Mayakovsky and Futurism

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Mayakovsky and FuturismAuthor(s): Zbigniew FolejewskiSource: Comparative Literature Studies, , Special Advance Number (1963), pp. 71-77Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40245613 .

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ZBIGNIEW F O LE] EW S Kl

Mayakovsky a n d F u t u r i s m

The red and the white are crumbled and gone,fistfuls of ducats were tossed to the green,and the black palms of window upon windowhave been filled with glowing yellow cards.is the first stanza of Mayakovsky's poem, Night (Noch) which ap-

pearedin Moscow in December, 1912, n the almanacA Slap in the Face o]Public Taste, and which Mayakovsky later called (in his autobiography) his"firstprofessional, publishablework."It may be mentioned as a curiosutn, perhaps as even more than that, thatat exactly the same time, i.e. in December, 1912,Guillaume Apollinaire wrotehis poem Windows (Les fentres) in which the image of lights changing inwindows is dramatized in a similar manner.

Du rougeau vert tout e jaune e meurt. .There cannot be any thought of any direct influence here, but one canperhaps speak as did the veteran Polish futurist, Anatol Stern* of a certain

analogy in attitude, in artistic climate, of a similar interest in a certain typeof vocabulary and imagery, similar reactions to earlier conventions in art(symbolism).The beginnings of Russian futurism are somewhat difficult to trace. Maya-kovsky, with his characteristicautobiographical"modesty,"dates the birth offuturism in Russia from a night in 1912,when he himself had a long talk withDavid Burlyuk on their way home from a performance of Rachmaninoffs"Islandof the Dead," which they had both left in disgust. This is, of course,sheer poetic license on Mayakovsky'spart. The fact is that works classifiableas futuristic had appeared earlier, to mention especially works by VelimirKhlebnikov, e.g. his celebrated poem Conjuration by Laughter (Zaklatiesmekhom) published in the almanac The Trap for Judges (Sadok Sudey) of1910. In comparing these two poems, it can be easily seen that Khlebnikov'spoetics in general was much closer to "orthodox" uturism than Mayakovsky's.Indeed, Mayakovsky in many of his works may seem not at all so far fromclassicism and symbolism as he claimed.

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72 + COMPARATIVEITERATURETUDIESThe very title of the Russian futurist manifesto,A Slap in the Face of PublicTaste, sounds very much like an echo of the Western futurist movement, espe-cially of Marinetti's slogans in the Italian manifesto of 1909, in which theeffects of futurist art are compared to "slaps in the face," "blows of the fist,"etc. In other words, the aim is clearly "anti-aesthetic."Nevertheless, imitativeas it was in its first impulses, Russian futurism like most other literarytrendsin Russia soon developed into an independent, specifically Russian move-ment, especiallysince its course coincided with an apparentlynew and uniquesocial and political development in Russia.To discuss Russian futurism and Mayakovsky's role in it is not a simpletask. This trend, which developed under rapidly changing social, political and

cultural conditions, has many phases and faces. Also, each of the poets whoparticipated n its developmenthas many phasesand faces, too. In each separatecase a number of questions arise1. The relationship of the trend and of the individual poet to traditionalRussian poetics.2. The relationshipto the poetics of symbolism.3. The relationshipto futurism as it penetratedinto Russia from the West.4. The relationshipto other contemporarytrends developing in Russia at thetime.5. The relationshipto the changing ideological and political attitudes towardart.6. The unique individual quality of each poet and of his work.In Mayakovsky'scase the whole problem is perhaps more intricate than inthe case of any other contemporarypoet. The question whether futurism wasonly an episode in Mayakovsky's poetic work or whether the poet lived anddied as a convincedbut conquered championof futurism,has not been definitelysettled. The official attitude in Soviet literary criticism is that it was only anepisode. I must confess that in my earlier remarks on Mayakovsky2 I tried tofollow this line of reasoning in view of the fact that it is quite true that there

