" (:54), and the word reflects both the human voice and the voices of Nature (:56). He recognizes that his point of departure is the Russian language, but is convinced that "there are however crystalline moments where the souls of all peoples converge" in expressive agreement (:57).

He then enters on a description of the meaning of specific sounds generally based on articulation. Thus: "It is easier to pronounce vowels, but one controls consonants only with a struggle. Vowels are women, consonants are men" (:57). He sees vowels as "a fluid formless moisture," while c()nsonants representfirmforce and order, though it is the vowels that tend to dominate our first impression of words (:58). Hence he begins his survey of sounds with the vowels and with A, the "clearest, easiest, most vocal sound, coming from the mouth without any obstruction" (:59). It is, he notes, the first sound from a baby and the last sound of someone who is losing the capacity for speech. When combined with M, it produces words like mama, amo (L. "I love"), Aum (the Buddhist chant). 0 is the throat and mouth, the sound of ecstasy, the sound of triumphant space (pole = field, more = sea, pros tor =space), but also associated with dark and large things (stan

I /

..


= groan, gore= grief, ozero =lake, solntse = sun)(:61). (Here, as throughout this discussion, I am giving only a few of Balmont' s many illustrative words for each point.) U is the "music of noises [ ... ] a cry of horror [ ... ] a weighty sound like a stormdoud and the drone of brass trumpets. U is often crude [muzyka shumov ... vsklik uzhasa [ ... ] zvuk gruzny kak tucha i gud mednykh trub. U chasto - gruboe]" (:62). As we can see, the descriptive terms also tend to contain the sound in question. By contrast, "I is a thin line," penetrating, sharp (krik = cry, vizg = screech, igla =needle). E is difficult to define, which is perhaps related to the fact that there are four letters for it (ye, yat', e, and yo). This leads to a brief comparison of jotized and non-jotized vowels ("jotized" [pronounced "yotized"] are those preceded by a y-glide), the former being generally "sharper and more refined" (:64).

Carrying over the male/female analogy, Balmont finds that some sounds are "androgynous," including the peculiar V, which in both Russian and English easily turns into U, as in some Mexican dialects G is pronounced V. "The babble of waves is audible in L, something moist, in love [ ... ]. The flowing word Lyublyu [I love]" (:65). If Lis "bright," then its brother R is "black." "R is rapid, patterned, threatening, disruptive, explosive [skoroe, uzornoe, ugroznoe, spornoe, vzryvnoe]" (:66). It shares windiness with the hissing consonants S, Z, and SH. If A is the first sound of an open mouth and M the first sound of a closed mouth, then N is the second and is associated with A in many ancient reli- •· gious names (Anu-Egyptian City of the Sun, Anna-Chaldean god of the sky, Ananta- Indian world serpent). Vis closely associated with the wind (veter).

But at this point, insecure about continuing such associations with the remaining sounds of the alphabet, Balmont suddenly breaks off his survey with the explanation:

Knowing that the sounds of our speech participate not equally and with an indefinite degree of dedication in the hidden voices of Nature, we are powerless to determine with exactitude why this or that sound acts on us with all the magic force of recollection or with all the charm of newness. Bringing our consciousness into contact with the music of the word, we are grasping a part of its shattered richness, but only by wise feeling do we sense the music of the word completely and, having joyously bathed in its resounding waves and mute depths, thus refreshed we are empowered to be conscious of a new harmony. (:71)

On this basis he establishes a link between music and magic spells or incantations, of which he gives several lengthy examples. Evidently convinced of the suggestive power only of R and V, Balmont ends by giving examples where these are featured in the poetry of Poe, Fet, Richard Wagner, and Pushkin, noting finally that the music of more


contemporary poetry has become more "multi-faceted and speculative [ugadchivym]," so as to involve such sounds asP, CH, "muting" M, and "explosively blizzardy" B (:88-89).

The expressive power of certain speech sounds is taken seriously by Balmont, but with the mythopoetic slant characteristic of Symbolism. If this never led him to the word creation of zaum, it led him to choose words and exotic names in his poetry on the basis of their sound components. Balmont has often been criticized for going overboard in this area, as in Boris Eykenbaum's review of this essay immediately upon its appearance. Eykhenbaum points out that words selected for sound are often banal. However, his real criticism is more substantive:

But what if this theory, consistently developed with all the pathos of logic, leads to the dissolution of the word's living force, turns it into a dead pile of sound and letters not tied together internally by anything? The cult of the sound and letter outside the word as a whole organism, outside its internal form, destroys the very essence of the verbal foundation. If the sound-letter alone, taken by itself, is a "fathoming," then words are not necessary, because then they are simple collections of these sounds which are able to live separately also. In that case, the word can and must be composed mechanically, combining separate sounds-outside the tradition of language, outside its form. One further step-and the sound will turn out to be superfluous and "fathoming" will be based on the letter or the punctuation mark. (1916:IV-2)

Such a criticism could more strongly be made of zaum, though Eykhenbaum does not consider it here. However, his Potebnian emphasis on the inner form of the word as the repository of value in language fails to take into consideration that the individual sound and word have a place in the hierarchy of language structure that includes the utterance and the whole language as a context for establishing meaning.2

In 1912, Andrei Bely left Russia for an extended stay in Europe, at first travelling around to attend Rudolf Steiner's lectures on Anthroposophy and then settling down in February 1914 for two years at the anthroposophical colony in Domach, Switzerland. During this time he was preoccupied with his anthroposophical studies and was generally out of touch with literary developments at home, such as the rise of Futurism. In 1916 he returned home to active involvement in Russian literary activities (Bely 1922b).

Among Bely' s writings of this period are an article which discusses Blok's sound instrumentation (1917a) and a long theoretical article, "Aaron's Rod. (On the Word in Poetry)," based on the same philosophical foundations as "The Magic of Words" (1910a). The new ar-

Parallel Developments, 19~5-1919 215

tide develops the title image of the dead contemporary word-term which can, like Aaron's rod, be made to sprout fresh branches of meaning by renewed contact with its roots in sound and myth. The following passage brings together several threads of Bely's argument:

The poetry of the future is the word new-born from music. Between our ideas [predstavleniyamtl about what the word is and the word-now lies an abyss. The word of our idea about the word is being vaguely born in us; and the remnants of the smashed, archaic word, as a shout and a naked schema of rational thought [rassudochnoy mysli], are powerlessly dashing around on the surface of the storm of ripped-off speech in the flooding sea of the current, trite word; and beneath this storm is a huge, deep silence: a silence of expectation; beneath the silence is sound: the first sound of the gospel of the coming, new, awaited inspiration of the word; the sound will fly to us like music, will be depicted in the internal gesture.

In gesticulation, in the mute range of gestures, in the accompaniment of eyes, in intonations of voice is the new, not-yet-born Reason [Razum] of poetry cutting through in the effaced meanings of concepts [smyslakh ponyatiy] and in the sonic rumble of the so dully voicing root. [ ... ]

At the present time the life of sound and rhythm is flowing up before us in laws; in alogism is lodged a logic, elusive of our logic; it is to be sensed in the cosmic rustle of phonetic emanations.

In logic is the new meaning [smysl] cutting through: by the sound of the t.

new word; and-by the new sounds of thought poured into the sound of the word. (1917b:171)

For Bely, meaning [smysl] is deeply buried beneath the layers of language phenomena and maintains a mysterious existence: "The impression of the meaning of words is more rooted and deeper than all three exposures [obnazheniy] (in the concept, in the metaphor, in the sound)" (:177), and: "The meanings of images are not exposed to us in either the material or the abstractly spiritual; meaning, not exposed, is secreted beyond them: meaning is third" (:178). The idea of language as gesticulation, closely based on Steiner's eurhythmy, is particularly significant here and will be developed into literal voice gestures in Glossaloliya.

In "Aaron's Rod," Bely discusses Futurism in print for the first time, finding its extreme emphasis on sound to be unmindful of the true depths of the living word, but nevertheless finding Futurism sincere in its position:

The word-itself is logically inexpressible; it is still less expressible futuristically; in the futuristic word the fire of life's word grows cold from the crusts of terminological life which have surrounded phonetics; there is still the steam of routine verbiage, and not the living flame, rising from


Futurism, which is not capable of breaking out through the crusts of icy muteness; Futurism is a grimace at the word; what redeems it is its sincerity: you believe in the gnashing of futurist torments. (:166}

This is in contrast to the Parnassians who, while claiming to emphasize form and sound, do so only lukewarmly:

the Futurists are proclaimers of the cult of the naked word; the relationship of the Futurist to the esthete is the relationship of a Russian nihilist to a moderately liberal gentleman; the Futurists are more right-wing than the esthetes in paradoxicality, in directness, in the unconcealedness of their naked "credo," in their rejection of" reason" [razuma ]. [ ... ] the meaning of poetry for them is a paradox (:177}.

He positions these parnassian esthetes "between the logic of Cohenianism and the logic of 'Kruchonykh"' (:194), for some reason feeling it necessary to place Kruchonykh's name rat~er tha~ t~e wor?, "logic" in quotes and to identify him in a footnote as a futunstic poet. Bely agrees with some Futurist ideas, for instance: "the word is not an atom, but if you want-a molecule composed of letters and sounds" (:165), and that "the sounds of words are a spell [zagovor]" (:160). But Futurism produces an "augury [ ... ] where all sounds are prematurely born, a kind of unclear 'y-y-y' sound. They a~e h~lf-sounds!" (:195). And the perceived nihilistic position of Futurism m regard to meaning is obviously not to Bely' s taste.

The conclusions of contemporary poets that the expressible word is outside of thought [vne myslij leads them to the consciousness that: expansion of the word's expressiveness involves breaking apart the crusts of meaning that have hardened on us; and we can hardly attain the limit of sonic expressiveness outside thought in a poem in" one's own language":

"Dir bul shchyl ubeshshchur," etc. Sonorous sound negates itself, and thought too, when it exists outside

any exercise in the mysteries of sound: sound and thought, calling to each other, end in each other; however, sound and thought, having broken up in each other, strive toward each other, sound and thought, confirming themselves, kill themselves: killing themselves, they presuppose themselves. (:205)

Though Futurism's intense concern with sound is of interest, its preoccupation with sound to the exclusion of meaning is" a falling into materialism" (:194), anathema to Bely's spiritualistic concerns. For him there is only one answer:

r

I T

I J)

l


the non-penetration of form by gesture and of gesture by spirituality produces an effort to know how to lead the word into mimicry, into gestures: searching for and finding relationships between sound and meaning are the results of spiritual knowledge; premature sound is a nervous tick; it is an involuntary parody of meaning: it is an unrecognized, undiscovered tongue; its gesticulation, its mimicry comes in the guise of a disease, even if a "holy" disease [ ... ]. (:209}

Hence, while Mayakovsky (see Janecek 1984b) and Khlebnikov might be found to be poets congenial to Bely, Kruchonykh never would be.

Glossaloliyal was finished in October 1917 at Tsarskoe Selo, but was no.t published in its entirety until1922, when Bely was in Berlin (excerpts were published in the Petrograd almanac Drakon in 1921)~ It is a detailed working out of many of the ideas already found in "The Magic of Words" and" Aaron's Rod," and no doubt Bely's lectures and seminars in Russia at this time were filled with similar thoughts. To avoid inevitable objections from the scholarly community, Bely subtitled his work "A Poem about Sound" and insisted that it made no sense to criticize him scientifically (1922a:10).

To begin with, Bely presents the spiritual underpinnings of language emphasized in" Aaron's Rod" (and seen as lacking in the Futurists) in a quite literal way as its t~e foundation. Breath (spiritus, dykhanie [same root as dukh =spirit, dusha =soul]) produces vocal sounds. The tongue is a danseuse: "All movement of the tongue in the oral cavity is ... the gesture of an armless danseuse twisting the air like a gaseous, dancing scarf," and "our armless tongue has observed the gesture of our hand; and has repeated it in sounds; the sounds know the secrets of ancient movements of the soul" (:15-16). Bely accompanied these statements with diagrams of tongue gestures which show both the tongue position vis-a-vis the airstream and the gestures of the tongue-danseuse for the sounds "Haa!" and "Rr-rr!" On this articulatory/ metaphoric basis, Bely erects a cosmogony of sound that explicitly combines Max MOller's interpretations of Indo-European roots (1865), Jacob Bohme's Aurora {1730], Steiner's An Outline of Occult Science [Die Geheimwissenschaft in Umriss 1910] (Eng. trans. 1972), Greek creation mythology, and the story of creation from Genesis. In fact Steiner himself combines these latter two frameworks in the so-called "Akashic Record" which he summarizes in Chapter N of his Outline and in Secrets of the Story of Biblical Creation [1910] (Eng. trans. 1925; see Steinberg 1987). In addition, the danseuse with the scarf is drawn from Bely's experience of anthroposophical eurythmic performances (:19)4• For Bely, as for Steiner, eurythmy was quite literally "visible speech" (Steinberg:407). Bely' s contribution is to combine Bohme' sand Steiner's principles with precise linguistic and articulatory factors in elaborate developmental detail (as with Steiner, this includes even relationships


to color (:106-15)). We might recall that the idea of the tongue imitating hand gestures goes back to Darwin, and the idea of sound gestures [Lautgebiirde] to Wundt.

The following early summation will give an idea of the direction of Bely' s linguistic thought (Bely mainly uses the Latin alphabet to indicate sounds, and these will be given as he did; cyrillic letters are italicized):

The combination of high "i" with low "u" (foreign "u") does not indicate for us- combination, amalgamation; we do not comprehend: the sound "W" is the sound "U"; in "i" is "n": iun-iuw-iun-(go)-iuv(enes)-runs for us through history; and it indicates: "sliyan'e" [amalgamation] and "yunost'" [youth]; we do not understand the ancient "W," pronounced near the glottis; we do not comprehend how the sound "V" arose only later, flying across to the lips. The expression of air flying into the glottis is Hah; hence also "akh" -surprise, intoxication by the air; "ha" is a transfer, an emanation: of air, of soul heat; and the sound "Hauch" expresses the significance of the meaning- the significance of the sound. The semi-vowel "h" (more accurately "a" with aspiration) is the first airwave of sound from the heat, from the glottis.

The formation of spirants is the formation of burning clouds of gas: the subtlest material of sounds; in "w," "v," "r," "h," and "s" we have a disintegration into warmth (w), energy (r), cold air (v), and warm air (h), into light and fire ("s" and "r"); but in the sonorant series u-w-r-1-n we have the formation: of moisture from the air; 1-m-n are clearly liquid; the three plosives-g-d-b-are almost hard: "b" is viscous, "d" is resonant, 11g" is friably scattered; k-t-p (a series of voiced and voiceless plosive consonants) are hard; I would say stony, if "r" were not a symbol for us of hard animality; "t" of vegetative tissue; 11k" is a stony, lifelessly mineral sound; hence the three kingdoms: animals ("p," "b"), plants ("t," "d"), crystals ("k") and amorphous lands ("g"). (:14-15)

With articulatory detail, Bely fixes the qualities of given sounds and how they are formed in the mouth, and he builds upon this foundation a number of layers of symbolic superstructure, the most notable of which recounts the creation of the world in these terms. For example:

How did the world of consonants emerge? Exhalted heat was thrown into nothing-into the oral cavity; and

sounds were formed, positioned around the circle of the larynx: warmths came forth, broadened into a stream at the exit to the glottis; in the flying thinglessness of sound stood the lightest- "h" - ... -The noise of exhalted warmth is the Beginning. In the Beginning is warmth; and the birth canyon of sound is the glottis: The stream of heat carried an indefinite vowel "e," upside down, corresponding to a non-syllabic alpha [ ... ]. (:39)

J)


The reason for exploring this realm is as follows:

Sound is imageless, conceptless, but- meaninged [bezobrazen, bezponyaten, no- osmyslen]; if it developed meaning regardless of given meanings of concepts,-beyond the deciduation of words we could, by penetrating verbalism, also penetrate ourselves to the very bottom: we could see our hidden essence; and sound-verbalization is an experiment; the structure of the world is establishable in it. (:31)

On this basis he proceeds: If "U" is formed by the first tightening movement of the glottis, and "R" is the first motion of the tongue and "H" the motion of exhalation, then 11U-h-r" is "the primeval heavens: 'Uranos' and 'Uhr-alte' are one" (:42), and words with similar roots are the product of the First Day of Creation, the day of Saturn (:48). The Second Day, the day of the Sun, is characterized by hissing sounds (s, z, ts, ch, shch) representing light, the sun, fire. "Ts" and 11 st," combinations of "t" (vegetable matter) and "s" Qight), are the beginnings of plant life (:60). The Third Day is the day of the Moon and is characterized by sonorants. The Fourth is the day of the Earth and of plosives. (Following Steiner, Bely' s Creation has only four 11 days" and includes inaccurate interpretations of the Ancient Hebrew text of Genesis (Steinberg:408-09).) Sounds are combined in various permutations to form roots and words that reflect the meaning of their components.

Though certainly some, perhaps many, of Bely's interpretations •· are idiosyncratic and questionable5, he nevertheless marshals considerable evidence from Indo-European and mythological sources to support such ideas. The result is the most complete and explicit system of correlation between sound and meaning in Russian.6 Only Khlebnikov in his various essays of 1913-20 and Tufanov in his K zaumi (Toward Zaum, 1924) come close to this level of thoroughness, and both of these neglect the vowels and are less concerned with the matter of articulation (for a comparative study see Janecek 1985). It is possible that Khlebnikov and especially Tufanov might have been aware of Bely's ideas through public lectures before their publication in 1921-22. Kruchonykh, however, remained in the south until August, 1921, and so was away from the opportunity for direct contact with Bely.

Notes

1Elderfield in his introduction to the Ball diary (:xxvi-xxvii) points to a passage in Kandinsky's iiber das Geistige in der Kunst which underscores the importance of the word's "inner sound" in the language of poetry. The passage referred to is:


Skillful application (in its poetical meaning) of the word itself, which, as an artistic necessity is repeated twice or three times, if not more frequently, not only intensifies the reiterated sound, but also brings to light unsuspected spiritual properties dwelling in the word itself. [ ... ] The abstract value of the indicated object fades away into the pure sound of the given word. This "pure" sound of the word we may hear unconsciously, when in harmony with the real, or abstract meaning of the object. In the latter case, this pure sound comes to the fore and directly influences the soul. Here, it produces a non-objective vibration more complicated, I may say, more super-sensuous even, than that caused by the sound of bell or the sound of a stringed instrument, the fall of a plank, etc. This indicates vast possibilities for the literature of the future. (Kandinsky 1946:28)

This passage probably served as an important impetus for Ball, but it did not appear in the Russian version of On the Spiritual in Art [0 dukhavnom v iskusstve] published in Petrograd in 1914 based on Kandinsky's paper read there by N. Kulbin in 1911 (see Bowlt/Long 1980), and therefore cannot be assumed to have had a similar impact in the Russian sphere.

However, the following passage is to be found in Kandinsky's 1911 article published in Odesskie navosti in Russian:

Maeterlinck was able to pick up not just the external meaning of the word, but its internal sound. By itself the "simply" sounding word, by deepened penetration into it, acquires a kind of special, incommunicable, but definite sound. [ ... ] That broad trend in "new" literature, which has many talented representatives in Russia, is the logical and organic development of this source. He who "does not understand" this trend should recall that the word is like a living being radiating its spiritual aroma. Inhalation of this aroma by the soul is a condition for "understanding" literature.

Kandinsky's continuing interest in linking sound and meaning in poetry with form and object in art is illustrated by his program for the post-revolutionary art school INKhUK (GrUbel1981:165).

lWeststeijn (1980) explores the similarities between Balmont and Khlebnikov in this area, but dissociates Kruchonykh, finding the usual view of Kruchonykh's zaum as "incomprehensible, meaningless sound-language [ ... )for the greater part correct." By contrast with Khlebnikov, in Kruchonykh this led "to the equation of words and abstract sound material, so that the relations between signifier and signified and sign and referent became reduced to zero" (:285-86).

ifl••


3"fhe anomalous spelling of this title would appear to be intentional on Bely's part. The word glossolaliya is correctly spelled several times in "Aaron's Rod" (1917b:176, 212), and it is unlikely that Bely would have allowed it to pass misspelled this way in the book's title, and several times in the 1922 preface, unless he had chosen this rendering himself (see Steinberg 1987:404 for additional discussion). In one place in the text he gives what appears to be a synonym in the Russian coinage zvukoslavie [sound-verbalization] (1922:68). It is possible that glossaloliya is intended to be a cross between glossolaliya and glossologiya [glossologyL a terrn Bely also used in" Aaron's Rod" (:172).

F~r a detailed and nuanced study of sound play in Bely ih general, Steinberg (1987) IS to be recommended. There she covers such topics as indeterminacy in language and music (:10,26, 43), sounds devoid of meaning (:15-16), Glossaloliya (:29, 51), and the use of specific sounds in Bely's works (:56 ff). See also Mandelker (1990) for more on glossolaliya.

An additional document of interest in this context is the manuscript of Bely's lecture "On Artistic Language" [1920], published with ellipses by Lavrov (1980:47-51). In this lecture Bely reviews many of the same points about language, again rejects the Futurist attempt to replace meaning with sound, and expresses the hope that in the future people will find a way to unite sound, meaning, and image in a "language of word gestures."

~For a succinct discussion of the various facets of Steiner's theory of eurythmy, Including black and white reproductions of Steiner's diagrams of gestures and, color coordinations, see Raffe et al. (1974). ·

5ln her discussion of Bely's Kreshchony kitaets [The Baptized Chinaman, 1927), the sequel to Kotik Letaev written at this time and apparently consciously based on the ideas in Glossaloliya, the critic A. Veksler was able to apply Bely' s soundmeaning principles to an interpretation of the novel, but at the same time she refuses to accept their universal validity in the cognitive or even the esthethic sphere (1925:62). She also, by the way, takes note of the significant number of neologisms in the novel, a factor which will continue to increase in Bely' slater novels and may have been stimulated by Khlebnikov's work. These neologisms fall into two main groups, onomatopoetic coinages and those based on a reinterpretation of uncommon words or a new combination of recognizable morphemes (:64-68).

'Bely makes brief reference to sound-gestures in some of his other works (1920:47 and 1923a:176), including references to Wundt. And he mentions Futurism negatively in his cycle of "Crises" (1923b 1:25, 48, 190).

Chapter Nine

Zaum in Tiflis, 1917-1921

KRUCHONYKH

Upon his arrival in Tillis, Kruchonykh found ready allies in a group of avant-gardists centered around Ilya Zdanevich. While earning a living working on the Erzerum railroad, he engaged in literary disputes, gave lectures, and produced a long series of zaum works. The first of these,1918, came out in late January or early February, 1917, in Tillis. Along with Kamensky's ferroconcrete poems Oanecek 1984a:139-43) and Ilya' s artist brother, Kirill Zdanevich' s semi-<!-bstract lithographs and calligraphy, Kruchonykh provided three poems and collages in .I

the style of Universal War. ) In the new environment of Tiflis, surrounded by Georgians and

Armenians speaking their native languages, Kruchonykh's zaum poetry takes on a fresh dimersion and presents a new challenge for the analyst. Which words are coinages, and which are borrowed from other languages that Kruchonykh heard on the street? In the first poem [Figure 7], among the few recognizable complete Russian words is gruzina ["a Georgian man," gen. or ace. sg.], suggesting a possible orientation here toward the Georgian language (which Kruchonykh probably did not know very well, if at all). There are several other Russian words, such as luza [billiard pocket, coin purse] and his now familiar coinage zaum'. There are the standard onomatopoetic evocation of gunfire tatata and several monosyllables that could be taken as fragments of Russian words: miz [-gat'==weepj -er=poor, weak], zip [-un=homespun coat],liz [-at'=lick], shka [-/=cupboard, wardrobe], and muf[-ta =muff/ -ti==Islamic leader]. Oniy is possibly the ending for a number of nouns and adjectives (e.g., ammoniy ==ammonium, voroniy = crow's), but because it is capitalized, thus emphasizing that it is a beginning rather than an ending, it also suggests the demonstrative pronoun/ adjective onyy [that one]. The remaining words, zma, mze, and zakma, sound foreign and may be intended to be Georgian (e.g., mze Georg. =sun), though they might be seen as sound variations of the word zaum'. The

223

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Fig. 7: A. Kruchonykh, "Oniy," from 1918 (Tiflis, 1918), with illustration and calligraphy by Kirill Zdanevich

" ....

Zaum in Tijlis, 1917-1921 225

totality of the poem does not suggest any clear theme or subject, though most of the fragmentary images seem to be negative. The accompanying illustration seems also on the brink of interpretability without achieving definiteness.

The second poem [Figure 8], on the other hand, seems almost entirely opaque, except for its title, "Of Armenians." The incidence of the vowel y is exceptionally high (7 of 19 vowels, though statistically it is the least frequent Russian vowel), and it predominates toward the end of the poem. Nevertheless Kruchonykh considers it a vowel particularly characteristic of Russian. The poem as a whole is structured on paired sound repetitions with variations, hence nulty-pul- pul, arlvou-zhamavor, chila- chiga, nyl- tyk- nyk, drenzyk- zymn- zy. and

. these interlock: nulty- nyl- nyk- drenzyk. Thus we have virtually a pure sound poem. When pressed, an Armenian might be able in zhamavor and chiga to identify possibly Armenian words (zham =hour, avor=good (child), chiga=there isn't anything), but there is no supporting grammar. Kruchonykh at best picked up a few Armenian sound patterns he heard on the street without knowing any Armenian.1 The accompanying illustration appears to be a cubist two-storey house with a peaked roof.

By contrast with the first two poems, the third [Figure 9] is in suprasyntactic zaum and in translation reads:

A [building] crane [or faucet] of gray velvet in my heart was placed And they squeeze tenderness out as from an intestine into a scroll of banknotes rustling like a woman

A-choo! Hey, better again to be a HERD whistled-at (like a buffalo looking at my automobile) or a lout again tossed out to fall

behind the carriage So I should be quiet. ...

not squeeze out any honey ....

I'd rather me- Ian- cho-lically

pick the nose of

I don't want to! ...

a cow with a spoon A- a -choo! -

The rhythm is irregular, but there are rhymes (kreditolylsvitok, khochuj nosu) and 11ear-rhymes (svitok/kalitku, myodu/budu, lozhkoy/ melankholichno) which are visually highlighted. Despite the surrealis-

Fig. 8: A. Kruchonykh, "Armyan," from 1918 (Tiflis, 1917), with illustration and calligraphy by Kirill Zdanevich

!

Fig. 9: A. Kruchonykh, "Kran iz sizago barkhata," from 1918 (Tiflis, 1917), with illustration and calligraphy by Kirill Zdanevich


tic, outrageously anti-esthetic imagery, the poem would seem to be about love with a strongly, sexual suggestiveness. Perhaps it expresses the anger and frustration of a spumed lover. In the illustration one can make out the head of an animal that looks more like a horse than the cow mentioned in the poem. Nevertheless, it re~ins unclear whether Kirill Zdanevich's drawings are actually intended as illustrations for the neighboring poems.

The relative heterogeneity of the preceding works is replaced in the next work of 1917, Uchites' khudogi [Learn Arters!], by a homogen~ ity similar to that in some of Kruchonykh's earlier works. Both texts and illustrations are done in handwritten lithography in crayon or pen, and the boundaries between text and illustrations are blurred by the introduction of pictorial elements into some of Kruchonykh' s texts and verbiage or graphemes into some of Kirill Zdanevich' s illustrations. In several of the latter, it is difficult to decide what is an abstract shape and what is a letter (e.g., 1973:213,215, 217; :213 is discussed in Janecek 1984a:105-06).

The title's khudogi, a derogatory variant of the word khudozhnik [artist1 highlights an association with another word, khudoy [thin, weak, poor], and first appears in Khlebnikov's Prologue to Victory Over the Sun (:2): "Smotrany napisannye khudogom, sozdadut pereodeyu prirody'' [Seens written by an arter will create a redressing of nature].

Kruchonykh' s first poem in the collection, "The Whistle of a Locomotive Going Uphill" [Figure 10], is surprisingly onomatopoetic. Given the clue of the title, the first words, boro/choro, can be interpreted as chugging sounds instead of true zaum. The next two, "two/ one," might be the countdown to the whistle [svistok] emitted graphically at an angle to the right amid lines pictorially suggesting the sound. The next few words evoke sounds and effort [gam=racket, sham [-kat1=mumbling, ga=ha!, gish!=sound of steam being released?]. The last line echoes the first two and might suggest a return to normal progress after reaching a summit. The three words below svistok, because they are parallel to it, suggest that they are perhaps the actual sounds of the whistle or echoes of them, though this may be stretching a point. To the extent that one is convinced of the onomatopoetic intent of the poem, then it cannot be considered zaum; but in some instances (e.g., sorko, syayn') a reasonable doubt remains.

Kruchonykh's next poem [Figure 11] represents a new stage both in the development of his visual devices and in zaum. Since I have already discussed the visual aspects elsewhere (1984a:104-05), here I will concentrate on its verbal features. These are very sparse, consisting of seven, or perhaps eight, cyrillic letters, three of which appear to form a syllable in a column at the left. The shape inside the lines at the upper right may or may not be the eighth letter, an Z. The K inside the

• f ",;

)

ryA llitPOBOleL t1 d, noli' E 11

SOPO ~OPO

A6£L OIJ.MH rdM W4M

rtL r111 w ~

GoPo coP~O

Fig. 10: A. Kruchonykh, "The Whistle of a Locomotive Going Uphill," from Learn Arters! (Tiflis, 1917).

.,,

w '

Fig. 11: A. Kruchonykh, poem fromLearnArters! (Tiflis, 1917).

);

Zaum in Tiflis, 1917-1921 231

triangle suggests an association with the Russian word klin (wedge), upon which Kamensky based a poem in 1918 (discussed in Janecek 1984a:142). The i-yu may evoke the falling shift in the oral cavity connected with the successive articulation of those two sounds, and the shape in which they are contained seems to go along with that sensation. The letter C in a circle suggests copyright sign to a modem reader, . but this would be an anachronism, since the symbol would have been unfamiliar to Kruchonykh at the time. The series of letters in a column at the left may also be taken merely as a list of letters, but one is inclined to see them as a syllable bash, which could in tum be taken as a word fragment like many other zaum monosyllables, beginning with "Dyr bul shchyl." This syllable begins a few common Russian words, such as bashka [head (colloq.)], bashmak [peasant shoe], bashnya [tower]. Of these, bashka (pl. bashki) seems most likely because of the k and i in the vicinity (moreover, Dal gives bash as a variant of bashka). This might go along with the interpretation of the i-yu shape as a throat. The first two of these three choices and a few other less common words beginning in bash- are, by the way, of Tatar origin, thus giving the poem a somewhat exotic flavor, possibly derived from exposure to life in the cosmopolitan Caucasus. The Suprematist figure in the center and the other shapes are quite abstract and do not offer any further clues. If in the instance of the previous poem we might feel uncertain whether it qualifies as zaum, in the present case there is little room for doubt. This approach-using letters as graphic shapes in an abstract visual composition-will soon become the basis for a whole series of hectographic works.

Kruchonykh' s next poem, "Immortality," seems designed to evoke the Georgian language:

Bezsmert'e Mtsekh Khitsi Mukh Tsl Lam Ma Tske

Such initial consonant clusters as Mts [Mtskheta] and Tsk are Georgian, though there are Russian words here as well (Mukh=of flies, Ma =rna). Tske could also be linked to tska [Russ.=back of an icon]. "Tsa" is a real Georgian word [sky, heaven].3 The same is true in the following poem:


Shokretyts Mekhytso

Lamoshka Shksad

Tsa Tyal

However, by sharp contrast with the foregoing poems, the next poem," A Belch," is in normal if anti-esthetic Russian (see discussion Janecek 1984a:105-07). In diametrical opposition to this poem, the next one [Figure 12] is a list of two-letter words ending in either o or a, all but the second of which are monosyllables. Here the element of abstract sound patterning for its own sake is uppermost:' The words are grouped in threes, the last member of which is either ro or ra, and when in the third group the vowel switches to a, the group is set off by a three-sided enclosure. The consonants in the first two members of the second and third groups are reversed. Thus, within a well-ordered structure we have a certain amount of asymmetry.

The next poem is also very sound-oriented:

upacha Chume muzha Lazhila zhila na Zhilu uzhilok Gumb

Razhe

But this time it comes across as a Russian tongue-twister focused on zh. As with many tongue-twisters, while recognizable words are used, they are chosen for their sound content, and the resulting sentence or thought is often absurd or obscure (i.e., suprasyntactic zaum). The sense of the poem is something like: "pleasing the Plague I of her husband Lazhila I lived·on the Zhil I crops of banter I Great." But the sound is marvelously rich and sibillant. The style is definitely the folk language of Central Russia, and this may be an actual folk tongue-twister.

The final poem presents us with yet another variation of zaum, again of a somewhat suprasyntactic variety:

Iskarioty Vy nikudy

Ya sam sebya predal ot bol' shogo smekha

boltayu nogami puskay iz ukha techot dryan' ·

sud'i- koryto noch' i den'

Fig. 12: A. Kruchonykh, poem from Learn Arter sf (Tiflis, 1917).


grom i svist dlyamenya

odno ..... polotentse pokazyvaet kulak

Iscariots you [are going] nowhere

I have betrayed myself from big laughter

I swing my legs let junk flow from the ear

judges are a trough night and day thunder and whistling

forme it's-all the same

a towel shows a fist.

This is obviously a protest against some authority (the legal system? the bosses on the railroad? the military?), but some of the leaps of thought are perplexing. Why should the person~ have tx:tr~yed himself "from big laughter"? Possibly because of h1s appreciation of the great absurdity of it all (the war?). Why would "junk flow from the ear" rather than, say, the mouth (i.e., as propaganda or lies)? Judges as a trough suggests the corruption of the legal system. But the final image of a towel showing a fist? Perhaps a towel is an image equivalent to a doormat, and the passive, abused people are now ready to revolt.

Despite its homogeneous visual appearance, Learn Arters! turns out to be quite a varied and rich catalogue of approaches to zaum and near:.zaum and can fairly be numbered among Kruchonykh's masterpieces. Suk~oparov rightly considers it a landmark in Kruchonykh's career, "a kind of anthology of his previous experiments and the beginning of a new period in his creative work" (1992:87-88). It caps a series of works that demonstrates the range of zaum and its progress from the baroque profusion and complexity of works from 1913 to a state of clean classical mastery.

The next series of works is set off in Kruchonykh' s autobibliography (1973:497-99) as a special group, described as" Autographical Books (Hectograph)," which extends from 1917 well into 1919. It consists of 36 items, a number of which have not come to light so far. Those that have make it clear that this series of works constitutes an interesting episode not only in Kruchonykh's creative history, but also in avantgarde book production. The specific works upon which any generalizations have been based will be mentioned or discussed below, but

'.

.

t ~ , t


such generalizations must inevitably be provisional and subject to amendment when and if additional works in the series rise to the surface. Nevert~eless, because Kruchonykh has set them off as a group, we can feel fairly confident that they are to some degree similar.

Kruchonykh' s designation for the series," auto graphical," is a good working characterization, since indeed most of the books are handwritten in their entirety, while some include pages produced by rubber stamp or typewriter. "Hectograph" is less adequate, since not many pages are duplicated by this method akin to the more recent ditto machine; often simple carbon paper was used, in addition to the other methods just mentioned. In any case, the books are generally handmade, without the use of typesetting equipment or lithography. The physical features and method of production of this series are perhaps its most striking and unique aspect, but since these have been described elsewhere aanecek 1984a:107-11), let us proceed to the verbal contents of those known to us.

The first item in the group,Golubye yaytsa [Sky-Blue Eggs] (1917b) is homogeneous in both its means of production (black or blue carbon copy) and its contents, nine pages of text in recto consisting of seven poems, at least two of which are probably parts of a single poem, plus a list of Khlebnikov' s neologisms with their interpretations, and finally a list of recent publications by Kruchonykh et al. The poems are in Kruchonykh's anti-esthetic, absurdist style and are fairly conservative and accessible to comprehension. Thus:

The End of Victory

Sticks were poking out Iron was wetting

over the dug-up field eyes rolled

we all were lying down and nearby of soot and my wife has

stiff hair out of the quiet

crawl reptiles

The next page and possibly the two following appear to be continuations of this poem. (Is there an element of zaum in a situation in which one is uncertain where one poem begins and another ends?)

Perhaps the most intriguing item in the book is one that at first appears to be a zaum sound poem [Figure 13] because of its columnar arrangement, sound repetitions, and sprung rhythm. But on further examination it suggests amorous liaisons with a touch of humor

--1

,,

j\\A~b/{4_, 'l1A-'UtLC0 0·1At ()J

Ov1t VT~C\../ ~u-o M-111

Fig. 13: A. Kruchonykh, poem from Sky-Blue Eggs (1917).

(


("Minnie I Innie I Points I Olgie I all night I !expatiate I Quietly"). Another item from the 1917c, Tunshap, is more avant-garde, con

sisting of eight pages almost exclusively of words in phonetic zaum, the title included. The only non-phonetic zaum is in the opening lines to the first poem: kak bezkonechnolunylaya vercha/kolesa v balomol' e ("as endlessly I she is li~p turning I wheels in a molemill [?]"). A majority of the others are monosyllables in columns, such as mo I ro I cho I mo I kholroldolsholboandshamachalmaklshaklgaklshaklmaldel'.What appears to be the title poem is more complex: tunshap I mkher I ameslev I skap I fev I lunsukl sale lkchy. This has an echo on a later page: gunshap I khar I amechlev I chkap I fev I lunchuk I chu I nu. Abstract sound composition would seem to be the main feature here, rather than root-play or other forms of semantic suggestiveness. However, Kruchonykh's correspondence with Shemshurin reveals an actual morphological basis for some of the zaum: "I'm sending two copies. Tunshap tundra shaman sharapnel' [sic]" [July 17, 1917). In other words, "tunshap" is a compound of syllables from three standard words. In other letters he says, "Kho bo ro is the gloom of the tundra isn't it?" [July 11, 1917}. Such economy of expression he considered to be" the highest, ultimate poetry"[April2, 1919]. He had in mind also the expressive capacity of sounds: "What does the letter u mean? I think (a secret) it is flight, depths. The remaining vowels are calmer, u is the motion of agitation." And he requests a copy of Konovalov' s book to refer to [March 12, 1916] (Ziegler 1982:237). Nevertheless, while individual syllables "' might fall within the range of morphemes and sound combinations possible in Russian, the overall impression is of non-Russian speech, and therefore one is not much tempted to interpret its sonic expres-siveness. \

The copy of Tunshap in the Russian State Library is handwritten in pencil on graph paper. flowever, the one at Pushkinsky Dom is of ·mixed hecto and blue and purple carbon copies, all of which are compositions of letters and lines (not true of the Russian State Library copy at all). A copy of lz vsekh knig [From all booksJ (191&) in the same series is to be found in the Manuscript Division of the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library, St. Petersburg (fond 1000 op. 2 ed. 682), and it contains the Tunshap poem, the "Min'ka" poem, and another one from Tunshap (chen I men I ben I rap I map I pap), but these are composed with lines and words at angles and are done by hectograph. Such evidence supports my earlier suspicion (Tanecek 1984a:109-10) that the contents and design of these booklets and the poems in them differ among copies bearing the same title, thus creating a new level of zaum activity on the book level in which a sdvig of pages produces indefiniteness or indeterminacy in the contents of the given work. Thus, individual poems tum up at random in various books with various means of production and layout. This being the case, my bibliography indicates the location


of the copy of a given work used in my analysis, since other copies may differ.

