The buffoon Aleksey Kruchenykh: the poetic dedications of Nikolay Khardzhiev

The article discusses the reception of Aleksey Kruchenykh’s image as buffoon in Nikolay Khardzhiev’s poems. Three poems from the collection “Kruchenykhiada”, in which this image appears, were analyzed. Among other “roles” of the futurist, proposed by Khardzhiev in the numerous dedications, the image of the buffoon stands out with a pronounced national coloring. In the analyzed texts, Khardzhiev creates allusions to the poetic works and theoretical articles by the futurist (“The Word as Such”, “Stihomet Zudissimo”, etc.). Also, the poet draws parallels between buffoonery, magic, and craziness. These three phenomena have a common feature - the ecstatic state of the persons involved in the action. Kruchenykh himself wrote about a similar state in his collection “Vzorval”, 1913. In addition, the interest of the inner circle of the poet (in particular, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Roman Jakobson) to buffoonery and the probable acquaintance of the futurist with contemporary studies devoted to buffoons (first of all, Andrey Famintsyn’s monograph “Buffoons in Russia”, 1889), make it possible to suggest that Khardzhiev’s reception was caused by the Kruchenykh’s really existing creative mask of the buffoon. The national origin of buffoonery art, reflected in Khardzhiev’s reception, was very important for Kruchenykh as well. The image of buffoon (as well as the use of folklore zaum, archaizing neologisms and folk verse) was an element of ancient poetry, which the futurist tries to revive.