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Zabolotskii and Filonov: The Science of Composition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Darra Goldstein
Darra Goldstein*
Affiliation:
Department of German and Russian, Williams College
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Extract

In 1927 Nikolai Zabolotskii first began making public appearances with the young Leningrad poets Daniil Kharms and Aleksandr Vvedenskii. Kharms and Vvedenskii had been allied in an informal group called the Chinari, a name Kharms intended to signify “enfants terribles.“ In the autumn of 1927, however, they decided to join with Zabolotskii in the OBERIU (Ob“edinenie real'nogo iskusstva). The nucleus of this group was composed of Zabolotskii, Kharms, Vvedenskii, Konstantin Vaginov, Igor’ Bakhterev, and Boris Levin, although at various times others participated in the OBERIU performances. It was not necessarily easy to become allied with the group: Kharms and Zabolotskii would test the creative potential of candidates by having them answer questions like “Where is your nose?” and “What is your favorite dish?“

The OBERIU held readings in dormitories and military sections and at the Union of Poets and the Institute of the History of the Arts.

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Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , Winter 1989 , pp. 578 - 591
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1989

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References

1. Aleksandrov, A. A., “Materialy D.I. Kharmsa v rukopisnom otdele Pushkinskogo doma,” Ezhegodnikrukopisnogo otdela Pushkinskogo doma na 1978 god (Leningrad: Nauka, 1980), 72 Google Scholar.

2. According to A. Aleksandrov, the final U of the acronym was added for fun, in parody of the -ismsof the time. See his article, “Oberiu, predvaritel'nye zametki,” Československa Rusistika 13, no. 5 (1968): 297. The same explanation is repeated in Milner-Gulland, Robin, “Left Art in Leningrad: the OBERIU Declaration,” Oxford Slavonic Papers, n.s. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), 67 Google Scholar. Milner-Gulland's informationcomes from Aleksandr Razumovskii, a filmmaker associated with the OBERIU.

3. In his study of Zabolotskii, A. V. Makedonov includes Iurii Vladimirov in the group. See Makedonov, A. V., Nikolai Zabolotskii. Zhizn', tvorchestvo, metamorfozy (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel, 1968), 35 Google Scholar.

4. Reported in Bakhterev, Igor’, “Kogda my byli molodymi,” Vospominaniia o Zabolotskom, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel, 1984), 87 Google Scholar.

5. The House of the Press was founded in 1920 on the same pattern as the House of the Arts, theHouse of Literati, and the House of Scholars, all of which served as cultural magnets for the Petrogradpopulace. Each professional club retained its own focus, sponsoring appropriate exhibitions, lectures, films, discussions, and readings. The House of the Press in particular provided a forum for writers, artists, and performers who had not yet gained wide acceptance among the public at large.

6. Stepanov, Nikolai, “Iz vospominanii o N. Zabolotskom,” Vospominaniia oZabolotskom (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel, 1977), 86–87 Google Scholar.

7. See the advertisement for this performance in Afishi doma pechati, no. 2. (Leningrad, 1928), 35.

8. Interview with Igor’ Bakhterev, Leningrad, August 1985.

9. Lidiia Lesnaia, “Ytuerebo,” Krasnaia gazeta, vechernii vypusk, 25 January 1928.

10. L. Nil'vich, “Reaktsionnoe zhonglerstvo,” Smena, 9 April 1930. Zabolotskii, however, had leftthe OBERIU earlier because of irreconcilable differences with Vvedenskii. Fragments from Kharms's notebookimply that Zabolotskii broke with the group as early as the fall of 1928: “We mustn't fear a smallnumber of people…. Three people completely bound to each other are better than a larger number continuallyat odds” (entry for 28 October 1928, cited in Vvedenskii, Aleksandr, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1984] 2: 247)Google Scholar.

11. The quotes that follow are from the declaration. The complete Russian text has been reprinted in Milner-Gulland, “Left Art in Leningrad,” 65–75.

12. Zabolotskii categorically rejected zaum; Kharms and Bakhterev, however, did use zaum in theirverse, though for Kharms at least it carried referential meaning. On the Oberiut attitude toward zaum, seeIlya Levin, “The Collision of Meanings: The Poetic Language of Daniil Kharms and Aleksandr Vvedenskii (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, 1986).

13. The formulation is Osip Brik's and is quoted in Lodder, Christina, Russian Constructivism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983), 102 Google Scholar.

14. See Bowlt, John E., “The Construction of Space,” in Von der Fläche zum Raum, Russland 1916–1924 (Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1974), 7 Google Scholar.

15. Here it is interesting to compare the theories of spatial realism as propounded by the Zorved group, as well as Petr Miturich's concept of a sixth sense (a chuvstvo mira or “feeling for the world “) as “an essentialcognitive power that [gives] man a heightened insight into natural phenomena and enable[s] him to transcendthe limitations of perception through five senses, and to see the world more clearly.” Miturich definedthis chuvstvo mira as “a perfectly concrete sense of the world” (see Lodder, Russian Constructivism, 217). The Zorved likewise believed in a kind of “clairvoyance” or “inner gaze” that would yield a “perspicacityand a penetration of extraordinary power” (Margit Rowell and Angelica Zander Rudenstine, Artof the Avant-Garde in Russia: Selections from the George Coslakis Collection [New York: Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum, 1981], 74).

16. Walter Benjamin, Moscow Diary, entry for 13 December 1926, in October 35 (Winter 1985): 20.

17. Ginzburg, Lidiia, “O Zabolotskom kontsa dvadtsatykh godov,” Vospominaniia o Zabolotskom (Moscow: Sovetskiipisatel', 1977), 122 Google Scholar.

18. Brown, Edward J., “Mayakovsky's Futurist Period,” in Russian Modernism, ed. Gibian, George (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976), 108 Google Scholar.

19. Two of Zabolotskii's portraits from the 1920s have been reprinted in Den’ poezii for 1978and 1981.

20. I. Sinel'nikov, “Molodoi Zabolotskii,” Pamir (January 1982), 60.

21. Sec especially K istorii russkogo avangardalThe Russian Avant-Garde (Stockholm: Hylaea, 1976); and J Stapanian, uliette, Mayakovsky's Cubo-Futurisl Vision (Houston: Rice University Press, 1986 Google Scholar.

22. Levin, Ilya, “The Fifth Meaning of the Motor-Car: Malevich and the Oberiuty,” Soviet Union/Union Sovietique 5, pt. 2 (1978): 286–300.Google Scholar

23. Tolmachev, D., “Dadaisty v Leningrade,” Zhizn’ iskusstva, no. 44 (1927), 14.Google Scholar

24. Afishi doma pechati, no. 2 (1928). Igor’ Terent'ev had worked with Filonov and his students ona 1927 production of the Gogol’ play in the House of the Press. For more on Filonov's involvement see “Dnevniki Filonova v vospominaniiakh ego sestry Glebovoi” in SSSR: Vnutrennie protivorechiia 10, ed., V. Chalidze (Benson, Vt.: Chalidze, 1984), 197; Misler, Nicoletta, “Pavel Nikolaevich Filonov. Slovo iznak,” Russian Literature 11 (1982): 253–254 Google Scholar; and Misler, Nicoletta, “Pavel Filonov, Painter of Metamorphoses,” in Nicoletta Misler and John Bowlt, Pavel Filonov: A Hero and his Fate (Austin: Silvergirl, 1983, 34–37 Google Scholar.

25. Milner-Gulland, “Left Art in Leningrad,” 74 n. 1; Misler and Bowlt, Filonov, 37; Sinel'nikov, I., “Molodoi Zabolotskii,” Vospominaniia o N. Zabolotskom, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1977), 110–111 Google Scholar. Igor’ Bakhterev recalls that “I was merely acquainted with Filonov, Zabolotskii was closerto him. He even drew in imitation of Filonov” (letter to this writer of 9 May 1983). Nikolai Stepanov reportsthat Zabolotskii liked Filonov's paintings very much and that “he himself sometimes tried to drawin the same spirit” (Stepanov, “Iz vospominanii o N. Zabolotskom,” 87). Finally, the late critic DmitriiMaksimov remembers that Zabolotskii's drawings were “ “in the style of Filonov” (interview in Leningrad, March 1983).

