Futurism (from the Latin word futurum, meaning "future") - the avant-garde trend in the art of Europe in 1910-1920, mainly in Russia and Italy. It sought to create the so-called "art of the future", as representatives of this direction declared in manifestos.
In the works of F. T. Marinetti, an Italian poet, Russian cubic futurists from the Gilei society, as well as participants in the Mezzanine of Poetry, the Association of Ego Futurists, and Centrifuges, traditional culture was denied as a legacy of the past, and aesthetics of the machine industry and urbanism were developed .
Specific traits
The painting of this direction is characterized by influxes of forms, shifts, repeated repetitions of various motifs, as if summing up the impressions obtained as a result of a quick movement. In Italy, the futurists are J. Severini, W. Boccioni. In literature, there is a mixture of science fiction and documentary material, in poetry - experimentation with language ("zaum" or "words in freedom"). Russian futurist poets are V.V. Mayakovsky, V.V. Khlebnikov, I. Severyanin, A.E. Kruchenykh.
Groupings
This trend arose in 1910-1912, simultaneously with acmeism. Acmeists, futurists and representatives of other currents of modernism in their creativity and association were internally contradictory. The most significant of the futurist groups, later called cubofuturism, united various poets of the Silver Age. Her most famous futurist poets are V.V. Khlebnikov, D.D. Burliuk, V.V. Kamensky, A. Kruchenykh, V.V. Mayakovsky and others. The ego-futurism of I. Severyanin (poet I.V. Lotarev, years of life - 1887-1941) was one of the varieties of this trend. Famous Soviet poets B. L. Pasternak and N. N. Aseev began their work in the Centrifuge group .
Freedom of poetic speech
Russian futurists proclaimed the independence of form from content, its revolution, unlimited freedom of poetic speech. They completely abandoned literary traditions. In a manifesto with a very daring title, “Slap in the face of public taste,” published by them in the 1912 collection of the same name, representatives of this direction called for the rejection of recognized authorities such as Dostoevsky, Pushkin, and Tolstoy from the Steamboat of Modernity. A. Kruchenykh defended the poet’s right to create his own “abstruse” language that does not have a specific meaning. In his poems, speech was in fact replaced by an incomprehensible, meaningless set of words. But V.V. Kamensky (years of life - 1884-1961) and V. Khlebnikov (years of life - 1885-1922) were able in their work to carry out very interesting experiments with the language, which had a fruitful effect on Russian poetry.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky
The famous poet Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893-1930) was also a futurist. His first poems were published in 1912. Vladimir Vladimirovich brought his topic to this direction, which from the very beginning distinguished him from other representatives. Mayakovsky-futurist actively advocated the creation of a new society in life, and not only against various "junk".
In the period preceding the 1917 revolution, the poet was a revolutionary romanticist who denounced the so-called kingdom of the "fat", foresaw the impending revolutionary thunderstorm. Denying the entire system of capitalist relations, he proclaimed a humanistic faith in man in such poems as Flute-Spine, Cloud in Pants, Man, War and Peace. The theme of the poem “Cloud in Pants”, published in 1915 (only in censored truncated form), was later defined by the poet himself as 4 cries of “Down!”: Down with love, art, order and religion. He was one of the first Russian poets to show in his poems the whole truth of the new society.
Nihilism
In the years preceding the revolution, vivid individuals existed in Russian poetry, which were difficult to attribute to a specific literary movement. These are M.I. Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) and M.A. Voloshin (1877-1932). After 1910, another new direction appeared - futurism, which opposed itself to all literature, not only of the past, but also of the present. It entered the world with the desire to subvert all ideals. Nihilism is also visible in the external design of collections of poets, which were published on the back of the wallpaper or on wrapping paper, as well as in their names - "Dead Moon", "Milk of the Mares" and other typical poems of the futurists.
"Slap to the public taste"
In the first collection, “Slap in the face of public taste”, published in 1912, a declaration was printed. It was signed by famous futurist poets. These were Andrey Kruchenykh, David Burliuk, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velimir Khlebnikov. In it, they asserted their exclusive right to be spokesmen for their era. Poets denied the ideals of Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Tolstoy, but also Balmont, his "perfume fornication", Andreev with his "dirty slime", Maxim Gorky, Alexander Blok, Alexander Kuprin and others.
Rejecting everything, the manifesto of the futurists established the "lightning" of the valuable word. Not trying, unlike Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky, to overthrow the existing social system, they only wanted to renew its forms. In the Russian version, the slogan "War is the only hygiene of the world", which was considered the basis of Italian futurism, was weakened, however, according to Valery Bryusov, this ideology nevertheless "appeared between the lines."
According to Vadim Shershenevich, futurists of the Silver Age raised their form to the proper height for the first time, giving it the significance of the main, self-targeting element of the work. They categorically rejected poems that were written just for the sake of an idea. Therefore, many formal declared principles arose.
New language
Velimir Khlebnikov, another futurist theorist, has proclaimed a new “abstruse” language as the future language throughout the world. In it, the word loses its semantic meaning, acquiring a subjective connotation in return. So, vowels were understood as space and time (the nature of aspiration), consonants - sound, paint, smell. In an effort to expand the boundaries of language, he suggests creating words according to the root attribute (roots: char ..., chur ... - "we hide and shy away").
Futurists opposed the aestheticism of symbolic and especially acmeistic poetry with emphasized deestheticization. For example, "poetry is a worn out girl" by David Burliuk. In the review “The Year of Russian Poetry” (1914), Valery Bryusov noted, noting the conscious rudeness of the futurist’s poems, that it’s not enough to scold everything outside your circle in order to find something new. He pointed out that all the alleged innovations of these poets are imaginary. We meet them in the poetry of the 18th century, at Virgil and Pushkin, and the theory of sound colors was proposed by Theophile Gautier.
Relationship difficulties
It is interesting that, with all the denial in art, the futurists of the silver age still feel the continuity of symbolism. So, Alexander Blok, who watched the work of Igor Severyanin, said with concern that he had no topic, and in an article in 1915 Valery Bryusov noted that his inability to think and lack of knowledge belittled his poetry. He reproaches the Northerner for vulgarity, bad taste, especially criticizes his poems about the war.
Back in 1912, Alexander Blok said that he was afraid that modernists have no core. Soon the concepts of "futurist" and "bully" became synonymous with the moderate public of those years. The press eagerly watched the "exploits" of the creators of the new art. Thanks to this, they became known to the general public, attracted enormous attention. The history of this trend in Russia is a complex relationship between representatives of four main groups, of which each believed that it expresses “true” futurism, and fiercely polemicized with others, disputing the main role. This struggle took place in flows of mutual criticism, which strengthened their isolation and hostility. But sometimes members of different groups moved from one to another or became close.