From futurism to fascism in a few theatrical evenings. Futurists in the theater, or "Victory over the sun" Chukovsky, despite the long training of his Kruchenykh to our pleasure, is an incredible, philistine nonsense

2 In June 1913, Malevich wrote to Matyushin, responding to his invitation to come and “talk”: “In addition to painting, I also think about the Futuristic theater, Kruchenykh wrote about this, who agreed to take part, and a friend. I think that it will be possible to stage several performances in Moscow and St. Petersburg in October ”(Malevich K. Letters and Memoirs / Pub. A. Povelikhina and E. Kovtun // Our heritage. 1989. No. 2. P. 127). This was followed by the famous “First All-Russian Congress of Bayaches of the Future (Futurist Poets)”, which took place in the summer of 1913 at the dacha near Matyushin, where Malevich and Kruchenykh gathered (Khlebnikov, who did not come because of the notorious incident with money for the road, was also supposed to participate, which he lost). The “report” on this congress, published by the futurists in the newspaper, contains a call “to rush to the stronghold of artistic stunting - to the Russian theater and resolutely transform it”, and this is followed by one of the first mentions of the “first futuristic theater”: “Artistic, Korshevsky , Alexandrinsky, Big and Small there is no place in today! - for this purpose, established
New theater"Budetlyanin". And it will host several performances (Moscow and Petrograd). Deim will be staged: Kruchyonykh's "Victory over the Sun" (opera), Mayakovsky's "Railway", Khlebnikov's "Christmas Tale" and others.” (Sessions on July 18 and 19, 1913 in Usikirko // For 7 days. 1913-August 15).
3 Three. St. Petersburg., 1913. S. 41. Mayakovsky worked on the tragedy in the summer of 1913 in Moscow and Kuntsevo; at the beginning of the work, the poet intended to title the tragedy "Railway". Obviously referring to one of the earliest drafts of the play, in a letter to A.G. Kruchenykh mentions to Ostrovsky: “Mayakovsky’s railway is a project of a failed drama” (Ziegler R. Briefe von A.E. Kručenyx an A.G. Ostrovskij. S. 7). Another variant of the title was: "The Rise of Things".
4 See about this: Kovtun E.F. "Victory over the sun" - the beginning of Suprematism // Our legacy. 1989. No. 2. S. 121-127. Currently, the whereabouts of not all, but only 26 sketches by Malevich for the opera are known: 20 of them are kept in the Theater Museum in St. Petersburg, where they were transferred from the collection of Zheverzheev; 6 sketches belong to the State Russian Museum.
5 This poster is now a significant rarity. There are copies in the Literary Museum and in the Mayakovsky Museum in Moscow. One of the copies of the poster is in the collection of N. Lobanov-Rostovsky and reproduced in color in the catalog: Boult J. Artists of the Russian Theater. 1880-1930. Collection of Nikita and Nina Lobanov-Rostovsky. M.: Art, 1990. Ill. 58.
6 The text of the tragedy, submitted to censorship, has significant discrepancies with a separate edition of the tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky" in 1914, as well as with subsequent publications of this text containing discrepancies.
7 Mgebrov A.A. Life in the theatre. In 2 vols. M.-L.: Academia, 1932. Mgebrov writes about the futuristic theater in the chapter "From the "Stranger" to the studio on Borodino" in the second volume of his book, outlining the line that directly connects the symbolist and futuristic theater. "Black Masks" - a play by Leonid Andreev, which Kruchenykh mentions here - was sustained in the style of symbolism, which was repeatedly subjected to a "futuristic attack" in manifestos and declarations.
8 Mgebrov A.A. Decree. op. T. 2. S. 278-280.
9 Mayakovsky's well-known comment: “This time ended with the tragedy “Vladimir Mayakovsky”. Placed in St. Petersburg. Luna Park. They whistled it to the holes ”(Mayakovsky V. I myself // Mayakovsky: PSS. T. I. C. 22), as Benedikt Livshits rightly notes, was an “exaggeration”. According to the latter's memoirs:
“The theater was full: in the boxes, in the aisles, behind the scenes, a lot of people crowded. Writers, artists, actors, journalists, lawyers, members of the State Duma - everyone tried to get to the premiere. <...> They waited for a scandal, even tried to artificially provoke it, but nothing came of it: insulting cries heard from different parts of the hall hung in the air without an answer” (Livshits B. Decree. Op. P. 447).
Zheverzheev echoes Livshits, indicating, however, a possible reason for the attacks of the public: “The huge success of the performances of the tragedy “Vladimir Mayakovsky” was largely due to the impression that the author made on stage. Even the first rows of stalls, who were whistling, fell silent during the moments of Mayakovsky's monologues. It must be said, however, that the protests and outrages noted by the reviewers of the newspapers of that time related mainly to the fact that the performance, scheduled for 8 o’clock according to the poster, but actually began only at half past eight, ended at nine and a half o’clock, and part of the audience decided that the performance was not finished” (Zheverzheev L. Memoirs // Mayakovsky. Collection of memoirs and articles. L.: GIHL, 1940. S. 135).
10 Volkov N. Decree. op.
11 Almost all of these notes and reviews were reprinted by the Futurists themselves in the article "Pillory of Russian Criticism" in the First Journal of Russian Futurists (1914, Nos. 1-2).
12 According to the memoirs of Matyushin:
“On the day of the first performance, there was a “terrible scandal” all the time in the auditorium. The audience was sharply divided into sympathizers and indignant ones. Our patrons were terribly embarrassed by the scandal and themselves from the director's box showed signs of indignation and whistled along with the indignant ones. Criticism, of course, bit toothlessly, but it could not hide our success with the youth. Moscow ego-futurists came to the performance, very strangely dressed, some in brocade, some in silk, with painted faces, with necklaces on their foreheads. Kruchenykh played his role of the “enemy” fighting with himself surprisingly well. He is also a “reader”” (Matyushin M. Russian Cubo-Futurism. An excerpt from the unpublished book “The Artist’s Creative Path” // Our legacy. 1989. No. 2. S. 133).
13 From a letter from Kruchenykh to Ostrovsky: “In Pobeda, I played the prologue of the play wonderfully: 1) the likars were wearing gas masks (a complete resemblance!) 2) thanks to the wire-cardboard suits they moved like cars 3) the opera actor sang a song of only vowels. The audience demanded a repetition - but the actor got scared...” (Ziegler R. Briefe von A.E. Kručenyx an A.G. Ostrovskij. S. 9). For more on this, see also the article by Kruchenykh "On the Opera" Victory over the Sun "" (1960), published in present. ed. us. 270-283.
14 This interview, along with the article "How the Public Will Be Fooled (Futuristic Opera)", immediately preceding the premiere of the performance, was published in the newspaper Den (1913. December 1). See also Matyushin's memoirs about the joint work with Kruchenykh on the play: Matyushin M. Russian cubo-futurism. An excerpt from an unpublished book. pp. 130-133.
15 Mikhail Vasilievich Le-Dantyu(1891-1917) - artist and theorist of the Russian avant-garde, one of the authors of the concept of "all-ness", the closest associate of Larionov. He was one of the first members of the Youth Union society, with whom he soon broke after Larionov. Participated in the exhibitions "Union of Youth" (1911), "Donkey's Tail" (1912), "Target" (1913), etc.
16 Mgebrov is wrong. Not Twisted, and not "Victory of the Sun", but "Victory over the Sun". What happened in ancient Egypt? So mix up names and titles! Also, Academy! — A.K.
17 Mgebrov A.A. Decree. op. T. 2. S. 272, 282-284.
18 Zheverzheev L. Vladimir Mayakovsky // Construction. 1931. No. 11. P. 14.
In later memoirs, Zheverzheev writes: “According to the basic rule of the Union of Youth, any work of both members of the Society and participants in its performances had to be paid. For the right to stage, Mayakovsky received 30 rubles per performance, and for participation as a director and performer, three rubles per rehearsal and ten rubles per performance ”(Zheverzheev L. Memoirs // Mayakovsky. P. 136).
In his memoirs, Kruchenykh, apparently guided by everyday considerations, diligently avoids the “sharp corners” associated with Zheverzheev’s behavior. Nevertheless, the “material issue” associated with the production of the opera caused a scandal and served as an indirect reason for the collapse of the Youth Union. Kruchenykh wanted to speak before one of the performances and tell the public "that the Union of Youth does not pay him any money." Many members of the "Union of Youth" regarded this as a "scandalous and insulting trick" against themselves, and not only towards their chairman, against whom it was actually directed. As a result, joint work with the poetic section "Gilea" was recognized as "inexpedient", and there was a complete break (see: General letter of the artists of the "Union of Youth" to L.I. Zheverzheev (dated December 6, 1913) // OR Russian museum, fund 121, item 3).
Zheverzheev not only did not pay Kruchenykh, Matyushin and Malevich, but also did not return to the latter sketches of costumes for the opera (they were also not bought by the philanthropist), stating “that he is not a philanthropist at all and does not want to have anything to do with us” (Matyushin M. Russian Cubo-Futurism, An Excerpt from an Unpublished Book, P. 133). Soon he stopped subsidizing the Union of Youth.
19 The strong impression made by the “everyday” appearance of Mayakovsky in this performance in contrast with other characters (an effect, no doubt, provided by the creators of the performance), is also recalled by Zheverzheev, who on the whole did not accept the design of the performance:
“Extremely complex in terms of composition, Filonov’s “flat” costumes, written without preliminary sketches by him personally directly on canvas, were then stretched onto curly, along the contours of the drawing, frames that the actors moved in front of them. These costumes also had little to do with Mayakovsky's word.
It would seem that with such a “decoration” the verbal fabric of the performance should unconditionally and irrevocably disappear. If this happened to some performers, then Vladimir Vladimirovich saved the main role. He himself found the most successful and profitable “design” for the central character.
He went on stage in the same attire in which he came to the theater, and in contrast with the “background” of Shkolnik and with “flat costumes” of Filonov, he affirmed the reality that was clearly felt by the viewer and the hero of the tragedy - Vladimir Mayakovsky and himself - its performer - poet Mayakovsky” (Zheverzheev L. Memoirs // Mayakovsky. P.135-136).
This pathos of the performance was also keenly caught by one of the contemporary theater critics of the Futurists, P. Yartsev: the fact that a poet and an actor will become one thing: the poet himself will address people in the theater with his songs ”( Speech. 1913. December 7).
20 Nevertheless, judging by Malevich's letter to Matyushin dated February 15, 1914, Malevich received an offer to stage the opera in Moscow in the spring of that year, in a "theater for 1,000 people, ‹...› no less than 4 performances, and if it goes, then more ”(Malevich K. Letters and Memoirs. P. 135). However, the production did not take place, possibly due to Zheverzheev's refusal to support.
21 Quoting this passage from the memoirs of Kruchenykh, John Boult believes that “Kruchyonykh, who saw this performance, was especially struck by the scenery of Shkolnik for the first and second acts, mistakenly attributing them to Filonov” (see: Misler N., Boult D. Filonov. Analytical art. M: Soviet artist, 1990, p. 64). However, I would like to argue with this statement, knowing the constant commitment of the Kruchenykh to factual accuracy in speeches and memoirs. In addition, it seems to us that the style of Shkolnik's urban landscapes of this period is hardly distinguished by “drawing out to the last window” (see reproduction of one of the scenery sketches in: Mayakovsky, p. 30). The question remains open, since Filonov's sketches have not survived to our time, which, however, did not prevent attempts to reconstruct the scenography of the performance based on later copies and sketches from nature directly during the performance. Filonov worked on the costumes for the entire performance and wrote sketches for the prologue and epilogue, while Shkolnik for the first and second acts of the play (see: Etkind M. Youth Union and its scenographic experiments // Soviet theater and film artists’ 79. M., 1981).
22 Iosif Solomonovich Shkolnik(1883-1926) - painter and graphic artist, one of the organizers of the Union of Youth Artists Society and its secretary. In the 1910s actively engaged in scenography, participated in the design of revolutionary festivities in 1917, in 1918 he was elected head of the theater and scenery section of the Collegium for the Arts of the People's Commissariat of Education (IZO Narkompros). Sketches of Shkolnik's scenery for the tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky" are now in the Russian Museum and the Theater Museum in St. Petersburg, as well as in the collection of Nikita Lobanov-Rostovsky. For reproductions of Shkolnik's sketches, see publications: Mayakovsky. S. 30; Russia 1900-1930. L'Arte della Scena. Venice, Ca' Pesaro, 1990. P. 123; Theater in Revolution. Russian Avant-Garde Stage Design 1913-1935. San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1991. P. 102.
23 We are talking about a painting now kept in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg under the name "Peasant Family" ("Holy Family"), 1914. Oil on canvas. 159×128 cm.
24 In the handwritten version: “real”.
25 In the handwritten version it follows: "working in the same tones."
26 This characteristic statement, noted by Kruchenykh, directly echoes Filonov's phrase in a letter to M.V. Matyushin (1914): “I completely reject the Burliuks” (see: Malmstad John E. From the History of the Russian Avant-Garde // Readings in Russian Modernism. To Honor Vladimir F. Markov / Ed. by Ronald Vroon, John E. Malmstad. Moscow: Science, 1993. P. 214).
27 N. Khardzhiev mentions this portrait: “Probably, at the end of 1913, P. Filonov painted a portrait of Khlebnikov. The location of this portrait is unknown, but it can be partly judged by the verse “reproduction” in Khlebnikov’s unfinished poem “The Horror of the Forest” (1914):