are many poems by Mayakovsky in which he did not seem to follow theprinciplesof futurism as they are usually understood.However, when one at-tempts to chart Mayakovsky'spoetic practicein the light of his theoretical con-victions, the situation becomes more complicated.After all, when studying anySoviet writer, one may not eliminate the influence of political and ideologicalconsiderations,which apply to all phasesof human activity poetrynot excluded- and there are few, if any, Soviet writers who have not faced a possibilityof aconflict between artistic convictions and these considerations. In Mayakovsky'scase the program of futurism was not something external. On the contrary,itwas something that Mayakovsky identified with the Revolution in the beliefthat it was indeed the art of the Revolution and, hence, of the future. If hisinvolvement with futurismand enthusiasmfor the Revolution were indeed onlyexternal, then one would have to accept the view that personal lyricism inMayakovsky'spoetry completely overweighs everything else.It would certainlybe an exaggerationto think of Mayakovsky mainly in termsof formal cubist-futuristexperiments. His poetry goes deeper than that. The



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MAYAKOVSKYAND FUTURISM + 73entire problem of the meaning of "futurism"as conceived by him and some ofhis friends has to be investigated and apprehendedin a largercontext than hasbeen done up to now.In Mayakovsky'scase particularly,it seems that the existence of a "Maya-kovsky-agitator" r a "Mayakovsky-Werther"does not mean that he at any timeceased to be a futurist provided, of course, that the word futurism be notlimited to the Italian and the Russian manifestoes alone. In his recent book onVelimir Khlebnikov8 Vladimir Markov has listed some of the difficulties inattempting a simple account of the history and the nature of Russian futurism.Mayakovsky's role in it and especially his long and desperate campaign indefense of futurism as a truly revolutionary concept of poetry, has never beenfully investigatedand its significancein Mayakovsky'spoetic work made clear.It is a pity that exchanges of views between Western and Soviet scholarsonthese matters are often beclouded by the phenomenon of "speaking past eachother."The lively interest in Mayakovsky'spoetry and poetics inside the USSRand abroadcould, in view of the different theoreticalpoints of departure,leadto fruitful confrontations.As it is, they often end with misunderstandingsandaccusationsof distortion. A good example is the Soviet reactionto the collectionedited by Patricia Blake, V. Mayakovsky's The Bedbug and Selected Poetry(New York, i960). In a polemical article, "How They Study Mayakovsky atHarvard" Kak izuchayut Mayakovskogo v Garvardskom Universitete) inlnostrannayaLiteratura(1961 1, pp. 245-252), Soviet critics,who regard futur-ism as just another manifestation of bourgeois aesthetics,attack Miss Blake'streatmentof Mayakovskyas a representativeof this trend.4It should be bornein mind that the element of anarchy in futurism is defined by them as asymptom, not of revolution,but of bourgeois crisis.It is probablytrue that many of the formal experimentsof the futurists canbe interpreted as just another manifestation of decadent art. However, thesignificanceof Mayakovsky's ife-long fight to identify- both in the theory andin practice the poetics of futurism with revolution per se cannot be dismissed.EspeciallyMayakovsky'sassertionsthat form is equally, or more, an expressionof revolutionaryspirit as content, must be taken into account in every assess-ment of Mayakovsky'sconcept of futurism. Form must not lag behind thechanging rhythm of life. It must not "wilt away." Mayakovskywould certainlysubscribe to the following statement by Khlebnikov (quoted here from R.Jakobson,Noveyshaya russ\aya poeziya, Prague, 1921,p. 4). "When I noticedhow old lines suddenly wilted away when the future hidden in them turnedinto present,I understoodthat the matrix of poetry is in the future. It is fromthere that the wind of the gods of word blows."Futurism for all its reaction against symbolism, both in the West and inRussia, has at least one thing in common with symbolism, namely, a stronglylogocentricattitude, a preoccupationwith the problemsof language, a belief inthe power of WORD in uppercase letters.Symbols,metaphors,sound harmony,the power of language, "Thinking in images"- all these notions, so importantfor the symbolists,were never completely rejectedby the futurists (e.g. "glow-ing yellow cards" in "the palms of the windows"). The main difference is



