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The WORLDBACKWARDS: Lewis Carroll, Aleksei Kruchenykh and Russian
Alogism
Nikolai Firtich, Vassar College
In a February 1914 letter to Aleksei Kruchenykh, Roman Jakobson made the
following observation concerning the concept of "mirskontsa" ["the worldbackwards"]
which Kruchenykh had proposed as a literary method for uncoupling narrative from a
normal time sequence: "You know, none of the poets have said "worldbackwards" before,
only Bely and Marinetti perhaps sensed it a little, but meanwhile this grandiose thesis is
fully scientific... and clearly outlined in the relativity principal" (Sukhoparov 1994, 227).
The first expression of this concept in print occurs in Kruchenykh's commentary to his
own poem published in the collection Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu (1912),
where he writes the following: "carrying world backwards in the work of art could be
expressed as follows: instead of 1-2-3 events are unfolding as 3-2-1 or 3-1-2. This is the
way it is in my poem" (Kruchenykh 2001, 261).i
With even the graphic organization of this commentary reflecting the idea of
"displacement," Kruchenykh introduces the concept of an alogical "shift" in chronology
that would violate the linear progression of time.ii The initial notion of "worldbackwards"
then could be described as a reflection on the relativity of time in its function within the
creative process. In Kruchenykh words the artist is free "to trace the world backwards"
["sledit' mir s kontsa"] (Kruchenykh 1999, 54), arranging the narrative episodes without
concern for chronological motivation, rearranging word order, syllables, phonemes and so
on for the purpose of discovering new meanings. This method was embodied in a number
of poems and prose works by Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov, most notably in the collection
Mirskontsa ["The Wordbackwards"] (1912) and in Khlebnikov's short play by the same
title.iii
Several years after his initial remark, Jakobson again addressed the problem of
temporal shifts in literature. In his brochure Noveishaia russkaia poeziia. Nabrosok
pervyi: Podstupy k Khlebnikovu (1921) he addressed the thesis of "worldbackwards" in
connection with Khlebnikov's play. Granting the similarity of Khlebnikov's text to a film
reel played backwards, Jakobson pointed out, however, that the structure of this play is
more complex because the past contains the “real past as well as the real future.”Jakobson
lists numerous ways in which the device of temporal shift has been used by earlier authors
such as Tolstoy while pointing out that, in contrast to them, the Russian futurists' use of
the temporal shift did not require semantic motivation (Jakobson 284-285). iv
It is surprising that the name of Lewis Carroll (Charles Ludwidge Dodgson 18321898) is not mentioned by Jakobson among the predecessors of Kruchenykh and
Khlebnikov. In fact, however, Carroll had put forward a very similar idea in his celebrated
Alice books: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking -Glass
(1871). Introducing Alice to peculiarities of the "Looking -Glass Land" the White Queen
says: "Living backwards ... always makes one a little giddy at first - but there is one great
advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways." Logical Alice responds that her
memory works only one way and that she cannot remember things before they happen.
The Queen expresses regret at such unfortunate limitation of Alice's memory and remarks
that she, personally, remembers best the "things that happened a week after next" (The
Annotated Alice 247-48).
This is just one of many examples from the work of the English author that exhibits
points of correspondence with the ideas and creations of writers and visual artists
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associated with the alogical tendency of the Russian avant-garde. Alogism, viewed in a
specifically Russian context , can be defined as an anti-rational, essentially metaphysical
development that was particularly evident in the early days of the Russian avant-garde
(1910-1915). This phenomenon can be defined as an aesthetic movement against
conventional logic and reason, one that was designed to debunk the traditional
(representational) methods of creating works of art. The metaphysical coloring of this
movement is evident in its aspirations to arrive at a “higher logic” and to transcend the
boundary of our reality in order to explore other realms and dimensions. Such a
“penetration”into these other realms is accomplished by creating works of art that appear,
from the conventional viewpoint, as either totally nonsensical, or, at least, semantically
enigmatic.v
Along with the founders of zaumnyi iazyk (transrational languag ), Aleksei
Kruchenykh and Velemir Khlebnikov, and such artists as Kazimir Malevich who produced
series of alogical paintings in 1913-1915,vi it is also necessary to include in this alogical
movement the poets of the Leningrad OBERIU (Association of Real Art) group, Daniil
Kharms, Aleksandr Vvedensky and Konstantin Vaginov in particular, whose work of the
late 1920’s and 1930’s represents the last manifestation of alogism in pre-World War II
Russia.vii
The question of Lewis Carroll's influence on the various fields of literary and visual
arts, especially on surrealism, has been addressed in the scholarly literature in some
detail.viii In connection with Russia, however, this question appears not yet to have
received the attention it deserves. Nevertheless it is important to note that the first Russian
translation of the Alice's adventures appeared as early as 1879 under the title Sonia v
Tsartstve Diva. This was followed by three more translations published in the first decade
of the 20th century, one of which belonged to the pen of Poliksena Solovyeva (Allegro)
the sister of Vladimir Solovyev. ix One can therefore assume that this extraordinary tale
did not go unnoticed by the many future representatives of the Russian avant-garde.
