The story of Vasilisk Gnedov — the man behind Death to Art
Death to Art is one of the most prominent works of the Russian avant-garde and experimental literature beyond borders. Unfortunately, it is mostly known for its final entry, “The Poem of the End” and its gimmick — being a blank poem. This poem led Gnedov to the unfortunate pigeonholing as one of those who wrote gibberish to beset the public and cause a fuss, which is the opposite of what Vasilisk Gnedov was trying to accomplish.
As a writer myself, I know how important it is to keep the narrative clear. Because of that, I want to explain who Vasilisk Gnedov was and what he was trying to do.
Vasilisk Gnedov is a kind of poet who is oddly independent of the historical context. For better or for worse — he is a footnote in literary history. A curious figure who didn’t make it. “The Poem of the End” remains in the narrative as an example of a blank conceptual piece like 4'33 — it is a dumb out of context interpretation, but that is how it got stuck.
Everything else, even the rest of the cycle — merely exists. He is mentioned alongside many prominent figures of Russian Futurism, and his work fits kind of neatly into the movement, but at the same time he sticks out like an outsider. There was something that made Gnedov different from the rest of the futurist bunch.
For some reason, he was able to go further. And that what makes him attractive.
But let’s get back to the start.
The beginning
Vasyl Ivanovich Gnedov was born on March 6th, 1890 in Mankovo-Berezovka Slovoda, of the Donetsk region of the Don Host Oblast. His father Ivan Afanasievich was from Tsaritsyno and had some education, while his mother Hanna Andiyivna was completely illiterate (the prevailing trend at that time). The family was Ukrainian, and the Russian language was an outside entity. While Gnedov never really expressed his identity as Ukrainian, it is all over his work, it is in the very foundational of his artistic program.
Here’s why: Ukrainians had been historically oppressed for centuries and treated like second-rate barbarians. Since this was not a natural state of things, resistance was persistent to the point it has become an instinctive reaction to any threat or oppressive rule. This mindset spreads into literature too. Ukrainians have a natural distaste for the status quo. They want to blow things up and wreck what is left because it doesn’t work for them. This attitude is all over Gnedov’s early work. He didn’t give a damn about how things are done, and he was going to figure out his way and not overly rely on the crutches of traditions and conventions.
This is parallel with the history of Ukrainian literature. It is defined by defiance. To name a few parallels:
- Ivan Kotlyaresky’s Eneida is a punk reinvention of the classic tale that went so far it is a thing of its own.
- Taras Schevchenko’ Kobzar is a Tunguska-sized Krakatoa eruption scale event that brought the sweeping grandeur of the written word in a simply digestible form.
- Ivan Franko’s Rotten Leaves poetry collection turned sentiments and romance inside out and warped it backward with seething nihilism and spleen.
- Pavlo Tychyna’s Clarinets of the Sun is a literal manifestation of the language going supernova and bending the fabric of reality to its taste.
The Gnedov family was very religious. Vasyl was sent to learn Slavic Church studies. He read psalms to his father and sang as a discant in a local church choir. The family had no books (the prevailing trend at that time), so Vasyl was devouring every single bit of knowledge he managed to get. Like any lower-class kid who was putting an extra effort to get his due — he always wanted to know more and go further. That’s natural when things don’t come to you quickly. This is a foundational element of his personality.
Vasyl first went to a two-grade school in Mankovo-Berezovka and then moved to a four-grade school in a neighboring village, Kamenska, which he finished in 1906. After that, he attended technical college in Rostov-on-Don. He didn’t fit in with the local crowd, so he tried to establish himself as a defiant one.
Gnedov transformed his name from Vasyl to Vasilisk because it is much cooler that way and because it referred to the mythical lizard monster. Inspired by the exploits of Ihor Severyanin and Ego-Futurists, he tried to pull off his approximation of their jams to mixed results. He was obnoxious, acted provocative, and was all-around hostile to all forms of authority. So Gnedov was kicked out of the college because of his attitude. And he felt fine about that because the Russian province was a dead end.
After a short stint working as a railway technician assistant on the Amvrosievka station, he decided to move to St.Petersburg as this was the place where all the action was happening. Eventually, he found his way to Severyanin and Ego-Futurists.
By the time Gnedov had met Severyanin, Severyanin was on the outs with the Ego-Futurists. So he gave the contacts of his former cohort, Ivan Ignatiev, who had taken over as the leader in late 1912. Gnedov found some success performing with Ego-Futurists. They had reliable press coverage which opened up some publishing opportunities.
1913 was a big year for Vasilisk. He had two books coming out that year. First — The Gift to the Sentiments which more or less a distillation of his early work. If anything, it pointed out that Vasilisk had done his homework and knew how to write poems in the ego-futurist style. The poems showed some promise but nothing in particular. However, the best was yet to come.
Later that year he released Death to Art, which is the book you are holding in your hands right now.
