Aleksei Kruchenykh

(1886 - 1968)

8032

David Burliuk a.o.

Дохлая луна

The croacked moon

Moscow: Gileia, 1913

195 x 155 mm. 120 pages 

Edition: 1,000

‘Futurists’ as a name appears in Russia for the first time in The croaked moon, an anthology of poetry and prose. Although stated as being published in Moscow, the book was in reality published in August 1913 in Kakhovka, a small town not far from the estate where the Burliuk family was living. On the title page it says that The croaked moon was the work of the ‘only futurists of the world’, which of course was not true and infuriated other futurist groups in Russia. The essay Liberation of the Word is of special interest as it represents the only opportunity for Livshits to oppose the 12th principle published only weeks before in the second volume of A trap for judges. If Pushkin and Dostoevskii had to be thrown overboard from the ship of modernity, than it was not because the futurists were obsessed with new themes (Kruchenykh) but because these classical works had the wrong perspective for this new era (Livshits). David and Vladimir Burliuk illustrated this book with two etchings and 18 lithographs. David used  this opportunity to publish 30 of his own poems in the book. The texts are printed with several kinds of typesets which of course could have been intentional, but also could have been the result of the limited numbers of lead letters present in the small printing firm in provincial Kakhovka.

References:

Markov 1969, pp. 178-179

Ex Libris 1974, no. 51

Compton 1978, p. 10

Compton 1983, plate 62

Los Angeles 1980, p. 128

Kovtun 1984, p. 70

Stanford 1989, p. 57

Munich 1991, no. 4

Bologna 1993, p. 86

Mainz 1993, p. 29

Munich 1993, p. 73

Paris 1995, p. 62

Getty 1997, no. 141

Moma 2002, no. 62

Brussels 2005, no. 15

Hellyer 2006, no. 80

Khachaturov 2009, p. 41

Vzorval 2010, no. 82 & no.88