Since the field of connections between Carroll and avant-garde is rather vast, for
the purpose of this study we will limit ourselves to putting forward some preliminary
observations, that illuminate the relationship between Carroll's "nonsense" and the
experiments of Russian alogists that led to their arrival at non - objective art. It should be
noted that at this juncture we are primarily interested in typological correspondences
between the ideas of Lewis Carroll and the Russian alogists, rather than in the question of
direct influence of the British author on the work of specific artists. However, these
observations will lead to a future explorations and to a more thorough investigation of this
relationship in the directions outlined below.
Three broad areas of correspondence between Carroll's fictional creations and the
ideas developed in the milieu of Russian avant-garde can be identified. The first belongs to
the playful field of literary "nonsense," where semantic shifts create images and situations
that appear nonsensical from the conventional view point. This area also includes linguistic
experimentation which may involve the creation of new words and even languages. The
second area of correspondence lies in the metaphysical (spiritual) realm where other
worlds and dimensions are explored or intimated, often in the context of literary
techniques that undermine traditional notions of meaning. Thirdly, there is the presence of
artistic epatage leveled against the dominant social mechanisms.
In the course of recent decades, the metaphysical tendencies of the Russian avantgarde have received considerable scholarly attention, particularly the links between the
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concept of hyper-dimensionality advanced by P. D. Uspenskii and the theoretical
constructs of Kruchenykh, Matiushin and Malevichx. In sharp contrast, the playful aspect
of the Russian avant- garde expressed in literary and visual nonsense has remained largely
outside the scholarly inquiry. Yet the notion of "nonsense" cannot be discounted when
addressing the complex of ideas that led to the creation of the trans-rational language and
that prepared the way for the appearance of non-objective art in Russia.xi
Let us take the most elementary example of nonsense poetry from Lewis Carroll,
the first two stanzas of a poem entitled "Father William" from Alice in Wonderland, and
look at it in the context of the early Russian avant-garde.
"You are old, father William" the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
"In my youth,"' father William replied to his son
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
"Why, I do it again and again" (The Annotated Alice 70)
This playful and at the first glance innocent poem, however, contains ideas which
later acquired prominence in Russian futurist aesthetics. First of all it is the conflict
between rational - i.e. conventionally "correct" - thinking and thinking that departs from
the norm, and is therefore unconventional. This is expressed in terms of standing on one's
head, in other words, of seeing the world from a radically different point of view. The
poem also features a rejection of the brain, the seat of logic and rationality. Thirdly, at the
heart of the poem we find a clash between "useful" and "sensible" activity with what from
a utilitarian viewpoint seems to be "nonsensical" and "useless" behavior.
The idea of the "world turned upside down" was unquestionably fundamental to
the alogical vision of the Russian Futurists. One need only to mention the famous
photograph of Kruchenykh, Matiushin and Malevich with the piano hanging upside-down
in the background, surrounded with upturned furniture. This photograph reflects the idea
of a semantic shift leading to the new possibilities of artistic vision, an idea which was also
expressed by Elena Guro in one of her poems written in 1912.
And, suddenly, I thought what if
We turn chairs and sofas upside down,
Turn the clock on its head?
The dawn of a new era would come
And will open new lands (Guro 104).xii
The alogical image created here by Guro happens to be typologically similar to
Carroll's Wonderland, where all logical connections are shifted and the concept of linear
time does not exist. As Alice discovers, everybody is "somewhat out of their minds" and
she realizes that tools other than logic and reason are required to comprehend that land.
The Cheshire Cat tells Alice: "We are all mad here." When Alice objects to being mad, he
calmly responds: "You must be, or you would not have come here." (The Annotated Alice
89).
Rejection of rational thought, or rejection of reason as an instrument for exploring
the mysteries of creativity was the central plank of the Russian futurist program. A
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characteristic example is Malevich's statement that crowns the list of futurists Easter
wishes of 1915: "Reason - is the prison chain for an artist, therefore I wish to all the artists
to go out of their minds" (Malevich 26).xiii In his booklet of 1916, Ot kubizma k
Suprematizmu, Malevich developed this idea in its application to contemporary art by
stating that "all artistic forms are waiting to be freed, so they can speak their own language
and not be dependant on reason, sense (smysl), logic, various laws of causality, etc..."thus
emphasizing again the "non-reasonable" essence of art (Malevich 25).xiv
At a later point, Malevich came to see the rejection of rationality as a passage to a
logic of a higher order, to what he called "transrational reason."xv But, Malevich, returned
to the ideas of "nonsense" and "uselessness" by stating in 1923 that it was his acquaintance
with Kruchenykh that had led him away from the fascination with the "material" and
brought him to "zero," inspiring the artist to produce "useless” works."xvi Malevich's
assertion creates a bridge with Kruchenykh's radical anti-utilitarianism expressed most
vividly in a following statement: "Uselessness senselessness (nonsensicality), mystery of
the powerful non-entity - this are the contents of new poetry!" (Sukhoparov 1994, 33). xvii
The concepts of "uselessness" and "senselessness" in art (of course, as seen in contrast to
the utilitarian view of artistic output) were instrumental parts of Kruchenykh's alogical
program that found fertile soil in Malevich's own interpretations of the same themes.
