This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Exploding Tongues: Language, Art, and the Russian Avant-garde

Te li le - dyr bul shchyl

This page has annotations:

Contents of this annotation:
1. Te li le - dyr bul shchyl
Contents of this annotation:
1. Te li le - dyr bul shchyl
Contents of this annotation:
1. Te li le - dyr bul shchyl

This page has tags:

Contents of this tag:

This page is referenced by:

CoaRse CaLIBration 72 ARTS 227 "Introduction to Letterpress Printing" (Pedersen) and CSLC134/RUSN334 "Exploding Tongues" (Gilman) structured_gallery 2017-05-26T12:45:21-07:00
During the middle third of the Spring, '17 Semester, two classes at Occidental College (ARTS 227 "Introduction to Letterpress Printing (Pedersen) and CSLC 134 / RUSN 334 "Exploding Tongues: Language, Art and The Russian Avant-Garde") collaborated on a book making project, with printed submissions of text and design compiled in a miscellany volume, Exploding Tongues: NthOlogy, inspired by the Russian Avant-garde.

Through creative making of their own collaborative book, students explored historical literary phenomena, such as "zaum," or "trans-sense" language, a nullification or distortion of meaning through invented words, as well as visual abstraction, neo-primitivism, "Rayism," "Suprematism," "Prouns," and other visual innovations that manifest as illustrations and cover and page designs. Students took inspiration from the authors, artists and book designers from the early years of the Avant-garde, when visual and verbal "abstraction" developed simultaneously.

A century's distance from the creative ferment of the Avant-garde has given time to literary scholars and art historians to sort out radical innovations in verbal and visual cultures as if they were discrete phenomena. Time, also, has separated complex creative processes that transpired between people working in close partnership and common purpose into individuated lines of authorial credit. The scholarly impulse to conceive of cultural history on the model of scientific discovery is not, however, well-suited for understanding the ambiguous work processes and products of this brief historical moment.

As Aleksei Kruchenykh, whose "Dyr bul shchyl" (1912) is generally acknowledged as the first instance of "zaum" poetry, explained in a letter to A.A. Shemshurin, the visual and verbal elements of his book art, produced with collaborators such as Mikhail Larionov, or his wife Ol'ga Rozanova, are inextricably confused [for more on "Dyr bul shchyl" and its publication history, see Dexter Blackwell's case study on this site]:
Many have noticed that the genius of external beauty is highest of all, so that if anyone likes best of all the way, say, Te li le is written (from the painterly aspect) but not its meaning (toothless meaning, of which, by the way, there is none in zaum’ either), then it seems that such a reader is right and not a ruffian at all.
The word (letter), of course, has undergone a great change here; perhaps it has even been replaced by painting, but what does a “drunkard of paradise” care about all this prose? And I have already met persons who bought Te li le without understanding anything about dyr-bul-shchyl but who admired its painting.
On the matter of instantaneous writing:
1. The first impression (by correcting it 10 times we lose it and perhaps therefore lose everything).
2. By correcting, thinking over, polishing, we banish chance from art that in a momentary art of course occupies an honored place, by banishing chance we deprive our works of that which is most valuable, for we leave only that which has been experienced and thoroughly acquired, and all of the life of the unconscious goes to pot!
-Alexei Kruchenykh
Course readings and discussions were informed by Gerald Janecek's pioneering works on zaum, and the Russian Avant-garde artist book, as well as Nancy Perloff's most recent contribution to the topic, both of whom address the integrated nature of multimodal, collaborative arts. An "intellectual" grasp of the matter is not sufficient, however, for deep understanding. To jolt student researchers of the Avant-garde from any of their own automatic assumptions about art and literature, a hands-on, creative unit of zaum poetry writing, illustration and book-making, allowed an opportunity to view and reconstruct cultural historical processes, as it were, inside-out.
The 'Deliberate Woman/Nude' in MirsKONtsa (1912) and Pomada (1913) In their groundbreaking 1912 text, MirsKONtsa [WorldBACKwards], poets Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov collaborated with painters Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov to produce a text towards the heart of linguistic 'meaning' through opening-up new possibilities within a literary-artistic item. These texts were unique for several reasons; primarily, though, their handmade quality and collaborative stylistic produced an entirely alternative model for the representation of language.

