“Poem-paintings” by V. Kamensky: performative gesture and its material embodiment

When Vassily Kamensky published so-called ferroconcrete poems (железобетонные поэмы) in 1915, hardly anyone would classify these graphic constructions as poetic texts. The poems had to be seen rather than conventionally read, which seemed to be problematic for the first readers. Ilya Zdanevich (strangely enough) scoffed at the idea of “giving too much room for the eye” (“уделя<ть> слишком много места глазу”) [Молок / Molok 1990, 390-391] since it was not “appropriate” [Молок / Molok 1990, 390-391] for poetry; Sergei Spassky called ferroconcrete poems “bizarrely split into graphic blocks” (“причудливо разграфленные”) [Спасский / Spassky 1940, 23]. Nor were Kamensky’s texts recognized as examples of painterly art: “His pieces of color calico sewn together and strewn with weird words... are not paintings at all” [Молок / Molok 1990, 401].

Thus, ferroconcrete poems came to be a halfway house between literature and visual arts. Its unorthodox character could be neatly captured by Kamensky’s own genre definition, “poem-painting” (стихокартина) (also see [Фе-щенко / Feshchenko 2015] [Стригалев / Strigalev 1995]). Yet this definition begs the question of a context of socio-aesthetic communication in which a need for such a genre definition might have risen, and of peculiar aspects inherent to this genre and called for by that context.

Visual Arts Background: “Impressio”, not an “Illustrated Supplement”

According to Kamensky’s testimony, the beginning of his literary career could be traced as early back as 1910s when a young man would take an apprenticeship in literature as an editor of a little magazine “Vesna” (characterized by his contemporaries as a site for graphomaniacs buying out space for printing verse [Спасский / Spassky 1940, 4]). Kamensky invested a lot of energy into

mastering the craft of literary writing (“built new images”, “reformed literary patterns” [Каменский 1968, 77]). While trying to establish his literary presence, Kamensky was repelled by “boredom”, writerly isolation and a lack of opportunity to be noticed in the literary world.

Around 1909-1908 [Харджиев / Khardzhiyev 2006, 42], Kamensky would visit the exhibition of modern painting (вернисаж выставки картин современной живописи) to meet the brothers Burliuk, the future nucleus of Cubo-Futurist group, and Nikolay Kulbin, a doctor, trying his hand at painting, and a patron of arts sponsoring the exhibition, along with other painters. At that time, visual arts institutions served as a platform for meeting like-minded individuals and as a source of new aesthetic conception.

For artists, clustering around David Burliuk, a peculiar kind of experience takes center stage. It comes down to the painter’s particular sensibility of perceiving the reality, or the structures of his visual experience, translated into the art of painting. At the exhibition in 1909, Kulbin would elaborate that a painter like him, an impressionist, communicated an “impression”, the way the painter sees the world. Communicating this kind of sensibility presupposes rendering the dynamics of a feeling rather than picturing a referent, since the painting is not “a free illustrated supplement to Neva magazine”, in Burliuk’s phrase [Каменский / Kamensky 1968, 86].

Kamensky advocates and reiterates the stance expressed in Kulbin’s circle later, in 1912, in his short note on Impressionists paintings (On Modern Art). In his view, an impressionist communicates “perceptions” (восприятия), and these perceptions could be described as “a host of sensations, merging into certain organized series of soul movements and moods” (“Это множество ощущений, слившихся в очень определенные стройные ряды душевных переживаний”) [Каменский / Kamensky 2018, 18].

An emphasis on “impression”, first discovered in the visual arts, foregrounds a “transverbal” level of communication, the locus of a pragmatic import of the text, with regards to literature. Pragmatics lays stress not on the semantics of discrete verbal units and their meanings but rather on an act produced by the words, its effect, residing “between the lines”. As Russian theorist S. Zenkin posits, this movement to a transverbal dimension of literary pragmatics, “beyond the word” (au-dela du mot) [Zenkine 2018], pulls into the orbit of analytical attention such terms as gesture, priyem (device; technique), in its primary meaning: an act, a physical movement^-, intonation (as a synthesis of articulatory, bodily movements, vocal inflection, and linguistic meanings).

“The Easiest Way to Get in”:

Scandal as a Literary Strategy, Gesture as a Device

At the 1909 exhibition Kamensky met the Burliuks and their colleagues, not knowing that this encounter would prove to change his literary career. The company would hold together for a few years, attracting new poetically-minded sympathizers (such as Khlebnikov in 1910, Livshits in 1911, Mayakovsky,

Kruchenykh in 1912) and transforming first into the literary group called Hy-laea (in 1912), and then appropriating a scandalous nickname “futurism” (in 1913), coined by Marinetti in Italy and popularized in Russia by Igor Severyanin [Markov 1968, 61-62].

