Futurists are who? Russian futurists. Futurists of the Silver Age

Futurism (from the Latin word futurum, meaning "future") is an avant-garde trend in the art of Europe 1910-1920, mainly in Russia and Italy. It sought to create the so-called "art of the future", as representatives of this direction declared in manifestos.

In the work of FT Marinetti, the Italian poet, Russian cubo-futurists from the Gilei society, as well as participants in the Mezzanine of Poetry, the Association of Ego Futurists, Centrifugi, traditional culture as a legacy of the "past" was denied, aesthetics of the machine industry and urbanism was developed .

Character traits

For the painting of this direction are characterized by the influx of forms, shifts, repeated repetitions of various motifs, as if summing the impressions obtained as a result of rapid movement. In Italy, the futurists are J. Severini, U. Boccioni. In the literature there is a mixture of fiction and documentary material, in poetry - experimentation with the language ("zaum" or "words on the loose"). Russian poets-futurists are VV Mayakovsky, VV Khlebnikov, I. Severyanin, AE Kruchenykh.

Groupings

This direction arose in 1910-1912, simultaneously with acmeism. Acmeists, futurists and representatives of other trends of modernism in their work and unification were internally contradictory. The most significant of the Futurist groups, later called Cubo Futurism, united various poets of the Silver Age. The most famous of her futurist poets are V. V. Khlebnikov, D. D. Burliuk, V. V. Kamensky, A. Kruchenykh, V. V. Mayakovsky and others. Egorofurizm I. Severyanin (poet IV Lotarev, years of life - 1887-1941) was one of the varieties of this trend. In the group "Centrifuge" famous Soviet poets BL Pasternak and NN Aseev started their work .

Freedom of a poetic word

The Russian Futurists proclaimed the independence of form from content, its revolution, the unrestricted freedom of a poetic word. They completely renounced literary traditions. In a manifesto with a very daring title, "Slap in the face of public taste," published by them in the 1912 collection of the same name, representatives of this trend called for the dismissal of such recognized authorities as Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Tolstoy from the "Modern Steamboat." A. Kruchenykh defended the poet's right to create his own, "abstruse" language, which has no specific meaning. In his poems, speech was in fact replaced by an incomprehensible, meaningless set of words. But VV Kamensky (years of life - 1884-1961) and V. Khlebnikov (years of life - 1885-1922) were able to carry out very interesting experiments in their work with the language, which had a fruitful impact on Russian poetry.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky

The futurist was also the famous poet Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893-1930). His first poems were published in 1912. Vladimir Vladimirovich introduced his theme into this direction, which from the very beginning identified him among other representatives. Mayakovsky-Futurist actively advocated the creation of a new in society life, and not just against the various "junk".

In the revolution of 1917, which preceded the revolution, the poet was a revolutionary romanticist who denounced the so-called "fat" kingdom, foresaw the impending revolutionary storm. Denying the whole system of capitalist relations, he proclaimed humanistic faith in man in such poems as "Flute-spine", "Cloud in pants", "Man", "War and Peace." The theme of the poem "Cloud in Pants", published in 1915 (only in a censored form), was later defined by the poet as 4 screams "Down with!": Down with love, art, order and religion. He was one of the first Russian poets to show in his poems the whole truth of the new society.

Nihilism

In the years preceding the revolution, there were bright individualities in Russian poetry, which were difficult to attribute to a specific literary trend. This is MI Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) and MA Voloshin (1877-1932). After 1910, there is another new direction - futurism, which opposed itself to all literature, not only the past, but also the present. It entered the world with the desire to subvert all ideals. Nihilism can be seen in the external design of collections of poets that were published on the reverse side of the wallpaper or on wrapping paper, as well as in their names - "The dead moon", "Milk of mares" and other typical poems of the futurists.

"Slap in the face of public taste"

The first published in 1912 collection "Slap in the face of public taste" was printed declaration. It was signed by famous futurist poets. They were Andrey Kruchenykh, David Burliuk, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velimir Khlebnikov. In it they asserted their exclusive right to be the spokesmen of their era. Poets denied as ideals of Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Tolstoy, but at the same time Balmont, his "perfume fornication", Andreev with his "dirty slime", Maxim Gorky, Alexander Blok, Alexander Kuprin and others.

Rejecting everything, the manifesto of the Futurists established the "lightning" of the precious word. Without trying, unlike Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky, to overthrow the existing social order, they only wanted to update its forms. In the Russian version, the slogan "War is the only hygiene of the world", considered the basis of Italian futurism, was weakened, however, according to Valery Bryusov, this ideology still "appeared between the lines."

According to Vadim Shershenevich, futurists of the silver age raised the form for the first time to the proper height, giving it the value of the main, self-goal element of the work. They categorically rejected the verses, which are written only for the sake of the idea. Therefore, many formal declared principles arose.

New language

Velimir Khlebnikov, another theoretician of futurism, proclaimed a new "abstruse" language as the future language in the whole world. In it, the word loses its semantic meaning, acquiring in return a subjective connotation. Thus, vowels were understood as space and time (the nature of aspiration), consonants - sound, paint, smell. In an effort to expand the language boundaries, he suggests creating words on the basis of the root (roots: spell ..., chur ... - "we are enchanted and shy away").

The aestheticism of symbolic and, in particular, acmeist poetry, the futurists opposed the emphatic de-aestheticization. For example, "poetry is a worn out girl" by David Burliuk. Valery Bryusov in the review "The Year of Russian Poetry" (1914) noted, noting the conscious rudeness of the futurist poems, that it is not enough to scold all that is outside his circle in order to find something new. He pointed out that all supposedly novelties of these poets are imaginary. We meet with them in the poetry of the 18th century, in Virgil and Pushkin, and the theory of sound colors was suggested by Theophile Gautier.

Difficulties in relationships

It is interesting that, with all denial in art, Silver Age futurists still feel the continuity of symbolism. For example, Alexander Blok, who watched the work of Igor Severyanin, said with concern that he had no topic, and in the article of 1915, Valery Bryusov noted that the inability to think and the lack of knowledge belittled his poetry. He reproaches Severyanin for vulgarity, bad taste, especially criticizes his poems about the war.

Back in 1912 Alexander Blok said that he was afraid of the fact that modernists do not have a core. Soon the concepts of "futurist" and "hooligan" became synonyms for the moderate public of those years. The press greedily followed the "exploits" of the creators of the new art. Thanks to this, they became known to a wide section of the population, attracted a lot of attention. The history of this trend in Russia is a complex relationship between the representatives of the four main groups, each of whom believed that it expresses the "true" futurism, and fiercely polemised with others, challenging the main role. This struggle took place in streams of mutual criticism, which increased their isolation and hostility. But sometimes members of different groups moved from one to another or came together.