MirsKONtsa is noted for its odd drawings, multiple and diverse copies, and its use of zaum [transrational] poetry. However, MirsKONtsa, is also marked by a prevalence of oftentimes-nude female forms. Perhaps in keeping with the Neo-Primitivist tradition (Perloff 2) that existed within Russian Futurism, MirsKONsa is littered with images of the naked woman. The figures in MirsKONtsa are notable in three thematics: Firstly, the female figures across the images do not look directly out at the reader-- their glances are slanted or attending some other image; Secondly, there is a repeated presentation of the 'woman' with the 'natural' and the 'woman' and the 'supernatural/angelic'; and Thirdly, there are no figures with openly observable genitals, the only deliberate nudity is in the presentation of bare breasts.

What is interesting is the occasion for what I will call the 'deliberate nude/woman' in MirsKONtsa. This 'deliberate nude/woman' is noted as such because the existence of such a figure in a work that seeks to come to the limit/rule of sound-images necessarily must fit in the system. Initial insights about a 'worldbackwards' represented through a tetrad of artists center on the linkage between a naive eroticism--one that barely even attempts to call the reader into seduction, let alone sexual fervor--and sound. Following this linkage, the consideration of the sound of the sensual-- especially as it relates to the natural and the supernatural-- becomes ground for analysis. Further questions on these images lead into the deeper intentions of the artists. One of the first obvious questions is simply, who painted these women-figures? Was it Natalia Goncharova or her late-in-life husband Mikhail Larionov? Was the Dryad painted in collaboration with the poetic text, or does the figure exist in complete distinctness from language?

MirsKONtsa is not the only book of zaum poetry to feature nude women. In Kruchenykh and Larionov's 1913 Pomada [Pomade], the nude woman is again a unique figured occasion in the text. However, the women of Pomada are not as deliberately visible as they are in MirsKONtsa. In the famous poem-painting 'dyr bul shchyl,' there is a nude woman hidden in what simply appears to be scratch marks and scribblings on the page. This nude is the only figure in either MirsKONtsa and Pomada to seemingly expose their genitals. It is notable that in alternative versions of 'dyr bul shchyl,' Kruchenykh's soon-to-be wife Olga Rozanova altered the image of the nude woman to produce an image seemingly more in line with female representations in MirsKONtsa. Later on in the Pomada and in contrast to the "urban prostitutes" (Perloff 75) 'dyr bul shchyl,' a peasant woman with her breasts exposed carries a basket or some other burden. As Pomada lengthens the image of the woman-as-figure becomes more oblique and it begins to discern the sex of the figure at all. In the final image of what appears to be a woman figure, the defining motif of these female nude becomes itself obscured. Is this figure-in-horror exposing their breasts, or do they raise their arm to their chest in quiet exclamation?

Citations:

Perloff, N. (2016). Explodity: Sound, Image, and Word in Russian Futurist Book Art. Los Angeles, CA: The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. 2, 74-75.
Prostitutes and Peasants Mirskontsa is not the only book of zaum poetry to feature nude women. In Kruchenykh and Larionov's 1913 Pomada [Pomade], the nude woman is again a unique figured occasion in the text. However, the women of Pomada are not as deliberately visible as they are in Mirskontsa. In the famous poem-painting 'dyr bul shchyl,' there is a nude woman hidden in what simply appears to be scratch marks and scribblings on the page. This nude is the only figure in either Mirskontsa and Pomada to seemingly expose their genitals. It is notable that in alternative versions of 'dyr bul shchyl,' Kruchenykh's soon-to-be wife Olga Rozanova altered the image of the nude woman to produce an image seemingly more in line with female representations in Mirskontsa.

