Tomashevsky. Victory Over the Sun

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Victory over the Sun Author(s): K. Tomashevsky Source: The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Autumn, 1971), pp. 92-106Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1144702Accessed: 30-08-2015 06:11 UTC

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Victory Over the Sun

Victory Over the Sun was a very important performance in the early history of the avant-garde. Produced in December, 1913, in St. Petersburg, Rus- sia, it was primarily the work of the three men pictured above: the composer Mikhail Matyushin (seated left), the designer Kazimir Malevich (seated right) and the playwright Alexei (Alexander) Kruchenykh (lying down). (Note the setting, which appears to consist of unmatched drop and wings hung upside down. It is not known whether this arrangement was actually used in Victory Over the Sun, but in the sixth scene of the opera, there is the unusual stage direction: "[the Fat Man] peeps inside the watch: the tower the sky the streets are upside down-as in a mirror.")

One significant aspect of the production is that it was to this work that Malevich attributed the origin of Suprematism.* Apparently he painted at least one extremely sim- plified non-objective backdrop for the performance: his sketch for the black and white square divided diagonally is reproduced at the right. (This design, the more complicated cubist design reproduced later, and the five costume sketches by Malevich for Victory Over the Sun are from The Great Experiment:

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*Suprematism, a "movement" in painting ini- tiated by Malevich, involved a rigorous reduc- tion of stylistic elements and a strictly geo- metrical non-objective format.



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Costume backdrops and sketches by Malevich reprinted from The Great Experiment: Russian Art 1863-1922 by Camilla Gray. Courtesy of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.



94 K. TOMASHEVSKY

Russian Art 1863-1922 by Camilla Gray. The book includes sketches for one other backdrop and seven other costumes and is an excellent source of ma- terial on Russian Futurism, Suprematism and their historical background.)

Victory Over the Sun was performed together with Mayakovsky's Vladi- mir Mayakovsky, a Tragedy. From the following description by K. Toma- shevsky, who acted in both productions, it would appear that the opera and the tragedy were presented on the same program; other sources indicate that the two works were given on alternate evenings. Tomashevsky's article, which bore the title "Vladimir Mayakovsky," was published twenty- five years after the performances (Teatr, No. 4, 1938); as will be noticed, his memory of particular lines does not always correspond to the published text. Only those sections of the article that refer to Victory Over the Sun and the conditions of its production are printed here: omissions are indicated by line rules.

There appeared in an issue of the Constitutional Democrat's newspaper Speech, a less respected and more popular newspaper than the Contemporary Word, a small notice that Vladimir Mayakovsky was inviting all those who wished to audition at the first reading of his tragedy, Vladimir Mayakovsky, to come to the Troyitsky Theatre. This invitation was stuck in between familiar and unimportant notices about students giving lessons in exchange for bed and board, and about runaway doberman pinschers and pugs. A statement at the end of the notice read: "Actors do not bother to come, please."

We-a group of typical mustachioed St. Petersburg students of those times- first laughed at Mayakovsky's banishment of actors. Then, in a devil-may-care attitude, we decided to go and apply for work with this newly emerged manager.

It was a sunny Sunday in October. We walked gaily along Nevsky Prospect. None of us had seriously considered the possibility of being hired, but we all an- ticipated some amusing and unusual entertainment. We had before us the opportunity not only of seeing the Futurists, but of getting to know them, so to speak, in their own creative environment.

We arrived at the Troyitsky Theatre. It has survived until now, a small building in crude, modern style. We had sometimes come there as spectators (with student tickets for fifty kopecks), and now we walked in with an air of importance, as the official doorman showed us how to get to the foyer where the reading was to take place. There already was a crowd of students of both sexes, grinning in an- ticipation of the coming entertainment. The gathering, however, was not very large. Everyone whispered to one another, exchanged knowing glances, and quite openly chuckled. In short, they were not in a very serious mood. Only one tall, handsome student stood apart from the whispering groups, trying to show that he had not come to fool around. This youth, who was unlike us, drew our attention.