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74 + COMPARATIVEITERATURETUDIESperhapsthe fact that at least, so far as Russian poetry is concerned the sym-bolists treated language with greater respect, trying to penetrateinto its inner"mystical"secrets;the futurists, in contrast,wanted to "free the word" from itsconventional contexts of morphology, syntax,etc., and emphasize its formal andemotional values per se, i.c. its euphonic elements and the emotional effectscreatedby these elements, thus providing a new building material for poetry.Both in the West and in Soviet Russia of that time the young generation ofpainters,sculptors,musiciansand poets, dissatisfiedwith impressionisticaesthet-ics, turned against "aestheticism"of any kind. Mayakovsky'srevulsion againstRachmaninoff's music and his rejoicingat the "anti-aestheticism" f such poetsas Sasha Chorny are signs of the same attitude. This attitude as is wellknown- occasionally led not only to the complete negation of conventionalnotions of "beauty"and "harmony"but even to disavowal of the conventionalmaterialsof art, e.g. color in painting, normal language in poetry. To be sure,the idea itself was not completelynew, not completelyunknown even to repre-sentativesof symbolism, e.g. Rimbaud. The attempts by Apollinaire in Franceand Khlebnikov in Russia to create a different system of linguistic values de-tached from the conventional one are well known. Mayakovskynever went sofar in this respect,but he, too, turned very sharplyagainst conventionalaesthet-icism and tried to convey his poetic message with "non-poetic" or evenseemingly "anti-poetic" exical, syntactical and typographical means.In what was ambitiously called "The First Journal of the Futurists,"whichbegan and expiredwith No. 1-2 publishedin Moscow in 1914, he programmaticarticle "Poetic Starts" (Poeticheskie nachala) by the Burlyuk brothers ex-pounded the notion of the poetic word as the bearer of qualities unknown tothe normal language. The most interesting thought expressedin this article isthe idea later developed by the "Formal School" of literary research,that lan-guage in poetry is perceivedand utilized in a specific poetic function, that wordexists independently of its normal traditional semantic value ("vne svoegosmysla"). From this notion there was only one step to the notion of the so-called "meta-semantic" anguage,5 an idea preached by several poets. In itsultimate purpose this is an ambitious idea; it would not only reveal the deepersense of the world of language (which the symbolists were doing) but wouldutilize existing and potential language values as raw material for creating self-sufficientpoetic reality.This is, of course,mostly theory, but not without someinteresting and even successful attempts to apply it in actual poetic practice.Khlebnikov is a case in point.

Mayakovsky was theoretically in agreement with these notions, but in hisown practicehe rarelyresortedto such radicallinguistic devices,evidently beingable to expresshimself adequately by means of the existing language. The mainpoint in his poetic practice,which he shares with all his futurist colleagues, isthe conviction that the hyperaestheticpoetic style of the symbolists was nolonger adequate for expressingthe world-outlook of the new generation in thenew, rapidlychanging reality.What he especiallyconsistentlyopposed was theimpressionisticmanner of trying to express some undefined and "undefinable"moods and feelings in images built of general abstractmaterial (instead of



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MAYAKOVSKYNDFUTURISM 75"something"happening "somehow," "somewhere,"he wanted defined eventswith defined address and date).In Mayakovsky'snotes for his first public talk on "Newest Russian Poetry"(O noveyshey russkoy poezii) in St. Petersburgin November, 1912,echoes ofthe Italian manifesto are quite strong. He speaks of his belief in the self-contained value, the independent "inner life," and the "myth-creating"(mifo-tvorchesky) power of the word, but at the same time he stressesthe fact thatthe important thing for a modern poet is finding words congenial to contem-porary reality.For Mayakovskyhimself, reality was soon to be identified withall-encompassingrevolution.While the post-revolutionary development in Russia led eventually to thedenouncement of futurism as bourgeois aesthetics,Mayakovsky persisted untilhis death in his belief that futurism was or, at least, could be a truly revolu-tionary trend.As for Mayakovsky'spoetic workshop, many of his devices which were newin Russianpoetry at the time had considerableconsanguinitywith what can betermed the general ideas of futurism.The more importantof these ideas were:

1. Colloquial syntax breaking with the rhythmic regularity,rounded periodsand poetic inversions. Still, although Mayakovsky makes his languagesound like colloquial spoken language, he resortsto many devices, ellipsisamong others,which cumulativelyconstitutea new sut generis poetization.2. Renovation of the vocabularyby refuting poetisms ossified by tradition,6and opening the door to more colloquial words, including vulgarisms.3. The development of specific rhythm, dynamic and breaking out of thetraditional regularity,governed by the exigencies of loud recitation, andarranged typographicallywith the line broken into short sectors so as tosuggest declamatory stresses on certain groups of words. The device ofspecial typographical arrangement in Mayakovsky is more natural thanthe obviously superficial experiments of this kind by Marinetti orApollinaire.

It has been suggested (by K. Chukovsky) that such typography, oftenimitated later both in Russia and elsewhere, implies the fast movement anddynamism typical of the swift changing pulse of modern life. One of the mainelements in the fast pulse of modern life was, of course, the machine. In con-trast to Marinetti and his immediate followers, who seem to be fascinated bymachines as such, the Russian futurists and imaginists are either frightened bythe apocalyptic vision of the world dominated by machines (Khlebnikov'sZhuravVor Esenin'sSoro\oust) or, at most (Mayakovsky), impressedby theirusefulness for man. Mayakovsky also insists on utilizing elements taken fromconcreteurbanreality to dramatize intellectualand emotional notions and evenelements of nature (snow white as newspaper sheet; night heavy as a loadedtruck, etc.). However, he did occasionallyhimself employ images constructedon opposite principles (blocks of water; heavy as years).The most ardent adepts of futurism certainly did try to apply "mechanical"devices.They spoke of composing poems not organicallybut mechanically,like



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j6 COMPARATIVELITERATURE STUDIESabstract pictures that could just as well be hung upside down. VadimShershenevichinsisted, indeed, that poems should be such that they could beread backwards, but, of course, none of the true poets in Russia ever seriouslywent that far.

Many of Marinetti'sslogans were adopted,and it can be said that some werepracticedquite successfully.Both the Russian futurists and the imaginists, forexample, took up Marinetti's insistence on limiting verbs and adjectives inimages 7, concentratingon nouns, and we do have successfulexamples of thispractice (especially by Maryengof). On the whole, however, Russian poetryremained "natural,""organic"in its basic linguistic pattern.Characteristicallyenough, Mayakovsky praised Khlebnikov for his allitera-

tions in which he reached for much more organic, associationalties than, forexample, K. Bal'mont'salliterations, n which the symbolistpoet satisfiedhim-self with sheer harmony of sounds that were more mechanical than associa-tional. In his posthumous eulogy of Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky counterposesKhlebnikov's "tightly forged chain" of associations (lesa lysy, lesa obezlosili,lesa obezlisili) to Bal'mont'slooselyarrangedsequence (chuzhdy charamchornycheln) which "fallsapart."8 Mayakovskyalso criticized the imaginists for theirobsessionwith the autonomy of images. He himself used images quite moder-ately; in this respect Esenin's organic images9 were much closer to his heartthan the mechanical images of Vadim Shershenevich who proclaimed thatpoetry should be a "catalogueof images."Mayakovsky,more than any other poet in Russia, had the knack of "organi-cally" fusing the new social reality and ideological propagandain Russia withfuturistic formal novelties in such a way as to give his works the quality ofnatural,spontaneouscreations. Those elements of futurism which he conceivedand practicedas being revolutionary,coincided so closely with Russian revolu-tionary ideas that it would not be out of character f the poet had claimed thatnot only futurism but also Revolution had originated in his own poetic visions.Excepting the lastyearsof Mayakovsky's ife, which were troubledby personal

