Voiceless Vanguard

Voiceless Vanguard
Northwestern University Press

Studies in Russian Literature and Theory
Series Editors
Robert Belknap
Caryl Emerson
Gary Saul Morson
William Mills Todd III
Andrew Wachtel
Voiceless Vanguard
THE INFANTILIST AESTHETIC OF

THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE
Sara Pankenier Weld
northwestern university press / evanston, illinois

Northwestern University Press
www.nupress.northwestern.edu
This book has been published with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation.
Copyright © 2014 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2014. All rights

reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weld, Sara Pankenier, author.

Voiceless vanguard : the infantilist aesthetic of the Russian avant-garde /
Sara Pankenier Weld.
pages cm. — (Northwestern University Press studies in Russian literature and
theory)
ISBN 978-0-8101-2984-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Russian literature—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Avant-garde
(Aesthetics)—Russia (Federation)—History—20th century. 3. Literature,
Experimental—Russia (Federation)—History and criticism. 4. Arts, Russian—
20th century. 5. Voice in literature. 6. Children in literature. 7. Children in art.
I. Title. II. Series: Studies in Russian literature and theory.
PG3026.E98W45 2014
891.709004—dc23
2013050522
o The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
For David
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Introduction From Voicelessness to Voice 3
Part I. Infantile Primitivism

Chapter One Infant Art: Mikhail Larionov, Children’s
Drawings, and Neo-Primitivist Art 19
Chapter Two Infant Word: Aleksei Kruchenykh, Children’s
Language, and Cubo-Futurist Poetics 62
Part II. Infantilist Aesthetics

Chapter Three Infant Eye: Viktor Shklovsky, the Naive
Perspective, and Formalist Theory 105
Chapter Four Infant Mind: Daniil Kharms, Childish Alogism,
and OBERIU Literature of the Absurd 156
Conclusion The End Point of the Infantilist Aesthetic 208
Notes 217
Bibliography 273
Index 297
Illustrations
Figure 1. Untitled (Cubist Girl), drawing by child, grade six,

Buckingham Elementary School, Pennsylvania 9
Figure 2. Miting detei (Children’s Protest), poster by Aleksei
Komarov, 1923 12
Figure 3. Vselenochku . . . (Universelet . . .), Mikhail Larionov, 1912 20
Figure 4. Anonymous child’s drawing, 1913 36
Figure 5. Tsyganka v Tiraspole (A Gypsy Woman in Tiraspol),
Mikhail Larionov, 1909 38
Figure 6. Bogomater’ Vladimirskaia (Virgin of Vladimir), Russian
Orthodox icon, eleventh or twelfth century 40
Figure 7. Soldat na kone (Soldier on a Horse), Mikhail Larionov,
1910–11 42
Figure 8. Venera (Venus), Mikhail Larionov, 1912 44
Figure 9. Osen’ zheltaia (Yellow Autumn), Mikhail Larionov, 1912 45
Figure 10. Zima (Winter), from the Seasons cycle, Mikhail Larionov,
471912 47
Figure 11. Portret N. S. Goncharovoi (Portrait of N. S. Goncharova),
Figure 12. Woman in a Hat, interior design for Pomada (Pomade),
Figure 13. Golova vostochnoi zhenshchiny s tolstoi sheei (Iz tsikla
“Puteshestvie v Turtsiiu”) (Head of an Eastern Woman
with a Thick Neck [From the Cycle “Travel to Turkey”]),
Mikhail Larionov, ca. 1928 59
Figure 14. Chort i rechetovortsy (The Devil and the Speechcrafters),
cover design by Olga Rozanova for book by Aleksei
Kruchenykh, 1913 63
Figure 15. Portret A. E. Kruchenykh (Portrait of A. E. Kruchenykh),
Figure 16. “Bosikom na krapive” (“Barefoot on the Grass”), visual
poem in Vasily Kamensky’s Tango s korovami (Tango
with Cows), 1914 75
ix
Illustrations
Figure 17. Pomada (Pomade), poem by Aleksei Kruchenykh with

typography and illustration by Mikhail Larionov, 1913 78
Figure 18. Pomada (Pomade), poems by Aleksei Kruchenykh with
typography and illustration by Mikhail Larionov, 1913 79
Figure 19. Cover of Porosiata (Piglets), by Zina V. and A. Kruchenykh
with illustrations by Kazimir Malevich, 1913 81
Figure 20. Cover of Sobstvennye razskazy detei (Children’s Own
Stories and Drawings), a collection edited by Aleksei
Kruchenykh, 1914 84
Figure 21. Cover of Sobstvennye rasskazy, stikhi i pesni detei
(Children’s Own Stories, Poems, and Songs), a collection
edited by Aleksei Kruchenykh, 1923 85
Figure 22. Drawing of faces by Nina Kulbina from Aleksei
Kruchenykh’s Sobstvennye razskazy i risunki detei
(Children’s Own Stories and Drawings), 1914 87
Figure 23. Drawing of a house by Nina Kulbina from Aleksei
Figure 24. Drawing by M. E. [Mariana Erlikh] from Aleksei
Figure 25. Cover of Nebesnye verbliuzhata (Baby Camels of the
Sky), design by Mariana Erlikh for book by Elena Guro,
1914 90
Figure 26. Cover of Na bor’bu s khuliganstvom v literature
(To Battle Against Hooliganism in Literature), design
by Gustav Klutsis for book by Aleksei Kruchenykh, 1926 96
Figure 27. Cover of 15 let russkogo futurisma (15 Years of Russian
Futurism), design by Gustav Klutsis for book by
Aleksei Kruchenykh, 1928 97
Figure 28. Cover of Khod konia (Knight’s Move), Viktor Shklovsky,
1923 118
Figure 29. Page from Khod konia (Knight’s Move) 119
Figure 30. Cover of Nandu II, design by N. Tyrsa for book by
Viktor Shklovsky, 1928 146
Figure 31. Cover of Skazka o teniakh (A Story About Shadows),
design by T. Lebedeva for book by Viktor Shklovsky, 1931 149
Figure 32. Illustrations by T. Lebedeva for Skazka o teniakh
(A Story About Shadows) 150
Figure 33. More illustrations by T. Lebedeva for Skazka o teniakh
(A Story About Shadows) 151
Figure 34. Photograph of Daniil Iuvachev Kharms, by Levitskii, 1906 157
x
Illustrations
Figure 35. Cover of Ezh (Hedgehog), no. 1 (1928) 189

Figure 36. Cover of Ezh (Hedgehog), no. 12 (1928) 190
Figure 37. Cover of Chizh (Siskin), no. 12 (1930) 191
Figure 38. Published children’s drawings from Ezh (Hedgehog),
no. 2 (1928) 193
Figure 39. “Zorkii glaz [Sharp Eyes] Activity” from Ezh (Hedgehog),
no. 3 (1929) 194
Figure 40. Cover of O tom, kak starushka chernila pokupala
(About How an Old Lady Went Shopping for Ink),
design by E. Krimmer for book by Daniil Kharms, 1928 199
Figure 41. Illustrations by E. Krimmer for O tom, kak starushka
chernila pokupala (About How an Old Lady Went
Shopping for Ink) 202
Figure 42. Photograph of Daniil Kharms in his final years, 1938 206
Figure 43. Chernyi krug (Black Circle), Kazimir Malevich, ca. 1923 209
Figure 44. Chernyi kvadrat (Black Square), Kazimir Malevich,
ca. 1923 213
Figure 45. White Planes in Dissolution, Kazimir Malevich, 1917–18 215
xi
Acknowledgments
The existence of this book depends on support from many sources that con-
tributed significantly to its development and realization, including countless
scholars and scholarly works that have inspired it. First and foremost, I owe
thanks to Monika Greenleaf, as well as Lazar Fleishman, Gregory Freidin,
Seth Lerer, and Gabriella Safran, who advised my doctoral dissertation and
generously enriched this book during my graduate work and in subsequent
years. I also am indebted to colleagues, friends, and mentors who read or
responded to all or part of this project at critical stages of its development,
particularly Barry Scherr and Mary Nicholas, and two anonymous review-
ers, as well as Oksana Bulgakowa, Nina Christensen, Elina Druker, Joseph
Frank, Wolf Kittler, John Kopper, Maria Lassén-Seger, Lev Loseff, Maria
Nikolajeva, Janina Orlov, Dick Sheldon, and Mia Österlund.
Many other colleagues offered valuable feedback and comments in re-
sponse to my work or provided stimulating opportunities and advice: Marina
Balina, Sandra Beckett, Eve Clark, Leah Dickerman, Michèle Dominy,
Maria Gough, Anna Gubergrits, Vanessa Joosen, Marina Kostalevsky, Bettina
Kümmerling-Meibauer, Misha Kunichika, Kevin Platt, Harsha Ram, Kim
Reynolds, Larissa Rudova, Eric Trudel, Marina Van Zuylen, and Ken Yalowitz.
Countless other colleagues, teachers, students, and friends have offered sup-
port, assistance, and advice as this book has taken shape and reached frui-
tion. Of these I owe special thanks to Elif Batuman, Mary Dakin, Deirdre
d’Albertis, Susan Derwin, Dan Edelstein, Alla Epsteyn, Amelia Glaser, Luba
Golburt, Roland Greene, Lenore Grenoble, Misha Gronas, Ken Haig, Sofia
Hart, Tom Hodge, Jocelyn Holland, Don Johnson, Dominique Jullien, Alicia
Kavelaars, Martha Kelly, Tatiana Kozhanova, Josh Landy, Ann Livschiz,
Katia McClain, Larry McLellan, Chanel Miller, Erika Monahan, Anne Eakin
Moss, Katia Neklioudova, Phil Nel, Catherine Nesci, Tom Roberts, Nathalie
Rouland, Jeffrey Schnapp, Sylvia Smullin, Jon Snyder, Sven Spieker, Stefania
Tutino, Josh Walker, Jean Webb, Elisabeth Weber, Adam Weiner, Martina
Winkler, and Ken Yalowitz. My colleagues and students at Bard College,
Dartmouth College, Wellesley College, and the University of California at
xiii
Acknowledgments
Santa Barbara have inspired me and asked insightful questions. Influential

teachers who have shaped me as a thinker and scholar include Marion
Martus, Lenny Perrett, and Judy Smullen, as well as Marianne Hirsch, Irene
Kacandes, Larry Kritzman, and Nina Loseff. The intellectual generosity of all
of these individuals has contributed to the formation and ultimate realization
of this book, but they have no responsibility for its flaws.
Much of the research and writing of this book was supported by fel-
lowships. I am grateful to the U.S. Department of Education for a Fulbright-
Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship that funded an ex-
tended period of research in Russia. The Gerald J. Lieberman Fellowship at
Stanford University supported the completion of my dissertation. The Center
for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Stanford University
provided a summer research travel grant. The John Sloan Dickey Center for
International Understanding at Dartmouth College generously provided an
opportunity for postdoctoral research and writing. The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation supported the publication of this book and permissions it re-
quired. I also would like to acknowledge particularly the Nordic Network for
Children’s Literature Research, funded by the Nordic Academy for Advanced
Studies, which sponsored my participation in various scholarly events in
Europe at a critical time in this project’s development. The European Science
Foundation funded my participation in a uniquely appropriate conference on
children’s literature and the European avant-garde as this project reached its
conclusion.
For support during research in Russia, I am grateful to the St. Peters-
burg State University of Culture and Art and Moscow State University,
as well as to Aleksandr Belousov, Andrei Efremov, Valentin Golovin, Ivan
Kharkevich, Evgeny Kuleshov, Olga Lozovskaia, Mikhail Lurie, Svetlana
Maslinskaia, Julia Petrova, Anna Senkina, Inna Sergienko, Marina and
Sergei Sorokin, and Valerii Voskoboinikov in St. Petersburg, and Maria
Akhmetova, Mikhail Alekseevsky, Irina Arzamastseva, Angela Lebedeva,
Yuri Nechiporenko, and Irina Odintsova in Moscow. For access to research
materials at libraries, museums, and archives, I wish to thank Andrea Immel
at the Cotsen Collection and AnnaLee Pauls at the Rare Books Department
in the Princeton University Library for their assistance with research and
materials, as well as the Friends of the Princeton University Library for a
Visiting Fellowship that supported work in these collections. For curatorial
research assistance in St. Petersburg, I am grateful to Marina Sorokina at
the State Russian Museum and Nataliya Kozyreva at its Marble Palace loca-
tion. In Moscow, I owe tremendous thanks to Evgeniya Ilyukhina and Irina
Shumanova at the Tretyakov Gallery Graphics Department and to Dmitry
Karpov and the curators of the auxiliary library at the Mayakovsky Museum
Archives. I also wish to express my gratitude to June and Robert Leibowits
xiv
Acknowledgments
for allowing me access to their impressive collection of avant-garde art and

to Jared Ash and Michael Patrick Hearn for their advice.
For advice and assistance on image rights, I am grateful to Maksim
Amelin, Elena Bokhonskaia, Charles Greene, David King, Liz Kurtulik,
Ekaterina Lakhmotko, Anthony Parton, Liubov Rodionova, Olga Savvina,
Margaret Samu, and Mary Weld. I also wish to personally thank Varvara
Viktorovna Shklovskaia-Kordi and Nikita Efimovich Shklovskiy-Kordi. I ap-
preciate image files and permissions granted by Art Resource in New York,
Artists Rights Society, the Cotsen Collection at Princeton University Library,
the David King Collection, the Getty Research Institute, Image Rights
Society, Russian State Library in St. Petersburg, the State Russian Museum
in St. Petersburg, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Tate Gallery London, and
the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Finally, I extend my thanks to the child art-
ist whose work is published anonymously within this book with her permission
and to Sophia Augusta Pankenier for her cover art for this book.
As this project approaches its conclusion, I wish to express my grati-
tude to the entire team at Northwestern University Press, especially to
Mike Levine for shepherding this project through its various stages and
to Anne Gendler for its final realization. Portions of chapter 4 were pub-
lished in English, Danish, and Russian in Slavic Review, Nedslag i børne-
litteraturforskningen, and Detskii fol’klor v kontekste vzrosloi kul’tury, re-
spectively. Material from this book has been presented at Amherst College,
Bard College, New York University, Stanford University, the University of
California at Santa Barbara, the University of Chicago, and Yale University.
My family has been a tremendous support in this undertaking, as
always. I owe everything to my mother Birgitta Wannberg, who is my crea-
tive model as a writer, and my father David Pankenier, who has been my life-
long academic inspiration. My sisters Eva Minoura, Emma Leggat, Sophia
Pankenier, and Simone Pankenier all have supported me throughout this
enterprise, each in her own unique way. I also wish to thank my acquired
family of Roosevelts and Welds for their support and inspiring examples,
particularly Susan Roosevelt Weld and Anna Roosevelt. My children Theo
and Maia, who were born during the realization of this book, and another
racing it to the finish line, continually deepen my sense of what childhood
really means, and doesn’t mean, at the same time that they continue to give
my life its greatest meaning. Finally, I wish to speak my inexpressible grati-
tude to my better half, my husband David Minot Weld, whose faith in me has
been a beacon in fog and darkness and whose steadfast support and sacrifices
for me will never be forgotten. It is to him that I dedicate this book.
xv
Voiceless Vanguard
Introduction
From Voicelessness to Voice
Non enim eram infans qui non farer, sed iam

puer loquens eram.
I was no longer an infant who does not speak,
but a speaking child.
—Saint Augustine, Confessions
THE IDEA OF INFANCY as an unspeaking state beyond the