Making our way through the clusters of skeptically laughing young men and women, we looked for the host, the author of this tragedy about himself. He stood at the other end of the foyer, among the producers of the Futurist productions. We recognized him at once. Dressed in a top hat, gloves, and an impeccable black coat, he was tall, slender and dignified. Mayakovsky handled himself like a real host, manager and authentic master of the Futurist Bohemians gathered around him.

Mayakovsky looked provocative: he had the qualities of a provincial lead-



ing actor but, at the same time, his pride was likable and prepossessing. All the other Futurists looked grey compared to him. They kept in the background and remained unnoticed.

Quite a number of Futurists were present. There was Vladimir Rappaport, a bustling, little, rotund man-later the author of a well-known operetta- parody, Ivanov Pavil. He, for some reason, joined the Futurists and was extremely active in their productions as an administrator and even as a director. Kruchenykh, a sharp-faced man with a little snout, pushed past from one end of the foyer to the other, looking about him distrustfully. The Futurist Matyu- shin, a slow and reliable composer, leaned toward Rappaport, looking worried. The painter Filonov looked around impassively and almost superciliously.

Eventually, a small table was placed in the middle of the foyer. Mayakovsky, clapping his hands, announced that the reading would begin. He took the script out of his coat pocket, sat at the table and, without taking off his top hat, began to read.

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To our big surprise, the meeting was not over [after the reading of Vladimir Mayakovsky]. It was announced that Kruchenykh's opera Victory Over the Sun would be presented together with Mayakovsky's tragedy. Kruchenykh, at that time an excessively restless and meddlesome young man, took Mayakovsky's place at the table. I had the immediate feeling that he was being meddlesome in an effort to bring some color to his hopelessly grey appearance. He reminded one of a telegraph office clerk, or a salesman who secretly wrote love poems behind the counter.

Victory Over the Sun turned out to be pure nonsense and abracadabra. As Kruchenykh began to read, there were chuckles and laughter, but after a while, everyone became very bored. Kruchenykh read very badly and the text itself, re- gardless of its abstruseness, was so grey and colorless that it was a good time to

yawn, not to laugh. I immediately got two parts in the "opera": The Ill-Intentioned One and the

Elocutionist. Muzalevsky and Tikhonov were supposed to perform the two Fu- turecountrymen. All the other parts were filled (there were a lot of them). Kru-

chenykh turned out to be less demanding than Mayakovsky-he hired many of those turned down by Mayakovsky for his own opera.

The Futurist performances were to take place in the Luna Park Theatre. This theatre on Officers' Street, now called Decembrists' Street, enjoyed deserved fame. Its history was rich with many different theatrical events.

At the end of the 1890's, a provincial second-rate actress, Nemetti, founded a



96 K. TOMASHEVSKY

theatre on the outskirts of St. Petersburg called Kowomina. It was intended to please the taste of a public made up of clerks and suburban bourgeois. Business was unprofitable, and Nemetti gave up managing it. There was a large garden next to the theatre where fairly good farce groups worked successfully on an outdoor stage for a long time. They had a very questionable and commercial repertoire: To the Strains of Chopin, Radium in Someone Else's Bed, and so on.

The championship art of French fighting* was also presented there, starring the well-known "Uncle Vanya." "Uncle Vanya," in a blue, unbuttoned poddyovka [a man's long waisted coat] and a student's hat pushed to the back of his head, announced in an imitative manner: "And now I have the honor of presenting ..."

The farces and French fighting were good box-office attractions, and soon, in- spired by their success, the farce group moved into the indoor theatre.

In 1905, a popular review, Days of Freedom, was presented at the theatre. Cut- ting remarks about the police regime were made from the stage.

In other countries they can Control persons with a word And save cartridges Here... it is the opposite...

This verse roused a storm of applause, and the public flocked to the theatre. The Days of Freedom did not last for long, however, and the review was taken off.

Vera F. Komissarzhevskaya and Vsevolod Meyerhold arrived in 1906. They started their own theatre, known under the name of Komissarzhevskaya. Here Mey- erhold displayed his "experiments." But neither Hedda Gabler, nor Maeterlinck's Sister Beatrice, nor Andreyev's Life of Man were successful. Attendance was very low. The only success at the Komissarzhevskaya Theatre was the play by Wedekind, Spring's Awakening, in which sex problems were discussed.