Death to Art
To understand the significance of this book, you need to understand the difference between Vasilisk Gnedov and the rest of the futurist bunch. Death to Art is an incredible document of an artist trying to go beyond, deep into parts unknown. The thing with Gnedov and the futurists was that Gnedov meant what he was declaring. While the majority of Russian futurists (aside from Khlebnikov, Burlyuk, and Kruchenykh) were mostly wimps with more bark than bite, Gnedov was all business. He wanted to make a difference.
Here’s what Alexander Zakrzhevsky wrote about Vasilisk: “Egofuturist poet — Vasilisk Gnedov — is an extreme anarchist. He despises any tradition or established forms of art. He went so far in his quest that even Kruchenykh is not on par with him. He writes poetry on his custom-made language and dedicates his work to those “who are deaf and blind.” You can chant these poems. They make quite an impression as if there was no 20 centuries of culture, no human concepts or burden of logic. As if we have reverted to the dark animal paradise and embraced its primal language with its faint cognition of chaos.”
That was part of Gnedov’s artistic program. He wanted to move forward. He wasn’t into the social stuff, and he wasn’t interested in establishing himself as an authority figure with connections and opportunities. He wrote poetry because it was his way of studying the world around him and understanding things.
His attempts at deconstructing language are more akin to constructing an artificial language than composing nonsensical sound poetry. He tried to figure out the other way around — more streamlined and efficient. What he lacked was the scientific method. He did everything on the gut, and it is fascinating to try to figure out his train of thought while translating the texts.
Death to Art is not so much writing as documentation of concepts or images in a specific form, as it is poetry happening from perceiving it.
Here’s how “Poem of the end” was performed. In his memoirs, Vladimir Pyast wrote that Gnedov performed this poem by a hand gesture — “there were no words — just a hand gesture — starting near the hairline with a rapid sweep down and shift on the right. That poem was something resembling a hook”.
Gnedov was going for the impressionist style in its ultimate form. Stripped of verbosity and doubled down on the impression of the concept. He wanted poems to happen in the mind and not on paper — just as humans perceive the world around them.
Who knows what could have been if the reality hasn’t interfered and spoiled the party?
The end
In early 1914, Ivan Ignatiev had committed suicide, and that spelled the end of the St.Petersburg period for Gnedov. He then moved to Moscow and had a brief stint in the group “Centrifuge”, which resulted in a spot in the “Rukonog” (Handleg) almanac. But things weren’t working out for Gnedov. His stuff wasn’t fitting in, and he felt like a pariah.
But since it was 1914, he had no time to be sad because by September he was drafted into the army. It was the time of The Great War. Gnedov spent two years in the military, fighting in the fields of Galychyna and Bukovina. He received a Medal of Saint George for his service, and in 1916 he was sent to Chuguev military college. He graduated holding the rank of praporschick in February of 1917 and was sent to the Spassky barracks in Moscow. Later that year he joined the mutiny and later became the caption of the Kremlin’s arsenal guard. During one of the skirmishes in October, Gnedov was badly shellshocked, and that led to his discharge.
After the October Coup D’etat, in 1918 he tried to work with the Cubo-Futurist group and even released one of their zines. However, the horses had left the barn by that point, and Gnedov was a Stranger in a Strange Land. Nobody gave a damn about him.
Around the same time, he met Olga Pilatska — one of the old bolsheviks, who was one of the earliest of Lenin’s accomplices dating back to the immigration days. Pilatska is the crucial figure in Gnedov’s later life.
The year 1918 was the breaking point for Gnedov. The combination of battlefield injuries, years of untreated PTSD, and feelings of rejection by the literary community had led to a severe nervous breakdown. Pilatska had Gnedov institutionalized a couple of times during that year. His state stabilized, but in the aftermath of the breakdown, he completely abandoned writing. There are no known pieces written by Gnedov between 1920 and 1938. Pilatska helped Gnedov with employment and in 1922 Gnedov and Pilatska moved to Ukraine, where Pilatska continued her communist party work while Gnedov pursued a career in engineering. They stayed in Ukraine until they both got arrested in 1938.
Pilatska was executed later that year, while Gnedov was sent to the Kazakh-Kyrgyz border. After the release, he worked on different factories of Middle Asia and later Dagestan. He was rehabilitated during The Thaw and moved back to Kyiv in the mid-50s. In the early 60s, he met Maria Sobolevska and moved with her to Kherson.
After the release and rehabilitation, Gnedov resumed writing and even tried to socialize with fellow writers. His most prominent contact of the late period was Serge Segay who later edited a collection of Gnedov’s poetry. However, the later Gnedov was a broken man who had abandoned his initial quest and mostly wrote for his amusement ever since. If you want to keep the mystique of Gnedov’s figure — stick to Death to Art and think about it as some sort of transmission from parts unknown.