limits of language and pregnant with potentiality has captivated philoso-
phers since the time of Saint Augustine (354–430 a.d.). In the First Book
of Confessions, Saint Augustine describes his own transition from the state
of the speechless infant to that of the speaking child who has gained the
symbolic capacity of language. He meditates on the acquisition of simple
signification and observes how it grants the possibility to utter one’s will and
escape the helpless state of infancy.1 The twentieth-century philosopher of
logic and language Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) uses this passage by
Augustine as a starting point for his Philosophical Investigations, when he
ruminates on the primitive language of children.2 He also explores the idea of
the ‘unspoken’ earlier, in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, when he tests the
limits of language and meaning and finds the boundaries of language where
sense ends—in nonsense.3 The contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben
furthers these ideas in Infancy and History (1993), where he argues that the
“Ur-limit in language” that Wittgenstein seeks “is the very transcendental
origin of language, nothing other than infancy.”4 Agamben concludes, “the
limits of languages are to be found . . . in an experience of language as such,
in its pure self-reference.”5 For these three philosophers the speechless in-
fant, or “infans qui non farer,” in the state of becoming a speaking child, or
“puer loquens,” inhabits language itself while acquiring the symbolic capacity
inherent to signification. Whether approaching the state of infancy from the
perspective of philosophy, linguistics, or psychoanalysis, thinkers continually
find a source of the unspoken in the ‘infant/child.’ In this volume I explore
how leading figures in the Russian avant-garde similarly employed a con-
struct of the ‘infant/child’ in order to tap into the potentiality of infancy as a
state beyond the limits of language. A study of infantilism in the literature,
3
Introduction
art, and theory of the Russian avant-garde, this book traces a trajectory from
the unspeaking child, or infans, to the child empowered with voice—puer
loquens. The topics raised by philosophers like Augustine, Wittgenstein, and
Agamben, including voicelessness and the unspoken, the limits of language
and the boundaries of sense, and the pure experience of self- referential
language, recur throughout this study of how the Russian avant-garde con-
structed the ‘infant/child’ in relation to language.
I argue that significant leaders within the Russian avant-garde em-
ployed a construct of the ‘infant/child’ as an unspeaking subject precisely in
order to confront the materiality of language and signification itself. In this
study, which argues for the centrality of infantile primitivism and an infantile
aesthetic within the theory and practice of the Russian avant-garde, I de-
scribe a phenomenon I identify in works of avant-garde art, literature, and
theory by the artist Mikhail Larionov, the poet Aleksei Kruchenykh, the theo-
rist Viktor Shklovsky, and the writer Daniil Kharms. At the same time, each
of these figures serves as an exemplar for a broader movement among several
closely interrelated movements within the Russian avant-garde. I find that
the widespread concern with the infant/child amounts to a vital trend within
the avant-garde movement, sometimes marking a key developmental stage,
sometimes crucial in the poetics or thought of an individual, and sometimes
marking an entire group’s aesthetic practice. I trace how an infantile primitiv-
ism, or the collection, exhibition, and imitation of children’s art and language
by leading avant-garde figures, moves along a continuum toward an assertion
of an infantilist aesthetic, a term I use to describe theory and practice that
assert the independent value of the infantile perspective and the child’s own
subjectivity. The meaning of these key terms hinges on the word ‘infant’ and
its etymological, linguistic, and philosophical associations with the idea of the
‘unspeaking’ subject. Indeed, I would argue that it is the infant’s “preverbal”
state and the child’s position before the conventions of verbal and visual rep-
resentation that predetermine the avant-garde fascination for the borderline
figure of the ‘infant/child.’
From a linguistic and psychological perspective, the unspeaking state
of infancy represents the period that precedes language. Julia Kristeva de-
velops the idea of the preverbal state before language in her psychoanalyti-
cal approach to the semiotic dimension of language, which builds upon the
formulations of Jacques Lacan.6 According to such conceptions of language,
signification requires the acquisition of linguistic structures that marks the
transition to symbolic order, while the semiotic represents a state of unified
and unlimited linguistic potentiality, as evident in the developmental stage
characterized by “the babbling of the infant who tries out the vocal repertoire
before he or she learns to speak.”7 In contrast, the symbolic state depends
upon the separation of signifier and signified according to the conventional
4
relationships of signification. Lacking the order of this structural system, the

preverbal state of babble, like the pre-artistic scribble, precedes the conven-
tions of art and language, as well as signifying systems in general. A psycho-
analytical approach to language thus reveals how the avant-garde liberates
itself from conventional forms of signification by returning to the origins of
meaning in the infantile state before language. Children’s babble, which is
analogously located at the boundaries of discourse, thus provides a source of
linguistic renewal that proves productive for those who practice and theorize
infantile primitivism. Through the practice of infantilism, and a consciously
infantile approach to language and form, the avant-garde seeks to create new
forms of art with a renegotiated relationship to meaning. As we shall see, a
new approach to signification also necessitates new models of interpretation,
as well as novel relations with an audience forcibly infantilized.
On a metaphoric level, the idea of the unspeaking subject, or infans,
hints at the politicized implications of the position of ‘infant/child’—the un-
speaking subject lacks the capacity to communicate verbally. Without lan-
guage, the infant can only communicate through cries; in the absence of
sanctioned societal outlets, the child is powerless to express desires or de-
mands. Historical linguistics reveals that etymology has often linked the state
of the child to that of the political subject who is not permitted to exercise a
right to vote. Lacking the power of expression, the symbolically unspeaking
subject cannot express itself, much less convey the alterity of its perspective
or portray its interior subjectivity. As we shall see, however, infantile primi-
tivism leads the avant-garde to an interest in the child’s unique perspective
and voice, as becomes manifest in the practice of an infantilist aesthetic.
The avant-garde, itself facing limitations on its freedom of expression by the
final years of its development, finds new frontiers and forms of expression
by approaching the child as subject and subjectivity. In the end, the infantile
proves to be the last bastion for the artistic principles of the Russian avant-
garde, even as the avant-garde finds its last refuge writing for children.
When the avant-garde uses the child in order to craft a new artistic
identity for the twentieth century, one might note that it constructs the ‘in-
fant/child’ in a manner that reflects its own presuppositions and aims. As his-
torical and sociological investigations of childhood have shown, ‘childhood’
is a construct variably defined by different societies and at different times.
For instance, in his seminal study of childhood, Philippe Ariès provocatively
argues that, before what he terms the “discovery of childhood,” European
culture did not recognize the ‘child’ as a separate category of being; only
in the eighteenth century does the child take a central place in the family
and in history.8 Indeed, a diachronic and comparative perspective reveals the
constructedness of notions of the ‘child’ in ways that provide critical perspec-
tive for an examination of the manner in which the avant-garde constructs
5
Introduction
the ‘infant/child.’ As Chris Jenks flatly states, “Childhood is to be understood

as a social construct.”9 Such critical distance, when combined with the self-
reflexive perspective of contemporary theory, helps reveal that the avant-
garde employs the child as a strange ‘other’ in ways that reveal more about
the nature of the avant-garde than about any actual children. In other words,
the avant-garde construct of the ‘infant/child,’ made manifest by its practice
of infantile primitivism and the infantilist aesthetic, is not an independent
entity but a reflection of the Russian avant-garde itself, refracted through its
aims and struggle for a new identity.
Regarding the child through a semiotic framework, meanwhile, reveals
how the ‘infant/child’ provides a productive counterpoint for the avant-garde,
as it struggles to create a new identity for itself. According to a semiotic
model of culture, renewal comes from the periphery rather than the center
of the semiotic sphere. Itself by definition a movement of the periphery, the
avant-garde seeks a source of radical and revolutionary renewal not in the
classics of a traditional canon, but in new forms inspired by cultural products
located at the margins. Yuri Lotman argues that it is the periphery of the se-
miotic sphere that “is the area of semiotic dynamism” and observes that “the
peripheral genres in art are more revolutionary than those in the centre of
culture.”10 In Lotman’s semiotic approach to the avant-garde, however, what
is at the periphery later becomes the center. “The avant-garde started as a
‘rebellious fringe,’ then it became a phenomenon of the centre, dictating its
laws to the period and trying to impose its colours on the whole semiosphere,
and then, when it in fact had become set in its ways, it became the object of
intense theorizing on the metacultural level.” In a similar manner, the avant-
garde practice of infantile primitivism, which originally may have seemed to
be a peripheral artistic phenomenon, gradually develops into the infantilist
aesthetic, which begins to be theorized on a higher level and asserted as a
central principle of art.
Theories of play also prove illuminating for this study of the avant-
garde since the concept of play belongs at the nexus of constructs like the
‘infant/child’ and the ‘avant-garde,’ and occupies the overlap of their concep-
tual spheres. If Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens (1949)11 first grants play a
central role in human culture, then Roger Caillois strives to create a typology
of play in Man, Play, and Games (1961).12 Defining play as free, separate,
uncertain, unproductive, and either regulated or “make-believe,”13 Caillois
also posits a continuum between two poles of ordered and disordered play,
ludus and paidia, where paidia is anarchic and capricious as opposed to the
conventions of ludus.14 Indeed, it is the turbulence of paidia, rather than the
rules of ludus,15 that proves relevant for the anarchic and disruptive behavior
of the Russian avant-garde, predicated as it is on the violation of expecta-
tions. On that note, Caillois’s warning against trivializing child’s play seems
6
apt also for the avant-garde. “The many writers who persist in viewing games,
especially children’s games, as pleasant and insignificant activities, with little
meaning or influence, have not sufficiently observed that play and ordinary
life are constantly and universally antagonistic to each other.”16 It is the dis-
ruptive potential of the avant-garde that first allied it with the revolutionary
spirit before 1917 and that then led to its demise as a threat to the estab-
lished Soviet state.
Indeed, though I value the general thesis of Boris Groys in his pro-
vocative article “The Birth of Socialist Realism from the Spirit of the Russian
Avant-Garde” (1990),17 I would argue that the avant-garde must be distin-
guished on exactly the basis of its playful nature from the Socialist Realism
that succeeded it.18 As movements, the avant-garde and Socialist Realism oc-
cupy opposite poles of the continuum outlined by Caillois; the revolutionary
avant-garde exhibits the disruptive turbulence and antagonism of paidia,
while an officially sanctioned Socialist Realism approaches the regulated
order of ludus, if it can be defined as playful at all. The argument of Groys
is correct in that, once the avant-garde aesthetic reaches the center of the
semiotic sphere and becomes the rule, it loses the destabilizing element of
play; but, for that matter, it can no longer be defined as avant-garde.
Though this interdisciplinary study focuses on infantilism in the
Russian avant-garde, it is important to note that the use of the infantile by
these avant-garde figures was not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a
widespread practice of modernist attention to the child in Russia and in
Europe. I ground this study in the uniquely telling and realized Russian ex-
ample, set in a particular revolutionary moment, but the findings of this book
also apply to the avant-garde and modernism in a wider context as well. By
treating art, literature, and theory together, as well as poetry together with
prose, and literature for adults along with literature for children, I aim to
identify the continuities that display the pervasiveness of avant-garde infan-
tilism. I argue that the avant-garde’s constructed notions of the ‘child’ sig-
nificantly influenced the aesthetic development of the avant-garde toward
a profound simplicity, a trend that runs throughout the various interrelated
branches of the avant-garde. The particular narrative trajectories I trace in
this book, from speechlessness toward voice and from objecthood toward
subjecthood and interiority, provide a paradoxical contrast to the infantiliza-
tion of the avant-garde due to political circumstances, which provides a par-
allel line of development in this portrayal of the avant-garde from its origins
to its demise.
Throughout this study, I navigate the contrast between the actual child
and the constructions that emerge when the child is studied by scientists;
has artistic artifacts collected, framed, exhibited, and published by primi-
tivists; is examined, constructed, and reconstructed by the avant-garde, its
7
Introduction
audience, critics, advocates, and theoreticians; and, finally, is politicized and

repossessed by the Soviet state. I explore the paradoxes that emerge from the
exploitation of the unspeaking subject “infans” and the avant-garde simula-
tion of the acquisition of voice and agency by “puer loquens.” The border-
line figure of the ‘infant/child’ thus represents the empty signifier and ideal
construct for the avant-garde in its desire to reconstitute itself, in its vacilla-
tions between signifier and signified, object and subject, action and mean-
ing. Ultimately, I explore how an infantile example points the way toward a
simplification of means that eventually leads to a new relationship with form
and meaning.
Synthesizing various interdisciplinary approaches to the multifaceted
constructions of the child that the avant-garde employs for the fulfillment of
its own aims and agenda reveals a deceptively complex portrait. The avant-
garde infantile does not in any sense resemble an actual child; neither does
the actual child in any sense remain the signified of this laborious significa-
tion process that revels mainly in the signifiers and the signifying. Instead,
the avant-garde presents us with something more like a multifaceted Cubist
composition of a child/non-child, impossibly collapsed and extended in space
and time, forcibly framed and flattened to two dimensions, and rendered
nearly unintelligible by distortions of the Cubist technique. It is not an actual
child, but a bizarre juxtaposition of many superimposed and conflated ver-
sions of the child constructed by the avant-garde.
Untitled (Cubist Girl) (see figure 1) shows such cubist contortions from
a child’s point of view. Though an actual drawing by an actual child, we might
ask if this image is infantile, avant-garde, or adult, or an imitation, or an imi-
tation of an imitation, of one of the above? Or is it the selection, entitling of
an untitled work, and elevation to prominence by adults that makes it into an
art object? Such questions echo in the hall of reflections one enters by step-
ping through the avant-garde’s looking glass into the modernist wonderland
of the infantile.19
This study of Voiceless Vanguard: The Infantilist Aesthetic of the
Russian Avant-Garde traces the development of the infantilist aesthetic as
a phenomenon in the works of central writers, artists, and theorists of the
avant-garde in the period 1909–1939. It seeks to explain the widespread
and heretofore underacknowledged pervasiveness of aesthetic infantilism
in Russian avant-garde practice. The artist Mikhail Larionov collected and
displayed children’s drawings alongside his own Neo-Primitivist paintings
executed in a naive style; the poet Aleksei Kruchenykh collaborated with
children on Futurist poetry and collected children’s writings for publica-
tion; the theorist Viktor Shklovsky valorized the naive perspective of the
child in the context of his Formalist theories; and the prose writer Daniil
Kharms employed childish alogism in his absurdist writings for children and
8
Figure 1. Untitled (Cubist Girl), drawing by child, grade six,

Buckingham Elementary School, Pennsylvania
Used with permission
adults. These examples demonstrate a wide-ranging avant-garde interest in

children’s own art, language, perspective, and cognition. This book seeks to
explain the phenomenon of avant-garde infantilism as it traces its develop-
mental trajectory from infantile primitivism toward an infantilist aesthetic.
After briefly situating the reader in critical issues surrounding
twentieth-century primitivism and interest in the child, this book proceeds
in two sections comprised of two chapters on the practice of infantile primi-
tivism and two on the development of the infantilist aesthetic. Each of these
four chapters offers a detailed analysis of the theory and practice of one
avant-garde figure who played a significant role in the development of the
infantilist aesthetic and whose interest in the ‘infant/child’ also proves rep-
resentative of the artistic movement for which they served as influential in-
novators. In brief, the book treats Mikhail Larionov in the context of Neo-
Primitivist art, Aleksei Kruchenykh in the context of Cubo-Futurist poetry,
Viktor Shklovsky in the context of Formalist theory, and Daniil Kharms in the
9
Introduction
context of OBERIU literature of the absurd. By intellectually and artistically

approaching the subject position of the ‘infant/child’ in varied and evolving
ways, these avant-garde innovators sought and found new models for their
art in a concept of the child as ‘other.’ Despite the similarities in how they ap-
proach the infant/child as model, and the fact that they all represent a wider
trend within their particular context, it is worth noting that these examples
also differ in the extent to which their interest in the infant/child represents
the movement of which they are part. For instance, Larionov was part of
a larger movement interested in a variety of forms of primitivism, just as
Kharms was part of a movement in whose poetics the “infantile” played a cru-
cial role. Kruchenykh shared his interest in children with Velimir Khlebnikov
and others, but also stands out in the degree of his involvement with chil-
dren, just as Shklovsky, though not alone, made his study of the naive far
more central in his aesthetics and thought than did other Formalist critics.
All the same, taken together, the concern with the infant/child demonstrated
by these avant-garde leaders and innovators clearly represents a vital trend
within the avant-garde movement.
“Why the child?” one might ask. In this book, I argue that these central
writers, artists, and theorists of the Russian avant-garde found the preverbal
child to be an ideal creative source for the artistic renewal they were seek-
ing. Situated before the conventions of verbal and visual representation, the
unspeaking subject provided a defamiliarized perspective with the potential
to destabilize the relationship of signifier and signified. By artistically ap-
proaching the unspeaking state of the infant and the unschooled state of the
child, the avant-garde found the new modes of artistic representation they
were seeking as part of their revolutionary approach to the arts.
In summary, this interdisciplinary study of the literature, theory, and
art of the avant-garde investigates how the Russian avant-garde employed
constructs of the ‘infant/child’ at key moments during the development of its
radical aesthetics. I argue that the infantile aesthetic of the Russian avant-
garde moves through certain distinct phases, from a superficial interest in the
artifacts that represent the child’s creative production to a deeper and more
sophisticated interest in the child’s unique subjectivity. Gradually, the atten-
tion to the artistic and linguistic production of the ‘infant/child,’ as part of
an infantile primitivism that views the child as an object or a strange ‘other,’
leads to a more theoretical interest in the child’s own perspective and per-
ceptions. This marks a shift toward regarding the child as a subject in its own
right. In the final stage, as the avant-garde itself faces limited possibilities for
expression and becomes more attuned to the politics of voice, voicelessness,
and the unspoken, the avant-garde expresses an interest in the unique sub-
jectivity of the child through creative explorations of children’s consciousness
and cognition. In this way, from the initial primitivist fascination with the
10
unspeaking subject, or infans, to the deepening of this interest in a theo-

retical sense, the practice of infantile primitivism leads to the assertion of
an infantilist aesthetic, where the context of the absurd makes possible the
paradox of puer loquens, or the speaking child as such.
TH E H IS T O RY O F A N I DEA
A testament to a tumultuous time, the early Soviet poster Children’s Protest

(Miting detei) (see figure 2) vividly expresses the central paradox of this
study of the Voiceless Vanguard: The Infantilist Aesthetic of the Russian
Avant-Garde.20 Though this poster demonstrates how the revolutionary re-
covery of oppressed subjects and new view of the child seek to give voice to
the voiceless, it also makes manifest the problematic aspects of an infantil-
ist project undertaken by adults. In actual fact, this absurd illustration of a
“children’s meeting” depicts not just an unlikely scene of disenfranchised
children organized and agitating for children’s rights, but the impossible
spectacle of mere babes seizing the revolutionary stage and voicing their
demands through a mass protest—complete with eloquent placards and a
revolutionary speaker at the dais. Frighteningly adult in their anger, the in-
fants depicted here open their mouths not as passive objects of adult atten-
tions but as active subjects expressing their outrage and issuing demands in
the revolutionary idiom of the times. “WE DEMAND!” (MY TREBUEM!)
reads the largest, central banner of black on red. The content of their spe-
cific demands, however, is far more infantile—fresh diapers, mother’s breast,
healthy parents, clean air and water, pacifiers—and more accurately reflects
their age. The organization of this chaos of children presupposes verbal abil-
ity, while their posters mark them as literate and highly articulate beyond
their years. Clearly, this absurd portrayal somewhat exceeds the capabili-
ties of preverbal infants who have not yet been breeched. If this paradoxical
spectacle—of the voiceless achieving voice—is fundamentally impossible,
then the young children represented here prove to be mere puppets in a
drama framed and staged by adults. In fact, childhood often proves to be that
very stage, or battleground.
In short, the ‘infant/child’ depicted here, like that employed by the
avant-garde in its practice of infantile primitivism and the infantilist aes-
thetic, is being exploited for adult purposes. This poster, which seeks to de-
liver a public health message and convey a revolutionary spirit, uses the ‘in-
fant/child’ as an empty signifier and strategic construct for the transmission
of adult ideology. In no sense does the artistic depiction of children escaping
objecthood and achieving voice actually accomplish this goal. In truth, the
adult invasion of the child’s subject position not only fails to give voice to
11
Introduction
Figure 2. Miting detei (Children’s Protest), poster by Aleksei Komarov, 1923.