The Theatre of Vera F. Komissarzhevskaya did not have a long existence. Meyer- hold soon left it. The theatre existed for awhile without Meyerhold, but financial difficulties were growing and Komissarzhevskaya had to cease being manager. Her place was taken by a provincial manager called Niezlobin. It was then that the garden next to the theatre was enlarged, and American attractions were introduced. This and the indoor theatre received the American name, Luna Park.

Such was the history of the theatre in which the Futurist performances were produced.

Rehearsals began.

The situation was much worse with Kruchenykh's "opera." Kruchenykh asked us to pronounce all the words with pauses between each syllable. It sounded like: "The cam-el-like fac-to-ries al-read-y threat-en us ..." As a matter of fact, he was constantly inventing and finding something new, and getting on everyone's nerves. He especially annoyed Rappaport, who was helping him direct the play.

Finally the "trick" was found to open the "opera." The "trick" consisted of the following: Two Futurecountrymen came on stage. One of them said, "All is well that begins well!" The other one asked, "What about the end?" The an-

*We believe that this refers to a French style of boxing in which the fighters are allowed to use their feet as well as their hands-Eds.



swer was, "There will be no end!" After this exchange, the "Futurecountry- men" tore a paper curtain that was painted completely in Cubist style, and the opera began.

After accomplishing the "trick," Kruchenykh rested on his laurels and calmed down.

During the rehearsals of the Futur- ist plays at Luna Park, the theatre became a sort of Futurist salon. Here one could meet all the Futurists, beginning with the handsome Kublin, who was an assistant professor at the Army Medical Academy, and ending with the inex- perienced puppies who persistently followed Burliuk and the other Futurist masters around. Everyone came there: Futurist poets, critics, and painters.

Velimir (at that time, still called Victor) Khlebnikov, in comparison to the others, rarely showed up. He was silent, reserved and kept to himself. He would usually sit somewhere in a corner to watch the rehearsal. Silent, he showed neither enthusiasm nor dis- pleasure. But somehow, it always happened that he was approached, first by one person, then by another, until at the end he became the center of a Futurist group. At that point, he used to drop some remark, to which everyone listened with great respect and, if it concerned the performance, it was acted on immediately.

Among the permanent participants in the rehearsals were: the composer Matyushin, who wrote the music for Kruchenykh's opera, and the painters Male- vich, Filonov and Shkolnik. Malevich did the scenery and costumes for the opera. The painted scenery was cubist and non-objective: On the backdrops were painted conical and spiral forms similar to those painted on the curtain (that the Futurecountrymen tore apart.) The costumes were made of cardboard and re- sembled armor painted in cubist style.

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Matyushin's music for the opera was original and interesting. But, as a matter of fact, there was more talking than singing in the opera. Music burst upon the action only occasionally. If I remember correctly, there were only one or two truly singing characters. The most important role of the Aviator was sung by the then well-known tenor, Richter, who was an artist from the People's House [an inexpensive theatre in the St. Petersburg suburbs.] It was in this way that Kruchenykh departed from Mayakovsky's principle, "Actors, do not bother to come, please."



98 K. TOMASHEVSKY

For some reason, I remerriber the words of two arias sung by Richter. The first one:

I am eating potatoes And white legged A fried cutlet Dead cat

And the second one:

The lake sleeps Plenty of dust Plenty of shavings And gun bodies...

The arias, as well as Matyushin's entire score, are like a parody of Verdi. At first Richter felt uncomfortable when he had to intentionally sing off pitch. But later he became used to it and honestly performed that Futurist nuance. He had more difficulty remembering Kruchenykh's dogma about the neuter gender that, supposedly, does not exist; hence, lake [masculine] instead of lake [neuter].

