Mayakovsky and Futurism Author(s): Zbigniew Folejewski Source: Comparative Literature Studies, , Special Advance Number (1963), pp.

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ZBIGNIEW

F O LE] EW S Kl

Mayakovsky and

Futurism

The red and the white are crumbled and gone, fistfuls of ducats were tossed to the green, and the black palms of window upon window have been filled with glowing yellow cards.

is the first stanza of Mayakovsky's poem, Night (Noch) which appeared in Moscow in December, 1912,in the almanac A Slap in the Face o] Public Taste, and which Mayakovsky later called (in his autobiography) his "first professional, publishable work." It may be mentioned as a curiosutn, perhaps as even more than that, that at exactly the same time, i.e. in December, 1912, Guillaume Apollinaire wrote his poem Windows (Les fentres) in which the image of lights changing in windows is dramatized in a similar manner. Du rougeau verttoutle jaunese meurt.. . There cannot be any thought of any direct influence here, but one can * perhaps 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 type of vocabulary and imagery, similar reactions to earlier conventions in art (symbolism). The beginnings of Russian futurism are somewhat difficult to trace. Mayakovsky, with his characteristicautobiographical"modesty," dates the birth of futurism in Russia from a night in 1912,when he himself had a long talk with David Burlyuk on their way home from a performance of Rachmaninoffs "Island of the Dead," which they had both left in disgust. This is, of course, sheer poetic license on Mayakovsky's part. The fact is that works classifiable as futuristic had appeared earlier, to mention especially works by Velimir Khlebnikov, e.g. his celebrated poem Conjuration by Laughter (Zaklatie smekhom) published in the almanac The Trap for Judges (Sadok Sudey) of 1910. In comparing these two poems, it can be easily seen that Khlebnikov's poetics in general was much closer to "orthodox"futurism than Mayakovsky's. Indeed, Mayakovsky in many of his works may seem not at all so far from classicism and symbolism as he claimed.
7i

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LITERATURE STUDIES 72 + COMPARATIVE The very title of the Russian futurist manifesto, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, sounds very much like an echo of the Western futurist movement, especially of Marinetti's slogans in the Italian manifesto of 1909, in which the effects 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, imitative as it was in its first impulses, Russian futurism- like most other literary trends in Russia- soon developed into an independent, specifically Russian movement, especially since its course coincided with an apparently new and unique social and political development in Russia. To discuss Russian futurism and Mayakovsky's role in it is not a simple task. This trend, which developed under rapidly changing social, political and cultural conditions, has many phases and faces. Also, each of the poets who participatedin its development has many phases and faces, too. In each separate case a number of questions arise: 1. The relationship of the trend and of the individual poet to traditional Russian poetics. 2. The relationship to the poetics of symbolism. 3. The relationship to futurism as it penetrated into Russia from the West. 4. The relationship to other contemporarytrends developing in Russia at the time. 5. The relationship to the changing ideological and political attitudes toward art. 6. The unique individual quality of each poet and of his work. In Mayakovsky's case the whole problem is perhaps more intricate than in the case of any other contemporary poet. The question whether futurism was only an episode in Mayakovsky's poetic work or whether the poet lived and died as a convinced but conquered champion of futurism, has not been definitely settled. The official attitude in Soviet literary criticism is that it was only an 2 episode. I must confess that in my earlier remarks on Mayakovsky I tried to follow 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 the principles of futurism as they are usually understood. However, when one attempts to chart Mayakovsky'spoetic practice in the light of his theoretical convictions, the situation becomes more complicated. After all, when studying any Soviet writer, one may not eliminate the influence of political and ideological - poetry not excluded considerations,which apply to all phases of human activity - and there are few, if any, Soviet writers who have not faced a possibility of a conflict between artistic convictions and these considerations.In Mayakovsky's case the program of futurism was not something external. On the contrary, it was something that Mayakovsky identified with the Revolution in the belief that it was indeed the art of the Revolution and, hence, of the future. If his involvement with futurism and enthusiasm for the Revolution were indeed only external, then one would have to accept the view that personal lyricism in Mayakovsky's poetry completely overweighs everything else. It would certainlybe an exaggeration to think of Mayakovskymainly in terms of formal cubist-futurist experiments. His poetry goes deeper than that. The

