5 February 1893 year
В Kazan was born Vadim Shershenevich — an imagist poet of the Silver Age. A friend of Yesenin and an opponent of Mayakovsky.
We are the last in our caste, love in the remaining time
Us - peddlers of happiness, craftsmen of heartfelt lines!
His father was a law professor, a cadet, and later a deputy of the First State Duma. His mother was an opera singer.
From the age of 14, he lived in Moscow and studied at a private gymnasium, then at Moscow University. He completed an internship in Munich.
Even as a high school student, I became interested in the Symbolists - Balmont, Bryusov и Block. At 18, he published his first poetry collection. He also published under the pseudonyms V. Galsky, G. Pashkevich, and Georgy Gaer.
At 20, he founded the Mezzanine Poetry publishing house and a futurist group of the same name (it disbanded a year later). Other futurists— Boris Pasternak и Benedict Livshits — they criticized him, calling him a “narcissistic graphomaniac.”
During the First World War, he was at the front as a volunteer (a volunteer on preferential terms, before being drafted).
After the October Revolution, he lectured at Proletkult, worked with the People's Commissariat of Education and with the Lunacharsky propaganda train.
In 1918, together with Yesenin and Mariengof founded the "Order of Imagists", whose charter was personally approved by the People's Commissar of Education Lunacharsky. Their work is based on metaphor, a form that is more important than meaning (hence Shershenevich's book with the formula "2 × 2 = 5"). Their poetry was often perceived as marginal—the Imagists were renowned for their outrageous performances and provocative events.
A loudmouthed ten-year-old boy has died—futurism is dead. Let's all shout together: death to futurism and futureism!
(from the "Declaration of the Imagists")
Contemporary poetry doesn't burn, only brings a pleasant warmth. This warmth must transform into heat. To do this, we must move to the fire of images. Liberate the word, destroy grammar.
That same year, he published the love poem "Crematorium," a response to Mayakovsky's "A Cloud in Trousers." The poets vied for the public's attention: both were favorites. Mayakovsky criticized Shershenevich for "the most poetic scum of all poets" and "his ability to steal from everyone without blushing." He responded with dignity.
Shershenevich wielded a verbal rapier like no one else in Moscow. Invisible blood flowed in streams.
(Anatoly Mariengof)
In 1919, he headed the Moscow branch of the All-Russian Union of Poets. He advocated apoliticality in art and was briefly arrested for contacts with the anarchist party.
We, the Imagists, have never kowtowed to the state from the very beginning. The state doesn't recognize us—and thank God for that! We openly proclaim our slogan: Down with the state! Long live the separation of state and art!
The most famous collection is "A Horse Like a Horse." Collective editions include "Peddlers of Happiness" and "We Repent of What" (confiscated due to its provocative title, reminiscent of the abbreviation for the Moscow Cheka).
Soon the hordes will flow out to replace them
Those who don't know blood clots,
Engineers of Iron Glory
And the artisans of love.
And they will leave room in life
Free from machines and foundations:
Seven minutes to caress the bride,
Three seconds a day for poetry
In 1921, after Lunacharsky's devastating article, the Imagists came under pressure. The poet Innokenty Aksenov in his review he wrote about Shershenevich:
A type subject to liquidation and interesting only from the latter point of view
In 1925, the Order of Imagists disbanded.
You can't help but give these boys a plus: they did what others didn't dare to do - they didn't want to give up and defended their right as a writer to say what they wanted.
(emigrant writer Mikhail Osorgin)
In his later years, he worked in film and theater as a playwright and director. He translated extensively—a note reveals his mood at the time:
I finished Baudelaire. It doesn't make anyone feel any better.
With the onset of the Great Patriotic War, he evacuated to Altai and lived alone. He participated in literary concerts at defense plants and military hospitals and wrote texts for propaganda posters.
Died in Barnaul in 1942, at 49, from pulmonary tuberculosis.
Many of Shershenevich's works from the 1930s (including his last collection of poems, "So, the Bottom Line") were published only in the 1990s.