David King Collection, London.
Courtesy of David King
actual children, but even usurps the voice of the ‘infant/child.’ The same
applies to the use and abuse of the child in avant-garde practice. Jacqueline
Rose observes that children’s fiction “hangs on an impossibility”—“the im-
possible relation between adult and child.”21 She observes that there is “no
child behind the category . . . other than the one which the category itself
sets in place, the one which it needs to believe is there for its own pur-
poses.”22 The same can be said of the avant-garde use of the child.
The historical and political context of early twentieth-century Russia
vividly evoked by this poster was characterized by an overdetermined focus
on the child. This odd poster could have been produced in no other time or
place. Similarly, it is no coincidence that infantile primitivism and the infan-
tilist aesthetic reached an extreme fulfillment in the Russian avant-garde. A
unique constellation of forces and influences contributed to the staging of
this drama. At the same time, however, the Russian instance must be seen
in the context of the full extent of the artistic interest in childhood in this
period. First of all, the attraction to the infantile cannot be confined simply
to the revolutionary avant-garde. It also appeared in other modernist move-
ments, including the poetic theories of language advanced by leading figures
of Acmeism and Symbolism.23 Most notable here is Andrei Bely’s Symbolist
12
re-creation of childhood consciousness in Kotik Letaev (1917–18), which will

be discussed at greater length later, but also merits separate study due to its
complexity and the unique circumstances of Bely’s case that differ from those
of the more closely interlinked avant-garde figures discussed here.24 Other
modern writers and autobiographers of childhood include Maxim Gorky,
Ivan Bunin, Fyodor Sologub, Osip Mandelstam, Andrei Platonov, Boris
Pasternak, and Marina Tsvetaeva.25 Clearly the Russian avant-garde was only
one of many artistic groupings that turned to the child as a creative source
in this period. I would argue, however, that, taken as a whole, avant-garde
experiments took this interest further and in a more extreme direction than
did any other artistic groupings, writers, or groups, with the possible excep-
tion of Bely’s experimental novel Kotik Letaev, which occupies a somewhat
different category.26
Though the Russian focus on the child, as part of its recrafting of its
national identity and global position at the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, was in many ways unique, its artistic attention to childhood exists in
a wider Western context, both synchronically and diachronically. In truth,
the Russian avant-garde was not original in its use and abuse of the child as
muse. Consciously or unconsciously, they draw upon an older tradition that
valorizes the child, even as they transform it uniquely according to their own
avant-garde purposes. Nevertheless, the framing of the present study, de-
voted as it is primarily to the period 1909–1939, does not allow for a full dia-
chronic account of this considerable prehistory in the history of childhood,
though credit must be given to Philippe Ariès for his provocative claims
about the discovery of childhood27 and, in the Russian context, to Andrew
Wachtel, who lifted to prominence the study of childhood in Russian litera-
ture28 and rightly credited Leo Tolstoy as a foundational figure in the creation
of the Russian myth of childhood.29
From a more synchronic perspective on the modern age, on the other
hand, it should be noted that modern art, such as the work of Paul Klee,
Pablo Picasso, and Joan Miró,30 often has drawn upon children’s art as an
inspiration for its radical experiments with the simplification of form, while in
poetry the Dadaist celebration of infantile nonsense even borrows its name
from the reduplicative syllables of children’s language.31 Many seminal works
of modern European literature also attempt entry into the child’s experience
as they create particular modernist sensibilities with regard to language, con-
sciousness, time, and memory. Such moments occur, for instance, in James
Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916),32 Virginia Woolf’s To
the Lighthouse (1927),33 and Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (À la
recherche du temps perdu) (1913–27).34 Indeed, for the twentieth century,
the child’s consciousness represented a new frontier for creative experimen-
tation in the arts.
13
Introduction
The twentieth-century artistic focus on the child itself, however, de-

pended upon a number of precursors who, in a variety of disciplines, pre-
pared the ground for this veritable cult of childhood. The preceding centu-
ries had witnessed a dramatic shift from the infantolatry of Christianity and
Romanticism,35 still represented in such influential figures as Nietzsche36 and
Baudelaire,37 to the infantology of Darwin, Haeckel, and Freud. If Charles
Darwin recognized that the embryo “reveals the structure of its progeni-
tor” and that “community in embryonic structure reveals community of
descent,”38 then Ernst Haeckel gave this notion eternal life as a metaphor
through his formulation of the “biogenetic law,” commonly expressed as
“ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”39 The symbolic resonance of this meta-
phor—written on the young body is the narrative of our collective past—
ensured its immediate adoption and overapplication within intellectual and
cultural spheres unrelated to its biological origins, regardless of the fact that
it was later discredited as a distortion and oversimplification.40 For instance,
Sigmund Freud, himself a devout recapitulationist, compares the infant
state to that of the animal, savage, or primitive man.41 In biogenetic terms,
one might say that, for Freud, the experiences of the infant body unlock the
narrative structure of the adult mind.42 Thus, infancy and early childhood,
as well as the interior experience of the ‘infant/child,’ attain maximal signifi-
cance as determining influences on the psyche. By the same token, Freud’s
own work still retains vestigial traits of times past, such as when he links the
preservation of the infantile with genius in a manner that borrows from ear-
lier Romantic notions of childhood.43
Nevertheless, in postulating the concept of “infantile sexuality” and
linking the child to the primitive urges and sexual drives, Freud dispels the
idealistic Romantic notion of the innocent child. Peter Coveney summarizes
Freud’s role in the development of the literary theme of childhood: “Freud
was a powerful agent in the ventilation of the sentimental atmosphere which
had grown up around the Victorian child; a solvent too of the religious sav-
agery toward the child.”44 Similarly, Steven Marcus credits Three Essays
on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), which includes Freud’s essay “Infantile
Sexuality,” with “bringing to a close that epoch of cultural innocence in which
infancy and childhood were regarded as themselves innocent.”45 Through his
revision of infancy, Freud purges Romantic and Victorian sentimentalism
from modern notions of childhood and thus ends the infantolatry of the past.
Instead, he internalizes the ‘infant/child’ as a savage within, who microcosmi-
cally recapitulates the relationship of the primitive ancestor to modern man.
Such a focus on savagery and the primal instincts and urges of man put forth
by Freud finds expression in artistic primitivism and avant-garde antics.
Freud’s contribution to twentieth-century approaches to childhood,
then, is to shift infancy and early childhood to the front and center of the
14
modern understanding of mind. Through his psychoanalytically motivated

attention to the interior experience of the ‘infant/child,’ Freud grants signifi-
cance to the subjectivity of the child. As Coveney writes, “A major concern
of Freudian analysis was to increase awareness of the child and objective ap-
preciation of the importance of the childhood consciousness to the develop-
ment of the adult mind.”46 Indeed, psychoanalysis lays the foundations for
all twentieth-century literary experiments venturing into infantile conscious-
ness.47 Significantly, however, Freud acknowledges limitations in the ability
of adults to penetrate the interiority of the infantile psyche. In “History of an
Infantile Neurosis” (1918), he admits, “we have rated the powers of children
too low and there is no knowing what they cannot be given credit for.”48 This
statement highlights how childhood and infancy have come to represent a
significant and mysterious new frontier.
Although the avant-garde artists treated in this book display limited
attraction to specific Freudian ideas, apart from his focus on the infantile,
they do revel at times in the savagery and primal urges Freud describes.
In many ways, they themselves seek to play the role of a Freudian enfant
terrible as they release the savage child within and court scandal through
their own eccentric performances of life as art, or zhiznetvorchestvo.49 The
Freudian effect also provides a model for the avant-garde’s destructive revo-
lutionary approach to traditional hierarchies and the ossified adult world. A
psychoanalytical interest in interiority and subjectivity, meanwhile, finds a
vivid embodiment in later attempts by the avant-garde to access the child’s
internal psychic world, reconstruct the child’s mind from within, and other-
wise explore the infantile perspective and cognitive processes of the child.
In all these cases, however, just as in psychoanalysis or any epistemol-
ogy, what is attributed to the infant/child risks reflecting more about the ar-
tistic and literary aims of the observer, rather than something intrinsic to
the object being observed. Thus any and all examples of the exploration and
colonization of the infantile might be subjected to an epistemological critique
that exposes the constructedness of the “object” they would define as primi-
tive. Ultimately, the subjectivity of the child remains fundamentally inac-
cessible to philosophical, scientific, and psychoanalytical inquiry, for closer
scrutiny reveals that the ‘infant/child’ continues to be viewed and constructed
as a mere object trapped within the same power-based hierarchical relation
with the adult—the impossible relation of child and adult.
As this brief enumeration of a few significant influences on modern
notions of childhood demonstrates, the Russian avant-garde’s interest in the
‘infant/child’ is neither without precursors in Russia or the West, nor entirely
original. Rather, despite its revolutionary rejection of the past and anxiety-
laden denial of all influences,50 the avant-garde’s claim to originality amounts
to a rhetorical strategy. Such claims are based on a concept of “self as origin,”
15
Introduction
as Rosalind Krauss argues in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other

Modernist Myths (1997).51 Originality and an originary naïveté become an
organicist metaphor of birth or self-birth.
Avant-garde originality is conceived as a literal origin, a beginning from
ground zero, a birth. Marinetti, thrown from his automobile one evening
in 1909 into a factory ditch filled with water, emerges as if from amniotic
fluid to be born—without ancestors—a futurist. This parable of absolute
self-creation that begins the first Futurist Manifesto functions as a model
for what is meant by originality among the early twentieth-century avant-
garde. For originality becomes an organicist metaphor referring not so
much to formal invention as to sources of life. The self as origin is safe
from contamination by tradition because it possesses a kind of originary
naïveté. Hence Brancusi’s dictum, “When we are no longer children, we
are already dead.” Or again, the self as origin has the potential for con-
tinual acts of regeneration, a perpetuation of self-birth. Hence Malevich’s
pronouncement, “Only he is alive who rejects his convictions of yesterday.”
The self as origin is the way an absolute distinction can be made between
a present experienced de novo and a tradition-laden past. The claims of
the avant-garde are precisely these claims to originality.52
This desire for originality and originary status also underlies the fact that the
Russian avant-garde constructs itself as a child and through the child. The
infant/child serves as an ultimate symbol of origins, originality, and originary
naïveté. For this reason, the avant-garde seeks to become the true child of
the twentieth century and, thus, its heir apparent.
16
Chapter One
Infant Art: Mikhail Larionov,

Children’s Drawings, and Neo-Primitivist Art
BORN IN THE CREATIVE FERMENT between the begin-

ning of the twentieth century and the impending upheaval of the 1917
October Revolution, the Russian avant-garde came of age in a uniquely tu-
multuous space and time. In its confrontation with the new age defined by
modernity, and later by revolution, the Russian avant-garde sought a radical
disruption with the past in its search for the new art of the future. Defining
themselves as ‘avant-garde,’ originally a militaristic term for the vanguard
that precedes the main forces both spatially and temporally, these innova-
tive artists fought a war against time. Formed by the apocalyptic sensibility
of the fin de siécle and revolutionary eschatology, the avant-garde foreswore
linear time in favor of the simultaneity of an eternal present.1 Emblematic
of their war on time, primitivism offered these avant-garde artists an op-
portunity to reject preceding influences, revisit archaic origins in the distant
past, and catapult themselves forward into the future through a new vision
of art. Published in Mirskontsa (Worldbackwards) (1912)2 and set to Velimir
Khlebnikov’s text that reads “Dying half-children call the dear universe / and
the dying curse” (Vselenochku zovut mireia poludeti / i umiratishche klia-
nut), Mikhail Larionov’s graphic work shown in figure 3 displays a diminu-
tive universe (vselenochka) aswarm with primitivist influences. The violent
scene of the collapse of cosmic time conjures different temporal spheres as it
combines the Neolithic art of the past, children’s drawings, and apocalyptic
visions of the future. It also collapses personal time by combining imagery of
death with the idea of half-children, a fit coinage for the doubly encoded use
of the infantile by adults practiced by Russian Neo-Primitivists like Mikhail
Larionov.
In conflating and combining primitive influences through the imi-
tation of prehistoric art, an unschooled artistic hand, and children’s draw-
ings, this image also raises the issue of how the equation of primitive and
child, as Lévi-Strauss observed,3 is equally unjust to all concerned. In fact,
19
Infantile Primitivism
Figure 3. Vselenochku . . . (Universelet . . .), graphic work by Mikhail Larionov in

Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov, Mirskontsa (Worldbackwards), 1912
The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (88-B27486). Copyright © 2013
Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.
the primitivist framework confers a benefit only to the Western adult who
categorizes them in this manner, as Johannes Fabian notes in Time and the
Other.4 Indeed, Larionov deploys the primitive as part of a revolution against
traditional aesthetics and the art of the immediate past. Here and elsewhere,
the avant-garde exploits the primitive to level the field, demolish artistic con-
ventions, shatter accepted notions of artistic representation, and, ultimately,
offer its own new view of art. In this context, Mikhail Larionov and other
artists associated with Neo-Primitivism construct the child as primitive as a
strategic anachronism to demolish the past even as this primitivist practice
seems to provide new directions for the future of art by offering a return to
origins. By recovering the supposed infancy of art, Neo-Primitivists sought
to catapult the Russian avant-garde to the forefront of artistic innovation
and experiment as they claimed the mantle of “primitives of the twentieth
century.”5
In the essay “Spatial Form in Modern Literature” (1945), Joseph Frank
argues that atemporal spatial form characterizes avant-garde art and all forms
of its artistic and literary activity.6 Indeed, the avant-garde obsession with
temporality and defiance of its conventional strictures by collapsing dimen-
sions of time and space not only serves as an effective lens through which
to view the artistic and literary experiments of the Russian avant-garde in
20
Infant Art
general, but also explains the avant-garde turn to the ‘infant/child.’ Russian
avant-garde artists use the child as a strategic anachronism that offers a
return to the origins of art and originary artistic perception, thereby provid-
ing an alternative artistic path forward that is not bound by previous laws of
space and time. This same collapse of time not only brings the avant-garde
to the child, but also, in so doing, the avant-garde adopts the eternal present
of the child’s concept of and experience of time. As Wilfried Lippitz writes
in “The Child’s Understanding of Time,” citing Piaget’s view, “time does not
exist for children up to the age of operative intelligence.”7 Alongside other
primitive sources of inspiration, the avant-garde uses the newfound infantile
to embark upon a course toward formal simplification and abstraction that
suited their artistic agenda. Indeed, what the Neo- Primitivists discovered
and emphasized in children’s art reflects more about their own artistic goals
and assumptions than it reveals any essential features of children’s actual
art, since no primitivist enterprise can escape the limitations of the coloniz-
ing perspective that defines the other as a ‘primitive’ atavism. Nevertheless,
this chapter explores how the avant-garde artist Mikhail Larionov, along with
other artists involved with “Neo-Primitivism,” function within a primitivist
framework when they construct the child as primitive and their own art as
infantile even as they define themselves as the primitives of the twentieth
century in order to stage a spatiotemporal coup in the world of art.
For modern art in general, the practice of primitivism has often been
used as a device to revolt against tradition, time, and the rhetoric of linear
progress. In Primitivism and Modern Art (1986), Robert Goldwater defines
primitivism as the cultivation of ‘primitive’ art as a source of renewed vitality
in art.8 For twentieth-century artists confronting modernity with a critical
eye, primitivism offered an alternative to the rhetoric of progress through a
regressive return to mythic origins in the past. Initially, the temporal escape
from modern civilization was accomplished by spatial dislocation, such as in
the case of the painter Paul Gauguin, who spent most of his last twelve years
in Tahiti.9 Tellingly, this return to the past sometimes tends to be framed
according to the personal past and in the language of childhood; Gauguin
argued, “In order to produce something new, one must return to the original
source, to the childhood of mankind.”10 Indicatively, Gauguin wished to
paint “like children,” as Vincent Van Gogh noted approvingly,11 and Gauguin
summed up his aesthetic in the statement, “I have gone far back, farther back
than the horses of the Parthenon . . . as far back as the Dada of my babyhood,
the good rocking-horse.”12 Comments such as these display the modernist
primitivist’s desire to shed the accretions of the historical past to reach an
illusory primitivist paradise through a simulated temporal and spatial jour-
ney to a perceived place of origin conveniently constructed as ‘primitive.’
Indeed, this battle against tradition and time, whether the struggle against
21
modernity or a revolutionary rejection of the past, first brings modern artists