Indeed, Kruchenykh was the most radical and dedicated artist of the alogical nonsense. The futurist opera Pobeda nad solntsem the libretto for which was written by
Kruchenykh in 1913, can be seen as the most outstanding masterpiece of “nonsense”
literature of the early twentieth century avant-garde. In that light the parallels with the
Alice texts of Lewis Carroll are particularly revealing. There are striking similarities
between the second act of Pobeda nad solntsem and Alice's experiences during her
adventures in Wonderland (Chapters Two, Three and Four).
The Scenes Five and Six of the Second Act of Pobeda nad Solntsem describe the
so-called "The 10th Country" of the future as seen through the eyes of the character
simply called "Fatman." It is here, in Fatman's wanderings in this strange land, that the
parallels with Alice's adventures in Wonderland can be discovered. For example, the
Fatman's exclamation, "What kind of country is this? How could I know that I will be
locked up without being able to move either my arms or legs" (Kruchenykh 2001, 400)
brings to mind Alice's reflections, when she changes in size until she literally gets stuck in
the house and cannot move her limbs. "What will become of me?" sadly thinks Alice "It
was much pleasanter at home." But right away she exclaims "and yet -and yet - it's rather
curious, you know, this sort of life!" (The Annotated Alice 58). In Kruchenykh's text the
Fatman, after having complained about his predicament, also becomes curious: "what if
one could climb up the stairs to the brain of this house and open there a door # 35- oh,
what wonders! eah, all is not so simple here, although it looks just like a chest of drawers,
but one just roams and roams around " (Kruchenykh 2001, 400).
Alice, as we know, also tries to open the door, beyond which a wonderful garden
can be seen, but before she is able to do that she has to wander around quite a bit and
experience a number of transformations. Everything she encounters turns out to be not
quite what it seemed at the first glance.
In Through the Looking -Glass, Alice climbs up onto the fireplace mantle shelf in
order to get into the "Looking-Glass House." Inside the Looking-Glass the concept of
time turns out to be irrelevant (instead of arrows the clock has a grinning face).
Analogously, Kruchenykh's Fatman, having climbed up into the "Brain of the House," also
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seems to be in sort of a "Looking-Glass Land" exclaiming "Wow, I almost fell" (looks
through the crack in the clock: tower, sky, streets are all upside down -just like in a
mirror)." He tries to find out what time it is "where do your clocks turn, and arrows?" and
receives a mysterious reply "both arrows turn back right before dinner" (Kruchenykh 401).
Among the numerous puns on the relativity of time in Carroll's works, the particularly
memorable one is the scene in Alice in Wonderland during the "Mad Tea Party," when
Alice also inquires about time and finds out that the clock always points to six o'clock,
which happens to be dinner time.(The Annotated Alice 96-99).
In Pobeda nad solntsem Kruchenykh's Fatman, trying to understand the "10-th
country," comes to a conclusion that everything is complicated there. "All the roads here
are mixed up and go up to the earth and there aren't any side exits" and receives the advice
"please, there is an entrance, you can exit right back, there aren't any others" ( Kruchenykh
2001, 401). In much the same way, but in a text written fifty years earlier, Alice tries to
walk up to the top of the hill in the Looking Glass Land but always ends up in the same
spot from which she had started. Carroll's Alice and Kruchenykh's Fatman both try to
approach the new reality from the conventionally logical viewpoint and end up in a dead
end situation.
These parallels between the texts of Carroll and Kruchenykh point not only to
similarities in their thinking, but also to the possibility that the playful and alogical world
of Lewis Carroll would be closer to Kruchenykh's creative imagination, than, for example,
Uspenskii's theoretical constructs about other dimensions. It is also significant that
Kruchenykh was one of the most serious collectors of children's art, and not unlike
Carroll, paid close attention to the specifics of children's comprehension and
imagination.xviii
Let us return to the scene of the "Mad Tea Party," which from typological
viewpoint appears particularly connected to Russian avant-garde. This chapter in Carroll's
work contains themes that are central not only to Russian Futurism, but to avant-garde in
general. There is, first, the theme of madness, in other words, the rejection of the so-called
common sense; secondly, there is the theme of time treated not in linear but in relative
terms; thirdly there is the theme of behavior that breaches the limits of socially acceptable.
All these themes are presented in the atmosphere of total absurdity.