The archival copy of Iz vsekh knig is accompanied by a scrawled note by Kruchonykh dated 24 Feb. 1947 in which one can make out that the item was produced in 1917 while he was working on the railroad, that the pages were in the majority hectographed and "written by me-for sure!" and "printed in approximately 20-50 copies, mainly my zaum things" (:2). If this note is correct, then this item belongs in the 1917 group rather than he 1918 group where it is listed; however, such precision is clearly unimportant, since all these works appear to be similar and virtually interchangeable chronologically. We might add that Kruchonykh's constant moves during this period must have contributed to the haphazard production of these works.

Of the works listed under 1918, I am in a position to discuss five: Fo-ly-fa, Tsots, Iz vsekh knig, F-nagt, and Kachildaz. Since F-nagt has already been reproduced in full and discussed elsewhere aanecek 1984a:108-10; Marzaduri 1984:86), here I will comment more on the others.

The contents of Fo-ly- fa are more varied than the other works in the group. The first poem reads approximately: recheloml chyay'gzhl d'yyan 1 chr I lrsl I ch9444. I say "approximately" because some of the graphemes cannot be established with absolutely certainty, particularly in the last word. The first word- which may be a title, since it is underlined- translates as" speech fragment/ fragmentation" and gives a clue that what follows is disrupted speech. The remainder is indeed very garbled, since it contains nonrecognizable morphemes, and the letter combinations often violate norms for letter combinations in Russian. The poem ends on a series of graphemes that may be either the cyrillic letters ch or n or the number 4, followed by a few squiggles that may or may not be graphemic in nature (not given above). This poem depicts rapid disintegration into incoherence.

The next two poems are rubber-stamped and are familiar: kho I bo 1 ro I I mo I cho I ro and chitat' v zdravom I ume jvozbranyaetsya (to read with a healthy mind is prohibited). The following four poems are manuscripted compositions of lines and letters or zaum words (e.g., b lyl r lynl dly I r). These are interesting visually, but alas a reproduction is not available. The next poem is, by contrast, in recognizable Russian, though its meaning is perhaps inc!eterminate (a winter sketch?):

bledny vse zemli

i krasny nosy

pale are all the lands

and red the noses

r t I

I I

odin ya surovy

ichemy kak

plastyr'


i alone am severe

and black like

a plaster

Then comes another rubber-stamped poem:

nyod pe tsy

yuklya syu

And finally a return to the theme of the opening:

veshchelom umolom

rech elom

Bukvolo

m

thing fragment mindfragment

speechfragment

Let-terfragmen

t

Kruchonykh spells out in neologisms four levels of fragmentation characteristic of zaum and graphically illustrates this here and in other "' works. Ry Nikonova (1983:237) suggests a relevant notion that zaum can be seem as fragments or pieces of a large unknown whole, rather like, we might add, P. D. Uspensky's notion of the fourth dimension intersecting our three-dimensional world and giving the impression, as in his example of a cross-section of a treetop (1970:30), of disparate, unconnected items that are in reality closely linked in the higher dimension. Alternately, this manifestation can be taken to express the total disintegration of the known world.

Tsots (1918b) is similar, but it goes one step further by having several pages that consist exclusively of lines or lines and a letter or two. These pages are randomly positioned throughout the work so as not to form a logical step-by-step progression from pure text to pure abstraction, as would later be the case with Chicherin (see Janecek 1989). Kruchonykh avoids such obvious systematization. But for the sake of analysis, let us present a sequence of examples not in the order in which they appear in given works but in a logical progression.

Figure 14, from Iz vsekh knig (also Zaum'1921b) is well filled with words combined with dynamic diagonal lines. The first word, and a rare instance when Kruchonykh provides a stress mark (which limits the interpretive possibilities), is the Russian word for "soybean" in the accusative case. The others hover between phonetic and morphologi-

8

Fig. 14: A. Kruchonykh, poem fromZaum' (1921).

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il.


cal zaum in that, with the exception of lav (lavka=shop, bench, lava= lava), they seem to be on the point of becoming Russian morphemes or words (e.g., dlyldyk is very close to dylda=tall person (derog., colloq.)). In any case, here the verbal elements are the focus of attention.

Figure 15, from the lz vsekh knig portion of Zaum', is simpler, consisting of three straight lines and six monosyllables (me-zi-na-la-shi-sak). These are all quite Russian, and it would be easy to identify many real words that they could be part of. Here in particular we have a case of an Uspenskian treetop, but where the number of possible wholes would be virtually endless. One is also inclined to explore the possibility that, if shuffled properly, these syllables could be assembled into something definite, but nothing in that direction seems to succeed.

In Figure 16, one version of which is in Tsots (this one is fromZaum), the visual links between the letters and the lines are more developed, the curved lines an·d positioning of the letters being echoed by the other curved lines. Even the verbal articulations (ogal-mly-kly-obun) co:ntribute to the sensation of rounded liquidity, creating a harmonious sightsound composition in phonetic zaum.

Figure 17, also from Zaum' with an equivalent version in Tsots, represents another small step in the direction of leveling the distinction between letter and line. The text is simpler (byz-byr-bun-gun) and the lines more elaborate, with the curves of the letters clearly made to echo the other curves and the curve over the cyrillic letter g leading directly to the letter as if the letter had emerged from a series of curves. .., The syllables suggest the plosiveness and spraying conveyed by the whole composition. In Figure 18, from F-nagt, we· have a similar example, but one in which angularity is the key. The three monosyllables (pe-ri-zat) are on the point of becoming a Russian word. Pere (phonetically: piri ) and za could be taken as two prefixes to some verb root beginning in it, so we might have a half-word here cut off at the first letter of the root.

In Figure 19, from Iz vsekh knig and Zaum', the verbal elements are down to four letters, the first three of which form a word [mom!] and at the same time contribute to the graphic composition. Figures 20 and 21, both fromKachildaz, are down to three and two letters, respectively, w}\ich, in the first instance, form a zaum syllable, and in the second do not even do .that, since there is no vowel. And finally in Figure 22, from F-nagt and Zaum', there are lines and no letters. Such purely abstract, letterless pages appear sporadically in a number of these works. It is important to remember that this set of examples has been artificially assembled here, and that Krucho:nykh does not present us with a sequence of progressively disappearing verbal elements, but with a full range of possibilities in an unpredictable order. In other words, Kruchonykh seems not to be predicting or advocating the death of language, but rather he is demonstrating various relationships among language, its graphemes, and visual art.

. -:.\ \v*' ;. \ ,.., .. .,·

., I -~ ....... -................... .

..

.....

Fig. 15: A. Kruchonykh, poem from Zaum' (1921).

r f

I

\ ·' .. .... . \

~, .. ·• " . . I

Fig. 16: A. Kruchonykh, poem fromZaum' (1921).

I

./

- v _) . ~~ . b~ /t~

\....., 6 I ~._p

I'

(' '"

Fig. 17: A. Kruchonykh, poem fromZaum' (1921). Fig. 18: A. Kruchonykh, poem from F-nagt (1918).

Fig. 19: A. Kruchonykh, poem from Zaum' {1921).

.. /

/ ./

J

I '!

Fig. 20: A. Kruchonykh, poem from Kachildaz (1918).

I , .•-"

Fig. 21: A. Kruchonykh, poem from Kachildaz (1918). Fig. 22: A. Kruchonykh, poem from F~nagt (1918).


At this point, one might raise the not-too-facetious question of the existence of a category of subphonetic zaum on the lowest end of the zaum spectrum, that is, a level of zaum in which letters or graphemes no longer even stand for sounds, but are virtually silent forms, such as in Figure 21. But here we have reached the limits of zaum as language, because the tongue (Russ. yazyk, Fr.langue) is no longer invol~ed, the~ fore the minimal requirements for language are absent, even m potentia, and we pass over into the visual arts, which hav~ a "langua~e" ~f expression tangential to and overlapping to a cer~m e~tent wxth literature but which abides in silence, not in oral articulatiOn.

Kruchonykh' s goal at this stage in his career is perhaps best indicated by this passage from a letter to Shemshurin of July 12, 1917:

- A riddle ... The reader is curious first of all and convinced that zaum means something, i.e. has some logical meaning. Hence one can sort of catch the reader by a worm-riddle, by mystery. Women and art have to have mystery; to say "I love" is to make a very definite commitment, and person never wants to do that. He is covert, he is greedy, he is a mystifer. And he seeks, instead of I-e [I love], something equal and perhaps special-and this will be: lefanta chiol or raz faz gaz ... kho- bo-ro mocho-ro and darkness and zero and new art! Does an artist intentionally hide in the treehole of zaum?- I don't know ... (Ziegler 1978:306)

Having reached a minimalist limit, Kruchonykh could go no further as a poet. But while the autographic series continues well into 1919, with 15 more booklets, it is intersected by an opposing trend. Under the influence of Ilya Zdanevich, the print medium returns with great richness and enthusiasm, ushering in a new expansive trend toward larger, more complex works and a return from the limits of zaum to something eventually closer to the mainstream.

In November 1917 in the center of Tiflis, the avant-garde cabaret which came to be called The Fantastic Little Inn [Fantastichesky kabachok] began operation. At the same time, Kruchonykh formed an association with Ilya Zdanevich and Igor Terentev called "41"." In a manifesto in the only issue of its newspaper 41• [July 1919] the group declared:

Company 41• unifies left-wing Futurism, and affirms transreason as the mandatory form for the embodiment of art.

The task of 41" is to make use of all the great discoveries of its collaborators, and to place the world on a new axis.

(Lawton/Eagle:177)

T I l


And in the same place, Zdanevich declared:

Metalogical Futurism [zaumny futurizm] sets itself the task of realizing in words the facets of experience which could not in any way be realized by our predecessors, so long as poetry was dealing with words that tried to make sense. For this purpose, Futurism creates metalogical words. (Nikolskaya 1980:305)

This close association with Zdanevich, who was particularly interested in the typographical innovations of the Italian Futurists, resulted in the rise of a new element in the look of Kruchony kh' s work, which had hitherto been published either in some handwritten form or in crude typescript without much adventurousness. The manuscript format would continue until1930, but now alongside it appeared elaborately laid out typographic works (typeset mostly by Zdanevich himself, it seems). At the same time, while Zdanevich's works in zaum of these years became gradually more extreme, culminating in LeDantiu as a Beacon (1923), Kruchonykh's were tapering off in their inventiveness, perhaps because he had already reached the practical limits of zaum. Kruchonykh, Zdanevich, and Terentev used The Fantastic Little Inn as a base for their so-called Futuruniversity [Futurvseuchbishche] and, beginning in February 1918 initiated a series of lectures on various avantgarde themes, including zaum, Futurism, Futurist theater, and avantgarde poetry (see Nikolskaya 1980 for details). By their titles, one can ~surmise that a number of later published works had their foundations in these presentations. 1918 was evidently a particularly stimulating year for Kruchonykh, to judge by the close of his article commemorating the first anniversary of cabaret:

For me (and r think also for the other participants in the "Little Inn") the past year was unforgettable. r have never worked so completely and productively, mainly on themes percolating in "The Fantastic Little Inn." Much was written during that year, more than in the five previous years combined. And that's not the end of it! (1919a:21)

We have already discussed Kruchonykh's autographic series through 1918 to the extent that the works were available. The series so designated in his bibliography continued well into 1919 with another 15 works, but only one of these, Zugdidi (1919b), was available in its entirety for study.5 One notes a shift in emphasis away from radical zaum to more usual Russian and to a theoretical, logical analysis of zaum. The first page states:

At Zugdidi every day is a discovery. Thoughts subjugate me. That hasn't occurred for a long time. The same thing with dreams . .


Kruchonykh wonders whether this is because of his semi-mechanical work as a draftsman during the day or because of the countryside or the Georgian town of Zugdidi itself.

The second page contains two theoretical statements:

In phonology the fundamental antinomy of the word: does each individual letter have a meaning or not? Sound imitation relates to zaum as allegory to the symbol and as everyday life [byt] to eternity.

What follows is a series of pages with coinages interpreted to remove any doubt as to their intended meaning, e.g.," mirianstvuyu= upivayus' mirom" [=I revel in peace] (:6). Or a more anomalous interpretation:

Or:

Curiosities of doubling texture: fi! = dissatisfaction fi-fi = cheerfulness bo, vo = big; bo-bo, vo-vo = small ko (ko-ko), .cho (cho-cho-cho) (:8)

phonology mainly about sound imitation (of nature and the soul) The soul is a head cold, (you spit it out-and it's gone) (:9)

Some of this is certainly of doubtful validity and may, as in the last quote, be intended as epatage.

The remaining publications listed under 1919 are designated as separate from the autographic series, but several of them are nevertheless autographic in content, though they have typeset covers (which is perhaps Kruchonykh's reason for distinguishing them from the autographic series where even the covers are handwritten). Others are entirely typeset, sometimes quite elaborately. Two of these, Malokholiya v kapote [Malocholy in a Housecoat] (1918f, 1973:257-77), and Ozhirenie roz [The Fattening of Roses] (1918g), would seem in fact to have come out in 1918 (Zdanevich (ed.) 1919:184).

Malocholy in a Housecoat has a subtitle given on a second printed page: "History AS Anal Eroticism" [Istoriya KAK anal'naya erotika]. This is a play on the work "kak" [as] and "kaka," the Russian (and international) children's word for feces. (One might consider why this word became so international, if not because its articulatory features were suitably expressive.) In this work Kruchonykh uncovers the presence of "kaka" in all sorts of places, some expected, such as the name of the hero of Gogo I' s "The Overcoat," Akaky Akakievich, and in Zdanevich' s plays, while others are unexpected, such as the initials K. K. (pronounced Ka-Ka, for Konstantin Konstantinovich) of the Petersburg critic

T I I I I


Arsenev, the poet Sluchevsky, and the Grand Prince Romanov. Borrowing an idea, it seems, from Shemshurin (see above, Ch. 6), Kruchonykh proceeds to identify the "unconscious 'kak' (a sdvig woven into language)" (1973:260) in various lines of poetry, sometimes just noting their presence, sometimes giving them further interpretation. An example are the lines by Nina Vasileva: "With dark silk is held my waist/ slender as a wasp's," where the last three words kak u os are interpreted: "In reading aloud one gets: kakuoc=sweet sauce [sous] kak" (:260). Citations include lines from Tyutchev, Pushkin, Khlebnikov, Kuprin, Rukavishnikov, D. Burliuk, Vertinsky, etc., and go on to include other anal and/ or erotic roots and further examples of sectarian glossolalia, folklore, and zaum.

One poem is an interpretation or elaboration of "Dyr bul shchyl":

DYR-BUL-SHCHYL /BULYZH DYRU/

UBIL SHCHELI

SHISH PRYG

SHISKOV (:269)

The second line, though syntactically distorted, would seem to be deciphering the first two words of the famous first line, bul as a syllable • from bulyzh[nik] [=cobblestone] and dyr as indeed a form (ace. sg.) of dyra [=hole]. The word in the third line is the normal Russian word "he killed," which emerges parono-mastically from dyr + bul. If we take bulyzh as a non-existent shortened form of the masculine noun bulyzhnik, then lines 2-3 could form a sentence that reads: "The cobblestone killed the hole," a possible, though distant metaphor. Shcheli would seem to confirm our earlier supposition that shchyl is a distorted form of shchel' [crevice, crack]. Given the fact that the second line is bracketted off from the third, shcheli might well be taken as the object of "killed," yielding the sentenced "He killed the cracks." The only evidently erotic aspect of the poem is Shish, the mildly obscene word/ gesture that concludes Explodity, which is now associated with the surname Shishkov, presumably a reference to Admiral A. Shishkov (1754-1841), noted for his futile attempts to maintain the purity of Russian by substituting clumsy Slavicisms for the numerous European words that had crept into Russian at the time. Another, but less plausible reference would be to the Siberian writer V. Ya. Shishkov (1873-1945), whose early stories appeared in 1912-16. Pryg [jump, hop] continues the staccato rhythm and some of the previous sounds, but forms no obvious logical connection with the rest of the poem. Thus, this version, which had begun by seeming to be answering questions. Another, later variation of "Dyr bul shchyl" previously mentioned (Ch. 1, note 5) reads:


e DYR(a)-BUL(ava)-SHCHYL(') DYR-DYAR-YAR

ZHLYCH! (1920b:n.p.)

It reiterates the interpretation of "dyr" and "shchyl," but gives a different one for "bul" [bulava=mace], and has an entirely different continuation in phonetic zaum.

Another particularly eloquent poem in Malocholy (also by Kruchonykh himself, it seems) includes the line "F-of forms of phallus" (:274), thus spelling out the sexual symbolism of the cyrillic letter F(I), the suggestive significance of which has long been noted. By bringing to the surface in this way the hidden meaning of certain apparently zaum poems or passages, Kruchonykh is thereby destroying their indeterminacy and removing them from the realm of zaum. What he is doing instead is substituting the notion that certain combinations of sounds, even when embedded in ordinary language, have a subconscious suggestiveness. As Freud had already been discovering, since sexuality is often deeply repressed, it therefore acts as a powerful subconscious force. In this work, then, we can see Kruchonykh's move toward a deeper understanding of the theoretical foundations of zaum (for further discussion of Malocholy see Comins-Richmond 1994 and 1995).

The influence of Freud on Kruchonykh's thinking becomes overt at this time. The Tiflis mathematician and poet G. A. Kharazov was an active proponent of Freudian psychology. Although Kharazov was apparently able to read Freud in the original German Qudging by one such reference by him (1919:12)), the main Freud texts were already available in Russian translation: The Interpretation of Dreams [1900] in 1904, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life [1901, 1904,1907] in 1910 and a second edition in 1916.6 Among the recorded contributions of Dr. Kharazov to the discussion of Freud and zaum were a lecture, "Freud's Theories and Zaum poetry," at the Fantastic Little Inn, April 5, 1918, and his participation in a debate "On Theater and Zaum poetry" at the Conservatory, May 27, 1918, in which Kruchonykh also took part (Gordeev 1918:136). His only publication on Freudianism in literature is an article on Pushkin's Eugene Onegin,"Tatyana's Dream (A Freudian Interpretation)" (1919), which unfortunately does not discuss language per se (see also Marzaduri 1982:117).7 In any case, evidently Kruchonykh had read the two books by Freud as early as 1915, judging by a letter of Aug. 8 of that year to Shemshurin: "By the way: on sdvigi, incomplete statements, writing mistakes, etc. S. Freud The Pathology [sic] ofEveryd. Life and Interp. ofDrearns" (Ziegler 1982:240).

In The Interpretation of Dreams, the ideas relevant to zaum are the nonsensical content of dreams (1965a:89ff), connections in dreams that

T I

I II

l


are sometimes made by the sounds of words (:91-92, 239, 570),8 and neologisms that are sometimes produced in dreams (:530ff). Of par~icular interest is Freud's contention that nothing in psychological life Is ever purposeless: "It can be shown that all that we can ever get rid of are purposive ideas that are known to us; as soon as we have done this, unknown-or, as we inaccurately say, 'unconscious' -purposive ideas take charge and thereafter determine the course of the involuntary ideas" (:567). This might argue that even zaum is not indeterminate, but determined on a subconscious level. Also intriguing is Freud's discussion of the absence in dreams of representations for conjunctions (if, ~ause, either-or, etc.), whose sole content is to convey a logical relation of other elements (:347 ff). Freud compares this to the situation in the visual arts which "labor, indeed, under a similar limitation as compared with poetry, which can make use of speech" (:347). However, the same limitation would be present in phonetic zaum., since such words would have to be present in their dictionary form in order to be recognized and serve their function; otherwise they become ambiguous, lose their logical function, and become a part of the sound patterning equivalent to other words.

. In The Psy~hopathologyoJEveryday Life, Freud underscores psychologtcal determmacy even more strongly. In referring to a Viennese literary article which makes the same point, he states: "It is impossible intentionally and arbitrarily to make up a piece of nonsense" ~196:5b:240), ~nd .he fol.lows this by examples, finally concluding: "nothmg m the rmnd ts arbitrary or undetermined" (:242). This would validat~ the wildest experiments in zaum as inevitably based on a psychic • reahty of some sort, yet paradoxically it undercuts zaum's achievement of indeterminacy by inescapably binding it to that same psychic reality. While zaum might seem to be the ultimate manifestation of free will, in Freudian terms it would merely demonstrate the ultimate lack of free will. But this assumes that zaum is finally interpretable or resolvable at least in psychoanalytic terms. If so, then it ceases to be zaum.

Freud's contention that creating nonsense is impossible is directly echoed in Kruchonykh's "On Madness in Art," first given as a lecture at the Fantastic Little Inn, Feb. 28, 1918, then published in the Tiflis newspaper Novy Den', May 26,1919:

It is impossible to write nonsense. There is more sense in nonsense than in anything else. If each letter has meaning, then any combination of letters has meaning. If somebody, in an attack of jealousy, spite or love, starts to write words in an arbitrary assortment (as happens when people are aroused) then what he is really doing is to give a flow of words immediately (without his reason controlling them), words which reflect this feeling and which even outgrow it. Therefore, there are no completely irratio-


nal works. And in our day this is being proven by the fact that now, as never before, the work of savages, children, flagellants and the mentally ill is being studied. And now we have the final conclusion-to leave reason aside and to write in a language which has not yet congealed and which has not been labeled with concepts-to write in metalogicallanguage! Let it be absurd, incomprehensible, monstrous. (Nikolskaya

1980:305)

Combined in this one statement are traces of Marinetti' swords-in-freedom (i.e., telegraphic and compressed expression caused by high emotion), the Freudian psychoanalytic technique of free word association as a means of gaining access to the subconscious, and even Bely' s "word magic" vs. the congealed language of concepts, plus the usual connections to primeval, children's, sectarian, and insane languages, all ma.rshalled to demonstrate that there is method in madness, or sense m nonsense. This rationalization of zaum will continue.

Ozhirenie roz [The Fattening of Roses] (1918g) is the joint effort of Kruchonykh and Igor Terentev, who emerged as a leading avant-gardist at this time. In fact, Kruchonykh turns him into the star of this collection by opening his initial essay with the question "what are the best lines about spring?" and then quoting four lines of Terentev. In the course of the essay, Terentev continues to figure prominently. The point of the essay is rather straightforward, namely, that the Futurists have refreshed the decay~ gardens of metaphor by their various techniques, zaum in particular: "The move to zaum language has already been accomplished. Its poetry has already begun to futurize" (:10). Kruchonykh insists that it is time now for Mayakovsky to "futurize" too, and that he is showing signs of being ready to do so with, among other things, his use of "damp" Khlebnikovian coinages based on yu and z and of anal eroticism. Other new arrivals to print are Ilya Zdanevich, Olga Rozanova, and Nikolay Chernyavsky. He quotes from Zdanevich's "Yanko, King of Albania" and gives two of Rozanova's zaum poems from Balos [1917]. Kruchonykh mentions that Dr. Kharazov has adopted one of his coinages susten' for use in his lectures at the Tiflis Women's College to mean studenistaya sushchnost' [=chilly essence]. He concludes:

In this way one notes the emergence of new art from the dead end of pastness not into zero and not into clinical insanity.

Earlier there was: sane and insane; we provide a third alterna live-za urn,creatively transforming and overcoming them.

Zaum, taking all the creative values from insanity [bezumiya] (which is why the words are almost the same), except for its helplessness-its sickness. Zaum has outwitted ... (:14)

T l I l


This formulation is very neat and effective, since it places zaum in the middle ground between pale, uninteresting sanity and true clinical psychosis. It identifies itself with the creative genius that is not far from madness, but is not madness. In a very reasonable way it recognizes the creative ingenuity of a psychopathological state and makes use of its discoveries without sharing the disease itself.

The next section is a dialogue between Kruchonykh and Terentev dated April3, 1918 on the themes of Malocholyin a Housecoat. Terentev explains that "Russian expresses everything unpleasant by the sound 'rya'" and gives a list of examples: dryan' [=trash], Severyanin, etc. The combination ka and rya "produces an impression of ridiculousness [ ... ] because here there is a mechanical joining of the good with the boiled" [sic! otvaritel' nym, an obviously intentional substitution for the expected otvratitel'nym=repulsive] (:16). Oearly this is all for satirical purposes (the Ego-Futurist poet Severyanin is identified as "unpleasant" and ka, with its anal associations, identified as "good"). Kruchonykh chimes in with similar associations for f, to which Terentev adds ts, the latter, despite its harsh fricative qualities being characterized as "for expression of the pleasant" and to be found in words meaning kiss, whole, sun, swell! (:17). Terentev then notes that the sounds of katsap [a Ukrainian nickname for the Russians (Dal11:99a)] are not there by chance, but "synthetically characterize the Russian person in sounds." He must mean by this, perhaps with tongue in cheek, that the Russians are anally erotic in a pleasant way.

The dialogue ends with Kruchonykh's surprising admission that ~

there is a problem with extensive knowledge: if you know many languages you can discover obscene associations in them for any combination of sounds, and zaum also will not be able to avoid such an eventuality. This is an interesting tack to take: while maintaining the indeterminacy of zaum, it argues for its endless capacity for obscenity. On the other hand, in the context of an argument in favor of the direct meaning of sounds, if the claim is made that sounds can have obscene associations in some language somewhere, this defeats the idea that sounds are linked to specific expressive contents. The meaning is thereby shifted away from the sounds themselves to their associations with words (in which their presence may arguably be considered arbitrary). That is, if all sounds can have an obscene meaning, then obviously that meaning is not inherent in the sounds themselves.

Following this dialogue is an interesting selection of Terentev's poems, ranging in technique from phonetic zaum to distant Mayakovskian metaphors. The most extreme of these is a poem titled "Toward the Occupation of Palestine by the English":


K zanyatiyu Palestiny anglichanami.

Soyneka zhyneyra Lipitaroza kuba Veyda leyde Tsyube Tuka stuka vey Oyok kyok Eb' Kheptsup Up Pi (:23;1988:154)9

While there are a few Russian words that emerge (kuba=of a cube/ Cuba; stuka=of a knock) along with other roots and parts of words, t~e impression is mainly of an unknown foreign language perha~s In

tended to be Palestinian. Earlier in this book, Kruchonykh had mtroduced another Terentev poem with the phrase "'Twilight' of human

speech":

Politics! in a map of the world Wrap herrings Vedeyda mel' dira Eyda Cadets to England Socialists to Germany Swallow angels These mel' din of a yoke Veri boy naydiga Ah-these countries From a geographer's wall You ought to hang Not getting wet with blood That you ate at supper Eli gay day day met That needs a bouquet of skippers. (1988:423)

The italicized words have been transcribed from the original rather than translated to reproduce the effect of inserting of foreign phras_es into the poem. Some of the words could have Russian translations (lioy =battle, day =give). The impression is one of protest against imperiali.st powers by victims. The" foreign" words are similar to some of those ~n the Palestinian poem, which may have a comparable message, but m

zaum.


Finally, Fattening ends with a piece titled "From the plong by A. Kruchonykh .... 'Gly-Gly"' (:26-30). The coinage "plong" is used to translate the Russian coinage p'esny, which I interpret as an amalgam of p'esa [play] and pesnya [song]. This appears to be an excerpt from a work like Victory Over the Sun, in which music or singing were to be involved, though there is no sign of this in the excerpt provided. The piece is a scene in which some Futurists and a crowd confront each other at a train station. Malevich and Khlebnikov are specifically identified as speakers. Malevich has the opening line: Gamlet el' tetku tek [=Hamlet el his aunt (or any adult woman) flowed), a piece of syntactic zaum based on sound play. The next lines are by a character designated as Khryashch [gristle, gravel], who is not clearly identified as belonging to the crowd but is not an identifiable Futurist. (The Futurists seem to be identified by their real names in this excerpt, so one must assume that the other characters are individual members of the crowd designated by tag features.) His first lines are a series of morphological zaum words ending in phonetic zaum: "vechnyakhu khlyundu onulil. nulevo/pulevojkulevo . . dyzh". One can make out the root "eternal" in the first word and "he nullified" as the third, followed by "zero" [adj.] and two coinages of the same pattern based on the roots for "bullet" and "bag." The last word does not suggest any interpretation, except perhaps as a contraction of dazhe [=even (adv.)]. The next three lines, evidently also Khryashch's, are given with the parenthetical notation "in the crowd:" "horses are falling from the sky I clods of earth 1 a meteor black as a stone of the kaaba." Malevich replies and other characters from the crowd, Vzvi, a Girl, Fingerless, Thin, Wine, and a Sol- '· dier contribute absurdities ranging from phonetic zaum (Wine: "kovo-bo" etc.) to suprasyntactic zaum (Girl: "I'm afraid-the building might crush my legs"). The only notable action or dramatic event occurs when the Girl says: "Take the bricks apart a fire showed," at which the women and children begin to scream and a panic sets in. At the end of the excerpt, Khlebnikov stands on his head and says: "no, you tell me, what are we to do? even Paris has yet to see such a scandal ... " (curtain). This is all richly absurd and inventive, though it does not demonstrate any new devices or advances over Victory Over the Sun, other than a number of letters printed upside-down. The title evidently comes from the word glyba [=clod], as in" clods of earth." Sigov interprets this piece as an amalgam of three themes, the revolt of things, zero, and" documental poetry," represented respectively by Wine, the Futurists, and the crowd. The conflict centers around the latter two groups. Wine, in Sigov' s conception, suggests the Resurrection through its association with Christ the Savior and also Zeus the god of wine (1988:51).

That this work is indeed only a portion of a longer work is indicated by a separate series of illustrations and collages done by Varvara


Stepanova in which other passages and characters (Rozanova, Matyushin, the composer Roslavets, Lady with a Golden Eye) appear (From Painting to Design 1981:211-13; Lavrentiev 1988:28-29). These illustrations may have been intended for a collaborative edition that never materialized.

Kruchonykh's other publications of 1919 fall into three categories: 1) further autographic works with printed covers similar to Malocholy, 2) complete typeset works, and 3) short articles in Tiflis periodicals and an introduction to collection of poems by A. Chachikov.

In the first group, Zamaul' I (1919c) consists mainly of one-page poems by Kruchonykh in which the sdvig is catachretic in nature; that is, there is a lack of fit, say, between an adjective and the noun it modifies or between a verb and its subject or object.10 The first poem is a good example:

Zhivu na bombe! ne trevozhit

gaechnaya voznya S oskalennym

Klyuchom ...

I live on a bomb! it doesn't disturb me

the [bolt] nut fuss With a grinned

Key ...

Here the "fuss" is due to the nuts, and it has a key that is somehow "grinned," thus animating inanimate objects in ways that are difficult to imagine or place in a context. Catachresis can, in fact, be considered a specific type of suprasyntactic zaum, particularly when it is as radical as this.

Another structural pattern that comes to the fore at this time has been noted by Ziegler: "Many of Kruchonykh's poems of the '41"' period have as their situation of departure a 'discrete,' ordered reality which in the course of the development of the theme is disrupted and ends in disorder, chaos, 'apocalypse"' (1985:81). She gives a good example from the S. G. Melnikova collection, but another, milder example from Zamaul' is:

Zhizn' konchaetsya spetsial'naya

nachinaetsya fotograficheskiy kagal!

v frenche sbitya kon'

SABBADA! ..

Special life is ending

a photographic kahal is beginning!

in a field jacket beaten a horse

SABBADA! ..

Zaum in Tifiis, 1917-1921 261

The meaning becomes progressively obscure, the syntax breaks down in the middle, and the poem ends on a foreign or meaningless exclamation, here sounding like a word from the Witches' Sabbath. Typically, the last word in such poems is written larger than the others and a~kew. This poem, by the way, exemplifies another trend of this penod: Kruchonykh often marks the stresses on coinages (e.g., SABBADA) and even occasionally on Russian words, a move away from earlier ambiguity in this area.

However, Kruchonykh continues to write poems in more radical forms of phonetic and morphological zaum like those in the autographic series. A poem from Zamaul' III (1919e), "The Deaf-Mute," has already received some scholarly attention (Panov 1966:156-57; Balcerzan 1968:68-69; Faryno 1978:65,73; Marzaduri 1980:56-57):

Glukhonemoy. mulomng

ulva glulov

amul yagul valgul za Ia e ...

u-gul volgala'

marcha!

In this case, the text is basically phonetic zaum with some morphological suggestiveness, but Panov, working from a slightly expanded later version (Kruchonykh 1922a), has calculated that 90% of the sounds (including!) are "low" and only 10% "high," as opposed to a normal ratio of 50:50. Thus, "the image of a deaf-mute is given by a huge preponderance of low sounds, by a concentration of articulationally viscous, tense sound combinations" (:157). From this we might conclude that Kruchonykh is moving to a more overtly onomatopoetic orientation than was generally the case before. This trend will continue. In a perhaps comparable way, when the poem "kho bo ro" is accompanied by a drawing of a primitive human figure, one is tempted to interpret the text as the language of a caveman or, as Kruchonykh intimated to Shemshurin, of a denizen of the tundra. . ~svetistye tortsy [Flowery Paving Logs], the last item Kruchonykh

hsts tn 1919 (1919£), but whose cover bears the date 1920, consists of 44 one-page poems, the largest such collection to date. Significantly, of the 44 poems in the collection, only five are in phonetic or morphological zaum, and a few others have a coined word or two. The remainder are in pure standard Russian without even any syntactic zaum, which is not to say that they are necessarily traditional in content. Quite the contrary. The imagery and thought patterns are sometimes very dislocated, as in the following:


eysplez nashponakh

mne podal strelochnuyu budku v tualete, volocha po-polu RASPOY ASAN= NOY BORODOY! ..

eisplez leaded

served me a switchman's booth in a restroom, dragging across the floor AS AN UNBELT-ED BEARD! ..

The first word could be taken as a proper name which seem:' to~ half German (Eis) and half French (plaise), though it may be a dtstortion of "Ei palast" i.e. an iceskating rink.11 "Leaded" here refers to the leads use~ in ty~ese;ting to space lines and words,. or, poss~bly, filling between logs in building construction. What stnkes one m th~se po~ms is the richness of Kruchonykh' s imagination and verbal mvenbon, which compares quite favorably with Khlebnikov and early Mayakovsky. His sdvigi continue to be fresh, exuberant, and pervaded with a sense of humor.

The second group of works are three that are ty~eset th~ou~hout: Lacquered Tights, Milliork, and "Muzka," Krucho~ykh s contnbution to the Melnikova anthology edited by Ilya Zdanevtch (1919:95-120). The title of the third, "Muzka," places a derogatory suffix on the war~ ~use, thus debunking the beloved handmaiden of poets, w~il~ retat~mg a begrudging respect for her. The influence of Z~a~evich ts tmmedtately apparent in the profuse typography charactenstlc of ~e rest. of the a~thology as well (see Janecek 1984a:183-88 for further dtscusston of thts aspect). One also notices that Kruchonykh' s poems are longer and more elaborate than those in Flowery Paving Logs and the other hectogra.phed collections, as if the texts have grown to fill the great space available

. on a page in the print medium. What is most striking her~ is the nea_rly complete absence of zaum. True, there is outrageous tmagery a la Mayakovsky in abundance, for example:

I roasted my brain on an iron rod Adding some red pepper and acid So that it would please you, musey, More than a smeared cake by Igor Severyanin So that tickling with a fingernail you would eat into A moist morsel smelling of terpentine. My heart will be topsy-turvy Like nervous Kubelik's VIOLIN BOW (:104; 1973:470)


But this is no longer the indeterminacy required of zaum. All the more radical sdvigi are accessible to interpretation. Even the two instances of what at first might be taken as phonetic zaum can be interpreted, one as an echo:

i ya pazslablenny neftetochivy

nefte ....... . efte!

rchiv ....... .

and I relaxed petrolstropped

petrol. ..... . troll

brop

(:103; 1973:469)

the other as a pre-echo [Figure 23] (:113; 1973:479; compare 1973:245) in which the initial series of fragments take on the flesh of full words, e.g., Bezma bzama = bezumny [=insane], yaan anu NI = ya annuli- ruyu [=I annul], etc.

Lakirovannoe triko [Lacquered Tights] (1973:225-55), though it contains nine poems from "Muzka," is more varied and interesting i11. its use of sdvigi. Although most of the poems would not qualify as zaum, there is still a full range of genuine zaum to be found here, sometimes in brief moments in otherwise non-zaum poems, more often in whole poems. An excellent example of synthetic zaum, in which a range of ~. sdvig types is contained in a brief text, is:

Aychik Kun'ki li tyuk nityun Sud'bicha smyli sunesli vnu proglochennye busy bezkolesny, lezhu- uzhasny-KAK BELAY A KALOSHA bez moloka (:9)

Ayebit is the sack of marten threddle Fatescourge washed off incarry ins swallowed beads wheelless, I lie-horrible-LIKE A WHITE GALOSH without milk

Here we have words that are fragments (vnu-tr [to the inside], z-aychik [hare]), compounds (sun[-uli/ne-]sli [they inserted/ carried], sud'b[-ajb]icha [fate/scourge], morphological coinages (nityun [thread]); the fourth line (is sud'bicha subject or object of smyli [washed off)?) and possibly the second line are syntactically dislocated; and the last four lines verge on zaum in their absurdity. Individually each of these items might not be very extreme, but the whole is certainly zaum.

