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KRUCHYONYKH ON MAYAKOVSKY AND ILIAZD IN 1918] Kuranty. #1, 1918 [The Chants] / edited by Boris Korneev

Tiflis: Phoenix, 1918. Item #766

24 pp.: ill. 22x18 cm. Original printed wrappers. Very good.

The Chants was the periodical of the group known as ‘The Fantastic Tavern’. It was edited by Korneev, included the articles and poems by Tatiana Vechyorka, Yuri Degen, Alexei Kruchyonykh. It’s known that both Terentiev and Ilia Zdanevich were in the editorial board. All of the people involved in the publication were the key participants in the publication ‘Fantastic Tavern. To Sofia Georgievna Melnikova’, which considers one of the key-books of Russian avant-garde.
The article by Kruchyonykh on p.15-18 ’Maykovsky’s Love Affair’, is one of the most important works on Mayakovsky by Kruchyonykh. In it he analyses the role of the letter ‘yu’ [ю] in the love lyrics of the poet, that refers to Lilya Brik. Eventually K. concludes that the letter has the mystical meaning and symbolizes the feminine. In his own book ‘Malankholia v Kapote’ [Tiflis, 1918] he includes one section called ‘The story of letter YU’.
In the same issue the review of Iliazd’s ‘Yanko Krul Albanskiy’ [Tiflis, 1918] could be found. It’s signed A.Livnev, which was the Kruchyonykh’s pen-name of the period (confirmed by Khardzhiev). In this review Kruchyonykh writes that it’s hard to talk about the book that is understood only by the ‘few initiated in the secrets of zaum language’, but calls for its uniqueness for Russian literature.
Apart from this issue, two others were printed.
Extremely rare.

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