to the child. These primitivists construct childhood as an ideal space from
which to derive artistic renewal and inspiration, but, in truth, the attraction
of the voiceless ‘primitive’ is the blank canvas it offers for the representation
of what they themselves seek.
Beyond the limits of civilization, in the realm of a primitive ‘other,’ con-
veniently unable to protest or speak for itself, modern artists believed they
could return to the beginning of time and rediscover the origin of art and
language. Following in the footsteps of a figure like Jean-Jacques Rousseau
and influenced by Romanticism, they made use of the idea of the noble sav-
age to shed the encumbrances of civilization and reeducate themselves from
first principles. By a parallel path, they rediscovered the child, conveniently
close at hand, as a strategic anachronism collapsing both time and space and
offering a form of access to origins. The ontogenetic fallacy that constructed
the ‘infant/child’ in this manner was pervasive at this time. For instance, the
respected Russian scientist Nikolai Morozov remarked in 1916:
The successive stages of the mental development of the child repeat in sim-
plified forms the prehistoric stages of development of all mankind since the
time of his origin on earth. In the first sounds of infantile speech we hear
the first attempts at speech by our distant ancestors; in the first scribbles
of children’s drawings we see their first attempts to depict the surrounding
world and all that they desire to see in it. Children’s drawings—these are
the vestiges of epochs long since past.13
Apart from its dubious scientific accuracy, the ontogenetic conceptual frame-
work endowed the scribbles and babble of the child with tremendous sig-
nificance. The ‘infant/child’ thus seems to offer the possibility of traveling
through time. Similarly, the view of the child as ‘primitive’ proffers tantaliz-
ing access to the origins of art and language, even as the child becomes a tool
and anthropological object.
At the turn of the century, across Europe, the primitivist gaze fix-
ated on newly discovered ‘primitives’ of various types, whom they viewed
as standing in a privileged place outside the flow of time. These primitives
of the twentieth century became the objects of the artistic, intellectual, and
anthropological gaze. As George Saiko reflects in the article “Why Modern
Art Is Primitive” (1934), modern art “based itself on three spheres in which
kindred aims seemed to be realized: on the art of primitive peoples, on pre-
historic art, and on the ‘artistic productions’ of the child.”14 The fallacious
parallel drawn between these three forms of ‘primitives’ notwithstanding,
this analysis of the infantile primitivism of the Russian avant-garde takes as
its focus the third, namely, the artistic productions of the child. Artists prac-
ticing infantile primitivism regarded children’s own artistic productions as
22
Infant Art
more spontaneous, naive, and pure than adult works. These seemed to grant
access to a more expressive creative world, as would be explored further in
later Surrealist movements.
Insofar as primitivism reevaluated or revitalized marginalized subjects
belonging to the spatial and temporal periphery of contemporary society,
it also reconceptualized the child as a strange ‘other’ close at hand. As if
a modern-day savage, and new incarnation of the ‘noble savage’ of the
Enlightenment and Romanticism,15 the child represented an externalized
form of access to the primitive past. The idea of child as savage also extended
internally within the individual, since psychoanalysis had painted the infan-
tile psyche as primal and savage compared to its later encrustations.16 The
primitivist focus on a distant space and time, or the spatial and temporal pe-
riphery, also applies to the avant-garde fixation on the ‘infant/child,’ since the
child represented an opportunity for renewal of the arts from the temporal
and spatial periphery of the semiotic sphere—at a maximal remove from the
artistic establishment.
The imperialist context of primitivism, which similarly subjects pre-
historic man, savage, and child to a colonizing gaze that predetermines their
status as ‘other,’ reveals how primitivism proves vulnerable to a postcolonial-
ist critique. In Time and the Other, Johannes Fabian discusses Claude Lévi-
Strauss’s critique of “the archaic illusion” that imagines the minds of children,
lunatics, and the “primitive mind” as parallel.17
This old evolutionist strategy of arguing from ontogeny to phylogeny (and

back) is of course a classical example for ‘methodological’ abuses of Time:
Primitive thought illuminates the thought of Western children because
the two are equidistant from Western adult thought. Both represent early
stages in a developmental sequence.18
The equation of lunatic, primitive, and child, as Lévi-Strauss observed, is

equally unjust to all concerned, except to the Western adult who categorizes
them in this manner and subordinates them through a hierarchy defined by
time.19 Fabian develops his critique further in ways relevant for this study
when he begins to apply postcolonialist thinking to the child by asking,
Are we to overlook that adult-child relations are also, and sometimes pri-
marily, fraught with barely disguised attitudes of power and practices of re-
pression and abuse? Even worse, are we to forget that talk about the child-
like nature of the primitive has never been just a neutral classificatory act,
but a powerful rhetorical figure and motive, informing colonial practice
in every aspect. . . . Aside from the evolutionist figure of the savage there
has been no conception more obviously implicated in political and cultural
oppression than that of the childlike native.20
23
If the childlike native is a construct interrogated by postcolonial theory,

then the present work sets out to interrogate its mirror image—the child
as savage.
As in ethnography, artistic primitivism often equated the savage and
the child quite literally. For example, in 1908 a Parisian art critic makes this
parallel and takes the next logical step:
“From the point of view of the arts of design,” [E.-T. Hamy] says, “as from
so many other points of view, savages are true children; they draw, they
mess in paints, they model, like children.” And Hamy claims, as others
have claimed since, that where we lack evidence of savage art we can fol-
low the aesthetic evolution of mankind in the development of the abilities
of our children.21
After the initial assumption that constructed the child as savage, primitivism
progressed through certain typical stages. The early stages of primitivism
often involve a conscious collection of original works of the ‘primitive’ as
exotic artifacts, such as the collection of African art and sculpture by Pablo
Picasso.22 Framed in a particular way, these artifacts then serve as a source
of inspiration for primitivist imitations. At all times, however, the primitivist
frame of reference involves a colonial gaze that constructs a strange ‘other’
according to a preconceived colonialist mold that proves less an image of the
colonized subject than an objectifying construct that reflects the aspirations
of the colonizing agent. As Marianna Torgovnick observes, “The primitive
does what we ask it to do. Voiceless, it lets us speak for it. It is our ventrilo-
quist’s dummy.”23 Her wording underscores the usefulness of the voiceless
primitive in a manner particularly apt with regard to the unspeaking infans
that is the subject of this book. Such a postcolonialist critique applies also to
the infantile primitivism of the Russian avant-garde, which collects, frames,
and employs children’s creative production in order to advance its own self-
construction and to accomplish the radical reconfiguration of art that was
its aim.24
In early twentieth-century Russia, the character of the avant-garde
movement was uniquely bound up in the idea of revolution, which is itself
a metaphor for “revolt” and tumultuous change, or a rapid rotation with re-
spect to time and space. The elevation of savagery over civilization, and the
child over the adult, should be seen within the anti-hierarchical and even
carnivalesque reversal of positions that expressed the spirit of the times. The
spirit of the fin de siècle and political tumult of 1905 would only build toward
the 1917 Revolution, civil war, and a radical political reconfiguration with
countless casualties. In the year 1909, however, as this account of the avant-
garde begins, revolution remained a utopian idea and an inspiring prospect
for the future. Nonetheless, the temporal orientation implicit within the term
24
Infant Art
‘avant-garde,’ as well as in the ‘primitivism’ discussed in this chapter and ‘fu-

turism’ in the next, serve as an effective reminder of the revolutionary goals
of this new art which sought in the distant past represented by primitivism a
radical path to the future.
Beginning with the actions and innovations of Mikhail Larionov and his
contemporaries, the Russian avant-garde indeed did reposition itself at the
forefront of artistic innovation and shocked its audience with aesthetic spec-
tacles. With avant-garde artist Mikhail Larionov in the lead, Neo-Primitivist
artists constructed the ‘infant/child’ and themselves as the true ‘primitives of
the twentieth century’ in order to accomplish their own revolutionary artistic
aims. Through primitivism, they sought to escape from the traditional rela-
tions that define Russia as temporally backward, spatially peripheral, and
hierarchically subordinate to the West. Their assertion of artistic autonomy
comes, however, at the expense of the child, who becomes a chronological
construction and savage defined and delimited by preconceived ideas of lin-
ear progress that define the child as primitive.
As typical of primitivist practice, the equation of the savage and the
child through essentialist definitions means that the reality and the projec-
tion cannot be distinguished. When faced with drawings by the children of
artists from the World of Art movement, Fyodor Sologub perspicaciously
remarked, “Charming, apart from the fact that they are still too much us,
and too much in our own manner” (Ocharovatel’no, nesmotria na to, chto eto
vse eshche slishkom my, i slishkom po nashemu).25 The same can be said of
the artwork, often by these same World of Art children, which was collected,
exhibited, and imitated by Neo-Primitivist artists. As Robert Goldwater notes
in Primitivism in Modern Art, when he distinguishes between the produc-
tion of the ‘primitive’ and the ‘primitivist,’ “Nor are the productions of adults
the same as those of children, however imitative their intention may be.”26
Imitation itself involves interpretation and conscious or unconscious prin-
ciples of selection that construct the object of the gaze in a hypertrophied
way. The same applies, of course, to the infantile primitivism of the Russian
avant-garde.
E A RLY M A NI F ES TAT I O NS O F
IN FA N T I L E P R I M I T I V I S M
After attending the exhibition “Art in the Life of the Child” (“Iskusstvo v
zhizni rebenka”) held in Saint Petersburg in 1908, the Symbolist poet
Maximilian Voloshin, like many other artists and intellectuals provoked by
this exhibit to take an interest in children’s art, asked, “Should children learn
from adults or adults from children?” (Detiam li uchit’sia u vzroslykh ili
25
vzroslym u detei?).27 Voloshin here alludes to Leo Tolstoy’s 1862 pedagogi-

cal article which asks, “Who should learn to write from whom, the peasant
children from us or we from the peasant children?” and unequivocally claims
that adults should learn to write from children.28 Tolstoy, who himself con-
flates peasant and child as primitive ‘other,’ such as when he speaks of “the
pure primitive soul of a peasant child,”29 indeed stands as a significant pre-
decessor in the revaluation of the child as idealized primitive and his words
echo in twentieth-century statements about children’s creative production.
If Voloshin approaches children’s art from the perspective of Symbol-
ism, and the World of Art artist Alexandre Benois, who declared in 1908 that
“all children’s play is art,”30 approaches the child’s creativity from the oblique
angle of his own artistic perspective, then such examples illustrate how chil-
dren’s art and the idea of child’s play had begun to occupy a significant place
in the discourse of the literary and artistic elite at the beginning of the twen-
tieth century. The avant-garde artist Mikhail Larionov and his colleagues who
collaborated under the banner of Neo-Primitivism, however, constructed the
child as artist-exemplar in both theory and practice. Through the practice of
infantile primitivism, which involved the collection, exhibition, and imita-
tion of children’s art and led to a deepening interest in infantile perception,
Mikhail Larionov and his collaborators led Russian art toward a process of
formal simplification and increasing abstraction that marks the first accom-
plishment of infantile primitivism.
Although Russian artists and intellectuals in this period frequently
construct the ‘infant/child’ as an abstract creative ideal, the avant-garde art-
ists of Neo-Primitivism take this primitivist interest further by incorporating
the forms of children’s creative production into their own artistic practice,
thereby reifying the avant-garde interest in the infantile. In so doing, Mikhail
Larionov and his Neo-Primitivist colleagues led the way for the develop-
ment of the infantilist aesthetic of the Russian avant-garde. Passing through
the characteristic stages of primitivism, avant-garde artists’ serious attention
to children’s art began with its private collection, continued with its public
exhibition, and then received further emphasis and critical attention in the
manifestoes and theoretical statements of Neo-Primitivism. Once primitivist
notions of children’s art and creativity pervaded all levels of artistic practice,
they not only provoked imitation but also began to shape artistic develop-
ment and aesthetics on a more abstract and deeper level. Through their prac-
tice of infantile primitivism, Larionov and other Neo-Primitivist artists used
a model of the infantile to achieve their artistic goals of liberating themselves
from artistic conventions, incorporating innovative elements in their art, and
moving toward a simplification of form that charted the future course of the
avant-garde. In this chapter I argue that Larionov’s infantile primitivism plays
26
Infant Art
a significant role in leading him on a path toward a simplification of form

concomitant with an increasing degree of abstraction.
IN PRA I S E O F B A R B A R I S M A ND T H E I NFA NTI L E
Through primitivism, Russian artists attempted to end centuries of cultural

subordination to the West by reconceptualizing Russia’s cultural ‘backward-
ness’ as a strength. This view of Russia’s delayed development formed a re-
current strain in Russian intellectual history at least since Petr Chaadaev’s
“First Philosophical Letter” (1829), which lambasted Russia’s anachronistic
features, and the later “Apology of a Madman” (1837), which reformulated
Russia’s backwardness as a strength.31 Less recognized than this preva-
lent theme of Russia as retrograde is the degree to which it, dating back to
Chaadaev’s original formulations, characterizes Russia as infantile. After
commenting on how Russia is neither West nor East and stands outside of
time, Chaadaev speaks of Russians as having “come into the world like il-
legitimate children” (iavivshis’ na svet kak nezakonnorozhdennye deti).32 In
his opinion, nineteenth-century Russia had not yet undergone a period of
“adolescence” when “faculties reach their peak”;33 he thus defines Russia, by
implication, as a mere child on a linear time scale of progress.34 Chaadaev
frequently draws upon imagery of childhood as he explores the formation
and education of people and compares Russians to children who cannot think
for themselves: “We are like those children who have not been taught to
think for themselves” (My podobny tem detiam, kotorykh ne zastavili samikh
rassuzhdat’).35 He detects only “some of the virtues of peoples that are young
or lagging behind civilization” (nekotorymi dostoinstvami narodov molodykh
i otstavshikh ot tsivilizatsii).36 In his view, geography and other circumstances
have infantilized the Russian people and left them in a state of immaturity
and helplessness comparable to that of a child.37 Chaadaev’s cynical belief
that Russians exist only “in order to teach some great lesson to the world”
(chtoby prepodat’ kakoi-to velikii urok otdalennym potomkam)38 later be-
comes reformulated more positively and, indeed, this is the charge taken up
by primitivism and the avant-garde as part of a broader revolutionary con-
text. Clearly this old sense of Russia as an anachronistic, atavistic, and only
marginal member of a wider Western or Eastern society contributes to the
comparison of Russia to a child. The infantilization of Russia thus has a con-
siderable prehistory already by the beginning of the twentieth century when
primitivist practice begins to confront this theme and turn it on its head.
Under the banner of primitivism, the Russian avant-garde claims greater
access to authentic origins, due to its temporally and spatially peripheral
27
position. Rejecting a Westernizing emphasis on progress and imitation of