The absurdity of the situation is marked in the beginning of the chapter by the
puzzle addressed to Alice by the Mad Hatter: "Why is the raven like a writing-desk?" This
absurdist query brings to mind Malevich's alogist painting A Cow and Violin (1913) or
Kruchenykh's assertion that the best rhyme for the word "theater" is the word "cow." The
following statement by Malevich also appears as quite Carrollian. The artist makes a
pronouncement: "The supreme work of art is created when the mind is absent" ["Vysshee
khudozhestvennoe proizvedenie pishetsia togda, kogda uma net"]. And then concludes : "
Of course many will think that this is absurd, but to no purpose, because it's enough to
light two matches and put up a wash basin." ["Konechno, mnogie budut dumat', chto eto
absurd, no naprasno, stoit tol'ko zazhech' dve spichki i postavit' umyval'nik"] (Malevich
57). In all cases as the result of a semantic shift we have the creation of the new, free,
artistic space to which rational laws can not be applied. Common sense, or reason, are
useless in this kind of situation and a person needs to rely on intuition in order to function
in this space.
The debunking of the traditional perception of time as a linear progression takes a
central place in "Mad Tea Party." Time becomes an animate being, which could be
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convinced to move faster, or to go backwards, or it might decide to stop altogether. One
needs to recall here that the interpretation of time played an important role in the milieu of
the early Russian avant-garde. Aside from the temporal shifts in Pobeda nad solntsem
mentioned earlier it is enough to recollect the famous painting by Malevich, An
Englishman in Moscow (1914) where the word "hour" ( ) occupies a central place and
a looming fish together with a red arrow forms something akin to a clock pointing to 5
p.m which happens to be a traditional tea time in England ("five o'clock"). We know that,
Velemir Khlebnikov was particularly preoccupied with the problem of time and based a
number of his theories on his calculations of the cyclical nature of time. xix However Lewis
Carroll had already addressed many of these issues in his original interpretation of
temporal problems, presenting them in a playful and puzzling manner that affected the
imagination of his readers. For example, Carroll's idea of "living backwards", in the sense
of freely moving back and forth in time (as indicated above) found its reflections in
Herbert G. Wells' The Time Machine and, notably, in F.Scott Fitzgerald's "The Strange
Case of Benjamin Button" among many others.xx
The eccentricity of the "Mad Tea Party" is expressed by the anti - social behavior
of the participants, which may comprise an ironic comment on the artificiality of Victorian
manners. The Mad Hatter and March Hare switch their sets of dishes and splash their tea
on the Dormouse, which shocks the well-mannered Alice terribly. The epatage of Russian
Futurists comes to mind when one reads these lines. Curiously enough, the ritual tea
drinking had often accompanied futurist public lectures and disputes. Particularly
interesting is the fact that ruchenykh used to splash his tea out onto the respectable
audience , trying to awaken it from its bourgeois somnolence (Livshits 435, Sukhparov
60). By this gesture Kruchenykh, in effect, turned into reality the fictional image created
by Carroll. This parallel with Carroll's Wonderland is further supported by the following
sentence from the alogical text of Kruchenykh's and Khlebnikov's book Mirskontsa
(1912): "The spilt out tea and many wonders that killed the pleasers with their light
"[Razlityi chai i mnogo chudes kotorye ubivali svoim svetom litsepriiatnykh ](Mirskontsa
23).
This excerpt is from the prose work by Khruchenykh entitled "Journey Around the
Whole World" which, arguably, comprises the centerpiece of the book. It is indeed the
most experimental text in the collection which has been defined by Vladimir Markov as
"an attempt at creating a prose of a totally new type" and compared by him with a much
later "automatic writing" of the Surrealists (Markov 43). Another characteristic feature of
this text, which, to our knowledge, has not been noticed by scholars so far, is that it
actually can be read backwards (starting from the last word) without affecting the
semantics of the story, since the story does not unfold in any kind of chronological
fashion. This serves as a perfect illustration of Kruchenykh's idea of "worldbackwards"
according to which the narrative can flow freely in either direction without regard for
syntax and grammatical norms.
In fact the same principle can be applied to the entire collection, which can literally
be read starting with the last page. Moreover, all of Kruchenykh's poems in this particular
collection can also be read backwards, which does not hamper their meaning, because the
meaning itself is alogical and non-static. xxiSignificantly, in about the middle of the
collection we find a short poem by Khlebnikov typeset in such a way that it can only be
read by holding it to the mirror.
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This points to a one more link between Carroll and the Russian avant -garde, this
time in the area of linguistic experiment. Almost everybody is familiar with the famous
lines of the "Jabberwocky" poem from Through the Looking Glass which was written in a
language of Carroll's own invention - "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, did gyre and
gimble in the wabe..." etc. When Alice first looks at the poem she cannot read it, for as she
says "it's all in some language I do not know"( The Annotated Alice 190). Realizing that it
was a "Looking-glass book" Alice decides to hold the book to the mirror, however, the
meaning of the lines despite the fact that she can now read them, still remains obscure.