Milliork (1919i), with a title that seems to be a compound of "million" and "New York," is even more heterogeneous. The first five pages

t5aaxa

sau aaycnH· TX uy 11HJIHp .r~

fEHEP ..• 6eaJKBHft tHBaHCBCT Jl aHHYJllf-

pyD reaH.llbuea coq~ xpyroaoA nyraKeK! lll:lPjJI) ~COM EPAThHM-BAHI<H-

PAM B BOK! paniyCLI: Taropu-Co(5aaoaw sanprrasw B 6oroyrollRLIS aaBe,lleHbHUa

TU PATATOP.RT crapqectdft naetd jl nepesepqHBall u-ka111, CTOJl6WIRH-TaKCH, 6esnpo•aaao nonal13IO aa 6eslrkcmo Bepc:T

B Jli;JI:b floBBJKU> xypc aa MbiJIOBAPEHHbUI

JIACKH JIO:SHBAD MIPOBOli DPOCTPiaJI B BH OlDIH 1101 TOproBLII ltOJI He nporopbl

Fig. 23: A. Kruchonykh. "Muzka," from S. G. Mel' nikovoy (Tillis, 1919).


consist of the title work, which is an interesting polyphonic collage of verse and prose with marginal notes, that ends with the designation "Poems by A. Kruchonykh, notes by Terentev ." Then there are two of Kruchonykh's essays," Apollo in the Crossfire" (Apollon vperepalke (:11-18; also in Terentev 1988:427-31)], and" Azef-Judas-Khlebnikov" (:19-32). The first, subtitled "Painting in poetry," is a discussion of the theme of perpendicularity in Terentev's, Ilya Zdanevich's, and Kruchonykh's own poetry. It includes a list of nine "word shapes" [risunki slov] with fanciful designations, such as "Turned/ removed heads" (e.g., mochedan instead of chemodan [suitcase}), "Two-headed words" (e.g., ya ne yageniy [I'm not an 1-genius]), "Triple in belly" (e.g., brenden'= bred, drebeden', razdroblenny den' [delirium, nonsense, fractured day]), and "With squeezed-out middle" (sno instead of son [sleep, dream] (:17), as in Khlebnikov' s prologue to Victory Over the Sun. Hence, what might appear to be zaum coinages involve distortions that can,. be deciphered by referring to a list of sdvig types. Earlier zaum may have been composed this way, but when the key is provided, the original purpose is defeated. The essay ends with the declaration:

.In zaum words freed from the burden of meaning there is the greatest force and independence of sound, extreme lightness (fyat, fyat; mechtyanny pyun') and extreme heaviness (dyr-bul-shchyl, khryach sarcha Krocho, kho-bo-ro, khruzhb.).

Alternation of ordinary and zaum language is the most unexpected composition and texture (the layering and fracturing of sounds)- orchestral poetry, everything combining

Zamaul! . . . (:18)

The synthetic approach is seen as a way to produce the "unexpected," and this is already in evidence in the works we have been discussing.

The second essay is Kruchonykh' s mild critique of Khlebnikov for being too sweet-tongued, that is, for showing a preference for liquid and labial consonants, the vowel yu, and hence derivations from "love" [lyublyu ], which do indeed figure prominently in Khlebnikov' s poetry, along with a generally affectionate attitude toward the world.

The third group of Kruchonykh' s writings from this period, short articles in various, mostly periodical publications, are similar to the two essays in Milliork and mark a growing inclination in him toward critical theory or what we might characterize as retrospective reflection on what has been accomplished. Of these, the most interesting and relevant to the study of zaum is his introduction to a small collection of eleven poems by the young poet Aleksandr Chachikov (1919; see also Nikolskaya 1988b). The poems themselves with their Severy an in-like decadent titles(" Approach to an Intimate Villainette,"

..


"Olanson fran~aise," "Cafe'Empire'") and their traditional forms (sonnet, triolet) would not have attracted Kruchonykh were it not for their orientalisms and sound play. The former provided unusual sound combinations as well as a non-European frame of reference which Kruchonykh as well as Khlebnikov preferred. But what are most significant are Kruchonykh's analyses or, perhaps more accurat.ely, ~~fractions of Chachikov's lines. For example, he takes the hnes S prospekta Yurt-Shakhe i Konsul'skoy Allei/ Bezhit kriklivo-sonnykh ulits ryad" [From Yurt-Shakhe Avenue and Consul's Alley I Runs a series of shoutingly sleepy streets] and "distills" from them the fol-lowing:

kta pros I sul'kson ekhash tryu le-le-le I aysh sonyr os'ko

• sonar I shnyt (:1; 1973:489)

Some pieces of this" distillation" are obviously based on the Chachikov poem (pros, kta, sul'kson, and, from a later line not quo~ed ~y Kruchonykh, shnyt [shnyryayut=they poke]), but one searches m vam for most of the others. He transposes some segments (kta pros/prospekta) and juxtaposes others over considerable distance (sul'-k- son), leading one to speculate about the actual methods he used f?r composing his own zaum (snip-snip, shuffle-shuffle, paste). He gtves a second example in which he does the same thing, though in this c~s.e it is easier to locate all the pieces in the text. He decodes several exotic~sms for t~e reader (khanuma=lady, Jlinta=rifle). Then he praises Chachtkov for hts "sharp words flavored [nastoeny] by alchohol and ~~t by ~ater a~d paper" (:2) and for his partial rhymes, which he calls crawlmg, reptilian" (e.g., krasavy 1 serale), and other forms of what we would identify as paronomasia. Finally, he uses Chachikov to launch yet ~nother attack on other poets, this time particularly Tyutchev, for thetr deafness toward anal-erotic sound· combinations (kak), and ends with two more distillations from Chachikov that are quite zaum in appearance, thus presumably demonstrating the growing hegemony of this orientation. That there may be more Kruchonykh than Chachikov in these distillations is indicated by the fact that the source for the final one is not given by Kruchonykh, and I did not succeed in identifyi.n~ ~he lines of Chachikov from which they were drawn, though a posstbthty appears to be the second stanza of "Urmiya" (:15), the first stanza of which was used as the first example above. But they could just as easily be Kruchonykh's own invention.

Given the close, collaborative association between Kruchonykh and Terentev at this time, it is appropriate to consider Terentev's little booklet on Kruchonykh Kruchonykh grandiozar' [Kruchonykh the Grandee],


1919a; Kruchonykh 1973:503-20; Terentev 1988:215-32; excerpts in Lawton/Eagle:178-81). It can be taken as a jointly authored work like the ones by Kruchonykh, in which Terentev was the main subject and/ or commentator, but in which in complementary fashion Terentev is the main author and Kruchonykh the subject (Sigov 1987b:79). In it Terentev, in addition to discussing Kruchonykh, quotes liberally from works which, in more than a few cases, are otherwise unknown and are not even listed by Kruchonykh in his bibliography (Tushany, Bugbuddy, LyubverigP Budaly, Vodaly vodolaz). True, there are no surprises for us in these poems, nor for that matter in what Terentev has to say about them or about Kruchonykh, but for the first time Kruchonykh is given the respect due his achievements. Terentev underlines Kruchonykh's ability to "beat at the nerves of habit," to take even already avant-garde poetry, such as Mayakovsky's, Khlebnikov's, or Burliuk's, and to go beyond it into something even more extreme (:4) . Quoting "Tyanutkoni" from Explodity, he remarks:

In place of a weakened poetry of semantic associations, here he offers phono-logic, as indestructible as an aspen stake. [ ... ]

Such words as "noni" and "choly" are strange, but they are tightly perceived, they don't tickle the heel of memory, they gratify the aspen stake on the stubborn heads of people with a good memory.

And as a result these poems will be understood! Content will adhere to them! And not just one content, but more than

you can hold. Because ridiculousness is the sole lever of beauty, the poker of creativity. (:5-6)

Naturally, he has much to say in praise of zaum, such as that" All of Futurism would have been an unnecessary jaunt if it had not come to this language, which is the only one for poets of the 'world backwards"' (:11). Yet he warns: "Zaum is dangerous: it will kill anyone who, not being a poet, writes poetry. He will not like the zaum lines, and the mousetrap door will slam automatically" (:13). He predicts that some future Dal or Baudouin de Courtenay (who produced a new edition of Dal's dictionary) will compose a single dictionary of zaum for all peoples, and Kruchonykh will then come into his own.

The economic situation in Georgia deteriorated in 1919 and Kruchonykh, along with many other Russian literary figures who had been living in Tiflis, moved to Baku, where he remained until August 1921. In 1920-21, once the Bolsheviks had taken control of Baku, he worked for ROST A and the newspapers Kommunist and Azerbaydzhanskaya Bednota. Among his productions in this period are several individual poems printed in official publications and a series of his own productions. In all these works what is most notable is not

\


the level of new experimentation but the efflorescent expressive use of already established techniques. Various kinds of zaum may be present, but earlier purism has given way to a compendiousness, richness, and synthesis in which zaum is only one of a wide range of forms of expression. Radical exploration returns changed and enriched, as do the larger forms characteristic of Kruchonykh's early works. Kalendar is, perhaps the most accomplished of the works that grew out of this trend.

In Baku in 1921, Kruchonykh published a leaflet with a new manifesto, "Declaration of Transrational Language" (1921b; Lawton/ Eagle:182-83). He repeats previous ideas, but adds several elaborations, such as: "Transreason [zaum J is the (historically and individually) primordial form of poetry. At first it is a rhythmic-musical excitement, a protosound (the poet should write it down, because in further reworking he may forget it." And he lists instances when it is an appropriate form of expression:

(a) when the artist wants to convey images not fully defined (within himself or without himself), (b) when he does not want to name the object, but only hint at it [ ... ] (c) When one loses one's reason (hate, jealousy, rage ... ). (d) When one does not need it-religious ecstasy, love. (The glossa of exclamation, interjection, murmurs, refrains, children's babble, pet names, nicknames-such transreason is plentiful among writers of all schools.)

Zaum is seen as only one of three types of word creation, the other two being "Rational" and "Random." In it Kruchonykh distinguishes three subtypes: "a. The magic of songs, incantations and curses. b. 'Revelation (naming and depiction of things unseen' -mysticism. c. Musicalphonetic word-creation- orchestration, texture." He further maintains that zaum is the "most compact art, both in terms of the time span between perception and expression, and in terms of its torm," and is "the most universal art," because it "can provide a universal poetic language, born organically, and not artificially like Esperanto." Ultimately, zaum is valuable because it" awakens creative imagination and sets it free, without insulting it with anything concrete." Be that as it may, one cannot help feeling that Kruchonykh is essentially trying to rationalize the irrational, to spell out the place of zaum in poetry in much the same way as Shklovsky already had in his article "On Poetry and Zaum Language." While Kruchonykh is insisting here that zaum is "wild, flaming, explosive (wild paradise, fiery languages, blazing coal}," in the context of such a systematic presentation one begins to doubt thaUhis is any longer the case.


TERENTEV

While Igor Terentev (1892-1937; for date of death see Terentev 1993:48) is an interesting poet in his own right, in the sphere of zaum he exists largely in the shadow of Kruchonych. That is, he wrote anumber of successful works in which zaum plays a significant part without going substantially beyond the techniques and theories laid out before him by Kruchonykh. At the very least, Kruchonykh found in him an enthusiastic supporter and colleague. . .Tere~tev's literary career began in 1919 in Tiflis directly in asso-:

ctahon wtth Kruchonykh and Zdanevich.13 His first publications, The Olerubim:Whistle, Fact, "it's ready" (his contributions to Zdanevich's anthology To Sofia Geogievna Melnikova), and 17 Silly Tools, all came out in 1919 and showed the influence of Zdanevich in their florid typography and of Kruchonykh in their use of zaum. The first poem in the first of these publications, which contains the title of the collection in its last line, shows Terentev to be a capable and mature zaumnik:

inoi pokhorony

Liaval Rpata ptk ptk ptk Tiktka Be pokhorony idut po mozolyam mostovoy pytka pyt Kopyt s"edennyya mol'yu loshadi Vstoionu ranu Brenden' ,?f

U solntsa muchitel'neyshaya migren' V serdtse vlyubchivy Soliter Veter sufliruet komediyu SHUSHIAN zabintovannaya dusha i nezhnaya fizionomiya A ya poka vy zhuyote KAMENNY UGOL' na buterbrode ya proletayu POOllVSHI V BOZE Po golubomu vzdokhu Na oblake MOZGA v samoy neprinuzhdennoy poze URRIET URREOLA F'Y A TF F'YAT serafimy SVISfY AT ([1918] 1988:84)

my funeral

Liaval Rpata ptk ptk ptk Tiktka Beh funeral

they walk over the calluses of pavement torture tor

270 Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism?

Of hooves of horses eaten up by moths To the side a wound Brenden The sun has a terrible migrain In the heart Solitaire in-love-ing The wind prompts a comedy SHUSHIAN a bandaged soul and a delicate physiognomy But I while you are chewing ANTHRACITE COAL on a sandwich I am flying by REPOSING IN GOD Through a sky-blue sigh On a cloud of BRAIN in the most natural pose URRIET URREOLA F'Y ATF F'YAT the serafim WHISTLE

He employs a full battery of zaum techniques, ranging from phonetic to suprasyntactic, with emphasis on the latter. The phonetic zaum at the beginning and end is somewhat interpretable on the basis of clues given in the poem itself. Thus ptk can be a contraction of pytka {=torture], and the penultimate line can be read as what the serafim are whistling, like Khlebnikov's language of the birds or gods. There are also touches of Mayakovskian extravagant imagery and anti-sentimentality. But the final result remains indeterminate enough to be consideredzaum.

A later poem in the same collection presents an interesting case of moving in and out of zaum by means of playful sound and root repetitions, something not usually encountered in Kruchonykh's zaum (the upper case vowels appear to indicate stress) :

the little gray goat

mOsnyal mAzami sEno kUtka neizvErnaya tEna fr Asam li.chema nErna prOkatom Okatom vysOkatam vustA ustA stAli sikhl melebOrmkhaUli mOtma bOrma smEniy vYborma VYLisma vYmotma vYbormotalsya geniy VotKak (:89 [1918])


While there are quite a number of recognizable morphemes and even some standard words, the poem is nearly impossible to translate because most of the words reach only the brink of recognizability (e.g., mOsnyal-snyal=took, tEna-ten'=shadow, nEma-neverna =unfaithful f nercma=nervqus). The seventh line sounds Georgian. But the key might be the last two lines, the only fully comprehensible ones in the poem, which read: "the genius muttered out f Like This." Perhaps Terentev has Khlebnikov in mind here, since the latter was frequently described as a muttering genius by his confreres, but then the little gray goat is anomalous.

In other poems, Terentev plays around with morpho-phonetic n.1ns in a way similar to Gnedov {Figure 24]. As with Gnedov, nearly complete recognizable words blend into each other in a stream that becomes chaotic and uninterpretable (for another example see Janecek 1984a, Figure 145).

As with Kruchonykh, Terentev's zaum is characterized by brevity, variety, and flexibility. However, his own view focused on its not being a "language"; rather, it is "material for exercising the speech organs, material for incorporating the constructive laws of sound, zaum is the decisive condition for creating linguistic internationalism" (1988:288). Presumably, if all languages concentrate on establishing such laws, the elements that they all hold in common will be discovered and can then be shared.

In public discussions of zaum that heated up in Moscow in 1924 .1"

surrounding the journal LEF, Terentev insisted that "there is no Futurism ... without zaum!" (1988:287). It turns out that throughout this time he remained a more faithful adherent to the principles of zaum than its founder Kruchonykh. In a letter to Zdanevich (1988:404-07; also Pagani Cesa 1982), he complained that Kruchonykh had aligned himself with LEF, which Terentev felt to be a compromise with the ideals of 41°. During this stay in Petrograd, Terentev continued to argue for zaum, and even, as he put it, '"translated' Marx into zaum and established zaum on the tangible foundation of Marxism" (:400). He also came into contact with Tufanov (whom he called a "learned zaumnik" and "platonic anarchist- I'm keeping him at a distancehe's soft") and Matyushin' s "Zor-ved" school (:404). And he composed his short zaum play, "Jordana Bruno," which he included in his letter to Zdanevich (:406-07). This play resembles Victory Over the Sun in its satirical-political theme and the variety of its zaum methods, even within the space of only a few pages of text. The absurdist plot finds Giordano Bruno at work on Place de Ia Concorde. Shmetterlink and his wife Kolumbia, strolling by, see Bruno, and Kolumbia reports this to the Pope, but her husband condemns her and gathers some people to listen to Bruno's wisdom. The whole human race assembles. Kolumbia arrives with a papal order to burn Bruno at the stake, which

DC31COBC'IBWi TOCT 8 'ICCT.

CO<l>IH fEOPfiEBHhi

• e • • elanasocnouuuouillyo-

a pununroaTopxhlcrpo

:unopoMBLITacKuBaitac·

acywJIKHwaamypcKHJl·

'ICCTK>Tn~6bl m U' 0 0 0 00 0

Fig. 24: I. Terentev, "Endless toast in honor of Sofia Georgievna," S. G. Mel'nikovoy (Tiflis, 1919).


the police then do. The people leave and the two men are left a\one, Bruno remaining quite alive. Shmetterlink condemns the people for their frivolity. A Girl runs in, and Shmetterlink wants to kill her, but Kolumbia saves her. The Mona Lisa also appears, asking "What's the matter, little girl?" and the girl responds with a string of vowels (see Konstriktor 1990:27). Bruno and the groups of people speak in phonetic and morphological zaum, but Shmetterlink and Kolumbia mainly speak Russian. The Girl begins in Russian, but then shifts into phonetic zaum. For some reason, Terentev seems to have kept the existence of the play hidden from everyone but Zdanevich (Sigov 1988:177), and it was not until1988 that a Leningrad theater group staged it, albeit, in the opinion of one commentator, without the necessary enthusiasm for its zaum (Konstriktor:27-29).

ILYA ZDANEVICH

The third member of the central 41 o triumvirate, Ilya Zdanevich (1894-1975)u, was a native ofTiflis who, while studying law at St. Petersburg University, became closely associated with the artistic and literary avant-garde of the capital. His main contribution to the history of zaum is a series of five one-act plays called "dras" and given the collective title of "Dunkeeness" because a donkey figures in them either overtly as a character or by implication. The first of these, Yanko krul' albanskay [Yanko, King of Albania] was written in 1913-16, evidently

1,

under the direct inspiration of the theatrical experiments of Larionov and Bolshakov (see Chapter 3) with whom Zdanevich was closely allied at the time, though Victory Over the Sun, which Zdanevich attended, was doubtless also a factor. Sigov (1991b) points to other probable sources as well, such as the ancient rite of the Donkey's Mass, Dionysian rituals in which a donkey figured prominently and a donkey's tail was offered to the god of theater; Apuleius's The Golden Ass; and the folk puppet theater vertep, to which we can in all likelihood add Alfred Jarry's Ubu roi with its similar mixture of vulgarity, rapid, weakly motivated, mechanical action, and Punch-and-Judy style murderousness. Yanko was first performed in St. Petersburg on Dec. 16, 1916, in the studio of B. N. Essen, with music by Mikhail Kuzmin. It was prohibited from being printed by the censor (Terentev 1988:482) and therefore was not published until May 1918 in Tiflis, to which Zdanevich had returned in 1917.

Several characteristic features of Zdanevich's zaum practice are established immediately in Yanko. These include: 1) a "host" [khazyain] who speaks more or less standard Russian and acts as stage manager or narrator, without whose explanations it might be difficult to follow the action, at least in the reading text (Sigov compares him to the Argumentator in a medieval school drama (:211)); 2) phonetically


spelled text, both in Russian and zaum passages, which indicates stress placement, so as to produce the desired rhythm and pronunciation15

;

3) patterned zaum that often creates distinctive character speech; 4) use of simultaneous speech in quasi-operatic ensembles, such as duets, trios, and choruses; and 5) a predominance of phonetic zaum, which creates a texture of incomprehensible language in which occasional recognizable (sometimes obscene) words unexpectedly pop out.

The basic plot of Yanko is simple and quite absurd: a band of robbers force Yanko, a donkey, to assume the throne of Albania by gluing Nm to it; he tries unsuccessfully to detach himself with the help of a German, Irrental (yrental); the robbers return and kill him. There is possibly some political allegory in this, since in 1913 the German prince Vid was crowned king of Albania, immediately deposed by the Albanians and called "Prince Vid the Foolish" (Sigov:211). The name of the title character is a reference to the Russian journalist and literary historian Janko l..avrin, who wrote a book of sketches on Albania (Marzaduri 1990, 1991a on this and other background). However, the main features of the work are language-oriented. The dra opens with a speech by the host, who explains that the play is by the "famous Albanian poet Brbr Stock-Exchange Pillar" and is dedicated to Olga Leshkova (a friend of Zdanevich's). He points out that the strange language encountered is Albanian and that occasional Russian words such as" donkey," "idiot," and "galosh" are really not Russian, but Albanian, and have a different meaning in Albanian; hence, '"donkey' [asyol] means ... ," but then he declines to say what, the implication being that it is

obscene. This sets a humorous tone for what is to follow and an expectation of bawdiness. The dramatis personae are announced. Yanko is described as being "in pants from someone else's shoulders shod by the new times." Other characters are Prince Prenkbibdada, the Albanian Breshko-Breshkovsky (perhaps the nineteenth-century Russian judge, but whose name is probably chosen for its comic sound), two robbers "from Goosinia;' the German Irrental, a flea, and some "free skippidars" played by members of the audience. The play is to begin with the "roar of a small clock," upon which the robbers offstage start loudly reciting the cyrillic alphabet and continue to do so as they run out on stage. Several passages are arranged to emphasize vulgar meanings: "kakal kakal" [=he kakaed], "cheshyshchcheshyshch" [=you scratch]. A dialogue between the robbers ensues in which the text still consists of sections of the alphabet, but intoned as question and answer. This develops into a duet which concludes in a fight for their knives, a conflict inevitable, as Sigov notes (:211), because the old alphabet ends in the letter izhitsa, and the expression "propisat' izhitsu" [=write an izhitsa] means to "chew out" or "punish." Prenkbibdada and Breshko-Breshkovsky enter to separate the robbers and to engage in a duet in which the first utters bisyllabic zaum words with a trochaic


pattern ("Iivot duvot ravotkovot," etc.), while the second simultaneously utters longer zaum words that consist mainly of alternating vowels and consonants ("ukuk vykikzhukugzakam likiflikips ykikiki," etc.). These patterns establish the characteristic voices of the personae. Zdanevich is careful to distinguish those ensembles (simultaneous recitations) where the characters have differing texts as arkestram [=orchestrally)16 from others where everyone recites the same text in unison (khoram [=in chorus]). They end this eight-line duet in a chorus with the phrase dinavzyat' krulya? [dane vzyat' korolya?=shouldn't we take a king?], presumably a way of ending the country's internal strife. The robbers then join the ensemble, together reciting the alphabet to form a trio with the other two characters, at the end of which the question is repeated in unison.

The host announces the appearance of Yanko, who is being bothered by a flea. He is seized by the company, and his first speech, in a mixture of phonetic and morphological zaum, suggests childish babble: "papasya mamasya I ban'ka kakuyka vizika I budyuit'ka vas'ka mamudya," etc. (Tretyakov et al. 1923:16}. Here, in addition to lisped affectionate forms of papa and mama, we can detect elements of infant sexuality in some of the other coinages (kaka, tit'ka=tit, mudi=balls) oriented, as in Kruchonykh, toward anal eroticism. This speech is supposed to convey the fact that Yanko is "frightened" (Sigov:212; see Kruchonykh 1918g:12). Prenkbibdada, who of all the characters seems most inclined to patterned sound repetitions, responds with a mixture of zaum types, often in groups of three:

kharam bazham glam zyki kiu kvet ioioio svabodnyi shkipidary tampus marsis puzynuza labiruza kavatuza uzyzus yanko banka kazyblanka kypablanka shakhmatist prenkbibdada dlinaroda galavoda ododo loda zhoda uiuoda tprv mkst nshprs utpr vek klkn klkm pttk p'yuk yu

This passage is a good example of how recognizable words can suddenly emerge from an otherwise incomprehensible speech. We have "free skippidars"- "shkipitar'' is the Albanians' actual name for themselves (Sigov:212)-in line 4 and then "Yanko jar Casablanca Capablanca the chessplayer'' and the speaker's name in lines 6-7. This produces the impression that something substantive is indeed being


said in this "foreign" language, but only certain words and names can be identified. Another interesting feature is the last two lines, which consist mostly of vowelless words where the stress falls on a consonant. One is inclined to see these as telegrammatic abbreviations and to try to decode them by adding vowels, but nothing emerges from this exercise. There is, however, one actual Russian word in the series, vek [century, age].

The other characters repeat a piece of this passage in chorus and the host comments, "difficult speech." Yanko then "grabs" the crown and makes a speech rather like Prenkbibdada' s with sound repetitions, vowelless words, and a few recognizable Russian words, such as stuk [knock], the aforementioned galosha, and gitara [guitar]. The others then glue Yanko to the throne and, dancing and shouting, recite a passage in chorus which ends with the line II gor Q gor a gore gori goro gogorugol," which plays on the Russian words for "mountain" and "burn." Next they stand still and break into a trio like the first one, in which their speech is differentiated. In this case, however, at certain points they achieve a unison, indicated by double or triple-sized letters (see Janecek 1984a Figure 121). They leave.

Yanko, glued to his throne, struggles to unstick himself in a speech full of oohs, ohs, and ahs. The host announces the arrival of Irrental, who speaks a zaum laced with miscellaneous German words and phrases, e.g., "botyr veger ikhabe kayny mutyr klops latamin yrental' rosfatyr." In some cases the words can be either German or Russian, e.g., "kham brants val mazol'," where the third word can be either G. Wahl orR. "billow /bank." In this quotation there are also Russian words that could pass for German (kham=boor, mozol'=cornj callus), thereby increasing the humor. After a phonetic zaum speech in which Yanko presumably explains his plight, he and Irrental engage in an orchestral duet where each maintains his speech style, and they end in a unison "V ADA" [R. water}. The lack of water to dissolve the glue causes Irrental's attempts to free Yanko to be in vain, and the others run in shouting" aminazet" [amen-zee]. Partly reversed, this can be read as "ate za nim" [and they [run} after him} (Sigov:217), giving the expression additional meaning. Irrental flees. In chorus, the others recite a series of consonants, then stab Yanko, who dies with the word "f'yu." The host says: "roar twilite of sea" ("ref sumirchi morya"). The others then recite a zaum poem that parodies classical rhymed iambic pentameter poetry to the extent of observing the form rather strictly, but filling it mostly with nonsense sounds:

ereraro rarum rive ravora iiie nad mori parusa iiie ikhe ikho ikhora iyduvale iyduvalya khira


The second line pokes fun at the romantic image of sails on the sea (literally "rising up over'' it [nad more}, rather than" at" or" on" it [na morel).17

Terentev, in his booklet on Zdanevich, Rekord nezhnosti [Record of Tenderness} [1919} (1988:237-60), argues that "in Yanko all human vices are stretched to the limit" in the person of the main character: greed, lowliness, sexlessness, cowardice, stupidity, and pride (:242-44). He also notes the extreme" dryness" of the language, the absence of water to unstick Yanko, and metaphorically the lack of any drop of tenderness. He jokes that this dryness "has caused many to take Ilya Zdanevich for an academic and a bureaucrat" (:246). This fault is corrected in the next play by a predominance of jotized vowels (:248) i.e., vowels beginning with a y-glide making them more "liquid." Sigov further notes that, as in Victory Over the Sun, there are no female characters in the play (:213), a fault also corrected in the next play.

A distinctive feature of Zdanevich's plays, as is clearly evident in this first of them in its attention to how the speeches are to be recited individually and in combination, is their emphasis on a basically musical organization of text and action so as to provide occasions, as in opera, for various kids of sound effects and ensembles. However, though Kuzmin provided some sort of music for the first production, there is no indication in the text that parts were to be sung, as was specified in much of Victory Over the Sun; yet Zdanevich is more thoroughly operatic in design than Kruchonykh. While the underlying reference point of Victory is to bourgeois music hall productions or oper- '' ettas, the underlying reference point in Zdanevich is to the high culture of full-fledged opera.

The second play in the series, Asyol na prakat [Dunkee for rent} (1919a), was first performed on March 29, 1918, to benefit the Tiflis Theater of Miniatures, and is dedicated to the actress Sofia Melnikova, with whom Zdanevich was in love at the time. The design of the play follows the same pattern as the first, with a host and four characters: a woman named Zokhna, two suitors A and B, and a donkey. In his introductory speech, the host indicates that this new play is incomprehensible in its action and writing and that "Zokhna was able in some unknown way to admit that the donkey is a person and vice-versa" (:43). He also points out that few have the courage to present incomprehensible art and that the audience is requested to "withhold disapproval" because there is possibly more here than meets the eye.

The suitor A is introduced and delivers a zaum speech in which a few words (kaftan, warmth) and the heroine's name can be picked out. This speech ends in a series of repeated consonants: "MP .,.._ mP- mPmp- p- P- TS-" (:44). Suitor B flies in with the lines: "chYUm ch YUk? I pidAl'nay pagnUta karEta?" The second of these can be deciphered as "of a pedalled is bent the carriage?" The two suitors ex-


change long speeches in basically phonetic zaum, then join in a trio with the donkey, who is apparently already on stage. Judging by the layout [Figure 25], the suitors do most of the speaking. An amusing feature of this ensemble is that at a number of junctures the donkey joins in, and two or all three make the sounds 1-A, a donkey's heehaw in Russian, thus confirming the host's indication that humans and donkeys are indistinguishable. Both parts also contain Russian words, including a unison "DURAKA" [fool]. The suitors then dance together while reciting "mnepp/mnippjmnupp/mnapp" (:47), seeming to indicate solidarity rather than rivalry. Suitor A leads the donkey away and Suitor B "becomes a donkey" who says: "d- nT -An"', to which A replies: "d-nT -n In"' (:48). The two seem to have established a pattern of consonantal correspondence and vowel variation.

Zokhna enters dancing and reciting a long zaum speech in which, as usual, some Russian is to be discovered. It should be added that in addition to occasional regular Russian, there are a number of nearRussian words which are slightly removed by differing stress or a sound or two from a standard word but are still recognizable, e.g., gOrchyat [ogorchat=they distress]. Zokhna throws feed to Suitor B with a speech heavy in plosive and fricative consonants, and he responds in vowels and soft consonants that are lyrically expressive, e.g., "napYAlyaya khlYUs' yaslyuslYAyka vbil'E niisYAti," etc. This apparently wins Zokhna over, and the two fall into an embrace and recite a duet that ends on a rooster crow. This orchestral duet is particularly interesting in that its "two-storeyed" arrangement is reminiscent of the folk vertep in which the lower level of the two-storeyed puppet stage represents crude, earthly existence, while the upper level reveals the (divine) significance of the action (Sigov:215). In this case the unison sounds are sexually expressive labials, liquids, and jotized vowels (frequently "yu"), which are further reflected in the lower part in the love-making speech of Suitor B, while the upper level (Zokhna) contains a number of recognizable Russian words ("kumachen" =calicoed, "pakhli" =they smelled, "son"=sleep, "izhitsa" [name of cyrillic letter], "mukha"=a fly, "lapa" =a paw, "bryukha"=of a belly, etc.) that more clearly verbalize the earthy act going on. Sigov sees this as overtly reproducing the religious mysterium of Dionysian intercourse between a woman and a donkey as in Apulcius (:215).

Zokhna and Suitor B kiss. Suitor A and the donkey return, and the suitors recite a duct, but this time it is aligned not horizontally but in parallel columns without any unisons ijanecek 1984a Fig. 123), evidently to indicate their present dispute. A's text is varied in content, but B obsessively returns to variations on the word "Obzhych." Then the suitors repeat their matched lines (see above :48). The donkey replaces Suitor B, and the host announces "Zokhna the bride" (zOkhna podvinEshnaya). She embraces the donkey, who heehaws appreciatively

Jl;\oUUIZ a }t(YHUJ. 6 acc.'t apxecTpaM

MAPHO ·~ soXHA. •!![A""'· 3Ait.Alii.OH: IIRY ••• ,. ~ 5JKJT. liJKJT. IKbiBATW • AIIO. • JOT. At;Y

Fig. 25: I. Zdanevich, fromDunkeefor rent (Tiflis, 1919). Courtesy of the Sackner Archive.


in response to her word of affection (lYUshyk). Suitor A embraces Zokhna, and they recite a duet which ends with a kiss. Suitor B runs in, the suitors fight, Zokhna falls down and recites a long concluding speech. This is animalistic human sexuality at its most absurd. The dedicatee, Melnikova, must have had a good sense of humor to appreciate such a tribute to her.

The third dra, Ostraf paskhi [Eester ailend] (1919b), also a benefit performance, was given on July 19,1918. The host announces a shift in locale, following the sun in the direction of Australia to a place alien to the "jumps of our artiodactylae" (read: donkeys), the exotic location having been chosen to generate greater theatrical interest and profits.

h (, I ") (" ") The characters are a mere ant a rea ass , a carver even more so , and "two and a half stone wenches." These latter are the kamennye baby found all over southern Russia and Ukraine and assumed to be preChristian fertility idols, but here they seem to be identified with the famous stone figures on Easter Island. The stage is set in a shop for stone coffins. The two and a half women each recite a zaum speech, the half woman's speech being appropriately shorter and more gutterally compacted in sound than those of the other two. Terentev characterizes the first as "a mother powdered with earth," the second as" a sister-in-law with hysterics in a bathhouse," and the half as "just a yat'/' meaning "to a tee" (1988:252). He notices that the carver uses his most affectionate zaum for her. The two and a half women engage in a brief "orchestral" trio, then lie down in the coffins and die. The merchant enters and slams the coffins shut. His speech is full of lengthy phonetic concoctions sometimes over twenty letters long (e.g., "shtanpavalagugugodzhachkin"). The carver appears and smashes the three coffins. The merchant runs in. The carver kills him and sprinkles blood on the women, who are resurrected one by one in an elaborate musical ensemble that alternates between solos and repeated choral "Yu' s," then develops into an orchestral trio which contains many merry "Ha" sand ends on a unison" ukh bzypyzy." To the carver's long speech the stone women say the same thing, adding a "balda" [dolt]. They beat him and use his blood to revive the merchant, singing a song as they do so. He revives with the word paskha [Easter]. This underscores the link between resurrection and Easter as a religious event, with further associative links to blood-wine producing eternal life and to blood sacrifices (Sigov:217). There is merriment and dancing which includes an orchestral quartet Ganecek 1984a Fig. 124). They depart, leaving puddles of blood which the host identifies as menstrual fluid (something Terentev notes with especial relish (1988:252-54)). The host uses it to revive the carver, who flees. If the first dra can be taken as a political satire and the second as a parody of sex, then this third dra is surely a similar send-up of religion's preoccupation with death and resurrection.


The next dra is more complex in plot than the preceding three and is "a play of classical symmetry on the theme of reality and illusion" (Markov 1968:354). Zga Yakaby [Az tho Zga] was performed in November 1918 but not published until September 1920. The Zga of the title is a female named by the Russian word for darkness or something small enough to be scarcely visible, as in the expression ni zgi ne vidno [it's pitch black out]. (It also echoes Melnikova's initials, S. G., pronounced ezge (Sigov:218)). Hence, even this character is intentionally obscure. The "as though Zga" of the title is another manifestation of Zga, but described by the host as a man, identified specifically as Zdanevich in the host's introduction (see below). The action consists of Zga's waking up, setting up a mirror which then comes alive, and engaging the Mirror first in conversation, then in dance. Zga' s speech does, as Markov notes (1968:354), have more of a Russian sound to it than is usual with Zdanevich, though this means not that there are more recognizable Russian morphemes, but rather that the sound combinations fall generally within Russian possibilities. The Mirror's speech, by contrast, has" a spicy, oriental flavor'' (Markov:354) because of un-Russian consonant clusters and the predominance of back vowels, especially y.

Zga then looks into the mirror, which generates Zga-in-the-mirror, who also becomes independently active, and eventually joins Zga and the Mirror in a chorus. Zga-in-the-mirror in turn looks into the mirror and thereby generates Az-tho-Zga, who then generates Az-thoZga-in-the-mirror. Finally, this last character tells fortunes using cards. ' In the latter part of his speech one can easily pick out the names of number cards four through ten and the phrase "without documents of love" (:38). He does a dance. Then he and Az-tho-Zga both look into the mirror, and Az-tho-Zga-in-the-mirror turns into Zga, and Zga-inthe mirror passes away, leaving Zga to throw out these remains and fall asleep again. This time, instead of saying "the end" as usual, the host says "A blind end haz retumd" (virnUlsya slepOy kanEts), sug·gesting a hopeless, no-exit situation.

The reasons for this mood are only hinted at by the host's introduction. With each successive dra, the introduction has become both more elaborate and less comprehensible. As usual it is in phonetically transcribed Russian, but the syntax has become increasingly dislocated, to the point here of syntactic zaum. It translates in normal English spelling as:

Citizens The galosh of a lawyer who had begun to kick jumped bird expeditions into the mountains with the betrothal of an old as though woman thefts


handouts betrothals to one's zga and the lawyer having seized the stolen flutter did he go to the theater to honor by betrothal the actress Melnikova but unwittingly the old as though woman turned by resurrection/ sunday according to signs taken up at the watershed by a frivolier [?] unwitting became a man as though Zdanevich as though Zga and while the actress was singing the escapade of the lawyer hearts trampled by flying chips grew damp in the end from the silly stories of Zga turned at the action to volcanoes sentenced to the donkey perforce [?) theft of tenderness you, too, place your little mouths over the Mississippi roaring toward blocks (:9-10)

Evidently Zdanevich is upset by Melnikova' s preference for.a lawyer's attentions or so one surmises, although, except for the mention of Zga, this introduction does not seem to have much to do with the play itself. The gender shifts in the play would seem to raise the question of sexual identity I ambivalence/ indeterminacy in human nature and sexual relationships.

The fifth dra and grand finale, lidantYU fAram [LeDantiu as a Beacon], remains unperformed and was not published until1923, when Zdanevich had emigrated to Paris. Its florid typography was already in part an admission that the likelihood of its being performed had passed, and it was turned into a visual artifact, a "livre-objet, ultin:'-e prolongement del' experience zaum'" (Gayra~d 1991:~6). :me LeD~tiu of the title is the close friend of the Zdanev1ches, M1khad LeDanhu, a cubist/ rayist painter who had died in the war (1917). The second word of the title is a form of fara [headlight, Fr. phare], but either in the anomalous masc. sg. instrumental (hence as/like a beacon or headlight) or in fern. pl. dative, which would have to be rendered "to beacons."." As. a Beacon" is Markov's preference (:354) and seems more appropnate m the context. Sigov (:219) suggests that the title is a truncation of the phrase "Le-Dantyu faram dayot svet" [=LeDantiu gives light by /to

Zaum in Tifiis, 1917-1921 283

beacon(s)]. However, Zdanevich himself refers to the play in French as "ledentU le phAre" (1982:303). Possibly he was using the French directly and therefore treated the word as masculine in Russian because it is masculine in French.

Zdanevich's zaum is presented here with even greater than usual phonetic precision and includes symbols for weak vowels, complex consonants, and even tongue clicks, as described in a prefatory list. A statistical study of LeDantiu (Janecek/Riggs 1987) reveals that Zdanevich came up with over 1,600 coinages for this play, making it by far the most extensive work of phonetic zaum to date. Some other interesting statistical facts are that the coinages adhere to normal Russian stress entropy toward the middle of the word, that there is a higher incidence of some soft consonants and u!yu than normal, and that there are a number of non-Russian consonant clusters, some of which may be from the Georgian influence of Zdanevich's native Tiflis.