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MAYAKOVSKYAND FUTURISM + 73

entire problem of the meaning of "futurism"as conceived by him and some of his friends has to be investigated and apprehendedin a larger context than has been done up to now. In Mayakovsky's case particularly, it seems that the existence of a "MayaWerther"does not mean that he at any time or a "Mayakovskykovsky-agitator" ceased to be a futurist- provided, of course, that the word futurism be not limited to the Italian and the Russian manifestoes alone. In his recent book on Velimir Khlebnikov 8 Vladimir Markov has listed some of the difficulties in attempting a simple account of the history and the nature of Russian futurism. Mayakovsky's role in it and especially his long and desperate campaign in defense of futurism as a truly revolutionary concept of poetry, has never been fully investigated and its significance in Mayakovsky'spoetic work made clear. It is a pity that exchanges of views between Western and Soviet scholars on these matters are often beclouded by the phenomenon of "speaking past each other."The lively interest in Mayakovsky'spoetry and poetics inside the USSR and abroad could, in view of the different theoretical points of departure, lead to fruitful confrontations.As it is, they often end with misunderstandings and accusationsof distortion. A good example is the Soviet reaction to the collection edited by Patricia Blake, V. Mayakovsky's The Bedbug and Selected Poetry (New York, i960). In a polemical article, "How They Study Mayakovsky at Harvard" Kak izuchayut Mayakovskogo v Garvardskom Universitete) in lnostrannaya Literatura (1961: 1, pp. 245-252), Soviet critics, who regard futurism as just another manifestation of bourgeois aesthetics, attack Miss Blake's treatment of Mayakovsky as a representativeof this trend.4 It should be borne in mind that the element of anarchy in futurism is defined by them as a symptom, not of revolution, but of bourgeois crisis. It is probably true that many of the formal experiments of the futurists can be interpreted as just another manifestation of decadent art. However, the significance of Mayakovsky'slife-long fight to identify- both in the theory and - the poetics of futurism with revolution per se cannot be dismissed. in practice Especially Mayakovsky'sassertionsthat form is equally, or more, an expression of revolutionary spirit as content, must be taken into account in every assessment of Mayakovsky's concept of futurism. Form must not lag behind the changing rhythm of life. It must not "wilt away." Mayakovsky would certainly subscribe to the following statement by Khlebnikov (quoted here from R. Jakobson,Noveyshaya russ\aya poeziya, Prague, 1921, p. 4). "When I noticed how old lines suddenly wilted away when the future hidden in them turned into present, I understood that the matrix of poetry is in the future. It is from there that the wind of the gods of word blows." Futurism for all its reaction against symbolism, both in the West and in Russia, has at least one thing in common with symbolism, namely, a strongly logocentric attitude, a preoccupationwith the problems of language, a belief in the power of WORD in upper case letters. Symbols, metaphors,sound harmony, the power of language, "Thinking in images"- all these notions, so important for the symbolists, were never completely rejected by the futurists (e.g. "glowing yellow cards" in "the palms of the windows"). The main difference is

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LITERATURE STUDIES 74 + COMPARATIVE - the symperhaps the fact that- at least, so far as Russian poetry is concerned bolists treated language with greater respect, trying to penetrate into its inner "mystical"secrets; the futurists, in contrast, wanted to "free the word" from its conventional contexts of morphology, syntax, etc., and emphasize its formal and emotional values per se, i.c. its euphonic elements and the emotional effects created by these elements, thus providing a new building material for poetry. Both in the West and in Soviet Russia of that time the young generation of painters, sculptors,musicians and poets, dissatisfiedwith impressionisticaesthetics, turned against "aestheticism"of any kind. Mayakovsky's revulsion against of such poets Rachmaninoff'smusic and his rejoicing at the "anti-aestheticism" - as is well as Sasha Chorny are signs of the same attitude. This attitude known- occasionally led not only to the complete negation of conventional notions of "beauty"and "harmony"but even to disavowal of the conventional materials of art, e.g. color in painting, normal language in poetry. To be sure, the idea itself was not completely new, not completely unknown even to representatives of symbolism, e.g. Rimbaud. The attempts by Apollinaire in France and Khlebnikov in Russia to create a different system of linguistic values detached from the conventional one are well known. Mayakovsky never went so far in this respect,but he, too, turned very sharply against conventional aestheticism and tried to convey his poetic message with "non-poetic" or even seemingly "anti-poetic"lexical, syntactical and typographical means. In what was ambitiously called "The First Journal of the Futurists," which began and expired with No. 1-2 published in Moscow in 1914,the programmatic article "Poetic Starts" (Poeticheskie nachala) by the Burlyuk brothers expounded the notion of the poetic word as the bearer of qualities unknown to the normal language. The most interesting thought expressed in this article is the idea later developed by the "Formal School" of literary research, that language in poetry is perceived and utilized in a specific poetic function, that word exists independently of its normal traditional semantic value ("vne svoego smysla"). From this notion there was only one step to the notion of the socalled "meta-semantic"language,5 an idea preached by several poets. In its ultimate purpose this is an ambitious idea; it would not only reveal the deeper sense of the world of language (which the symbolists were doing) but would utilize existing and potential language values as raw material for creating selfsufficientpoetic reality. This is, of course, mostly theory, but not without some interesting 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 his own practicehe rarely resortedto such radical linguistic devices, evidently being able to express himself adequately by means of the existing language. The main point in his poetic practice, which he shares with all his futurist colleagues, is the conviction that the hyperaesthetic poetic style of the symbolists was no longer adequate for expressing the world-outlook of the new generation in the new, rapidly changing reality. What he especially consistently opposed was the impressionistic manner of trying to express some undefined and "undefinable" moods and feelings in images built of general abstract material (instead of