The group’s first move, a collection “A Trap for Judges” went largely unnoticed in the literary world, with more blows to come. Piggy-backing off the resources of artistic groups (such as Jack of Diamonds and Union of Youth) under the aegis of David Burliuk, hylaeans managed to be invited to the debates about modern visual art, hosted by artistic groups, as speakers (February 1912 and February 1913 debates of Union of Youth and Jack of Diamonds). These debates became an instrumental platform for shaping and articulating new group’s literary program and finding new allies and opportunities for publication [see Крусанов / Krusanov 1996]. After the debates, an avalanche of books followed, starting with a “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste”, Khlebnikov’s and Kruchenykh’s “A Game in Hell”, Kruchenykh’s “Old-Fashioned Love”, a collection “A Trap for Judges П” etc. [see Janecek 1984]. Literary evenings ensued, resulting in a tour across Russian provinces.

An interest toward a transverbal act on the part of Russian futurists, albeit informed by visual arts, seemed to have practical reasons. Coming up with a pragmatically successful (meaning: recognized by the public as such [see Иоффе / Yoffe 2012]) act was at heart of Russian futurism PR strategy. Pragmatics-wise, acting out and reaching the addressee by the means of a deliberately calculated act, sometimes to the detriment of getting across the literal content of the message, attracted much needed readerly attention so that futurists could stop being an obscure and minor unknown group and obtained some symbolic capital and an audience.

One of the strategies of emphasizing act over the semantics of message was scandal, to the point of becoming an unofficially declared term. When writing a history of Russian futurism, Kruchenykh made a note: “Futurists’ scandals were not drunk scandals, the likes of which we encounter in everyday life... but purely literary, serving as an advertisement” (“скандалы ф<утуристов> не пьяные ск<андалы>, не бытовые, житейские... а чисто лит<ературного> порядка для рекламы” [Гурьянова / Gur’yanova 2006, 19]). Shklovsky would advocate scandal as a strategy too, stressing that “the very thought of getting published was impossible yet one could have a public presentation” (“о том, чтобы печататься, не было и разговора, но можно было и выступать”). А presentation required a poster, with an abstract sounding as if “the Turks had conquered the city and were announcing it with the beats of their drums” (“такие тезисы, будто турки заняли город и оповещают об этом под барабан”), for journalists to pick up on. “A journalist, - concluded Shklovsky, - has to be given the easiest way to get in. And the journalist would not go beyond the doorstep” [Шкловский / Shklovsky 1966, 240].

Ways of provoking the addressee (who could be both real and imaginary), performing an act and thus stirring a potential scandal were manifold. Often scandal was associated with the device of “impeded perception” when routine

habits of meaning-making all of sudden fail, confronting an unfamiliar phenomenon. (Futurists’ practice of using this device would be epitomized and extended as applicable to art in general several years later in Shklovsky’s essay “Art as a Device”). In terms of technique, deautomatization of perception was produced by relying on performative practices, including gesture. Gesture could be defined, according to J. Kristeva, as “the elaboration of the message, the work which precedes the constitution of the sign (of the meaning) in communication” [Kristeva 1978, 267]. Gesture is placed before the meaning communicated orally or in written speech, as a process of constituting the meaning in front of the addressee.

In 1911, David Burliuk at his home estate would rehearse a presentation of a painting at a Jack of Diamonds winter exhibition of 1912 in front of B. Livshits. While the Cubist portrait was being polished by his brother, David improvised an analysis of the painting by shouting out esoteric phrasings (“The canon of transposed construction!”, “Switching the planes of a projection!”, “A synthetic landscape: elements of sky and planes disintegrating, introduced from four points of view”) (“Перемена плоскостей проекции!”, “Синтетический пейзаж: элементы неба и моменты разложения плоскостей, интродуцированные в изображение с четырёх точек зрения”) [Лившиц / Livshits 1933, 38]. The ultimate goal consisted in producing an effect of an “impede perception” to “detach perception from a habitual reflex” [Лившиц / Livshits 1933, 38], with the issue being not the term “transposition of a construction” itself but the way this term was perceived [Лившиц / Livshits 1933, 38]. That effect was created by a performative gesture of appropriating recondite and erudite vocabulary and employing the utterance in a playful manner.

