Experiment/3KcnepHMeHT, 1 (1995), 229-33.

ISABEL WONSCHE

MIKHAIL MA T/USHIN AND HIS DREAM

The violinist and composer Mikhail Matiushin (Figs. 70-76) began his second career as a visual artist in the 1890s. In 1903-05 he worked at Yan Tsionglinsky's studio in St. Petersburg, where he met Elena Guro, his future second wife, and in 1906 they enrolled in Elizaveta Zvantseva's private art school, also in St. Petersburg, where Mstislav Dobushinsky and Lev Bakst were the primary professors. In 1909 Guro and Matiushin founded the publishing house Zhuravl (Crane) which produced more than twenty publications by Pavel Filonov, Guro, Velimir Khlebnikov, Alexei Kruchenykh, Kazimir Malevich, and other representatives of the avant• garde movement. ·In 1910 Guro and Matiushin became founding members of the Union of Youth which in 1913 consolidated with the poets' group known as Hylaea. Between 191 0 and 191 7 Matiushin was the practical organizer of many Cubo-Futurist events, contributing to the publications and exhibitions of the Union of Youth, to Nikolai Kulbin's exhibitions such as "Contemporary Trends in Art" in 1908 and "The Impressionists" in 1909, as well as to Vladimir lzdebsky's "International Salon" in Odessa and other towns in 1909-1 0 and the "Salon d'Au• tomne" in Paris in 1913. Matiushin was also active as an art critic and as a composer, creating the music for "Victory Over the Sun" in 1913. Matiushin wrote the text of I Had a Dream between 1931 and 1933.1 It was one of his last essays, following earlier publications also concerned with the evolution of the avant-garde in Russia, 2 and it com• plemented the chapter on the Cubo-Futurist movement in his unpublished

1. Matiushin's text, "Ya vide! son,' published here for the first time, is preserved in the Elena Guro File at RGAll (Russian State Archive of literature and Art), Moscow. Call num• ber: f. 134, op. 2, No. 22. Consisting of two sheets, the text is typewritten, and carries sev• eral handwritten emendations. Matiushin wrote another version of this piece as an obituary to Guro which is preserved in the Alexei Kruchenykh File at RGAll. Call number: f. 1334, op. 2, No. 323. This obituary carries the date '1920s.• 2. In the following texts, for example, Matiushin discusses the ramifications of Russian Cuba-Futurism, especially as it manifested itself in performance: "Futurizm v Peterburge • spektakli 2,3,4 i 5-go dekabria 1913 goda," Futuristy- pervyi zhurnal russkikh futuristov (Moscow), No. 1·2 (1914) pp. 153-57; "0 vystavke 'poslednikh futuristov'/ Ocharovannyi strannik (St. Petersburg), Spring Almanac (1916), pp. 16-18, and •Nashi pervye disputy/ Literaturnyi Leningrad (Leningrad), No. 53 (75), Sept. 26, 1934, p. 4. 230 Experiment/3KcnepHMeJIT

memoirs Tvorcheskii put khudozhnika [An Artist's Creative Path] (1934). In I Had a Dream, Matiushin reflects upon the Cuba-Futurist presence in St. Petersburg during the 191 Os, designing a kind of a stage-play in which the members of the Union of Youth (Guro, Matiushin, losif Shkolnik, Savelii Shleifer, Levkii Zheverzheev, et al.) and the Hylaea poets (the Burliuks, Guro, Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh, Benedikt Livshits, Vladimir Maiakov~ky) appear and interact as if participating in Futurist theater.

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MIKHAil MATIUSHIN

'I; I HAD A DREAM

I had a dream. I dreamt how, to the enchanting accompaniment of Guro's "Hurdy• Gurdy,"3 a "Mud Hut"4 jumped out from Glahn's hut (Hamsun)5 and began to dance. Nearby stood Khlebnikov,6 who, in his melancholy, swayed to the rhythm of the dance. But just then a terrible thud sounded .... It was Kruchenykh, who had hurled a rock with "a hole and a plop," shattering the dying "sunset'' of Spengler's sun/ Only Maiakovsky's "Cloud in Trousers" gleamed by reflection, but after turning his back,

3. The reference is to the book Sharmanka (St. Petersburg; Sirius, 1909), which contains prose, plays, and poen:JS by the painter and poet Elena Genrikhovna Guro (1877 • 1913) as well as Matiushin's musical score for her play The Indigent Harlequin. Guro also designed the illustrations and the cover. ' .4. Vasilii Vasilievich Kamensky (1884-1961), whom.Matiushin described as 'a merry poet, • published his novella Zemlianka (The Mud Hut) in 1910. This romantic story, reflect• ing a number of autobiographical episodes, is concerned especially with Russian nature. 5. Both the Russian Symbolists and the Cubo-Futurists were much indebted to the Norwegian novelist Hamsun (pseudonym of Knut Pedersen, 1859-1952). For example, Kruchenykh even used the word nKuboa" invented by the hero of Hamsun's novella Hunger in his second zaum declaration (Baku, 1921). The 'hut• here is a reference to the hut of Glahn, the hero of Hamsun's novel Pan. From Lieutenant Thomas Glahn's Papers. : 6. Kamensky introduced Velimir (Viktor) Vladimirovich Khlebnikov ('18~5-1922) to the Union o(Youth at the beginning of 19 Hi in St. Petersburg where he arrived with a basket full of his manuscripts. Absentminded, introspective, and forever wandering, Khlebnikov was always mislaying and losing his manuscripts, baskets, and other personal possessions. 7. The reference is to the book Der Untergang des Abend/andes by Ostwald Spengler published in Munich in 1922-23 in which. the author introduced a morphology of the world history of philosophy. As Matiushin suggested in his memoirs,· the Cubo-Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun questioned the traditional conception of the sun as beauty and her• alded a victory. over Romanticism. In I Had a Dream, Matiushin is invoking Spengler's dis• course so as to encourage a similar victory over traditional Western culture and civilization.