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The Prose of Anatolii Mariengof

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From Pushkin to Palisandriia

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Abstract

Few scholars in the Soviet Union or the West have devoted serious critical attention to the works of Anatolii Borisovich Mariengof (1897–1962). During the heyday of his notoriety, from 1919 to 1927, Mariengof revelled in literary-bohemian ‘scandals’ as a founding father of Russian Imaginism. Under the group’s own imprint, ‘Imazhinisty’, he issued controversial verse, drama and theory, baiting the Moscow public and outraging a gamut of aesthetic sensibilities (from aristocratic to proletarian) by a show of cynicism and amoralism.

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Notes

  1. See A. Lunacharskii, ‘Pis’mo v redaktsiiu’, Izvestiia, 14 April 1921, p. 2. See also Gordon McVay, Esenin: A Life (Ann Arbor, Ardis and London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1976), pp. 150–52, and passim on Mariengof.

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  2. D. Furmanov, Iz dnevnika pisatelia (Moscow, 1934), p. 71.

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  3. I. A. Bunin, Vospominaniia (Paris, Vozrozhdenie, 1950), p. 16.

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  4. See, for instance, V. Friche, ‘Literaturnoe odichanie’, Vechernie Izvestiia (Moscow), 15 February 1919, p. 1; V. Iretskii, ‘Plavil’nia slov’, Vestnik literatury (Petersburg), IX (1920), 9–10;

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  5. A. Evgen’ev, ‘Perly i adamanty imazhinizma’, Vestnik literatury, X (1921), 6–7 (Tor Mariengof the revolution is a mincing-machine … What is this? Cannibalism or psychosis? Evidently, the latter …’.); L’vov-Rogachevskii, Imazhinizm i ego obrazonostsy: Esenin, Kusikov, Mariengof, Shershenevich (‘Ordnas’, 1921), especially pp. 33–45, the section entitled ‘Miasorubka’.

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  6. See Riurik Ivnev, Chetyre vystrela v Esenina, Kusikova, Mariengofa, Shershenevicha (Moscow, 1921), pp. 18–21.

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  7. See Riurik Ivnev, U podnozhiia Mtatsmindy (Moscow, 1973), p. 82.

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  8. See Anatolii Mariengof, Roman bez vran’ia, first edition (Leningrad, ‘Priboi’, 1927), 155 pp., 10000 copies; second edition (Leningrad, ‘Priboi’, 1928), 157 pp., 7000 copies; third edition (Berlin, ‘Petropolis’, 1929), 158 pp. The second and third editions, which are identical, slightly amend and correct the first edition (for instance, providing accurate chapter numbers, a different death for N. L. Shvarts, and a kinder portrayal of A. M. Kozhebatkin). There may also have been a third ‘Priboi’ edition (Leningrad, 1929) — see note 19 below. Quotations in the main text are from the first edition, indicated as RBV.

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  9. See Anatolii Mariengof, Buian-ostrov (Moscow, 1920), pp. 11–12.

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  10. See Anatolii Mariengof, Roman bez vran’ia (reprint, Oxford, 1979), pp. xvii–xviii, lxiv.

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  11. See Anatolii Mariengof, Novyi Mariengof (Moscow, 1926), 2000 copies. The book is called Stikhi i poemy 1922–1926 on the title-page.

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  12. Anatolii Mariengof, Tsiniki: Roman (Berlin, ‘Petropolis’, 1928), 160 pp. It is not clear which edition of Tsiniki was published by October 1928 — the Russian (by ‘Petropolis’), or the German (by Fischer).

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  13. See Iu. N. Tynianov, Poetika: Istoriia literatury: Kino (Moscow, 1977), p. 467.

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  14. Anatolii Mariengof, Buian-ostrov (Moscow, 1920), p. 9. Compare Oscar Wilde, in his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891): There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.’.

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  15. See Gordon McVay, ‘The Tree-stump and the Horse: The Poetry of Alexander Kusikov’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, XI (1978), 129.

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  16. See V. I. Kachalov, ‘Vstrechi s Eseninym’, Krasnaia niva, II (1928), 19.

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  17. Entry on Mariengof in Victor Terras (ed.), Handbook of Russian Literature (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1985), p. 274.

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Authors
  1. Gordon McVay
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, UK

    Arnold McMillin (Professor of Russian Literature) (Professor of Russian Literature)

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© 1990 School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London

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McVay, G. (1990). The Prose of Anatolii Mariengof. In: McMillin, A. (eds) From Pushkin to Palisandriia. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21065-7_10

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