A magnificent eyewitness

Perhaps not a single period of the history of Russian literature was characterized by such a quantity and a variety of literary trends, schools and groups, as the first quarter of the 20th century. Some of them existed for quite some time, others disappeared, barely originating. Along with the emergence of each new direction on the pages of magazines and the covers of collections, the names of new poets appeared. One of these names is Vadim Gabrielevich Shershenevich, in whose work the whole history of Russian poetry was reflected in the early twentieth century. Shershenevich in the early 1920s, one might say, knew "all of Moscow". He was an indispensable participant in various literary assemblies, the initiator and organizer of collections and almanacs. His name did not leave the poster of noisy disputes and evenings of poetry. One after another, books of his poems appeared. Shershenevich’s early poems were close to the poetry of the Symbolists. But soon urban motifs sounded in his works, and he became an active propagandist of the poetics of futurism.
However, neither symbolism nor futurism of Shershenevich was really fascinated, in poetry he was looking for his own ways. Along with the memories and poems of different years, the poems of Vadim Shershenevich ("Crematorium: the Imazhinist Poem", the Song of the Song "," Angel of Disaster ", etc), plot and experimental prose (" Diary of George "," bell of the dead man, are also included in the real edition. "," Princess Karakatitseva "and others) and journalism (" On the Fun in Art ", “An open letter to the poet Rurik Ivnev",“ Today and Tomorrow of Russian Futurism ”, etc)