I'm from the wall of Filonov's letter
I watch how the horse is tired to the end
And a lot of flour in his letter,
In the eyes of a horse face

(Cm.: Khardzhiev N., Trenin V. Poetic culture of Mayakovsky. S. 45).

28 In the handwritten version, instead of "In the same years" - "At the beginning of 1914".
29 In Khlebnikov's book Izbornik Poetry (St. Petersburg, 1914), typed and printed in the traditional manner, a “lithographic supplement” was included, consisting of Filonov's lithographs for Khlebnikov's poems Perun and Night in Galicia.
30 On the creative relationship between Filonov and Khlebnikov and, in particular, on the possible mutual influences associated with the creation of Propeven..., see: Parnis A.E. Canvas Troubleshooter // Creation. 1988. No. 11. S. 26-28.
31 Kaverin V. Unknown artist. L .: Publishing house of writers in Leningrad, 1931. On p. 55 Filonov is mentioned under his own name, in other places - under the name of Archimedov.
32 There are missing words in the last line. According to Filonov: "the sword of a half-child, a hand-to-handed king will fly through the sword."
33 Filonov P. Propeven about the sprouting of the world. Pg.: World heyday, . S. 23.
34 In handwritten version: “After 1914”.
35 In the handwritten version: “the strongest and adamant representative of “pure” painting.”
In the 1940s Kruchenykh wrote the poem "The Dream of Filonov". We present it in full:

And next
At night
in a back alley
sawn across
Quartered
Lost Treasure Volcano
great artist
eyewitness of the invisible
Canvas troublemaker
Pavel Filonov
He was the first creator in Leningrad
But thin
from hunger
Killed during the blockade
With no fat or money left.
Paintings in his studio
Thousand seethed.
But spent
bloody brown
reckless
the road is steep
And now there's only
The wind is posthumous
Whistle.

36 For the Filonov School, organized in June 1925 and also known as the Collective of Masters of Analytical Art (MAI), see: Pawel Filonow und seine Schule / Hrsg.: J. Harten, J. Petrowa. Catalog. Russische Museum, Leningrad-Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf, Koln, 1990.
37 For Filonov's work, see the already mentioned monograph by Nicoletta Misler and John Boult in Russian and an earlier American edition by the same authors: Misler N., Bowlt J.E. Pavel Filonov: A Hero and His Fate. Austin, Texas, 1984. See also: Kovtun E. Eyewitness of the invisible // Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov. 1883-1941. Painting. Graphic arts. From the collection of the State Russian Museum. L., 1988.
38 Filonov's personal exhibition was planned in 1929-31. In 1930, a catalog of this unopened exhibition was published: Filonov. Catalog. L.: State Russian Museum, 1930 (with an introductory article by S. Isakov and partially published abstracts from Filonov's manuscript "The Ideology of Analytical Art").
39 We are talking about Y. Tynyanov’s book “Lieutenant Kizhe” (L.: Publishing house of writers in Leningrad, 1930) with drawings by Yevgeny Kibrik (1906-1978), later a well-known Soviet graphic artist and illustrator, who was a student of Filonov in those years. Judging by some evidence, Filonov took a great part in this work of his student, which, however, did not prevent the latter from publicly renouncing his teacher in the 1930s. (See Parnis's commentary on the text of the Kruchenykhs in: Creation. 1988. No. 11. P. 29).
40 In a handwritten version: “this last of the easel Mohicans”.
41 Lines from Burliuk's poem "I. A.R.” (Or. 75), published in Sat.: Dead Moon. Ed. 2nd, supplemented. M., 1914. S. 101.
42 Lines from the poem "Fructifying", first published in the first collection "Sagittarius" (Pg., 1915, p. 57).
43 Face painting became a performance ritual in early Russian futurism, starting with Mikhail Larionov and Konstantin Bolshakov's outrageous walk along the Kuznetsky Bridge in Moscow in 1913. In the same year, Larionov and Ilya Zdanevich issued a manifesto "Why We Paint". Larionov, Bolshakov, Goncharova, Zdanevich, Kamensky, Burliuk and others painted their faces with drawings and fragments of words. Photographs of Burliuk from 1914 - early 1920s have been preserved, repeatedly reproduced in various publications, with a painted face and in the most eccentric vests, which may have inspired Mayakovsky's famous yellow jacket. In the spring of 1918, on the day the Futurist Newspaper came out, Burliuk hung several of his paintings on Kuznetsky Most. As the artist S. Luchishkin recalls: “David Burliuk, having climbed the stairs, nailed his painting to the wall of the house at the corner of Kuznetsky Most and Neglinnaya. She loomed before everyone for two years ”(Luchishkin S.A. I love life very much. Pages of memories. Moscow: Soviet artist, 1988, p. 61). See also the chapter Keeping up with the times.
44 A line from the poem "Seaside Port", first published in the collection: "Roaring Parnassus", (1914, p. 19):

The river creeps the belly of the vast sea,
Tricky water turns yellow
Patterning your parquet with colored oil
Having pressed the docks of the court.

Subsequently, with changes, it was reprinted under the title "Summer" in: D. Burliuk shakes hands with Woolworth Building. P. 10.
45 Lines from the poem "Undertaker's Arshin". See: Four Birds: D. Burliuk, G. Zolotukhin, V. Kamensky, V. Khlebnikov. Collection of poems. M., 1916. S. 13.

Cultural and historical context of "Victory over the Sun".

§ 1. Cultural and historical situation in the 1910s and Russian theatrical and artistic avant-garde.

§2. Creation of a theater project. Collective creativity of authors

§3. Overview of the character system (traditions, realities, prototypes).

§ 4. Synthesis of light, color and "letter-sounds" in the performance of 1913.

§ 5. Cultural codes in "Victory over the Sun"

Images in "Victory over the Sun".

Introductory remarks.

§ 1. Prologue.

§2. Deimo 1.

Bytolyansk strongmen.

Traveler through all ages.

Some Malicious.

Bully.

Enemy.

Enemy warriors dressed as Turks.

Choristers dressed as athletes.

Undertakers.

Phone speaker.

Bearing the sun many and one.

§ 3 Deimo 2.

tenth countries.

Motley eye. BUT

New and cowardly.

House on a wheel.

Fat man.

Old-timer.

Attentive worker.

Young man.

Aviator.

Cube house.

Mythological foundations of the organization "Victory over the Sun"

§ 1. Functioning of the "cube-square-circle" series.

§ 2. Cultural metaphor of separation as a search for wholeness.

§ 3. Semantics of the mask in "Victory over the Sun".

§ 4. Historical and geographical sources of futuristic mythologemes.

Dissertation Introduction 2000, abstract on art criticism, Gubanova, Galina Igorevna

The subject of this study is "Victory over the Sun", a performance of the Futurist Theater, held in December 1913 in St. Petersburg, an illogical dream spectacle, a grandiose theatrical metaphor. The performance was a declaration of Russian Cubo-Futurists who proclaimed new principles of art. The subject of this study is the originality of this theatrical undertaking, which had a significant impact on the development of art in the 20th century.

The author chooses not only the performance of 1913 as an object of study, but the entire theatrical project: both the performance and the author's concept (V. Khlebnikov, A. Kruchenykh, KMalevich, M. Matyushin), and the material (play, sketches, music) in their unity.

Theatrical art is going through a difficult period at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. There is a rethinking of the traditional system of values, both in the moral and ethical, and in the religious sphere, the rejection of classical philosophy, the search for new ideological systems, accompanied by the emergence of a new consciousness for the individual of his own internal fragmentation. The feeling of a person being lost in the world, the actualization of apocalyptic motives provoke an interest in mysticism, occultism, religion, philosophy, and psychology among the creative intelligentsia.

Against this background, representatives of the Russian theatrical avant-garde stand apart, having taken a left-wing radical position regarding the traditional system of values. In the language of the avant-garde, there is a mixture of various cultural layers that determine the features of a work of art. They have different genesis, associated with different cultural traditions. K. Malevich, one of the authors of the production of "Victory over the Sun" in 1913, was a prominent representative of new creative quests. (Malevich, 1995:35).