the West, Russian artists assert the value of their Slavic past and claim to
possess privileged access to a deeper past through their Eastern heritage.
In this way, the Russian avant-garde employs primitivism to escape from the
subordinate position they were allotted by a spatiotemporal hierarchy that
placed Russia behind in the rhetoric of progress and marginal with respect to
European artistic tradition. Within infantile primitivism, the child emerges as
a new artistic ideal that offers Russian and avant-garde art the chance to re-
conceptualize its weakness as a strength by reevaluating the infantile. In the
revaluation of the ‘primitive’ subject, Russian art not only discovers a new ap-
preciation for the infantile, but also seeks to surpass all others in constructing
itself, in the guise of the child, as the true primitive of the twentieth century
and rightful heir to the future.
The temporal reversal inherent in the concept of primitivism as strate-
gic anachronism thus helped reconceptualize Russia’s perceived “backward-
ness” as a strength. In 1909 a contemporary critic observed this shift.
A very short while ago it was a saying that if one scratched a Russian, one
discovered a barbarian. Now we understand this more correctly, and in
this barbarian we find a great artistic advantage. This fund of raw material
succoured by geographical and ethnographical circumstances is a national
treasure-house from which the Russians will long draw.39
Through primitivism, Russia’s dubious claim to barbarism becomes an envi-
able source of raw material. Interestingly, the usage of ‘barbarian’ and, later,
‘barbarism’ evokes not only the sense of ‘savagery,’ but also its etymological
link to the apparently incoherent speech or babble of the foreign other. 40
An underlying sense of foreign speech, its strangeness and its value, recurs
in the critic’s language. “The Russians spoke, and everyone’s attention was
attracted. We were made to envy them for the remains of barbarism which
they have managed to preserve. While they wish to learn from us, it turns out
that they are our teachers.”41 The reversal of the relationship between stu-
dent and teacher described here, in many ways comparable to Tolstoy’s ques-
tion of “who should learn from whom,” again reflects the reversal of power
positions implicit within the elevation of the primitive, savage, and infantile
to the level of an ideal. The subversive revaluation of adults/teachers and
children/students thus strategically relocates Russian artists to a new position
of power. Importantly, however, as Caryl Emerson observes when taking a
Bakhtinian perspective on Tolstoy’s idea of “who should learn from whom,”
no real challenge to authority is possible if the terms of the hierarchy are
merely reversed about the same axis (Emerson, “Tolstoy Connection” 152).42
A carnivalesque reversal of positions does not seriously, or permanently, chal-
28
Infant Art
lenge the authority of the powers that be, just as the Tolstoyan question does
not truly challenge the impossible relations of children and adults.
The reevaluation of Russia’s native tradition allows for a nationalism
that places Russia closer to the origins of art. Through primitivism, Russian
art speaks in praise of barbarism and identifies with the barbaric. Liberated
by the rejection of the West, Russian artists glorify their ties to the East. In
the manifesto of “Neo-Primitivism” (“Neo-primitivizm”; 1913), Shevchenko
speaks for Larionov and other Neo-Primitivists when he pronounces:
They call us barbarians, Asiatics. Yes, we are Asia, and take pride in this,
since “Asia is the cradle of nations,” a good half of the blood flowing in
our veins is Tatar, and we hail the Coming East, the originary source and
cradle of all culture, of all Arts. [Nas nazyvaiut varvarami, aziatami. Da,
my Aziia, i gordimsia etim, ibo ‘Aziia kolybel’ narodov’, v nas techet do-
braia polovina tatarskoi krovi, i my privetstvuem Griadushchii Vostok,
pervoistochnik i kolybel’ vsei kul’tury, vsekh Iskusstv.]43
Using the metaphor of the “cradle of nations,” Neo-Primitivist artists refor-
mulate Russia’s spatially peripheral position with respect to western Europe
as closer to an originary source in the East. As typical of primitivism, Asia is
simultaneously exoticized and praised as the cradle of nations, culture, and
arts, as if Asian art reveals the childhood of all peoples. That this primitivist
interest in a return to origins employs the metaphor of the cradle hints at
the parallel path by which Neo-Primitivism arrived at the infantile, that is,
through a search for the origin of art on an individual scale. Through primi-
tivism, Russian art relocates itself as closer to creative sources, including the
symbolic infancy of art.
The manifesto of “Neo-Primitivism” also demonstrates the connection
drawn by the Neo-Primitivists between Asiatic origins and the ‘primitive’
art of children. Shevchenko claims that Neo-Primitivism is entirely original,
since it is a unique combination of primitivisms originating in the East, in
national art, and in the infantile. He writes,
Hence, Neo-Primitivism, while deriving its genesis from the East . . . is
entirely original [samobyten]. To a great extent, it reflects the East, e.g.,
in its interpretation, in its traditions; and, yet, one’s own national Art also
plays a significant role, in the same way that children’s art does—this one
of a kind, always profound and genuine primitive [tak zhe, kak i detskoe
tvorchestvo, etot edinstvennyi v svoem rode, vsegda glubokii i podlinnyi
primitiv] art in which our Asiatic origin is evident in all of its fullness.44
Thus, in the central treatise of Neo-Primitivism, Shevchenko underscores
the value these avant-garde artists placed on children’s art, or as he puts it,
29
“this one of a kind, always profound and genuine primitive.” As he tallies

the major influences on primitivist art, from Eastern traditions and national
art to children’s creative productions, he seems also to recapitulate the
chronological stages of Neo-Primitivism, whose end point thus appears to be
children’s art. He expresses his conviction that children’s art offers access to
artistic and cultural origins.
A close collaborator of the Neo-Primitivists, the artist known as
Vladimir Markov (Woldemar Matvejs) strikes a similar tone in his article on
“The Principles of the New Art” (“Printsipy novogo iskusstva”; 1912).45 Tak-
ing a colonialist perspective on the ‘other,’ he infantilizes the ancient peoples
and the East he elevates as an ideal. He writes,
Ancient peoples and the East [Drevnye narody i Vostok] did not know our
scientific rationality. These were children, in whom feeling and imagina-
tion dominated over logic. These were naive, uncorrupted children [ne-
umnye, neisporchennye deti], who intuitively penetrated into the world of
beauty, who could not be bribed by realism or by scientific investigations
on nature. While with us here, “Die Logik hat uns die Natur entgöttert,” as
one German writer expressed it. Our stiff indifference toward the ‘babble’
of the East [k lepetu Vostoka] and our misunderstanding of it are deeply
offensive.46
Markov borrows from Romantic notions of the child as ideal artist and
extends these characterizations also to the ‘East.’ His revaluation of “the
‘babble’ of the East,” meanwhile, betrays his artistic fascination for inchoate
or incomprehensible forms of expression, including infantile babble. Here,
the depiction of the babble of the foreign ‘other,’ like the concepts of ‘bar-
barism’ and ‘barbarian’ in their older and etymological senses, betrays a
primitivist fascination with the exoticized ‘other.’
By embracing the East, the Neo-Primitivist avant-garde signals its
rejection of the West. For instance, the contemporaneous manifesto of
“Donkey’s Tail and Target” (“Oslinyi khvost i Mishen’ ”; 1913), signed by
Natalya Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, and Aleksandr Shevchenko, articu-
lates the rejection of the West along with all else. “We, the Rayonists and
Futurists, do not wish to speak about the new or the old art and still less about
contemporary Western [art]” (My, Luchisty i Budushchniki, ne zhelaem
govorit’ ni o novom, ni o starom iskusstve i eshche menee o sovremennom
zapadnom).47 The Russian Neo-Primitivists suppress their debt to Western
European primitivism for helping them recognize the value of indigenous
sources of primitivist inspiration. Shevchenko admits, “They accuse us of
imitation of western Art,” and it is indeed undeniable that Paul Gauguin and
Vincent Van Gogh stand as precursors of modernist primitivism.48 Though
the western European espousal of primitivism helped legitimize this new
30
Infant Art
trend in the arts, Russian Neo-Primitivism arguably had more significant

national antecedents in Russian intellectual history, including Tolstoy. In the
Russian context, as Camilla Gray notes, the movement for the emancipa-
tion of the serfs and socially engaged realism in the arts prepared the way
for the cultural revival of the folk tradition begun at the end of the nine-
teenth century,49 which led the way to primitivism. Symbolism and the World
of Art movements50 also played a role in the discovery of the child as an
artistic ideal.
Rhetorically speaking, these new expressions against the West repre-
sent a self-conscious declaration of independence for Russian art that simul-
taneously positions the avant-garde against Russian predecessors who em-
braced Western influences. Indeed, Russian Neo-Primitivist artists stand in
a unique position with respect to later western European counterparts in
terms of the comparatively early date of their engagement with children’s art,
the degree of their attention to it, and its impact on their practice of infantile
primitivism. Other modernist artists in Europe who collected and imitated
children’s art, such as Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, and Joan Miró,51 engaged in
these activities later than did Larionov, Shevchenko, and the other artists of
Russian Neo-Primitivism. Thus one might note that the Russian avant-garde
effectively used infantile primitivism as an opportunity to situate itself at the
forefront of the internationally active avant-garde and define itself, through
the child, as the perfect ‘primitive’ and new future of art. At the same time,
the practice of infantile primitivism also helped move the avant-garde into
new experimental areas.
TH E N E O - P R I M I T I V I S T ‘ D I S CO V ERY’ OF TH E CH I L D
Against the backdrop of an increasing attention to children’s creativity and

play displayed by Symbolists and World of Art artists, the artists of Neo-
Primitivism concretized the abstract and general interest in children’s art.
Unlike other groups, they not only spoke about the artistic significance of
children’s art, but also incorporated theoretical views on the infantile into
their artistic practice. In their work, Mikhail Larionov and his close associ-
ates Natalya Goncharova and Aleksandr Shevchenko not only reevaluate the
art of the child, but also appropriate the child as a construct for their own
radical, avant-garde aims. In their Neo-Primitivist writings, activities, and
artistic practice, they display their interest in children’s art and its specific
formal techniques. They then go further when, as artists, they seek to imitate
the primitive ‘other’ and emulate what they see in children’s art through an
artificial and self-conscious simplification of means. In so doing, they derive
innovative approaches to art through the implementation of new principles
31
of form. The impact of their infantile primitivism thus has significant reper-
cussions for the future of non-representational art, for Neo-Primitivism and
its subsequent stages help advance artistic development toward an increasing
simplification of form and artistic abstraction.
Though the first stage of infantile primitivism begins with the collec-
tion and exhibition of children’s art, it gradually penetrates to a deeper level.
This later stage involves the imitation of specifically infantile features and a
deeper influence of artistic infantilism upon their course of development.
Initially, Larionov, Shevchenko, and Goncharova participated in numerous
exhibitions that reveal how highly they valued children’s art and its aesthetic
principles. In these exhibitions, the Neo-Primitivists not only offer children’s
drawings equal stature and prominence in their exhibitions; they even grant
the artwork of children pride of place. At the same time, however, the very
process of framing often reveals how artists employ children’s art to advance
distinct polemical aims.
In “Children’s Drawings in Russian Futurism” (1998), Yuri Molok
details the contents of four exhibitions of children’s drawings between the
years 1908 and 1913.52 The “Fifth Exhibition of the New Society of Artists”
(1908) included an “Exhibition of Children’s Drawings” containing works
collected by K. Siunnenberg, S. Chekhonin, and others.53 Over the next
several years, Larionov and his avant-garde colleagues involved themselves in
three more exhibitions that featured art by children. First among these was
a salon entitled “International Exhibition of Painting, Sculpture, Engraving,
and Drawing” (“Internatsional’naia vystavka kartin, skul’ptury, graviury i
risunka”) organized by the sculptor Vladimir Izdebsky between December
1909 and July 1910. It included works by a wide range of artists with links
to primitivism, like the Fauves, representatives of early Cubism, the Neue
Künstlervereinigung from Munich, and numerous Russians living at home or
abroad. Larionov’s contributions included the early painting Gypsy Woman
(Tsyganka), which Kruglov rightfully calls one of the exhibit’s “classic ex-
amples of native [Russian] neoprimitivism.”54 This important exhibition also
included children’s drawings. Indeed, as Anthony Parton observes, “Izdebsky
was one of the first to recognize the artistic importance of children’s draw-
ings, and four of these were exhibited as a finale to the exhibition.”55 Yuri
Molok has uncovered the “names of the artists of the children’s drawings,”
namely, “Vitya Fedorov, Anya Vengrizhanovskaya, Armand Altman, Volodya
Rodionov,” who were clearly the children of the artistic elite.56 The exhibition
thus gave a prominent place to artwork by actual children, since the finale
represents a rhetorically powerful position in an implicit narrative. In fact,
children’s art frequently appears last in a sequence, just as the development of
infantile primitivism over time often tends toward increasing attention to the
creative production of ever younger children, as also proves to be the case in
32
Infant Art
Cubo-Futurist poetry. Such phenomena hint at the regressive tendency of

primitivism that relates to the use of the child as a strategic anachronism.
This grand exhibition was followed in 1911 by a second Izdebsky salon
entitled “International Art Exhibition” (“Mezhdunarodnaia khudozhestven-
naia vystavka”), where leading Russian avant-garde artists like Larionov and
Goncharova played a greater role.57 This exhibit also contained “children’s
drawings” (detskie risunki) of unspecified number and of unknown ori-
gin.58 These drawings are listed at the end of the catalog, after the names
Yakulov, Yavlensky, and Ekster, as in the previous salon they had been listed
after Yavlensky and Yakovlev.59 A participant in both exhibits, the artist Alexei
Yavlensky (Jawlensky) himself collected the drawings of his son Andreas,
as Paul Klee did with his son Felix, and Lionel Feininger did with his son
T. Lux. Like their Russian counterparts, these artists’ children grew up in
a highly artistic milieu, which closely watched, valued, and collected their
artwork.60 Yavlensky, like Vasily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter, seriously
pursued children’s art within the context of the art movement known as Der
Blaue Reiter.61 Similarly, Münter and Kandinsky began to collect children’s
art in 1908, Vasily Kandinsky and others mention children’s art in their theo-
retical writings, and the almanac of Der Blaue Reiter contained thirteen
works by children.62 The most prolific and published of these child artists
is Lydia Weber, whose work is attributed to her in the almanac and spe-
cifically referred to by Kandinsky in his writings.63 As this example demon-
strates, these wide-ranging exhibitions resulted in creative cross-fertilization
between contemporary movements and European branches of modernist
primitivism even in their use of children’s art.
Larionov’s participation in these two Izdebsky exhibitions illustrates
his and his colleagues’ proximity to the contemporary display and exhibition
of children’s art. The Target (Mishen’) exhibition he arranged in March and
April 1913 provides indicative evidence of Larionov’s own serious artistic at-
tention to children’s art. His interest in ‘primitive’ art clearly motivated the
inclusion of drawings by children in his Target exhibition.
A majority of the works on show at the Target were executed in a neo-

primitive style. . . . However, to emphasize the correspondence between
their own work and popular art forms, Larionov included in the Target a
selection of “contemporary primitive” art.64
Molok provides the titles of some of these children’s drawings, which give
some sense of their subject matter.
The catalogue for this Moscow show includes, along with an introduc-
tion by Mikhail Larionov, “Children’s Drawings from the Collection of A.
Shevchenko” (nos. 153–80), without artists’ names or titles, and “Children’s
33
Drawings from the Collection of N. Vinogradov” (nos. 201–9, without the

artists’ names, but with titles: 201–2, Cossacks; 203, Reading a Manifesto;
204, Haymaking; 205, Village; 206, Drawing; 207, ‘Little Russian’ Hut;
208, On the River, 209, On the Edge of the Village).65
The display of children’s drawings presupposes and depends upon a primitiv-

ist interest in its ethnographic collection. The attribution of one of these col-
lections of children’s drawings to A. Shevchenko provides additional evidence
that the theoretician and critical voice of Neo-Primitivism himself collected
children’s art. That Shevchenko’s primitivist attention to children’s drawings
had led him to amass a collection of children’s art by the year 1913 dem-
onstrates the depth of interest leading avant-garde artists had in children’s
drawings at this time.
Larionov and Goncharova also collected children’s art, as Jonathan
Fineberg argues in his study of “Mikhail Larionov and the ‘Childhood’ of
Russia” (1997), where he reproduces three children’s drawings he traces
to the original collection of Mikhail Larionov.66 In further affirmation of
Larionov and Goncharova’s collector’s interest in children’s drawings, Molok
brings forward new evidence of a visit by Larionov and Goncharova to a 1915
exhibition of “War in Children’s Drawings,” where they purchased several
drawings by children.67 This fact provides evidence of their sustained atten-
tion to children’s art and shows that they personally collected works by chil-
dren. Later evidence of their interest and collection of children’s drawings
in the period of their emigration also abounds, such as in collaborations with
Roger Fry discussed by Anthony Parton.68
My own research in the archives and holdings of the Tretyakov Gallery
in Moscow uncovered several unpublished drawings by children from the
former collection of Mikhail Larionov and Natalya Goncharova.69 This col-
lection includes striking examples of imaginative compositions by children
that share patterning features with the more abstract compositions of Vasily
Kandinsky. Such highly original contributions by an unknown child artist un-
derscore how the process of selection privileges particular works that strike
the fancy of the collector, rather than being reflective of an overgeneralized
category of “children’s art.” Other children’s drawings in this collection ap-
pear more conventional, such as a girl’s portrait painted with bold fields of
color signed “Elena” or a simplistic pencil-line portrait signed “Vera.” As both
of these are signed in Latin letters, they may date from a later period than
the one in question here, as also may apply to a series of ornate costume de-
signs with collage-style details that reflect the collector’s theatrical interests
and tastes. A few iconic Russian landscape drawings by children reflect a
distinctly Russian everyday; in this sense they resemble the everyday motifs
typical of the children’s works on display in the Target exhibit, as evidenced
34
Infant Art
by their titles. One watercolor clearly dates from an early time of war, since it
shows a patient reading a revolutionary-era Russian newspaper titled Early
Morning (Rannie utro) in old orthography,70 while a nun faces another pa-
tient recovering in his bed. A map of European Russia, with the juncture of
Russian rivers represented in detail, hangs on the wall, and a snowy land-
scape appears in the windows. Clearly by a child, however mature and tal-
ented, this drawing fixes its impressions in a certain reality and definite time
and place—wartime Russia. Such works serve as lasting and specific artifacts
of the avant-garde interest in actual examples of children’s art. At the same
time they also underscore how individual and non-representative children’s
drawings can be. Generalizations frequently do not apply. In truth, there
is no reason that children’s art should be any less variable than adult art is
presumed to be.
The fact that significant artistic figures of the time engaged in the con-
tinued collection of children’s art demonstrates their serious interest in chil-
dren’s creativity and artistic activities. Parton notes that “at the same time a
number of artists and writers were building collections of children’s art.”71
The scholar Vladimir Markov remarks in his history of Russian Futurism
that the Futurist poet Vasily Kamensky collected children’s drawings.72 Publi-
cation of children’s drawings by other Futurist poets, such as those pub-
lished by Aleksei Kruchenykh and Elena Guro’s husband and posthumous
publisher Mikhail Matiushin also implies the presence of other materials by
children.73 Clearly, Shevchenko and others had collections too, since they
contributed these to the Target exhibition. One “child’s drawing” (detskii
risunok) belonging to Shevchenko has been preserved (see figure 4), since it
was reproduced under this label as the final plate in his volume Principles of
Cubism (Prinstipy kubizma; 1913).
The fact that Shevchenko includes what he labels as a child’s drawing
among the illustrations for this volume demonstrates his belief in the kinship
of Cubists’ and children’s attitude toward artistic form. He thus advances the
serious study of children’s art as part of his own artistic rhetoric surround-
ing The Principles of Cubism and of Other Movements in the Painting of All
Times and Peoples (Printsipy kubizma i drugikh techenii v zhivopisi vsekh
vremen i narodov; 1913). The expressive title of his volume shows a primi-
tivist approach to art not confined by time or space, and, rather, collapsing
these dimensions. In addition to images by Larionov, Goncharova, himself,
and others, Shevchenko ends the volume with an anonymous illustration he
labels “child’s drawing” (detskii risunok),74 thereby creating a similar narra-
tive arc to that evident in the exhibitions that display children’s drawings at
the end.75 The narrative message thus indicates that the regressive trajectory
of modern art draws it toward the principles of ‘primitive’ art made evident
in a child’s drawing.
35
Figure 4. Anonymous child’s drawing, page from Aleksandr Shevchenko’s

Printsipy kubizma i drugikh sovremennykh techenii v zhivopisi vsekh vremen
i narodov (The Principles of Cubism and of Other Contemporary Movements
in the Arts of All Times and Peoples), 1913
The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (88-B28061)
Technically speaking, the drawing, which depicts a boat on a river

and a man walking along a path, has begun to approach the use of a van-
ishing point in the distance and employs reasonably sophisticated stylistic
techniques. The proportions and respective sizes of man, boat, trees, and
birds, however, represent the perspectival naïveté of an immature artist. In
Art and Representation: New Principles in the Analysis of Pictures (1997),
John Willats discusses the development of successive forms of projection in
children’s drawings.76 According to the descriptive vocabulary developed by
Willats, this drawing displays the use of “naive perspective” and thus might
belong to the fifth stage out of six he identifies in the artistic development of
children, thus marking it as fairly mature in its technique.77 Though records
attest that Shevchenko had a collection of children’s art, the possibility exists
that the labeling of this “child’s drawing” is spurious. Indeed, the idea of the
child as primitive serves a strategic purpose and amounts to a performance of
36
Infant Art
the infantile above all. For this reason, authenticity is beside the point; what
is significant is how this image is being labeled, framed, and used rhetori-
cally here.
Within the covers of his book on Cubism, Shevchenko equates the
work of accomplished artists with primitive art. Such leveling of hierarchies
proves typical of primitivism, which destabilizes conventional categories and
offers a new frame of reference. Through the juxtaposition he constructs,
adult artwork suddenly appears infantile and the child’s artwork appears
adult. All avant-garde art included in the volume appears primitive or infan-
tile by association. For example, a composition by Natalya Goncharova that
includes four figures under tall trees, which also appears in later versions
of the work, could easily be mistaken for a child’s drawing. It renders the
human form in simplified shapes, as four figures play-act a scene of violence.
Two men walk stiffly, while another points his arms forward, in a gesture of
real or simulated violence, at a fallen figure whose hat has flown off dramati-
cally. By assembling these drawings together in the artistic treatise on The
Principles of Cubism, Shevchenko shows that his praise of children’s art goes
beyond mere words; he visibly displays children’s art and puts it forth as a
model for emulation at the same time that he draws attention to the infantile
features of avant-garde art.
IN FA N T I L E P R I M I T I V I S M I N P R ACTI CE
Close analysis of examples from Mikhail Larionov’s artistic practice, mean-

while, displays how the artists of Neo-Primitivism transformed a widespread
cultural interest in children’s art into a determining source of inspiration and
influence. Here the anthropological fascination with the creative production
of the primitive ‘other’ reaches a later stage, where the interest in the primi-
tive ‘other’ begins to deepen. The ‘infant/child’ gradually shifts from being
the mere object of the collector’s acquisitive eye to becoming the site of an
idealized perspective, however limited by the painterly gaze its construction
may be. Larionov’s early paintings, drawings, and graphic work display this
transition from an interest in the child as primitive object to a view of the
child as an independent artistic subject and example for emulation.
Larionov’s painting known as A Gypsy Woman in Tiraspol (figure 5;
Tsyganka v Tiraspole; 1909) exemplifies the first stage of Larionov’s Neo-
Primitivist practice. Like its depiction of an infant toddling uncertainly, it
represents Larionov’s first steps in a primitivist direction. Here the painter’s
observing eye turns toward a Roma woman, who is displayed as a partially
exposed representative of the primitive body and the exotic ‘other.’ The bare-
breasted woman faces the artist’s gaze, though her eyes, set in an expres-
37
Figure 5. Tsyganka v Tiraspole (A Gypsy Woman in Tiraspol), painting by

Mikhail Larionov, 1909. Private collection, Paris.
Copyright © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
sionless face, stare past the viewer. She appears unaware of the exposed and
oversized infant behind her, who toddles uncertainly with his arms reaching
upward toward her in a gesture of mute request. The plight of the infant
(infans) remains unspoken. Whether closer attention has been interrupted
by the artist’s intrusion, or whether the child frequently escapes notice, the
painter here observes and depicts the neglect of the child. In this sense, the
painting marks the discovery of the infant as a new and neglected subject,
following behind the exoticized other as primitive.
The animals roaming freely in the background emphasize the painter’s
bestial depiction of ‘primitive’ woman and child. In fact, the implicit move-
ment in the painting, and the composition of animals in the background and
humans in the foreground, places the naked child in an intermediate posi-
tion in a continuous curve from background to foreground. It thus marks an
evolutionary progression from a schematically represented furry quadruped
to the line drawing of a naked pig and awkwardly ambling child to an up-
right woman, partially clothed and rendered in greater detail. The infant is
38
Infant Art
thus categorized, in his nakedness, with the animals. At the same time, the
rounded shapes of the infant’s hairless head and body are echoed by the
form of the large pig behind him, while his mother’s exposed breasts serve as
a reminder of the mammalian nature and bestial origins of man. In fact, the
mother’s bare breasts mark the center of the composition; in this sense the
painterly perspective echoes that of the nursling-infant and even supplants
the child by drawing the attention of the mother. At the same time, the ini-
tially peripheral object of the primitivist gaze thus begins to be recognized
as a subject with an independent perspective, though his own needs may
be ignored.
Larionov’s primitivist view of mother and child marks a radical depar-
ture from the longstanding tradition of depicting mother and child, which was
established by depictions of Mary and the infant Jesus in Orthodox iconog-
raphy. Comparison with the specular moment and iconic embrace between
mother and infant typical of old icons, such as the twelfth-century Virgin of
Vladimir shown in figure 6, brings this contrast into relief. Despite the pas-
sage of many centuries, the artist Viktor Vasnetsov’s painting Mother of God
with Infant (Bogomater’ s Mladentsem; 1895) still retains the pious modesty
of their garments and preserves their close embrace, though he does open
their posture to the viewer through the child’s outstretched arms. In contrast
to this longstanding tradition of depicting the Virgin and Christ Child in close
contact, Larionov breaks apart the iconic embrace to display the mother and
infant separately—in a way more bare and bestial than holy. Such modern
representations emblematize how the infant has become a separate subject
in its own right, independent of divine parentage or destiny. Over time, as
paralleled in the history of art, the representation of the infant has become
increasingly infantile, rather than being portrayed as a diminutive adult.78 In
the Russian context, this increasing realism with regard to the infant reaches
a certain culmination in Larionov’s work, where the child is no longer the
infant Jesus as spiritual ideal, but an actual infant body, rendered crudely
with the simple strokes of caricature. In fact, the infant body is the most
crudely and simplistically rendered, hinting at Larionov’s own future path
toward greater simplification through the practice of infantile primitivism.
Indeed, Larionov’s primitivism dramatically secularizes mother and child and
brings the vantage point down to earth.79
As opposed to the spiritual transcendence and idealism of traditional
forms of representation, art here focuses on the infant body and adopts the
primitivist perspective, even as the viewer too falls from a privileged posi-
tion with respect to the work of art. Larionov begins to reduce form to the
simplest and most minimal lines of a ‘primitive’ depiction. On the one hand,
the painting frames the Roma woman and her child as objects of the painter’s
gaze and thus entraps them within a certain conceptual frame that defines
39
Figure 6. Bogomater’ Vladimirskaia (Virgin of Vladimir), Russian Orthodox

icon, eleventh or twelfth century, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Scala / Art Resource, New York. Copyright © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York / ADAGP, Paris.
them as primitive ‘other.’ At this early stage, however, Larionov’s painterly

interest in the Gypsy Woman in Tiraspol and the infant who toddles behind
her also implies a reevaluation of such subjects. However limited by the ob-
jectifying painterly gaze and primitivist frame, the painting communicates a
certain interest and sympathy characteristic of the discovery and revaluation
of ‘primitive’ subjects.
The peasant women Larionov observed around his native Tiraspol in
this painting and in Woman Passing By (1909) were Larionov’s first direct
portrayals of peasants80 and reveal Larionov’s earliest search for ‘primitives’ in
his midst. As Parton observes, the onset of Larionov’s primitivist practice first
“represented a radical departure from previous paintings in both the choice
of subject and the rejection of the stylistic conventions.”81 Indeed, Larionov
seems liberated by his new subject to pursue a more stark expressive style
where “figures fill the canvas and are characterized by strong contours and a
40
Infant Art
bold approach to modelling.”82 The simplified rendering of the infant form

thus foreshadows Larionov’s path toward still greater formal simplification
through the practice of infantile primitivism.
The large pig that figures in the background of this painting recurs
as a quirky and absurd figure in other paintings by Larionov from this time
period. For instance, the pig is characterized by its incongruous color in the
painting The Blue Pig (1909). The title marks the pig as the main character,
as does his behavior, since he strides purposefully in the foreground while
the hunched human figures are preoccupied and turned away. The pig also
enters into the earlier painting Walk in a Provincial Town (1907–8), which
Camilla Gray uses as an illustration of Larionov’s “child-like indifference to
conventional rules.”83 With these playful and comic allusions to literary mani-
festations of the pig in a Gogolian tradition, these works grant an unexpected
and diabolical independence to the carnivalesque creature. Having escaped
its confines, the incongruous pig continues its escapades in avant-garde art
and literature in this period. Pigs also assume an inordinately large role in
the primitivist poetry of Aleksei Kruchenykh treated in the next chapter, such
as in the collection Piglets (Porosiata; 1913) that Kruchenykh coauthored
with a child. The incongruous pig and the earthy humor it represents thus
has a strong association with primitivism of the infantile variety and exhibits
how the primitivist carnivalesque and ‘uncivilized’ earthy bodies liberate the
artist from traditional painterly conventions on a path toward an increasing
simplification of form and line.
In the years 1910–11, after being expelled from the Moscow School
of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, Larionov performed his military
service and painted a series of primitivist works inspired by the vulgarity
of soldiers’ lives. Often incorporating soldiers’ sayings and drawings in the
background as grafitti on the walls, these paintings initiate a more casual
use of lettering in Larionov’s art. This blurring of the boundaries between
image and text represents one of the major innovations that occurs during
Larionov’s primitivist period. Such examples of ‘primitive’ and ‘low’ art, such
as folk art and the lubok popular prints or shop signs and graffiti all served as
important precursors for Larionov’s art with regard to experiments with text,
but I would argue that Larionov’s playfully naive orthography particularly
draws upon the example of children’s scrawls. Characteristic of children’s art,
the casual blurring of boundaries between verbal and visual art proves to be
a common feature of avant-garde artists and writers in the ensuing period,
including in Cubo-Futurist books discussed in the subsequent chapter.84 At
the same time, however, one might note how self-conscious and artificial is
the replication of the naive when the orthography, like other features of the
painting, only mimics the haphazard positioning of letters due to inexperi-
41
Figure 7. Soldat na kone (Soldier on a Horse), Mikhail Larionov, 1910–11.

Oil on canvas, 80.7 × 99.1 cm, Tate Gallery, London.
Copyright © Tate, London, 2013. Tate London / Art Resource, New York.
Copyright © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.
ence and limited motor control, while the placement of individual letters
remains balanced and harmonious. The painting is thus doubly encoded as
infantile and adult.
Dated to this period, the painting Soldier on a Horse (figure 7; Soldat
na kone; 1910–11) is executed in a particularly childish style. Fineberg details
a few childish elements.
Soldier on a Horse . . . perhaps the consummate work in the series, has the
same outlining and flatness in the forms as well as the same simplicity in
the description of its background planes as some of the paintings by chil-
dren that Larionov owned at the time, such as Dog on a Chain. These two
works even resemble one another in the yellow accents in the grass. The
strict profile employed by Larionov is a commonplace of child art, as are
the boxlike rendering of the muzzle of the horse and the oddly stuck-on
look of the legs on the animal’s far side. In addition, the artist has named
42
Infant Art
the picture, as children often do, with lettering in the sky: ‘8 esk’ for ‘8th
squadron’ (eskadron).85
The use of a consistent side profile and schematic geometric fields to repre-
sent the figure of the horse resemble childish conventions, while the human
figure shows a more naturalistic body shape. More convincing still is the
naively aperspectival composition in the painting. Other infantile features
include the use of outlining and the exaggeration of defining features ac-
cording to importance, such as the soldier and horse’s eyes, or the geometric
simplification of the hooves, for instance. The bold use of paint and line, per-
ceptible brushstrokes, and the preference for bright and basic colors also re-
semble technical features of children’s art. Fineberg notes that David Burliuk
“singled out Larionov’s ‘soldier’ paintings as an example” of what he called
“free drawing.”86 In this article, “Cubism (Surface-Plane)” (1912), Burliuk
elaborates on this term by explaining, “The fascination of children’s drawing
lies precisely in the full exposition in such works of this principle.”87 Burliuk’s
example shows that Larionov’s contemporaries also were attuned to and per-
ceived infantile elements in his art.
Larionov’s infantile primitivism reaches its peak in the numerous works
included in the Target exhibition where collections of children’s art were on
prominent display. For the contemporary viewer, the display of children’s
art alongside avant-garde paintings would accentuate the commonalities ap-
parent in the technical aspects of these paintings, such as a simplification of
form, naive approach to color, and casual use of lettering. At the same time,
the question of “who learns from whom?” might be turned on its head, since
the children’s art on display might itself be an imitation of the primitivist art
of adult artists devoted to the idea of child as artist. Indeed, the practitioners
of infantile primitivism rarely acknowledge how impressionable children
can be or how derivative children’s art sometimes is, just as any work of art
belongs in a certain context. The atemporal and decontextualized attitude
primitivists take toward children’s art thus underscores the anachronistic
goals they have for their use.
The incorporation of traces of text like those evident in Soldier gradu-
ally increases during Mikhail Larionov’s Neo-Primitivist period, as his experi-
ments with infantile primitivism increase in intensity and originality. Artistic
and aesthetic infantilism is particularly prominent in Venus (Venera; 1912)
and several works in a similar style that are associated with the Seasons cycle
(1912). Here Larionov casually juxtaposes image and text within the frame
of the piece, such as to indicate the title, artist, and date. In this sense, it
resembles the labeling of works by a child artist who does not yet observe
the boundaries that frame a work of art and render it inviolable. Larionov
signs the work with his first name only, as if an unknown and unspecified boy
43
Figure 8. Venera (Venus), Mikhail Larionov, 1912. Oil on canvas,

68 × 85.5 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Copyright © 2013, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. Copyright © 2013
named “Mikhail” and not the well-known artist identified by his surname
“Larionov.” At the same time, however, the careful placement of the self-
consciously naive lettering betrays principles of design, alignment, and pat-
terning that show it to be both naive and sophisticated at once.
In its composition, Larionov’s Venus (figure 8; Venera; 1912) playfully
confronts the conventions of artistic tradition and the portrayal of feminine
beauty over the ages.88 The artist reduces his subjects to the most basic ele-
ments of contour and line. Thick outlines render an approximate and simpli-
fied human form that lacks eroticism and sensuality; the human body has
been abstracted to such an extent that the display of Venus’s feminine beauty
in this traditional artistic posture becomes nonsensical. It thus issues a chal-
lenge to the viewer, who does not know whether to interpret it as a naive
drawing or a painting in the artistic tradition of Venus. A similar abstraction
of shape occurs with the cherub, bird, and plant that ornament the upper
fields of the canvas. These observe strict laws of symmetry and schematic
simplification. The overly loyal geometry of the bird’s feet and the reduction
44
Infant Art
Figure 9. Osen’ zheltaia (Yellow Autumn), Mikhail Larionov, 1912.

Oil on canvas, 53.5 × 44.5 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
of a plant to lines and dots particularly display the infantile primitivism of

the painting. Interestingly, as Willats notes in Art and Representation, chil-
dren’s drawings typically employ conventions like regions or lines to denote
flat volumes.89 These same principles apply to many plants and animals that
ornament Larionov’s primitivist compositions and figure in paintings from his
period of infantile primitivism.
Larionov’s painting Yellow Autumn (figure 9; Osen’ zheltaia; 1912)
preserves several of these infantile elements, even as it moves in new direc-
tions. The cherub and the bird retain their position in the upper fields of the
composition where they minister to the ornamental needs of the oversized
main subject of the painting. In this way, the primitivist work uses simplified
shapes to toy with representational conventions in a sophisticated way, as in
Venus. The main subject in the painting, however, is a mountainous human
head. Its towering and even phallic centrality marks it as totemic and por-
tentous, as do its placid features and oversized ornamental earrings. Like a
45
symbolic embodiment of “happy autumn” or a natural god able to grant one,

the head even resembles an idol or Buddha reduced to simple shapes and
features and even an infantile appearance. The lack of a neck or a body also
typifies very young children’s drawings that neglect non-salient bodily details
that escape the notice of the inexperienced artist, whose world is defined by
sense experience rather than conventional knowledge or schematic represen-
tation. At the same time, the fact that the figure extends beyond the frame
belies greater sophistication and use of artistic conventions.
Again, the most unmistakeably infantile feature in this composition,
however, is the text and title incorporated at the bottom of the canvas. The
scrawled text combines print, cursive, and capital letters of various colors in
a simultaneously haphazard and laborious manner. As if spontaneous and
unplanned, the second word is broken into two lines rather than being cen-
tered or carefully spaced. Though the text clearly communicates the idea
of a “happy autumn” through the phrase “osen’ schaslivaia,” it employs an
incongruous instance of capitalization and omits the virtually silent letter “t”
in schastlivaia. A representative English equivalent, then, might be “happy
autum.” Displaying an aural mistake typical of a child whose familiarity with
oral speech exceeds his or her experience with written language or linguistic
roots, this text imitates lisping baby talk (siusiukan’e) or a speech impedi-
ment that accentuates the sibilant “s” sounds and hushers. An infantile voice
is thus conjured in the very title of the piece, as if the artist performs a self-
conscious and artificial imitation of a child’s voice. Indeed, such a caricature
of the infantile or childish proves typical of primitivism and simultaneously
celebrates and denigrates the subject being viewed as primitive.
Though Larionov’s typographic experiments in these works share fea-
tures with other avant-garde works that experiment with the use of text,
Larionov emphasizes the infantile nature of orthographic errors and phonetic
misspellings. The texture of his lettering creates the illusion of inexperience,
exaggerated effort, and a sense of laborious literacy through an irregular and
haphazard style of lettering typical of a child’s scrawl. Awkward lettering
and phonetic misspellings add to the naive impression and draw attention
to the texture of the lettering and the sound of the speech that it renders
in an anticipation of what Formalists would term zatrudnenie, or retarda-
tion. In a typically primitivist fashion, oral language is celebrated over writ-
ten language, just as the signifier takes precedence over the signified. Such
orthographic manipulations effectively impede perception in a way that also
infantilizes the audience that must struggle to interpret the text.
The main works in Larionov’s cycle Seasons employ such lettering to
maximal effect, marking the continuation of the initial impulse evident in
Yellow Autumn and representing the high point of Larionov’s infantile primi-
tivism. The entire Seasons cycle was exhibited during the Target exhibition of
46
Infant Art
1913, which marked a high-water mark for infantile primitivism. A preserved

photograph from the opening of the exhibition shows Larionov, Goncharova,
and other contributing artists before the Seasons cycle, which appears to
have been exhibited in the manner shown below.90 An unusual feature of the
Seasons cycle, which was replicated by its display pattern in the exhibition, is
the division of the composition into irregularly partitioned quadrants, just as
the four were displayed in a somewhat irregular arrangement. In each paint-
ing in the series, a selection of laboriously lettered text is sequestered in one
of the lower quadrants. Another quadrant features a large humanoid shape
engaged in a seasonally symbolic action. Finally, the remaining two quadrants
are smaller in size and depict supporting images, scenes, or actions. The
harmoniousness and balance of these compositions, even if their substance is
infantile, still betray a sophisticated sense of design and balance.
Each painting in the Seasons cycle, such as Winter (Zima) shown in
figure 10, contains a simple poetic text written in a childish scrawl of irregular
Figure 10. Zima (Winter), from the Seasons cycle, Mikhail Larionov, 1912.
Oil on canvas, 100 × 122.3 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York. Copyright © 2013
47
and laboriously drawn letters. In Fineberg’s words, each contains “a saccha-

rine little poem such as children write about the seasons” (Innocent Eye, 38).
The four naively descriptive poems can be translated as:
Spring is cl/ear Beau/tiful With / bright / colors / With white / clouds /
Summer is sweltering With / stormy clouds / with Scorched / earth With
blue / sky With ripe grain / Fall is happy / Shining like / gold With ripen/ed
Grapes With tipsy / Wine / Winter is / cold snowy / windy Bliz/zard envel-
oped and shack/led with ice
Fineberg comments on the visual impact of this use of text and reacts to the
infantile impression created by its delivery.
In these poems the block lettering, the lack of punctuation, the awkward
hodgepodge of cursive and printing, lowercase and capitals, variant sizes,
and random mistakes in spelling, all seem as deliberately childlike as the
poetry and form in Aleksei Kruchenykh’s contribution to Worldbackwards,
created just a few months after these paintings, in the same year, and con-
taining illustrations by Larionov in his neo-primitivist style.91
Fineberg rightly notes its interrelationship to Kruchenykh’s Cubo-Futurist
works, which are treated in the next chapter. One might add that the casual
disruption and relocation of writing due to the presence of unexpected mar-
gins also replicates children’s behavior and spontaneous accommodations
to available space while writing. Here the adult artist performs an infantile
spontaneity. John Malmstad also examines the interplay of word and image in
Larionov’s art and mentions the Seasons cycle briefly in this context, though
his discussion of this theme mainly focuses on its resemblances to graffiti and
the crude slang of the soldier.92 When regarded within the context of infantile
primitivism, however, such misspellings and laborious orthography have a
decidedly infantile effect. Indeed, the infant/child on the verge of oral and
written language and pictorial representation perceptually inhabits the junc-
ture of word and image; for the illiterate child little distinction exists between
image and text. For the adult consciously aspiring to this effect, however, the
message becomes doubly encoded as infantile, on the one hand, and as an
adult performance of the infantile on the other.
The text, as well as the visual elements of the picture, display a childish
aesthetic. The regularity of their enumerative rhythm and the repetitiveness
of sounds and structures produce an incantatory effect. The poems revel
in the rhythm and sounds of strings of simple associations provoked by the
name of the season. The simplicity and repetitiveness of the language and
its underlying grammar resemble exercises given to children, as well as the
spontaneous verbal play of children. As Kornei Chukovsky notes, children
often string together sequences of rhymes for pure aural pleasure.93 The
48
Infant Art
repetition of the same grammatical forms in sequence also typifies children’s

spontaneous talk. As the linguist Ruth Weir notes in her study of a child’s
private monologues, Language in the Crib (1962), children privately engage
in extensive, repetitive practice of grammatical constructions they are work-
ing to grasp.94 Such play with new structures just being mastered closely re-
sembles the repetitive use of the instrumental case in these poetic texts.
Incongruous capitalization and the seven-fold repetition of the preposi-
tion “with” signals its salience here. Indeed, this description of the seasons
amounts to basic statements and lists of associations, as if in response to a
series of simple questions about the seasons, such as “What is winter?”
The infantile effect of verbal and visual elements in the texts that ac-
company the Seasons cycle is enhanced by infantile features in the remaining
portions of these paintings. Each painting features an oversized, androgynous
human figure. Their exaggerated and schematic sensory organs—eye, nose,
mouth, and ears—seem typical of children’s early fixation on the sensory or-
gans of the human body, which serve as the primary sources of sensual in-
put in the infant or young child’s interactions with the world. The absence
of a neck also typifies children’s drawings, as in the psychologically indica-
tive and well-studied “tadpoles” of children’s earliest representations of the
human form, where the child artist often fuses limbs directly to the head.95
Respective sensory importance also justifies the highly detailed illustration of
exactly five fingers and toes. Apart from the head, hands, and feet, however,
the plain white fields of their naked bodies lack other determining features.
This lack produces a naive view of the human shape, since the lack of second-
ary sexual characteristics makes them entirely asexual and androgynous. In
this way, these bodies are infantile, or rendered from an infantile perspective.
They defy categorization and lack the markings that distinguish gender, age,
and individual human types. Like the infant form, or the concept of tabula
rasa associated with the newborn child, the body is blank, not yet encoded
with specific meaning.
One strong color combination dominates each painting and character-
izes the season portrayed. The atypical seasonal coloration includes a dark
yellow in Spring, a nearly black blend of colors in Summer, a radiant dark
blue in Autumn, and a reddish-brown in Winter; they thus defy the conven-
tions of artistic tradition. Against this solid background, figures are painted
largely with the addition of white and black to this base, so that the over-
all effect remains largely monochromatic. In the case of the jubilant yel-
low Spring, however, the figures emerge as a lighter yellow rather than the
white figures in the remaining paintings, which only reflect a pale black, blue,
and brown undertone. In this sense, each composition can be regarded as
a free association provoked not only by the word for the season as a verbal
dominant, but by the representative color as a visual dominant. This unusual
49
loyalty to one color also might be compared to the child’s overdependence

on a particular color or drawing implement, whether limited by lack of mate-
rials or simply exploring the possibilities of a single medium. It might also be
explained by a short attention span. Indeed, an apparent hastiness of reali-
zation characterizes much modern art; just as infantile primitivism serves as a
strategic anachronism, so does the illusion of spontaneity, however laborious
or performed, help to to shed layers of sophistication. In Larionov’s Seasons
cycle, the use of color plays a key role in the naive effectiveness of these com-
positions, even if the uniformity of color amounts to a mere performance of
spontaneity and the infantile.
Despite the irregular division of each canvas into geometric quadrants,
each miniature composition and its components exhibit a strong sense of
symmetry. The strong bilateral symmetry evident here is typical of children’s
early drawing preferences. The simple white line drawings of houses and
trees in the lower left quadrant of Winter are rendered with bilateral sym-
metry and resemble chalk drawings by a child. Similarly, figures are reduced
to schematic representations that represent the overall taxonomy of the ref-
erent. Indeed, children’s keen attention to taxonomy has been exhibited in
studies of language acquisition, which reveal that children often overextend
words to apply to an entire descriptive category based on shape or taxon-
omy,96 for example, dog for the category “animal” or watermelon for the cate-
gory of “round things” in an example cited by Viktor Shklovsky.97 Visual ex-
amples of such taxonomic attention evident in the Seasons cycle include the
symmetrical flying birds that echo those in Venus and Yellow Autumn. These
are accurate in a schematic sense only, since wings, legs, tail, head, and beak
are given approximately equal weight in the symmetrical composition. These
birds consistently appear in a bilaterally symmetrical arrangement, such as
above the outstretched hands of the main figure facing forward in Autumn
or above the wheat in Summer. In contrast, the dark bird depicted standing
at the humanoid figure’s feet in Winter, or the seated cat in the same paint-
ing, give no indication of having wings or legs, since this taxonomic detail has
no relevance for their activity at present. Bilateral symmetry, also favored in
younger children’s drawings, thus prevails on the figural and compositional
levels in Seasons. The symmetry and balance of the compositions in their
entirety, however, exceed the artlessness of the naive.
Similarly, the schematically represented birds, trees, and large human
figures that predominate in the paintings almost exclusively appear in a flat-
tened frontal view. The accompanying paired human figures, marked by
subtle adornments that designate them as male or female, frequently ap-
pear in profile. Bilateral symmetry often prevails on the compositional level,
such as in the two human heads in profile looking at each other over a tree
in bloom in Spring and the two human figures in profile raising their arms
50
Infant Art
toward each other from either side of a schematic tree in Autumn. These
paintings, which show the most markedly infantile visual and verbal features
among Larionov’s paintings in this period, also demonstrate how Larionov
begins to move toward ever greater simplification. On the model of children’s
drawings, taxonomic features move toward greater schematization and sim-
plification that produce a more symbolic effect. Thus Larionov’s practice of
infantile primitivism helps to move him toward schematic simplification and
symbolic abstraction as he begins to chart a course toward non-objective art.
C H IL D I S H P ER CEP T I O N A ND A
S IMPL IF I CAT I O N O F M EA NS
The manifesto of Neo-Primitivism (Neo-primitivizm; 1913)98 spells out the

artistic principles of Larionov’s circle and articulates the justification for the
turn toward primitive art. Shevchenko expresses how Neo-Primitivists value
“simple, unsophisticated beauty,” “the severity of primitive art” (strogost’
primitiva), and “the mechanical exactitude of its construction.”99 Among his
observations of primitive art, he also lists harmony of style and wealth of
color as positive traits it exhibits. Further detailing the virtues he perceives
in primitive art, he offers a deeper explanation: “we find in them the most
acute, the most spontaneous perception of life” (naibolee ostroe, naibolee
neposredstvennoe vospriiatie zhizni).100 In short, Shevchenko claims that
“primitive” forms of art show a sharper and more direct impression of the
world. This emphasis on powerful reactions and unmediated expression re-
veals a new attention to perspective and perception characteristic of a later
stage of infantile primitivism that comes to fruition in the theoretical works
of the avant-garde critics of the Formalist school. Shevchenko elaborates:
“We consider work from an impression [vpechatleniia] to be the most valu-
able, the most productive. It provides a larger field for the expression of a
personal view on the world and does not distract attention with insignificant
details.”101 According to this primitivist view, the naive artist is endowed with
an artistically unadulterated and more pure and true sensitivity to the world.
Shevchenko advocates for the art created by ‘primitives’ as an exemplary
model of this sensitivity. “Its simplicity, severity of style, and spontaneous
and artistically true sensation of life only attracts us.” (Nas tol’ko prel’shchaet
ego prostota, stroinost’ stilia i neposredstvennaia, khudozhestvenno vernaia
pochuvstvovannost’ zhizni.)102 Thus the Neo-Primitivists privilege the naive
observer, who has not yet been desensitized by experience or an overabun-
dance of impressions and who has not yet been hampered in his free expres-
sion by learned conventions or artistic tradition. The shift from traditional
attitudes held by others is signaled by the use of the adverb “only” (tol’ko)
51
and the pronoun “us” (nas). Within this primitivist framework, the ‘infant/
child’ is perceived as an ideal artist whose perceptive innocence results in
strong impressions more directly expressed in artistic productions. At the
same time, the removal of details and simplicity praised in these quotations
also shows how primitivism has traced a course toward increasing formal
simplification.
A similar regard for children’s particular perceptiveness also appears
in writings by Vasily Kandinsky.103 In his treatise “On the Spiritual in Art.
(Painting)” (“O dukhovnom v iskusstve. [Zhivopis’]),” written in 1910 and
published in 1912, Kandinsky uses the child to cast his views in full relief.104
Seeking to explain the attraction of artistic primitivism, he contrasts inno-
cence and experience in an extended passage on the perceptiveness of the
child. He constructs the child as one who is not yet spoiled by experience and
therefore retains an enviable freshness of perception.
Those objects, which we encounter for the first time, immediately make a
psychic impression upon us. This is the sort of impressions the world makes
on the child, for whom every object is new [Tak vpechatliaetsia mirom re-
benok, dlia kotorogo vsiakii predmet nov]. The child sees light. The light
attracts him. The child wants to catch it, burns his fingers, and is filled with
fear and respect for fire. Later the child sees that, apart from its inimical
properties, fire also possesses friendly ones, that it dispels gloom, prolongs
the day, that it is in its power to warm, cook, and offer a pleasurable spec-
tacle. Through the accumulation of these experiences, a familarity with fire
is gained and this knowledge is stored away in the brain. The vivid-intensive
interest [iarko-intensivnyi interes] disappears and only fire’s ability to pre-
sent enjoyable performances slows the advance of complete indifference.
Thus, slowly and incrementally, the magic dissipates [chary raspadaiutsia].
Everyone learns that trees cast shadows, that horses run fast, automobiles
still faster, that dogs bite, that the moon is far away, that the person in the
mirror is not real [chto chelovek v zerkale—ne nastoiashchii].105
In this passage Kandinsky adopts the perspective of the child as he re-creates
the child’s perceptions and even evokes prehistory and Prometheus through
his imagery of fire. Using simple and short prose segments, he re- creates
the sensations and cognitive processes of the child experiencing the basic
phenomena of the world and seeks to enter into the interiority of the child’s
experience of the world even, it would seem, before the mirror stage when
the child discovers that the person in the mirror is a reflection of the self.
As with the later stages of Neo-Primitivism, Kandinsky’s view of the child as
primitive leads to his attention to infantile perception. Early Neo-Primitivist
practice, on the other hand, largely focuses on the artifacts of the child’s ar-
tistic encounter with the world.
52
Infant Art
As Larionov moves beyond Neo-Primitivism, however, and founds the