All the Futurists, especially Kruchenykh, were very enthusiastic about Matyu- shin's music. "Wonderful!" shouted Kruchenykh, pathetically waving his hands. "Outstanding! That's certainly not Tchaikovsky!" Only Mayakovsky was indiffer- ent to the music and the vocal experiments of the text by Matyushin and Kru- chenykh. But Mayakovsky gentlemanly hid his indifference by kind and slightly cunning smiles. Sometimes he would even tell Kruchenykh: "You know, it's nice. Very nice. Very..." Speaking in barely discernible sarcastic tones, Mayakovsky cheerfully hid behind a mask of friendly good-naturedness.

..... Posters were pasted up around town, and groups of animated citizens gathered around them. Notices appeared in the newspapers. The most playful notices appeared in the "yellow" press: The St. Petersburg Gazette and the St. Petersburg Page. The rag magazines, anticipating a scandal, carnivorously smacked their lips and cheerfully sharpened their pens.

... Kolia Tomasovsky, nicknamed "Siskin" [a small European finch] because of his rather small size and incredible liveliness, made us laugh when, with a dead- pan expression, he pattered senseless sentences from Kruchenykh's opera very quickly like drum beats. He had a "responsible" part in the opera, but in Maya- kovsky's tragedy, he had only to say: "Figaro! Figaro! Gazette!" He would cry out: "Is emptiness deep?" hitting his chest with his fist. Then suddenly he would patter: "We built into the past, plenty of dust, plenty of shavings," and similar nonsense.

Kruchenykh was very fond of Tomasovsky's way of speaking. He allowed him to turn the words into a pattering mess rather than chopping them apart.

Poor Siskin was killed in the Turkish war about two years later.

A couple of incidents occurred during the dress rehearsal of the opera. First the Futurecountrymen could not tear the curtain. Then, Siskin became so carried away with his pattering that he could not stop for several minutes. Those watching laughed so hard their stomachs ached. Rappaport reproved him, but Kruchenykh, very pleased, shook his hand.



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The third incident involved The III- Intentioned One, the role I was playing. At the moment when the Aviator, sung by Richter, had reached the place in his aria, "The Lake Sleeps," where he had to sing off key, I crawled out on stage and was preparing to shoot him with a gun. No one had told me that I must shoot up in the air. I aimed realistically at Richter and pulled the trigger. Pow!-a report was heard; Richter turned pale, clutched his stomach and ran off stage. Apparently, I was too zealous and had hit him with wads in the pit of his stomach. Even though the cardboard armor protected him to some degree, Richter was frightened. During the performance, he timidly glanced at me, fear- ful that I would forget to shoot up again and would hit him in the eye with a wad.

The first performance took place the same evening. There was a "sold out" sign over the box office. Numer- ous profiteers energetically bargained on the street in front of the theatre and in the foyer. Scandal lovers from the St. Petersburg demimonde were willing to pay enormous amounts of money to get into the theatre.

The bright gas lamps went on, and the doors began to slam hurriedly. Streams of spectators poured into the theatre.

Those who lived in St. Petersburg at that time will remember the picture of spectators arriving at the theatres. Sleds and private, elegant equipages with livery- men drew up to the theatre. Ladies muffled in fur wore pink and blue knitted hoods (to protect their coiffures). Dashing officers jingled their spurs. Hemor- rhoidal officials walked on the theatre's carpets with an air of importance. St. Petersburg dandies arrived in dinner jackets and tailcoats. Students in double- breasted jackets and girl students in modest blouses gathered upstairs. Middle- class theatre patronesses sat in the grand tier. Priest-critics appeared with stony faces: Yuri Believ of New Time, Kugel (Homo Novus) of Theatre and Art [the leading St. Petersburg theatrical periodical], Izmailov of Bourse News, Rossovsky of the St. Petersburg Page, and others.

