Boris Grigoriev

(1886 - 1939)

1293

Vasilii Kamenskii

Землянка

The mudhut

St. Petersburg: Obshchestv. polza, 1911

217 x 175 mm. 172 pages. 

Edition: unknown. 

This story of a man, leaving his lover to live in a mud hut on the bank of a river in the country, was published by Kamenskii in November 1910. The key figure, like a kind of back-to-nature activist, tries to settle the ruins of his early life in the tranquillity of nature. The novel is a mixture of prose and poetry. On it, Kamenskii claimed to be the inventor of ‘a new kind of novel’. It is a romantic story with autobiographical elements that display a naïve glamorizing of the self of the author. The book however did not meet with favourable reviews and Kamenskii left wife (the first of many) and home. He travelled to Europe to learn aviation, bought a plane and came back to Russia to become a famous air pioneer. Eventually, when he met Burliuk and Maiakovskii the trio formed a perfect launching platform for public scandals on which Russian futurism would thrive for many years. The cover of the book and 3 illustrations are designs by Boris Grigoriev. These were his first book illustrations and they show clearly their relation with the art of Mir Iskusstva and the Art Nouveau. The designs are not exceptionally good, but they are of value as they fill the gap between symbolist art and the beginning of Russian avant-garde art

References:

Markov 1969, pp. 29-32

Stommels 1993, p. 23

Galeeva 1995, pp. 11

LS 2004, p. 52

LS 2005, p. 39

Galeeva 2007, p. 25