Admitting that she cannot understand the poem Alice reflects that "Somehow it seems to
fill my head with ideas - only I don't know exactly what they are"(The Annotated Alice
197). The poem therefore is written in a language the meaning of which is flexible, nonstatic and strikingly similar to Kruchenykh's method of mixing understandable words with
the words of his own invention.xxii
Russian Futurists began their experimentation with language from palindromes and
reading of words backwards that gave them a new meaning. Such are, for example, David
Burliuk’s
,
(
,
).xxiii The next step was the
creation of a new language, that even if read in a mirror, would still remain obscure, or as
Kruchenykh did put it "a language with no particular meaning" (Kruchenykh 55). In other
words, not unlike Carroll's Alice, the Russian Futurists had gone "beyond the looking
glass" into the land of new creative dimensions. Thus, typological parallels with Lewis
Carroll addressed in this essay help to illuminate the imaginative and playful aspect of
Kruchenykh's "worldbackwards" as part of the alogical current of the early Russian avantgarde. As was testified by Malevich the alogism of Kruchenykh's Pobeda nad solntsem in
which nonsense and metaphysics were inseparable was an important steeping stone for the
Russian artists' movement towards Non-objective art.
It seems appropriate to end this essay with a quote from a 1901 essay by Gilbert
Keith Chesterton entitled "In Defense of Nonsense" where the author argued for the
connection between the nonsense literature on the one hand, and spirituality on the other.
Nonsense and faith (strange as the conjunction may seem) are the two supreme
symbolic assertion of the truth that to draw out the soul of things with the syllogism is as
impossible as to draw out Leviathan with the hook. The well meaning person who, by
merely studying the logical side of things, has decided that “faith is nonsense,”does not
know how truly he speaks; later it may come back to him in the form that nonsense is faith
(Chesterton 46).
Moreover Chesterton suggested that if “nonsense is to be the literature of the
future, it must have its own version of the Cosmos to offer; the world must not only be the
tragic, romantic, and religious, it must be nonsensical also.” Therefore, in Chesterton’s
view ”nonsense will, in a very unexpected way, come to the aid of the spiritual view of
things.”(Chesterton 46).
Chesterton's observation turns out to be quite prophetic indeed if one is to look at
the development of the avant-garde art and literature in the 20th century. From Appolinare
and Giorgio De Chirico's "Pittura Metafisica", through Dadaism and Surrealism to Theatre
of Absurd and to Post-Modernism avant-garde exhibits various manifestations of
nonsense and turns to the illogical and mysterious realms, thus, albeit often in iconoclastic
fashion, alerting us to the spiritual side of things. mong other innovations, the Russian
avant-garde pioneered "alogism," which championed "nonsense" as the guiding principle
of new art, thus establishing a spiritual connection with Carroll's Wonderland.
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WORKS CITED
Braithwaite, R.B. “Lewis Carroll as Logician.”Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland. Authoritative Texts
of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, The Hunting of the Snark.
Backgrounds. Essays in Criticism. New York: W.W.Norton &Company, 1971. 291-297.
Burliuk, David. “Cubism (Surface-Plane)” Russian Art of the Avant-Garde. Theory and Criticism 19021934. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991. 69-77.
Carroll, Lewis. The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
Introduction and notes by Martin Gardner. New York: Wings Books, 1993.
Chesterton, G.K. “In Defense of Nonsense.”The Defendant London, 1901. 37-46.
Danilov, Iu. A., Smorodinsky, Ia.A. “Fizik chitaet Kerrolla.”Prikliucheniia Alisy v strane chudes. Skvoz’
zerkalo I chto tam uvidela Alisa, ili Alisa v zazerkal’e. Moscow: Nauka, 1978. 266-274.
Douglas, Charlotte. Swans of Other Worlds: Kazimir Malevich and the Origins of Suprematism 19081915. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Dissertation Information Service, 1990.
Demurova, Nina M. "Alice Speaks Russian: The Russian Translations of Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass" Harvard Library Bulletin, 5/ 4 (1995):11- 29.
“Alisa v strane chudes I zazerkal’e.” Prikliucheniia Alisy v strane chudes. Skvoz’zerkalo I chto tam
uvidela Alisa, ili Alisa v zazerkal’e. Moscow: Nauka, 1978. 277-314.
Faryno, Jerzy. "'Allogizm' i izosemantizm avangarda (na primere Malevicha)." Russian Literature, XL
(1996) : 91-120.
Firtich, Nikolai. “Kartina Malevicha ‘Anglichanin v Moskve’kak pritcha o novom videnii.” Avangard
1910-kh-1920-kh godov.Vzaimodeistvie iskusstv. Moscow, 1998. 140-151.
Flesher, Jacquelin. “The Language of Nonsense in Alice,”Yale French Studies, XLIII (1970) 128-44.
Galinskaia, I.L. L’iuis Kerroll I zagadki ego tekstov. Moscow, 1995
Guro, Elena. Sochineniia. Oakland, California: Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1996.
