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long." Love was everywhere for, "Boris Kosarev was also secretly in love with Maria
but she seemed inaccessible. Maria was older than he, very beautiful and tall,
whereas Kosarev was slight. Kosarev himself remembered how he even threw
stones at Khlebnikov so as to interrupt a romantic tryst with Maria".
Khlebnikov was, Mayakovsky aside, probably the best known of the Russian
Futurist poets, writing the prologue to the legendary opera, 'Victory of the Sun'
in 1913 and inventing Zaum, a language probably used by birds. e feuding
lovers seemed to find consensus for Kosarev's swirling illustration - the tale of two
pagan figures from Russian rural folklore, Leshy, a deity of the forest and Vila, a
mythological female who rejects the advances of the God.
'ree Hamlets. Two villages' and
'Village Pastoral' retain the joy of
nature with which Krasnaya Polyana
had imbued Kosarev. e structure
is the same as Sinyakova's 'Venus',
separate scenes as if from an icon,
but the symbols are those of the land
and fertility. 'Spring' and 'Dedicated
to Pavel Kuznetsov' also use symbols
of Ukrainian primitivism whilst
'Communal Flat' is more a piece of
(anti) Soviet humour split, like a bizarre
religious image, into two.
Krasnaya Polyana is in the news. Under the leadership of Mikhail Sayany and
money from the local authorities, a new project entitled the Mecca of Futurism
has been set up to rebuild the house.
Futurism is back in vogue.
James Butterwick
Village Pastoral, 1927