and ideological dissonances,his poetry is in full agreement with the revolu-tionary slogans and post-revolutionarydevelopmentsin Russia,The new realityand the new problemsof individual and collective were embodied in his poetrywith such intensity and such realism that even those of his works that areobviously propagandist^ impress one as spontaneous,powerful works of art inwhich a kind of "Bolshevik Revolutionary Romanticism" (Gorky's slogan) isintimately paired with the formal novelty of a futurist. The poet could quitejustly consider himself a "proletariangun" and call his words "Commanders."Even such an "industrio-futuristic" imile as the one in which he compareshimself to a factory and producerof agitatorypoetry, can be justified in termsof this specific quality. This was poetry whose subject matter was the newreality; this was poetry created of materialthat was the new life in the making.Victor Katanyan quite rightly stated in his book, Maya\ovsfy. LiteraryChroni-cle (Moscow, 1948): "With Mayakovsky poetry stepped down from the cloud-capped height of Parnassusinto the very thick of life."



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MAYAKOVSKYAND FUTURISM 77It should be granted that the positive ideological impetus in Mayakovskydifferentiates him quite sharply from Russian and Western abstract experi-ments. His experimentswith formal innovation were seldom excessive; in his

style and language there are more elements of stylistic realism and conversa-tionalism than neologisms and other novelties. The gift of realisticpenetrationinto the very "thick of life" by futuristic means is clearly the mark of Maya-kovsky's specific poetics. As an adept of futurism he was deeply concernedwith word, but with word in its dynamic "life-transforming"power, viz. itsconsequences;he was less concerned with its abstract"self-sufficient"unctionthan with its adequacyfor the essenceof the changing life. It is mainly for thisreason that Soviet critics treat Mayakovsky as a precursorof socialist realismratherthan as a futurist.Had the poet himself lived longer, we might very wellhave witnessed still another version of his "Left Front," in which he quitelogically could have argued that the only true socialist realism is futurism.However that may be, Mayakovsky'sgenius for "correlatingobjectivethemeswith subjective attitudes"- to use T. S. Eliot's formula for true poetry- hasestablished Mayakovsky as a great poet regardless of labels.

NOTES1. In an interview on the "Languageof Poetry":"Jezyk poezji," Nowa Kultura,No. 26 (1962).2. Studies in ModernSlavic Poetry,I (Uppsala, 1955).*. The LongerPoems of VelemirKhlebnikpv (Berkeley, 1962).4. Depending on the emphasis, selections of Mayakovsky'spoetry can bring out various "faces"of the Russiangenius. It is very instructivefrom this point of view to compare Patricia Blake'svolume with, on the one hand, die Soviet edition: Vladimir Mayakovsky,SelectedPoetry (Moscow,early 'fifties), where there is primarilyMayakovsky's ocial and socialist rapturethat comes to thefore and, on the other, with the choice in Vladimir Markov'santhology: "Priglushonnyegolosa,"The Silenced Voices (New York, 1952), where Mayakovsky'spersonal lyricism, unhappy love,loneliness, deep human tragedyare broughtout in the selection.5. I submit this term as an equivalent of the Russianzaumny yazy\ in preferenceto the term"trans-senseanguage"used by many Americanscholars.6. In his futuristic eagernessMayakovskycounted here such words as friendship, love, beauty,serenity, etc. In his article, "War and Language,"written in 1914, Mayakovskycriticized Valry

Bryusovfor using in his poetry such words as mechi (swords)or shletny (casques). "Is it possibleto sing about modern war in such words?" exclaimed the poet, "this is the language of a grey-beardedwitness of the Crusades!A living corpse, a living corpse, nothing else!": V. Mayakovsky,SobranieSochineniytVol. 1. (Moscow, 1927), 374.7. Verbs, especially, like "conductorsof grammaticalorchestra (V. Shershenevich), were sup-posed to carry too much of a commonplace,communicativeload.8. In the first, as Mayakovskysaw it, les (forest) is organicallyassociatedwith forest creatures,los (moose) and lis (fox), while in the second he discerned no such chain of association,and,consequendy,disparaged t as "falling apart."9. Esenin's experimentationwith mechanicallyassembledimages (putting together nouns whichhe had jotted down*at random on slips of paper- as related by Goredetsky) never went beyondthe stage of experimentation.

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