Russian Formalism, Futurism and Revolution: Elena Guro (1877-1913)

Russian Formalist writer and contemporary of Roman Jakobson

(pseudonym: Aljagrov)

DR MARY COGHILLFellow at The London Metropolitan

University

‘For lovers of coloured cardboard boxes and powdered elementsThe city a lamppost the street’s din and a car’s horn the daughter of rooms etc.Along their shattered nerves like words or crazy versesJuggling the intersections the city’s nights dance......It blows eveningly and windilyO you city ensued inhumanly’

‘chr. greet fg evl if clear don’t see. ressur words sent bot-tom ressurwooods yr mnd. wt save skn splyd mowgli shush’

spit not t eat shchi so’d year shu = year pop weave bipl.Ofutpud....’

‘Scatterbrain, madman, soarer,maker of spring storms,sculptor of restless thoughts,driving the azure!Listen you mad seeker,rush, dash,shoot past, unshackledintoxicator of storms’

‘Streets curve around the city without beginning or end. Windows. Droplets. Window-sills. Cats, pigeons. Ahead it unfolds, shuts itself up, opens up. Turn after turn. Reflections, resonant voices. Secrets, unknown desultory thoughts, scraps of flowers, scraps of conversation’ (from Šarmanka, p10).

‘the dynamics of Futurist breakup and manipulation of fragmented form...a Futurist elasticity of imagery in its convergence of interiors and exteriors, struggle against confines (it had become the room “too white and bright and narrow”) and use of fragment and periphery (“the dusty edge of the table”)’ (Tomei, 1999, p395).

‘The street seethes with black and fiery patches. From secluded corners of houses, small dark insects are thrown on to the street, Immediately the crowd, and the crush of noises and shapes, rush deafeningly at them...Stunned, they look for a harbour within the roaring river of the street.’

‘We logically assume that the “I” stands for the narrator, but in light of following complications ...we will come to realize that the “I” might be the city, personified. For the man is said to have spent his day walking around the city in a state of half madness, thinking about his dreams....The time indications show that the day has passed between the beginning and the end of this address. Thus the address could have been made to him by the city while he walked around. He walked around dreaming about the real life of the city, but he walked around in the daytime’ (Jensen 1977, p92).