Pis'ma v Sigeisk by Nikolai Khardzhiev (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 125 him in the first place. And this absence of tools becomes even more peculiar when the only other composer quoted in interview isGrigorii Frid, an intrigu ingmusician whose specific history is also here leftlargelyundiscussed. In any case, why confine quoted comment to these two? Presumably Tomoff met many othermusicians with things to say during his time inRussia. There are certainly plenty of them still tottering around on the streets ofMoscow and St Petersburg. There is a whole oral history to be written here. All in all, Tomoff s book seems best approached as an interim report from a much larger research project in progress. He is to be applauded as a pio neer, though on the evidence of a couple of unfortunate passing observations, he should avoid musicological comments in future unless he is prepared to be the one to tackle the crucial but extremely difficult task of weaving the history of the union into the history of themusic it created. This is certainly a task someone should take on sometime. Chicago, IL Gerard McBurney Khardzhiev, Nikolai. Pis'ma v Sigeisk.Vvedenie i kommentarii Sergei Sigei. Pegasus Oost-Europese Studies, 4. Pegasus, Amsterdam, 2006. ix 4- 295 pp. Illustrations. 32.00 (paperback). Nikolai Khardzhiev (1903-93), famous Soviet art historian and collector of paintings and manuscripts bymany importantRussian twentieth-centuryart istsand writers, emigrated toHolland in 1993 in order to save his collection and archive. As a result of this move, Khardzhiev became a cause of consid erable controversy, and he himself felthe was a victim of corruption and theft: many among the Kazemir Malevich paintings, letters and manuscripts from Khardzhiev's archive went on sale in Europe without his approval. Various 1990smedia reports featuringKhardzhiev overshadowed the fact that Khardzhiev had played an instrumental role in the rediscovery in the 1960s of the Russian avant-garde. Khardzhiev's personal friendship with many prominent modernists ? including Malevich, Aleksei Kruchenykh, Daniil Kharms, Marina Tsvetaeva, Anna Akhmatova, Velimir Khlebnikov and Vladimir Maiakovskii ? and his superb knowledge of the avant-garde's aesthetic experiments are reflected in his conversations and correspondence with friends and in his essays and autobiographical writing. The present volume has been prepared for publication byWillem West steijn, a well-known Dutch specialist on Russian poetry. The book contains 116 of Khardzhiev's letterspenned between 1981 and 1990 to Sergei Sigei (1947-) who, togetherwith his wife Ry Nikonova (pseudonym Anna Tarshis), was an active member of a small group of Neo-Futurists. They also defined themselves as transpoety or transfuturisty. This group was active inRussia in the 1960s to 1990s, producing the samizdat magazine Number (Nomer)and thirty issues of the journal Transponans to which Khardzhiev contributed under various pseudonyms such as Nikodimov, Feofan Buka and Feofan Ivanovich Benkendorf. (Genrikh Sapgir also published several poems in this journal.) Khardzhiev's humorous poems featuring Kruchenykh, Daniil Kharms and 126 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 2OO9 Gnedov which are included in the correspondence reinforce the avant-garde notion of the livingword and bring back to life the forgotten figures and ideas of the Russian avant-garde. The book also contains various pictograms and visual poems of Sigei and Nikonova thatwere sent toKhardzhiev, in addition to Sigei's illustrations ofKhlebnikov's works and some insightfuldiscussions of Vasilisk Gnedov's poetry. Khardzhiev's comments on Gnedov are related to Gnedov's collected poems which Sigei compiled for publication. The cover of Gnedov's book published in Italy in 1992 is reproduced on page 168: itfeatures Sigei's playful portrait of Gnedov. In his letters to Khardzhiev, Sigei ? who was also interested inKhlebnikov and Kruchenykh ? probed Khardzhiev to provide extensive comment on the history of Russian futurism. Among some fasci nating responses to Sigei's questions, we find Khardzhiev asserting that Malevich's radical, anti-realist costume design created for the production of the 1913opera Victoryoverthe Sun {Pobedanad solntsem) stirred much controversy among itsRussian audience. Khardzhiev's letter suggests thatMalevich's designs were much more innovative and exciting thanwere Matiushin's music and Kruchenykh's trans-rational text (p. 167).Khardzhiev's lettersare full of many biased remarks about his contemporaries: they include his comment that examples of Futurist art can be found in thepossession of...