Later on in Pomada and in contrast to the "urban prostitutes" 'dyr bul shchyl,' a peasant woman with her breasts exposed carries a basket or some other burden. As Pomada lengthens the image of the woman-as-figure becomes more oblique and it begins to discern the sex of the figure at all. In the final image of what appears to be a woman figure, the defining motif of these female nude becomes itself obscured. Is this figure-in-horror exposing their breasts, or do they raise their arm to their chest in quiet exclamation?

Contrast between representations of the city and the village seem to have centered in representations on the people who live in them-- however, in keeping with Neo-Primitivist themes, this Individual-of-Representation often took the shape of the woman (it is no coincidence that one's place of origin is often referred to as the 'motherland.' In engaging with Marc Chagall's painting Above the Town there is (while not ubiquitous) an clear demarcation between the individual and place. Seemingly caught in a saving or pleasurably embrace, Chagall's female figure connotes a concerning specter haunting the transition from the town/village to the major city/metropolis. In the same period of time (1910-1920) this concern bubbled to the forefront of Russian Avant Garde iconography: In simple landscapes, the city (Moscow) begins to shake and climb upon itself as if reaching for the heavens by creating Jacob's ladder from its own body. Also, in the costuming of women, the peasant girl is constructed as having both agency and personhood--there is a 'capability'/potentiality present in her that is distinct from the faceless scratchings of the women in Pomada.

Like a two-headed infant conjoined at birth, the rise of technology both fascinated and demanded intervention by the Russian people. From the gruesome representations of the titular Anna Karenina preparing for death via railcar decapitation to the very presence of any portrayal of a traveling female peasant, the identity of Russia-going-forward was all but submerged by the crashing wave of questions and conflicts arising from technological advancement and integration in the social.

The presence and juxtaposition of prostitutes, peasants, cities, and villages belies a theoretical stance on reproduction and collaboration--- the deconstruction/vilification of the city, functions as a collaborative stance with the production of hand-made books. Even more than what can be done in a press workshop, in the continued supremacy of the village woman over the city prostitute, Larionov reasserts the Anti-Gutenbergian stance of early Russian Avant Garde sentiments. In doing this, Larionov accomplishes the turn from a rudimentary Neo-Primitivist discourse into a complete swerve towards mystical/fused signifier-signified systems.
Finding Meaning from Zaum How does Kruchenyk's Zaum language relate to the rules of Russian? How can we extract meaning from certain characteristics of this work?

Kruchenyk's poem, as stated by the author, is written in the Zaum language, rather than Russian. Zaum, which roughly translates to "beyond the mind," fills the poem with entirely nonsensical words. In writing this piece, Kruchenyk alternates between following certain conventions of Russian, yet at the same time breaking them through his Zaum language.

In constructing the words of the piece, Kruchenyk generally sticks to the rules of Russian. However, while both "dyr" and "bul" follow the phonological patterns of Russian, but the last word of the line, "schul," does not. After a certain set of seven consonants, the vowel "И" should be used instead of "Ы."

The final line, "р л эз" is also worthy of discussion. If we understand the constituents of this line to be simply letters, then the poem seems to break down from more complex constructions to its individual parts. However, the inclusion of "эз" makes this difficult to corroborate. On the contrary, we could perceive these three to be words themselves. I choose the latter, and see this poem as an exercise in demonstrating the possibilities of the Zaum language. The sounds are more important than the printed letters.

What seems to be scribbles underneath the poem is actually Mikhail Larionov's depiction of a nude woman, a contemporary of Aleksei Kruchenyk. Similar to the construction of the poem, Larionov's creation purposefully distances itself from the conventional process of drawing and artistry.

Starting from the top, we transition from language as we know it, to dabbling in Zaum, to Zaum in artistry. The three components of the page work together to mark this transition into the practice of the Zaum language. The notion of a grammar and a lexicon is what makes the opening statement differ from the poem. I believe that Kruchenyk, unknowingly, is trying to challenge this notion through this piece.