Victory over the Sun” is not only a fun futuristic action, but also a reflection of a turning point in the era, a premonition of future upheavals. Probably, this work can be attributed to the type of works, which, according to M. M. Bakhtin, are saturated with an objectively unsaid future. The future gives the material a specific "multiple meaning" and determines the rich and varied posthumous history of these works and writers. It is their permeation with the future that explains their unusualness, which M.M. Bakhtin characterizes as "apparent monstrosity" and explains this impression as "inconsistency with the canons and norms of all completed, authoritarian and dogmatic epochs" (Bakhtin, 1965:90).

As you know, the Budetlyans developed the principles of synthetic art, which, in their opinion, should have been created by a collective method, which made it possible to introduce the principles of synesthesia into the birth of the material at the earliest level, and thereby ensure its greater integrity. "Victory over the Sun" is a cubo-futuristic play, which is manifested in its design, expressed in the principles of cubism, which gravitates towards non-objectivity. Tracing, on the one hand, the interconnections of different artistic elements and the implementation of the principle of synesthesia within the framework of each specific image, we, on the other hand, can more deeply reveal the images themselves of this work.

Many of our predecessors keenly felt the unconventionality of "Victory over the Sun" and, being captivated by the external illogicality of what was happening on the stage, they accurately conveyed their own feelings and experiences arising in the process of perceiving this grandiose spectacle. So, for example, Igor Terentyev wrote: “Victory over the Sun” cannot be read: there are so many captivating absurdities, shy perspectives, disastrous events that will make any director’s head cloudy. "Victory over the Sun" must be seen in a dream, or at least on stage" (cited by Gubanov, 1989:42). Such a characteristic testifies not only to the profound impact of "Victory" on the author of the statement, but also to the impossibility of a flat, simplified reading of this work.

To a supporter of rigid logic within the framework of traditional realistic theatrical aesthetics, this production may seem like a combination of meaningless incoherent actions. Nevertheless, the proclamation of the rejection of the cultural past in the works of artists and theater workers of the era of the Russian avant-garde of the 1910s-1920s. did not mean their absolute freedom from it, although the newspaper criticism of those years it seemed that way.

For a long time, "Victory" was perceived in isolation from the mainstream of culture as an exotic theatrical and artistic matter. This perception was primarily facilitated by the theoretical declarations of the futurists, who proclaimed the rejection of realism, traditional for Russian culture of the 19th century.

The relevance of the chosen topic. Despite the fact that in recent decades there has been a rethinking of the place of the avant-garde in Russian culture and works of a theoretical, generalizing nature have appeared, and the number of works is constantly increasing, where the degree and forms of the impact of the avant-garde on the culture of our time are being studied in more detail, "Victory over the Sun" , which found itself at the intersection of different cultural traditions, needs a detailed comprehensive analysis to study the hidden semantics of images, as well as to identify the essence of the artistic declaration of Russian futurists and the originality of expressive means.

Determination of the genesis and semantics of characters, images, motives, plot moves;

Identification of the main codes of the Text by using the data of mythology, folklore, cultural history;

Determination of the originality of expressive means that organize the artistic integrity of the theatrical project.

The main goal of this work, achieved by the author by solving the above problems, is to create a comprehensive analysis of the theatrical project in a broad theatrical, cultural and art history context, involving the history of the theater, mythology, ethnography and generalization of the data obtained about the language, structure, semantics, originality of expressive means this project.

Research methodology. In this paper, the author uses methodological approaches that are new for the material under study. They are determined by the originality of the material itself and consist in a combination of different methodological techniques. These are theatrical analysis and reconstruction, cultural analysis, contextual approach to the key concepts (concepts) of Russian culture used in Victory over the Sun, as well as a descriptive method.

For the author, it is fundamentally important how the relationships between dramaturgy, images, musical sequence, costumes are built at each specific moment in the development of a theatrical action. Revealing the features of the plot and characters of the performance of 1913, the author not only analyzes the performance from the point of view of theatrical studies, but refers to the concept itself, traces the interrelationships of the elements of the production, which were declared by the creators of the Futurist Theater as especially significant in the context of the desire for synthetic art.

The author reveals the visual, musical and dramatic layers as mutually defining elements, and therefore applies the principle of deciphering one through the other.

The work practices an appeal to the later works of the authors of "Victory over the Sun" as an auxiliary material in which the concepts presented in the performance of 1913 exist in an expanded and developed form. For the same purpose, the author traces the use and development of concepts and images in works close to "Victory over the Sun" (Andrey Bely, V. Mayakovsky, S. Eisenstein, etc.). Thus, the author develops in this study a methodological approach that can be used in the analysis of similar material in other cases.

The dissertation is built as a gradual increase in the level of generalization, which is due to the desire to convey the gradual manifestation of mythological images, motifs, consisting of individual details, references, elements of the performance, hints contained in sketches and libretto.

A significant help in the study was the experience of reconstructing the famous performance of 1913, carried out by us in 1988 at the Black Square Theater, St. Petersburg (the first reference to the material was undertaken in 1986). This production was made on the basis of our director's script, which includes additional material. Preparations for the creation of the performance allowed us to determine the conceptual originality of Victory over the Sun, as well as the specifics of this avant-garde project as a theatrical phenomenon. Reflections on this were expressed figuratively in the artistic elements of the performance (in music, scenography, plasticity, rhythm, word). These additional elements, woven into the fabric of the performance-reconstruction and creating another layer, referred the audience to mythology, ancient cultures, to ritual, to the theoretical premises of the authors themselves, etc. The idea of ​​staging "Victory over the Sun" in 1988 consisted in the clash of the material of the performance of 1913 (authentically recreated by the theater "Black Square") and the introduced cultural context. He supplemented the main line with images through which the meaning and essence of the mythologemes proposed by Budetlyany in encrypted form were manifested.

Research novelty. For the first time, not only the play "Victory over the Sun" in 1913, but the entire theater project was chosen as the object of study. Thus, a new level of analysis of the performance itself is being reached as part of an integral cultural event. For the first time, the dramaturgy, which became the basis of the production under study, is analyzed in detail. Also, for the first time, a simultaneous and holistic consideration of all parts of the theater project is carried out. A multi-level analysis of the image-character-idea-concept system is also undertaken. The connection of the Text with mythological and folklore consciousness is traced. Thanks to this approach, a level of generalization is manifested: a character-concept.

The application of the system of cultural keys to the analysis of the material is a generally recognized achievement of semiotics, but the disclosure of cultural layers by the author on the basis of the Futurist theatrical project marks a fundamentally new approach to this material, and also draws a connection between the images of the futuristic project and the key concepts of Russian culture.

The era of denying the merits of futuristic art has long ended, but the need to develop new approaches to this art has become more acute precisely in recent decades. As a result, scientists' interest in the work of Russian avant-garde artists has intensified.

The theoretical basis of this work is the works of domestic and foreign theater critics, art critics, literary critics, cultural experts. The author uses works on sign systems, works on mythology, religious studies, draws on information on the history of the theater of the 20th century, commedia dell'arte, and avant-garde art. Particularly important are the works of such authors as K.S. Stanislavsky, V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, V.E. Meyerhold, B.V. M. Lotman, as well as A. F. Nekrylova, V. P. Toporov, N. V. Braginskaya, M. B. Meilakh and others. P. Radina, A. Golan, S. Douglas. The author of this work takes into account the fact that researchers have studied the history of the creation of the famous "Victory over the Sun" in general, determined its place in the creative evolution of K. Malevich as the creator of Suprematism, pointed out the problem of the relationship between the artistic work of this author and his journalistic justifications for new art.

It should be noted separately the methodological, theoretical and factual significance for this study of the works of G.G. Pospelov, D.V. Sarabyanov, A.S. Shatskikh, I.P. Uvarova.

The results of the study were tested in reports and reports at conferences: dedicated to the 110th anniversary of K. Malevich (Petersburg, 1988 and Moscow, 1989); "Russian avant-garde of the 1910-1920s and theater" (Moscow, 1997); "Vanguard of the 20th century: fate and results" (Moscow, 1997); "Symbolism and puppet" (St. Petersburg, 1998); "Malevich. Classic avant-garde. Vitebsk" (Vitebsk, 1998); "Russian Cubo-Futurism" (Moscow, 1999); "Symbolism in the forefront" (Moscow, 2000).

The main provisions of the dissertation are set out in the author's publications with a total volume of 4.5 printed sheets.

The work consists of an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion, a list of references, an appendix and illustrations: K. Malevich's sketches for "Victory", images of ancient signs (Western Europe, Trypillia-Cucuteni, Dagestan and DR-)

Conclusion of scientific work thesis on "Russian Futurist Theater"

CONCLUSION

The process of creating "Victory" is a collective work of the folklore type. The uniqueness of "Victory" was initially in the fact that each of the co-authors also owned theoretical developments in various types of art (M. Matyushin - music and painting, A. Kruchenykh - painting and poetry, K. Malevich - painting, poetry, music). The opera "Victory over the Sun", which they created together, was an action of theoretical artists who proclaimed new principles of art and creativity in their declaration performance.

The author of the work sought to present "Victory" as an integral artistic system, to realize its place in the artistic and historical process, and thus to find a clearer understanding of the artistic and historical process of the 1910s.

Futurism's struggle with symbolism, sometimes understood as the rejection of symbolism along with partial borrowing, seems to us to be a somewhat different process. On the example of "Victory over the Sun" one can see that this is a process, in the language of folklore, of mastering through "devouring", if we consider the ideas and actions of the futurists in the system of laughter culture.

Read the entire Text, i.e. all its levels, it is possible only by removing all the seals in turn, finding all the codes with which the images of "Victory" are encrypted. In "Victory" the mythopoetic thinking of the authors is especially manifested: it is saturated with mythological motifs.

Each figure, each character is a kind of new mythologeme created by the futurists on the basis of traditional mythologems, and can be considered as a character-concept (character-mythologeme).

Each character-concept (character-mythologeme) is conceptually correlated with others as part of a single artistic and philosophical declaration.

The structure of the declaration, which is implemented as a series of semantically rich visions, combines concept characters (mythologeme characters) and organizes the text of "Victory" along with a plot that develops as a description of events related to the struggle and victory over the sun, and then the creation of a utopian world .

The dream poetics of Victory, which was first pointed out by Igor Terentiev, is undoubtedly connected with the poetics of Revelation and resembles a series of visions that appeared to the gaze of St. John.

The motives of ancient myths are felt as a primary source, many of them are included in the "Victory" through the plot of the Apocalypse, as its components. Therefore, one of the cipher texts for the plot of "Victory" is the plot of the Apocalypse.

