Experimentj3KcnepHMeHT, 1 (1995), 281-88.

WALTER COMINS-RICHMOND

IGOR TERENTIEV AND ALEXEI KRUCHENYKH

Igor Gerasimovich Terentiev (1892-1941 (?])1 and Alexei Eliseevich Kruchenykh (1886-1968)2 were members of the Futurist group known as the "41 Degrees Company," especially active in Tiflis just after the October Revolution and then in Paris (Figs. 96-98). The group was estab• lished by Kruchenykh-who in 1913 had coined the term "zaum• [literally, "trans-sense" or "beyond the mind"] in his endeavor to undermine literal meaning in language-and (pseudonym: lliazd), an artist and poet who championed "Everythingism,• the synthesis of all artistic and literary forms. 3 The name of the group refers to the latitude of the city of Tiflis, which the group felt had special significance: "'41 degrees' is a · geographical notion; along this axis are located the cities Tiflis, Constantinople, Rome, Paris, and Washington, where our representatives are located; this is the region of the activities of "the 41 Degrees Company."4 The "three idiots"5 staged numerous lectures and readings in 1918-19 (Fig. 99), and were at the center of literary and artis• tic life in Tiflis, especially in the bohemian cabaret called the Fantastic Tavern. Indubitably, Kruchenykh's most memorable and shocking work produced during this period was his 1918 book Malokholiia v kapote [Malancholy in a Bathrobe] (Fig. 100) 6 in which he applies a parodic,

1. For a concise biographical sketch of Terentiev, see T. Nikolskaia, "Igor Gerasimovich Terentiev: Biograficheskaia spravka,' in M. Ma~zaduri and T. Nikolskaia, eds., Igor Terentiev. Sobranie sochinenii (Bologna: S. Francesco, 1988), pp. 15-21. Nikolskaia notes here that the exact date ofTerentiev's execution has still not been verified. 2. Vladimir Markov provides biographical details of Kruchenykh in his Russian : A History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1968), passim. 3. For information on Everythingism, see Mikhail Le-Dantiu's 'The Painting of Everythingness• in this volume. 4. A. Kruchenykh. Undated lecture note, Private archive. 5. Terentiev published his portrait of the "Three Idiots• (Kruchenykh, Terentiev and lliazd) in I. Zdanevich eta/., Melnikovoi. Fantasticheskii kabachek (Tiflis: n.p., 1919), pp. 178. 6. The deliberate misspelling of the word 'melancholy' ('malancholy') and the use of the French word capote ('hood' or 'condom') in the title Malakholiia v kapote can be in• terpreted as a parody of Russia's traditional tendency to borrow Western words in place of indigenous ones (e.g., literatura instead of s/ovesnost) and to incorporate mistakes in or. thography or meaning during the process of transmission. Although the word kapot was used in nineteenth-century Russia to designate a cowl, morning-coat or bathrobe, it had 282 Experiment/3KcnepHMeiiT pseudo-Freudian version of what today might be called reader-response criticism to the analysis of poetry. Kruchenykh's and Terentiev's "Conver• sation about Malancho/y in a Bathrobe• adduced below demonstrates the piquancy of this work. Kruchenykh's inspiration derived in part from Freud's The Psychopa• thology of Everyday Life/ in which the author explains slips of the tongue as manifestations of the repressed thoughts and desires of the speaker. Kruchenykh modified this theory, claiming that every language possessed subliminal messages which represented the.repressed thoughts and desires of an entire people. He also proposed that these messages could be uncovered, particularly in poetry, through various means of morphemic rearrangement, and that this technique not only revealed the inner traits of the people who spoke that language, but also exposed the psyche of the poet under investigation. As he notes in his introduction to Alexander Chachikov's. book, Krepkii grom [Strong Thunder}: "As one can see, the acoustic method [demonstrated in the introduction] leads to interesting and unexpected results, uncovers a poet's most intimate work, groping at his most sensitive spots."8 Malancho/y in a Bathrobe is a comprehensive effort to exploit this theory: the book consists of lists of quotations that Kruchenykh had assembled and arranged in such a way that real or virtual sexual and scatological references become apparent to the reader in each of the quotations. At the same time, these lists transform into texts that defy generic classification. Kruchenykh's approach here was the culmfnation and synthesis of particular trends within . like the Symbolists, the Futurists were especially interested in deriving a new level of semantic meaning from language. However, in opposition to their predecessors, their central goal was to shock and even repulse their audiences. In addition, the Futurists directed a great deal of energy toward breaking down the poetic text as a unified structure. All these impulses are fused within Malancholy

already received the added meaning of 'condom• by the time that Kruchenykh and Terentiev worked on their poem, an obvious semantic thrust being •post-coitum triste.• The contem• porary reader of Malakholiia v kapote, therefore, would have been aware of these extra connotations. . 7. Freud's The Psychopathology of Everyday Life was published in Russian translation in 1911 and republished in 1916. Kruchenykh first mentions this book as well as Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams in 1915. See R. Tsigler, 'Poetika A. E. Kruchenykh pory '41 gradusa': Uroven zkuka,• in l. Magarotto eta/., eds., L'avanguardia a Tiflis (Venice:Universita degli Studi di Venezia, 1982), p. 240. For a comprehensive study of Freud in Russia (lacking, however, references to Kharazov, Kruchenykh, and Terentiev), see A. Etkind, Eros nevozmozhnogo (Moscow: Gnosis, 1994). 8. A. Kruchenykh: Preface to A Chachikov, Krepkii grom (Moscow: n.p., 1919), p. 7.