Poet’s Flight (Russian poets-futurists and an aviation)

Abstract

The intensive development of an aviation in the beginning of the XX century was reflected in many spheres of life: a space of human dwelling considerably widened, a rate of movement increased extremely, new cognitive horizons cleared. At that time an aviation became one of the most showy manifestations of the technological progress. Futurists as active enthusiasts of this progress put forward the theme of aviation in their creative work and some of them used in working-out of this theme the personal experience of the flights. In their poetry the new image of the world was bounded up with the theme of aviation, the new aspects of often tragic relations between man and machine were revealed. Futurist Vasilij Kamenskij was the most outstanding figure in the rank of poets-aviators. He became a professional pilot and displayed the theme of the flight in ont’s poetical works of buoyant tone. Kamenskij created the rich vocabulary of the thematic neologisms, which were notable for striking expression owing to unusual morphosemantics and phonetic system. Velemir Khlebnikov dramatized the “aerial ways” of man, when he depicted them against a background of the world catastrophes. Such subject was worked out by Blok in some poems of the aviation.