Such poetics could be perceived by the authors of Victory not only through Revelation directly, but also indirectly - i.e. manifested in other forms - mysteries, puppet shows built as a series of separate phenomena-visions, cosmorama and other farcical spectacular performances, from where they drew inspiration like Goethe, who saw Faust in a puppet theater, and then created his "Faust". But in the light of the ideas of the new theater, based on myth and ritual, on the idea of ​​a life like a dream, on the experience of shamanism, it is natural that the action was a series of dreams.

As in Revelation, in "Victory" the essence of the phenomenon is expressed allegorically, in visual and sound metaphors.

The play is built as a "theatre within the theater". That is, against the backdrop of a real theater (for example, the hall on Ofitserskaya), a performance of the Budetlyanin theater is being played, where the Reader invites us.

The approach to the text we have chosen allows us to clearly imagine the functions and characteristics of the characters. Budetlyansky Strongmen are the builders of the New World, the New Art, the prophets of the New Age. Everything is done according to their will. They themselves begin the battle with the Sun and open the sky for themselves.

One, on whose will all events in the Apocalypse depend, is Jesus Christ. In Pobeda, he is abolished and replaced by a whole series of futuristic characters who themselves build the world of New Art. The functional attributes of the One are distributed among the characters. Budetlyane themselves are recognized in them - artists, poets, musicians.

Addressing in the first person is not only a farcical device, but also the key position of Budetlyan authors, who presented deeply autobiographical material as a statement made for the general public.

The basis of all curtains in Malevich's sketches is a square inscribed in a square, a projection of a cube, an imaginary cube. The square shape is both the ancient symbol of "Babylon", and the shape of Scythia, and the type of horoscope, and the plan of the tower-ziggurat, an ancient observatory. The symbolism of the square, the abstract limitation of space, plane is the form in the philosophical sense.

It is not surprising that the tree of life is an image that also connects the distant (as it may seem) works of Malevich: after all, the center of the cubic Christian Temple of the future is the tree of life.

The idea of ​​the world tree, which has a triple division - bottom, middle and top - leads us from the "Victory" even deeper into the past, in the Paleolithic era, to the ancient images of "chthonic animals" - snakes, ungulates and birds. In the art of the era of the world tree, as noted by V. Toporov, there is already a clear three-term system: snakes - the bottom, the underworld; birds - top, sky; ungulates - the middle part, the ground (Toporov, 1972:93). This ancient model, being a mythopoetic basis, shines through in the plot of Victory as a combination of the following motifs:

The motif of snake fighting (as we will consider later, the function of the monster - the Apocalyptic beast, correlated with the underworld, is performed by the character "Nero and Caligula in one person");

Horse motif (iron horse with hot hooves - steam locomotive); bird motif (iron birds-airplanes, anthropomorphic birds-characters and bird language).

House on a wheel" is also a theater - contemplative Budetlyanin. This is a theater-cart-ark, saving the actors themselves from the boredom of official life, because the theatrical cart of wandering actors usually "spreads around itself a festive carnival atmosphere that reigns in life itself, in the very life of the actors" (Bakhtin, 1965: 118). This is the carnival-utopian charm of the theatrical world. And the action in the theater "Budetlyanin" continues in two directions - as the development of the plot and as a play in the theater.

The path is one of the essential mythologems of Victory.

We note here the idea of ​​the path as a movement directed along the vertical. This is a special mythological movement leading to the upper and lower worlds, in a word, to another world. This idea of ​​the path is typical for shamanic journeys: a path called the “shamanic vertical”. Naturally, the "wild crowd" in act 2 is worried.

The Way of the Budets is a movement in time. The path leads nowhere in space. Therefore, this is an enchanted place, a "ghostly realm." "Victory over the Sun" is a myth about the death of an enchanted place - a city - the world.

The post-symbolism of the 1910s solves the Petersburg theme in its own way. In the variants of controversy, correlation with tradition, attempts to move to an even higher level - “meta-metatext”, which describes the symbolist meta-text. A similar model is used to create a futuristic meta-world.

Y. Lotman noted that each significant cultural object, “as a rule, appears in two guises: in its direct function, serving a certain range of specific social needs, and in a metaphorical one, when its signs are transferred to a wide range of social facts, the model of which it becomes . One could single out a number of such concepts: “house”, “road”. "threshold", "scene", etc. The more essential the direct role of this concept in the system of a given culture, the more active its metaphorical meaning, which can behave exceptionally aggressively, sometimes becoming an image of everything that exists” (Lotman, 1992:51).

We have considered a number of concepts, the metaphorical meaning of which is essential for the beginning of the century and for that model of the universe, that “image of everything that exists”, which was declared by the Budutlyans. These mythologemes are built in Pobeda as a system of binary oppositions: light-darkness, black-white, old-new, etc.

In the mythological system of St. George the Victorious, to whom the bird-like Budutlyans liken themselves, he himself is a bird that defeats a snake, and the sun - St. George - Yuri - Yarilo, with whom the Budetlyans are fighting. Heroes of the future New, who defeated the Turks - themselves in the Turkish costume of the "old style". It turns out the opposition East-East? A certain Malevolent is fighting with himself.

What does it mean?

The rite of passage involves tearing the body apart. What does a person learn at this moment, after which he becomes a prophet?

In African rites associated with the twin myth and twin cult, it is common to paint each side of the face and body in different colors. Often black is associated with one twin and white with the other.

In the African myth Nyoro, Mpuga's twin Rukidi was white on one side and black on the other. The very name of the hero Mpuga can mean his multicolored. This is also the name of animals of black and white color. The double color corresponds to the symbolism of dark - light: day and night. The demiurges Mavu and Lisa embody one - the day, the sun, the other - the night, the moon. One of the twins may be zoomorphic. In dualistic twin myths, one brother can kill the other. Among peoples whose mythology is built on a binary symbolic classification, twins serve as embodiments of these rows of symbols.

The demonic-comic understudy of the cultural hero is endowed with the traits of a mischievous rogue - a trickster.

When a cultural hero does not have a brother, comic features are attributed to him, the implementation of tricks, a parody of his own exploits. In Greek mythology, the deified Hermes is close to the trickster.

The universal comedy of the trickster is akin to the carnival element - it applies to everything. The combination of the divine cultural hero and the divine jester dates back to the time of the emergence of man as a social being. Jung sees the trickster as a glance of the I, thrown into the distant past of the collective consciousness, as a reflection of the undifferentiated, barely detached from the animal world of human consciousness. K. Levi-Strauss writes about its mediative function, the function of overcoming oppositions and contradictions. The moon, like a trickster, sends its part - a shadow, eclipsing the sun. The shadow turns it into a black sun. Eclipse is the substitution of one for another.

The mechanism of comprehension of the supernatural in different cultures, religions, beliefs is practically the same, and its elements can be collected from different fields. And vice versa, some cultural spaces can be involved in our imagination, because. they are associated with this mechanism. But this is specific to mythological thinking.

Our study also allows us to draw a conclusion about the specific methods of organizing integrity in the studied material.

As Jung wrote, “The descent to the mothers allowed Faust to restore the whole, sinful man who had been forgotten by modern man, mired in one-sidedness. This is the one who, during the ascent, made the heavens tremble, and this will always be repeated. the discovery of the bipolarity of human nature and the necessity of pairs of opposites or contradictions. The motive for the unification of opposites is clearly manifested in their direct opposition ”(Jung, 1998: 424-425), but there is another way to reconcile contradictions - finding a compromise according to the type of mediator.

With this table we can show how the reconciliation of contradictions is achieved in the "Victory over the Sun" variant.

This is one of the levels of achieving the integrity of the work of art "Victory over the Sun", the creation of a holistic view of the model of a new, albeit utopian, world.

Traditional culture and mythological oppositions A variant of the Budtlyans, reconciling this contradiction through the union of oppositions.

Sun-Moon Eclipse (black sun - shadow of the moon). Abolition.

West-East A position between East and West. Choosing the East, he looks to the West - "The one-and-a-half-eyed archer."

Sky, top, upper world - earth, bottom, lower world Change places, and even abolish

Bird, (creature of the upper world) - human

Light - Darkness, shadow, night, Light wins within heroes

Hero - jester Hero - jester rolled into one

White - Black Bicolor

Feminine - Masculine Androgyny of heroes

Sea - Land "Lakes harder than iron"

Trizna - Feast Feast, clownish funeral of the sun, devouring the world

Old - Young Immortality as eternal youth

Nature - Technological progress Horse locomotive. airplane bird

Belobog (good share) -Chernobog (not share) Black gods as goodies

Distant - Close Distant The tenth countries have been turned into their home.

New times The end of history met with its beginning

Alien - Custom Character NEW - "ours" with the appearance of "strangers"

Life is death TEMPORARY DEATH (death of the world and rebirth)

VISION (Sun-eye, light gives vision) - BLINDNESS (lack of sunlight). INTERNAL VISION (Man-eye, sight-omniscience, Zorved)

FACE (sun - eye, face, daylight, mind, individuality) - BODY (unconscious, collective, transpersonal) MASK

WEAKNESS (In a certain context, the lack of physical strength is a sign of spirituality) - STRENGTH Strong poet

Static - movement MOBILE HOUSE

Cultural hero, demiurge - TRIKSTER Comic hero (ARCHAIC COMBINATION OF CULTURE HERO AND TRICKSTER IN ONE PERSON)

FRONT as correct BACK as reverse (back to front) Eyes from behind

As we study the material, we can single out another level of its structuring, organizing it as a whole. These are the ideas of the authors of "Victory" about space.

In the first act of the "Victory over the Sun" there is a visual image similar to the archaic model of the world: the upper sky is located vertically, where the sun and the moon adjoin in confrontation; the middle of the sky, where the iron bird-aeroplane flies; the middle world (earth), where stands (and at the same time gallops, moves, floats) an iron horse-locomotive-steamboat-house; and, finally, the lower world - "lakes" (P. 61).

In the second act after the victory, the world cannot be presented as a visual image. It can only be seen with inner vision, since the concepts of top and bottom disappear, the centrifugal vector is equal to the centripetal one (wherever you go, you will come back), the external is equal to the internal, etc.

Fragments of mythological images, the realities of 1913, biographies of authors, elements of the performance, fragments of the concept - all this, in the process of flowing and lining up in rows (and in this case rather in a ball) of identities, eventually merges into a single living and moving matter - a metaphor that is very simplistically, it could be presented as follows.

CHTHONIC ANIMAL HORSE, TRANSPORTER OF THE DEAD TO THE OTHER WORLD

THE SACRED HORSE, THE CARRIER OF THE SUN IN THE SKY - A HORSE AS A MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION IN HOUSEHOLD - A WAR CHARIOT HARNESSED BY A HORSE - IRON HORSE-ENGINE WITH HOOVES AND WHEELS - A WHEEL STEAMPER - A WHEEL AS A SYMBOL OF SPEED - THE SUN-WHEEL, WHICH IS NOT A CARRIAGE THE SKY TO THE LOWER WORLD - A FUNERAL BOAT TRANSPORTING PEOPLE BY THE SEA TO ANOTHER WORLD - A COFFIN BOX THAT WERE PLACED IN A BOAT - A COFFIN (EUPHEMISM "DOMINA") - THE IDEA OF THE RESURRECTION - THE RESURRECTION OF FEDOROV'S DEAD - THE ARK AS A MEANS OF SALVATION OF THE RIGHTEOUS - AKUFORM Cube as a geometric basis of Malevich’s sketches - a cube and a house as astronomical and astrological concepts - a house as a place of action in a “victory over the sun” - a mobile house of the future on a wheel - Konka as a moving building on a wheel - an iron horse - a copper rider - death under a hoof - LESHY UNDER THE HOOF - TRAMPING AS A TERRIBLE JUDGMENT - IRON BIRD PLANE BRINGING DEATH - BIRD HORSE - LOCUST WITH IRON WINGS - BIRD LANGUAGE AS A SYMBOL OF WISDOM - BIRD HEAD ANCESTORS - BIRD LIKE HEROES - HERO MEMORY ZORY BEER VICTORIOUS, YURI, YARILO, THE SUN - SET AND RISE - THE PROBLEM OF THE WEST AND THE EAST - BLACK SUN - ECLIPSE OF THE SUN - MADNESS AS AN ECLIPSE OF THE MIND - AN ECLIPSE - HIGHEST KNOWLEDGE - NEW VISION - CHARACTER MULTIPLE EYE - ON THE SUN AS AN EYE OF THE SHRA - THE SUN AS THE SUN - THE SUN AS A PART OF THE WORLD TREE - THE SUN WITH FAT ROOTS plucked out by the CHARACTERS OF "VICTORY" - THE SUN IS AS A HORSE - HERODOTUS: "THE FASTEST OF THE GODS (SUN) IS DEDICATED TO THE FASTEST ANIMAL" (HORSE) - SPEED AS A BASIC FUTURE CONCEPT The sun like a wheel - wheels of airplanes of 13 years - “Wheels of aircraft” as a means of transporting the character “Victory” - an iron bird Airplane - a flying mythological boat - the folk drama “Board” about robbers - robbers, Cossacks, Cossacks - War with the Turks - Order of George- VICTORIOUS - SNAKE FIGHTING - LERNEAN HYDRA - HYLEA - BUDETLE ROBBERS - PILOT AND MISCINESS AT THE MOMENT OF INITIATION - MEN'S HOUSE OF PRIMARY SOCIETY - HOUSE IN "VICTORY"

THE CENTER OF THE WORLD - THE SACRED MOUNTAIN ZIGKURAT, THE PLACE OF OBSERVATION OF THE STARRY SKY IN ANCIENT - A SQUARE IN A SQUARE - SKETCHES FOR "VICTORY OVER THE SUN", etc.

We see that transformation into a different quality, a different form is a theme worked out by the Budtlyans in various ways. We can draw the following conclusion that the central theme of the Victory over the Sun project is Metamorphosis, the transformation of the world into a new world, a person into a new person, etc.

Mandelstam later called the ability of the material to transmit such a process "the reversibility of poetic matter."

Having revealed the main codes in our work, highlighting the main elements of the expanded metaphor, which is called by the authors “Victory over the Sun”, we were able to see and feel how the very process of flow, transformation, metamorphosis becomes a new level, on which a new wholeness of the material arises.

Thus, we see that in this theatrical project, in the center of which is the philosopheme of the part and the whole, specific methods of creating wholeness are used, which we can include:

1. The presence of a limited number of metaphors (although they vary many times and are presented in a disjointed form, bringing the fabric of the work closer to the poetics of the riddle).

2. The use of the same theoretical and aesthetic premises when creating different parts of the project - a verbal series, a visual series, music, etc.

3. Structuring the work through the creation of a variant that transforms and develops in its own way the rigid structure of traditional binary oppositions.

4. A single visual image of the world, a peculiar model of the universe, reflecting in a peculiar way the rigid scheme of the archaic model of the universe.

5. Metamorphosis, as a process repeated many times and developed at different levels of the project, combines disparate elements as parts of a single process, creating a “liquid phase” of artistic material, to use the expression of the futurists.

It seems that it was precisely such characteristics of the theatrical project of Russian futurists as internal structure, integrity, mythopoetic breadth of generalization, originality of expressive means that concentrated a powerful clot of artistic energy in Victory over the Sun and determined its attractiveness and significance.

The practical significance of this study is that the author managed, through a detailed description and analysis of the factual material, to discover the cultural layers hidden in the object under study and defining its features, and thereby reveal the integral embodiment of the philosophical views, aesthetic predilections and artistic credo of the creators of the avant-garde theater.

Specific information about one of the significant theatrical projects, detailed development of the semantics of images, identification of the originality of expressive means and generalization of the results obtained enrich the general concept of the development of art at the beginning of the 20th century, and help further advancement into the world of Russian avant-garde.

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We are used to the fact that the political theater and the left movement are twin brothers. Meanwhile, at the origins of this theater were people, many of whom subsequently connected their lives with the ultra-right movement. "Theater." recalls what the first steps of the founders of the futurist movement were, acquaints readers with excerpts from their plays and tells the sad story of how Italian futurism became an aesthetic showcase for fascism.

Great barbel Marinetti

Italy 1910s. The usual cheap city cabaret. On the proscenium - a simple scenery familiar to a cafe-concert: night, street, lamp ... a corner of a pharmacy. The stage is tiny. In addition, only one step separates it from the noisy, smoky, crowded hall.

The show starts! A small dog comes out from behind the right wings. Solemnly passes along the stage and goes behind the left wings. After a heavy pause, an elegant young gentleman with a twisted mustache appears. Cheerfully walking around the stage, he innocently asks the audience: “Well, have you seen the dogs ?!” This is, in fact, the whole show. A sympathetic cackle is heard in the hall - this is the laughing of the mob, the common people, the working class. They look at each other cheerfully: here he is, Marinetti! But today there is a whole detachment of seniors here - the same, with twisted mustaches. They are not laughing, on the contrary, they are scowling and, it seems, are ready to run up onto the stage without ceremony and properly puff up the impudent actor. So far, oranges are flying into it. Deftly dodging them, Marinetti makes a gesture that is destined to go down in the history of the theater: having caught an orange, he, without ceasing to dodge, peels it and, smacking his lips, impudently eats it, spitting out the bones right into the hall.

The meticulous researcher of the theater of Italian Futurism, Giovanni Liszt, notes that “the first performances of the Futurists in cabaret were something between a happening and a microtheater ... and, combining provocation with propaganda, often ended in brawls and the arrival of the police.” And now the necks of the seniors turned purple and puffed up under the exquisite white collars: just look they will beat their own! But - a miracle! - the working people rise to the defense of Marinetti. The rabble is pushing back the bourgeois who have come to teach the scoundrel a lesson and defend the honor of the real Italian stage. And Marinetti smirks, trying to hide his satisfaction, because this is exactly what he needs: scandal, outrageous.

The leader of the Futurists, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, at that time was by no means an obscure theatrical provocateur. Futuristic evenings with their microsketches have taken root in the pubs of many large Italian cities. And he himself became famous as a playwright and author of the novel Mafarka the Futurist. Glory, of course, is also scandalous.

The Italian theater of those years is very provincial. But at the same time, processes similar to the pan-European ones are taking place in it. By the end of the 19th century, verism became obsolete. The new drama and the theater, which in later criticism will be called decadent, enjoys success. They put Ibsen, Hamsun, Maeterlinck and the still young, but already well-known aristocratic writer Gabriele d'Annunzio - he managed to mount the Nietzsche cult of the superman into a parlor and heartbreaking, purely Italian bourgeois love melodrama and, moreover, has a passion for old folk legends, skillfully transferring one of them on the stage of the classical theater, in which Eleonora Duse then shone with her refined beauty and brokenness. A touch of symbolism and decadence cannot hide the fact that this theater largely inherits the classical theater of the last century, grew out of it and does not pretend to be shocking, and even more so political rebellion.

At this very time, Marinetti wrote his modernist play "King of the Revel". The starving people of the brutes laid siege to the castle of the Revel King. The fiery rebel Zheludkos calls on the fools to revolution. The Idiot Poet, who reads his idiotic verses to the people, and the faithful servant of the King Bechamel (the name of the white sauce) are trying to calm the rebels - he, the “culinary of Universal Happiness”, the King of the Revel instructed to satisfy the hunger of the enraged subjects ... Nonsense still take the castle by storm. The king is killed, but there is still no food, and they devour his corpse, all as one dying of indigestion. But the immortal soul of the people is supposed to be reborn - and now the people of nonsense are reborn in the Swamp of Holy Rot, surrounding the royal castle. Here the King himself mystically comes to life - and thus the story completes its circle, terrible and funny, finding itself at the same point from which it began. Time is cyclical. The revolutionary impulse of the people is natural, but meaningless, since it does not lead to any productive changes. The meaning of the play, however, is not as important as the form, and from the point of view of the regulars of the bourgeois theater, it was really unusual. And those hot mustaches in white collars from decent, well-bred families who were eager to beat Marinetti well were precisely the audience of such a theater.

We admit that their conservative rage against the defiler of the foundations is quite capable of meeting understanding even today: a tiny sketch with a dog really makes an impression of stupid and outrageous. But, firstly, it is still not worth tearing it away from the context of time, as well as running ahead. And secondly, aesthetic hooliganism was an indispensable feature of the early futurists. Let us recall, for example, the young Vladimir Mayakovsky, who threatened to put the sun in his eye instead of a monocle and walk down the street like that, leading Napoleon Bonaparte himself “on a chain like a pug”.

Superman

Living room. At the back is a large balcony. Summer evening.

Superman
Yes... the fight is over! The law has been passed!.. And from now on, all that remains for me is to reap the fruits of my labors.

Mistress
And you will devote more time to me, right? Confess that you have neglected me so often in recent days...

Superman
I confess!.. But what do you want! After all, we were surrounded on all sides ... It was impossible to resist! .. And then politics is not at all as easy as you think ...

Mistress
It seems to me that this is a very strange occupation! ..

From the street suddenly comes the muffled roar of the crowd.

Superman
What is it? What's that noise?

Mistress
These are people… (Going out to the balcony.) Manifestation.

