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Aleksei Kruchenykh's "Razboinik Van'ka-Kain" and the Literary Politics of LEF

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Ronald Vroon
Ronald Vroon*
Affiliation:
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California, Los Angeles
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Extract

Aleksei Kruchenykh's "Razboinik Van'ka-Kain i Son'ka-manikiurshchitsa" is the first in a cycle of four "crime novels" in verse published by the poet during the heyday of his involvement in postrevolutionary futurist politics. Unlike much of the ephemera he wrote during the 1910s, this particular poem was produced and promoted with unusual care. It first appeared in the sixth, penultimate, issue of Vladimir Maiakovskii's LEF.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , Summer 1991 , pp. 359 - 370
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1991

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References

1. Kruchenykh, Aleksei, “Razboinik Van'ka Kain i Son'ka manikiurshchitsa (ugolovnyi roman),” LEF, no. 2 (6) (1924): 24–26.Google Scholar

2. Kruchenykh, Aleksei, Razboinik Van'ka-Kain i Son'ka-Manikiurshchitsa. Ugolovnyi roman (Moscow: Vserossiiskii Soiuz Poetov, 1925 [front cover: 1926]).Google Scholar

3. Kruchenykh, Aleksei, Chetyre foneticheskikh romana (Moscow: Avtora, 1927), 5–27;Google Scholar facsim. in Kruchenykh, Aleksei, Izbrannoe, ed. Vladimir Markov, Centrifuge: Russian Reprintings and Printings, 8 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1972), 401–440 Google Scholar. All citations from the poem refer to the original edition, with the page number in parentheses following the citation.

4. The fourth “ugolovnyi roman” was published under separate cover: Dun'ka-rubikha (Moscow: Avtora, 1926). In the table of contents to Chetyre foneticheskikh romana Kruchenykh indicates that Dun'karubikha is published as a supplement, but in Dun'ka-rubikha he makes no mention of Chetyre foneticheskikh romana and identifies the edition as an offprint from another book, Na bor'bu s khuliganstvom v literature.

5. The neologism is taken from one of the earliest futurist manifestos, “Slovo kak takovoe,” coauthored by Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov. See Literaturnye manifesty ot simvolizma k Oktiabriu, ed. N. L. Brodskii, V. L'vov-Rogachevskii and N. P. Sidorov (Moscow: “Federatsiia,” 1929), 81-82.

6. V. V. Maiakovskii and O. M. Brik, “Nasha slovesnaia rabota,” LEF. no. 1 (1923): 40-41.

7. Compare N. Khardzhiev, “Polemichnoe imia,” Pamir, no. 2 (1987): 168.

8. V. Shklovskii, “Iskusstvo kak priem,” Sborniki po teorii poeticheskogo iazyka (Petrograd: Sokolinskii, 1916) 2: 3-14; and idem, “Tristram Shendi” Sterna i teoriia romana, Sborniki po teorii poeticheskogo iazyka (Petrograd: “Opoiaz,” 1921).

9. “Tristram Shendi,” 3.

10. The fullest nonfictional account of Van'ka-Kain's life and activities is found in Esipov, G. V., “Van'ka Kain. (Iz podlinnykh bumag Sysknogo Prikaza),” in Vosmnadtsatyi vek. Istoricheskii sbornik, ed. Bartenev, P. (Moscow: Ris, 1869) 3: 280–342 Google Scholar; see also Mordovtsev, D. L., Van'ka Kain. Istoricheskii ocherk, in his Sobranie sochinenii (St. Petersburg: N F. Mertc, 1901), vol. 19.Google Scholar

11. O Van'ke Kaine, slavnom vore i moshennike kratkaia povest’ (St. Petersburg, 1775), and Zhizn’ i pokhozhdeniia Rossiiskogo Kartusha, imenuemogo Kaina, izvestnogo moshennika i logo remesla liudei syshchika, za raskaianie v zlodeistve poluchivshego ot kazni svobodu, no za obrashchenie v prezhnii promysel soslannogo vechno na katorzhnuiu rabotu, prezhde v Rogervik, a potom v Sibir', pisannaia im samim pri Baltiiskom Porte v 1764 godu (St. Petersburg, 1777); Komarov's work was published in Petersburg in 1779. For a description of the bibliographical history of Van'ka-Kain's biography, see V. V. Sipovskii, “Iz istorii russkogo romana XVIII v.,” Izvestiia otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti Imp. Akademii nauk, 1 book 2 (St. Petersburg, 1902), 97-191.

12. Pokhozhdeniia syshchika Van'ki Kaina, no. 1 (Moscow: Artel’ “Knizhnik,” 1918). For a review of the novel's contents and a general overview of the Kain tradition in Russian popular fiction, see Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 200-203. I would like to express my gratitude to Brooks for providing me with a detailed summary of the novel.

13. Shklovskii, Viktor, Matvei Komarov, zhitel’ goroda Moskvy (Leningrad: Priboi, 1929.Google Scholar

14. Ibid. 291.

15. A. Kruchenykh, Dun'ka-rubikha, 3.

16. N. Khardzhiev, also describes the work as a “lubochno-satirisheskii ‘ugolovnyi’ roman,” though without reference to Siniakova's illustrations ( “Polemicheskoe imia,” 168).

17. See Chekhov's “Ostrov Sakhalin,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii ipisem (Moscow: Nauka, 1978) 14-15: 89 and passim.

18. Doroshevich, V. M., Sakhalin (Katorga) (Moscow: Sytin, 1903) 2: 3-4.Google Scholar

19. Published in Odessa in 1903 by Poliatus; cited in Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read, 203-204.

20. Compare Boris Nesmelov's comment: “nastoiashchikh kruchenykhovskikh zaumnykh slov, krome, pozhalui, dvukh-trekh mezhdometii, zdes’ net” (3).

21. Kruchenykh, A., Faktura slova, Deklaratsiia (Moscow: MAF, 1923), 3.Google Scholar

22. Ibid.

23. Kruchenykh bares the device of sound symbolism by putting these two passages in boldface.

24. Krystyna Pomorska notes that Kruchenykh associated such harsh sounds with the morphologies of certain foreign languages ( Pomorska, K., Russian Formalist Theory and Its Poetic Ambiance [The Hague: Mouton, 1968]: 109 Google Scholar). Perhaps one reason he found thieves’ cant an ideal medium for creating “transrational” effects without resorting to neology was because it contains so many words with non-Slavic roots.

25. Faktura slova, 11. His “instructions” relate in particular to another poem, “Otrava,” which employs this device. The lines broken up into their syllabic constituents are to be read “naraspevmarshem.”

26. See, for example, “Morozhenitsa bogov” in the first issue and “Aero-krepost” in the fourth issue (1923).

27. The Pushkinian allusions in the novel should be viewed against the broader background of Kruchenykh's preoccupation with the poet in the mid-1920s, culminating in the publication of his notorious 500 Novykh ostrot i kalamburov Pushkina (1924).

28. N. Aseev et al., “Za chto boretsia LEF?” LEF, no. 1, 6.

29. Compare the opening couplet of Pushkin's poem: