Vasily Kamensky
Encyclopedia
Russian Futurism
Russian Futurism is the term used to denote a group of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism"...
poet, playwright, and artist as well as one of the first Russian aviator
Aviator
An aviator is a person who flies an aircraft. The first recorded use of the term was in 1887, as a variation of 'aviation', from the Latin avis , coined in 1863 by G. de la Landelle in Aviation Ou Navigation Aérienne...
s.
Kamensky was born in the Perm
Perm
Perm is a city and the administrative center of Perm Krai, Russia, located on the banks of the Kama River, in the European part of Russia near the Ural Mountains. From 1940 to 1957 it was named Molotov ....
district, where his father was an inspector of goldfields. (The story that he was born on a boat on the Kama River
Kama River
Kama is a major river in Russia, the longest left tributary of the Volga and the largest one in discharge; in fact, it is larger than the Volga before junction....
, which he himself promoted and recounts in his memoirs, is untrue.) He lost his parents at the age of five and went to live in Perm
Perm
Perm is a city and the administrative center of Perm Krai, Russia, located on the banks of the Kama River, in the European part of Russia near the Ural Mountains. From 1940 to 1957 it was named Molotov ....
with his aunt, whose husband piloted steam tugs on the river; he later wrote "My whole childhood took place in a house on the Kama wharf among tugs, barges, rafts, boats, stevedores, sailors, bargees, captains..." He left school in 1900, and from 1902 to 1906 worked as a railroad clerk. In 1904 he began to contribute to the newspaper Permskii Krai, publishing poems and notices; at the newspaper he met local Marxists and developed his own leftist political orientation. At this time he also took up acting and traveled around Russia with a theatrical troupe. On his return to the Urals, he became an agitator
Agitator
An agitator is a person who actively supports some ideology or movement with speeches and especially actions. The Agitators were a political movement as well as elected representatives of soldiers, including the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell, during the English Civil War. They were also known...
and led the strike committee at Nizhny Tagil
Nizhny Tagil
Nizhny Tagil is a city in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia, situated east of the virtual border between Europe and Asia. Population: -History:...
, for which he was sentenced to prison. On his release, he traveled to Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
and Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
; the impressions from this Eastern trip would leave a mark on his later work.
In 1906 he arrived in Moscow, where in 1908 he began working as an editor on the journal Vesna (Spring), meeting important Moscow writers such as David Burlyuk, with whom he studied painting, and Velimir Khlebnikov
Velimir Khlebnikov
Velimir Khlebnikov , pseudonym of Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov , was a central part of the Russian Futurist movement, but his work and influence stretch far beyond it.Khlebnikov belonged to Hylaea,...
. Two years later the three collaborated with other writers on the anthology Sadok sudei (A cage [or hatchery] for judges) and formed the proto-Futurist group Hylaea ( [Gileya]), soon joined by Aleksey Kruchenykh and Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was a Russian and Soviet poet and playwright, among the foremost representatives of early-20th century Russian Futurism.- Early life :...
. In 1910 Kamensky published his first prose work, the short novel Kamenka (The mud hut), "in which urban life is abandoned for the joy and beauty of nature," but its lack of success temporarily discouraged him from further literary endeavor. Kamensky left Moscow to travel around the country, and became one of the first Russians to master the new art of aviation, flying a Blériot XI
Blériot XI
The Blériot XI is the aircraft in which, on 25 July 1909, Louis Blériot made the first flight across the English Channel made in a heavier-than-air aircraft . This achievement is one of the most famous accomplishments of the early years of aviation, and not only won Blériot a lasting place in...
; he brought the Russian word самолет [samolyot] 'airplane' into circulation. After an airplane crash in 1911, however, he gave up flying. For a couple of years he lived on his estate near Perm, but in 1913 he moved back to Moscow, though he toured Russia with Burlyuk and Mayakovsky, promoting Futurism; "from this time Kamensky was an invariable participant in Futurist collections, newspapers, journals, and public appearances." He also returned to literary activity, in 1914 publishing his poetry collection Tango s korovami
Tango With Cows
Tango With Cows: Ferro-Concrete Poems is an artists' book by the Russian futurist poet Vasily Kamensky, with additional illustrations by the brothers David and Vladimir Burliuk...
(Tango with cows) and in 1915 his long poem Stenka Razin, about the 17th-century rebel
Stenka Razin
Stepan Timofeyevich Razin Тимофеевич Разин, ; 1630 – ) was a Cossack leader who led a major uprising against the nobility and Tsar's bureaucracy in South Russia.-Early life:...
.
He welcomed the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
of 1917, and was one of the first writers elected to the Moscow Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. In November he "persuaded Filippov, the Moscow baker (his shops had been the center of struggle during the February Days and even earlier during the 1905 revolt in Moscow), to subsidize a small café for poets. It was located in an old laundry on a small pereulok called Nastasyinsky just off the Tverskaya." (Soon anarchists began frequenting the Poets' Café, and after it closed in April 1918 they set up their journal Anarkhiya there.) For the first anniversary of the October Revolution, he turned Stenka Razin into a play; Robert Leach writes that this "most convincing version created a very strong impression when it was presented at the Vvedensky People's House, Moscow":
Stenka Razin was played by Nikolai Znamensky from the Moscow Art Theatre, the play was designed in an attractive childish-primitive style by Pavel Kuznetsov and directed by Meyerhold's former pupil, Arkady Zonov, and Vasily Sakhnovsky, formerly Komissarzhevsky's partner at the theatre named after Vera Komissarzhevskaya. It was, wrote one critic, an 'enormous success', partly at least, it should be noted, because it 'reeked of streets and circus'.... The play employs an utterly direct and simple style, with plenty of clowning but a minimum of Futurist mannerisms, and achieves something of the spirit of the folktale.
That was the peak of Kamensky's career. In the 1920s he played a minor role in Mayakovsky's LEF
LEF (journal)
LEF was the journal of the Left Front of the Arts , a widely ranging association of avant-garde writers, photographers, critics and designers in the Soviet Union. It had two runs, one from 1923 to 1925 as LEF, and later from 1927 to 1929 as Novy LEF...
group; in the 1930s he wrote his memoir, Put' entuziasta (The path of an enthusiast, 1931), and two more historical dramas, Emelyan Pugachev (1931) and Ivan Bolotnikov (1934). On April 19, 1948, he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed until his death in 1961; the house in which he lived in the village of Troitsa in the Perm Krai
Perm Krai
Perm Krai is a federal subject of Russia that came into existence on December 1, 2005 as a result of the 2004 referendum on the merger of Perm Oblast and Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug. The city of Perm became the administrative center of the new federal subject...
from 1932 to 1951 is now a museum.
The Dictionary of Literary Biography
Dictionary of Literary Biography
The Dictionary of Literary Biography is a specialist encyclopedia dedicated to literature. Published by Gale, the 375-volumes set covers a wide variety of literary topics, periods, and genres, with a focus on American and British literature....
sums up his career in these words:
Kamensky was involved in significant literary events throughout his career and knew many people who were central to the Russian avant-garde. His zhelezobetonnye poemy (ferroconcrete poems) were among the boldest and most distinctive experiments in Russian Futurism, and he freely adapted other Futurist techniques to his own impressionist style. Although his greatest contribution to literature was most likely his discovery of Velimir Khlebnikov, Kamensky was a creative poet in his own right and an active participant in the artistic life of Russia in the first third of the twentieth century.