In this fifth dra, the host introduces five trupYOrdy (a compound ofroots for" corpse" and" fart"), dead women whose names" are mostly Russian folk words with sexual anatomical meanings" (Markov:355), and Saint Zap"ridUkhyay, a grotesque coinage based on the root dukh [=spirit]. They have assembled around the body of a" croaked" woman, over which Zap" ridUkhyay delivers a speech without any full vowels, which makes it sound like grunting. The host then declares: "In the name of god the donkey," thus establishing a clearly blasphemous tone.

1,

The trupYOrdy respond in chorus: "mama's," which is their frequent refrain. Each then gives a monologue, the first being entirely of vowels, the second characterized by lisping, the third by tongue clicks, and the last two by quasi-Russian formations. They then join in a quintet. Because of the number of separate parts, the individual voices no longer share enlarged letters, but are printed in separate lines, the temporal correspondences being indicated by their vertical position. Sometimes the stressed vowels are aligned in a column to indicate simultaneity, sometimes not. This first quintet (:13-14) maintains their individual styles, but in subsequent ensembles the voices sometimes become similar. The quintet alternates with monologues by Zap"ridUkhyay.

Scene 2 introduce a Peredvizhnik painter, i.e., one of the famous Wanderer group noted for their realist style and social orientation. The Peredvizhnik' s zaum is Russianate and formally repetitious: "pupUlya yunYAryaya khAtya/ pulYAtya zlYAtya/ s"YUya fAtya" (:23). The painter forms a sextet with the trupYOrdy as he takes out a portrait of the "croaked woman." Here the trupYOrdy first say the stressed syllable of the painter simultaneously with him, then add slight echo variations (Tanecek 1984a Fig. 129). In Scene 3, the portrait comes alive and speaks in morphological zaum, perhaps intended to indicate the portrait's distortion of but closeness to "reality." As with the painter, the portrait's style tends toward formal repetition. A septet ensues in


which the stressed vowels are almost always simultaneous and the same, while the rest of each word is different for each voice. They leave. Scene 4 is a short monologue by Zap"ridUkhyay, after which LeDantiu "the caresser" [laskatun] is introduced to paint an "unrealistic" portrait of the croaked woman. These two engage in a dialogue and duet. The artist speaks floridly in long words, in contrast to the portrait he pa~nts, which speaks in short, halting coinages. He leaves, and the unrealistic portrait touches the dead woman, reviving her. The host refers to her as "frenzied mother," suggesting that she died defending her "pup," and indeed she begins to howl: "uAu uAu uAu," etc. (:40) in unison with the painting. This alternates several times with her monologues, then leads to a duet in which the parts are often similar, but never identical. All this could be taken to reflect the relationship between this portrait and its subject.

In Scene 9, the realistic portrait returns and speaks with the revived woman; then the unrealistic portrait destroys the realistic one. The trup YOrdy return to attack the unrealistic portrait and the woman, but Zap"ridUkhyay slaughters the trupYOrdy. The Peredvizhnik shoots him. LeDantiu then slams the Peredvizhnik, shouting "Stop!" The host announces a "bloodless killing." The host begins a prayer that mimics the Our Father, "vOt"chi mnAsh" (:52; Sigov:220), and he is joined by the unrealistic portrait. The woman revives a second time, and the work concludes in an ensemble of all eleven characters, beginning with a trio of the "living" (LeDantiu, the woman, and the unrealistic portrait), who are then joined by the eight "dead" (the five trupYOrdy, Zap"ridUkhyay, the realistic portrait, and its painter). Although Markov feels that these are "two separate ensembles superimposed one upon the other in the manner of Verdi's Falstaff' (:355), the two groups are not in fact distinguishable by content or style. Each voice has a separate though related part Oanecek 1984a Fig. 130). It remains for some brave avant-garde theater group to stage the work so we might experience how this grand finale would actually sound. In the end, the Living march off, while the Dead remain, a tribute to LeDantiu and to avant-garde art, which is life-creating, as opposed to realistic reproduction, which is moribund.

This last dra, in addition to having the most musically elaborate ensemble structure and richest variety of zaum in the series, also brings together the earlier themes of death, resurrection, illusion, and reality as they are embodied in art. Thus, for all its absurdity and vulgarity, Dunkeeness is, in the end, a hymn to art and the power of human creativity. This is reflected in the major role played by zaum itself as a form of language creativity of an "unrealistic" sort, like the portrait which is unlike [nipakhOzkay] its subject and therefore has the power to revitalize it. One cannot help but admire Zdanevich' s inventiveness in word creation. It is, after all, no mean feat to come ,up with several


thousand coinages, as anyone will quickly realize if he makes the attempt.

For all that, Zdanevich's use of zaum is more restricted in range than that of Kruchonykh. It is predominantly of the phonetic variety, and there is so much of it that one is not much inclined to pay attention to each individual word and its possible interpretations. Rather, Zdanevich creates for given instances and characters a sonic, quasiverbal texture or style that is perceived as a stream of incomprehensible speech. As he puts it in a preface written in 1923, but only recently published, "We left the realm of onomatopoeia for the realm of zaum, the world of abstraction, mental games and great, cold insights" (Gayraud 1991:233). The zaum is expressive in places, but much of the time it is merely filler for dramatic monologue and dialogue. When a recognizable word or morpheme suddenly emerges, it comes as a surprise: one does not expect to encounter something one can understand. More careful and detailed analysis, say of individual coinages or speeches, is often (but not always) unproductive. There is little morphological or syntactic zaum to ponder. The former is sporadic and possibly accidental (perhaps unavoidable, given the large number of letter combinations that could potentially be morphemes), while the latter is confined to the host's. introductions. Though the plots of the dras might be termed absurd, they are not especially hard to follow or understand or particularly indeterminate in meaning, and the over-riding musical structures of the scenes give them an organizational coherence not found in Kruchonykh. In their favor, they are tightly controlled artistic edifices, succinct, dramatically lively, and apparently stageworthy. The dras are certainly a major monument of zaum practice awaiting a modem production.

When Zdanevich moved to Paris in 1921, he continued to propagandize for and lecture on zaum. His 1922 lecture, "Le degre 41 sinapise" (1982), presents a view of the types of zaum very similar to that upon which the present study is based. Notable also is his later anthology (1949), which assembled an international spectrum of zaumlike poetry, each work carefully dated to make it clear that the Russians were there first when it came to such poems.l8 Also of interest for zaum is his novel Parizhach'i [1923-26], which has finally been published in Moscow as the first volume of his collected works (Zdanevich 1994b). It displays an interesting, disjointed style like that of the hosts in Dunkeeness.19

Notes

11 would like to express my thanks to Juliette Stapanian for her help with possible Armenian aspects of this poem.

·?·


:ZSukhoparov in fact calls the entire composition "suprematist" (1992:88) and considers that "in Kruchonykh's artistic work all of 1918 and the first half of 1919 was spent under the influence of Suprematism" (:94). To support this he provides the following quotation from Kruchonykh's Nosoboyka (1917]: "'[ ... ] if there is no zaum (objectless supremus) poetry- then there isn't any poetry at all!- because poetry in zaum (beauty, music, intuition) [ ... ] eco-etry is the most general and brief (zaum) poetry" (:94, ellipses as in Sukhoparov). "Ecoetry" in Russian is "eko-ez," which Sukhoparov interprets a elwnomicheskaya poeziya [economic poetry] (:94).

3Howard Aronson graciously offered several of these observations in regard to Georgian, plus a possible link in "ts I" [ts'eli=year] and "lam rna ts" [lamazi=beautiful]. In free associations outside of Georgian, "Mekhytso" reminded him of Mexico; "Shksad" with the Labove it from "Lamoshka" suggested chocolate [shokolad], which originated in Mexico; and "tyal" suggested Bulgarian tyalo [Russ. telo=body ]. On the influence of Caucasian languages on Kruchonykh at this time see also Marzaduri (1984:93).

'Ziegler (1982:242) expresses exactly the opposite opinion about the similar poem from Tunshap: "In this quiet, mute poetry, the role of sound [ ... ]moves into the background." She calls such poetry "suprematist" and "'economic" zaum. But if in such cases sound moves into the background, it is hard to imagine what is left to be in the foreground, and she does not spell this out. The designations "suprematist" and "economic," however, seem quite apt to characterize the simple monosyllables as analogous to the simple geometric shapes in Malevich's Suprematist paintings.

S"fhe following remarks are based on a transcription of Zugdidi generously provided to me by Dr. Rosemarie Ziegler, to whom I would like to express my thanks. Citations from works of the autographic series, the originals of which have not been available to me, appear in a number of other sources. Poems by Kruchonykh from Balas are given in Ziegler (1982:241; 1985:82), as well as others from Apenditsit [Appendicitis, 1919] (1982:245), Salamak [1919], Ryabomu rylu [To a Pockmarked Snout, 1918], and Ra-va-kha [1918] (1986:83-84). Quotations from Gorod v osade, Vosem' vostorgov, Begushchee, and a number of other works not listed in Kruchonykh's bibliography are to be found in Terentev (1919a, 1988:215-32, 479), Kruchonykh (1973:503-20), and Tolstaya-Vechorka (1923:35; 1925:35).

In the Russian State Library Museum of Books, a booklet done in steklografiya with cover by Rodchenko, Baku 1921, Kozyol-Amerikanets would appear to correspond to Myatezh IX with the same subtitle (see Ziegler 1986:96). This is a satire without notable zaum features, however.

Also, two pages from the book Nastuplenie [Attack, 1918], for some reason dated there 1920, are reproduced in color in Duganov (1988:239).


6A third work by Freud with some relevance to zaum is, of course, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious [1905], but this seems not to have been translated at the time and does not arise in discussions. Of potential application are Freud's discussion there of the fact that jokes bring together words or concepts separate in meaning (as opposed to zaum where meanings are kept or made to be separate), that children assume that words with the same sound have the same meaning (1963:120, 163), that dreams resist being understood while jokes are meant to be understood (:179), and his discussion of "ideational mimetics" (the innervations in muscles that correspond to ideas thought or expressed) (:192-93), and in general his discussion of the sources of pleasure in nonsense (:125-27, 131, 138-39, 172, 175, 195, 204). At a later stage in the study of zaum, its relationship to humor might well be a productive investigation. One tends to underestimate the humorous and playful aspects of zaum, perhaps because these depend for their effect on the immediate context and manner of delivery.

The work of the Russian psychoneurologist V. M. Bekhterev (1857-1927) should perhaps also be mentioned here. His investigation of so-called Reflexology included reflexes in the area of speech and was concerned with putting psychological phenomena on an objective footing along lines suggested by Darwin, Wundt, and others. It is possibly significant that his article "The Causes of Slips of the Tongue" appeared in the journal Golas i rech'No. 9,1913. His major treatise General Principles ofHuman Reflexology appeared in 1917 (Eng. trans. based on 4th Russian ed. [1928] 1933). Ziegler (1982:248, 1985:78) points to a connection between Bekhterev and Kruchonykh's use of the term "reflex of words" in Apenditsit (1919].

7J<harazov is also the author of a review of Yuriy Degen's poetry (1918]. Although generally more conservative, Degen occasionally resorted to passages of zaum (see Nikolskaya 1988a).

8Later in emigration in Paris llya Zdanevich would make reference to this connection with Freud's theory of dreams (Marzaduri 1982:286).

9"ferentev (1988) is the most complete source for works by Terentev and contains nearly all his known writings. Hereafter we will refer to it exclusively, except in the few instances where there is reason to refer to other sources. For more on Terentev's use of zaum see Sigov (1987b) and I. Bogomolov (1990).

101. P. Smimov (1986) has attempted to argue that catachresis is the dominant principle of the avant-garde in general, but in order to do this he has expanded this figure of speech into a concept of alienation or estrangement so broad, it seems to me, that the original and useful meaning of the term is obliterated. It seems more appropriate to see catachresis as an extreme literary device not necessarily limited to the twentieth-century avant-garde, and in our context to argue for its being one form of suprasyntactic zaum.

----------------------------.,------------288 Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism

uThis and several other useful ideas were provided to me by M. L. Gasparov, whom I would like thank for his constant willingness to help. He offers the following "purely subjective impression" of the poem: "In a public toilet someone or something magnificent and bright (and very big, because spread out 'on leads') is serving Kruchonykh a little booth turned roofside down, from the bottom of which pokes the head of a switchman who is sweeping the floor with his beard which is sticking out in all directions" (letter to the author, Aug. 10, 1990).

uA variant of the poem "Dushistoe rvotnoe" quoted by Terentev as being from Lyubverig also appears in Zudesnik (1922b) with the same indication.

13for detailed biographical information on Terentev and his role in 41° see Nikolskaya and Marzaduri (Terentev 1988:15-36), also Markov 1968:337-63 and Terentev 1993.

14For a detailed chronicle of Zdanevich' s life and career, see Lionel-Marie 1978. Also Markov 1968:337-40, 350-58.

lSfeatures of the transcription used in the Dunkeeness plays are discussed in Janecek 1982.

1'Not to be confused with the so-called "orchestral poetry" method identified by Magarotto, "in accordance with which in the confines of one and the same poem zaum alternated with normative language" (1991:415, 418).

11 A typescript of this last chorus is to be found in the Leshkov archive (RGALI f. 784) together with a sketch of music by Olga Leshkova, which is labelled as "sverkh-zaumnaya" [super-zaum]. It is simple in rhythmic outline but polytonal and dissonant.

UOther associates of 41 o who dabbled in zaum are the already mentioned Yuriy Degen and another contributor to the Melnikova anthology, the Russian-Ukrainian poet Nikolay Chemyavsky. In imitation of Zdanevich' s two- and threestorey typographical arrangements for duets and trios, Chemyavsky created poems in which each voice of the ensemble recites an independent text with unisons occurring repeatedly throughout (:161-63; see Janecek 1984a Figures 143-44). In the resulting poems, most of the words are recognizable Russian, but they are syntactically unclear and disjointed. One wonders whether this is intentional zaum or merely incomplete control of the orchestral technique. An intriguing note in The Fattening of Roses (Kruchonykh 1918g:13) indicates further that Chemyavsky had composed other zaum works, but "unfortunately these do not submit to typographical reproduction"; they were in the process of being published by Kirill Zdanevich, but the results, if any, remain unknown.

Another zaurnnik associate of 41° has come to light only recently in the


figure of Yuriy Marr (1893-1935), son of the prominent linguist Nikolay Marr. In 1921 he fell under the influence ofTerentev and Kruchonykh, and Nikolskaya characterizes his poems of this period as "variations on the poetry of the zaurnniks" of a "semiparodistic semipastiche" sort (1985:49; also Nikolskaya 1993). She further notes that in his interest in exotica his poetry also at times resembles Chachikov's, and his zaum is almost always clearly motivated (1985:52). Examples are provided in her articles. See also his recently published selected works (Yu. Marr 1995).

1"Mention should also be made of a work with zaum features from Zdanevich' s

archive that, though undated and unsigned, is very well argued to be by Zdanevich from his pre-Yanko period (Gayraud 1984), and other, incomplete zaum works of around 1923 (seeGayraud 1991).

Chapter Ten

The Debate over Zaum in the 1920s

In August 1921 Kruchonykh moved to Moscow to take up residence there for the rest of his life. Baku no doubt seemed isolated, and his move to Moscow was probably in part motivated by an urge to return to the center of Russian literary life. The NEP period did indeed allow Kruchonykh considerable scope for publication and public performance of his works for sizeable audiences and readerships in a climate that was, if not continually receptive, at least not as hostile as it initially was before the war and would become again by the end of the 1920s.

The new forum encouraged him to continue and develop trends .11

identified with the end of the Caucasian period: 1) the composition of longer works, particularly multi-sectioned cycles, 2) a groWing interest in writing on the theory and history of zaum, 3) a lack of new experimentation in favor of using previous devices in a synthetic form, and 4) extensive republication of previously published works. All but the first of these trends, and perhaps even the first as well, indicate a decline of forward impetus and an inclination toward conSolidation and retrospection. In addition, now that Kruchonykh was operating in a Russian literary center, rather than in a non-Russian city, greater critical attention was paid to his activities. It is on the critical debate surrounding zaum that we will focus our attention in this chapter.

A survey of Kruchonykh' s poetic works of the 1920s adds no new aspects to the picture of zaum already complete by 1921. However, his theoretical writings of 1922-23 yield insights into the principles of zaum. Zaumniki (1922c) contains Kruchonykh's first essays in the environment of post-revolutionary Moscow. The first of these, "Victory with-' out End," dated 1921, lays claim to the hegemony of Futurism:

Futurism has occupied the first place in the field of the word- this is evident both from internal events (its achievements) and from external events: the thirst for the futuristic word, the acclaims of the reading and especially the listening public,-all this recently (at an evening of poetic

291

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--


schools and trends) has been credited to our account by V. Bryusov. Soundism (soundel [zvuchel'], richness of instrumentation), striking

metaphorism, the variety of rhythmic figures and sdvig construction have captivated the afficionados and simple lovers of new art.

But we futurians think not so much about the doings of today, as to a greater extent about futural art, tomorrow's, and here we order that the word be moved toward rabid abstraction, pure word-creation, zaum. (:12)

I<ruchonykh indicates that a zaum school has been formed and lists the names we would expect. He points out that the Formalist group OPOYAZ has written about the theory of zaum, whereupon follows almost the complete text of his "Declaration of Transrational Language."

Significantly, it is section 6 of the Declaration which is omitted. Instead of the three types of zaum (transrational, rational, and random) proposed in that section in the original version, Kruchonykh now proposes the following three types:

1) the merriest amusement, 2) energetic sound technique (instrumentation and texture of the word) 3) exposure and insight into the riddles of the word and the universe. (:14)

Gone is the emphasis on indefiniteness, alogic, and transrationality. In their place are silliness, sound texture, and clear visions of the world as it is. Any mysteries are to be found in the world or language itself. Perhaps even the most conservative viewer would be willing to grant zaum a place in this scheme of things. No one could deny that the world contains riddles [zagadktl and that therefore zaum might play a role in presenting them, as long as the goal was to bring them to light and aid in solving them and not, as before, to create them to begin with. This shift can be taken as Kruchonykh' s attempt at accommodation with popular taste. The humorous trend is exemplified by Zdanevich' s "dras."

About the second type, Kruchonykh comments: "The new instrumentation and word texture automatically require intensified word innovation, going as far as zaum" (:15). Khlebnikov and Petnikov are active in the area of word creation from "already known roots." Kruchonykh points out, for example, that Khlebnikov's coinage smekhach can be interpreted as bogach smekhom [a man wealthy in laughter]. Poems written purely in zaum can be found mainly in Kruchonykh himself, Zdanevich, Alyagrov [Roman Jakobson], Terentev, Varvara Stepanova, and Rozanova. Here he refers to Jakobson's remark in The Newest Russian Poetry (1921:68) that in Khlebnikov Russian poetry "is striving to reach the limit-the euphonic word" and that semantic

The Debate over Zaum in the 1920s 293

meaning is therefore muted; but then Kruchonykh points out that even Khlebnikov has as his goal the creation of a "new worldwide-zaum language on mathematical and poetic foundations-as you see, the zaumniks are reaching much higher than euphonies" (:17). Moreover,

Khlebnikov strives toward the divining [ugadyvan'vu] of primeval roots-of individual letters, while all zaumniks strive toward the divining and revealing, the projecting onto a verse screen of as yet dark, inchoate, psycho-physical patterns- of rhythms, images, sounds, etc., etc.

Not mere sound, but precisely the story of everything that must be revealed without words ... (:17)

Therefore Jakobson did not go far enough, though his basic idea, that "the science of literature is the science of the device," is very important. Kruchony kh ends this essay by insisting that recognition be given to the school of zaum which represents the limit of poetry a_nd saves all other schools from the decay caused by "noseless tendentiousness and too nosey, bloody diarrhea-like topic-boundedness." To make his point final, he concludes with the zaum word "Zhlych!"

Beginning with Faktura slova [The Texture of the Word] (1923a), Kruchonykh' s booklets of 1923-24 are all, judging by their titles, ostensibly theoretical works, though many of them contain generous helpings of poetry and other materials, much of which comes from previous publications. In fact less than half of Texture is new and only a few 1.

pages of that is theoretical. The brief essay "The Texture of the Word," which opens the book, lays out the fundamental points ofKruchonykh' s theoretical ideas, most of which have already been advanced in earlier works (see Janecek 1996 for more information). The remainder of the book focuses on the use of the sound z, primarily by Kruchonykh. He defines the sound as follows: "The sound z is convenient for depicting: sharp movement, itching, wandering, squeals, clanging, winter storms, snowdrifts, frost, darkness, skin and nerve irritation, the whistle of switches, anger, envy, teasing, infection, rejection, snakes, zigzags" (:5). Nearly all the Russian words for these already contain the sound in question. Thus, Kruchonykh demonstrates the imitative effect of the articulation and how widespread its presence in the language is. He also points to a spectrum of sound accretions ["Gamma narostaniya zvuka"]: s-z-ts, and from these potentially to zh. To illustrate the use of the sound he follows this with selections from his Zudesnik (1922b), which plays extensively on the root zud [itch] and includes the winter poem from the cycle "Calendar" (1973:365-66), and other poems by himself and lines from other poets (see also Ziegler 1982:238-40 for more on specific sounds in Kruchonykh). He also provides a list of neologisms based on z, which he thoroughly interprets on the basis


of morphological analogy with existing words; thus zudich,_zudunchik, zudyonok, and zudyonysh all mean "son of zudun [=itcher]," while zudiytsa has an evil tone because of its analogue ubiytsa ~iller]. These coinages are rather clearcut, and most of them could easily be understood without help from the author. Kruchonykh thus demonstrates that he is now less interested in creating radical indeterminacy than in attempting to make his inventions accessible to interpretation.

However, the most complete and convincing theoretical work of this period, Sdvigologiya russkogo stikha [The Sdvigology of Russian Verse] {1923b; excerpts trans. in Lawton/ Eagle:184-86)1

, argues effectively for the value of zaum as indeterminacy and demonstrates the various uses of sdvigi to achieve it. The term was, as we know, first applied .t~ P?etry by Shemshurin (1913:3), and the concept "'as 1mphc1t 1~ Kruchonykh's theories from the beginning, but he began to use the term explicitly only in 1915 in connection with his developing interest in Freudianism (Ziegler 1986:87). In Sdvigology it is presented as a new literary science, the science of dislocation as a literary device in which we are still" children" (:3). Kruchonykh begins, as before, with the misguided business of running words together or shifting word boundaries as a means of revealing new or hidden perspectives in language, giving examples from Rafalovich, Shaginyan, and others, but particularly from his (and Shemshurin's) favorite target, Bryusov. He then demonstrates the "influence" of Khlebnikov on Andrey Bely's style and coinages (:10-12), and the use of compound rhymes as a source of new perspectives (e.g., teper' ya [now I]: teper'ya=coined plural of teper'). In answer to the rhetorical question" Are there many sdvigi?" (:14) he points to Shemshurin's book on Bryusov (1913), to Jakobson's statement that" every word of poetic language in juxtaposition with practical language- both phonetically and semantically- is deformed" (1921:47), and to Terentev's statement that "mastery, i.e., the ability to make mistakes, signifies for the poet-thinking by ear and not by head ... every poet is a 'zaum poet"' (1919b:3,7; 1988:181,185).

But what makes this treatise most valuable is that Kruchonykh gives us an inside view of his work methods and the motivations for his effects and sdvigi. Thus, in a section titled "The sdvig as a device," he says:

The sdvig is a poison very dangerous in the inexperienced hands of deafears, but one can use it as a good device, for example: wanting to give the word tsiku ta [cicuta, poison or water hemlock] still more moistness, I looked for a phrase in which tsikuta would be positioned in the middle of the line and would have before it the conjunction i [and] to obtain by juxtaposition the sdvig word itsikuta, resulting in the line:-Payusny konnoran i tsikuta sestra miloserd'ya [Pressed cormorant and cicuta nurse]. (:15)


In another case he ran a preposition together with the following word (vazhurnye serdtsa [into openwork hearts] "in order to underline that in the given case the sdvig was intended and desirable."

Under the heading of "Sound-images" he discusses cases in which the focus on sound creates a sdvig in meaning. Hence, in the lines:

letit moy dukh lebyazhi na-fta-linny?!

my spirit flies swan-like naphthaline-like

the word naftalinny, though representing an acrid and unpleasant substance, is light and fleeting in sound and therefore appropriate in its sound composition to the contexf; however, its meaning is thereby dislocated, though this then permits a further sdvig na -fota -linny [=en-bridal-veiled], which is fitting for the love-flight depicted in the poem (:16-17; the complete poem :40). Thus, he illustrates the Futurist principle that similar-sounding words in poetry are equivalent in meaning. This principle, when applied literally and radically, will easily lead to semantic surprises and dislocations that will be zaum in nature when the genesis of the poem is hidden from view. If we were unaware that naftalinny was chosen for its sounds rather than its meaning, we might be puzzled by its presence, and it would seem to be a form of suprasyntactic zaum (a catachretic epithet).

The next section, on the "sdvig-image," is handled by reprinting •· Terentev's article "Marshrut sharizny" [The itinerary of globality,1919] (1988:233-34), subtitled "The law of chance in art," in which the main point is: "The unexpected word is the most important artistic secret of every poet" (:18). "The contrastive epithet is replaced by an epithet that conforms to nothing [nischem ne soobraznym]" (:20). To illustrate Terentev's point, Kruchonykh appends a poem of his own on the wombat in which the animal is compared to three things:

She is softer Than a bandage on the forehead, She is more condescending Than a chicken feather, She is tenderer than a cave Where barefoot admirals walk! ..

"The first comparison is by similarity, the second by contrast and the third is by chance ("tender, which doesn't even occur-some sort of cave where someone walks ... )" (:21).3 In a section titled "From impressionism to the sdvig image" using examples from the poetry of Nina Saksonskaya, Kruchonykh iiiustrates that as emotions become more intense, the metaphors become more extreme and end by "going


off into 'random' distances" and finally into word coinages. He illustrates sdvigi in syntax from the work of Nina Khabias.

Kruchonykh reprints his essay" Apollo in the Crossfire" under the heading of" sdvig of composition- sdvig of esthetics," to cover dislocations on broader levels than syntax and semantics, such as visualgraphic elements and matters of taste in general. The theoretical portion of the book ends with sections that reiterate some of the basic principles of sdvigology, such as "Zaum language is always sdvig language" and "Perhaps one can never get away from the roots of words, but then one must consider each letter a root, as Khlebnikov has tried to do" (:35). . .

What is surprising in this otherwise most complete survey of sdvtgt is that only in this last-quoted and in one other oblique reference does Kruchonykh bring up phonetic zaum, that is, sdvigi on the phonemic level where no root is recognizable. The latter instance is:

In the zaum word there are always parts of various words (concepts and images), whether in simple amalgamations (e.g., Martober in Gogo!) or in whimsical and clever combinations creating a zaum image (composite, sdvig-like, complex). It sometimes corresponds and sometimes wars with a zaum phonetic image (correspondence: lesya lezhnaya lupan'ka [coinages base on "forest," "in a lying position," "peel"], non-correspondence: difteritka glyal' [woman with diphtheria, glance/ shine]- a soft sound coloration where there is a freezing image meaning). (:37)

Nor does any of the poetry that concludes the book illustrate phonetic zaum.

Kruchonykh leaves some space toward the end to respond to critics. Referring to the 1922 edition of Chukovsky's booklet The Futurists, Kruchonykh quotes the passage (:44-45) in which Chukovsky notes that when he had first read a poem by Thomas More before knowing English he was charmed by the sou11ds of the unknown words, but when he reread the poem later, after having studied English, he found that the charm had disappeared. To this Kruchonykh adds: "Yes, naturally, because ordinary language in the sense of expressiveness is 1000 times weaker than zaum! And because zaum is not only a method of the past, but mainly of the startling future!" (:37). He quotes Chukovsky' s statement that "all poetry is (to a certain limit) zaum" (Chukovsky:43) and reacts:

Where are the limits? What shields will we put up? what censors? Zaum is beyond the laws of rationalism! it is an arena where the rivulet of little minds drowns [tonet umok rucheyka]! .. Zaum is an absolute sdvig, the complete exile of the theme (the spirit), technical trickery, acrobatics of imagery, a car on stilts, Psochphocles [sic]


in a puppet theater! Super eccentrism! .. (:38).

The reappearance of Chukovsky's semi-complimentary treatment of Kruchonykh's work (the most complete and positive evaluation of it by a non-Futurist) was no doubt welcome to Kruchonykh as publicity and provided him with an opportunity to reemphasize that the thinking of the critics, while still lagging behind, was finally catching up with his achievements. Moreover, Chukovsky' s claim that the Futurists "took to pieces previous esthetics, rhythmics, etymology, syntax, and with this created new revolutionary forms necessary for the revolutionary epoch" (:59) was high praise and something to be savored in post-revolutionary 1922. Significantly, Kruchonykh quotes the second half of this sentence in the singular, as if it referred only to himself.

Finally, in a "Short Answer to All My Critics" (:38), Kruchonykh replies to A. Gomfeld, with his" counterfeit pathos," and to V. Bryusov (1921, 1922), with his "borrowed wit," and to all critics "who have been trying to bite me, but because of their cowardly nature can't make themselves approach me closely, and only howl in chorus from a distance":

Of course, they would like me to take on the young parnassians one after another for study and to write triolets according to all the rules of versifying from "the forties." So therefore- I will stand firmly for my position and will wait until perhaps in maybe 20 years finally the remaining poets too will drag themselves to me, and if they don't- I'm not bored being by myself either!

Long life to the zaum school of poetry,- which has given new art to new Russia!

Europe, do you hear? ...

Gomfeld, whose views we have already discussed in the Introduction, continued to publish, republish, and speak on topics related to the issue of zaum in the 1920s (1922a,b, 1924, 1927). Possibly the immediate occasion for Kruchonykh's reaction was a speech Gomfeld gave in Petro grad, Sept. 5, 1921,"New Words and Old Words" (1922a/ 1927:144-203) on the subject of the neologisms sprouting everywhere in the new Soviet society. While objecting to the conservative view requiring that all new words be russified according to the old Shishkovian pattern of the early nineteenth century, Gomfeld is nevertheless repelled by what the Futurists are doing:

All you have to do is pick up a newspaper or go out on the street to read a Futurist poem or simply speak with a lively young person in order to have your hearing and taste dumbfounded by some new word which nei-

•,


ther by its sound nor its content can live in peace with what has established itself in you as the impression of your native language. (1922a:4/ 1927:145)

He illustrates the point with citations from these sources, including excerpts from Shershenevich and Khlebnikov. At great length but also with a certain judiciousness he discusses the new coinages and the reasons for their prevalence, but he has concluded from the very beginning that indeed "language can be spoiled; it can lose its clarity, its expressiveness, its purity" (:61/:147) if words are coined unnecessarily or sloppily.

When Gomfeld comes to Kruchonykh, he places him first in a list of Futurists who have coined new words, some of which, Gomfeld can say "without the least irony-are successful, adept, necessary/' enough "to fill a whole new volume of Dal." But such a new volume will not be necessary because Dal"is a dictionary of the living Great Russian language, and these little words are not very alive. After all, Esperanto is also a necessary, successful and reasonable language.only it is not alive" (:181). However, Gomfeld notes, some Futunst neologisms, e.g., by Severyanin, have made it into the dictionary. Nevertheless,

There are of course word novelties here which cannot take root in the language; they were not even counting on that, and when Kruchonykh turned to the past, congealed world with his fiery and mighty "futurian" call: "Dyr bul shchur" [sic], -he of course was not proposing to enrich the dictionary; he was beyond that petty desire. He was proclaiming the new Word, and not just tossing out new little words. (:43-44/:186).

To illustrate this point Gornfeld quotes not Kruchonykh but, presumably by mistake, Khlebnikov' s "Nemotichey i nemichey." He concludes that a complete break with the past is unproductive (:44/:187). To be used, every new word must be understandable. Though he is fairly liberal in his evaluation of linguistic innovation, Gomfeld cannot accept it when it goes as far as zaum.

Since Bryusov was several times the target of Kruchonykh' s barbs in Sdvigology, he felt an urge to respond, and did so in the conclusion of a review of seven books of poetry that came out in 1922 (1923a:76-78). Explaining that Kruchonykh defines a sdvig in verse as an instance "where a series of sounds forms a combination or even, regardless of the wishes of the poet, perhaps a whole word which is unpleasant to the ear," Bryusov notes that all the textbooks from ancient times to the present say that cacophony is to be avoided in poetry. That combinations formed by linking the end of one word with the beginning of the


next one can lead to aural misunderstanding is "also not at all a new idea." What is new is that Kruchonykh "easily and eagerly discovers such 'sdvigi' everywhere" as did his predecessor in this, Shemshurin. After giving a few of Kruchonykh's examples, Bryusov's response is quite reasonable and to the point:

In speech up to now the meaning [smysl] of words has prevailed; but these days sdvigologists want to turn speech into a series of meaningless sounds. A literate person, when reading, does not follow the letters, but immediately grasps the outline of the words with the eye; someone who knows how to speak, when listening to speech, perceives not separate syllables, but whole words and word combinations. Depending on what the subject is, identical sounds have different significance.[ ... J When in conversation someone says: "poshol v les po yagody" [I went to the woods for berries], the listener would never imagine that what was said was: "poshol, vlez, poya gody" (I went, crawled in, singing for years]. One would have to lose the capacity to understand meaningful speech in order to suddenly encounter sdvigi everywhere.

Bryusov turns the tables by finding equivalently" cacophanous" cases not just in the classics and Symbolists, but also in the revered Futurist genius, Khlebnikov. He elaborates:

The perfection of contemporary language is expressed in the fact that the .... slightest sound distinctions make for an essential difference in meaning. [ ... ] In conversation, using intonation, we do not entirely identically pronounce: "vy li?" [did you?] and "vyli" [they howled), or"ta li?" [that one?], "tali" (from "tal'") [lifters], ''taliy" (from "taliya") [of waists], "taley" (from "taly'') [thawed). The hearing of sdvigologists evidently makes no distinctions here. This is horrible because it bears witness to a monstrous decline in Russian speech. Russians are unlearning how to speak Russian!

In the theory of zaum there is a healthy kernel, inasmuch as the question of the technique of poetic art and of the development of poetic language has been posed. But when "zaumniks" move toward the abolition of meaning in verse, when they see in verse only a combination of pronounceable sounds (and this is the final result of "sdvigology"), then "zaum" ceases being a technical device and becomes a theory, the ridiculousness of which one has to demonstrate.

He hopes that no one will be taken in by Kruchonykh's book, but "the idea that poetry is exclusively a sonic art has already seduced many"not, however, the proletarian poets, whose task is to express an ideology.

Bryusov's attack on the Shemshurin/Kruchonykh sdvigological principle of sound combinations over word boundaries is certainly on


target and successfully deflates one of the weakest parts of Kruchonykh's critical theory, but that did not cause Kruchonykh to abandon it right away. He subsequently applied it to Pushkin (1924a; 1973:279-350) and attempted to respond to Bryusov by pointing out that in verse the metric foot plays a role in subdividing the line, and this weakens the feeling for word boundary (1924a:11). But we can safely leave this unfruitful dispute without further consideration.

Of the remaining publications from 1923, Fonetika teatra [The Phonetics of the Theater] (1923d) is the swan song of zaum. In contrast to Kruchonykh's other recent works, Phonetics does not avoid phonetic zaum, but rather luxuriates in it.

Boris Kushner's introduction to the book emphasizes the social dimensions of language and the linguistic changes that have come about as a result of the Revolution. The language context is very important:

One cannot conduct oneself the same way linguistically in one's room, on the street, and in a session of a legislative body. This truth was consciously adopted first by the Futurist poets. [ ... ]

The concern for giving the street a special language, a special social dialect peculiar only to it, stimulated the Futurists to engage in developingzaum.

Zaum is a language of loud, short, bright signals, a language of maximal dynamism. The significance [znachenie] of the signal is not only different from instance to instance- it can change even in the course of the short span of time needed to pronounce it.

Although A. Kruchonykh has been developing zaum in the area of poetry and using the devices of verse forrri., this language is least of all a specifically poetic language.

Zaum is primarily a language of public action, the tempo and rhythm of which far exceeds the slowness of ordinary human language in its speed and dynamics. (:4-5)

Given that the theater is a "public action" that has been languishing, zaum can make an important contribution to it. Similarly, zaum can contribute to oratorical practice, public demonstrations, and propaganda. Ov~r-optimistically, Kushner concludes:

This dialect is breaking more and more openly into speech practice. It is serving quite definite social needs, and in this sense its victory is guaranteed.

Zaum is being and will be victorious as a social dialect. (:6)


, Yet, despite this evident enthusiasm for zaum, oddly enough, Kushner never seems to have written any himself.

Next in the book is a series of statements by Kruchonykh that are surprisingly close to the principles first articulated by Marinetti in his manifestoes of the early 1910s: strong emotions cause ordinary language to be exploded, disordered, distorted.

In the presence of strong emotions the meaning [znachenie] (concept) of the word is not all that important, is even forgotten; a person in a state of emotion mixes up words. forgets them, says others, distorts, but the emotional side of them at the same is not destroyed (the zaum part); on the contrary the sound image and the sound (phoneme) live as never before, and the more unusual and expressive they are, the better material they are for expressing intense emotions! (:7)

But to this Kruchonykh adds an element new both to him and to what Marinetti had to say: "The summit of emotions and furor rJ!arezh] is during elemental mass movements of peoples; zaum was always the language of the chorus (refrains, exclamations), choral action is the beginning of theater" (:7). Here Kruchonykh is obviously trying to tie Greek theater (and theater in general), contemporary social revolution, and zaum together in a neat package which fills the .social order of the day. This section ends with a "military cry" that is in virtually pure ~'· phonetic zaum with only a few suggestions of foreign words:

Khosmochay

Gunt zhamen goda Aga-ga-a-gug! gum! Birchi kudar gug-

GY-GA-GAII

0-urray go zok zyn zon Zuk zuk bun chubur! Chynygar Plins! Ps-s-s! : . . 0-urrat zok zon! Barrobas gor mechagor metar! Garyman-gykh! Chibu-u-borcha


rabchub- ga ... -opirchUII ... (:8)

Building on this general position, Kruchonykh proceeds specifi

cally to the theater:

For the actor, zaum is the most expressive language because it is born of oral speech (sound-aural) and expressively uses articulatory devices directed toward the not yet congealed impression of the given moment; our existing languages are primarily the product of ossifications of dead roots (from which, for example, Esperanto is built). Zaum is created and made by the artist and not just passively adopted as a heavy inheritence from ages past; it is the sole constructive [konstructivny] language.