Superman
Ah yes, the manifestation...

Crowd
Long live Sergio Walewski! Long live Sergio Walewski!.. Long live the progressive tax!.. Here! Here! Let Walewski speak! Let it come to us!

Mistress
They call you... They want you to speak...

Superman
How many people! .. The whole square is crowded! .. Yes, there are tens of thousands of them here! ..

Secretary
Your Excellency! The crowd is large: it demands that you come out ... In order to avoid incidents, you need to speak to them.

Mistress
Come on!.. Say something!..

Superman
I will tell them... Tell them to bring candles...

Secretary
This minute. (Exits.)

Crowd
To the window! To the window, Sergio Walewski!.. Speak up! Speak! Long live the progressive tax!

Mistress
Speak, Sergio!.. Speak!..

Superman
I will perform ... I promise you ...

Servants bring in candles.

Mistress
The crowd - what a beautiful monster! .. Vanguard of all generations. And only your talent can lead her way to the future. How beautiful she is! .. How beautiful! ..

Superman (nervously).
Get out of there, I beg you! (He goes out onto the balcony. A deafening ovation. Sergio bows, then makes a sign with his hand: he will speak. There is complete silence.) Thank you! How much more pleasant it is to address a crowd of free people than to an assembly of deputies! (Deafening applause.) The progressive tax is just a small step towards justice. But he brought her closer to us! (Ovation.) I solemnly swear that I will always be with you! And the day will never come when I will tell you: enough, stop! We will always go only forward!.. And from now on, the whole nation is with us... It is for our sake that it has stirred up and is ready to unite!.. Let the capital admire the triumph of the whole nation!..

Prolonged ovation. Sergio bows and moves away from the window. Applause and shouts: “More! More!". Sergio exits, greets the crowd, and returns to the living room.

Superman(calling servants).
Get the candles out of here...

Mistress
How beautiful she is, the crowd! That evening I felt that you are the master of our country!.. I felt your strength!.. They are ready to follow you all as one! I adore you, Sergio. (Squeezes him in his arms.)

Superman
Yes, Elena! .. No one can resist me! .. I lead all the people into the future! ..

Mistress
I have an idea, Sergio... Why don't we take a walk... right now: I so want to enjoy the spectacle of this tipsy city. I'm going to get dressed... Do you want to...?

Superman
Yes ... Let's go ... Let's go. (Tired, sinks into an armchair. Pause. He gets up and goes to the balcony.)

Suddenly, a powerful and rude dork appears from the door, walks across the room, grabs Sergio by the throat and throws him down from the balcony. Then, carefully and hastily looking around, he runs away through the same door.

The futurist play Settimelli was written in 1915. The mockery of Dannuncianism with its cult of the superman and the politicking patriot is here side by side with precisely grasped features of Italian political life - populism, flirting with a feverish and excited crowd and with anarchists or fanatics of other political forces ready to kill. Curious and overly caricatured image of the superman: the ideal of d'Annunzio, an aristocrat-politician who is loved by the people, appears in this sketch as a self-satisfied dunce. A parody of fashionable literature and bourgeois theater turns into an obvious political mockery. However, both of these pretentious ladies - the refined nationalist muse d'Annunzio and the cunning, caustic, defiantly evasive muse of the futurists - only seem aesthetically incompatible. Very soon they will merge in patriotic ecstasy, and a little later in political ecstasy: fascism, to which both will join, will use both to their heart's content. And futurism will already become its aesthetic showcase. In the meantime, these two planets - a decent rich world and the world of the common people, which includes both the proletariat and the declassed elements, and cabaret regulars and cheap music halls with all their bohemian atmosphere - are sworn enemies. That is why the communist Antonio Gramsci speaks sympathetically of rebellious futurism, noting its closeness to the common people, recalling how in a Genoese tavern the workers defended the futurist actors during their brawl with the “decent public”, very caustically going over about the “dryness of mind and tendency to cynical clowning" of Italian intellectuals: "Futurism arose as a reaction to the unresolved main problems." Today, the sympathy of Gramsci, an unsurpassed connoisseur of European culture and, in general, an intellectual of the highest standard, for the futurist rebels with their hatred of academically educated intellectuals and their trump card slogan "Shake the dust of past centuries from your boots" can surprise. But, in addition to the ardent desire for social change that united the communists and futurists, they also had a common strong enemy.

Future versus past

For example like this:

Benedetto Croce
Half of the number sixteen, first divided into two parts from its original unity, is equal to the product of the sum of the two units, multiplied by the result obtained by adding the four half-unities.

superficial person
Are you saying that two times two is four?

All visitors to futuristic evenings were necessarily given programs, where the names of the plays were indicated. The piece cited was called "Minerva under chiaroscuro" - an allusion to legal research, which was also carried out by Benedetto Croce. This is a 1913 sketch. The war is still being waged on an exclusively aesthetic level, it is a struggle by theatrical means. Characteristic sketch, which is called "Futurism against passeism." A fit lieutenant enters the cabaret stage. Looking around those sitting at the tables in the cafe with a long and gloomy look, he says: “Enemy? .. Is the Enemy here? .. Machine guns at the ready! Fire!" Several futurists posing as machine gunners run in and twist the handles of the “machine guns”, and in unison with machine gun bursts in the hall, small aromatic cans burst here and there, filling the cafe with sweet smells. The frightened crowd rumbles and applauds. “Everything ends with a loud sound - it’s thousands of noses simultaneously sucking in an intoxicating perfume” - the author ends his stage “joke” with such a remark, clearly in a peaceful and vegetarian mood.

And times something come not vegetarian. For almost a year now, a war has been going on in Europe, but the Italian government, although bound by diplomatic obligations with Austria-Hungary, does not want to enter into it. The formal reason for refusing to fight is that Austria-Hungary was not attacked, but itself declared war on Serbia, which means that Italy's obligation to mutual defense as a member of the Triple Alliance is invalid. In reality, however, the matter is quite different. Nobody wants to fight on the side of the empire - the memories of the metropolis and the Risorgimento are still alive among the people. The government, the big bourgeoisie and the conservative intelligentsia - neutrals, passeists - are pacifist. But a significant part of society is seized by the desire for national revenge, that is, the conquest of the territories that once belonged to Italy from the current ally. But then you will have to fight on the side of the Entente, the opponent of the Triple Alliance! The government is full of doubts. But the slogans of the Dannuncians, Futurists and Socialists under the leadership of Mussolini just coincide here - they are all ardent patriots of Italy and want war with Austria-Hungary. Futurists now profess a cult of strength: victory in the war will bring Italy glory and a modernization breakthrough, and in a victorious Italy, futurism will finally defeat passeism! And so the futurist Cangiullo (by the way, it was he who came up with the trick with the dog!) creates an evil caricature full of caustic hostility not only to Croce, but to the entire soft-bodied neutralist intelligentsia, who did not want to plunge the country into hostilities. The scene is called poster - "Pacifist":

Alley. A sign that reads "Pedestrians only." Afternoon. About two o'clock in the afternoon.

Professor (50 years old, short, with a belly, in a coat and glasses, a top hat on his head; clumsy, grumbling. On the move he mutters under his breath)
Yeah ... Fu! .. Bang! .. Bang! War... They wanted war. So in the end we will simply destroy each other ... And they also say that everything goes like clockwork ... Oh! Ugh! .. So in the end we will get involved in it ...

The Italian - handsome, young, strong - suddenly rises in front of the Professor, steps on him, slaps him in the face and beats him with his fist. At this time, indiscriminate shooting is heard in the distance, which immediately subsides as soon as the Professor falls to the ground.

Professor (on the ground, in a deplorable state)
And now… let me introduce myself… (Holds out a slightly trembling hand.) I am a neutral professor. And you?
Italian (proudly)
And I am an Italian combat corporal. Poof! (Spits in his hand and walks off singing a patriotic song). "In the mountains, in the Trentino mountains..."
Professor (takes out a handkerchief, wipes the spit off his hand and rises, visibly saddened)
Poof! .. Poof! .. Yes, pah. They wanted war. Well now they get it... (He fails to escape quietly, the curtain falls right on his head.)

If you imagine this play being played on the stage of a music hall, it may seem like a direct call to rebellion. This, however, is not the case: the text dated 1916, on the contrary, accurately records how quickly the mood in society changed, how quickly it was seized by military-state patriotism, from which fascism would later grow. Indeed, on May 23, 1915, the dream of the futurists, Mussolini and d'Annunzio came true: Italy entered the war on the side of the Entente and sent troops against the former ally.

Italia futurista

This war, which lasted more than three years, would cost Italy dearly. She will lose about two million soldiers and officers - killed, wounded, taken prisoner. He will experience the bitterness of heavy defeats, the first of which will be just the battle of Trentino, about which the Italian corporal who beat the venerable pacifist professor so victoriously sang. Many of the young soldiers who went to fight, filled with patriotic feelings and a desire to take away the old Italian territories from Austria-Hungary, will return crippled, others will be disappointed in their government and join the ranks of future fascists.

And now Marinetti is back on stage. This time not alone, but with a companion - also a futurist Boccioni. The play they wrote could pass for quite patriotic - its action takes place right on the front line - if it were not for the elusive spirit of mockery hovering over it, starting with the very name - "Marmots". By God, this resilient couple is somewhat reminiscent of the characters in the famous movie "Bluff":

Mountain landscape in winter. Night. Snow, rocks. boulders. A tent lit from the inside by a candle. Marinetti - a soldier wrapped in a cloak, in a hood put on his head, walks around the tent like a sentry; in the tent - Boccioni, also a soldier. He is not visible.

Marinetti (almost inaudible)
Yes, turn off...

Boccioni (from tent)
What more! Yes, they know exactly where we are. If they wanted to, they would have shot them during the day.

Marinetti
Damn cold! There is still honey in the bottle. If you want, feel it there, it is on the right ...

Boccioni (from tent)
Yes, you have to wait an hour for the honey to drain to the neck! No, I don't even want to take my hand out of the sleeping bag. And they are doing well there! They’ll decide what they need here… They’ll come and stitch the tent in a burst… And I won’t even move! There are still five minutes to warm up here in the warmth ...

Marinetti
Hush... Listen... Are the stones falling?

Boccioni
But I don’t hear anything ... It seems not ... Yes, these are probably marmots. Let's listen...

At this time, the audience sees how an Austrian soldier, not noticed by the sentry, very slowly crawls to the tent on his stomach over rocks and stones, clutching a rifle in his teeth. Boccioni finally comes out of the tent, also in a hood and with a gun in his hands.

Marinetti
Hush ... Here again ...

Boccioni
Yes, there is nothing... (To the viewer.) Look, the fool himself is a fool, but he pretends to be smart, huh? Now he will say that I think superficially and are generally stupid, but he knows everything, sees everything, notices everything. Nothing to say… (In a different tone.) Yes, here they are. Take a look ... As many as three. Yes, how beautiful! Look like protein.

Marinetti
Either squirrels or rats... We must put our duffel bags on the snow, there is some bread there... They will come here, you will see for yourself... Hush... Listen! Nothing. (In a different tone.) By the way, if we are not destined to die in the war, we will continue the fight against all these disheveled academicians! And glorify all the modern baldness of arc lamps.

They dump the soldiers' duffel bags on the snow and return to the tent. At this time, the Austrian continues to crawl towards them, stopping all the time, very slowly. Suddenly, “tra-ta-ta-ta-ta” is heard from afar - these are machine-gun bursts. At the back of the stage, a cloaked officer appears.

Officer
Captain's order: all advance. crawl. Rifles at the ready, fuses removed.

He slowly moves back to the wings, both soldiers hurriedly run after him, bending over as they go, preparing to crawl. The Austrian, still unnoticed, lies motionless among the stones. The light goes out completely. In the darkness - a grenade explosion. The light flashes again. Scene in smoke. The tent is overturned. Around the still lying Austrian - piles of stones. Both soldiers return.

Marinetti (looking around)
There are no more tents... It's blown away! And the duffel bag is empty, of course... (Notices the Austrian.) Wow! Corpse... Intestines out... Austrian! Look, he has a face like a professor of philosophy! .. How nice, thank you, good grenade!

Scene: Temple of War.

War, bronze statue.

Democracy, an old vixen dressed as a young maiden; a short green skirt, under her arm a thick textbook entitled "Rights for cattle." In his bony hands he holds a rosary made of triangular knuckles.

Socialism, an untidy-looking Pierrot with the head of Turati and a large yellow sun disk painted on his back. On his head is a faded red cap.

Clericalism, an old saint, in surplice, on his head a black skufia with the inscription "Sacrifice of the Spirit."

Pacifism, with the face of an ascetic and a huge belly, on which is written: "I am a nihilist." Falling to the ground redingote. Cylinder. In the hands of an olive branch.

Democracy, kneeling before the statue of War, earnestly prays, now and then anxiously looking around at the door.

Socialism (entering)
Are you here, Democracy?

Democracy (hiding behind the pedestal of the statue)
Help!

Socialism (grabbing her hand)
Why are you running from me?

Democracy (released)
Leave me alone.

Socialism
Give me a hundred lire.

Democracy
I don't have a penny! Everything was lent to the state.

Socialism
He-ge-gay!

Democracy
Yes, leave me! I'm tired of such a dog life, stop exploiting me. Between us, it's all over. Either get away from me or I'll call the police.

Socialism immediately jumps back, looking around fearfully. Democracy uses this to escape through the temple door. At the threshold he turns around for a moment, standing on tiptoe, sending Socialism air kiss and hiding in the temple.

Socialism
We'll deal with it after the war. (Statue.) Oh War, damned, since nothing can drive you out, do at least someone at least something useful! May the Social Revolution be born from your insides, so that at last the sun of the future shines in our pockets! (Removes his Phrygian cap from his head and throws it in the face of the statue. Goes to the door. At the door he stumbles upon Clericalism, who has just entered, and looks at him with obvious contempt.) Trash!

Clericalism (unctuous voice)
I forgive! (Socialism, seizing him, begins to waltz with him, brings him directly to the pedestal of the statue and leaves him with prayerfully folded hands, dancing to the door himself. Clericalism, addressing the statue, speaks in a nasal and trembling voice.) O Holy War, it is necessity that has brought me here to bow the knee before you, do not deny me mercy! Turn your chaste gaze to us! Don't you yourself turn pale at the sight of all this shamelessness? Guys and girls are still running after each other, as if this is the way it should be! Holy war, stop this disgrace!

He takes out a fig leaf from the surplice and attaches it to the intimate part of the statue. At that time Democracy, sticking his head out of the door, making dirty faces Socialism trying in every possible way to humiliate him. To the beat of her Clericalism prays fervently. Here comes Pacifism removing the cylinder from the head. All three bow in respect as he passes.

Pacifism
Holy war! Do that miracle of miracles that I cannot do! End the war! (Puts an olive branch into the hands of the statue.)

Terrifying explosion. Phrygian cap, fig leaf, olive branch fly through the air. Democracy, Socialism, Clericalism, Pacifism fall to the floor. The bronze statue suddenly glows, first turns green, then becomes completely white and, finally, bright red - on its giant chest, the spotlight highlights the inscription "Futuristic Italy".

What will it be, this Italia futurista - the Italy of the future, about which such different figures dreamed so differently? White, red, green (the colors of the Italian tricolor)?

In 1922, Benito Mussolini came to power. A little more - and all over the country blackshirts will start to manage. Only ten years have passed since the first performances of the futurists in cheap cafes, and history itself will assign its place to each of these three major figures of national culture.

The superhuman nationalist d'Annunzio will lead a national expedition that captures the city of Rijeka and establishes a dictatorship there with significant support from the local mob, becoming a Comandante. He will turn out to be more successful than the superman from the futuristic play, and will almost compete with Mussolini himself, who was eager for unlimited power, but will step aside, preferring to receive a princely title and other privileges from fascist Italy.

But the "venerable professor" - the intellectual Benedetto Croce - will be a rare gem. So having lived all his life in Italy, he will not stop doing creative work, he will not be afraid to openly speak out against the onset of the fascist era, in 1925 he will release the “Manifesto of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals” and will not hide his hostility to the regime that was afraid to touch him. At the same time, he did not miss the opportunity to express emphatic respect for his other ideological opponent - the communist Antonio Gramsci. For seven years, Croce will survive both Mussolini and fascism. He will die in his old and beloved baroque house, bent over a manuscript.

On the other hand, Marinetti, who willingly took the side of the Duce prone to "cynical clownery", will personally take part in the pogrom actions of the Blackshirts, finally becoming like a little "combat corporal" with his hatred of "disheveled academicians." His favorite brainchild - futurism - he will advance to the very heights, making fascism a national aesthetic doctrine, thereby dishonoring both him and his name.

In 1929, fate brings one of Marinetti's associates to Germany, where he meets with Erwin Piscator. The communist and great director of the political theater expresses his indignation to him: “Marinetti created our present type of political theater. Political action by means of art - after all, it was Marinetti's idea! He first carried it out, and now he betrays it! Marinetti has renounced himself!" Marinetti's response is well-known: “I answer Piscator, who accused us of refusing to follow the principles of our art-politics manifestos twenty years ago. In those years, futurism was the very soul of interventionist and revolutionary Italy, then it had precisely defined tasks. Today, victorious fascism demands absolute political obedience, just as victorious futurism demands infinite freedom of creativity, and these demands unite in harmony.

"This official motto of the entire movement under the fascist regime," notes researcher Giovanni Lista, "is nothing more than a veiled recognition of impotence and at the same time a paradoxical justification for conciliation." Also in 1929, Marinetti, a former rebel and hater of the "bearded heads of philosophers", becomes a fascist academic, gaining official recognition and remaking his early play "King of the Revel" about the cyclical nature of history and the meaninglessness of revolutionary change. It could be said that, having become a recognized scholar with age, he shared the fate of all successful rebels. But the story itself introduced into the image of the “fascist academician” that obvious shade of mockery, which was read in the role of a groundhog soldier played by the young Marinetti. The fate of the eccentric writer largely determined the fate of the entire movement. The “second futurism” will be without politics, but with lyrics and a kind of “poetry of technology”, but as an official ideology it will no longer be destined for those stormy ups that early futurism had - young and rebellious.

FUTURIST AND OBERIUT DRAMA POETICS

(to the question of succession)

The concept of tradition in relation to avant-garde phenomena is somewhat paradoxical, but also quite natural. The paradox is connected with the avant-gardists' eternal desire to break with their predecessors, with the proclamation of their "otherness" to anyone, with the refusal to inherit previous aesthetic experience. But the very renunciation of the past is a constant looking back at it. In this regard, the Futurists relied - albeit with negation - on the traditions of the former literature, and the Oberiuts are connected by strong threads with the Futurists. One of the features of Russian futurism, inherited from symbolism, was the aspiration to some kind of synthetic art, which was especially clearly manifested in the futuristic theater, which uses, in addition to the word, painting, graphics, gesture, dance. But was a synthesis achieved by the Futurists, or did the mixture of aesthetics of different art forms remain eclectic? What message did Futurism give to subsequent avant-garde practices, in particular, the dramaturgy of the Oberiuts?

The concept of "futuristic dramaturgy" includes quite different phenomena. On the one hand, these are the plays by V. Mayakovsky, the “opera” by A. Kruchenykh, V. Khlebnikov and M. Matyushin, which most clearly expressed the poetics of the early stage of the Futurist theater. But these are also the dramatic works of V. Khlebnikov of 1908-1914, which differ from his later dramatic experiments, which were never staged. This is also the pentalogy of I. Zdanevich "Aslaablish", called by the author "nativity scene". And yet, for all the dissimilarity of these works, there are a number of common features that allow us to talk about the phenomenon of futuristic dramaturgy. One should also take into account the fact that the dramaturgy of the Budetlyan futurists is closely connected with the concept of "futuristic theater".