There were police-in excessive numbers-by the theatre entrance and in the foyer. Even the assistant to the chief of city police, Galli, came. The students of St. Petersburg were acquainted with him: It was he who, at the head of a group of armed policemen, burst into a university building during several student gather- ings. It was he who led the dispersal of student demonstrations on Nevsky Pros- pect. His presence in the theatre indicated that the police were seriously worried about the Futurist performances. One could be sure that if Galli was there, plenty of police would be hiding in the neighborhood. Their worried imaginations had



100 K. TOMASHEVSKY

run away with them. There was no reason, of course, for the alarm. The majority of the spectators were fashionable and philistine bourgeois. There were very few members of the intelligentsia or students. There were no workers at all. In those years, with few exceptions, workers did not attend the theatre. Even if they went, they would attend suburban and inexpensive theatres like the People's House, Vasileostrovsky and the Guideburov.

The first bell rang; then the second. The well-dressed public quickly filled the orchestra. The "heavens" were dark and modest and seemed crowded with spectators. There were the characteristic buzzing sounds, well-known to every theatregoer, that mean the curtain will be going up in a few minutes.

Some time ago, Belinsky wrote: "Do you like the theatre? Is it possible to dis- like the theatre?" Alas, that evening the majority of persons came not out of love, but out of unhealthy curiosity, out of a craving for scandal. Impudent expectation of fun showed on their faces rather than a reverent love of theatre.

... Matyushin and Kruchenykh's opera Victory Over the Sun fully rewarded the spectators after the strong and unpleasant feelings they had experienced during the first half of the evening. Now they could throw aside all restraint and roar with laughter over Kruchenykh's abstruseness and Matyushin's cacophony. There were Futurecountrymen, Ill-Intentioned Ones, Aviators, and completely harmless characters who were saying and singing unmitigated nonsense and nothing else.

The opera was as easy to look at as it was interesting, and there were many in- termissions. In other words, it was just this abstruse but interesting Futurism that the St. Petersburg public wanted, since they had a weakness for unusual sights. Kruchenykh was whistled and hissed at as much as, if not more than, Mayakovsky, but the public was not angry; they shouted happy remarks at the actors, who swal- lowed them silently, without answering back.

The public became angry and howled with real spite only once. It was before the third and fourth scenes when the Elocutionist, who I was playing, appeared in front of the curtain. I was wearing something like a monk's robe and hood. The hood covered almost my entire face. The public thought that I was Kruchenykh, because Mayakovsky had appeared in his own work. The audience became alert. The first words did not make a big impression, but at the end of my speech I pro- nounced this sentence: "Only gnawed-at skulls run on just four legs-likely (pointing at the audience) they are donkeys' skulls!"

I could not see what was happening in the auditorium very well because of my hood. But hearing the howls and frenzied shouting that broke out in response to my words, I could easily imagine that splendid sight. Spectators were jump- ing up from their seats, shaking their fists. "You're a donkey yourself!" they unani- mously howled. Nearly the entire audience stood up then, except for a few people on "our" side. I rushed to hide behind stage. I was just in time, for some heavy fruit buzzed by my ear. In the wings, I almost ran into the incomparable author of the opera. He enthusiastically watched the angry audience through a crack in the curtains. "Do you hear that?" I asked him with a note of lively malice. Kruchenykh threw up his hands theatrically and pathetically exclaimed: "What a success! What a remarkable success!" However, that was the only incident to disturb the quiet flow of the opera.

Kruchenykh received feeble hisses and sarcastic applause, and when this unmitigated abstruseness was over, everyone left satisfied and happy. They had had the opportunity to witness Futurist nonsense.



FUTURISM IN ST. PETERSBURG 101

One more futurist performance took place the next evening. Everything was repeated, with few variations. True, the composition of the audience was more democratic this time, and Mayakovsky received more applause than the day before. However, there was no lack of whistling and malice.

Soon afterward, daily student demonstrations began. During the spring, I was expelled from St. Petersburg for participating in student disorders. War broke out, and we were dispersed to many parts of the country.

Mikhail Matyushin, who composed the music for Victory Over the Sun, also described the origins and performance of the opera. His spirited de- fense of the Futurist work, written about a month after the productions, appeared in Futuristy: pervyj

.urnal russkix futuristov, No. 1-2, Moscow 1914.