Here Bely' s principle of revivifying ossified word roots ("The Ma~~ of Words," 1910a) is combined with the new doctrine of Constructivism in vogue in the early 1920s.r"Zaum allows the crunching of words to fulfill a definite phonetic (or other) task." Note that even phonetic zaum, originally a language with "indefinite meaning," can now be used to fulfill a" definite" [opredelyonnoe] assignment. Moreover, the speed and intensity of zaum make it an ideal language for use in the ciner:na; za~m strives to be internationally applicable. Then to conclude this section Kruchonykh proposes an interesting innovation:

Zaum can serve not only for the most common emotions-fear, anger, jealousy,-but it can run parallel with the actor's acting for the whole length of the film-zaum will be an emotional accompaniment (at first perhaps such theater would be accessible only to the few). In some typically cinematic places, verbal parallelism is made technically impossible- the word can't keep up with the film, and here only zaum is possible! (:10)

In the next section, "Phonetics of the Theater," Kruchonykh reacts to Bryusov and others who say: "Your zaum words are incomprehensible!" or more dangerously charge:" And if comprehensible, then only to five people!-That's antisocial(!!!)" (:11). Kruchonykh responds: "But the theater knows best of all that if an actor does not know how to convince using only phonetics (sound, intonation, rhythm), then no meaning [smysl] can help him. For the benefit of the actors themselves and for the education of the deaf-mute public, it is vital to stage zaum playsthey will revive the theater!" He therefore proposes zaum exercises (his own Stanislavsky method of sound training) involving the careful study and reciting of the examples of zaumfound in the book "for.~~ development of sensitivity to the word as such and of vocal flextbthty and for finding each actor's own sound-sequence and rhythm." Zaum will


provide "hygiene for the throat" and "hygiene for language," among other beneficial effects. Examples of phonetic zaum are then provided from Zdanevich' s Yanko (1918) and Kruchony kh' s Victory Ooer the Sun.•

The occasional use of phonetic zaum to convey the sound of machines, trains, etc., is here given an emphasis unusual for Kruchonykh: "If not today-tomorrow little people will descend from the stages of theaters and their places will be taken by dynamos, tunnels, canals, magnets, and their speech will be zaum" (:15). Thereupon follows an evidently new playlet titled "Underwater Tunnel (Throat-metallic resonator)" with three voices speaking in phoneticzaum (:16-17). Sonorant consonants and the vowel u are appropriately foregrounded, making the speech sound as if it indeed occurred in a resonant tunnel (e.g., "Dun -lu rub! Kurro!"). In a section titled "Sounds of the Revolution," he provides a series of illustrations from himself and Mayakovsky, and takes a jab at Bely for finally seeing the light by belatedly publishing his Glossaloliya. Following this is a selection of Kruchonykh poems in phonetic zaum. Some of them are unfamiliar and may be new, and these are given titles such as "Throat," "Sweet Lament," "Greeting," "Rebel," or "The East" that suggest an expressive content and therefore a context for their use, though one would be hard-pressed to identify the basis for such a connection. Examples are also given from Terentev and Zdanevich. Then an actor, A. Olenin, gives a brief description of how to read a zaum poem by Kruchonykh, "Descent of an Airplane" (:31-32). Unfortunately, the poem is onomatopoetic in con- '' tent and therefore not really zaum.

After a lengthy excerpt from Kruchonykh the Grandee (1919), Kruchonykh concludes with a brief history of zaum, in which he mentions his creation of the "first complete work" of zaum, "Dyr bul shchyl," in December 1912 and emphasizes that no one before him wrote works II entirely" in zaum, although individual lines Of zaum COUld be found in Khlebnikov, Guro, and Kamensky. He takes credit for founding a whole school of zaum, including works by himself ("about 100 zaum poems and several plays"), Khlebnikov, Guro, Kamensky, Tretyakov, Rozanova, Zdanevich, Terentev, "et al.," and for laying the foundations for its study by Shklovsky, Chukovsky, Jakobson, and himself. Since this is his most complete summation of the place of zaum in literature, let me present the concluding pages of this work in their entirety:

Problems arising with the appearance of zaum are the following: 1) The imagistic and phonetic side of zaum language. Until now all investigators have directed attention mainly to the sonic,

phonetic side of zaum and have accused us even of wishing to transfer poetry to the state of music, i.e. to deprive it of one of its important partsword-imageness, completely forgetting that by the formation of verbal


sdvigi and zaum-synthetic words we have forwarded an absolutely new state of zaumness of the image, a state expressible by our words, for example: sakhrun, mizyun ', trust', rokokovy rokokuy, gnestr, peter, etc.

"E to vetra laskovy peter'' [This is the affectionate peter of the wind] C:V. Khlebnikov). In the word "peter'' is united the verb "pet"' [to sing) and the noun "veter" (wind] and the song of the wind is given as one word peter, a new, still not exactly definite image, partly reminiscent of a rooster [petukh].

In the zaum word there are always parts of various words (concept images, which provide a new "zaum"(not exactly definite) image. (For example: the word peter permits also another interpretation than the one we have given it.)

The phonetic side of the zaum word is hardly a simple sound imitation (for then it would be ordinary language" ay- ay" or" meow- meow") but rather a self-sufficient, always unusual sound combination, for example:

Kho-bo-ro Mo-cho-ro Vo-ro-mo

Zhlych The task of zaum language is always to provide a new sound sequence

unusual for the given language, thus refreshing to the ear and throat, the sound-perceiving and -producing organs of hearing and speech.

Among further problems we note: 2) The fate of zaum language-

a) to what extent will we permit zaum in poetry (individual words, short segments, whole poems, dramas, novels?).

b) to what language does the future belong- to ordinary language or zaum, and is zaum only the rejuvenation of old language or its complete replacement.

3) Zaum and society: a) is zaum the product of individualism, of subjective sa

voring of the world, or does it have a collective principle, is it needed by the masses? (mass signalization).

b) is zaum the language of the future (abstractionism, constructivism), or of the past (savagery, primitivism) ....

At the moment my opinion and belief are: ZAUM IS THE NEW ART GIVEN BY THE NEW RUSSIA to the whole amazed and confused world. (:40-42, punctuation sic)

The answers to some of these questions and the fate of zaum were at hand when the issue was raised here, because the greatest proponent of zaum had by now in essence abandoned it himself. And while Zdanevich and Kruchonykh had written large works, including dramas, in zaum, no novels have been written in it (would a zaum novel be recognizable as a novel by its prose layout and size?). And the New


Russia and the world, though perhaps amazed and confused, were not much to appreciate this gift. The question posed in 3b, however, remains an open one. ,

In these years and following, Kruchonykh published other poems, plays, and theoretical statements, and edited collections, but none of these add anything to our understanding of zaum5• Reportedly, to the end of his life, despite other significant poetic achievements, Kruchonykh considered zaum to be his primary claim to fame (McVay 1976:571), though by 1923 he had ceased to produce and develop it. However, the history of zaum itself does not end here, since zaum continued to be the subject of debate and polemic throughout the 1920s.

THE FORMALISTS

In "Victory without End" Kruchonykh mentioned the theoretical writings on zaum by Roman Jakobson and the OPOYAZ critics Shklovsky, Brik, and Yakubinsky. Shklovsky's article "On Poetry and Zaum Language" (1916, 1919a) formed the backbone of our Introduction. It is the first treatise by a non-practitioner of zaum to take a positive view of the phenomenon and argue for its universality. Zaum has in general been recognized as an important influence on the early stages in the development of Formalist literary theory (see especially HansenLtive 1978 and P. Steiner 1984). Let us therefore examine the views of the other Formalists as well.

Osip Brik's article "Sound Repetitions" (1917,1919) delves deeply into the ways in which sound patterning is used in poetry not merely as a decorative element, but as an essential organizing feature; however, his analyses stay within the realm of traditional verse, primarily by Pushkin and Lermontov.

Lev Yakubinsky's series of articles from various vantage points also underscores the importance of sound for poetic language. His "The 0 ustering of Similar Liquids in Practical and Poetic Language" (1917 a, 1919a) points out that in so-called practical language (i.e., everyday communicative speech) repetitions of r or l in the same word tend to be avoided as difficult to pronounce, and there is a strong inclination to dissimulate them (e.g., to say prolub instead of prorub [a cut-through]), whereas such repetitions are valued in poetic language. In this category he includes the speech of children, the mentally ill, and sectarians.

A second article in the same collection, "The Creation of Sound Similarity in Lermontov's poetry" (1917b), studies the drafts of Lermontov poems and reveals that Lermontov's guiding principle in making revisions was to find words that were closer in sound to the words surrounding them than those in initial versions. In "On Poetic


Glossemocombination" (1919b) Yakubinsky provides a list of over twenty examples of "new combinations of speech units" which relate "to the realm of sounds, to the morphological side of speech, to the structure of the sentence (syntax), and to the semantic elements of language" (:10). He sees these as instances of "creative glossemo-com~ination" (1919b), i.e., of linguistic inventiveness, which are engaged m as an end in itself and give pleasure to speakers and hearers, regardless of any practical aims of communication. Several of his examples incorporate elements of zaum such that the resultant expressions are unclear in meaning. Finally, in "On the Sounds of Verse Language" (1919c) Yakubinsky summarizes these observations, concluding: "In verse language thinking, sounds float up into the bright field of consciousness; in this connection an emotional relationship to them arises, which in tum leads to the establishment of an interdependency between the content and its sounds; this is also facilitated by expressive movements of the speech organs" (:49). To support these conclusions he refers to Shklovsky' s article and adds additional material from William James, Bally, Meillet, Shcherba, Bezpyatov, Grammont, Pogodin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Gogol, Kuzmin, Sergey Volkonsky, F. Zelinsky,

et al. To these articles we can add Evgeny Polivanov's "On 'Sound Ges-

tures' in Japanese," which was included in the second series of OPOYAZ articles (1919), though Kruchonykh does not mention it. Polivanov, while recognizing that most words are not directly expressive in their sound composition, notes that "intonation and gesture have a potentially natural character'' (:30), which in some instances is carried over into sound composition itself and has pretensions to a universally understandable meaning. Following Wundt, he calls them "sound gestures" [zvukovye zhesty], and they include onomatopoetic expression. He finds Japanese to be especially rich in th~m and devotes most of the article to examples from Japanese. Most common are double two-syllable words (e.g., gorogoro=thunder) expressing natural sounds.

Jakobson's pioneering study of Khlebnikov, The Newest Russian Poetry (written in Moscow 1919, published in Prague 1921, abbreviated English translation 1973} is now considered a classic of literary criticism and theory and has been discussed extensively. Because Jakobson focuses primarily on Khlebnikov and on the unusual but not particularly zaum aspects of his poetry, only a few of his remarks are relevant to our study. He defines poetry variously as "utterance for the purpose of expression" and as "language in its aesthetic function"; in any case it is characterized by having its communicative function reduced to a minimum (1973:62). In a selective way, he applies the concept of the sdvig to Khlebnikov. He identifies a "temporal sdvig" in Khlebnikov' s "Worldbackwards" in which during a dialogue time runs


in reverse and the characters get progressively younger (:68-69), and a "syntactic sdvig" under which he includes a variety of syntactic abnormalities, such as metathesis and anacoluthon (1921:34-37). Later he gives examples of a "stress sdvig" in which a normal word is deformed by changing its stress placement (1921:46-47), the only instance where he gives an example from Kruchonykh. In this discussion of types of sdvigi we can find in embryonic form the framework for Kruchonykh's "sdvigology," soon to be articulated, and for the analytical approach developed for the present study. Jakobson also attends to the matter of neologism, stating: "That focus upon expression, upon the verbal mass itself, which I have called the only essential characteristic of poetry, is directed not only to the form of the phrase, but also to the form of the word itself" (1973:73). Neologisms are to be found in folklore of all kinds, including children's, and they enrich poetry in three ways:

1. They create a bright euphonic interlude, while the established words become phonetically obsolete, being worn out by constant use, and, most important, because they are only partially apprehended in their phonetic patterns; 2. In practical language the form of the word is no longer appreciated; it is dormant and petrified. However, we cannot help apprehending the form of a poetic neologism, given so to speak in statu nascendi; 3. The meaning of a word at any given moment is more or less static, but the meaning of a neologism is to a significant extent defined by its context, while at the same time it may oblige the reader to a certain etymological ,, cerebration. (:75)

This increases one's awareness of etymological relationships in general. Jakobson also discusses folk etymology, other types of semantic deformation, and phonetic deformations, such as sectioning words either for rhythmic purposes or to insert another word in the middle (see Kruchonykh's list of similar devices (1923a:1-3)). He is careful to state that" euphony operates, however, not with sounds but with phonemes, that is, with acoustical impressions which are capable of being associated with meaning" (:77). Hence, all of these devices fall outside the realm of zaum when they can be interpreted successfully, even if some extra effort is needed. However, Jakobson allows for the "important possibility" of" objectlessness" [bespredmetnost'] for a neologism. He gives an example, but elaborates in a footnote only to say: "To a significant degree every poetic word is objectless. This is what a French poet [Mallarme] had in mind when he said that in poetry there are flowers which are not to be found in any bouquet" (1921:47).

Only on the last pages of his study does Jakobson pick up the theme of zaum briefly. Having given several examples of coinages where the interpretation is not obvious ("Esmerami verdomi" [Bolshakov ], "vidennega" and "zinziver" [Khlebnikov]), he remarks: "Words of this type are as it were seeking a meaning for themselves. Here it is per-


haps mistaken to speak of the complete absence of semantic sense" (1973:82). There is a second type of neologism that "strives to not enter into any kind of coordination with a given practical language" (1921:82; 1973:82 mistakenly has "poetic language"), such as sectarian glossolalia, which is supposed to represent a "foreign" language, or Khlebnikov's various bird, monkey, or demon languages. In a footnote to "a given practical language," he adds: "But inasmuch as the latter exists, inasmuch as there is a phonetic tradition present, zaum speech is not to be compared with pre-language onomatopoeia any more than a nude contemporary European can be compared with a naked troglod~te." Thus, despite the very significant place in poetry that Jakobson gtves toneologistic inventiveness, he ultimately stops short of allowing it to have any final indefiniteness. Zaum words are either in search of meaning (and presumably will eventually find it), or they are words from another language (which we could understand if we knew the other language). Hence, Kruchonykh's reaction that Jakobson does not go far enough when he restricts zaum to euphonies is quite justified. What Jakobson says may perhaps be true of Khlebnikov, but it is certainly not true of Kruchonykh's pre-1921 theory and practice. Moreover, it might not be true even of poems Jakobson himself wrote earlier under the pen-name Alyagrov (see Chapter 7). (On other ramifications of Jakobson's views see Matejka (1986) and Polkinhom (1991).)

From Formalists who had not yet expressed their views on zaum, 1924 saw the publication of two essays, one by Boris Eykhenbaum and one by Yuriy Tynyanov. In contrast to Shklovsky, Eykhenbaum and Tynyanov take a more cautious position. In his "On Sounds in Verse" [1920], Eykhenbaum does not deal directly with zaum, but rather with so-called" sound-speech" [zvukorech1, primarily as discussed in Bely' s various treatises. He discounts the link between verse and music, because language articulation is" completely absent in music" (1924:202). In verse, because it is such a complex of rhythms and speech acoustics that are "in a logical sense the first moment in the realization of abstract artistic conceptions, [ ... ] the sounds of verse (acoustic and articulational speech conceptions) are self-valuable and self-significant'' (:206). Therefore these must be studied thoroughly.

This view is clearly based on the early Futurist principles out of which zaum grew. In reviewing these in "The Theory of the Formal Method" [1927], Eykhenbaum says:

The transrational experiments of the Futurists acquired considerable significance in principle as a demonstration against the tendency of Symbolism to balk at going beyond the sound "orchestration" accompanying meaning and, as a consequence, to debase the role of sounds in verse. The issue of sounds in verse then took on particular point.[ ... It] had to be

/


reexamined, above all with the aim of pitting a system of exact observations against the Symbolists' philosophical and aesthetic observations, and the pertinent scientific conclusions to be drawn. (1971:9)

It was for this reason that the first OPOYAZ volume in 1916 had been devoted to the problem of sounds and zaum.

Tynyanov, in one of the most important studies of verse to emerge from the Formalist School, The Problem of Verse Language (1924; English translation 1981), analyzes the various ways in which verse form dynamizes language. He opens the chapter "The Sense [Smysl] of the Word in Verse" with the statement:" A word does not have one definite meaning." In fact, "the word does not exist outside of the clause," but is an abstraction, though there is some "category of lexical unity" that may be "the principal sign of meaning [osnovnym priznakom znacheniya]" (1981:64-65). Other speech features may be expressive besides meaning [znachenie] and may even overshadow lexical meaning, highlighting other stylistic features (:70); however, "if the principal sign were to disappear completely, the semantic sharpness of poetic speech would disappear. (This is why completely transrationallanguage. is quickly effaced)" (:96). Here we should point out that Khlebnikov himself noticed this phenomenon:

When I was writing the beyonsense words of the dying Akhenaton in "Ka" [1915]-"Manch, Manch" -they almost hurt to look at; I couldn't read them, I kept seeing lightning bolts between them and myself. But '• now [1919] they don't move me at all. And I don't know why that is. (Khlebnikov 1989:7)

On the other hand, Tynyanov notes that "words without a principal sign (in a given linguistic environment) will be the strongest in terms of lexical coloring" (1981:106). For example, this is true of unfamiliar dialectisms, barbarisms, and foreign names. "Here we already have a phenomenon which turns into the 'transrational,' but nevertheless retains its lexical tonality" (:109); i.e., we recognize from the context at least that they are dialectisms, names, etc. He also discusses" phonetic metaphors" and "phonetic gestures" (basically soundplay) that often result in a serious deformation of the basic meaning of the word (:114-15). In fact, the question ultimately is whether a meaning of some sort is ever entirely absent in even the most extreme cases of unfamiliar words or zaum. Tynyanov seems to posit the possibility that meaning may be absent and then to reject the idea.

Tynyanov nowhere examines Kruchonykh' s poetry, preferring to look instead at Khlebnikov. In his essay "Transitional Period" [1924], he cautions against the popular inclination to identify Khlebnikov with zaum and "meaningless sound-speech" [bessmyslennaya zvukorech1


because: "The essence of Khlebnikov' s theory is in something else. He has moved the center of gravity in poetry away from questions of sound to the question of meaning [smysl]" (1929:559-60). In a later essay, :'on Khlebnikov" [1928], he even considers it possible to discuss Khlebmkov without necessarily speaking about zaum at all, if zaum is understood as meaningless sound (:581), because "for him there is no sound uncolored by meaning" (:589). Perhap~ because Kruchonykh produ~es ~is zaum from material less congemal to Tynyanov than Khlebmkov s, Tynyanov does not care to consider it, and indeed, as we have seen, Kruchonykh' s goals are generally quite different than Khlebnikov' s. Tynyanov himself points out: "Futurism and zaum are not at all simple things, but rather a tentative designation covering different phenom-ena" (:581). . .

Boris Tomashevsky, in his book The Theory of Lzterature: Poetzcs (1928), devotes considerable attention to" euphonies" in poetry: rem~ ding the reader that this involves not only sound, but also articulation. He proposes the useful terms, analogous to phoneme, of" akouseme" for a musico-sonic element and "kineme" for an articulational element (i.e., a movement of the speech organs), and even "kinakeme" for a combination of the two (:55). He classifies the sounds of Russian along the usual lines, and in talking about" sonic expressiveness" concludes: "The basic expressive function[s] of sounds are those associations which we make directly with the phonemes themselves" (:65). These may be onomatopoetic, that is, imitative of external sounds, or associated with non-sonic ideas; hence, "the sound's' which is reminiscent of hissing can also express contempt" (:66), etc. He gives an example of a" zaum" poem by Kamensky, "Taiga Convict's Song," which is full of convict jargon. He calls it zaum because some of the words are unfamiliar to the average reader and therefore meaningless, but, despite this, he considers the poem to be "sonically expressive" (:68). Nevertheless, when later speaking about theme, which he defines as "commonality of thought" [obshchnost' mysli (:131)], he says: "Only a zaum work does not have a theme, and therefore it is nothing more than an experimental laboratory exercise in certain schools of poetry" (:131). Clearly Tomashevsky is a conservative in the matter of zaum, despite the fact that he accepts the direct expressive function of sounds themselves, because zaum "rejects the most powerful aspect of the word- its meaning [znachenie]" (:68).

An intriguing explanation for why the Formalists lost interest in zaum is given by Boris Engelgardt, "a thoughtful philosophical sympathizer of Russian Formalism" (Erlich 1965:186). In his The Formal Method in the History of Literature (1927), he considers the familiar attempts to write in zaum "naive" and unsuccessful in creating a new language system as an alternative to the existing one (:65-66). He sees no analogy between words and expressive gestures or other signals,


because "in its real functioning, the word is not only a means of communicating thought [mysli], but is the thought itself, objectivized in a special way" (:66). Therefore, zaum language is a contradictio in adjecto like "meaningless thought" [bessmyslennaya mysll Oddly enough, he criticizes zaum practitioners and theoreticians for "not daring in general to create pure forms of 'zaum speech,"' and for striving only to create a form of "communication of a purely emotional type," which deprives it of any formal value. However, all of this "does not in the least diminish its significance as an extreme methodological principle" (:67).

Engelgardt disagrees withJakobson's position (1921:63) that zaum is the limit toward which all poetry in practice strives; rather, it is "all in all an abstract [uslovnoe] definition of the boundaries of a strictly aesthetic study of poetry." Zaum is a useful theoretical postulate for examining the limits of language and poetry when dealing with the issue of the opposition between form and content or message and means of communication. "This opposition on the level of communicative interpretation of language phenomena can be eliminated only with the help of the concept of 'zaumness."' Such is the case when we are trying to deal not with the concrete features of a specific work of verbal art, but with "constructing an aesthetic of the word as an object of investigation," and science has the right to use zaum as a "working hypothesis" to aid in the "understanding of a whole series of new facts which do not permit investigation from other viewpoints." Used in this way, the concept of zaum has" quite serious methodological faun- ,, dations" (:68). In a surprising leap of thought, Engelgardt then points out that formal linguistics has long used such a hypothesis (though it conceals the fact), because, despite its insistence that linguistic phenomena must be examined in context, linguistics rarely does so, "and elements of the verbal series as a unified structure are analyzed precisely in their separateness and isolation." Hence, "their correlations with the semantic unity of 'content' are ignored and the investigation is unavoidably transferred to the level of zaum" (:69). Along the same lines, "the majority of psychological investigations of language phenomena can be boldly termed 'zaumno-psychological,' which by the way is partly explained by the peculiar zaumness of contemporary psychology in general," i.e., Freudianism, one presumes. Thus, as a rule, "the investigation of the immanent principles of phonetic, morphological, syntactic, etc. elements of the verbal series not only is of great independent interest, but is also undoubtedly necessary for defining their function in the whole structural formation." To do this, one must eliminate meaningful elements, which is easier to do in practical language, where the rules for making oneself understood are determined by traditional phraseology, and a disruption of the rules results in the elimination of meaning. However, in verbal art" the verbal


series as a whole is presented first of all as the individual creation of an artist and as something distinctly original and idiosyncratic" (:70). There the unity of meaning and expression is much greater than i~ p.ractical language, and separating them for the purposes of analysis Is more difficult. At one time zaum had been a great help in the development of formal methodology, but now new points of view have developed, and, as Eykhenbaum already noted, zaum has moved into the background. Engelgardt regrets this because he feels it is still a relevant and useful tool. He notes the Formalists' tendency to equate zaum exclusively with the phonetic level, while it could certainly be used also to investigate other levels of expression, such as syntax and other com-positional devices separate from "content." .

P. N. Medvedev also points to the value of zaum to Formahsm as "the expression of that ideal limit to which every artistic construction aspires" (1928:143/1978:104), noting its use by Shklovsky in his study of Tristram Shandy and by Eykhenbaum in his studies of Gogol's "The Oyercoat" and of the cinema. In connection with the last, Eykhenbaum [1927] had said:

The very essence of art lies in the human organism's need to discharge those of its" energies" which are excluded from ordinary life or which act in it only partially. [ ... ] This basis, in essence playful and not linked to precisely expressed" sense," is embodied in those" trans-sense" and" selfdirected" tendencies which shine through in every art form and constitute its organic ferment. By using this ferment and transforming it into "expressiveness," art becomes organized as a social phenomenon, as a special kind of "language." The constant gap between "trans-sense-ness" and "language" is indeed the internal antinomy of art, governing its evolution. (Eagle 1981:57 fMedvedev 1978:105)

For other contemporary reviews of the link between Formalism and zaum see Efimov (1929:47-74) and Zhirmunsky ([1919]1928). The latter, responding to Shklovsky's question as to whether sounds have an artistic function independent of meaning [smylsa], answers "definitely that the sounds of poetic speech always have 'meaning [znachenie],' although this meaning does not always reduce to a 'concept [ponyatiyu ].' It is precisely the sonic side of the poetic word that is tightly linked with meaning [znacheniem] in the broadest sense [smysle], and in poetic speech there are no meaningless [ neznachashchikh] sounds" (:343).

Thus, despite some disagreement about the ultimate legitimacy of zaum poetry, among formalist-inclined analysts there was general appreciation for zaum's historical role in the development of formalist thinking on verbal art and for its usefulness as an experimental tool in exploring the boundaries of language.


LEF

The Left Front of the Arts, founded as a new organization of Futurism triumphant under Socialism. attempted to unite avant-garde forces and fight for the integration of a progressive new culture under the Soviet regime (on LEF in general see Stephan 1981 ). As spokesman for the Constructivists and latter-day Futurists, LEF advocated moving art into the arena of industrial production. Since its express purpose in the area of language was to "work on the organization of language sounds, on the polyphony of the rhythm, on the simplification of verbal constructions, on the accuracy of verbal expressiveness, on the manufacture of new thematic devices" (Lawton/Eagle: 203), its journal LEF (1923-25) contained a number of significant essays on the use of language, including zaurn. a controversial subject even within the covers of this avant-garde journal.

The first of these essays, Georgy Vinokur' s article "Futurists, Builders of Language," appeared in No.1 (1923a:204-13). Vinokur emphasizes the systemic and social nature of language and feels that Futurist word invention figured not so much lexically as grammatically. "It culminated in the appearance not of new linguistic elements, but of new linguistic relationships. And, of course, these relationships are created by the method of analogy" (:208-09). Hence, he appreciates the contributions of Khlebnikov and May'}kovsky along these lines. But • when it comes to zaum, he objects that it cannot be called a language, "because the very concept of language presupposes the concept of meaning [smysl]. Thus, a 'zaum' poem as such is asocial, since it is incomprehensible, meaningless." And he describes Kruchonykh's zaum poems as "pure psychology, exposed individualization, having nothing in common with the system of language as a social fact" (:211). He does not deny that zaum words could function in the mundane world as do, for instance, the names of movie houses and brands of cigarettes such as Uranus and Ambassador in which the original meaning of the words is vacated and turned into a mere label for some other concrete object. The cigarettes could just as easily be named Euy and the movie house Zlyustra. In other words, '"zaum language,' as a language deprived of meaning, does not have the communicative function characteristic of language in general. What therefore remains to it is a purely nominative role, and it could successfully perform this role in the area of social nomenclature" (:211-12). It can be looked upon as a laboratory for the creation of a new system of social nominalization, and therefore it has a special social function.

Sounds predestined to perform social-nominative work not only may, but must, be meaningless. Along with this, the present phonetic possibilities


in the language must be carefully checked by the critical ear of the poet; their specific gravity requires exact measuring- and this is precisely what Kruchonykh's experiments give us. In other words, here again we have invention, the value of which is the clearer when it is based on a subtle distinction between the functions of language. (:212)

Certainly the labelling of new objects, products, organizations, etc., may indeed be meaningless (e.g., numerous bra~d. names), but w~! he insists that they must be so is not clear, unless It Is merely to facilitate the identification process: a product with a unique and meaningless name will not be confused with something else. Stephan sees this as carrying "a good argument to an absurdly narrow conclusi?n" (1981:80-81). But it is the technical, purely linguistic focus of Futunsm that makes an important social and cultural contribution to an understanding of the word and should attract the attention. of linguists. Of course, Vinokur, with his focus exclusively on the social and communicative function of language, places no value on the deliberate indeterminacy of zaum, only on its phonetic experimentation.

While sharing Vinokur's social focus, the essay "Language Creation (On 'Zaum' Poetry)" by Proletkultist Boris Arvatov in LEF No.2 (1923a:79-91; 1928:127-43; Lawton/Eagle:217-31) is more sympathic to the original goals of zaum. He states his purpose clearly in the opening paragraph:

When the works of the "transrationalists" (Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh) first appeared, they were perceived by the public and by the majority of

the scholars: 1. as an unprecedented fact; 2. as a fact possible only in poetry; 3. as a phenomenon of a purely phonetic order (sound play,

"sound combination"); 4. as a sign of the degeneration of poetry and poetic language; 5. as an innovation which did not possess an independent, posi

tively organizing significance, i.e., as something pointless.

In this article I will try: 1. to show that all5 of these positions are erroneous; 2. to provide a sociological explanation for so-called

transreason and its role in poetry. A.s for the last point, I have to limit myself to the formulation of a

working hypothesis. The current state of poetics and linguistics does not allow me to lay claim to anything more ambitious. (LawtonjEagle:217)

The first two points are easily demolished by examples in previous literature, children's lore, sectarian glossolalia, and everyday speech drawn from Chukovsky, Shklovsky, and Yakubinsky which indicate that the phenomenon has a broad social base. On the third point he


says:

People tend to see "transreason" as a "combination of sounds," and if they recognize its formal significance it is only as a musical or acoustic value. "Transreason" appears to be an abstract, phonetic composition. This concept alone would be enough to put "transrational" forms outside the domain of verbal forms, because language in all its manifestations possesses three continuous and necessary facets: phonetic, morphologicalsyntactic, and semantic. And yet, we talk about "transrational" language, the "transrational" form of speech. Finally, the problem of "transreason" would never have been raised if it did not fall into the range of linguistic facts. "Transreason" is interesting precisely because it is not a mere combination of sounds (recitative, melody, vocal music), but a form which is pronounced and realized in a social context (verses, conversation, the flagellants' ecstasy, lovers' talk), i.e., a form of language. (:220-21)

Arvatov argues that the mistake occurs in not taking into account that 11 every pronounced -sound composition is inevitably perceived against the background of a given language system, and consequently penetrates it as a new element, subordinates itself to all the norms, and becomes active only because we associate this new composition with the usual norms of our language creation." In other words, there are no pure or abstract phonetic forms, because we automatically associate any new sound combinations with those already existing in our language. "That is why 'transreason' is not a phonetic, but a phono- •· logical (Takobson's term), and even morphological, phenomenon." He gives examples interpreted along the lines we have pursued ourselves and concludes: 11 a meaningless, absolutely trans rational, speech is impossible. [ ... ] The question is actually our degree of understanding-a quantitative, rather than a qualitative difference" (:221-22). For Arvatov, the only difference between zaum and exotic or unfamiliar words is that the latter already exist in another context and have a precise practical function there, while the former are the product of conscious verbal invention.

This issue is developed further in response to the fifth point. "Kruchenykh defines transrational forms as having an indefinite meaning. Actually, it would be more correct to say: function" (:223). He broadens his definition: "The' transrational' is anything which adds to the common mass of devices used in everyday speech newly created devices which do not have a specific communicative function" (:223-24). Thus, any literary (or just verbal) device that does not have a communicative function is to some extent zaum, and this includes virtually all esthetic devices. Anything that is not mandatory for getting the message across is zaum. In effect, for him all art is zaum. (We should say that this definition is much too broad.) He then suggests that the term zaum, while once useful, "will not pass the test of serious criti-


cism," and a new and more precise classification of "categories ~f ~e language-creation process" must be worked out. The fourth pomt IS easily dismissed at the end: anything that is creative cannot be decadent. "Language creation is a positive organizing force" (:225).

In the second part of his article, Arvatov deals with language creativity, experimentation, and innovation in general, in w~ich za~m, narrowly defined, is only a part. He does, however, credit ~utunsm and zaum with bringing the social function of poetic innovabon.to the fore by rejecting language norms and poetic canons and conscw~sly developing a system of neologism. But in the matter of the practical function of zaum, he parts company with Vinokur:

The social use of experimental achievements always presupposes the presence of a firm criteri[on], of a purpose. But "transreason" has no purpose and cannot have one.

A direct social use of ready-made products generated by individualistic "transrational" language creation is impossible. Vinokur's proposal is as utopian as Kruchenykh's and Khlebnikov's fantasies about a "universal" language which would originate from "transreason." (:229)

Ultimately, poetic and practical language have different functions, and something created in the sphere of poetic language can rarely be tra~planted into practical language directly .. Neve~thel;ss~ ~e agrees With Vinokur that the zaumniks can be credited with significant and progressive achievements in lin~uistic ~echniqu~ an~ theory that will, in consonance with new collective social orgamzation, lead to an amalgamation of poetic and practic~l l~guage: "~e engineering culture of language (Vinokur' s expression) Is the practical task of our epoch. The 'transrationalists' are its partial, individualistic-heralds- the proletariat must become its complete realizers" (:231). Later, Arvatov added that Khlebnikov' s contribution was "work on practical language," while Kruchonykh's was "work on emotional language" (1926:140). .

In the same issue of LEF, Vinokur mounts an attack on revolutionary cant, calling empty phrase-mongering "pure 'za~m:, a collection of sounds which our stylistic ear is so used to that It Is completely impossible to react to these calls to action in any way" (1923b:112-13).6

Thus, he equates zaum with ineffective and unaffective language. Laying out a more detailed program for social linguistics alo~g the lines .of his first article, and apparently in response to Arvatov, m the next Issue Vinokur insists: "The theory which makes a distinction in principle between the practical word and the poetic word does not hold up against any serious criticism. The poetic word is the same as the practical word, only served up, so to say, 'with a different sauce'" (1923c:109). This effectively eliminates the possibility of any other goal for poetic language than communication. He soon became even more


conservative, deciding that even the term" zaum language" was a contradiction in terms since language had to have meaning, and zaum did not have any (1925:196). He denies that zaum can have any expressive power and at best is "a product of purely bestial, animal creativity" (:198). Furthermore, he rejects the possibility of using zaum even for naming products, as he had proposed previously. He does this on rather peculiar grounds:

The problem here is obviously no longer with the language at all, but exclusively with the historical conditions under which one or another name presents itself to us. As a simple historical indicator, the introduction of one or another sound complex into a historical material context gives us the right to interpret this complex as a name. Hence zaum could have become a means of social nomenclature if it had been surrounded by corresponding historical indicators and commentaries. However, what real commentaries are possible for "zaum," inasmuch as it, as a noun, has a meaning that is merely potential? In order to write zaum poetry with such "productive" goals, Kruchonykh would have had to first create his own new history. But evidently even the zaumniks themselves are beginning to understand that zaum in principle is an impossible thing, regardless even of the goals it is pursuing: it is not by accident that in his most recent "experiments" the same Kruchonykh, for example, now frames his zaum in morphemic constructions ("rokokovy rokokuy") or uses it to convey the ~ meaning of a certain parodic relationship to a normal word ("zlyustra" etc. [zlyus'=I'm angty; lyustra=chandelier]). And so this new attempt by Futurism to go beyond the bounds of historically determined traditional linguistic patterns ends in self-parody. (:198-99).

In short, zaum does not reflect or relate properly to the current historical state of society and language. Moreover, the indefiniteness of zaum makes it roundly condemnable, and Vinokur, in his later study of Mayakovsky, calls it a "semi-maniacal conception" and "a manifestation of hatred for the word" (1943:18-19).

Meanwhile, as the debate on zaum raged within LEF, reactions to LEF in the Soviet press "ranged from qualified approval to outright sarcastic comments. None demonstrated support for the program of the Left Front of the Arts" (Stephan:35). One of the earliest of these reactions was an attack in Pravda by Party critic L. Sosnovsky, who had been characterized even by V. Polonsky, editor of the journal Pechat' i Revolyutsiya, as "the bitterest and perhaps most unjust critic of LEF" (Polonsky 1923a:292; also 1923b:329). (Polonsky himself was no admirer of zaum; he had in the same breath referred to zaum as "neumny" [unintelligent] and "unnecessary either to LEFor to the reader," and


had advised that such experiments should be confined to the artist's laboratory (1923a:292).) Sosnovsky took LEF to task for publishing Kamensky's "Zgara-amba" ["The Juggler'' (LEFNo.1:18)Y and used it as a prime example of how LEF was "against understandability" and out of touch with the masses. He said the same thing about Kruchonykh's "Ice-cream Vendor of the Gods" (1923e). He also questioned Terentev's profession of loyalty to the revolution, suggesting that he and other Tiflis zaumniks were Mensheviks or secret White Guardists who had fled the Bolsheviks. In reply, LEF No.3 Oune-July 1923) published a series of responses. Brik defended the political reliability ofTerentev, Zdanevich, and Kruchonykh (Brik 1923:4). Terentev pointed out that Zdanevich had left Tiflis for Paris to flee not the Bolsheviks, but the Mensheviks, that Kruchonykh had gone toward and not away from the Red Army by moving to Baku, and that he himself had gone to Constantinople with a Soviet passport and returned home to work for the Soviet Army (Terentev 1923:5). Arvatov responded to a similar attack by V. Polyansky, who had implied that, because "we Marxists have always thought that the word and language are a product of social development," Arvatov's advocacy of zaum was anti-Marxist (Polyansky 1923b:206). To this Arvatov replied: "The center of [my] article was the idea that the elemental development of language must be replaced by a consciously planned one and that the experimentalism of the 'zaumniks' was important only in that sense" (Arvatov 1923:9). He challenged both Polyansky and Sosnovsky to substantiate the charge that Kamensky's poem was "meaningless" by taking the time to analyze it first from the formal-linguistic and then from the sociological viewpoint before making rash and unscientific judgements.

The same issue of LEF also included a few responses by members of LEF who were Communist Party workers. Sergey Vol odin described how crowds at Mayakovsky's "Purges of Poets" at the Polytechnical Museum "voted into the ranks of poets genuinely revolutionary masters of the word-Aseev, Kruchonykh, Kamensky and others, whose every scratch of the pen gives off a brilliant electromagnetic spark" (Volodin 1923:25). He also maintained that Mayakovsky' s yellow blouse and "Dyr bul shchy I" were necessary at the time as antidotes and protests against the oppressive climate of bourgeois society (:27). Party activist and LEF theoretician N. Chuzhak called upon the Party to end the internal squabbling among factions in the arts even within LEF itself and support the Productivist wing against the old-style Futurists (Chuzhak 1923:28-33). Another Communist Party functionary, N. Gorlov, complained that the "primitively naive" Comrade Sosnovsky seems not to have noticed all the ideologically positive things in Mayakovsky for the last decade or in LEF and has chosen to focus on the former's once provocative yellow blouse and the one zaum-like


poem by Kamensky published in LEF. Gorlov had written an essay, "Futurism and Revolution," men

tioned by Chuzhak as already available prior to the publication of LEF No. 3 (:28), and finally published as a separate booklet in 1924. In this essay Gorlov considers the revolution in literature accomplished by the Futurists in 1913 to be "parallel to our" Communist revolution (:18) in importance and without which "poetic creativity is no longer thinkable" (:26). He credits them with a revolution in sound that introduced to poetry the "sound image": "This sound image had until then been hidden from us by semantic content [smyslovym soderzhaniem]" (:22).