26. Filonov, “Avtobiografiia,” in TsGALI, f. 2348, op. 1, ed. kh. 22. Filonov's autobiographies havebeen translated and published in Misler and Bowlt, Filonov, 117–134.

27. Kovtun, E. F., “Iz istorii russkogo avangarda (P.N. Filonov),” Ezhegodnik rukopisnogo otdelaPushkinskogo doma, 1977 (Leningrad: Nauka, 1979, 216–235 Google Scholar. For extensive information on Filonov andtranslations of many of his documents see Misler and Bowlt, Filonov.

28. A reproduction may be seen in Misler and Bowlt, Filonov, 79.

29. Kovtun, “Iz istorii russkogo avangarda,” 222–223.

30. Compare, too, Filonov's 1928 “Drayman,” reproduced as plate 34 in Misler and Bowlt, Filonov, 338.

31. Umberto Boccioni quoted in Caroline, Tisdall and Angelo, Bozzolla, Futurism (London: Thamesand Hudson, 1977), 78 Google Scholar.

32. Misler, “Slovo i znak,” 244.

33. Ibid.

34. Quoted in “Dnevniki Filonova v vospominaniiakh ego sestry Glebovoi,” 228–9. See alsoW. Sherman Simmons's article on KA and Malevich, where he defines the KA as “a force or principle that isable to abolish the diacritical divisions of the time and space of both prose and reality and to weave them intoa fabric that is whole, continuous, and synergistic” (Simmons, “The Step Beyond: Malevich and the KA, “Soviet Union/Union Sovietique 5, pt. 2 (1978): 149–170.

35. Filonov's pencil drawing of Khlebnikov from 1913 has been preserved in the Khlebnikov Fund atTsGALI; see Misler and Bowlt, Filonov, 22, n. 61.

36. See Nikolai Khardzhiev's commentary in Velimir Khlebnikov, Sobranie sochinenii (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1971) 4: 443. Interestingly, E. F. Kovtun believes that the portrait in question was of Khlebnikovhimself, not of a horse; he quotes from Aleksei Kruchenykh's memoirs: “I remember that Filonov dida portrait of ‘Velimir the Great, ’ giving him on his high forehead a very prominent, swollen vein that seemedto be straining with thought” (see Kovtun, “Iz istorii russkogo avangarda,” 221.

37. Translated in Misler and Bowlt, Filonov, 135–138).

38. Kurdov, Valentin, “Stranitsy bylogo,” Avrora no. 5 (1979): 145.Google Scholar

39. Poret, Alisa, “Vospominaniia o Kharmse,” in Panorama iskusstv 3 (Moscow, 1980): 356–357 Google Scholar.

40. Misler, “Slovo i znak,” 240. On a different level, Filonov's reading to his students as they workedrecalls other experimental groups at the Institute of Artistic Culture, where zaum “verbal series” (riady slov)would be read to artists at work to determine the correspondence between what was recited and what theartists produced (see Levin, “The Fifth Meaning of the Motor-Car,” 290).

41. “Deklaratsiia mirovogo rastsveta” in Zhizn’ iskusst\>a no. 20 (1923): 13.

42. Kovtun, “Iz istorii russkogo avangarda,” 219.

43. Zabolotskii shared Filonov's belief that the observer (reader) must participate in the artistic process.In a letter to A. K. Krutetskii he wrote: “If a man's not a savage or a fool, his face is always more or lesscalm. The face of a poem should be just as calm. The intelligent reader will clearly see the whole play ofmind and heart underneath the cover of external calm. I count on an intelligent reader. And because I respecthim, I don't want to become too familiar with him” (letter of 6 March 1958 in Zabolotskii, Nikolai, Izbrannyeproizvedeniia v dvukh tomakh [Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1972], 265 Google Scholar).

44. John E. Bowlt, “Pavel Filonov and Russian Modernism,” in Misler and Bowlt, Filonov, 8.

45. The Czech critic Jan Křiž terms Filonov's art cosmic. See Křiž, Pavel Nikolaevich Filonov (Prague: Nakladatelstvi československýkh Vytvarnýkh Umęlcu, 1966), 7.