The same effort to “detach perception from a habitual reflex”, or to break conventional expectations, was made by Kruchenykh at “The First Recital of Speech Creators” (“Первый вечер речетворцев”) on 13 October 1913 [Markov 1968, 133] when the poet allegedly “spilled a glass of hot tea on the first row of orchestra seats” [Markov 1968, 134], to the outrage of the audience. In reality, spilling a glass of tea was a performative gesture, a staged act, according to the author:

Мне подали чай. Я его выпил, пока все сидели. Осталось немного на дне. Когда надо было вступать... посмотрел... сзади меня стояла... декорация. Я тогда читаю стихотворение.. .выплескиваю чай назад... Но журналистам... нужно было “сочинить” что-нибудь...Впереди в зале сидели гусары с дамами, хорошо одетыми... Можете себе представить, что со мной было бы, если бы я это проделал по-настоящему» [Крученых / Kruchenykh 1990, 231].

I was given some tea. I finished the tea while the audience was waiting. There was some left... When it was my turn, I took a look around... there was a decoration behind me... Thenlreadthe poem... and spilled the tea leftovers behind my back... But journalists had to “come up” with something... The front row was taken by hussars with their ladies in fine clothing... You could only imagine what would have happened to me, had it been for real [Крученых / Kruchenykh 1990, 231].

The gesture of spilling tea went against the conventions of a public recitals as an uncommon practice, and the effect was immediately exaggerated, so that a scandal became almost real.

Gesture and Its Material Embodiment

The performative gesture was not solely restricted to the reality of performance (with or without audience). The gesture also obtained a material embodiment in the form of small books of poetry, leaflets and posters. Some of these productions boasted an unusual material in terms of its tactile qualities, not really “fit” for print. “A Trap for Judges”, as well as “Tango with Cows”, was made out of thick, cheap wallpaper leaves with decorative patterns on the reverse side of each leaf. The poster for “The First Recital of Speech Creators”, on the other hand, was printed on toilet paper (not perforated toilet paper rolls that we have today but rather packages of flat sheets, made out of poor quality paper). The lithographs of Kruchenykh were described as “usually the cheapest and... the most perishable variety; thin, brittle and made of wood pulp” [Janecek 1984, 70].

Such a strange choice in all cases was motivated not only by financial constraints but also by the desire to shock the reader out of her complacency, breeding scandal in the absence of the author, by proxy of his books (defined as “literary bombs” [Каменский / Kamensky 1968, 96]).

The material embodiment of the text implied an active interaction with it, an alternative use of the book. Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh suggested the following in their manifesto “Word as Such”: “Once you’ve read it (the book -A.S.) - tear it up” [Kruchenykh, Khlebnikov 2004, 62]. Tearing texts up, cutting the thick paper, looking at the page rather than through it, touching rough edges of the book, actively interacting with it instead of passively holding a book in one’s hands were the options on the table. This interaction was also a gesture capable of impeding routine ways of perception, yet a gesture accomplished on the part of the reader.

The material cover of a text presupposes a deautomatizing gesture on the part of the reader but could also be said to contain the authorial gesture, or the gesture of an imaginary subject behind an utterance. In the manifesto “Letter as Such”, Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh state “(1) that mood influences handwriting during writing; (2) that the handwriting, idiosyncratically influenced by mood, conveys this mood to the reader independently of words” [Janecek 1984, 90]. “A text transcribed... by one who is not reliving the original experience while transcribing, loses all the charms with its script” [Janecek 1984, 90-91]. The written word contains the dynamics of a gesture of writing, inspired by the mood as a sum of affective and physical sensations. This affected and affective gesture is reproducible by the reader and, while being repeated, generates the same emotion in her, thus making the reader replace the conventional meaning of the word with an affective, defamiliarizing, idiosyncratic one.

This understanding is projected onto the printed word. The size, font choice,

curves and thinness as characteristics of a printed letter are also indicative of a certain “dynamics” and of a certain movement, especially when there is a typographic contrast between the letters with regards to these aspects. The line, abounding in typographic play, partakes of “cinematography”, as Kruchenykh termed it in 1919, speaking of Zdanevich’s typographic experiments (“cinema of perpendiculars”, “кинематограф перпендикуляров” [Крученых 1919, 1], perpendiculars being the lines of letters). The lines, changing from one letter to another, defamiliarize the look of the word and are seen independently of it, as moving elements. The letters become “actors”, stretching and gesturing with their “bodies” in front of the reader. Such text is seen as producing a performative effect on the viewer, not just communicating information. For instance, a poster of a Futurists evening, with its unconventional typographic design, was described as “agitating” and “deafening” [Спасский / Spassky 1940, 22].

Vasya Kamensky’s Airplane Flight in Warsaw

Kamensky’s experiments are located at a crossroads of performative practices (including gesture) and their material embodiment, in this case taking shape of a strangely shaped book, printed on wallpaper, with top edges of pages cut.