Simply put, the sounds of one word freely combined with the sounds of neighboring words, forming with them independent sound images. These images live in the verse on their own and sometimes are so clearly highlighted that they completely overshadow the semantic significance of the line. (:26)

Gorlov is one of the few critics to refer with respect to Kruchonykh' s sdvigological discoveries in Pushkin and other poets (:27), pointing out that Mayakovsky may have dropped a preposition to avoid an "unpleasant sound sdvig" (oknu lechu instead of k oknu lechu [I fly [to] the window], since koknu would suggest kaknu [I defecate](:49). The new poetry would not tolerate the insensitivity to sound combinations that Kruchonykh showed was pervasive in the old poetry. However, the sound image must be a reflection of the semantic image, and only the co~bin_ation o~ the two can" attain such expressiveness, such psychologtcaltmpact m verse, as not to be found anywhere in the poetry of the past" (:28). Gorlov also points to the masses of new words coined to serve the revolutionary epoch. ,

But when he comes to Kruchonykh and zaum poetry itself, Gorlov is much less supportive. "Kruchonykh is a one-sided artist and a onesided revolutionary. He is a destroyer in art. And that means he is no longer a futurist. He is a former futurist," who is static and hasn't moved since 1913, though his recent poems in LEF ("Ruhr'' (1923e) and "May 1~t" (1923£)) show progess (:31). Gorlov gives zaum a detailed analysts:

The revolution does not kill the old language, but rebuilds, purifies and renews it. In naming the lily" euy," Kruchonykh disrupts the organic unity of language; he kills the language itself as a factor of social order. In the name of social revolt he creates an antisocial thing. He is a bad revolutionary.

The same thing with zaum. Zaum is a language not having a definite meaning [he is quoting verbatim the phrase from the introduction to "Dyr bul shchyl"J, a language built not on a semantic, but ~n a sound image.


But the sound image-as I've already defined it-is nothing but a reflected semantic image. A clear, entirely cognized image is replaced by an indefinite, hazy, semicognized one. As a rule, the emotional effect of such an image has to be much weaker than that of a direct semantic image. And although Kruchonykh tries to convince us that ordinary language in the sense of expressivity is 1000 times weaker than zaum., his zaum poems convince us of the opposite. True, there are cases when a pure sound image-some unfamiliar word or a name of something heard for the first time-produces in us a strong, deep emotion. But this happens exactly when we ourselves posit a clear, precise semantic content beneath a sound image which we find indefinite. At such moments we ourselves become artist-creators. How does this occur? In the majority of cases the semantic image is drawn toward the given sound combination by way of association: the unfamiliar word reminds us by sound of a series of other, familiar ones, and their meeting in our brain produces an accidental, sometimes very complex and subtle harmony, which flows out into a living, high-relief image that is new for us and therefore is brightly colored with emotion. So I recall that one time I was deeply excited by first hearing the name of the Palestinian city Kiriafiarim. I clearly imagined the sundrenched sand and a woman's name as though said by someone, and the image of a woman, and even the sparkle of the sun and the rustle of yellow, definitely yellow, silk.

Taking' the word Kiriafiarim apart into sound images, we obtain a whole harmonious series: Kiria (Kyrie-eleison-Syria), Kir-ria (suggesting the name Mariam or Maria) fia-rim (again a feminine image-fia, combined with sunny Rome [Rim]. But positing a semantic image beneath a sound image can occur also for a different reason: not by external, but by internal association, not as a result of consonances with other words, but as a link in a chain of emotions. (:32-33)

Here Gorlov gives the example of the women in Chekhov' s story "The Peasants," who, because of the emotional impact of the Orthodox liturgy, are brought to tears by Church Slavic conjunctions.

And so we see that zaum, as a pure language of sounds, as speech freed from all semantic meaning, is a zero in poetry or at least an infinitesimally small quantity. In fact, zaum is the same semantic language. Only zaum approaches the image not by a direct, but by a circuitous path. Zaum is a semantic echo reflected from other words. But the echo is audible only when it sounds clearly. And zaum acts on us the more strongly, the more clearly it reflects the semantic image. Zaum does not destroy the semantic language, but only expands its boundaries. The sound image does not force the semantic element from poetry, but, uniting with it and helping it, produces with it the maximum of emotional expression. Therefore every attempt to remove meaning from poetry for the sake of the hegemony


of sound is predestined to fail. (:34)

Hence, Kruchonykh has killed himself as a poet. Gorlov imagines a state of affairs in which zaum can be a valued

element in poetry, but he requires it to remain in the service of clear meaning. The only way this could be possible would be to reduce zaum to the equivalent of routine soundplay, though the echo-effect of semantic suggestiveness would apparently remain part of its function as well. Interestingly, his analysis of Kiriafiarim follows the same lines as our attempts to interpret Kruchonykh's zaum. For Gorlov the decoding is a rather precise explanation of the mental picture he had upon hearing the word, but we might expect that others' interpretations of the same word would differ. Thus, the indefiniteness remains, and any sense of precision is subjective. Nevertheless, his method of decoding seems appropriate. In the end, though, the role he sees for zaum is anomalous:

Zaum as an element in poetry presents great value; as a sound image acting together with meaning, it has already entered poetry and occupied a firm place there. Zaum will find (and is already finding) application not only in the selection of words by sound image, but also in the restructuring of words themselves. But [ ... ]one shouldn't bust one's brains even with such a revolutionary blockbuster as a univeral world language, and • one shouldn't arm sound against meaning. Otherwise poetry will become empty sound. (:34-35)

Returning to LEF No.3 (1923:154-64), we find that Sergey Tretyakov also contributed to the discussion. In the context of a defense of Futurism in general against continuing charges that it was full of madmen and "charlatan advertisers" and, more recently, that its works were "incomprehensible to the masses," Tretyakov again focuses on the practical benefits of Futurist experimentation:

The Futurist-transrationalists work on the phonetic aspect of language. They look for expressive sounds. They use sound itself as an agitational blow against public taste. Mayakovsky protested with words against mellifluousness, against petty poets who "scraping rhymes on their violins cook up a soup out of love and dove," and Kruchenykh protested against the same things with the sounds, "dyr bul shchyl." It's not the fault of the Futurists if the reader sought in the verse of the transrationalists the usual narrative about something and did not find it. (LawtonfEagle:242)

To the charge that the masses don't understand, he answers that not all of them understand Marxism, mathematics, or writing; hence, effort is devoted to educating them. This can be done with poetry as


well. Finally, to the charge that the Futurists are writing in a special language instead of ordinary speech he answers that '"Futurist' language, as a kind of deliberate gibberish, does not exist. What exists is an expressive language which makes use of all available devices and means of word construction and phrase construction," and that "poetry is a form of spe~ch whose task is to affect our consciousness not only through naked meaning, but also through sound," rhythm, and image (:243-44). As examples of this he points to LEF's offerings:

The transrational works which may give certain people the impression of being aesthetically self-contained manifestations are printed in Lef as examples of laboratory work on the elements of the word: phonetics, rhythm, semantics. Lef is pleased to note the transrationalists' shift in orientation, from isolated experiments to the construction of socially meaningful things, as is illustrated by all the transrationalist pieces published in Lef, with the exception ofV. Kamensky's poems in issue No.1. (:245)

But this new orientation toward "socially meaningful things," as we have seen, has eliminated zaum entirely. The Kamensky poems appropriately excerpted by Tretyakov are among that poet's most radical exercises, and they have elements of zaum in them, though what usually passes for zaum in Kamensky is really a form of onomatopoeia.

In LEF No.2 (6) 1924, Grossrnan-Roshchin lent his support to the view that zaum was an important experimental device, as long as it was not a goal in itself:

It performs a significant function. The sound of the word is revealed, the connection of individual elements, and for this it is experimentally, laboratorially necessary to eliminate the semantic sense [smyslovoe znachenie] of the word. This is a device and nothing more. Of course it is possible to tum any device of an experimental character into a widespread poetic trend, and this would indeed be a decadent phenomenon. [ ... ] In Futurism zaum is merely used to reveal the autonomous nature of the word. After all, the word is not the servant of meaning [smysla), as science was supposed to become the servant of theology! The independent structure of the word opposes the effort to eliminate its phonetic independence by a despotic subordination to meaning. Revealing the nature of the word in this way is necessary precisely for establishing internal-imperative contact with the word. (:97)

Once again the goal of indeterminacy is replaced by a functional orientation: meaning may be made obscure as a strategy for establishing the true nature of the word and for re-establishing a closer and better contact with meaning than is now the case. Hence, despite appear-


ances to the contrary, "in fact the neo-formalists and Futurists can be observed to have an exceptionally serious, concentrated relationship with the word" (:97).

In his "Declaration No.6 on today's arts (Theses)," dated October 1925, Kruchonykh defended LEF in the following way:

The concern of art is to invent and apply (focus, synthesis) the necessary device, while material is always supplied in abundance by all of surrounding life.

Only the device (form, style) provides the face of an epoch. [ ... ]And LEF's device makes even laboratory work revolutionary.

Therefore the question is to be put thus: EITHER academism OR LEF, and no MONGRElS! ... (1973:432)

LEF ceased publication with the first issue of 1925 and was reconstituted as New LEF only in 1927-28. By then, however, zaum was no longer an issue, and it was barely mentioned in New LEF in a discussion of the Left Arts of the mid-1920s in Georgia, where Simon Chikovani was described as engaging in "laboratory work with the zaum word," and as "testing the national phonetic trustworthiness of the invented zaum word" (Esakia 1927:45). In a later issue, Vladimir Trenin described zaum as" already reactionary in our time" and without social or literary function (1928:31, 34).

VARIOUS OTHERS

Among a number of other critics and supporters of zaum whom Kruchonykh identified (1925b:35-38, 53-56), the psychiatrist A. Yushchenko, in a familiar criticism going back as far as 1914, considered zaum to be a psychological problem and compared it to the writing of mental patients. First he gives an example of the latter, then quotes Kruchonykh's "Graveside Word" (1973:272) and "Voen-Kr'' (1922c) with the comment:

Here we have something of an atavism. Recall a primitive man expressing his experiences. A person who did not know how to speak and found himself in contemporary society would express himself by sound-imitating expressions, exclamations, etc. He would invent new, unnecessary words. All this for a person in normal contemporary conditions has to be considered pathological. (1924:93)

Yushchenko follows this with further juxtapositions of writings of the mentally ill and poems by Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky, Kruchonykh, and


Petnikov (whose talent is nevertheless noted). He concludes that in these examples "you have noticed something in common, characterizing an instability and disharmony of creative work, and in places directly psychopathological traits belonging to disassociational transitional periods of personality as well evidently as the period of culture we are experiencing" (:95).

The populist poet Demyan Bedny responded to the renewed fuss about zaum with a poem-manifesto "Forward and upward!" ["Vperyod i vyshe!" 1924] in which he declared himself for simplicity and against poetry that was "tongue-breaking and incomprehensible to boot." The target is specified in the third stanza:

My language is simple, my thoughts, too: In them there is no zaum innovation, -Like a pure spring in a silicate bed, They are transparent and clear.

He ends by asking his "honest verse" to rise above the "mire of rotting literariness." Kruchonykh responds by doubting the inevitability of simplicity in folk language, pointing to the frequent presence of tonguetwisters and figures of speech. Even Bedny himself, notes Kruchonykh, cannot long maintain the cliches of "honest form" and sometimes turns to "language fracturing." He quotes a poem in which Bedny repeats fragmented syllables in a series of lines:"- U, u, u, u!/ Rok, rok, rok, rok!/ I, i,i, i!/ Ok, ok, ok, ok!/ Tya-tya! Tya-tya!" (1925b:55-56).

On the positive side, Kruchonykh refers to a book by V. Serezhnikov, Muzyka slova [The Music of the Word] (1923)8 that surveys many of the works we have also looked at in this context (Bely's Glossaloliya, the articles by Shklovsky, Brik, and Yakubinsky, Kruchonykh's "Declaration of the Word as Such," and The Texture of the Word). For Serezhnikov, who has been working out a system of signs to indicate precise recitational features (see also 1920), "In every sound there is its own magic power of action. It is natural that the music of speech too, as a combination of sounds, has a definite musical impact on the psyche of the perceiver'' (1924:65). When it comes to poetic creation he paints a picture seen earlier in Shklovsky, Gomfeld and others:

The first" sounds" moving in the soul of the poet are indefinite," chaotic"- they represent something akin to glossolalia (the gift of speaking in foreign languages received, according to the Scripture, by the apostles on Pentecost) or zaum language with its unclarity and indefiniteness [here he refers to the "Declaration of the Word as Such" in a footnote].

But then the sounds crystallize, are made "cosmic," are turned into bound-images. (:74)


In his classification of sound effects, he uses Kruchonykh' s "euy" as an extreme example of ziyanie (a cluster of vowels) and his "Voen-Kr" as an extrent.e example of zator (a cluster of consonants) (:75, 77), concluding: "Every sound, even an insignificant, muted one has an impact on the music of the word" (:77). The implication is that at the very least the Futurists and Formalists have drawn attention to this fact. And a sensitivity to sound is highly important for a poet, as in the following statement by Seyfullina which Kruchonykh had quoted earlier in the same book (1925b:13):

An artist must develop his dull human hearing to extreme sensitivity. To hear all life's sounds, not only moans and groans. All its tremors. And himself tremble with it. (1924:51)

Kruchonykh (:38) also mentions Trotsky's astute, though politically slanted critique of Futurism in Literature and Revolution (1924, English translation 1960). Kruchonykh notes (quoting without verbatim precision) that Trotsky had thought it inappropriate to take zaum' s laboratory experiments out into public view (Trotsky 1924:100; 1960:132-34). Trotsky's comments are actually more pointed and interesting. While calling Kruchonykh's claim that "Dyr bul shchyl" was more Russian than anything in Pushkin, "something midway between philologic poetics, and the insolence of mad manners," he grants the • possibility that Kruchony kh' s sound orchestration may suit" the structure of the Russian language and the spirit of its sounds more than Pushkin's orchestration, which is unconsciously influenced by the French language." Nevertheless, this is "philology of a doubtful character, poetics in part, but not poetry." Such new words may, in a certain though very modest degree, facilitate the development of the living and even of the poetic language, and forecast a time when the evo-

. lution of speech will be more consciously directed. But this very work, whose character is [supportive of] art, is outside poetry" (:132-33). "At any rate, it is quite clear that to substitute the exercises of the 'superreason' [zaum] for poetry would stifle poetry" (:134). And the Futurists themselves, he notes, were moving away from this approach. For Trotsky zaum might have performed a useful function for the poet in private, like exercise scales for a musician, but it had not produced finished works of art worthy of public attention. Kruchonykh responds to this by pointing out that because of Futurism's work with sound in poetry, the importance of sound had become axiomatic, and "thus our exercises and experiments turned out to be more significant than other more standard poems of patented authors! Thus often the sketches and studies of an artist are more significant than his large paintings ... " (:38).


Kruchonykh takes pride in the fact that the literary critic LvovRogachevsky concludes his History of Recent Russian Literature (1924) by indicating that Russian literature now faced a choice between returning to the language of Pushkin or moving toward "the 'zaum' of all possible Kruchonykhs with their vagaries and extravagances" (:376). Lvov-Rogachevsky obviously hopes for the former, and his contempt for Kruchonykh is made clear in several places (:282, 284), but Kruchonykh gloats that "obviously no one can avoid the zaum path!" (1925b:S6). After all, it had risen to a position where it is perceived by someone like Lvov-Rogachevsky as a dangerous competitor to the tradition of Pushkin! According to Kruchonykh, even Lunacharsky used it in his plays (though Kruchonykh has now made his definition of zaum so broad that he can find it virtually anywhere he wants to).

R. Shor, in a review of Kruchonykh's 500 New Witticisms and Puns by Pushkin, pointed out that modern linguistics considers the unit of speech not the printed word but the phrase and that "in connected speech there exist not individual words, but complexes of sounds which are almost always available to multiple interpretations" (1924:221-22). In the case of puns:

Relevant here are also cases of incorrect interpretation of an uncomprehended sound complex; since normal consciousness does not permit the saying of meaningless sounds (zaum speech),- it always tries to isolate in the uncomprehended complex known elements (morphemes) familiar to it as bearers of one or another meaning. (:221)

Thus, children and naive adults interpret new or foreign words according to the practices of" folk etymology." And Kruchonykh' s sdvigi, despite the pretense of scientific methodology, are simply the expression of a "naive linguistic consciousness" which fails to "distinguish phonetics from graphics" (:222).

The last substantive critical discussions of zaum in this period turn out to be by the Proletkult critic Sergey Malakhov and the Constructivist theoretician Kornely Zelinsky. Malakhov's article, "The Zaumniks" (1926), is predictably negative, but contains a number of interesting points. He identifies the social roots of zaum in decadent bourgeois society with its "disintegration of the psyche, intellectual vacuity, inability to find one's way and content in class society, pressures on middleclass intellectuals," etc.; hence, "the flight of zaumniks from content is a flight from oneself, from the 'fateful questions' tied to personal catastrophe. This cannot pass without consequences,- the death of meaning [smysl] is for a person the death of the 'meaning of life,'" and this leads to the end of the world in general for such a person (:13). Kruchonykh' s Victory Over the Sun is seen as an expression of this state of affairs.


When Terentev argues that thought that follows all the rules leads to a "global enigma" that one cannot solve, and he therefore recommends zaum ("bzy-py-zy") instead of thinking (1919c:9), Malakhov responds: "In other words,- zaum in general is the antidote to the fateful obligation to think and for the zaumniks it replaces sand (see the parallel with an ostrich), i.e., it is their fetish." Therefore "bzy-py-zy" turns out indeed to be a "whole worldview" (:13).

Malakhov notes Kruchonykh' s predilection for children's language "in its zaum stage" and for shamanic chants, but experiments along these lines "cannot bring any richness to language and reducing our very conceptually rich language to children's babble is something only a person with a decidedly deteriorated psychology would do" (:14). This psychological attack is not new, but Malakhov adds a new dimension: "Their phonetics does not go farther than conveying the emotions of savages and children, for emotions expressed only in sounds (cries of pain and joy, sighs of weariness, shouts accompanying work, etc.) are always primitive, i.e., these emotions themselves are very simple'' (:15). The result of these experiments on sonic expressiveness is that "in the course of 13 years of zaum practice it hasn't gone beyond depicting primitive emotions and sound imitations." Why, he wonders, is there this stagnation if zaum is supposed to be such a progressive phenomenon?

Malakhov's foray did not go without a response from Terentev, • included by Kruchonykh as the final article in his 15 Years of Russian Futurism (1927e:61-67), with the provocative title" About the Disintegrated and the Semi-Disintegrated (Analytics contra Paralytics)." Terentev rejects Malakhov's premise that language is a means of communication, insisting that it is also a means of discommunication or disunity [razobshcheniya], as in war and revolution, and that in the case of poetry it is more accurate to say that it is a means of emotional impact, which, as we have seen, Malakhov is willing to grant. But Terentev points out that expressivity is not as important to the zaumniks as effectiveness: "The zaum word which has not been fully cognized by the hearer acts directly on his au dial reflex without the participation of his logical transformer'' (:62). Terentev argues that the zaumniks have not turned away from life, as Malakhov maintains, but instead have built a new approach to life on the ruins of rotting bourgeois society. Moreover, Malakhov has missed the satirical thrust of such injunctions as "don't think!" Finally, Terentev insists that zaum had not only contributed much in the last 13 years, but "participates in all genuinely significant literary works of recent times" (:66), such as in Seyfullina, Vesyoly, Kirsanov, et al., and was important in the theater. "In our time zaum is the sole live poetics," the only one "based not on the preconceived notions of mysticism and symbolics of word and sound, but on the pure unadulterated word as such." And he adds a Marxist


slant: "Only we, who perceive the word dialectically, i.e., as a developing phenomenon, are the first genuine materialists in poetics" (:67).

As indicated by the title of his most interesting book, Poeziya kak smysl. Kniga o konstruktivizme [Poetry as Meaning: A Book about Constructivism] (1929), Kornely Zelinsky is inclined simply to equate poetry with meaningfulness. In fact, for him Constructivism is "mathematics suffusing all the vessels of culture" (:7). Hence, his attitude to zaum is also negative: "Zaum poetry has taken up arms not only against the semantic overloading [smyslovoy peregruzkz] of poetry by the Symbolists, but also against meaning itself as a whole" (:119). He takes an unusual tack, however, by arguing not that the zaumniks succeeded in eliminating meaning, but rather that meaninglessness in language is essentially impossible:

Indeed zaum poetry is unthinkable outside a context. It does not exist outside a semantic frame (culture in the broad sense). The wider the frame and the farther away the features by means of which we fill the resonant meaningless pause with meaning-the weaker the frame is for us and the farther zaum goes out of the field of consciousness. However, by itself zaum poetry cannot exist by returning to the world of"meaningless" natural sound. Zaum words exist in poetry, too, and in our environment only because there are "intelligible" [umnye] words in front of them and behind them. The weight of meaninglessness in zaum words rests on these semantic trusses. (:123)

This happens, he argues, because the context and sound combinations are set up to "arouse in us the conditioned reflex of semanticization" [v nas budit' uslovny rejleks osmysleniya] (:122). In other words, zaum stimulates us to semantic activity, to interpretation. He points out that eveneuy, "when framed with motivation," as Kruchonykh does in "Declaration of the Word as Such," "appeals here for meaning as much as anything" (:122). He compares zaum to Tynyanov' s "minus device" of ellipsis in Pushkin (i.e., rows of dots in some poems, including Eugene Onegin, where Pushkin created an evidently intentional textual vacuum). Zelinsky terms this "graphic zaum."

Thus, for Zelinsky zaum is a semantic vacuum, the purpose of which is to stimulate our powers of interpretation and semanticization. "The zaum word here is a pure quantum charge, a semantic explosion, by which poetry is moved" (:122). However, this seemingly positive view, based more on Khlebnikov's theories of the self-sufficient word than on Kruchonykh's, is ultimately discounted:

It goes without saying that one cannot take all such theories as these seriously. I introduced them as an illustration of the fact that the sole motive for poets' conjectures and fantasies about the role of meaningless zaum


sounds is nevertheless their semantidzation. The whole thing is that this semantization strives to jump beyond the bounds of logic. But what new systems or way of semanticization do these attempts open up for us? None at all. They are all presented in logical forms, they all address themselves immediately to logical thought development as soon as a "foundation" is laid by some silly or, putting it more mildly, poetic conjecture that a consonant creates the meaning of a word (Khlebnikov), or that gestures of the tongue in the mouth duplicate our hand gestures, or that "gestures of sounds correspond to a drawn image" (A. Bely). (:124)

Therefore the Symbolists and Futurists can be equated, the only difference being that the former focus on the occult significance of sounds, while the latter are characterized by" fleshly tonguelessness" and" the self-assured dilettantism of the street."

Malakhov, by the way, notes Pasternak's praise for Kruchonykh in the preface to Kalendar [1926], which provides us with an occasion to briefly take in the views of a number of other poets on zaum at this time as well. Pasternak had said: "If the premise about the content value [soderzhatel'nost1 of form is heated to a fantastic brilliance, then one has to say that you [Kruchonych] have more content than anyone" (Malakhov:15; Kruchonykh 1973:354). Whatever Pasternak may have thought about Kruchonykh's poems themselves, Fleishman explains that this unexpected praise for Kruchonykh was due to his appreciation for Kruchonykh's avoidance of poetic banality, his uncompromising position vis...Q-vis demands for conformity, and his faithfulness to his poetic vision of the world (1981:44-47, 50; see also Pasternak's note in Tretyakov et al. 1925:1-2; Pasternak 1961:155-56).

Mayakovsky, never himself a practitioner of zaum, had defended Kruchonykh at one of his "purges of poets" in 1921, but in a speech at The First All-Union Conference of Proletarian Writers, January 5,1925, he more circumspectly stated: "I would be the last idiot if I said: 'Comrades, follow Aleksey Kruchonykh and his "dyr bul shchyl."' No, we say: when you provide a revolutionary fighting song, remember that it's not enough to provide any haphazard expression which comes to hand, but rather choose words whicl;l generations of literature before you have developed, so as not to do one and the same work twice" (1959:270-71).

Khodasevich, a long-standing opponent of Futurist extremes, expressed his latter-day feelings about zaum in the poem "God lives! He's intelligent not zaumny" ["Zhiv Bog! Umyon, a ne zaumen" [1923] (1983:4)]. One might perhaps wonder about the aptness of the assumption that God is "intelligent" [umyon] rather than zaumen, given the usual belief that God's ways surpass human understanding.


Khodasevich had in fact already used the term the previous year in a review of Mandelstam's Tristia [1922], noting Mandelstam's tendency toward play of both meanings and sounds, resulting in deep penetrations into the roots of words that were sometimes difficult to decipher, perhaps even for the author himself. This prompts Khodasevich to conclude:

It would be appropriate for the theoreticians of "zaum" poetry to read Mandelstam deeply: he is the first and so far the only one to demonstrate by his own example that zaum poetry has the right to exist. To do this he was helped by: a poetic gift, intelligence [urn] and education, i.e., those things completely lacking in the poor "maitres" of Russian Futurism. ([1922] 1990:340)

Mandelstam's own relationship to zaum is subtle and interesting and deserves special study. He is one of those poets who deeply appreciate the music of speech and the state of pre-verbal thinking ([1921] II:226-27). Mandelstam's approach to the word, which loosens its attachment to concrete meaning, making it virtually "objectless," makes his poetry at times indeterminate. The element of"incomplete expression" [nedoskazannost1"mists up the content of his works and brings his speech close to the 'self-sufficient word' of the Futurists. In Mandelstam there is no zaum in the direct sense of the concept, but any very ordinary word, purified of 'thingness,' having completely lost its 'nominalizing' function, can sound in his poetry like 'zaum.,' i.e., objectless" (Menshutin/Sinyavsky:401; see also Polyakova 1983, Ronen 1993). In a number of places Mande_lstam expresses an admiration for Khlebnikov's explorations (II:245, 247, 261, 263, 349), but he has much less respect for Kruchonykh, who is "absolutely bankrupt and unintelligible, and not because he is leftish and extreme, but because there is after all such a thing in the world as rubbish (regardless qf the fact that Kruchonykh has an unquestionable pathos and intense attitude toward poetry, which makes him interesting as a personality)" ([1922] 11:329).

TUFANOV

The last significant self-designated zaumnik of the pre-Stalin period was Aleksandr Tufanov (1877-1942), who led an Order of Zaumniks in Petrograd in the mid-1920s and published the last major original contribution to the history of zaum., K zaumi [Toward Zaum (1924)).9 1twas subtitled "Poems and a Study of Consonant Phonemes" and "Phonic Music and the Function of Consonant Phonemes" variously on the cover and title page, and contained a detailed presenta-


tion of Tufanov's theory of zaum and three sections of poems that illustrated it. Its epigraph reads: "THE SEVENTH ART IS ZAUM." While Tufanov saw himself as a continuer of Khlebnikov's work, dubbing himself Velirnir II, in many respects his is a synthesis of the various theories of sound symbolism in poetry from Bely to Kruchonykh, including Khlebnikov.

In his theoretical introduction, dated October 1923, he introduces a new coinage, "Zaumie," to indicate his emphasis on the temporal aspect of zaum throughout his essay. He distinguishes between "applied lyricism" in poetry, where sound is subordinate to meaning, and "immediate" or direct lyricism, i.e., zaum, in which nature expresses itself directly: "It does not think, but sings to itself simply" (:7). He identifies this also with folk poetry, which has maintained a close bond with nature. The material of this art is the phoneme, consisting of a kineme and an acouseme, i.e., an articulatory motion of the vocal organs and the resulting sound, which link the phoneme with nature as is the case with musical sound and the dance movements of Isadora Duncan. "This is why for the last two years I have undertaken to establish the immanent teleologism of phonemes, i.e., the definite function of each 'sound': to elicit definite sensations of movements" (:9). Initially it would seem that he intends to develop a system of correspondences that would result in a precise, definite communication of ideas and emotions, but this turns out not to be the case, at least at this st<}ge. Rather, he produces.something that he compares to a color chart for painters, "a dictionary of 1,200 morphemes including Chinese and Russian, I call a 'Palette of Morphemes,' such that composers of zaumie can use them like painters use colors from their palettes" (:10). Hence, his definitions go no farther than definitions of the meanings of various colors can be expected to go.

Tufanov's definitions of consonants seem to be based on an unclear mixture of articulatory movements, letter shapes, and associations with roots. As with Khlebnikov, the assumption is that one can thereby approach primeval iconicity (see Janecek 1985). Classification begins with identifying what he terms the "seven times," in order of genetic origin, which range from M and N as "closed movements" to Z, ZH, S, SH as "radially dispersed." These correspond basically to phonology, which in tum is based on articulation. However, Tufanov adds such rash comments as: "Now there is no doubt that at the dawn of language generation a Neanderthal, for example, pronounced the sound B and conveyed by this his sensation of circular motion around a fire (bonfire) at a certain radius of approach to it." B was classified as the fourth "time" and defined as "free [sounds] around a closure" (:11). This is followed by a table, "Incomplete spatial-image reestablishment of consonant phoneme functions," listing twenty consonants and definitions that Tufanov calls "laws," which are details about the canso-


nants listed in the "seven times." Thus, "M has a psychological link with a sensation of spatially closed movement free under a protective cover," while "N is associated with the sensation of a barrier in a closed movement" (:14), etc. He then produces a list of words from various languages to illustrate the aptness of these designations, hence: "mewtoimprison, lock in, a fenced-in place, mute-deaf, mesh-catch with a net" (:16). In several places he refers to specific pages in his "Palette of Morphemes," but unfortunately these are not provided.

However, even with the incomplete information provided, we can interpret the poems in phonetic zaum that Tufanov presents in the essay itself and in the sections following it. A key poem, "Spring," is given in the essay in both Latin transcription and cyrillic, as well as in the sections "Phonetic Music" (:29) and "Disruptions" [Sryvy] (:35). The first section gives the poems in Latin transcription, and there, instead of the Russian title for the poem, "Vesna," a phonetic version is provided: "SOOL' AF." Since we know that this is meant to be the equivalent to "vesnajspring," we can check how Tufanov's "laws" operate. "S has a psychological link with a sensation of radial double wave-like movement [ ... ] L with a sensation of wavy linear directon toward a moving point [ ... ] F has a psychological link with a sensa-tion of circular movement of indefinite radius" (:14-15). A double vowel indicates a long and a single vowel a short syllable in the classical metrics used by Tufanov (a strange departure from the usual Russian syllabotonic system). If we combine all these factors, we come up with "spring" in phonetic music. The rest of the eight-line poem is filled with S's and L's and a few other consonants, e.g., "sii'n soon siiselle soong s'e/siing s'eelf siijk signal' s'eel' s'in'." Some words have semantic associations with English words (fufanov knew English) or with Russian words, and no doubt with words in other languages as well, but organization on the sound level obviously predominates. By the way, it should be noted that the alphabet he uses for zaum tends to create its own frame of reference, cyrillic suggesting predominantly Slavic associations, while the Latin alphabet suggests more international, non-Slavic associations.

Tufanov emphasizes how well these" sound gestures" worked for primeval man and how universal they are, regardless of language: "Phonic music is equally 'understandable' to all peoples" (:12). He concludes that "our zaumie [ ... ] leads of course not to a return to a primeval state, but to a destruction of the universe in its spatial perception by humans and to the creation of a new universe in Time" (:25), which he links explicitly with Bergson, Kant, and implicitly with Einsteinian relativity and the Fourth Dimension. He adds:" An emotion or an idea which completely fills my I and really belongs to me amalgamates with a whole mass of conditions and is not expressible in a word, which by its very nature is alien to the dynamic I. The same


applies also to real objects in art" (:26). Indeed, Tufanov's system is the closest thing to abstract art in a verbal medium.

Interestingly, while the second section of poems includes many of the poems from the first section in cyrillic transcription, it ends with a series of poems that are a mixture of Russian and coinages of varying degrees of abstraction, demonstrating, as it were, the possible combinations available. Some, such as" Autumn Snowdrop" (:36), alternate lines of zaum and Russian, thus providing sonic and semantic complements to the subject. Others are sprinkled with coinages throughout, many of which are similar to Khlebnikov or Kamensky and are easily deciphered (solntseleynoy=sun-pouring), while others are less transparent (Neminki netyat natish' kokona=Difficulties net/negate(?) the prebattle quiet of the cocoon) (:37). One must recall that Tufanov did research on Russian dialects and not jump to the conclusion that an unfamiliar word is a coinage, when it could be a dialecticism or archaism; hence, I have rendered neminki as "difficulties," assuming it to be a diminutive of neminy ("unavoidable difficult situation"), and natish' as "the quiet before battle" (Tufanov 1991:188). The last section, "Around the Globe," is less adventurous and contains no real zaum, though one palindrome poem, as is typical of this genre, produces some rather contorted imagery and syntax (:42). Suitably, in a poem that is essentially a series of self-definitions, Tufanov concludes, "Ya [I]= n + 1" (:44), which can be interpreted on the basis of the meaning of these letters given in his essay.

The book ends with a table of" speechsounds" (rechezvuki) created by Boris Ender (1893-1960), an artist and associate of Matyushin' s Zoroed [See-Know] School, which was doing experiments with color and space perception analogous to Tufanov's with sound. Ender links the two endeavors by providing a chart of shapes for each of the consonants in Tufanov's list, though inevitably these are lacking the dynamic movement in Tufanov's definitions. It has recently come to light that Ender also wrote some unique zaum poems at this time, e.g.:

Chetyryokhstishie

U-SH.vi-GL. GL" .v KH'. 'Ev.vruv:uv

~ .t GVE-AV-S.V GLIAGL'.G'.U ,

Sosny i lyod. Vyshe nulya. Vecher 1 yanv. 23. Sr.

(Biryukov 1991a:14; Z. Ender:279)10


The first line indicates that the poem is a quatrain, and the last reads: "Pines and ice. Higher than zero. Evening 1 Jan. 23 Wed.[?]" Zoya Ender explains that these were exercises in "zvukoshum" [sound-noise] that attempted to convey·the essentially non-melodic sounds of nature in phonetic transcription along intuitive lines first used by Matyushin's wife, Elena Guro (:262-63). The last line can therefore be taken as indicating that the poem intends to convey the sounds of icy pines at above freezing on the day indicated. But without this cue, the poem itself seems even more abstract than Tufanov's "phonetic music," which at least had word-like formations and meter. The periods presumably indicate word boundaries or brief pauses and the dashes longer pauses, while the diacritical dots and dashes would indicate short and long vowels. Thus, on one hand, Ender's poems represent a radically minimalist equivalent to Kruchonykh' s autographic series of the Tiflis period in their graphic means, but on the other, they have a decided onomatopoetic intent.

OBERIU

A rejection of zaum came from what at first might seem to be an unexpected quarter, the most avant-garde group of the later 1920s, the poets of OBERIU, the "Association for Real Art." They were initially linked to Tufanov (Vvedensky 11:238-40; Jaccard 1991; Jaccard/Ustinov 1991; on other influences see Sigov 1986). Daniil Kharms (1905-42) in particular in the mid-1920s closely associated himself with zaum, titling one of his notebooks Vzir' Zaumi and at least occasionally engaging in phonetic zaum (see A. A. Aleksandrov 1980:68-73). In one notebook he even wrote: "If one can demand national traits [natsional'nost1 from a non-zaum thing, then all the more so from zaum" (:73). As Vishnevetsky has noted, phonetic zaum not only did not disappear in Kharms' works after 1926, but became one of its most important components and became associated "either with statements of prophetic divine inspiration or the incursion of nonverbalizable metaphysical meanings into the realm of normative language and thought" (1991 :59; also Nakhimovsky 1982, esp. 48-55).

However, in their "OBERIU" statement of 1928 (Kharms 1974:287-98), where the section on poetry was drafted by Zabolotsky and hence "sheds the most light on his own poetics and worldview" (Meylakh 1980:xxii), the Oberiuty found it necessary to disassociate themselves from zaum in very distinct terms:

We are poets of a new world view and of a new art. We are not only creators of a poetic language, but also founders of a new feeling for life and its objects. [ ... ] The world covered by the rubbish

{


of the tongues of a multitude of fools bogged down in the mire of "experiences" and "emotions" is now being reborn in all the purity of concrete, bold forms. Some people even now call us zaumniki. It is difficult to decide whether that is because of a complete misunderstanding or a hopeless failure to grasp the principles of literary art. No school is more hostile to us than zaum. We, people who are real and concrete to the marrow of our bones, are the first enemies of those who castrate the word and make it into a powerless and senseless mongrel. In our work we broaden the meaning of the object and of the word, but we do not destroy it in any way. The concrete object, once its literary and everyday skin is peeled away, becomes a property of art. In poetry the collisions of verbal meanings express that object with the exactness of mechanical technology. (Gibian 1971:195-96)

This attempt at disassociation may have been prompted by an attack by D. Tolmachov (Nov. 1, 1927:14), in which he refers to the Oberiuty as Dadaists and epigones of Khlebnikov who, under the guise of creating" real art," are merely continuing to purvey" their own zaum works." Tolmachov, it is true, does not specifically identify any of the participants in the reading of a declaration at the House of Print where the Oberiuty gave public readings, but all of his references to the contents of the declaration match the version published in January, 1928, except for the overt rejection of zaum. Tolmachov's characterization of Oberiu works as zaum is noteworthy in that the amount of phonetic, morphological, or syntactic zaum in Oberiu poetry is relatively limited by this time, compared to the earlier, more radical zaumniks, though there is a great deal of absurdity, which we might term suprasyntactic zaum. As Meylakh noted, the Oberiuty had shifted emphasis from zaum phonetics to zaum semantics (1993:143). As indicated in my Introduction, the boundary between indeterminacy, absurdity, and reality is rather subjective and difficult to locate satisfactorily; however, recent studies of the" poetics of the absurd" (Shukman 1989, Babaeva/Uspensky 1993) can be recommended as useful efforts to shed light on this phenomenon in Kharms. In their statement, the Oberiuty are obviously rejecting the first three classes of zaum and consider the last to be "realistic." However, Tolmachov finds what they are doing to be as" meaningless" as other forms of zaum. Perhaps then, at least in part for ideological reasons, the Oberiuty were forced to reject the label of zaumnik, while defending the social significance of their "realistic" art.