It was headed "Futurism in St. Petersburg" and a sub-title read "Perfor- mances on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th of December, 1913." The complete article follows:

There was recently an enormous success for Futurism, which gathered a large number of people in St. Petersburg to attend more than forty lectures, discussions and debates. There also were two striking and significant presentations: The Tragedy of V. Mayakovsky, by Mayakovsky, and the opera, Victory Over the Sun. The latter was written by A. Kruchenykh, with staging and costumes by K. Male- vich, and music by M. V. Matyushin. They were both performed in the beginning of December at the theatre formerly called Komissarzhevskaya. These two productions left the St. Petersburg press in a state of complete ignorance and perplexity about the importance of these events.

And above all, the leading masters of the written word had shown their utter, vulgar, dark ignorance. Is it possible that they are so tightly knit by their herd instinct that it does not allow them to have a close look, to learn and to mediate about what is happening in literature, music and the visual arts at the present time?

In the visual arts: complete displace- ment of planes, displacements of visual relationships, introduction of new concepts of relief and weight, dynamics of form and color.

In music: new ideas of harmony and of melody, new pitch (quarter of a tone), simultaneous movement of four completely independent voices (Reger, Schoenberg).

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102 MIKHAIL MATYUSHIN

In the discovery of words: the break away from the meaning of words-the right of a word to be independent, hence, new creations of words (discovery by the genius, Khlebnikov).

In this way were created: In visual arts: the breakdown of old academic drawing, boring classicism. In music: the breakdown of old sound, boring diatonic music. In literature: the breakdown of old, worked over, cluttered words, boring

word-meaning. Only those who are in darkness do not see the light-the deaf do not hear the

new sound. Suddenly our deep Russian creation rises-spit upon by the ignorant, backward

large newspapers. They did not anticipate how those people who were frightening away their sleep would defend themselves-and is it fair to strike the undefended? There was not one positive word said in their favor, since the press was given orders to spit upon and criticize them.

But what happened? Was it an outrageous, pornographic, or illegal excitement of minds? Let's put it this way: As a result of the gradually rising changes in life and also, consequently, in creative work, the transition from academicism to impres- sionism, and then to Cubism and Futurism, in short, a new dimension in all the arts, our Russian youth, without any knowledge of the new theatre experiments abroad, presented the first performance on a stage in St. Petersburg of the disinte- gration of concepts and words, of old staging, and of musical harmony.

They presented a new creation, free of old conventional experiences and complete in itself, using seemingly senseless words-picture-sound-new indications of the future that lead into eternity and give a joyful feeling of strength to those who reverently will lend an ear and look at it. They will light up with the joy of someone who has found a treasure and will not become a savage who laughs heartily-or be- comes senselessly angry and animalistically spiteful when, for the first time, he hears or sees some complicated mechanism, invented after centuries of investiga- tion, even something like the telegraph or liquid air.

The newspapers behave like New Zealand Papuans. This is apparent because of their sandwich-like staleness and unwillingness to follow the present growth of the creative soul. Instead, they are paying exceptional attention to the

cliche, derivative fictions of everyday petty reality and its generalization, without any emo- tional reaction ... And this is called reflection of public opinion!

The idea of a joint creative work by a poet, painter and musician arose last summer in Finland, and a number of propositions on new creativeness were drawn up in a "Manifesto of Futurists" that was printed during the fall in many newspapers.*

Also during the summer, participants in the conference decided to work on a collective creation based on the new principles of word, drawing and music.

Half a year of enormous collective work went into creating Victory Over the Sun. The artistic council of the Union of Youth finally decided to perform Victory Over the Sun and the tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky after many difficulties and discussions.

*In July, 1913, "a group of Futurists held a conference in Usikirko, Finland, which was called rather grandiloquently 'The All-National Congress of Futurist Writers.' Little is known about the proceedings of, and the participants in, this 'Congress,' but soon a 'declaration' appeared in the St. Petersburg press bearing the signatures of Kruchenykh, Malevich and Matyu- shin, and announcing the decision of the Congress to organize a Futurist theatre under the name of 'Budetlyanin.' " Pp. 141-142, Russian Futurism: A History by Vladimir Markov, Univ- versity of California Press, 1968.