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+ 75 ANDFUTURISM MAYAKOVSKY
"something" happening "somehow," "somewhere," he wanted defined events with defined address and date). In Mayakovsky's notes for his first public talk on "Newest Russian Poetry" (O noveyshey russkoy poezii) in St. Petersburg in November, 1912, echoes of the Italian manifesto are quite strong. He speaks of his belief in the selfcontained value, the independent "inner life," and the "myth-creating"(mifotvorchesky) power of the word, but at the same time he stresses the fact that the important thing for a modern poet is finding words congenial to contemporary reality. For Mayakovsky himself, reality was soon to be identified with all-encompassingrevolution. While the post-revolutionarydevelopment in Russia led eventually to the denouncement of futurism as bourgeois aesthetics, Mayakovsky persisted until his death in his belief that futurism was or, at least, could be a truly revolutionary trend. As for Mayakovsky'spoetic workshop, many of his devices which were new in Russian poetry at the time had considerableconsanguinity with what can be termed the general ideas of futurism. The more important of these ideas were: 1. Colloquial syntax breaking with the rhythmic regularity, rounded periods and poetic inversions. Still, although Mayakovsky makes his language sound like colloquial spoken language, he resorts to many devices, ellipsis among others, which cumulatively constitute a new sut generis poetization. 2. Renovation of the vocabulary by refuting poetisms ossified by tradition,6 and opening the door to more colloquial words, including vulgarisms. 3. The development of specific rhythm, dynamic and breaking out of the traditional regularity, governed by the exigencies of loud recitation, and arranged typographically with the line broken into short sectors so as to suggest declamatory stresses on certain groups of words. The device of special typographical arrangement in Mayakovsky is more natural than the obviously superficial experiments of this kind by Marinetti or Apollinaire. It has been suggested (by K. Chukovsky) that such typography, often imitated later both in Russia and elsewhere, implies the fast movement and dynamism typical of the swift changing pulse of modern life. One of the main elements in the fast pulse of modern life was, of course, the machine. In contrast to Marinetti and his immediate followers, who seem to be fascinated by machines as such, the Russian futurists and imaginists are either frightened by the apocalyptic vision of the world dominated by machines (Khlebnikov's ZhuravVor Esenin's Soro\oust) or, at most (Mayakovsky), impressed by their usefulness for man. Mayakovsky also insists on utilizing elements taken from concrete urban reality to dramatize intellectual and emotional notions and even elements of nature (snow white as newspaper sheet; night heavy as a loaded truck, etc.). However, he did occasionally himself employ images constructed on 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 organically but mechanically, like