Zabolotsky's own attitude toward zaum was perhaps more negative than that of either Kharms or Aleksandr Vvedensky (1904-41), as revealed by a letter to Vvedensky in 1926 titled "My Objections to A. I. Vvedensky, Author-rity on Meaninglessness." As Meylakh records


(Vvedensky 11:362), Kharms kept the letter to himself to avoid the rift between the other two that it would inevitably have caused; it came to light thus only in 1984. In the letter Zabolotsky describes "Dyr bul shchyl" as composed of words without meaning ["smysla ne imeyut"] (:252), while he sees Vvedensky as using meaningful words to create meaninglessness [bessmyslitsa] by combining them in alogical chains. Zabolotsky describes this formally as the "line of metaphor," and dedares that "every metaphor, while it is still alive and new, is alogical" (:252). But because Vvedensky makes metaphor not a means but a "selfvaluable category," his poetry is "legless" and constricted, i.e., too abstract. By comparison, Zabolotsky's is notably more concrete. In any case, the goal of the Oberiuty as expressed in the statement was to "broaden the meaning of the object, word, and act" each in their individual way (Gibian: 1%). Thus, Vvedensky

(at the extreme left of our association) breaks the object down into parts, but the object does not thereby lose its concreteness. Vvedensky breaks action down into fragments, but the action does not lose its creative order. If one were to decode it completely, the result would give the appearance of nonsense. Why appearance? Because obvious nonsense is the zaum word, and it is absent from Vvedensky' s works. One must be more curious, not too lazy to examine the collision of word meanings. Poetry is not porridge that one swallows without chewing and forgets right away. (:196-97)

The argument then is that the meaninglessness is only apparent; it is a puzzle that must be solved with some effort, but-an important distinction for us-a puzzle that can be solved and ought to be. If it is solvable, then indeed the semblance of zaum disappears as does zaum itself. Whether this always happens is another question. Such Vvedensky lines as "khodit v gosti t'ma koleney" [a countless number of knees go visiting] and "shepchet vazhnoe ura" [an important hurrah is whispering] ([1926] 1980:3) border on zaum because of their oxymoronic or absurd juxtapositions, but certainly many other instances that might in the abstract seem to be absurd appear chillingly less so in the Soviet context of the late 1920s and early 1930s when Kafka was turning into reality. Druskin quotes Vvedensky as saying: "I don't understand why my thing.!! are considered zaum; the news hea_dlines_ar:e wh~ is zaum" (Druskin 1985:408). · · ·--

In fact, a full appreciation of OBERIU is a rather recent development. Vvedensky and Kharms published very little of their writings for adults (as opposed to poems in children's magazines) during their lifetimes, and only in the last few years have their complete works been published. At the same time, the works of Igor Bakhterev (b. 1908),


a very interesting Oberiut in regard to zaum, who, in contrast to his colleagues, has lived and continued to write into old age, have to date been published only partially. And the philosophical-critical memoir writings of Yakov Druskin (1902-80), a major Oberiu thinker, have gradually come to light only over the last decade or so. From these recent publications it becomes dear that the picture of OBERIU' s relationship with zaum was much more complicated and on-going than their manifesto would lead one to believe, a picture too complex to do justice to here. A few general observations may be risked, however.

First of all, their activities, centered on Petersburg, and works circulated in manuscript among friends, were not very broadly known or influential in the 1920s and 1930s. There was a certain level of local notoriety resulting from their public performances and other anecdotal shenanigans, but their lack of publications inhibited their impact in broader arenas. Secondly, recent publications reveal a rather subtle and consistent philosophical method to their evident verbal madness, which considered the world to be essentially meaningless [bessmyslitsa],or perhaps more accurately "alogical":

Meaninglessness, alogicality, noncomprehension are sometimes linked with irrationality, and this is often associated with a certain unclarity or confusion. Vvedensky's meaninglessness is not irrational, but arational. Although Logos and logic come from the same root, they are two different and sometimes incompatible concepts. Logos is alogical, but alogicality is not necessarily irrational. (Druskin 1991:94)

We can see even from this brief comment that there is a significant element of Nco-Platonic mysticism in OBERIU that aligns the movementmore with Symbolism and Khlebnikov than Kruchonykh. And this is despite Vvedensky's reported opinion that "Khlebnikov is alien to me; Kruchonykh is perhaps nearer," to which Druskin was quick to add: "The 'perhaps' was because Kruchonykh was also alien to him" (Druskin 1985:383). Another commentator, on the contrary, notes that the Oberiuty understood and appreciated Khlebnikov more deeply even than Tufanov and "intersected with him through Malevich" (Ponomaryov 1991:86; also Levin 1978). Finally, although the Oberiuty evolved a different approach to the matter, it is probably not a great exaggeration to say that, throughout the 1920s and beyond, zaum was an important tool in their "battle with meanings [bitva so smyslami]" (Meylakh 1991:374).

Attacks on their work had taken a sharply political turn by the end of the decade, as indicated by this comment by a Soviet critic, L. Nilvich, under the title "Reactionary Juggling" (Smena April9, 1930, p. 3): "Their moving away from life, their meaningless poetry, their zaum jugglingthese are a protest against the dictatorship of the proletariat. Their po-


etry is therefore counterrevolutionary. This is a poetry of people alien to us, poetry of a class enemy." On the eve of the new year 1932 Vvedensky, Kharms, and other associates were arrested and charged with counterrevolutionary activities under article 58 because they were distracting people from the tasks of constructing socialism with their "zaum poetry" (Meylakh 1980:xxiv).

Finally, remarkable in this picture of heated discussion on zaum is the absence of a single detailed analysis of a zaum poem, even among the Formalists. The closest thing is A. Redko' s Literary Quests at the End of the 19th-Beginning of the 20th Century (1924), a revised and expanded version of his essays of 1913-14. One of the areas of expansion was his discussion of Kruchonykh' s zaum (:118-24). While retaining his ironic tone and not delving particularly deeply, Redko nevertheless takes at least a brief look at "Go osneg kayd" and "Dyr bul shchyl." He concludes that there are zaum elements in poets such as Blok, Sologub, and Bryusov, but" the Futurists have merely taken the' zaum' element characteristic of all superterrestrial quests to the limit. And they have done what other more cautious ones have not: they have decided on such doubtful neologisms as' zaum' in contrast to' um.' But then brightness and bravery in self-definition is not a fault, but a merit in literature" (:123-24).

A measure of Kruchonykh's ambiguous position in the minds of his contemporaries can be found in the treatment given to him by various literary histories and anthologies of the 1920s. He was characterized as "undoubtedly the most 'militant' and popular figure of early Futurism" (Stepanov 1928:37), and his "Dyr bul shchyl" is, "it seem5, much more famous in Russia than Khlebnikov's fine poetry" (Aseev 1929:10). Sayanov's chapter on Futurism in his Essays on the History of 20th Century Russian Poetry (1929) states that among the Russian Futurists "it might appear that the most original was Kruchonykh, the most important theoretician of Zaum" (:97, capitalization sic). Yet he then quotes from the "Declaration of the Word as Such" of 1913 as republished in The Apocalypse in Russian Literature (1923c), evidently unaware of its earlier date (he says that it was written "not long ago"), and then claim.S that the Acmeists had preceded Kruchonykh in their quest to "see the world in a new way, like Adam" (:98). Sayanov convincingly argues for seeking Russian Futurism's roots not in Italian Futurism, but in Russia Symbolism.

Boris Gusman's 100 Poets. Literary Portraits (1923) gives Kruchonykh (but no other zaumnik) an average-length entry of three pages that emphasizes his "rebellious, Adamic soul" that yearns for sources of language still unsullied by profane contact (:141). Gusman notes that when Kruchonykh tries to write in ordinary language, "you feel how he is floundering helplessly in 'dress not made for him,' but only have


him cast off this 'dress' and his works (we won't call them 'poems') gain an unexpected internal force and persuasiveness" (:142). He quotes "KoterofPero/Byaso/Muro/Koro/Poro/Ndoro/Po" as an example of this "childlike simplicity and directness, combined with childlike force and expressiveness" and compares it with the quotes from Pokrovsky' s Children's Games used by Shklovsky in his article on zaum. Whether one can call this poetry or not, it nevertheless demonstrates "the thirst for a healthy (unmediated) perception of the world and of sound" (:143).

By contrast, none of Kruchonykh' s poems was included in the section devoted to Futurists in Ezhov and Shamurin's compendious Russian Poetry of the Twentieth Century: An Anthology of Russian Lyrics from Symbolism to Our Days (1925), though some of Kamensky's near-zaum poems were. Yet Shamurin in his introductory essay quotes "Dyr bul shchyl" in its entirety (and accurately!), leading in with the comment that "Russian Futurism has provided not only the theory of 'zaum language' but also significant accomplishments in this area" (:XXIX). Yet "Dyr" is referred to as a "poem'' in quotation marks and followed by the remark: "But it is hard to relate seriously to this and, by the way, to almost everything written by this poet. Kruchonykh's role in Russian Futurism was rather prominent, but this was the role of a theoretician and destroyer of old poetic forms, and not the creator of new values. "Compared to Khlebnikov, Kruchonykh is seen as a compiler of" meaningless miscellaneous sounds," a view shared by many, including· Markov as late as 1962 (:7). Yet, N. Stepanov, the editor of the first collected works ofKhlebnikov (1928-33), maintains the alternate position that Kruchonykh' s zaum is definitely" designed for emotional impact" built on association with emotionally colored roots (1928:61).

Notes

1Though dated on the cover as 1922, this work was assigned the number 121, that is, the next after Faktura slova, which is dated 1923. It is also listed after the latter in Kruchonykh's bibliography, and internal evidence further supports this chronology. On the other hand, Bryusov's review of books of 1922 (1923a:76-78) reacts to it in early 1923, indicating its availability perhaps in late 1922.

2An anonymous commentator at a conference where I read a paper on this topic pointed out certain resonances to these lines: "dukh lebyazhi" contains an implicit reference to lebyazhi pukh (swan's down], and there exists the phrase naftalinnaya starukha, i.e., an old lady smelling of mothballs (old-fashioned, out of touch, dumpy), which in tum creates an association with the phrase bozhi oduvanchik [God's dandelion] referring to an old woman so small and frail that she could be blown away like a dandelion puffball. These associations give


further support to the dimension of lightness and airiness embodied in the sounds of the words.

3()n the role of chance Kruchonykh had also written: "In making corrections rethinking polishing we drive away from creativity the element of chance [sluchaynost1 that in instantaneous creativity of course occupies an honorable place Driving away chance we deprive our works of the most valuable thing for we leave only what is chewed over, fundamentally controlled, and the whole life of the subconscious goes to pot!" [letter to Shemshurin Sept. 23, 1915, lack of punctuation: sic] (Ziegler 1978:291).

'As Nikolskaya has pointed out (1986:66), the EmotionalistSergey Radlov valued zaum and Kruchonykh' s Plwnetics of the Theater. He used zaum in his training of actors and preferred phonetic zaum to morphological zaum because "it is precisely the wave of sound, the wordless, articulated sound of the human voice, that strengthens and foregrounds the rejection of human speech in favor of a broader, extra-meaninged [vnesmyslovogo] art" (Radlov 1924:97).

5Excluded from this blanket statement are extensive archival materials that contain or may contain additional works of zaum or theoretical statements on it. Not all of these have been seen by this researcher, but among those known to be of interest are:

1) RGALI fond 1334 (Kruchonykh) Op. 1, ed. 4: Ballady o kamne karborunde, Dve ballady ob ispanke, Kalenda i dr. stikh. [1920]," which includes several items of phonetic zaum (:10, 34).

2) Russian State Library Ms. Div., fond 339 (Shemshurin) IV, 1-4: Kruchonykh's letter to Shemshurin, Tiflis 1916, includes a poem, "Zhivya na ape!' sikon mazya," and one by Rozanova, both with zaum features. The same Kruchonykh poem, dedicated to Matyushin, is also included in a letter to Matyushin, 1917 (fret'yakov Gallery Archive fond 25/7).

3) Saltykov-Schedrin Library Ms. Div., fond 552 (A.G. Ostrovsky) ed. 90: Kruchonykh's letter to Ostrovsky includes a selection of zaum poems by Gnedov, Ignatev, and Shirokov.

4) State Literary Museum archive fond 106 (Kruchonykh) No. 7491 "0 voyne" 1914-1944 gg. includes information on the project of a second play by Kruchonykh and Khlebnikov to be called "Voennaya opera," a satire of Wilhelm II, not completed and not published.

5) RGALI fond 1334 (Kruchonykh) Op. 1, ed. 25 ["Most"], "Deyuga (drama)", "Voennaya opera" contains fragments of the uncompleted "War opera" which was begun in August 1914. Only one speech by a "Middle-aged person" contains any zaum (additions and variants as perms., some evidently by Khlebnikov):

Sandzhmuum! nadul tebya!-cheshi zagrivok!

The Debate over Zaum in the 1920s

zovi brega! pompei grud'! pust' shipy vtykaet! [koney begushchikh s lyuna bud' !]

[t] ni vpered ni v kana! ne puskay druga stop! .. [zaerzala] zamerzla v peskakh oblakov bezzvuchna Ian' jvelik vsezhe/ ostolop [prostit polotyanka protykat']

obryuzgshiy cherep sidel'tsa piv on prodaet kadril'!

esli [b] ya po krysham ne khodil kak by ya by! velik? (:31-32)

341

Sketches for Act I of the opera "Voyna" are also to be found in the Matyushin archive at Pushkin House in St. Petersburg (Kapelyush 1976:7), there dated "<1915-1919>."

For a survey of Kruchonykh's literary activities in the period 1928-1968 see Ziegler (1981).

6This essay was also included in Vinokur's Kul'tura yazyl<Jl (1925), and the example he gave in both instances is:

And can one really grasp the desired thought in such exclamations as: Long live the working class of Russia and its forward avant-gardethe Russian Communist Party! Long live the international communist party- the Communist International!

(1925:82)

His apt remark. which he doubtless eventually came to regret, had, of course, no effect on the course of Soviet political language, and this ironically underscores that fact that zaum remained alive and well in some unsuspected places. Contentless verbiage is, to be sure however, not the exclusive property of Soviet politics.

For more on Vinokur' s relationship with LEF and his attitude toward zaum, Khlebnikov, and Kruchonykh, see Vinokur 1990:280-84. Especially noteworthy is his definition, quoted from his archive, of" zaumny yazyk" in Khlebnikov as a combination of "sounds directly carrying meaning [smysl] accessible to everyone, always and to each" (:283). By contrast, in his essay on Khlebnikov [1924], he refers to "all that agonizing trash which is living out its days now in the dogged meaninglessness [bessmyslitsa] of Kruchonykh, where it stands on the border of charlatanism'' (1990:34).

.,


7 A curious footnote to Sosnovsky's attack on Kainensky is his pointing to an eighteenth-century Russian translation of The Aeneid in which the translator, giving free rein to his inventiveness, has the Cui,naean Sybil of Book VI speaking in neologistic Russian that to Sosnovsky sounds similar to Kamensky's zaum. Hence, he is able to say about the Futurists that "Alas, all this is not new" (1923b:247). Indeed, such lines as "Zhalelom tak ty ne publyuy" quoted from the eighteenth-century translation do resemble the inventions of some of

the Futurists.

'A book with a similar title, The Music of Speech, by the musicologist Leonid Sabaneev mentions zaum (1923:14) but does not discuss it or Kruchonykh, preferring to focus more on the Symbolists, Balmont in particular. Sabaneev takes a more literally musical approach to the question than Serez.hnikov. Other works of these years that deal with the matter of declamation and at least mention the Futurists are those by Vsevolodsky-Gemgross (1925:39) and Bernshteyn

(1926).

'For more on Tufanov see especially Tufanov (1991), Jaccard (1991 :40-57,317-30), Nikolskaya (1987), .Bowlt (1991a:305), and N. Bogomolov (1993). The introductory essay to K zaumi has been reprinted in Kuzminsky, Janecek,

Ocheretyansky (1988:102-25).

toln addition to the two other Ender poems provided by Biryukov, another is given by Sigov (1988:167), and others appear in the samizdat journal TRANSPONANS No. 15 [1983]. The most thorough study of zaum in Ender is by z. Ender (1991 ), which includes a complete set of twelve poems. Sigov notes interestingly that "Ender was an artist and therefore for him it was especially important to exactly show the relationship of upper and lower case letters, the role of signs for length and stress, not to mention the organization of periods and the reorientation in layout of the text on the page; all this gives his poems the character of exercises in rhythm and ordering of elements" (1988:167-68).

Chapter Eleven

Conclusion

From 1930 to the present, broad vistas of theoretical territory open up, reflecting the twentieth century's continuing concern with the nature of language from its minutest particles (distinctive features) to its broadest philosophical implications. We cannot do more than locate zaum among these concerns in the briefest of outlines. Outside Russia, zaum was not well known after the late 1920s, and it had little impact abroad even during its heydayi hence, with few exceptions we cannot give it direct credit for later developments abroad. But ramifications of the ideas underpinning zaum have been far-reaching.

The most direct genetic link between zaum and more recent de.velopments is in the work of Roman Jakobson, who was closely associated with the Cuba-Futurists and, as we have seen, even wrote some zaum in the teens. One of his last works, The Sound Shape of Language (with L. Waugh, 1979), gives the fullest attention to some of the issues involved in zaum, but other works throughout the years also touch on the matter (1960:372-73i 1978: esp. 56-58, 74, 112-16), testifying to his continuing concern for the topic. For discussions of Jakobson' s theories of sound and meaning see Matejka (1975), Veltrusky (1976), and Holenstein (1976).

The Soviet Structuralist school, which Jakobson so strongly influenced, has a more ambivalent attitude toward this issue, however. Yuriy Lotman, for instance, insists in a purely Saussurian way that" all arguments concerning the meaning which phonemes are alleged to possess independent of words are not in the least compelling and rest upon subjective associations" (19n:136/1977:107). On the other hand, he also maintains that "'trans-rational' words are not [in] the least devoid of lexical meaning in the strict sense of the word," because "insofar as we perceive the sounds produced by the speech organs as language, we attribute meaning to them. [ ... ] The word in poetry in general, and the trans-rational word in particular, is composed of phonemes which in tum were derived by breaking down lexical units and which

343


have not lost their connections with these units" (:178/:143-44). Elsewhere he notes that the popular concept of zaum as meaningless language is "inaccurate" because this is a contradi~ti?n in terms,. sine~ language "implies a mechanism for the transnusston of meanmgs. Rather, zaum words are "words with unfixed lexical meaning" (1976:65), a definition we can accept. His reasoning is:

they are words inasmuch as they have the formal features of words and are found between word boundaries. Since they are words, it is to be assumed than they have meaning (there are no words without meanings), but that it is somehow unknown to the reader and sometimes even to the author. (:65)

He notes that it was Kruchonykh's intention to produce "subjective, fluid, individualized meanings in opposition to the 'frozen' ordinary language meanings of words" (:65), whereupon he .discu.sses h?w people deal with any unknown words they encounter m thetr readmg and listening, namely, by guessing their meaning from the context. Such words, when they occur in poetry, acquire an additional" cluster of structural meanings" as a result of their position in a poem. Mi~sed here is the distinction between words that may be unknown to a gtven person when encountered but whose meanings are det.erm~nable (e.g., foreign words) and true zaum words whose m~an~ng .ts, even ~y Lotman's own definition, lexically unfixed and flutd, t.e., mdetermm-able.

A similar strong inclination by people to semanticize the mean-ingless had already been noted by Gornfeld (1922b:139-40), but had been criticized by Vygotsky [1925] as akin to interpreting Rorschach inkspots "which provide an obvious demonstration of the fact that ~tis we out of ourselves who introduce meaning, structure and expressiOn into the most accidental and meaningless compilation of forms" (1968:61). Thus, despite all their proclamations to the contrary, the Futurists are seen by Vygotsky as "in practice giving the element of meaning in art a previously unheard of hegemony" (:85) .. He has in mind, however, not the creative early stages of zaum practice, but the later attempts by Mayakovsky and Kruchonykh to turn poetic practice to constructive social purposes (see also :509). For Vygotsky, as for very many others, the sounds of poetry can be expressive only in relation to verbal meaning (:92).

However, we can point to a number of sound-sense studies of Russian poetry by more recent Russian investigators (e.g., Panov 1966, Reformatsky 1966, Nevzglyadova 1968, Blagoy 1973, and esp. Voronin 1982 for theory and a thorough survey of the literature), Added to this is a series of studies by linguists in the German Humboldtian tradition which identify or argue for the link between sound and meaning in

Conclusion 345

language: Sapir (1929), Whorf (1956), Bolinger (1946), F6nagy (1961, 1963, 1966) and others. There are also a number of Russian studies which attempt to put the sound-sense issue on a scientific basis by using empirical tests (e.g., Orlova 1966, Ivanova-Lukyanova 1966, Zalevskaya 1972, Zhuravlyov 1974, 1981, 1987). And there is an empirically rigorous American study of phonetic symbolism by Mandelker (1982) which tested the emotional responses of subjects who did not know Russian to passages of Russian poetry. She was able to conclude that "there is something occurring at the sound level of poetic language and not in prose language, which is consistently available to subjects, even though deprived of semantic or contextual cues," and that "phonetic symbolism seems to elicit a diffuse response which is consistent, even when specific frames of reference are not proposed by the experimenter" (:177-78, 180). She appropriately criticizes many previous studies of sound in poetry, including Panov's (1966), which involves zaum, as methodologically flawed. In a broader study, Psychology of the Arts (1972), Kreitler and Kreitler maintain that "the stripping of words of conventional meanings maims language" by sacrificing "the referential and conative functions of language for the sake of the poetic and emotional functions, whose impact is paradoxically reduced, even eliminated, when thus isolated" (:221). Yet they must admit that "in view of the overwhelming positive evidence, the existence of phonetic symbolism can hardly be doubted," though the basis for the phe- ,, nomenon is still in dispute (:219; see also Wellek and Warren 1956:162-63).

The concept of the voice gesture, that is, the kinetic aspect of language articulation as a significant factor in meaning and expression, has also been taken seriously by a number of scholars (Bakhtin [1924] 1976:66-68, Blackmur 1952, A.N. Sokolov 1972).

After the 1920s, Soviet official attitudes toward zaum (and Futurism in general) continued to be hostile. The concept of zaum became ossified as "sound-writing opposed to meaning [zvukopis ', protivopostavlennuyu smyslu]" (Selivanovsky 1936:90), even in connection with Khlebnikov; and Kruchonykh was seen as such an extremist as to be a parody (:93). Selivanovsky notes that the Futurists' attempts via zaum to create an international language of the future were doomed to failure because of their Slavophile-nationalist roots (:95), which were not suitable for proletarian internationalism. This attitude was exemplified by the entry in the Acapemy of Sciences History of Russian Lit- , erature: "The reactionary theory of 'zaum language,' i.e. language deprived of elementary meaning, a defense of the principles of the 'self-

. sufficient word,' -all this was the programmatic creative activity of the Futurists, who were openly opposed to the interests of the people and created a poetry 'for the few'" (Stepanov 1954:779). Kruchonykh's


zaum poetry was specifically singled out as "pathological vagaries," and "Dyr bul shchyl" was cited as an example of "a meaninglessly cacophonic collection of sounds" which "demonstrated the hopeless dead end into which this reactionary, decadent 'theory' led the Futurists" (:779-80; see also Revyakin 1974).

The commonplace view of zaum among both Soviet and non-Soviet critics has been that in Kruchonykh's hands zaum was totally incomprehensible and "strove for absolute independence from the laws of existing language" (Folejewski 1980:79; also Gvozdyov 1965:100; Stephan 1981:79). Typically this has been contrasted with Khlebnikov's "zaum" which, if still difficult to comprehend, was recognized as at least striving for meaning and comprehensibility (B. Mikhaylovsky 1939:373-74; Menshutin/Sinyavsky 1964:96,102,306; Myasnikov 1975:107-09; Folejewski:73; et al.).

More recent Soviet reference works, however, show a gradual neutralization. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia reflected a negative attitude in its entries on zaum in first two editions (Vinokur 1933; n.a. 1952), but the entry in the third edition (1972) by A. A. Leontev was already more neutral. However, it focused on Khlebnikov instead of Kruchonykh. Similarly, Ushakov's 1935 Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language (edited in part by G. Vinokur and B. Tomashevsky) included entries for zaumnik, zaumny, and zaum'. The definition of zaumny was: "(lit.) About verbal creativity-based on the creation of new words lacking in object-meaning content and composed by selecting arbitrary combinations of sounds which are not justified by the structure of the language" (1935 1:1062). The USSR Academy of Sciences Dictionary of the Russian Language also has entries for zaumny: "Excessively abstruse, incomprehensible" and zaum': "Something zaumny, nonsense" (Slovar'1957 1:808). In contrast, Kvyatkovsky's 1966 Poetic Dictionary, whose author was once associated with the poetic av~nt-garde, provides an objective entry under zaum' that extensively quotes from Kruchonykh's manifestoes and gives examples from Khlebnikov, Kamensky, and A. N. Chicherin, though not Kruchonykh. The entry even mentions the 18th century poet Sumarokov's satirical use of zaum in his "Chorus to Pride" and that elements of it can be found in folklore and children's poetry. K vyatkovsky' s only quasi-judgmental statement is: "Thus the zaumniks rejected Russian in literature as a means of communication and proclaimed a poetic language [ ... ] incomprehensible even to its creators" (:112).

The terms zaum' and zaumny have firmly entered the Russian language. The Soviet equivalent of Bartlett's has an entry for them (Ashukin/ Ashukina 1966 :247-48). And they have begun to appear in contexts not directly related to Futurism, such as in politics, where it has the connotation of" too complicated or subtle for the average mind to grasp." This may have been facilitated by the long-standing exist-

Conclusion 347

ence of the verb zaumnichat', which means "to show off one's intelligence or to over-subtilize." Smimitsky' s Russian-English Dictionary now gives zaumny the English definition "abstruse." In a recent textbook discussion of Russian usage designed for school grades 8-10, the author, in objecting to the overuse of foreign lexical borrowings, refers to this as "the debris of zaumforeignisms [debri zaumnoy 'inostranshchiny1" (Gorbachevich 1984:130).

The term also began to be used retrospectively to characterize features of writers who wrote no zaum in the strict sense. Thus, Bely refers to Gogol's "sonic monsters [zvukovye monstry]" as a form of zaum and describes Gogol as a "zaumnik" and "Futurist before the Futurists" (1934:215, 228). With obvious disdain, Bely refers to one of the characters in his last novel Masks, Zastroy-Kopyto, as a "poetesszaumnik" [poetka zaumnitsa] (1932:30), while Bely himself in tum is referred as a "zaum personality" (K. Zelinsky 1934:190). And Jakobson penned an article titled "Zaumny Turgenev" [1979] (1981, 1987:262-66) in which he uncovers some piquant aspects to Turgenev' s relationship to speech sounds.

It is also possible to identify a reemergence of zaum practice in the work of some contemporary avant-garde Russian poets (Sergey Sigey, Ry Nikonova, Gleb Tsvel, Anna Alchuk, Sergey Biryukov). The playwright and prosaist L. Petrushevskaya recently (1995) published a zaum playlet on the humor page of Literaturnaya gazeta, subtitling it a "Lin- • guistic Comedy." On occasion even a more conservative poet gives zaum a try (e.g., Tsvetkov 1985:58). In American poetry, we might look upon the so-called Language School poets (see anthologies by Silliman (1986) and Messerli (1987)) and some others, such as John Ashbery, also as contemporary zaumniks and apply our analytical tools to them.

A place in twentieth-century philosophy has been made for" nonsense as a peculiarly human product and [ ... ]as the philosopher's occupational danger'' (Baier 1967:520):

The concern with nonsense as a human phenomenon whose nature illuminates the nature of language has been deepened and furthered by recent advances in linguistic theory and by analyses provided by literary critics of those poetic uses of language which successfully risk the appearance of nonsense to achieve their special effect. The concern with nonsense as a philosophical phenomenon was stimulated by the logical positivist verifiability theory of meaning and the consequent rejection of all metaphysical claims as meaningless. As difficulties in this position accumulated, the demand for verifiability gradually gave way to the much less stringent requirement that if any expression is to count as meaningful, there must be some rules governing its use, some recognized conventions adhered to. (:520)


Hence a system of classifying types of nonsense is needed to identify which rules of language are being violated in order to give rise to nonsense. Baier then outlines a tentative classification ranging from" nonsense as obvious falsehood" to "gibberish" such as "grillangborfemstaw," which is similar to the classification we have been using for zaum. He notes significantly that: "Nonsense is parasitic upon sense and never departs so far from sense that it ceases to be part of some language, to the minimal extent of sharing its alphabet with that lan-guage" (:521).

The English have a particular gift for "nonsense," and this has been studied especially in regard to those great masters of it, Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear (Cammaerts 1925; Chesterton [1901] (1935); Sewell 1952). For broader studies see Edinger and Neep (1929), Forster (1962), Liede (1963), Stewart (1979), and W. Steiner (1982). These last three books are of particular interest for their theoretical discussion. The fact that many of these studies are based on literature usually characterized as humorous should encourage us not to overlook the playful, humorous, fanciful aspects also to be found in zaum, though we have not especially attended to this aspect in the present study. Zaum can indeed often be read for comic, sometimes parodistic effect, and in Kruchonykh there is little doubt that this is intended.

From the viewpoint of literary criticism, on the one hand one might sympathize with George Steiner's insistence that "the problem consists in locating the point at which contingent, increasingly private signals cease emitting any coherent stimulus to which there could be a measure of agreed, repeatable response" (1975:197). After all, we cannot talk about the text at all unless there is at least some consensus as to its ontological status. The problematic word, though, is" coherent," which implies logic, order, and some degree of paraphrasability. On the other hand, one cannot agree with Steiner when he insists that" nonsense-speech seeks to inhibit the constant polysemy and contextuality of natural language" (:187; also Sewell:122). On the contrary, if anything, nonsense-speech, i.e., our zaum, increases polysemy and extends the need for contextuality. Yet later he admits: "Ambiguity, polysemy, opaqueness, the violation of grammatical and logical sequences, reciprocal incompre-hensions, the capacity to lie-these are not pathologies of language but the roots of its genius. Without them the individual and the species would have withered" (:235; see also Empson 1955). The range and compass of human consciousness are indeed large and indeterminate.

What then is the" meaning" of zaum, its lessons, its value, its accomplishments? Most obviously it represents a phenomenon at the limits of language; perhaps it is the limit of language. That this is so is best revealed by the dispute over whether it is language at all. At the very

Conclusion 349

least it stimulated debate on the nature of language itself and its origins. There may have been a point at which Kruchonykh, as was certainly true of Khlebnikov, intended zaum to be the language of the future, but in general for him it was only one possible form of language, a way, when necessary for whatever reason, of escaping from the bonds of standardized language. Here we might recall Kurt Gtidel' s Incompleteness Theorem, restated by Hofstadter as: "All consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory include undecidable propositions" (Hofstadter 1980:17), and see zaum as an undecidable proposition inevitably present among the consistent formulations of language and as a necessary complement to the system of language. "Every undecidable proposition is actually a Gtidel sentence, asserting its own nontheoremhood in some system via some code" (Hofstadter:708). Ong puts it this way:

What leads one to believe that language can be so structured as to be perfectly consistent with itself? There are no closed systems and never have been. The illusion that logic is a closed system has been encouraged by writing and even more by print. Oral cultures hardly had this kind of illusion [ ... ]. (1989:169)

Any system is perceived as determined or limited only when it can be transcended and seen from outside, when the mind has reached a higher

1

level. In other words, the mind comes to rest at indeterminacy (mystery). Humans are constantly going from the known (determinacy) to the regions of the unknown (indeterminacy) and coming to know a new portion of them. This is probably an unending process. Language must remain open-ended, to some degree indeterminate, and we must be able at least on occasion to exit from the system, or we are doomed. "This drive to jump out of the system is a ·pervasive one, and lies behind all progress in art, music, and other human endeavors" (Hofstadter:478).

Even great minds can be trapped by systems, as is Pavel Florensky, a Russian Humboldtian, when he insists that" zaum is lacking a Logos" (1986:153), that is,"we do not know what the poet wished to embody, and his opus does not provide any 'what'" (:151). Because of this, not only does the reader have no guidelines for judging the merits of a given work, but" even the author, if he is sincere in his zaum-ness, for, if he is truly and thoroughly za-um [beyond-mind] and therefore wordless in his creative writing, he himself does not know what to obligatorily embody in the sounds he uses, and therefore he also cannot judge whether he has embodied it or not" (:151). This can be a vicious circle in which the poet must know definitely what to express before it is expressed, and must have a clear vision of the Logos before it can be incarnated.


One of the attractions of Deconstructionism is its campaign against precisely this sort of dualism. Derrida seems to be motivated by the same dislike for deterministic thinking as Kruchonykh. In Derrida's case, the target is mainly Western philosophy that has attempted to fix truth by linguistic means (writing) which, as Derrida sees it, are essentially indeterminate. He mounts a brilliant attack on the determinacy of Structuralism and, as he terms it, logocentrism. By analyzing the apparently endless regressiveness of language in which there is no final or even definite word or idea, he could be considered to be advocating a zaum philosophy, at least in those instances when he does not fall into the pits he is trying to avoid. On the other hand, the moral issue of the conventional code's capacity to lie, which Kuenzli (1979) associates with Nietzsche and sees as part of the motivation for Dadaism's move away from conventional signification to more directly expressive and therefore less deceptive features of the sign (sound, shape, articulation), seems not to have been a particular concern of zaum. The moral dimension, if present at all in Russian Futurism, was submerged beneath more purely aesthetic and linguistic concerns.

Indeterminacy has become a prominent theme in recent thinking on the arts: "The play of indeterminacy and immanence is crucial to the episteme of postmodemism" (Hassan 1978:51). In addition to figuring in Derrida, it plays a role in the theorizing of Ingarden (1973a:246-54; 1973b:S0-55; on Ingarden see Markiewicz (1975) and Iser (1978:170-79)), Iser and Barthes (1974, 1977:142-48), to name only a few of the most obvious figures. "Thus it is perhaps one of the chief values of literature that by its very indeterminacy it is able to transcend the restrictions of time and the written word and to give to people of all backgrounds the chance to enter other worlds and so enrich their own lives" (Iser 1971:45). Hassat;t ,is able to conclude: "in the end I believe indeterminacy to be neither a fashionable nor a factitious term but rather a decisive element in the new order of our knowledge" (1978:74). In Kruchonykh, we must hasten to add, indeterminacy reaches a more radical condition than these gentlemen probably have in mind; zaum is more than "instantaneous multifariousness without conventional

( ('shapes" (Mickiewicz :365), but a state of mutually exclusive meanings. I While it may be "the destiny of all poetic language to have equivocal

ties to rationality" (M. Beaujour 1967:34), zaum is certainly a special case of this.

Mickiewicz's thought-provoking study of zaum, though it has as its basic goal making sense out of zaum and thus differs significantly in its approach from the present study, contains some observations that support our view. He points out, for instance, that "we can never predict the exact semantic effects" of various grammatical relationships in a statement, "nor can we establish a standard for determining the degrees of conceptual 'nearness' of terms (especially abstractions), let

Conclusion 351

alone the metaphorical potential of words" (1984 :374).1n other words, "zaum' does not 'dampen' semantics; it only inhibits the factor thatj subo~di~a~e~ the plurality of semes to basic lexical indicators [ ... ]. . Such inhibiting frustrates the expectation of unified meanings of utterances, but it does release the semantic energy of the polysemic and extra-lexical content which is 'dampened' in ordinary speech" (:451). By presenting a conundrum and making it difficult for the reader to rush to a single interpretation of a given word or passage, zaum forces us to use our interpretive powers more fully. It reveals or improves the capacity of the human mind to deal with extreme ambiguity, with meanmgs that are vague and uncodified, or with the extreme polyvalency of mutually exclusive meanings. It heightens our consciousness of such features in even the most clear, practical forms of language. Thus, zaum can be seen in Shklovskian terms as a means of linguistic ostranenie [defamiliarization]. The so-called "difficult form" [zatrudnyonnaya forma] of zaum forces attention to what is going on in language. It is interesting that Sokolov (1975:195,200) has established that inner motor speech excitation is directly related to the difficulty of the mental task performed, and we can therefore expect that with zaum the excitation would automatically be very high. That is, in order to make the motor side of poetry most active, it is appropriate to make verse difficult to cognize, and this will generate greater motor effort

, 1.

hence greater attention to articulation. Mickiewicz also suggests an ~xplan~,tion for why ~e zaumniks tended to avoid pure onomatopoeia, m that the monosemic content of [it] approaches, at best, the denotative capacity of normal language" (:405). Finally he concludes: "International Modernism may be said to have ended when, for whatever reasons, artists ceased to escalate the semantic saturation of their texts by extra-normal means. In poetry, zaum' represents, in this sense, the peak of Modernist aspirations" (:446). . Zaum highlights the open-endedness of language, that language Is not a closed system, but one in which humanity is constantly breaking out of rules and limitations it has created for itself. Oarity is such a limitation. The dictionary is another. Zaum is an anti-reductionist escape hatch, and thus a antidote to efforts, however well intended, at the schematization, the computerization of language and thinking. In a_n age of in,creased ordering by technology (as opposed to the primitive human s sense of natural chaos which craved order in art and religion), modem humans might well crave disorder or indeterminacy. If certain mental f~nctions are preempted by computers, then perhaps we value more htghly those features of the human mind not (yet) preemptable by machines, such as the capacity for transcendence, multileveled synthesis, intuition, fantasy, and caprice. We seem to be able to transcend any rational system and want to transcend it because it is inherently limited, boring, en tropic. As Eco has noted, in the Structur-


alist search for an Ur-Code there came a point when~~ the code became unmanageable, because it was suspected that we do not posit it; on the contrary, we -as thinking cultural objects- are posited by it" (1984:188). It could be argued that Khlebnikov was searching for the Ur-Code. However, Kruchonykh already foresaw the danger of humanity's being tyrannized by its own creation, and so he provided an escape. Whether Kruchonykh himself always succeeded in escaping is another matter. Ziegler does not think so: "In many respects he remained within the framework of the kind of thinking that he rejected" (1986:89), particularly in his theorizing. Certainly the problem with theorizing is that it must almost inevitably be conducted in a logical, rational manner, which poetic practice may avoid. If he might not have escaped in his theorizing, I think he did succeed in some of his poetry.

Another issue is whether zaum is able to express anything, and if it is, then how does it do so? Readers of zaum works inevitably place it within a context, usually the context of Russian, but at the very least in . the context of human language, that is, within the frame of reference of a normative system from which it departs. As B. Uspensky puts it, "every work of art is conditional [ uslovno ], inasmuch as it always presupposes some norm, on the background of which it is perceived" (1962:127). To that extent, zaum is like any other unfamiliar text one encounters. It is interpreted in a linguistic context by seeking analogous units in the context to be used as interpretants. Phonetic or morphological similarity allows the reader to link the new (zaum) to other, more familiar words. While Uspensky and others may feel that Kruchonykh's zaum is at times so extreme as to lose contact with any norms, the framework for such a linkage always remains. Uspensky admits, "Phonetic similarity forces the poet also to seek semantic links between words-in this way phonetics gives birth to thought" (:128). This is most obvious in studies of paronomasia, where the presence of similar-sounding words in close proximity can be explained in this way. But the same principle is applicable to zaum, the difference being that in the case of" paronomastic attraction/' the poet usually supplies the necessary attractants directly in the poem, while in zaum the reader must search for them in the language at large and may well come up with various and logically contradictory or mutually exclusive interpretants. The results are much less defined, but the process is the same. We might add that this process is to a large extent subjective and bound to a given language. Put another way, it is based on linguistic intuition. "In the majority of cases, zaum is not understood because of the lack of a developed intuition" (Ocheretyansky 1989:70). The process is not merely subjective, however, since it goes deep into the realm of subconscious linguistic operations which are shared objectively by a language group. Moreover, it would seem on the basis of zaum ex-

Conclusion 353

periment that even when semantic definiteness is radically reduced, expression is still possible. There is the direct effect of sound, sight, and linguistic structures based on them (Lauhus 1983:34A0-41). Articulation is also not devoid of expressiveness; thus, there is a kinetic factor. Articulation may be unconscious or preconscious -present but unnoticed- yet, as Jakobson has pointed out, linguistic structure is extensively of this subconscious kind (1978:38). This does not, however, mean that it is not active, functional, influential. Linguistic drift ~fter ?ll.occu~s on t~is level: speakers express preferences by making Imgutstic chmces without knowing consciously why they choose one form and not another apparent equivalent. It would probably be useful, th?ugh .very difficult, to separate the various semanticizing elements m a g~ven word, whether zaum or not, into at least three factors: 1) oral ~rticulatio~ as~ silent mimetic gesture,2) sound suggestivity as phonetic symbolism mdependent of articulatory movement and of ~ssociation with familiar words, and 3) associations with other (familIar) words by morphology, paronomasia, and other factors. . In one way, zaum is less arbitrary than standard language. Since it Is not bound by the usual restraints of the dictionary and the grammar book, no sound, letter, form, or structure of any kind appears because it is forced to be present by some externally imposed rule. The only rule is the will or intuition of the poet.

If zaum's capacity to be expressive is granted, there remains the question of what it is trying to express. This relates to a modem view , of the human psyche. Even if one does not quite agree with Virginia Woolf's suggestion that "in or about December, 1910, human character changed" [1924] (1967:320) (maybe we just became more aware of human traits that had been there all along), we can generally admit that ~e twentieth c~ntu~ has become fascinated with that psyche's capacity to operate mtmtively, subconsciously, artistically in realms well beyond rational comprehension. To a very real extent, "this demand that language be the objectification of a psychological realm which is dissonant or irregular or complicated, led Kruchenykh inevitably to zaum" (Douglas 1975c:360). Or, as Ziegler puts it, "The disinte~ration of the verbal and poetic level in zaum implies the disintegration of the personal category" (1990:525). That is, it expresses the modem temperament, which can be seen either as diseased and in need of a cure, or as a state of mind to be understood and appreciated. Language is one of the most sensitive barometers of mental states, and, whether seen as pathological or progressive, zaum is a reflector of the modem consciousness in which a logical, hierarchical, intergrated order has .bee~ replaced by pluralistic crossroads where choices are many and gmdehnes are few. It creates an artistic structure which tries to maximally maintain choices for the reader rather than insist on a linear, unitary path. What individual zaum poems are trying to express


must be discussed in each particular case, but zaum as a whole may be seen as expressing indeterminacy as such, a preverbal or protoverbal consciousness that modem human nature has discovered or, perhaps more accurately, has recovered from pre-Gutenberg consciousness.

If, as Iser suggests, "indeterminacy is the fundamental precondition for reader participation" (1971:14), then zaum requires from the reader even more concentration (and good will) than usual. One must take time to explore the various possibilities and reactions to each word or word-fragment instead of just recognizing the usually single meaning of a given word appropriate for the given context. Zaum takes the polyvalency of language to an extreme which requires effort to deal with. As one critic puts it," A text written in this manner is submitted to various interpretations based on a reader's intuition. As never before, the reader becomes the co-creator of the text he is perceiving" (Buachidze 1989:169). All aspects of the text, ranging from visual properties to vocal articulation, enter into the process of interpretation. This unaccustomed degree of reader participation is, of course, taxing. Therefore it seems to work best in short, concentrated doses such as "Dyr bul shchyl." In longer compositions, the type of zaum itself needs to be varied or mixed in with non-zaum, as in Victory Over the Sun. We can add that Kruchonykh avoids repetition within texts. This reduces the inclination to accept them as quasi-musical sonic constructs.

Regardless of the number of other zaumniks included in this study, Kruchonykh r~mains the hero of it. Khlebnikov' s greatness is now generally recognized, but how does Kruchonykh stack up? His genius is less generally recognized, partly perhaps because he is simply less well known. Khlebnikov' s poetry has been reprinted sporadically throughout the century, while the only collection of Kruchonykh since 1930 has been Markov's excellent photoreprint edition of1973, with limited circulation especially in Russia. And it is only in the last few years that other zaumniks have received some attention. Perhaps also Kruchonykh and the others were less inventive in toto than Khlebnikov. Kruchonykh has little significant prose to his name. The philos~phical ramifications of his theories are more limited. Perhaps even the range of his poetic devices is more restricted. Yet in the sphere of genuine zaum indeterminacy he was clearly more radical than Khlebnikov, pushing language to limits rarely, perhaps never, entertained by Khlebnikov. If, for many, Khlebnikov took poetry to the edge, then Kruchonykh took it over the edge and down into the abyss. Kruchonykh's genius for disintegrative artistic methods makes him one of the most significant figures in this trend in this century. The extent to which avant-garde experimental innovations can be found in Kruchonykh at an earlier date and often in a more extreme form than in the work of his better-known European counterparts is truly striking. Also, while for some (Malevich, Khlebnikov, the Oberiuty) zaum

Conclusion 355

was seen as a means of penetrating to a higher spiritual realm through intuition, this arguably more profound orientation is a holdover from the Symbolist era. There is very little indication that Kruchonykh had such mystical inclinations, and in this respect he was even more forward-looking than his colleagues. We recall that in Jakobson's analysis (1976:189), public appreciation of Futurist innovations occurred in reverse chronological order: Pasternak's poetry, though later to arrive, was easier to assimilate than Mayakovsky's, Mayakovsky's than Khlebnikov's. Now that Khlebnikov is fully recognized, perhaps it is finally Kruchonykh's tum.

What in the end are zaum's achievements? In one way its lessons are its most important achievement. But did it produce any masterpieces of verbal art? Among the works by Kruchonykh we have examined, I would argue that the triptych "Dyr bul shchyl," Victory Over the Sun, and Learn Arters! are major masterpieces that retain their significance and fascination. Many minor masterpieces could also be listed, and to these we could add works by Zdanevich, Terentev, Tufanov, and others.

Perhaps another achievement difficult to overestimate is that zaum is still controversial, still avant-garde, still denigrated as having gone too far. In our age of sensationalism and rapid turnover of fads, this is no mean feat. Its detractors and supporters are agreed on perhaps only this: that it is a most extreme manifestation of poetic language. Thus Papemy says:

In Aleksey Kruchonykh zaum is a much more decisive break with image-·c meaning categories of language. The Word is not split in a poetic laboratory, but is ground in the meat-grinder of the author's whim:" All wordsinto smithereens!" If other Futurists preached "destruction" of the word in the name of other verbal constructions, then Kruchonykh destroyed the word to create a new" extra-verbal" language. (1972:348; Kruchonykh quote 1923d:7)

Whether this "extra-verbal language" is, as Ambrogio thinks, "prelingual" (:123) or a language of the future is irrelevant. Za- cleverly avoids the issue by allowing one to go "beyond" in any direction, backward, forward, or to the side. Zaum is seen as "much more innovative than Marinetti's 'parole in liberta'," and it "much more closely approximates abstract art" (Nebolsin 1975:391; Ambrogio:118-21). Despite its early association with primitivism, zaum is clearly the product of advanced civilization; it existed in a sophisticated environment and was a reaction to it. Nevertheless, it remains well behind (or ahead of) abstract art in public acceptability, since the latter has decorates the walls of banks and business offices. Zaum has yet to enter the corpo-


rate brochure or bank statement (at least intentionally), though it seems to have established itself as a regular part of the computer software manual.

What of its failures? Obviously it failed in ,perhaps its most cherished goal, to become a prevalent form of literary expression. It remained and remains a marginal phenomenon, existing on the boundary of literature.

But its goal was a noble one, to prevent the automatization of humans and their language, a fear brought before Kruchonykh's eyes especially by his own times, but relevant to all times when enforced standardization and uniform thinking and expression become a threat to the individual:

Before our eyes there occurred a transformation of people- beginning from the head'-'into moving machines, into a faceless gray cube and cylinder! Everything alive is extinguished and refined; the time is near when all people will be dressed alike and assigned numbers, -no doubt then they will stop distinguishing each other, will become walking geometric formulas-" a gray cube!" And even tears will no longer exist! (Kruchonykh 1918i; Ziegler 1987:92)

Fast upon this came Zamyatin's We [1920] and all the things it foresaw.

Perfect clarity may be a fine goal in many cases, but as the zaumniks have shown, unclarity is also valuable and necessary at times. "Nonsense" may be as sensible as sense.

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t,

Index

Listed are all surnames, but works only by the major zaumniks.

Adamovich, G. 102 Alchu).<, A. 347 Aleksandrov, A. 21 Aleksandrov, A. A. 334 Alyagrov (see Jakobson) Ambrogio, I. 355 Annenkov, Y. 68 Antin, D. 46 Apollinaire, G. 131 Apollonio, U. 131 Apollo of Corinth 11 Apuleius 273 Aronson, H. 286 Arp,H. 210 Arsenev, K. 253 Arvatov, B. 53,57-58,314-16,318 Aseev, N. 4, 67,318,338 Ashbery, J. 347 Ashukin, N. 346 Ashulqna, M. 346 Babaeva, E. 335 Baier, A. 347-48 Bakhterev, I. 336-37 Bakhtin, M. 345 Balcerzan, E. ~61 Ball, H. 206-10,219-20 Balla, G. 205 Bally, C. 306 Balmont, K. 83, 104, 114, 211-14, 220, 342 Baran, H. 142

410

~,

I

Barantsevich, K. 106 Baratynsky, E. 11 Bames,C. 68 Barthes, R. 350 Bartos, E. 127, 132 Batyushkov, F. 13-14,32,36 Batyushkov, K. 11 Baudouin de Courtenay, I. 47, 175-79, 267 Beaujour, E. 2 Beaujour, M. 350 Beck.G. 40 Bedny, D. 324 Bekhterev, V. 287

Index 411

Bely, A. 8-9, 15,27,32, 36,45,47, 78~0, 104,114,208,214-19,221,256,294,302-03,324,329,331,347

Benois, A. 88 Bergson, H. 40-42, 157, 174, 332 Bernsteyn, S. 342 Bezpyatov, E. 46-47,306 Biryukov, S. 333,342,347 Blackmur, R. 345 Blagoveshchensky, V. 21 Blagoy1 D. 344 Blavatsky, H. 40 Blok, A. 11, 25-27, 47, 88, 112, 338 Bobrov, S. 55, 68,106 Boccioni, U. 205 BOhme,Jakob 40,217 Bogomolov, I. 287 Bogomolov, N. 4, 342 Boiste, C. 46 Bolinger, D. 345 Bolshakov, K. 4, 97,99-101,108,273,307 Boronali 172 Bourdon, J. 9 Bow it, J. 42-43,48, 99, 106, 127, 196,200-01, 203,220,342 Bowra, C. 68 Braque, G. 58 Breshko-Breshkovsky 274 Brik. 0. 4, 142, 305, 324 Brodsky,!. 68 Brown, E. 57, 156 Bruno, G. 271, 273 Bryusov, V. 53,55-56,68,88,112,164-67,170,172,175,182,292,294,297-300,

302,338-39


Buachidze, G. 354 Bucke, R. 40 Burenin, V. 55, 68 Burliuk, D. 49, 67-68, 106-07, 133, 170, 253, 267 Buzzi, P. 20S Byron,G. 11 Calderon, P. 11 Cammaerts, E. 348 Capablanca, J. 275 Carli, M. 205 Carpenter, E. 40 Carra, C. 205 Carroll, L. 348 Cassedy, S. 8 Chachikov, A. 260, 265-66, 289 Chebotarevskaya, A. 86 Chekhov, A. 10, 320 Chekhov, V. 47 Chemyavsky, N. 256, 288 Chemyshevsky, N. 31 Chesterton, G. 348 Chicherin, A. N. 4, 31, 239, 346 Chikovani, S. 323 Chizh~vsky (fschi!ewskij), D. 68, 98, 165 Chkonia, D. 69 Chrysippus 31 Chukovsky, K. 63,67-68,162-64,180,296-97,303,314 Chuzhak, N. 318-19 Clement of Alexandria 40 Cohen, H. 216 Collins, M. 40 Comins-Richmond, W. 254 Compton, S. 50 Cooke, R. 147 Cratylus 7 Curtis, J. 40 Dal, V. 12, 66, 231,257,267,298 Darwin, C. 17, 21, 47,218,287

Dashwood,J. 205 Degen, Y. 287-88 Del Sarte, F. 20 Delson, V. 46 Democritus 212 Depero, F. 205 Derrida, J. 350

Derzhavin, G. 123 Deych, A. 68 Dickens, C. 10 Dobrolyubov, A. 27 Donchin, G. 46 Dostoevsky, F. 11, 15,52

Index 413

Douglas, C. 4, 40, 42, 44, 46-47, 114, 127-29, 132-33, 142, 201-02,353 Druskin, Y. 336-37 Dubovitsky, Colonel 29 Duganov, R. 97, 142, 286 Duncan, I. 331

Dyakonitsyn, L. 48, 98 Eagle, H. 55, 77-79, 89, 91-93,95, 160, 250,267-68,294,312-14,321 Eco, U. 351-52 Edinger, G. 348 Efimov, N. 312 Efremov, E. 109 Efros, A. 211 Einstein, A. 332 Elachich, G. 126 Elderfield, J. 219 Empson, W. 348 Ender, B. 4, 192, 333-34, 342 Ender, Z. 333-34, 342 Engelgardt, B. 310-12 Enukidze, N. 112 Epshteyn, M. 68 Erbsloh, G. 113, 115, 119-20, 122, 127-30, 132 Erlich, V. 310 Esakia, L. 323 Essen, B. 273 Euclid 138 Evtushenko, E. 68 Eykhenbaum, B. 214, 308-09, 312 Ezhov, I. 339 Faccani, R. 23 Faryno, J. 261 Fauchereau, S. 57, 68 Fet, A. 11, 91, 161, 213 Filonov, P. 4, 192, 195-200,203 Flaubert, G. 36 Fleishman, L. 329 Florensky, P. 57, 68-69; 98,349 Folejewski, Z. 346 F6nagy,I. 345

>,


Forster, L. 348 Frank, L. 106 Freud, S. 153, 159, 254-56, 287, 294, 311 Frye, N. viii Fyodorov, N. 198 Gant d'Orsaille, J. 55 Gasparov, M. 288 Gayraud, R. 282, 285, 289 Gerigk, H-J. 68 Ghil, R. 46 Gibian, G. 335-36 Glazkov, N. 57, 67 Gleizes, A. 43-44 Gnedov, V. 4,101-04,135,160,164,175,271,340

GMel, K. 349 Goethe, W. 6, 11-12,36-37 Gofman, V. 142 Gogol, N. 252, 296, 306, 312, 347 Golenishchev-Kutuzov, A. 11 Goncharov, I. 10 Goncharova, N. 58,98-100 Gorbachevich, K. 347 Gordeev, D. 254 Goriely, B. 97 Gorky, M. 10, 20, 23-24 Gorlov, N. 318-21 Gornfeld, A. 11-14,32, 36, 46, 67, 84, 297-98,324,344

Gould,J. 31 Grammont, M. 9-10,306

Gray, C. 127 Grigorev, V. 4, 67,142 Grossman, J. 27 Grossman-Roshchin, I. 322-23 Grilbel, R. 151-52, 220 Grygar, M. 57, 67, 147, 195-96 Gubanova, G. 132 Gumilevsky, L. 109 Guro, E. 88, 166, 183, 195, 303, 334 Gurevich, L. 113,125-26 Guryanova, N. 183-84, 186, 192-95 Gusman, B. 338-39 Gutenberg, J. 354 Gvozdyov, A. 346 Haeckel, E. 21 Halle, M. 119

Hamsun, K. 8, 20 Hansen-L6ve, A. 114,305 Hartmann, T. von 133 Hassan, I. 350 Hausmann, R. 208-11 Helmholtz, H. von 46 Henderson, L. 43-45, 48, 89, 127 Heraclitus 212 Herder, J. 32,34 Hermogenes 7 Higgins, D. 25 Hinton, C. 37-38, 44 Hofstadter, D. 349 H6lderlin, J. viii Holenstein, E. 343 Horace 118 Huelsenbeck, R. 209-10 Humboldt, W. von 14, 16, 31-37, 90, 180, 344, 349 Ignatev, I. 86-87, 102-03, 155-56, 160, 340 Ignatov, I. 55, 63, 67 Imposti, G. 142, 147 Ingarden, R. 350 Iser, W. 350,354

Index 415

Ivanov, E. I. 101 .t~

Ivanov, V.I. 7-8, 27, 114 Ivanov-Razumnik. R. 67 Ivanova-Lukyanova, G. 345 Ivanyushina, I. 109 Ivask,G. 27 lvnev, R. 67 Jaccard, J-Ph. 334, 342 Jacobowski, L. 46 Jadova, L. 127

Jakobson, R. (Alyagrov) 4, 46, 119, 152, 165, 184, 186-91, 204, 211, 292-94, 303, 305-08,311,315,343,347,353,355

James, W. 17,2~21,40,42,306 Janco, M. 209 Janecek. G. 4, 7, 45,50,58,65, 84-85,97-98,175,181,191,202,217,219,223,228,

231-32,235,237-39,262,271,276,278,280,283-84,288,293,331,342 Jangfeldt, B. 189,191 Jarry, A. 120,131,273 Jensen, K. 103 John, Saint 199 Kafka, F. 336

Kamensky, V. 4,97,108,191,223,231,303,310,318-19,322,333,339,341,346


Kandinsky, V. 42, 48, 130, 133, 208-09, 219-20 Kant, I. 39, 94, 96,332 Kapelyush, B. 88, 113, 131, 341 Kemer,J. 209 Khabias, N. 296 Kharazov, G. 254, 256, 287 Khardzhiev, N. 49, 97, 99, 104, 112, 114, 116, 119, 131, 133

Kharms, D. 334-36, 338 Khazan, V. 69 Kheraskov, M. 123 Khlebnikov, V. 1, 3-4, 19, 49, 51, 56-57, 59, 61, 68, 73, 78, 79, 86-89, 91-92, 102,

108, 111-13,119,126-27,135~2,15~8, 160,164,167-70,178,182,194-95, 197,200,208,211,217,219-21,228,235,253,256,259,262,265-67,270-71, 292-94, 296, 298-99, 303-04,306-10,313-14, 316, 323, 328-31, 333, 335,337,

339-41, 346, 349, 352, 354-55 "Artists of the World!" 138 "Bobeobi Sang the Lips" 49, 55, 177 "Incantation by Laughter" 49, 136, 158

"Lyubkho" 158 . "Night in Galicia" 138 "On Poetry" 138, 141-42 "Our Fundamentals" 68, 138-41 Snezhimochka 81, 111-12,142-43 "Teacher and Student" 138 "Thicket" 73 "Worldbackwards" 307 Zangezi 145-52,200

Khodasevich, V. 67, 170-71, 329-30 Khomyakov, A. 12 Khudakov, S. 56, 93, 97-99, 101 Kiktev, M. 135 Kirby, M. 82,131,205 Kirby, V. 127,132 Kireevsky, I. 11-12 Kirpichnikov, A. 162 Kirsanov, S. 327 Kiterman, B. 9, 15 Kjetsaa, G. 7 Klyun, I. 183 Kolosov, M. 46 Koltsov, A. 155 Konovalov, D. 26,28-31,47,84, 92,155,163,237 Konstriktor, B. 273 Konyonkov,S. 57 Koreysha, 1:· 31, 107

• I

I I'

Korolenko, V. 10 Korsakov, S. 153-54 Kostetsky, A. 142 Kovtun, E. 43, 68, 97,119, 121, 195,201-02 Kr., K. 132 Kranikhfeld, V. 73 Kreitler, H. 345 Kreitler, S. 345

Index 417

Kruchonykh, A. 2~, 27, 31, 43, 45, 47, 49-69, 71-98, 101-02, 104-06, 108-33, 135, 139,141-42,144,147,151,153,155-75,177,179,181~7,189-95,198,200-01,

203-04,206-08,210-11,216-17,219-20,223-71,275,285~10,313-21,323-31,

334,337-42,344-46,348-50,352-56 The Apocalypse in Russian Literature 338 Appendicitis 28~7 "Apollo in the Crossfire" 265,296 Attack 286 "Azef-Judas-Khlebnikov" 265 Balas 192-93,256,286 Begushchee 286 "A blow" 76-77 "The Deaf-Mute" 261 "Declaration of the Word as Such" 5, 49, 78-79, 86, 88, 324, 328, 338 "Declaration of Transrational Language" 268, 292 1.

"Deymo" 81-83 "Dyr bul shchyl" 3, 49, 52-69, 73, 78, 93, 98, 102,139,147, 160-61, 164, 170-

71, 174, 182, 189, 208, 216, 253-54, 265, 298, 303, 318-21, 325, 329, 336, 338-339,346,354-55

Explodity 83-85, 86, 93, 267 The Fattening of Roses 252,256-59,288 Flowery Paving Logs 261-62 F-nagt 238, 241, 245, 249 Fo-ly-fa 238-39 From all books 237-39,241 "From the Sahara to America" 88-89 A Game in Hell 49 ,Gly-gly 193,259 "Go osneg kayd" 73-74, 161, 171, 338 Gorod v osade 286 "Graveside Word" 323 Half-~live 71 Hermits 71 "I am a priest" 88 "Journey Over the Whole World" 50-51 Kachildaz 238,241,247-48 Kalendar 268, 293, 329


"Khosmochay" 301-02 Kozyol-Amerikanets 286

• "Kup asa" 83 iacquered Tights 262-63 Learn Arters! 228-34, 355 Let's Grumble 81, 93, 112 "The Letter as Such" 178 Lubverig 288 Malacholy in a Housecoat 252-54, 257, 260 Milliorlc 262-63, 265 "Mutiny on the Snow" 73, 75-76 "Muzka" 262-64 Myatezh IX 286 Nestroche 192 "The New Ways of the Word" 88-93, 157, 160, 171 Obesity of Roses 193 Old-Fashioned Love 49 "On Madness in Art" 255-56 The Phonetics of the Theater 300-04, 340 Piglets 85-86 Pomade 53-54,56,64,71, 93,101,168-69 Ra-va-kluz 286 Salamak 286 The Sdvigology of Russian Verse 294-98 The Secret Vices of Academics 181, 183, 185 Sky-Blue Eggs 235-37 A Slap in the Face of Public Taste 51, 157, 181, 208 "Song of a Shaman" 95 Te li le 203 The Texture of the Word 293-94, 324, 339 "They were pulling the horses" 71-73 To a Pockmarked Snout 286 Tsots 239, 241 Tunshap 237, 286 "a turnip burns" 50 "Universal Language" 79, 86, 88, 165, 179 Universal War 60, 185-86, 223 Victory Over the Sun 81, 95, 111-33, 142-45, 154, 166, 198, 200-01, 205-07,

209,228,259,265,271,273,271,303,326,354-55 "Victory without End" 291, 305 "Voen-Kr" 323,325 Vosem vostorgov 286 War 185 The Word as Such 113, 178 "The world ended" 88

worldbackwards 49, 58, 71, 88, 93 Zamaul I 260-61 Zamaul III 261 Zaum 239-44, 246 Zaumnaya gniga 183-85, 186-89, 191 Zaumniki 189-91, 291 Zudesnik 288, 293 Zugdidi 251-52,286 15 Years of Russian Futurism 327 1918 223-28, 231

Kubelik, J. 262 Kuenzli, R. 207-11,350 Kulbin, N. 42, 45, 48-49, 76, 80, 95, 133, 156, 220 Kuprin, A. 253 Kushner, B. 300-01 Kussmaul, A. 9 Kuzmin, M. 273, 271, 306 Kuzminsky, K. 202, 342 Kvyatkovsky, A. 346 Lacroix, A. 210 Lanoe, J-C. 4, 142 Lao-tze 40 Larionov, M. 58, 62,97-99,101,132,273

Index 419

Lauhus, A. 68, 142, 353 ~ Lavrentiev, A. 203, 260 Lavrin, J. 274 Lavrov, A. 221 Lawton, A. 4, 55, 68,71-79,89, 91-93,95,160-61,250,267-68,294,313-14,321 Lazaru~M. 16,36 Leach, R. 127-28 Lear, E. 348 LeDantiu, M. 282, 284 Leontev, A. 346 Lermontov, M. 6, 11, 91, 305-06 Leshkova, 0. 274,288 Letourneau, C. 21,46 Levin, I. 337 Liede, A. 211, 348 Lionel-Marie, A. 288 Lippard, L. 210 Lissitzky, L. 115, 132, 202 Lissitzky-KUppers, S. 132 Livshits, B. 40, 42, 78,176

Lobachevsky, N. 138 Lodyzhensky,M. 40


Lombroso, C. 155-57, 159 Lomonosov, M. 7,123 Long, R. 48, 220 L6nnqvist, B. 4,141-42,151-52 Lossky, N. 157 Lotman, Y. 343-44 Lotov, A. 4, 56, 93, 97-101, 132, 164 Lotze, H. 34, 36 Lukashevich, P. 157 Lunacharsky, A. 67, 68, 326 Lundberg, E. 166 Lvov,N. 11 Lvov-Rogachevsky, V. 67, 326 Maeterlinck, M. 174, 220 Magarotto, L. 288 Malakhov, S. 326-29 Malevich, K. 3-4,42-43,111-13,122,132,172,183,201-03,259,286,337,354 Mallarme, S. 46, 56, 160, 164, 174-75, 307 Mandelker, A. 142, 345 Mandelstam, 0. 11, 330 Marc, F. 133, 209 Marcade, J-C. 112-14 Marev, G. 107 Marinetti, F. 53, 61, 78, 92, 98, 114-15, 117,122, 131, 160-61, 161,163, 175, 205-

06,256,301,355 Markiewicz, H. 350 Markov, V. F. 45, 47, 50,55,57, 60-61, 63,78-80,86, 88-89, 96-97, 102,107,109,

127, 142, 156, 159, 161-62, 167, 184,204,281-84,288,339,354 Markov (Matvejs), V. 42-43 Marr, N. 289 Marr, Y. 289 Martynov, D. 157 Marx, K.· 271 Marzaduri, M. 4, 97, 104, 127, 159, 238, 254, 261, 274, 286-88 Matejka, L. 308, 343 Mathauser, Z. 68, 85 Mathauserov<\, S. 88 Matyushin, M. 42-45,48,111-15,120,123-27,130-31, 195,201; 260,271,333-34,

340-41 Maupassant, G. 36-37 Mayakovsky, V. 11,43,55, 111-12,120,127-28,160,170,198,200,205,217,256-

57,262,267,270,303,313,317-18,321,323,329,344,355 McVay, G. 57, 305 Medvedev, P. 312 Meillet, A. 306

Melnikov-Pechersky, P. 29, 31 Melnikova, S. 260, 262, 264, 272, 277, 280-81, 288 Melzer, A. 133, 207 Mendeleev, D. 139 Menshutin, A. 330, 346 Merezhkovsky, D. 11 Mersenne, M. 46 Messerli, D. 347 Metzinger, J. 43-44 Meyer, G. von 46 Meylakh, M. 67, 334-38 Mgebrov, A. 125 Mickiewicz, D. 1-3,57,68,350-51 Middleton, J. 208 Mikhaylovsky, B. 68, 346 Milner-Gulland, R. 142 Mindlin, E. 67 Mishchenko, L. 47 Moldavsky, D. 67 More, T. 296 Morgenstern, C. 209 Motherwell, R. 207, 209 MUller, M. 40, 47, 217 Muravyov, V. 57, 67 Myasnikov, A. 57, 67, 346 Myasoedov, S. 43 Nadson, S. 11,84 Nakhimovsky, A. 334 Nakov, A. 201 Naumov, V. 107 Nebolsin, S. 355 Neep, E. 348 Nevzglyadova, E. 344 Nietzsche, F. 160, 350 Nikitina, E. 68 Nikolskaya, T. 4, 251, 265, 287-89,340,342 Nikonova,Ry 239,347 Nilsson, N. 57-58,60-63,68,103,153,207-08 Nilvich, L. 337-38 Nizen,E. 48 Nordau, M. 154-57, 159 Ocheretyansky, A. 202,342,352 Odoevsky, V. 11-12 Olenin, A. 303 Olimpov (Fofanov), K. 156

Index 421


Ong, w. 349 Oraic, D. 142, 151-52 Orlov, N. 27 Orlova, E. 345 Osipov, S. 28 Ostrovsky, A. G. 340 Ostrovsky, A. N. 10, 112,142 Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, D. 14, 32, 36-37

Ozarovsky, Y. 20, 47 Ozerov, L. 67 Pagani Cesa, G. 271 Panov, M. 261, 344-45 Papemy, Z. 67, 355 Parnis, A. 126, 176 Pascal, B. viii Pasternak, B. 61, 329, 355 Paul, Saint 91 Paul, H. 16 Perloff, M. 46, 62 Pertsova, N. 135-36, 152 Petnikov, G. 4, 292, 324 Petrushevskaya, L. 347 Picasso, P. 42,58 Pisemsky, A. 11 Plato 3, 7-8, 26, 31, 45, 94, 96, 175, 180

Plotinus 39-40 Podgaevsky, S. 105-06 Poe, E. 212-13 Pogodin, A. 163, 180, 306 Pokrovsky. -E. 23-24, 95, 339

Polivanov, E. 306 Polkinhom, H. 308 Polonsky, V. 317-18 Polyakova, S. 330 Polyansky, V. 318 Pomorska, K. 67 Ponomaryov, A. 337 Potebnya, A. 34-37, 47, 126, 180, 214

Povelikhina, A. 43 Predtechensky, N. 67 Princet, M. 43 Puchkov, A. 108 Pushkin, A. 7, 57, 118, 120, 122, 155, 167, 181, 214, 253-54, 300, 305, 325-26, 328

Radin, E. 155-59

Radlov, S. 340 Radov, E. 68 Rafalovich, S. 294 Raffe, M. 221 Ramses 42 Razinkova, M. 69 Redko, A. 68, 73, 86-88, 171-73, 338 Reformatsky, A. 344 Remizov, A. 182 Revyakin. A. 68, 346 Revzin, I. 57 Richter, H. 207,209-10 Riemann. G. 44 Riggs, G. 4, 65, 283 Rimbaud, A. 46 Rimsky-Korsakov, N. 46,142 Robbins, D. 46 Rodchenko, A. 286 Romanov, K. 253 ~omportl, M. 88 Ronen, 0. 330 Rorschach, H. 344 Rosenblum, R. 58 Roslavets, N. 260 Rossiyansky, M. (L. Zak) 55, 68 Rousseau, J-J. 32 Rozanov, I. 68 Rozanov, N. 68, 160-61

Index 423

Rozanova, 0. 4, 42, 183-85,192-95,203-04,256,260,292,303,340 Rozhkov, S. 92 Rudenstine, A. 204 Rudy, S. 186 Rukavishnikov, I. 253 Rusinko, E. 40-41 Russolo, L. 131 Rutebeuf 25 Sabaneev, L. 342 Saint-Point, V. de 131, 175 Sakharov, I. 24-25, 136, 146 Saksonskaya, N. 295 Saladin 25 Sapir, E. 345 Saussure, F. 343 Sayanov, V. 338 Scheerbart, P. 209


Schiller, F. 6, 1~11 Schleicher, A. 16 Schmidt, P. 1, 143,150 Schnitzer, L. 142 Scholle,C. 118,120,122,127

Scholz, F. 57 Schwitters, K. 210-11 Scriabin, A. 46 Sechenov, I. 21-22 Selivanovsky, A. 345 Semyonov, A. rn Serenyi 158 Serezhnikov, V. 324-25, 342 Sergeev 97 Settimelli, E. 205 Severyanin, I. 87, 162, 166, 170-71, 175,257, 262, 265,298

Sewell, E. 348 Seyfullina, L. 325, 327 Shaginyan, M. 294 Shamurin, E. 339 Shapir, M. 139, 151 Shapotnikov1 B. 131 Shcherba1 L. 471 57, 791 306 Shemshurin. A. 167-701 1801 1821 1931 237~ 2501 253-54, 261, 2991 340 Shershenevich, V. 56, 67,101,1311161,298

Shevchenko, A. 58 Shirokov~ P. 340 Shishkov I A. 161, 253 Shishkov, Varlaam 28-29,31,83-84,92,163,177

Shishkov IV. Ya. 253 Shklovsky1 V. 5-111 13-16, 18, 22-24, 26-31, 37, 46-471 671 91, 951 126, 177, 268,

3031305-06,308,312,314,324,339,351

Shor, R. 326 Shukman, A. 335 Sigov (Sigey)~ S. 4, 82, 102-04, 112, 2591 267, 273-781 280-82, 2841 287, 3341 342~

347 Silliman, R. 347 Simonovich, A. 21 Sinyavsky, A. 330, 346 srowacki, J. 11 Sluchevsky, K. 253 Smirnitsky, A. 347 Smirnov, I~ 287 Socrates 7 Soffici, A. 61

Sokolov, A. 345,351 Sola; A. 57 Solivetti, C. 4, 142 Sologub, F. 86, 88, 204, 338 Sosnovsky, L. 317-18, 341 Spence, P. viii Spencer, H. 17, 21, 42,47 Spinoza, B. 37 Stanislavsky, K. 302 Stapanian, J. 60, 186, 285 Stein, G. 211 Steinberg, A. 45,217,219,221 Steiner, G. 348 Steiner, P. 305 Steiner, R. 214-15, 217, 219, 221 Steiner, W. viii, 348 Steinthal, H. 16 Stepanov, N. 68,338-39,345 Stepanova, V. 4, 192, 203-04, 259-60, 292 Stephan, H. 313-14,317,346 Stewart, S. 348 Stock, S. 31 St~rring, G. 155 Sukhoparov, S. 67, 234, 286 Sully, J. 22-23, 29 Sully-Prudhomme, R. 11 Sumarokov, A. 346 Swift, J. 209 Tarkka, M. 132 Tasteven, G. (Henri) 7, 56, 67, 173-75

Index 425

Terentev, I. 4, 104, 203, 250-51, 256-58, 265-67, 269-73, 277, 280, 286-89, 292, 294-95,303,318,327,355 The Cherubim Whistle 269 "Endless toast in honor of Sofie Melnikova" 272 Fact 269 "Iordano Bruno" 271, 273 "The itinerary of globality" 295 "it's ready" 269 "the little gray goat" 270 "my funeral" 269-70 "Politics!" 258 Record of Tenderness 277 "Toward the Occupation of Palestine by the English" 257-58 17 Silly Tools 269

Timenchik, R. 126, 176


Tolic, D. 142 Tolmachov, D. 335 Tolstaya-Vechorka, T. 286

Tolstoy, A. K. 11 Tomashevsky, B. 57, 68, 310, 346 Tomashevsky, K. 113-14,124-26,132

Toporov, V. 29, 186 Trenin, V. 323 Tretyakov, S. 6.7, 275, 303, 321-22, 329

Trotsky, L. 325 Tsvel, G. 347 Tsvetkov, A. 347 Tufanov, A. 4, 156, 219, 271, 330-34, 337, 342, 355

Turgenev, I. 162-63, 180, 306, 347 Tynyanov, Y. 308-10,328 Tyutchev, F. 11, 37, 68, 91, 253, 266 Tzara, T. 209-11 Ushakov, D. 346 Uspensky, B. 352 Uspensky, F. 335 Uspensky, G. 11 Uspensky (Ouspensky), P. 37-45, 47-48, 89-91, 94, 239, 241

Ustinov, A. 334 Vallier, D. 186, 188-89, 204 Varlamov, K. 125 Vasileva, N. 253 Vavulin, N. 155, 159 Veksler, A. 221 Veltrusq, J. 343 Verdi, G. 284 Verhaeren, E. 174 Vertinsky, A. 253 Veselovsky, A. 14-15,26,36,46,126

Vesyoly, A. 327 Vid, Prince 274 Vinokur, G. 313-14, 316-17,341,346

Vishnevetsky, I. 334 Vivekananda 40 Volkonsky, S. 47, 306 Volodin, S. 67, 318 Voloshin, M. 48 Voronin, S. 344 Vroori, R. 135-39,145-47,151-52 Vsevolodsky-Gemgross, V. 342 Vucinich, A. 47

Vvedensky, A. vii_i, 334-38 Vyazemsky, P. 10 Vygotsky, L. 344 Wagner, R. 214 Warren, A. 345 Watson, G. viii wa·ugh, L. 343 Wellek, R. 345 Wells, H. G. 116

Weststeijn, W. 68, 142, 147, 152,204,220 White, J. 57, 205 Whitman, W. 160 Whorf, B. 345 Wilhelm fi, Kaiser Wittgenstein, L. viii Woolf, V. 353 Wundt, W. 9, 15-21, 42, 46-47, 180, 218, 221, 287, 306 Yakubinsky, L. 305-06,314, 324 Yushchenko, A. 323-24 Zabolotsky, N. 334-36 Zakrzhevsky, A. 67,102,159-60 Zalevskaya, A. 345 Zamyatin, E. 356

Index 427

Zdanevich, I. 4, 97, 122, 156, 186, 210, 223, 250-52, 256, 262, 265, 269, 271, 273-85, 287-89, 303-04, 318, 355 f

Az tho Zga 281-82 Eester ailend 280 Dunkee for rent 277-80 Dunkeeness 284-85, 288, 292 LeDantyu as a Beacon 251, 282-84 "Le degre 41 sinapise" 285 Parizhachi 285

Yanko, King of Albania 205,256,273-77,289,303 Zdanevich, K. 223-24, 226-28, 288 Zelinsky, B. 68

Zelinsky, F. 15-19,21,23,47,306 Zelinsky, K. 326, 328-29, 347 Zhirmunsky, V. 46, 67,312 Zhukovsky, V. 11

Zhuravlyov, A. 69,345 Zhurba, A. 69

Ziegler, R. 4, 63, 68, 142, 193, 237, 250, 254, 260, 286-87, 293-94, 340-41, 352-53, 356

janecek gerald zaum the transrational poetry of russian futurism

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