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St Petersburg, December 1913 · written for this lesson

1. In December 1913, at the Luna Park theatre in St Petersburg, the Russian Futurists presented what they called the first Futurist opera: Victory over the Sun. The words were by Aleksei Kruchenykh, whose zaum poem you read in Unit 4, with a prologue by Velimir Khlebnikov. The music was by Mikhail Matyushin, and the sets and costumes were designed by the painter Kazimir Malevich. On the same programme was a play by the young poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, called simply Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy.

2. The story is strange and simple. A group of "strongmen of the future" capture the sun, lock it away, and replace it with a new, man-made light. Nature is defeated; the machine age begins. Much of the text was written in zaum, so the audience heard words that meant nothing. Malevich dressed the actors in stiff costumes made of cardboard and painted geometric shapes, so they moved like machines or puppets. One of his designs for the stage was a square divided into black and white. Two years later he painted his famous Black Square, and he said the idea began here.

3. Seven years later, in 1920, the artist El Lissitzky designed a new version of the opera as an "electro-mechanical show", with figures that would be moved by machines. It was never performed, but his designs were printed in 1923 and are now in museums such as MoMA in New York.

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) · written for this lesson

1. In Unit 1 you read the Russian Futurists' manifesto, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (1912). One of the four poets who signed it was Vladimir Mayakovsky. When the Bolshevik Revolution came in October 1917, he gave his art to it completely. "Accept or not accept? There was no such question for me," he later wrote about the Revolution.

2. In 1918 he wrote "Left March", with the dedication "To the Sailors". It is a poem for a marching crowd, meant to be shouted, not read quietly. In Russian, levoy! means "with the left foot!", the command soldiers shout when they march, and it also means "the left" in politics. The poem ends:

Who's that marching on the right?Left!Left!Left!

3. From 1919 to 1922, Mayakovsky drew and wrote posters for the Russian Telegraph Agency, called ROSTA windows. They were painted quickly with cardboard stencils and hung in shop windows, with simple pictures and short, rhyming lines about the news of the day. Poetry had become street art and propaganda at the same time. Later, Mayakovsky clashed with the new Soviet officials, who found his art too strange. He died in 1930, at the age of 36.

Ljubomir Micić and Zenit, 1921–1926 · written for this lesson

1. In February 1921, in Zagreb, a young Serbian poet from Croatia, Ljubomir Micić (1895–1971), started a magazine called Zenit ("Zenith", the highest point of the sky). It came out every month, first in Zagreb and later in Belgrade, and it printed texts in many languages. Its contributors included some of the most important artists in Europe: Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Archipenko, El Lissitzky, and even Marinetti.

2. In June 1921 Micić published the Zenitist Manifesto. Unlike Marinetti's manifesto, it was against war. It spoke for humanist ideals and for a new, united Europe. Micić also had a provocative idea: the "barbarogenius", a wild, young Balkan spirit that would bring new life to an old, tired Western Europe.

3. Zenit was one of the most important avant-garde magazines in Europe, with 43 issues in all. In December 1926 the authorities of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes banned it, and Micić left the country for Paris. Remember Fiume: Zagreb is about 130 kilometres away in a straight line. In the same years and the same region, the avant-garde produced both D'Annunzio's warlike theatre and Micić's anti-war magazine.