Cubo-Futurism Slap in the Face of Public Taste To the readers of our New First Unexpected. We alone are the face of our Time. Through us the hom of timeblows the art of the word. in The past is too tight. TheAcademy and Pushkinare less intelligible than hieroglyphics. Throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc., etc. overboard from the Ship of Modernity. He who does not forget his first love will not recognize his last. Who, trustingly, would tum his last love toward Balmont's per­ fumed lechery? Is this the reflection of today's virile soul? Who, faintheartedly, would fear tearing from warrior Bryusov's black tuxedo the paper armorplate? Or does the dawn of unknown beauties shine from it?t Wash Your hands which have touched the filthy slime of the books written by those countless Leonid Andreyevs.2 All those Maxim Gorkys, Kuprins, Bloks, Sologubs, Remizovs, Averchenkos, Chomys, Kuzmins, Bunins, etc.3 need only a dacha on the river. Such is the reward fate gives tailors. From the heights of skyscrapers wegaze at their insignificance! ... We order that the poets' rights be revered: 1. To enlarge the of the poet's vocabulary with arbitrary and scope derivative words (Word-novelty). "Slap in the Face of PublicTaste" (Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu) is the first and mostfamous manifesto of the Hylaea group (later renamed Cuba-Futurism). The manifesto opensthe homonymous almanac, publishedin Moscow in 1912. 51 Cubo-Futurism 52 2. To feelan insurmountablehatred for the languageexisting before their time. 3. To push with horror off their proud brow the Wreath of cheap fame that You have made from bathhouse switches. 4. To stand on the rock of the word "we" amidst the sea of boosand outrage. And iffor the time being the filthy stigmas of Your "Common sense" and "goodtaste" are still presentin our lines, these samelines fo r the first time already glimmer with the Summer Lightening of the New Coming Beauty of the Self-sufficient (self-centered) Word. BURLIUK, ALEXANDER KRUCHENYKH,4 V. MAYAKOVSKY, D. VICTOR KHLEBNIKOV (Untitled) From A Trap fo r Judges, 2 Finding the principles stated below fully expressed in the firstissue of Trap fo r Judges 1 and having already given impetus to the much­ A discussed and wealthy (if only in the sense of Metzl Co.) Futurists,z & WE nonetheless believethat we have traveled this path through and, leavingits reworkingto those who do not have any new tasks, we now use a certainform of orthography in order to focuspublic attention on the new tasks already arisingbefore us. We first brought to the fore the new principles of creativity which were dear to us in the following order: We ceased to regard word formation and word pronunciation 1. according to grammatical rules, since we have begun to see in letters only vectors ofspeech . We loosened up syntax. 2. We started to endow words with content on the basis of their graphic and phonic characteristics. 3. Through us the role of prefixes and suffixes was fully realized. 4. In the name of the freedom of individual caprice, we reject nor­ mal orthography. 5. We modify nouns not only withadj ectives (as was usual before us), but also with other parts of speech, as well as with individual letters and numbers: a. consideringas an inseparablepart of the work its correctionsand the graphic flourishesof creative expectation. the_Th is manifesto was published without a titleas the lead manifesto in the almanac of Hylaea group, A Trap for Judges (Sadok sud'ei), (St. Petersburg: Zhuravl', 1913), wh1ch 2 appeared a few months after Slilp. It complementsthe previousmanifesto with A Precisep rogrammatic declarations. 53 54 Cubo-Futurism b. considering handwriting a component of the poeticimpulse . c. and therefore, having published in Moscow "hand-lettered" (au­ tographic) books. 3 6. We abolishedpunctuation marks, whichfor the first timebrought to the fore the role of the verbal mass and made it perceivable. 7. We understand vowels as time and space (a characteristic of thrust), and consonants as color, sound, smeU. 8. We shattered rhythms. Khlebnikov gave status to the poetic meter of the living conversational word. We stopped looking for me­ ters in textbooks; every motion generates for the poet a new free rhythm. 9. The front rhyme (David Burliuk), as well as the middlean d the inverse rhyme (Mayakovsky), have been worked out by us. 10. The richness of a poet's lexicon is its justification. 11. We believe the word to be a creator of myth; in dying, the word gives birth to myth, and vice versa. 