Because of the tremendous production expenses and the high cost of renting a theatre, the Union of Youth sent out their representatives to approach people who did not have the slightest idea of the progressive work being done in art, which resulted in all sorts of unpleasant situations and obstacles. They had to recruit students who were amateur performers for the opera and the tragedy. Only two leading parts in the opera were sung by experienced singers. There was a very bad chorus of seven people, of whom only three could sing. The management, disregarding all our requests and persistence, hired them two days before the performance. Con- sidering the intricacy of the composition, it was impossible to prepare anything well.

A broken-down, out-of-tune piano, which took the place of an orchestra, was delivered on the day of the performance.

And what was happening to Kazimir Malevich, who, for economic reasons, was not allowed to paint with the colors and in the dimensions he had planned? The costumes were not made according to his drawings and wishes. There was no possibility of making a sufficient number of duplicate costumes. Considering that this great painter had to paint scenery while receiving the most vulgar mockery and idi- otic laughter from all kinds of people from the operetta theatre, one is amazed at his energy and the fact that he created twenty large pieces of decor in four days.

Here, I would like to mention with great gratitude those student-performers who fulfilled their tasks in the opera very well and also, according to our deci- sions, spoke the words without music, pausing for long intervals between each word. In that way, a word, alienated from its meaning, gave the impression of great strength.

Speaking of misfortunes, one must mention that there were only two rehearsals of the opera, including one dress rehearsal. There was a complete lack of under- standing and appreciation from the management, excluding, of course, the repre- sentative from the Union of Youth. They demonstrated this lack by whistling from the boxes and making a great deal of noise. With such a horseshoe kick, or even without it, it seemed as if all the possibilities for success were eliminated.

But new creativity is so healthy and strong that even with the most mediocre exposure it did not allow anyone to destroy it.

On the day of the performance, there was so much interest and sympathy shown by half the audience and such a strong expression of revulsion from the other half that never in my entire life in St. Petersburg did I ever receive such a shock, or experience such a Cyclopean scandal during a premiere as I did then. There was boisterous shouting at the top of their lungs from half the spectators: "Out! Down with the Futurists!" and from the other half: "Bravo! Don't disturb us! Down with the brawlers!" But even this tumult and scandal could not destroy the strong impression made by the opera. There was such inner strength in each word, the scenery and Future Man appeared so powerfully and threateningly in a way never seen anywhere before, the music moved so gently and resiliently around the words, the paintings and Future People and Strong Men conquered the cheap, preten- tious sun and lit their own light inside themselves.

There was so much unexpected magic in it, that it is impossible to understand the huge public scandal . . . One wanted to shout: "Listen! Rejoice, because the long-awaited is already born, and it doesn't matter whether Hercules has already crushed you in your cradle, rebel against him!"

The life of a new creation is strong. It is important to see and hear its appearance in time.

The Tragedy of Vladimir Mayakovsky represents an enormous exposure of im- pressionism in the symbolic use of words. But Mayakovsky never divorces a word from its meaning, he does not recognize that the sound of a word is priceless in it-



104 ALEXEI KRUCHENYKH

self. I find his play very important and significant, but it does not establish the last word or lay stones down in the quagmire of the future as a route for Futureland arts.

Even though I do not minimize the significance of his play, I still consider this production to be much below his creative capacities.

In her book The Great Experiment, mentioned earlier, Camilla Gray states that "in Victory Over the Sun the actors wore papier-mach heads half again as tall as their bodies and performed on a narrow strip of stage using marionette gestures..." Two notes included in the book give more information about the staging of the opera. The first, which follows, is an "extract from unpublished memoirs of Kruchenykh, Nash Vuikbod (Our Exit), on the play. . ."

