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[CHUKOVSKY AGAINST FUTURISTS] Futuristy [i.e. Futurists]

Chukovsky, K.

Item #2748

St. Petersburg: Polyarnaya zvezda, 1922. 84 pp. 18,6×12,5 cm. In owner’s contemporary cardboards (without original wrappers). Very good. Tears of the title-page. Ex-library copy: library bookplate to the front pastedown and a blind library stamp on the title page.

Scarce. First book edition. Text in Russian.
A fascinating document from the history of Russian modernism, featuring Korney Chukovsky’s severe criticism of the Russian Futurists.
After Russian Futurism gained prominence in 1913, the renowned children’s poet and literary critic Korney Chukovsky (1882–1969) made it his mission to combat the movement. He organized numerous public lectures to criticize their ideology, despite being close personal friends with many of its leading figures. “My attitude towards the Futurists was complex,” Chukovsky later recalled. “I hated their doctrine, but I loved them and their talents.” Their relationship was fiercely polemical and mutually dependent. The Futurists dedicated as much time to Chukovsky in their speeches as he did to them. As Benedikt Livshits, a member of the Futurist group Hylaea, famously quipped: “Chukovsky believed he was promoting us with his lectures, but we argued that without us, he would have starved to death, since criticizing Futurism had become his main profession.”
In 1914, the author published the extensive article “Futuristi” (Futurists), which synthesized many of his previous lectures and critical notes. The piece first appeared in the literary almanac “Shipovnik” [i.e. Rosehip] before being included in Chukovsky’s book “Litsa i Maski” [i.e. Faces and Masks] later that same year. By 1922, as the Futurist movement was already in decline in the Soviet Union, Chukovsky revisited the work, releasing an expanded version as a standalone edition.
In the book, Chukovsky wittily reviews the literary oeuvre of some of the most prominent Russian Futurists: Igor Severyanin (whom he calls a “breed of poets-singers... for whom to create meant to pour out in tune— good or bad, it doesn’t matter”), Alexei Kruchenykh (“For me he contains a prophecy, an apocalypse... It’s okay that he is a trifle, a small and dark figure, but as a symptom, he is huge”), Vasily Kamensky (noting that he is the most joyful of modern poets, surrounded by carousels and carnivals, who continues to sing of his “redheaded youth” despite being in his fifties), Vladimir Mayakovsky (“Mayakovsky can’t even understand what ‘our land’ is. He has no perception of a homeland”), and Velimir Khlebnikov. The author speaks most favorably of the latter, blaming him only for his zaum language. Skillfully playing on the provincial origins and lack of formal education of most of his opponents, Chukovsky declares their Futurist inclinations ridiculously untenable and destructive.

Overall, a fascinating historical document of the fierce polemics between Korney Chukovsky and the Russian Futurists.

Price: $950.00

Status: On Hold