12. We are enthralled by new themes: superfluousness, meaning­ lessness, and the secret of powerful insignificance are celebrated by us. 13. We despise glory; we know feelingswhich had no life beforeus. We are the new people of a new life. DAVID BURLIUK, ELENA GURO, NICHOLAS BURLIUK, VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY, KATHERINE NIZEN, VICTOR KHLEBNIKOV, BENEDICT LIVSHITS, A. KRUCHENYKH [The Word as Such] In 1908 A Trap forJudges, was in preparation.1 Partof the works (of 1 the Cuba-Futurists) ended up in that miscellany, partin The Studio of the Impressionists.2 In both collections, V. Khlebnikov, the Burliuks, S. Miasoedov,3 and others outlined a new aesthetic direction: the word was being developed as such. From then on a poem could consist of a single word,4 and merely by skillful variation of that word, aU the fullness and expressiveness of the artisticimage could be achieved. However, the expressiveness was of a different kind-an artistic work was perceived and critiqued (or at least was intuitively felt) simply as word. The work of artis the art of the word. As an inevitable consequence, tendentiousness and bookishness of all kinds were eliminated from literary works. A closeness to the passionlessly passionate machine. TheI talians inhaled the Russian air and startedproducing crib notes on art, word-for-word translations. They made no verbalartifacts until 1912 (the year their big collection was issued),S or later. That's understandable: the Italians reliedon tendentiousness. Like Pushkin' s little devil,6 they sangpraises to modernityand carried it on their shoulders, but instead of preaching modernitythey should have Writtenin 1913 text was subsequently publishedby Kruchenykh, without a title, . this Unpublishm vol. 18 (Moscow, 1930). 1t was reprinted in Collected m TM Khlefmikov, Works, vol. 5 (leningrad, 1933), with the title Word as Such" (Siovo takovoe). "The kak 55 Cuba-Futurism 56 jumped on its backand spedoff, they should have deliveredit as the sum of their works. After all, preaching which does not result from art itself is wood painted to look like iron. Who would trust such a lance? The Italians turned out to be vociferousbraggarts, but taciturn artist-writhers.7 They ask us about the ideal, about pathos? It's not a question of hooliganism, or of heroic deeds, or of being a fanatic or a monk. All Talmuds are equally destructive to the wordwright, what constantly remainswith him is only the word as (such) itself. A. KRUCHENYKH, V. KHLEBNIKOV From The Word as Such A. AND KRUCHENYKH V. KHLEBNIKOV ABOUTARTISTIC WORKS that it be written and perceived in the twinklingof an eye! 1. (singing splashing dancing, scattering of clumsy construc­ tions, oblivion, unlearning. V. Khlebnikov, A. Kruchenykh, E. Guro; painting, V. Burliuk and Rozanova).l in 0. 2. that it be written tightly and read tightly, more uncomfort­ able than blacked boots or a truckin the living room (plenty of knotted ties and buttonholes and patches, a splin­ tery texture, very rough. In poetry, D. Burliuk, V. Mayakovsky, Burliuk, and B. Livshits; in painting, D. Burliuk, K. Malevich. N. Whatis more valuable: wind or stone? Both are invaluable! Examples: 1st type-fromV. Khlebnikov (the princess and the werewolfare flying over the Earth And, to defend himself from the icy air of the frosty height from a lynx he turned into a bear. the first part of the fifteen-page booklet Word as Such (Slovo takovoe) This is The kak M 1913), ri n Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov, and illustrated ( oscow, tte V. Malevich and w0. Rozanova.by A. Here the authors their own personal viewsby K. express rather than speak for the entire Hylaea group. 57 Cubo-Futurism 58 She asked: "To where?" he turned around and in the wind he barked: to Petersburg . sensitive to the cold the princessshrank along . and now to they fly tumblerlike Earth Where the gold of St. Isaac lures them And direct from the heights, from the Sun's radiant station They fly to a girl's school of all-round education. (Comic poem in Moon)2 The Croaked from E. Guro: Or Finland ...Lulla, Jolla, lalla-lu, Jolla, lulla-li. Liza, Whisser, whisserl the pine trees, ti-i-i, ti-i-u-u ... 4 (exactly whisser! the leaf-bearing trees whisper, but the conifers whis­ ser) or Explodity of fire melancholy of a steed roubles of willows in the hair of wonders (A. Kruchenykh, E:rplodity)S while in the works of the first type the similes are usually limited to one word, in the second type they extend to several lines and consist mainlyof nouns, in this way ultimatelyeffective in "roughingup" the language, for ex.: . · "the rags of my lips stained with someone else's gilds . the smoke of my hair over the of . " fire tin eyes . Mayakovsky)6 (V. "Sky a corpse" !! No more! is Stars are wo drunk with fog rms- From The Word Such as 59 I suppress the pain with rust-ling, with deceit Sky is a stinking corpse!! Stars are worms-(puruJent living) rash!! Burliuk)1 (D. in the followingpoem the lineis dominated by the firstvividly expres­ sive consonant: it colors the line and produces the effect of rising, slowing down, finale for example: I grew lazy I am a priest why build all from earth the time all I withdrew to the palaceof bliss I lie and warm myselfnear a swine on the warm mud swines' exhalations and reekof dogs I lie and put on pounds.