. The scenery and stage effects were as I expected and wanted. A blinding light from the projectors. The scenery by Malevich was made of big sheets-tri- angles, circles, bits of machinery. The actors' masks reminded one of modern gas- masks. The Likari [a neologism from Lik, meaning image or face-TDR] reminded one of moving machines. Malevich's costumes were Cubist-like, made of cardboard and wire. They transformed the human anatomy, and the actors moved, held and directed by the rhythm dictated by the artist and director. What particu- larly struck the audience in the play were the songs of the Coward (in vowels) and of the Aviator (entirely in consonants). Professional actors sang. The public de- manded an encore, but the actors were shy and did not come out. The choral song of the Gravediggers, which was composed with unexpected intervals and disso- nances, was performed to a completely furious public. (The point of the opera is to destroy one of the greatest artistic conventions, the sun in the given instance. In men's minds there exist certain means of human communication which have been created by human thought. The Futurists wish to free themselves from this ordering of the world, from these means of thought communication, they wish to transform the world into chaos, to break the established values into pieces and from these pieces to create anew.)

The second note in The Great Experiment is an "extract from an inter- view given by Malevich and Matyushin to the newspaper Den, on the performance of Victory Over the Sun in the Luna Park Theatre, St. Petersburg, December 1913."

. . The curtain flew up, and the spectator found himself in front of a second




one of white calico on which the author himself, the composer and the designer were represented in three different sets of hieroglyphics. The first musical chord sounded, and the second curtain parted in two, and an announcer and troubadour appeared and an I-don't-know-what with bloody hands and a big cigarette. He began to read the prologue. The prologue ended. Odd war-like cries sounded, and the new curtain again divided in two. From above a piece of cardboard was lowered, covered all over with war-like colors. On it two life-like warrior figures of two knights were depicted. All this in a blood-red color. The drop-curtains were abandoned. Now the action began. The most diverse masks came forward and walked off. The backcloths were changed, and the moods changed. Ear-splitting noises sounded and gun-shots rang out ....

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106

One of the significant aspects of Victory Over the Sun is its concern with the nature of language: rules of grammar and syntax are worked against rather than merely broken, new words are invented and passages written in zaum, the Futurist transrational language of pure sound.* This approach makes the opera difficult to translate with accuracy; at times translation is not possible. Indeed, the linguistic complexity of Khlebnikov's prologue is so great that the version published here can only be considered an approximation.

One of the most obvious problems of translation derives from the Rus- sian use of neuter, masculine and feminine forms. In the prologue, Khlebni- kov makes the same word alternately masculine and feminine and gender can, somewhat awkwardly, be indicated to the reader-if not the listener- with parentheses. Kruchenykh, too, changes gender, as in the Traveler's song in the first scene, where the neuter word "lake" is given a masculine form. Although this change is meaningful in the context of the opera, it has no English equivalent.

Even the zaum or pure sound passages present problems of translation. In the first scene, Nero and Caligula sings letters of the alphabet. (The sin- gular has just been used, not in emulation of Kruchenykh's destruction of grammar, but because two actors are joined, as Cocteau would do later in his Romeo and Juliet, into one two-headed character.) Since the Russian letters have no exact English equivalent, however, Ewa Bartos has chosen to render the Russian sounds phonetically.

In several cases, Kruchenykh creates a noun from a verb, and these changes cannot always be rendered clearly in English. The verb "to sell" can, when converted into a noun indicating a place in the last line of the first scene, become "sellery," but the transformation of "to threaten" into the noun "threateners" in an earlier song by the Traveler is even less pointed and effective. In like manner, the sounds of words are very important, yet no translation can capture the dimensions of both sound and meaning. Sometimes the use of sound is poetic, echoing endings or entire words: in Russian, for example, the words translated as "sword" and "ball" in a speech of the Ill-Intentioned One in the first scene sound almost iden- tical.

On the other hand, it is possible to find English equivalents for many of Kruchenykh's linguistic deformations. Extra consonants, a lack of agree- ment in number, unusual gramatical order, verbs created from nouns, ne- ologisms and so forth can be rendered with some accuracy. Certainly, the general-if not always the specific-nature and variety of his historically significant work is apparent in translation.

*For an explanation of zaum as well as for information on the artistic movement of which Vic- tory Over the Sun was one manifestation, see Vladimir Markov's important, scholarly and de- tailed book Russian Futurism: a History (University of California, 1968).



Tomashevsky. Victory Over the Sun

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Transcript of Tomashevsky. Victory Over the Sun