Ivan Aksenov: Odopisec Ėjfelevoj bašni

Ivan Aksenov (1884–1935) was an outstanding figure in Russian Avant-Garde, member of the group “Tsentrifuga” and later of the Literary Centre of Constructivists, a subtle art, cinema, theatre and literary critic, a poet, a very close collaborator of Meyerhold, a beloved teacher for Eisenstein, the author of the first monograph in the world on Picasso’s work and of the first Russian translations of many Elizabethan dramas. In particular, it is his poetry that strikes for its originality, although his contemporaries did not devote much attention to it. After his collection of poems “Invalid foundations” (1916), only few poetic texts were published during his life; the second collection “Eiffeleya” — 30 odes to the Eiffel Tower (1916–1918) — had lain in archives for almost 90 years; in recent time we have managed to find some pieces of information about the project of a third book of verse “Odes and dances” (1920’s), of which we just know few texts. This is the first critical edition of the complete collection of poems written by Aksenov (almost 80 texts, 7 of which are published for the first time). It boasts almost 100 rare illustrations, including 16 portraits and photographs of Ivan Aksenov, some autographs and drafts of the graphic project by Lyubov Popova from the book “Ejffeleya”. The texts are widely commented (both philologically and hermeneutically), taking into account all the different versions of every single poem; the introductory essay aims at underlining Aksenov’s particular place in Russian Futurist poetry: his style was directly influenced by Western French post-symbolists who were not so popular in 1910’s Russia, he introduced new forms in Russian verse and often resorted to a special kind of urban stream of consciousness. The book is enriched by an updated bibliography of the studies on Aksenov and of memories on him by his contemporaries.