Gurianova, Nina. “Za sem’iu pechatiami slova.” Pamiat’teper’mnogoe razvorachivaet: Iz literaturnogo
naslediia Kruchenykh. Berkeley, California: Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1999. P. 311-340.
The Russian Futurists and Their Books. Paris: La Hune Libraire Editeur, 1993.
Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidian Geometry in Modern Art.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1983.
Ingold. F.Ph. “Portret avtora kak bezlichnosti. K voprosu ob estetike i poetike russkogo kubo-futurizma.”
Avtor i tekst. St.Petersburg, 1996. 387-407.
Jakobson, Roman. “Noveishaia russkaia poeziia. Nabrosok pervyi: Podstupy k Khlebnikovu.” Raboty po
poetike. Moscow: Progress, 1987. 272-323.
Janecek, Gerald. The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism. San Diego: San Diego State UP, 1996.
8
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lic
k
to
bu
y
N
O
W
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PD
O
W
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PD
c u-tr a c k
.c
H
F-XC A N GE
H
F-XC A N GE
c u-tr a c k
N
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to
k
lic
“’Mirskontsa’ u Klebnikova i Kruchenykh.” Jazyk kak tvorchestvo.Sbornik statei k 70-letiiu
V.P.Grigor’eva. Moscow, 1996. 80-88.
Kharms, Daniil. “Gorlo bredit britvoiu.Sluchai, rasskazy, dnevnikovye zapisi.”Glagol 4 (1991)
Kovtun, Evgenii. "Kazimir Malevich i poslednee stikhotvorenie Khlebnikova." Mera 2 (1994): 83-88.
Krasitskii, S.R. “O Kruchenykh.” Aleksei Kruchenykh. Stikhotvoreniia. Poemy. Romany. Opera.
St.Petersburg, 2001. 5-39.
Kruchenykh, Aleksei . Stikhotvoreniia. Poemy. Romany. Opera. St. Petersburg, 2001.
“Novye puti slova (iazyk budushchego-smert’simvolizmu).”Russkii futurizm. Teoriia. Praktika. Kritika.
Vospominaniia. Moscow, 1999. 50-54.
Khlebnikov, Velemir. Mirskontsa. St.Petersburg, 1912.
Kuz'menko, V.P. "'Osnovnoi zakon vremeni Khlebnikova' v svete sovremennykh teorii koevoliutsii
prirody i obchshestva." Mir Velemira Khlebnikova. Stat'i i issledovaniia 1911-1998. Moscow: Nauka,
2000. 733-756.
Livshits, Benedikt.
Polutoroglazyi strelets. Stikhotvoreniia. Perevody.Vospominaniia. Leningrad:
Sovetskii pisatel', 1989.
Malevich, Kazemir. Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh. Moscow, 1995, vol.1.
Markov, Vladimir. Russian Futurism: A History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1968.
McGarrity Buki, Ann. “Lewis Carroll in Finnegans Wake.”Lewis Carroll : A Celebration. Essays on the
Occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Charles Ludwidge Dodgson. New York, 1982. 154-166.
Papernyi, Z.S. "Boi za vremia." Mir Velemira Khlebnikova. Stat'i i issledovaniia 1911-1998. Moscow:
Nauka, 2000. 719-723.
Poliakov, Vladimir. Knigi russkogo futurizma. Moscow, 1998.
Punin, Nikolai. "Khlebnikov i gosudarstvo vremeni." Mir Velemira Khlebnikova. Stat'i i issledovaniia
1911-1998. Moscow: Nauka, 2000. 159-174.
Sewell, Elizabeth. The Field of Nonsense. London, 1952.
Stapanian, Juliette R. Mayakovsky's Cubo- Futurist Vision. Huston, Texas: Rice UP, 1986.
Stern, Jeffrey. "Lewis Carroll the Surrealist" Lewis Carroll : A Celebration. Essays on the Occasion of the
150th Anniversary of the Birth of Charles Ludwidge Dodgson. New York, 1982. 132-153.
Sukhoparov, Sergei, ed., Aleksei Kruchenykh v svidetel'stvakh sovremennikov. Munchen, 1994.
Aleksei Kruchenykh. Sud’ba budetlianina. Munchen: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1992.
Weaver, Warren. “The Mathematical Manuscripts of Lewis Carroll”Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
Authoritative Texts of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, The Hunting of
the Snark. Backgrounds. Essays in Criticism. New York: W.W.Norton &Company, 1971. 298-302.
9
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1
Gerald Janecek noted the innovative arbitrariness of Kruchenykh method and
observed that it could well be the first example of this type of structure in the
avant-garde literature. See Janecek 1996, 83.
ii
-
:
1-2-3
3-2-1
3-1-2
" (Kruchenykh 2001, 261)
The way this commentary is typeset indicates that it also serves as an illustration
of Kruchenykh’
s concept. It stresses the synthesis of literary and visual
innovation by giving this “footnote”an essentially cubist form and points to a
connection between “worldbackwards” and cubist “displacement”which violated
the “chronology”of the linear perspective. Later on Kruchenykh will develop his
own theory of sdvig (“displacement,”“shift”) in literature, but the first theoretical
definition of “displacement”in contemporary painting belongs to David Burliuk. In
an article “Cubism (Surface-Plane)”published in the same Poshchechina
obshchestvennomu vkusu Burliuk formulated “the canon of displaced
construction”as opposed to an academic “constructive canon.”This
“deconstructive canon “is based on the principle of “displacement”which
according to Burliuk can be linear, planar, particular or general, etc. (Burliuk 7677). Thus begins the theory of sdvig to which Kruchenykh makes an early
contribution by introducing a related concept of “worldbackwards.”
10
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PD
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PD
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F-XC A N GE
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iii
In two recent monographs dedicated to Kruchenukh’
s work this collection as
well as the “worldbackwards”concept itself are mentioned only in passing. In his
Aleksei Kruchenykh. Sud’
ba budetlianina Sergei Sukhoparov just points out
Jakobson’
s recognition of Kruchenykh’
s innovation.(Sukhoparov 1991, 54-55). In
her excellent article on Kruchenykh “Za sem’
iu pechatiami slova”Nina
Gurianova follows a specific agenda that does not include the discussion of the
“worldbackwards.”She does mention, however, that this concept is instrumental
for Kruchenykh’
s idea of the “birth of new reality”(Gurianova 332). In an earlier
essay Gurianova also provides a description, as well as the publication history of
Mirskontsa.(Gurianova 1993, 12-13). Some of the most recent observations on
“worldbackwards”belong to Vladimir Poliakov. In his monograph Knigi russkogo
kubofuturizma the author links “worldbackwards”to the Russian futurists real
hope for victory over time and, by extension, to medieval Russian sense of the
“stream of time”as a process in which the events occur ind pendantly of the
position of a human being in relation to them (Poliakov 125-129). However, in
our opinion, the most successful definition of the “worldbackwards”to date is
provided by S.R. Krasitskii: “…
“
…
”
–
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
.”(Krasitskii 15)
11
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C
lic
k
to
bu
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W
!
PD
O
W
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PD
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F-XC A N GE
H
F-XC A N GE
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4
"...
[...]
.,
,"
;
."
",
",
.[ ...]
,
, . .
[…]
,
.”(Jakobson 284-285). So, Roman Jakobson was not only the first scholar to
comment on Kruchenykh’
s invention, but also the first to disscuss Khlebnikov’
s
play, however the mention of Kruchenykh is curiously absent here. The
differences between Kruchenykh’
s and Khlebnikov approaches to
“worldbackwards”are discussed by Gerald Janecek. Janecek points out that if in
case of Khlebnikov the reverse logic of the structure is fairly clear, in case of
Kruchenykh’
s poem “Starye shchiptsy zakata… ”(1912) the structure does not
lend itself to chronological reversal, but is more ambiguous and complex
(Janecek 1996, 81-84).
v
For a discussion of alogism in Russian cultural context see: Firtich, Nikolai.
Alogism in Russian Modernism: Alogical Concepts in the Works of Gogol, Bely,
Kruchenykh, Malevich, Vaginov and Vvedensky. Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale
University, 2001.
vi
For interpretations of various aspects of Malevich’
s alogism see: Juliette
R.Stapanian Mayakovsky's Cubo- Futurist Vision. 75-92; F.Ph. Ingold “Portret
avtora kak bezlichnosti. K voprosu ob estetike i poetike russkogo kubo12
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to
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!
PD
O
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!
PD
c u-tr a c k
.c
H
F-XC A N GE
H
F-XC A N GE
c u-tr a c k
N
y
bu
to
k
lic
futurizma.”; Jerzy Faryno, "'Allogizm' i izosemantizm avangarda (na primere
Malevicha)."; N.Firtich “Kartina Malevicha ‘
Anglichanin v Moskve’kak pritcha o
novom videnii.”
vii
The question of Carroll’
s influence on members of OBERIU is a subject for
separate study. While it is difficult to uncover documentary evidence of the
futurists’familiarity with Carroll’
s works, in case of OBERIU it is easily
substantiated. In 1927 the mention of Carroll is made in Kharms diary where the
English author occupies 11th place among the fourty three foreign writers favored
by Kharms. In 1937 Carroll is already one of the six favorite authors on
Kharmses list. Kharms 85, 134.
viii
Of particular interest are the following essays: Jeffrey Stern, "Lewis Carroll the
Surrealist" and Ann McGarrity Buki, “Lewis Carroll in Finnegans Wake.”
ix
All these translations were soon to be followed by Vladimir Nabokov's Ania v
strane chudes published in Berlin in 1923. For the history of Alice's translations
into Russian, see Nina M. Demurova’
s highly informative article "Alice Speaks
Russian: The Russian Translations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and
Through the Looking Glass." ccording to a number of sources Lewis Carroll’
s
works on mathematics (he was a Don of mathematics at Chist’
s Church College
in Oxford) were considered as quite traditional and unimaginative. His works on
logic, however, are described by contemporary scholars as way ahead of his
times. It was these works, as well as the texts of Alice books, that started to
attract attention of modern mathematicians and physicists from the 1930’
s in the
West and in the 1960’
s in the Soviet Union. It appears that the first translations
13
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PD
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PD
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of Carrolls works on logic were published in the Soviet Union only in the 1970s.
