Slap in the Face – Four Russian Futurist Manifestos
Translated by Boris Dralyuk

I got very squeally and excited last month when I finally treated myself to a copy of a lovely little book/chapbook/pamphlet/whatever you call it which brought together several pieces of writing involving my beloved Mayakovsky! “A Slap in The Face of Public Taste” was the manifesto of the Russian Futurist movement, first published in 1912; and it’s from that piece of writing that this collection takes its title.

The Russian Futurists were a group of poets and artists who adopted the Futurist movement of Marinetti which “espoused the rejection of the past, and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, youth and industry; it also advocated the modernization and cultural rejuvenation.” There were a number of sub-groups and one called Hylaea issued “Slap”, which was signed by David Burlyuk, Aleksandr Kruchenykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Viktor Khlebnikov. I’d come across “Slap” before in my readings of Mayakovsky, but never the three following manifestos, with the final one “A Drop of Tar” being from December 1915 and signed by Mayakovsky alone.

“Slap” is a fascinating collection of words, showing the gradual development of the Futurist artists over the years, and Dralyuk translates the manifestos with the verve and originality with which Mayakovsky and co wrote them. They were determined to break down the constraints surrounding their art, jettisoning all that had gone before, and declared that Pushkin, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky should be tossed overboard “from the steamship of modernity”. That kind of thinking was symptomatic of the Futurist movement, although some (Mayakovsky in particular) introduced a political element which might well have been missing from the work of some of those poets and artists more interested in formal experimentation.

Entertaining as the manifestos are, much of the appeal of this book comes from the extra material included. For a start, it’s a lovely thing in its own right; printed in colour on quality paper, “Slap” is heavily illustrated with images by Mayakovsky, Goncharova, Larianov, Burlyuk and others, as well as reproductions of the covers of the original journals in which the works appeared. Innovation was at hand everywhere, with one journal even having a wallpaper cover!

The icing on the cake, however, is the conversation reproduced in the back of the book between translator Boris Dralyuk and Saul Alpert-Abrams. The discussion is fascinating and erudite, throwing much light on the futurists’ poetry as well as giving useful context if the reader isn’t familiar with the period. Interestingly, they draw comparisons between translation and issuing a manifesto, and it’s fair to say that both are optimistic acts!

I haven’t come across the publisher Insert Blanc Press before but laudably they seem to focus very much on experimental literature. Here, they’ve produced a fascinating, beautiful and instructive object which I’m so pleased to at last have on my Mayakovsky shelf!

P.S. Did I mention it’s bilingual?? I can’t read Russian but I love looking at the cyrillic! 😀

The richness of a poet’s vocabulary is his justification