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j6

COMPARATIVELITERATURE STUDIES

abstract pictures that could just as well be hung upside down. Vadim Shershenevich insisted, indeed, that poems should be such that they could be read backwards, but, of course, none of the true poets in Russia ever seriously went that far. Many of Marinetti'sslogans were adopted, and it can be said that some were practiced quite successfully. Both the Russian futurists and the imaginists, for example, took up Marinetti's insistence on limiting verbs and adjectives in images 7, concentrating on nouns, and we do have successful examples of this practice (especially by Maryengof). On the whole, however, Russian poetry remained "natural,""organic" in its basic linguistic pattern. Characteristicallyenough, Mayakovsky praised Khlebnikov for his alliterations in which he reached for much more organic, associational ties than, for example, K. Bal'mont's alliterations,in which the symbolist poet satisfied himself with sheer harmony of sounds that were more mechanical than associational. In his posthumous eulogy of Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky counterposes Khlebnikov's "tightly forged chain" of associations (lesa lysy, lesa obezlosili, lesa obezlisili) to Bal'mont'sloosely arrangedsequence (chuzhdy charam chorny 8 cheln) which "falls apart." Mayakovsky also criticized the imaginists for their obsession with the autonomy of images. He himself used images quite moderately; in this respect Esenin's organic images9 were much closer to his heart than the mechanical images of Vadim Shershenevich who proclaimed that poetry should be a "catalogue of images." Mayakovsky, more than any other poet in Russia, had the knack of "organically" fusing the new social reality and ideological propaganda in Russia with futuristic formal novelties in such a way as to give his works the quality of natural, spontaneous creations. Those elements of futurism which he conceived and practiced as being revolutionary,coincided so closely with Russian revolutionary ideas that it would not be out of characterif the poet had claimed that not only futurism but also Revolution had originated in his own poetic visions. Excepting the last years of Mayakovsky'slife, which were troubledby personal and ideological dissonances, his poetry is in full agreement with the revolutionary slogans and post-revolutionarydevelopments in Russia, The new reality and the new problems of individual and collective were embodied in his poetry with such intensity and such realism that even those of his works that are obviously propagandist^ impress one as spontaneous, powerful works of art in which a kind of "Bolshevik Revolutionary Romanticism" (Gorky's slogan) is intimately paired with the formal novelty of a futurist. The poet could quite justly consider himself a "proletariangun" and call his words "Commanders." Even such an "industrio-futuristic"simile as the one in which he compares himself to a factory and producer of agitatory poetry, can be justified in terms of this specific quality. This was poetry whose subject matter was the new reality; this was poetry created of material that was the new life in the making. Victor Katanyan quite rightly stated in his book, Maya\ovsfy. Literary Chronicle (Moscow, 1948) : "With Mayakovsky poetry stepped down from the cloudcapped height of Parnassus into the very thick of life."

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MAYAKOVSKYAND FUTURISM

77

It should be granted that the positive ideological impetus in Mayakovsky differentiates him quite sharply from Russian and Western abstract experiments. His experiments with formal innovation were seldom excessive; in his style and language there are more elements of stylistic realism and conversationalism than neologisms and other novelties. The gift of realistic penetration into the very "thick of life" by futuristic means is clearly the mark of Mayakovsky's specific poetics. As an adept of futurism he was deeply concerned with word, but with word in its dynamic "life-transforming"power, viz. its function consequences; he was less concerned with its abstract "self-sufficient" than with its adequacy for the essence of the changing life. It is mainly for this reason that Soviet critics treat Mayakovsky as a precursor of socialist realism ratherthan as a futurist. Had the poet himself lived longer, we might very well have witnessed still another version of his "Left Front," in which he quite logically could have argued that the only true socialist realism is futurism. However that may be, Mayakovsky'sgenius for "correlatingobjective themes with subjective attitudes"- to use T. S. Eliot's formula for true poetry- has established Mayakovsky as a great poet regardless of labels. NOTES
1. In an interview on the "Languageof Poetry": "Jezyk poezji," Nowa Kultura, No. 26 (1962). 2. Studies in Modern Slavic Poetry, I (Uppsala, 1955) . *. The Longer Poems of Velemir Khlebnikpv (Berkeley, 1962). 4. Depending on the emphasis, selections of Mayakovsky'spoetry can bring out various "faces" of the Russian genius. It is very instructive from this point of view to compare Patricia Blake's volume with, on the one hand, die Soviet edition: Vladimir Mayakovsky,Selected Poetry (Moscow, the early 'fifties), where there is primarily Mayakovsky'ssocial and socialist rapture that comes to fore and, on the other, with the choice in Vladimir Markov's anthology: "Priglushonnyegolosa," The Silenced Voices (New York, 1952), where Mayakovsky's personal lyricism, unhappy love, loneliness, deep human tragedy are brought out in the selection. 5. I submit this term as an equivalent of the Russian zaumny yazy\ in preference to the term "trans-sense language" used by many Americanscholars. 6. In his futuristic eagerness Mayakovskycounted here such words as friendship, love, beauty, serenity, etc. In his article, "War and Language," written in 1914, Mayakovsky criticized Valry Bryusov for using in his poetry such words as mechi (swords) or shletny (casques). "Is it possible to sing about modern war in such words?" exclaimed the poet, "this is the language of a greybearded witness of the Crusades! A living corpse, a living corpse, nothing else!": V. Mayakovsky, Sobranie Sochineniyt Vol. 1. (Moscow, 1927), 374. 7. Verbs, especially, like "conductorsof grammatical orchestra (V. Shershenevich), were supposed to carry too much of a commonplace, communicative load. 8. In the first, as Mayakovskysaw it, les (forest) is organically associated with forest creatures, los (moose) and lis (fox), while in the second he discerned no such chain of association, and, consequendy,disparagedit as "falling apart." 9. Esenin's experimentationwith mechanically assembled images (putting together nouns which he had jotted down*at random on slips of paper- as related by Goredetsky) never went beyond the stage of experimentation.

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