Russian Formalism, Futurism and
Revolution: Elena Guro (1877-1913)
Russian Formalist writer and
contemporary of Roman Jakobson
(pseudonym: Aljagrov)
DR MARY COGHILL
Fellow at The London Metropolitan
University
‘For lovers of coloured cardboard boxes and
powdered elements
The city a lamppost the street’s din and a car’s
horn the daughter of rooms etc.
Along their shattered nerves like words or
crazy verses
Juggling the intersections the city’s nights
dance......
It blows eveningly and windily
O you city ensued inhumanly’
‘chr. greet fg evl if clear don’t see. ressur
words sent bottom ressurwooods yr mnd. wt save skn splyd
mowgli shush’
spit not t eat shchi so’d year shu = year pop
weave bipl.O
futpud....’
‘Scatterbrain, madman, soarer,
maker of spring storms,
sculptor of restless thoughts,
driving the azure!
Listen you mad seeker,
rush, dash,
shoot past, unshackled
intoxicator of storms’
Streets curve around the city without
beginning or end. Windows. Droplets.
Window-sills. Cats, pigeons. Ahead it
unfolds, shuts itself up, opens up. Turn
after turn. Reflections, resonant voices.
Secrets, unknown desultory thoughts,
scraps of flowers, scraps of conversation’
(from Šarmanka, p10).
‘
‘the dynamics of Futurist breakup and
manipulation of fragmented form...a
Futurist elasticity of imagery in its
convergence of interiors and exteriors,
struggle against confines (it had become
the room “too white and bright and
narrow”) and use of fragment and
periphery (“the dusty edge of the table”)’
(Tomei, 1999, p395).
‘The street seethes with black and fiery
patches. From secluded corners of
houses, small dark insects are thrown on
to the street, Immediately the crowd, and
the crush of noises and shapes, rush
deafeningly at them...Stunned, they look
for a harbour within the roaring river of the
street.’
‘We logically assume that the “I” stands for the
narrator, but in light of following complications
...we will come to realize that the “I” might be the
city, personified. For the man is said to have
spent his day walking around the city in a state of
half madness, thinking about his dreams....The
time indications show that the day has passed
between the beginning and the end of this
address. Thus the address could have been
made to him by the city while he walked around.
He walked around dreaming about the real life of
the city, but he walked around in the daytime’
(Jensen 1977, p92).