The origin of futuristic drama in Russian literature is traditionally attributed to 1913, when the Joint Committee of the Union of Youth, created by E. Guro and M. Matyushin, decides to organize a new theater. The idea of ​​a theater that would destroy the previous stage forms was based on the futuristic concept of shocking traditions, anti-everyday behavior, shocking the public. In August 1913, an article by the artist B. Shaposhnikov “Futurism and the Theater” appeared in the Masks magazine, which spoke about the need for a new stage technique, about the relationship between the actor, director and spectator, about a new type of actor. "The futuristic theater will create an intuitive actor who will convey his sensations by all means available to him: rapid expressive speech, singing, whistling, facial expressions, dancing, walking and running." This article hinted at the need for the new theater to use the techniques of various art forms. The author of the article presented to the reader some of the ideas of the head of the Italian futurists F.-T. Marinetti, in particular, the thesis about the renewal of theatrical techniques. It should be noted that the Russian futurists began to create their own theater and theoretically substantiated it before Italian futurism announced a synthetic theater. The common position of both concepts of the futuristic theater was the declaration of an improvisational, dynamic, illogical, simultaneous theater. But the Italians took priority from the word, replaced it with a physical action. Marinetti, who arrived in Russia, speaking with his poems, demonstrated some of the techniques of dynamic theater, ironically described by B. Livshits in The One and a Half Eyed Archer: drunk mechanic. Accurately demonstrating the possibilities of new dynamics by his own example, Marinetti doubled, throwing his arms and legs out to the sides, hitting the music stand with his fist, shaking his head, flashing whites, baring his teeth, swallowing glass after glass of water, not stopping for a second to catch his breath. Russian futurists, on the other hand, considered the word the basis of dramaturgy, although they expanded the space for freedom of verbal and, more broadly, language play. A. Kruchenykh in the article "New Ways of the Word" (see:) noticed that the experience does not fit into the frozen concepts that words are, the creator experiences the torment of the word - epistemological loneliness. Hence the desire for an abstruse free language, a person resorts to such a way of expression in stressful moments. "Zaum", as the futurists believed, expresses a "new mind", based on intuition, it is born from ecstatic states. P. Florensky, who did not at all share a futuristic attitude to the world and art, wrote about the origin of zaumi: “Who does not know the joy that overflows the chest with strange sounds, strange verbs, incoherent words, half-words, and not even words at all, composing themselves into sound spots and patterns, published similar to sonorous verses? Who does not remember the words and sounds of embarrassment, grief, hatred and anger, which are trying to be embodied in a kind of sound-speech? ... Not with words, but with sound spots that have not yet been dissected, I answer to being. The Futurists proceeded from the common for the avant-garde art of the early twentieth century, the installation of a return to the origins of the word, speech, seeing creative intentions in the unconscious. In the work “Theater Phonetics”, A. Kruchenykh assured that “for the benefit of the actors themselves and for the education of the deaf-and-dumb audience, it is necessary to stage abstruse plays - they will revive the theater.” Nevertheless, the Futurists also attached importance to gesture as meaning expression. V. Gnedov performed his "Poem of the End" only with gestures. And the author of the preface to V. Gnedov's book "Death to Art" I. Ignatiev wrote: "The Word has come to the Limit. The man of the day was replaced by stamped phrases with a simple vocabulary. He has at his disposal many languages, “dead” and “alive”, with complex literal-syntactic laws, instead of the uncomplicated writings of the Primary Powers. Zaum and gesture not only did not contradict each other, but turned out to be connected in the articulatory act of speaking in an ecstatic state.

The task of the futuristic theater was expressed in the declaration: “To rush to the stronghold of artistic stunting - to the Russian theater and resolutely transform it. Artistic, Korshevsky, Alexandrinsky, Big and Small have no place in today! - for this purpose, a new theater "Budetlyanin" is being established. And it will host several performances (Moscow and Petrograd). Deimas will be staged: Kruchenykh's "Victory over the Sun" (opera), Mayakovsky's "Railway", Khlebnikov's "Christmas Tale" and others. (quoted from:).

The Futurists rejected classical theatre. But not only nihilism led the overthrowers of the old forms. In line with the time of total renewal and the search for art, they sought to create such a dramaturgy that would become the basis of a new theater that could accommodate poetry and dance, tragedy and clowning, high pathos and outright parody. Futuristic theater was born at the crossroads of two trends. In 1910-1915, eclecticism and synthesis equally existed in the theater. In the first decade of the twentieth century, eclecticism permeated both everyday life and art. The mixing of different styles and epochs within the same artistic phenomenon, their intentional indistinguishability were especially clearly manifested in the numerous theaters of miniatures, variety shows, buff and farcical theatricals that multiplied in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In April 1914, in the Nov newspaper, V. Shershenevich published a “Declaration on a Futuristic Theater”, where he accused the Moscow Art Theater, Meyerhold, and cinema of eclecticism and proposed an extreme measure: to replace the word in the theater with movement, improvisation. This was the direction that the Italian futurists took when they created the form of synthesis - the prototype of performances and happenings of the second half of the 20th century. An article by V. Chudovsky about the "Old Theater" by N. Evreinov and N. Drizen appeared in the almanac "Russian Artistic Chronicle": "Eclecticism is a sign of the century. All eras are dear to us (except for the just former, which we changed). We admire all the past days (except yesterday).<…>Our aesthetics are like a crazy magnetic needle.<…>But eclecticism, before which everyone is equal - Dante and Shakespeare, Milton and Watteau, Rabelais and Schiller - is a great force. And let's not worry about what descendants will say about our polytheism - the only thing that remains for us is to be consistent, to sum up, to do syntesis. Synthesis acted as the ultimate goal, but it could not arise immediately. The new theater and its dramaturgy had to go through the stage of mechanical combination of heterogeneous forms and techniques.

The second trend originated from symbolism with its desire for a synthetic undivided art, in which word, painting, music would merge in a single space. This desire for fusion was demonstrated by the work of the artist K. Malevich, the poet A. Kruchenykh and the artist-composer M. Matyushin on the production of Victory over the Sun, which was conceived as a synthesizing mutual enrichment of word, music and form: “Kruchenykh, Malevich and I worked together, Matyushin recalled. - And each of us, in his own theoretical way, raised and explained what others had begun. The opera grew through the efforts of the entire team, through the word, music and spatial image of the artist ”(quoted from:).

Even before the first public performance of the futuristic theater, a play was published in the book “Vozropschem” (1913) by A. Kruchenykh, which can be considered a transition to a new dramaturgy. In the monologue Preface, the author attacked the Moscow Art Theater, calling it "a venerable haven of vulgarity." The characters in the play had neither character nor psychological individuality. These were the characters-ideas: Woman, Reader, Someone Laidback. The drama was built on alternating monologues, in which the initial remarks still had a generally understood meaning, and then it was lost in grammatical nonsense, fragments of words, stringing syllables. The Woman's monologue is a stream of word parts and neologisms, phonetic formations. At the end of the Reader's monologue, a poem built on zaumi is inserted, which, according to the author's remark, had to be read with various voice modulations and howls. Abstruse verses also sounded in the Epilogue of the play, when all the actors left the stage, and Someone Unconstrained uttered the final words. At the same time, there was no action as the mover of the play, just as there was no plot. The play, in fact, was an alternation of monologues, in which the abstruse was called upon to reach the viewer with the help of intonation and gesture.

It should be noted that, although in the first dramatic experiments the Futurists claimed to be an absolute innovation, much of their work rested on traditions taken from different areas of life. Thus, zaum was a discovery of the Futurists only in its application to poetry, but its forerunner was the glossalia of the Russian sectarian whips, who, during zeal, entered a state of ecstasy and began to utter something that had no correspondence in any language and that at the same time contained everything languages, formed a "single language for the expression of the restless soul". Later, in the super-story "Zangezi" (1922), V. Khlebnikov called this sound speaking "the language of the gods." The source of the theoretical justification for the zaum of A. Kruchenykh was the article by D. G. Konovalov “Religious ecstasy in Russian mystical sectarianism” (see:).

The dramatic poem "Mirskonets", originally consisting of poems by A. Kruchenykh and V. Khlebnikov's play "Fields and Olya", can also be considered the threshold of futuristic dramaturgy. Here, a new principle of solving artistic time was applied: events were not located from the past to the present, but the heroes lived their lives from the end, from death to birth. Starting with a funeral procession, from the hearse of which Polya escapes, not agreeing to "be swaddled at almost 70 years old", the plot ends with the heroes riding in baby carriages with balloons in their hands. According to their age, speech also changed, passing from a commonly understood everyday language to sound-syllabic babble. R. Yakobson, in a letter to A. Kruchenykh, raised such a device to A. Einstein’s theory of relativity: “You know, none of the poets said “worldly” before you, Bely and Marinetti just felt a little, and meanwhile this grandiose thesis is even scientific completely (although you are talking about poetics, opposing mathematics), and more clearly outlined in the principle of relativity.

The theatrical performance program announced by the futurists was not fully implemented. At the beginning of December 1913, the first performances of the Futurists took place in the Luna Park: the tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky by V. Mayakovsky and the opera Victory over the Sun by A. Kruchenykh, V. Khlebnikov and M. Matyushin.

The founders of the futuristic theater were the Budtlyane. V. Mayakovsky in a hurry did not have time to come up with a name for his tragedy, and she went to censorship with a title: “Vladimir Mayakovsky. Tragedy". A. Kruchenykh recalled: “When the poster was issued, the police chief did not allow any new name, and Mayakovsky was even delighted: - Well, let the tragedy be called “Vladimir Mayakovsky”. I also had some misunderstandings from the haste. Only the text of the opera was sent to censorship (the music was not subject to preliminary censorship at that time), and therefore the poster had to be written: “Victory over the Sun. Opera by A. Kruchenykh”. M. Matyushin, who wrote music for it, walked around and snorted displeasedly. It is significant that M. Matyushin, who created the music, was an artist. The play "Vladimir Mayakovsky" was designed by the artists P. Filonov and I. Shkolnik, who shared the ideas of a futuristic depiction of a person in painting: "A person-form is the same sign as a note, a letter, and nothing more." The characters of the tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky", with the exception of the Author, were abstractions, almost surrealistic images - a Man without an ear, a Man without a head, a Man without an eye. Human spitting grew into surrealistic metaphorical images, turning into huge cripples, a pianist who "cannot pull his hands out of the white teeth of the furious keys." At the same time, all the characters in the tragedy embodied different hypostases of the Poet's personality, as if separated from him and sublimated into some talking posters: in the performance, the actors were enclosed between two painted shields that they wore on themselves. Moreover, almost every character was an inside-out scheme-image of a specific real person: A man without an ear - musician M. Matyushin, Without a head - poet A. Kruchenykh, Without an eye and a leg - artist D. Burliuk, An old man with black dry cats - sage V. Khlebnikov. Each character, therefore, was multi-layered, behind the external posterity there were several meanings that sprouted from one another.

In the tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky" the canon of the dialogic construction of a dramatic work was violated. The direct stage action almost disappeared: the events did not take place, but were described in the monologues of the characters, as was the case in the monologues of the Herald in ancient tragedy. Almost all early Futurist plays had a Prologue and an Epilogue. In the Prologue of the tragedy, as V. Markov noted, “Mayakovsky manages to touch not only all his main themes, but also the main themes of Russian futurism as a whole (urbanism, primitivism, anti-aestheticism, hysterical despair, lack of understanding, the soul of a new person, the soul of things)” .

The play was divided into two acts. The first depicted the complex world of rupture of ties between people, the tragic alienation of people from each other and from the world of things. The "Feast of the Poor" was reminiscent of both the ancient choir, where the Poet performed the functions of the Corypheus, and the carnival, in which the Poet faded into the background, and the images-ideas of people-parts of his personality came into play. The second act represented, as is typical of V. Mayakovsky's later plays The Bedbug and The Bathhouse, a kind of utopian future. The author collected all human sorrows and tears in a large suitcase and, “leaving his soul on the spears of houses behind a tuft”, left the city, in which harmony should reign. In the Epilogue, Mayakovsky tried to travesty the tragic pathos of the play with buffoonery.