Aleksei Kruchenykh

Aleksei Kruchenykh
Kruchenykh, Moscow 1913
Born	Aleksei Eliseevich Kruchenykh (1886-02-09)February 9, 1886 Olevka, Kherson province, Ukraine
Died	Moscow
Nationality	Russian
Known for	Poetry, Collage, Artist's book
Notable work	Universal War, 1916
Movement	Russian Futurism, Zaum

Aleksei Eliseevich Kruchenykh or Kruchonykh or Kruchyonykh (Russian: Алексе́й Елисе́евич Кручёных; 21 February 1886 – 17 June 1968), a well-known poet of the Russian "Silver Age", was perhaps the most radical poet of Russian Futurism, a movement that included Vladimir Mayakovsky, David Burliuk and others. Together with Velimir Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh is considered the inventor of zaum. Kruchenykh wrote the libretto for the Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun, with sets provided by Kazimir Malevich. He married Olga Rozanova, an avant-garde artist, in 1912.

He's also known for his Declaration of the Word as Such (1913): «The worn-out, violated word "lily" is devoid of all expression. Therefore I call the lily éuy – and original purity is restored.»

The Russian punk band Grazhdanskaya Oborona have a reggae-styled song called "Posveshtenie A. Kruchenykh" (Homage to A. Kruchenykh) on their 1990 concept album Instruktsiya po vyzhivaniyu.

External links

• On Kruchenykh (English)
• Kruchenykh in Tiflis (from Chapter Nine of G. Janecek, Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism) (English)
• Biography and poems (Russian)
• Biography, bibliography (Russian)
• Four zaum poems (Russian)
• Visual Poems 1917 - 1921
• Digitized Russian avant-garde books
• English translations of 4 poems
• Includes English translations of two poems, 118-120