Let us have a look at the poem Kasya Kamensky s Airplane Flight in Warsaw, a “visual and sonic evocation of an airplane takeoff’ [Janecek 1984, 159], according to Gerald Janecek. Indeed, the poem focuses on the biographical experience of driving an airplane [Желтова / Zheltova 2018, 83] (Kamensky received pilot’s certificate) on a runway and taking off the ground. In this poem, a sonic and sensory bodily experience of being on an airplane is staged and performed visually.

The poem is turned into a “verbal icon”, consisting of a triangular-like text (in fact, it is rather a combination of one triangle and a trapezoid structure with rounded lines), a line underneath, and a typographically baffling heading, with the letters breaking the grid of a linear sequence by varying in size, font, and typographic pressure and extending into either the superscript or subscript areas. A bewildering array of fonts, sizes, space and capitalization choices is preserved in the body of the poem as well, so that the words are torn apart, broken down into smaller fragments, and regrouped within a sentence. Spaces, often breaks off in midword, form, in Janecek’s observation, three “vertical corridors”, piercing the text of the poem and eventually intersecting at the “ю” and “i” letter positions, presumably ending at the “i’”s dot.

In iconic terms, that visual form might be said to represent several things. First obvious guess would an airplane runway, receding while the aircraft gains speed. Secondly, the triangle with three “vertical corridors” is indicative of an airplane keel, with the axes forming a tail-skid. Third, the “corridors” and the whole spaced structure are also reminiscent of wings support, with the cables extended from two vertical poles to the wings (much like in a suspended bridge).

In terms of gestures and physical experiences, the spatial arrangement of words plays a crucial role. Blank spaces inserted in the middle of a word abound in the poem and shape a particular rhythm, evoking a physical sensation. The first line, devoid of unorthodox spacing, might be read as possessing a conventional iambic rhythmic pattern (iambic hexameter): “Аэродром. Толпа. Механик суетится”. That conventional rhythm is discarded in the next lines because of unusual spacing in the middle of words, suggesting an alternative rhythm of reading:

контакт есть з_авелпро_пеллеръ ВЕТЕР ВЗДРоГНуЛикРыЛЬЯ ЗН вдруг легко земля ук_атила ПОЛО сы пол ей БЕГУТ выше

ГОР иЗоНт ы растут све_ ви_раж кс_олнцу яр_ны_ в _ыше го_род синь_ю трепе т велич! альн_аейтам тум_ анито чу_ть ещ_

Here, we are dealing with a visual rhythm that translates into our bodily reality. If the first line, containing iambic hexameter, is articulated and read naturally, in a series of consecutive breaths uninterrupted by sudden breaks, the following lines introduce a broken word as a unit and an interrupted breath as a sensation. The break in the process of reading (as a procedure based on seeing and recognizing the word as image) and the attendant break in breathing occurs when we encounter such letter combinations as “завелпропеллеръ”, “ВЗДРоГН НуЛикРы_ЛЬЯ”, “ук_атила” etc. The reader has to perform a series of glottal stops and sudden pauses, stressing throat and stomach muscles. That process invokes a bodily sensation of experiencing a shift in gravitational force, be it weightlessness or, on the contrary, a stronger gravity pull. Other breaks might suggest an experience of being shaken inside airplane cabin when the aircraft faces turbulence. As a consequence, not only do we see a plane composed out of words while we are reading the poem, but also go through the physical process of taking off by turning graphic rhythms into articulatory movements and bodily sensations.

Finally, the graphic execution of this poem is in alignment with the soundscape referred to in the text. The variance in capitalizing, bolding, italicizing, size and font handling imitates a sonic environment of a take-off. For instance, the lines “контакт есть з авелпро пеллеръ”, “ВЕТЕР В ЗДРоГ НуЛикРы ЛЬЯ ЗН”, suggest an experience of being unable to make out what is being said in the noise. The words are shouted out loud several times and barely reach the listener, turning into audible fragments (for example, the sentence “завёл пропеллер” repeated three times would turn into “з...!...авёлпро!...пеллер!”, and “вздрогнули крылья” is broken down into “здрог”, “нуликры”). Also, the

combination of uppercase and lowercase letters points to a fluctuation in noise level. Uppercase letters suggest that the noise is getting stronger while lowercase letters indicate a decrease in noise (“НуЛикРы” thus becomes a representation of a noise pattern, with its ups and downs).

Thus, the poet creates a textual installation for an experience of flying, in which the reader sees an image of the space of action, feels its soundscape, performs a series of gestures that could only be performed in that environment.