46. Al'fonsov, V. N., Slova i kraski (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1966), 185 Google Scholar.

47. Quoted in Kovtun, “Iz istorii russkogo avangarda,” 220.

48. Misler, “Slovo i znak,” 254.

49. Quoted in Kovtun, “Iz istorii russkogo avangarda,” 234.

50. Misler interprets the gash in the cheek of Filonov's “Mother” (1916) as a manifestation of “thepainter's extreme proximity to the border between animate and inanimate matter” (see Misler and Bowk, Filonov, 37).

51. See ibid., 26.

52. See Zabolotskii, Nikolai, “Avtobiografiia,” in Stikhotvoreniia (Washington, D.C.: Inter-Language Literary Associates, 1965), 2 Google Scholar, concerning his interest in a scientific career. Zabolotskii, Nikita, “N.A.Zabolotskii i kniga,” Vstrechi s knigoi (Moscow: Kniga, 1984) 2: 285 Google Scholar, mentions his scientific reading.

53. Björling, Fiona, Stolbcy by Nikolaj Zabolockij. Analyses (Stockholm: Almqvist och Wiksell, 1973), 13 Google Scholar.

54. “Naturalistic and abstract theses were already introduced, to the point that physiological processesn in trees were depicted along with the smells emanating from and streaming around them. [I] began to paintthe processes taking place in [the trees] and creating an encircling series of phenomena.” Filonov, “Avtobiografiia. “

55. Filonov, “Short Explanation of Our Exhibition of Works,” in Misler and Bowlt, Filonov, 253.

56. Regarding Zabolotskii: “urodlivye fantasmagorii i bol'nye videniia Zabolotskogo” ( Selivanovskii, A., “Sistema koshek,” Na literaturnom poslu, no. 15 [1929]: 32 Google Scholar); “stikhi Zabolotskogootlichaiutsiasvoim groteskovym postroeniem” ( Neznamov, P., “Sistema devok,” Pechat’ i revoliutsiia no. 3 [1930]: 78 Google Scholar. Regarding Filonov: “Liudi, izobrazhaemye Filonovym … boleznennyi. Liudi prevrashcheny v melkikhfizicheskikh urodov” (N. Gurvich, “Tri vystavski,” Zhizn’ iskusstva, 31 May 1927, 9); “Obshchestvenno-politicheskii grolesk s uklonom v patalogicheskuiu anatomiu—vot naibolee tochnoe opredelenie togo, chto est’ vystavka v Dome Pechati—shkola Filonova” (E. G., “Shkola Filonova,” Krasnaia gazeta, 5 May1927, 5. (The italics in all cases are mine.) In addition, the mental health of both artists was questioned. Of Zabolotskii's Scrolls, none other thanMikhail Zoshchenko wrote: “I tut skoree predmetdlia psikhoanaliza, chem material dlia kritiki” ( “OstikhakhN. Zabolotskogo,” Rasskazy, povesti.fel'tony, teatr, kritika 1935–37 [Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literature, 1937], 382). In striking comparison, Filonov's early works were considered a “psychiatric document, “more suited to medical students than random viewers; see Breshko-Breshkovskii, N., “Vystavka ‘Soiuz molodezhi',” Birzhevye vedemosti (St. Petersburg, 1911)Google Scholar, 13 April, 6, quoted in Misler and Bowlt, Filonov, 37.

57. Kayser, Wolfgang, The Grotesque in Art and Literature (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1968), 37 Google Scholar.

58. Filonov's sister relates the reaction of the artist Smirnov to Filonov's 1924 painting “Golova “: “Iam stunned … I purposely brought this magnifying glass in order to examine your brother's work. Thesearen't lines, they're nerves!” (quoted in “Dnevniki Filonova,” 248). More than anything, Smirnov's commentreflects the emotional effect of Filonov's work.

59. See Istokov, I., “Vospominaniia o khudozhnikakh. V gostiakh y O.K. Matiushinoi,” Sankl-Peterburg. Literaturnyi al'manakh (Chicago: St. Petersburg Publishing, 1984) 1: 452 Google Scholar.