For more information on this subject see: Warren Weaver “The Mathematical
Manuscripts of Lewis Carroll”and R.B.Braithwaite “Lewis Carroll as Logician”;
N.M. Demurova “Alisa v strane chudes I zazerkal’
e”; Iu. A. Danilov,
Ia.A.Smorodinsky, “Fizik chitaet Kerrolla.”; Martin Gardner, The Annotated Alice.
x
Among the best studies that address this issue are: Charlotte Douglas, Swans
of Other Worlds: Kazimir Malevich and the Origins of Suprematism 1908-1915 ;
Linda Dalrymple Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidian
Geometry in Modern Art.
xi
In his fundamental study of the Russian transrational poetry Gerald Janecek
makes a mention of nonsense, but only in passing. He does note, however, that
one should not "... overlook the playful, humorous, fanciful aspects also to be
found in zaum [...] Zaum can indeed be read for comic, sometimes parodistic
effect, and in Kruchonykh there is little doubt that this is intended." (Janecek The
Transrational Poetry 348)
xii
"
,
,
:
,
? ...
,
." (Guro 104)
xiii
"
-
,
." (Malevich 26)
14
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to
bu
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!
PD
O
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PD
c u-tr a c k
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xiv
"
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
." (Malevich 25)
xv
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
. Cited by E. Kovtun in Kazimir Malevich 1878 - 1935:
Catalogue of an Exhibition in Leningrad - Moscow - Amsterdam (Amsterdam:
Stedelijk Museum, 1989) 155.
xvi
"...
[... ]
,
. [...]
,
,
"
,
"(
1913
,
),
,
." (Kovtun 1994, 83)
xvii
"
,
,
-
!" (Sukhoparov 1994, 33) According to Benedikt
Livshits this utterance was one of Kruchenykh's contributions to the prefice of
Trap of Judges II. Livshits 411. In the actual text of the prefice this statement
appears as follows: "
:
15
,
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o
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w
w
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C
lic
k
to
bu
y
N
O
W
!
PD
O
W
!
PD
c u-tr a c k
.c
H
F-XC A N GE
H
F-XC A N GE
c u-tr a c k
N
y
bu
to
k
lic
,
." See Russkii
futurizm. Teroiia. Praktika.Kritika.Vospominaniia 42.
xviii
In 1913 Kruchenykh published collection Porosiata where alongside his own
poetry he placed poems by 13 year-old girl Zina V. (Zina V. i A.Kruchenykh.
Porosiata. St.Petersburg, 1913). In the following year he released a miscellany
where the children’
s stories were complimented by their own
drawings.(Sobstvennye rasskazy i risunki detei. St.Petersburg, 1914).
xix
V.Vs. Ivanov disscusses Khlebnikov's ideas in his extensive essay "Kategoria
vremeni v iskusstve i kul'ture XX veka." Ivanov does not address the concept of
"worldbackwards" however, and while providing rich material on the 19th
century literary approaches to time, mentions Alice in Wonderland only in
passing, skipping Through the Looking Glass alltogether. One of the first essays
discussing Khlebnikov's interpretation of time belongs to the pen of Nikolai Punin
and is entitled "Khlebnikov i gosudarstvo vremeni." Among the recent studies
dedicated to this subject are: V.P. Kuz'menko, "'Osnovnoi zakon vremeni
Khlebnikova' v svete sovremennykh teorii koevoliutsii prirody i obchshestva" and
Z.S. Papernyi, "Boi za vremia."
xx
See The Annotated Alice. 97, 247.
xxi
What is meant by “backwards”here is not actual reading of the words from the
last letter to the first, but, rather reading the lines, or words, in the reversed
order.
xxii
In his commentary on “Jabberwocky”Martin Gardner suggests that “there
have been attempts to produce a more serious poetry of this sort-poems by the
16
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PD
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Dadaists, the Italian futurists, and Gertrude Stein, for example,”(The Annotated
Alice 192) however he does not provide an analysis of this connection, as well
as he does not mention Russian avant-garde. A fairly extensive literature on
“Jabberwo ky”has been produced over the last few decades. For example see:
Galinskaia, I.L. L’
iuis Kerroll I zagadki ego tekstov.; Flesher, Jacquelin. “The
Language of Nonsense in Alice,”; Sewell, Elizabeth. The Field of Nonsense.
London, 1952.
xxiii
See: Jakobson 314.
17
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!
PD
O
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!
PD
c u-tr a c k
.c