We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath … a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.

The movement created by Marinetti profoundly altered the contemporary art world in the years leading up to the First World War. But the Italian theorist was hardly the only member of the avant-garde interested in integrating technology and art. Russians numbered among the most innovative and influential of the new “Futurists.” Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchonykh, David Burlyuk, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Kazimir Malevich (among others) took up Marinetti’s challenge. They set-out to create new modes of communication that would transcend previous forms in the construction of a new aesthetic.

Of all the Russians who contributed to the emerging avant-garde perhaps none was better suited to the role of technological prophet than Vasily Vasilievich Kamensky (1884-1961). Beginning in 1908 as editor of the poetry journal Spring (Весна), and later as a participant in the literary group Hylaea and contributor to the movement’s foundational collection of poetry A Trap for Judges (Садок судей) (1910), Kamensky was among the earliest of the “Cubo-Futurists,” the most prominent Russian group to build on the ideas first developed by Marinetti. No less important, Kamensky was one of the very few Imperial Russian citizens who had direct experience with the era’s most revolutionary technological device: the airplane.

Kamensky’s first encounter with aviation came in the summer of 1910 when he flew as a passenger along with Vladimir Lebedev (one of Russia’s earliest pilots and aircraft constructors). Smitten by the “passion for wings,” the poet resolved to master the new art of flying. After placing an order for a Blériot XI of his own, he traveled to Paris where he took some half dozen lessons from Louis Blériot himself. Kamensky then returned to Russia to complete his informal training under the tutelage of Lebedev. Within several months he had made enough progress that he was able to pass the flying exam administered by the Imperial All-Russian Aero-Club. By the early spring of 1912, Kamensky had joined the small ranks of Imperial Russia’s first licensed pilots.

As it turned out, Kamensky’s tenure as a pilot was short-lived. The poet’s aerial career met an abrupt end only a few months after he had earned his wings. Following a near-fatal crash into a muddy bog, Kamensky abandoned aviation and returned to literature. Still, the airborne experiences profoundly shaped his artistic vision. In the years to come, Kamensky worked to incorporate the sights, sounds, and sensations of the new technology into his poetry and prose. The result was a series of radically new works that helped shape Cubo-Futurism and, in doing so, contributed to the rise of modern aesthetics.

Typical of Kamensky’s air-minded Cubo-Futurism was his 1912 poem “The Flight of Vasya Kamensky on an Aeroplane to Warsaw” which describes a pilot’s sensations as he prepares to depart from an aerodrome. Aside from the poem’s subject matter (which was itself quite novel), it was the striking composition of the piece that set it apart from contemporary works. Instructing his readers that the poem should be read “from the bottom of the page upward,” Kamensky employed a series of progressively smaller typefaces to communicate the experience of observing an airplane’s take-off, ascent, and final disappearance into the horizon. In retrospect, the poem is an early indication of the immense contributions that Russians were poised to make in the written and visual arts.

A more extreme (though less immediately obvious) example of Kamensky’s air-minded artistry is his 1914 “ferro-concrete” composition “Constantinople.” Although the work is typically identified as a “poem” it bears little resemblance to anything previously seen in that genre. “Constantinople” consists of words, sounds, letters, and numbers grouped together in apparently random fashion and arrayed within individual sub-sections comprising a larger square-shaped field. The words (and parts of words) chosen by the author clearly suggest things that one would encounter on a visit to the Turkish city. Here, one encounters “sailors” (матросы), “mullahs” (муллы), and “seagulls” (чайки). There, one can glimpse the “shores” of the “Bosphorous” (берег — Босфор) and the ancient cathedral “Haiga Sophia” (Ай Софи). But the “poem” has no beginning or end. It is impossible to “read” even in its original Russian. As such, it is essentially untranslatable.¹ So what, if anything, does it mean?

It is only when we recall Kamensky’s experience as an aviator that “Constantinople” makes sense. The visually arresting, unreadable composition is a literal word-map depicting the city’s architectural features, inhabitants, and urban neighborhoods as experienced from overhead while looking down from an airplane. Little-known beyond a small circle of Russian literary and cultural scholars, “Constantinople” is one of the earliest and most important examples of aviation’s vital role in transforming twentieth-century art.

And now, the musical portion of today’s post:

1. For Jack Hirschman’s “translation” of the poem see, Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris, eds. Poems for the Millennium. The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry. Volume One: From Fin-de-Siecle to Negritude (U of California Press, 1995.)

From the very beginning of their Campaign to Build the Red Air Fleet in the spring of 1923, Bolshevik Party officials oversaw the creation of propagandistic media aimed at inspiring citizens to join the voluntary society “Friends of the Air Fleet” (ODVF) and to contribute money toward the construction of airplanes. Posters, of course, played an important part of the state’s campaign but so, too, did written works including short stories, rhymes, and poems.

Most of the literary texts created to support ODVF have long since been forgotten, even by Russians. Very few (if any!) have been published in English translation. Nevertheless, these items are important for what they reveal about Soviet leaders’ intent and visions regarding the USSR’s emerging aviation culture.

The poem “Aero-verses” is a characteristic example. It was first published in 1925 by the short-lived journal Give Us Motors. High art it ain’t. But it reflects well two of the principal themes associated with ODVF’s initial campaign: that citizens should replace their faith in God with faith in technology, and that citizens’ should recognize as their duty participation in building aviation.

Here’s the English translation, followed by the Russian original:

“Aero-verses” (1925)

We no longer consider ourselves worthless dust.
Who taught us the narcotic of faith?
Skyward we launch the aero-squadron.
Our religion is the airplane.

Hey, wake up you blind and deaf ones,
Attend to the path of life,
We wrest power from the hands of nature
In establishing the air fleet.

Look upward, friend of the air fleet,
Let pride constrain your thoughts
That aerial flock is, after all your work.
The propellers were fastened by your dues.

Higher, comrade, lift your head.
Eyes wider with an intense glance,
See how they splendidly fly,
The steel children of the laboring mass.

Listen, the propeller whirling,
The aero ever higher climbs.
Adroitly moving through the sky,
Friends, it is our airplane.

*****

“Аэро-стихи”

[Даешь мотор, но. 5 (1925), ст. 30]

Довольно считать себя никчемною пылью.
Чему научил нас религии дурман?
В небо запустим аэро-эскадрилью.
Наша религия–аэроплан.

Эй, проснитесь, слепцы, глухие,
Слушайте жизни ход,
Вырвем власть из рук стихи,
Создавая воздушный флот.

Вверх гляди, друг воздухо-флота,
Гордостью мысли свои стреножь,
В стае воздушной твоя, ведь, работа,
Винтиком ввернут твой членский грош.

Выше, товарищ голову.
Шире зрачки напряженных глаз,
Видишь, как летят здорово,
Дети стальные трудящихся масс.

Слышишь, пропеллeр дыжится,
Аэро выше гляди берет.
Ловко по воздуху движется,
Наш, друзья, самолет.

*****

ScP