non-objective school of Rayonist art, he reveals the deeper impact of the prac-
tice of infantile primitivism. Like Kandinsky above, he reflects on the ac-
tual mechanisms of a child’s visual perception. In the article “Rayonism”
(“Luchizm”; 1913), Larionov outlines the principles of this new artistic move-
ment, which emphasizes the depiction of the rays of light that emanate from
objects and make impressions upon our senses, rather than those objects
themselves.106 In this way, Rayonism, which takes a naive approach to the re-
creation of unadulterated sensory impressions, moves from primitivist sim-
plification of form toward increasingly non-objective art. I would argue that
infantile primitivism plays a significant part in Larionov’s artistic develop-
ment toward this point; through an increasing simplification of technique and
the cultivation of a naive and unsophisticated approach, as exemplified by
children’s art, Larionov moves toward an interest in the infantile perceptions
of the world. This marks a fundamental shift from exteriority toward interi-
ority at the same time that it increasingly liberates art from the strictures of
realistic representation through a change in focus from the artistic product
itself to the mechanics of vision that make perception possible.
Significantly, Larionov uses a child as an example of undistorted per-
ception for the purposes of his article on “Rayonism.” Like Kandinsky, he be-
lieves that the child’s eye sees reality more directly than does the experienced
and acclimatized eye of the adult. He writes:
Our eye is an apparatus so little perfected that much which we think we
transmit to the cerebral centers through sight arrives there in its correct
form (in relation to real life) not thanks to sight, but thanks to other senses.
For the first period of life, the child sees objects upside-down, and only
subsequently does this defect of sight correct itself through the other
senses. Despite all of his desire, the adult person cannot see objects in-
verted. [Nash glaz—apparat nastol’ko malo sovershennyi, chto mnogoe,
peredavaemoe nami, kak my dumaem posredstvom zreniia v mozgovye
tsentry, popadaet tuda pravil’no otnositel’no real’noi zhizni ne blagodaria
zreniiu, a blagodaria drugim chuvstvam. Rebenok vidit pervoe vremia
predmety vverkh nogami, i vposledstvii etot nedochet zreniia ispravliaetsia
drugimi chuvstvami. Pri vsem svoem zhelanii vzroslyi chelovek ne mozhet
uvidet’ predmet perevernutym.]107
Larionov here reveals a scientific interest in the mechanics of vision and the
perplexing idea of the inverted retinal image.108 He thinks deeply about the
child’s perceptual development as regards vision itself. Scientists long be-
lieved that it is during childhood that the direct image of the senses under-
goes the processing that reinverts the image in the mind. Today, after a cen-
tury of increased research into the development of vision and studies in visual
53
deprivation during development, cognitive neuroscientists still agree that

infancy and childhood represent critical periods in visual development. In
her chapter “Wiring Up the Visual Brain,” Lise Eliot explains, “The second
phase of visual wiring is controlled by experience, specifically, by the elec-
trical activity generated by a baby’s actual act of seeing.”109 Thus Larionov’s
idealization of the child’s unadulterated perceptions of the world remains
correct, although the paradox of inverted vision remains a complex issue he
oversimplifies in telling ways. Most importantly, it usefully serves Larionov’s
purposes as a scientific justification for the child’s “le monde à l’envers” view-
point. It also has interesting points of contact with Viktor Shklovsky’s ideas of
turning an image upside down, as will be discussed in a subsequent chapter.
Scientific investigations of the time thus can be seen to play a role in shaping
views of childhood.
Betraying a nostalgic idealization of infantile perception, Larionov con-
trasts the child’s ability to perceive exactly what the eye sees to the adult’s
inability to undo the involuntary processing automatically accomplished by
the habituated brain as a result of visual wiring that occurs through visual
experience in infancy. In the particular context of his developing theory of
Rayonism, Larionov puts forth the child, and the child’s initially unadulter-
ated perceptions, as an example for imitation. Infantile perception thus forms
part of his argument that art should be made to more closely resemble the
original impression it makes upon our senses. In this sense, Larionov takes
infantile primitivism to the next stage, where the child becomes more than
a mere object and begins to be viewed as an idealized vantage point. After
all, Rayonism aims to erase the effects of experience in order to restore to
the adult the more ‘pure’ perceptions of the child as if moving tantalizingly
closer to the recovery of the “original” image. Neo-Primitivism and Rayonism
thus both rely on an idealization of infantile expression and impressions, al-
though they also represent successive stages in a developmental sequence
that moves toward increasing interiority and points toward an increasing ab-
straction of the image, initially begun through an infantile simplification of
form, but which now continues through an artificial and purely theoretical
replication of the infantile visual experience.
In the ensuing period of his career, Larionov continues to experiment
with Rayonism, a movement that proves particularly significant in the history
of Russian art as one of the first schools of abstract art in Russia. The influ-
ence of the infantile aesthetic that he develops during the period of his child-
oriented primitivism remains in many of his Rayonist drawings, as well as in
other drawings, portraits, and graphic design from this period. For instance,
in his early Rayonist works, Larionov continues the search for universal sym-
bolism through abstract representation, which also relates to his primitivist
search for the origins of art in categories of the ‘primitive.’ He explores the
54
Infant Art
universality of primitivist symbolism in his drawing Universelet (Vselenochka;

1912) with which this chapter began. Simultaneously childish and Paleolithic,
this piece draws attention to the universal features of primitivist expression,
distilling art to its minimal components. Since it results in a universally read-
able composition and narrative despite the minimalist simplicity of its repre-
sentation, Larionov succeeds in reducing visual communication to its most
basic lines. Through primitivist simplification, he reduces the composition to
minimal “picture primitives,” to employ the terminology John Willats uses
for children’s drawings.110 Primitivist and Rayonist simplification thus move
toward an abstract universality, aspiring to a primitivist ideal of an originary
visual language that precedes civilization. Here even the idea of the infantile,
like the artistic product itself, becomes extremely simplified and abstract.
Many later drawings by Larionov, such as his Portrait of Natalya
Goncharova (Portret Natalii Goncharovoi; 1913) shown in figure 11, or
even more Self-Portrait of Larionov (Sobstvennyi portret Larionova; 1912)
Figure 11. Portret N. S. Goncharovoi (Portrait of N. S. Goncharova),

Mikhail Larionov, 1913. Lithograph, 14 × 9.4 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
55
not shown here, retain elements of the infantile aesthetic that the artist de-
veloped during his Neo-Primitivist period. Whether portraying the human
form, as in numerous depictions like Head of an Eastern Woman with a
Thick Neck (ca. 1928) shown in figure 13 or in the portraits mentioned here,
Larionov displays a bold but imprecise use of line and an air of casual spon-
taneity that in some ways resemble the hand of a child, as evident also in his
Neo-Primitivist works. Such a minimalist and Neo-Primitivist approach to
drawing continues in his many book collaborations with avant-garde poets
and writers over the next years. The simplified forms and schematic features
in such drawings remain reminiscent of children’s art, as do the laborious
representations of images and lettering that blend into one cohesive and bal-
anced composition. Also arguably infantile are the thick and prominent out-
lines, which emphasize contours, and the taxonomic shape that evokes the
referent through its most basic form.
A purely Rayonist work like Woman in a Hat (Pomade [Pomada], 1913),
shown in figure 12, on the other hand, may be seen to have reached the logi-
cal end of a trajectory. Reduced by primitivism to a truly minimalist use of
line, the artwork also has begun to resemble the arbitrariness and uniformity
of an exceedingly infantile work of art, which might boldly juxtapose a de-
scriptive title and an entirely non-representative drawing. On the other hand,
its angularity and interruptedness contrast with the fluidity and effortlessness
of a child’s scribble to such an extent that it more closely resembles the first,
almost entirely arbitrary marks an infant might make on paper, before any
fine motor control has been established. In a Neo-Primitivist sense, and by
conflating prehistoric, primitive, and infantile art on one small canvas of a
diminutive universe, this amounts to a deliberate return to the origins and
absolute basis of art in infancy, even if artificially constructed and constituted.
For indeed, in being simplified to its most minimal components, art here be-
comes extremely laborious, both for perception and interpretation. Through
infantile primitivism, Larionov has come to develop an expressive style and
symbolic language closer to the seemingly arbitrary scribble or lines of a
child’s first artistic encounter than to the realistic representation previously
enshrined as the culmination of Western art. In this way infantile primitivism
represents a strategic anachronism employed to reverse artistic history and
temporality and accomplish a regression to the origins of art. Virtually the
only representative aspect of the piece that remains is its title, which, like
many children’s drawings, issues more of an invitation or challenge to the
viewer to decode the image and artistic intention behind it. Such a challenge
is very much in the spirit of avant-garde and modern art in its playful or even
agonistic relationship to audience and interpretation. In linguistic terms, sig-
nifier and signified thus move further apart, as art moves toward increasing
abstraction through formal simplication, reduction to minimal components,
56
Infant Art
Figure 12. Illustration by Mikhail Larionov from

Aleksei Kruchenykh’s book Pomada (Pomade), 1913
and nearly apocalyptic self-obliteration in an artificial, staged return to the

infancy of art.
Thus we have seen that Larionov’s artistic development in painting and draw-
ing in the period from 1909 to 1913 moves through infantile primitivism, and
its concomitant simplification of form, toward the greater symbolic abstrac-
tion manifest in Rayonist painting, which culminates in non-objective and
abstract art. Rayonist works, such as Rayonist Portrait (1913) and Woman in
a Hat (1913), and many contributions to the art books of Kruchenykh and
the Cubo-Futurist poets continue these tendencies toward simplification, as
well as the distillation of the essential elements of art and the basic mechan-
ics of perception and representation. In a primitivist spirit, Larionov rejects
the traditional artistic progression toward greater realism in art; instead, he
seeks to reverse the flow of time and return to the origins of art in order
to rediscover the fundaments of art and perception. In so doing, he moves
57
toward greater simplicity and on a trajectory toward artistic abstraction as he

seeks to recapture a romanticized and nostalgic experience of the infant eye.
In 1916 Mikhail Larionov and Natalya Goncharova moved to Paris,
where they remained for the rest of their lives. In emigration, they escaped
the threats that many avant-garde artists later faced. Yet they also lost the
stimulating environment they had enjoyed in Russia, including the avant-
garde context of infantile primitivism and the infantilist aesthetic that de-
veloped out of it. Some of their ideas, however, survived in emigration.
Larionov’s collaborative exhibitions involving children’s work with the English
critic Roger Fry, for instance, attest to the continued importance children’s
art held for Larionov and show that Larionov’s interest in children’s art out-
lasted the Neo-Primitivist phase of his career. The accounts of those who
knew him also provide evidence for the continuation of his serious attention
to children’s art during this later period of his career. Parton quotes a con-
temporary who provides exactly such a portrait of the émigré artist.
Mikhail Andreenko remembered that “Larionov made many visits to the
area far from the Buttes-Chaumont where my studio was located. He used
to sketch some of the drawings scribbled on the walls by naughty chil-
dren. They attracted him because the execution of them was lively, natural
and without set rules.” Andreenko’s recollections of Larionov’s response to
children’s grafitti and Parnack’s note about his fondness for “hopscotch”
squares also testify to Larionov’s lifelong interest in the naive creativity of
children.111
Larionov’s artistic eye thus continues to be drawn to the scribbles and traces
left by children on the surfaces of urban life, like modern petroglyphs by the
savage child and “primitives of the twentieth century” he had celebrated in
his youth. This anecdote shows how the infantile aesthetic retained a life-
long value for Larionov. Perhaps he clung to it in part as a response to the
displacement experienced by the émigré, who seeks to re-create the artistic
glory days of his youth in another country.
In the emigration Larionov, whose artistic practice had waged a war
on time, to some extent seemed trapped in the eternal recurrence of his
youthful exploits and the practice of infantile primitivism. He obsessively
re-created his early primitivist works of art, such as in Head of an Eastern
Woman with a Thick Neck (Golova vostochnoi zhenshchiny s tolstoi sheei; ca.
1928) shown in figure 13, and shamelessly postdated and predated his works,
creating many puzzles for art historians to solve.112 For an artist obsessed
with temporal experimentation in his early avant-garde phase, this indicates
that the simultaneity of an eternal present that he sought through infantile
primitivism never entirely lost its grip on him. After all, the artists of infantile
primitivism sought not only to construct the ‘infant/child’ as the true primi-
58
Infant Art
Figure 13. Golova vostochnoi zhenshchiny s tolstoi sheei (Iz tsikla “Puteshestvie
v Turtsiiu”) (Head of an Eastern Woman with a Thick Neck [From the Cycle
“Travel to Turkey,” 1907–9]), graphic work by Mikhail Larionov, ca. 1928.
Gray paper, gouache, 33 × 26.8 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Copyright © 2013, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Copyright © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.
tive of the twentieth century, but also to occupy this position themselves and
thus ensure their place in the art of the future.
In this regard, Larionov was only one example among many artists of
the time, both within Neo-Primitivism and without, who constructed the
‘infant/child’ as an ideal artistic example for study, display, and emulation on
superficial and deeper levels. Along with other artists of Neo-Primitivism,
Larionov served as a pioneering example for avant-garde innovators who
would follow in his footsteps in the pursuit of infantile primitivism and the
infantilist aesthetic. Nonetheless, his view of the infant ‘other,’ as theirs
would be as well, was restrictive and artificial. He found in the infant/child
precisely what he was seeking as he engaged in a regressive performance of
the primitive as part of his own aesthetic agenda.
Indeed, the Neo-Primitivists also bequeath to all their successors in
59
infantile primitivism and the infantilist aesthetic their own fundamental

flaw—the inescapable blind spot of infantile primitivism—its dependence
on a primitivist approach that falsifies an infant ‘other’ for the aesthetic pur-
poses of the adult. Their application of the infant/child as device may differ
from the Neo-Primitivists’ use of it as a strategic anachronism to reverse
linear time, or even from the Cubo-Futurists’ use of it to access the future.
Still, the fundamental premise is similarly flawed. Time remains irreversible
and none can recover originary perception, just as the child is no primitive
and the adult, due to the impossible relation of child and adult, can never
truly access the interior experience of the child. Bold as the experiment is,
the artificial representation of rays of light does not in any way resemble or
replicate infantile perception. This purely theoretical idea of infantile vision
only justifies a new and original artistic experiment reducing representation
to minimal angular lines. At all turns, Neo-Primitivism uses infancy strategi-
cally and within a primitivist framework that predetermines the “findings” of
the primitivist in the so-called primitive.
For the Russian avant-garde, the abundant artistic activity of Mikhail
Larionov and his colleagues had provoked great interest in children’s
own creative productions that rapidly exceeded the boundaries of Neo-
Primitivism. By 1916, the attraction to children’s art had reached such a level
that F. Berenstam commented, “In bygone times too little attention was paid
to the artistic creations of children, while now it may be too much atten-
tion.”113 Yakov Tugendkhol’d had a more positive view when he reflected on
this phenomenon: “The interest in children’s drawings is a product of our
time; I would say—one of the significant discoveries [otkrytii] of our time.”114
Even Alexandre Benois, the prominent artist, editor, and organizer of the
World of Art movement, weighed in on the practice of infantile primitivism.
Yes, at the present time the interest toward children and toward all things
infantile [k detiam i ko vsemu detskomu] has acquired tremendous strength
[poluchil ogromnuiu silu] . . . now the attention of the most varied people
is fixed on children and all things infantile. . . . And the cult of the primi-
tives itself—is it not the cult of childhood? [A odin kul’t primitivov—eto
li ne kul’t detstva?]115
By this point, infantile primitivism had so succeeded in defining the infant,
and itself through it, as the ideal primitive of the twentieth century that
Benois proclaims primitivism and the cult of childhood to be synonymous, a
new high-water mark of infantile primitivism.
Avant-garde poets and writers would follow the lead of their close col-
leagues Larionov, Goncharova, and Shevchenko by taking an active interest
in children’s language and related poetic experiments. In The Russian
Experiment in Art, 1863–1922, Camilla Gray credits Mikhail Larionov and
60
Infant Art
the Neo-Primitivists’ experiments in art for inspiring the ensuing innovations

of other branches of the avant-garde. She detects its influence in the poetic
experiments of the Cubo-Futurists, treated in the next chapter of this book,
citing as examples “the imitation of children’s art”116 and the use of “infantile
language.”117 The links between the infantile primitivism of Mikhail Larionov
and the Neo-Primitivists to that of Aleksei Kruchenykh and the Cubo-
Futurists are many, both through their intimate collaborations as well as the
commonalities of their aesthetic interests and primitivist practice. As Gray
remarks, “Although for the first time painting thus led the way in Russia,
painting and poetry were still intimately bound up together, and almost
all early publications of these Futurist poets had illustrations by Larionov,
Goncharova and other members of their group.”118 The next chapter will
expose the deeper interconnections between these groups through their
practice of infantile primitivism. In this sense, the avant-garde innovators of
poetry and prose took up the banner of the infantile primitivism established
by Mikhail Larionov and his colleagues in Neo-Primitivism.
61
Chapter Two
Infant Word: Aleksei Kruchenykh, Children’s

Language, and Cubo-Futurist Poetics
IT FLIES IN THE FACE of chronological time to do as Kronos

did—castrate one’s father and consume one’s children in order to defy fate
and stake sole claim to the future. Yet both bloodthirsty acts credited to this
Titan of Greek mythology apply equally well to the exploits of the Russian
Futurists, who themselves defy their forefathers and the traditions of the
past in order to stake their claim to the future of poetry. The devouring of
children, or ‘pedophagy,’ to borrow the neologism of Lovejoy and Boas in
Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (1935),1 proves a fitting metaphor
for the infantile primitivism of the Russian Futurists, who fixate on the power
and potential of the infantile and become consumers of the ‘infant/child’ as
object. It is thus an apt illustration that ornaments the Cubo-Futurist poet
Aleksei Kruchenykh’s 1913 volume of Futurist poetry, The Devil and the
Speechcrafters (Chort i rechetvortsy). Created by Kruchenykh’s colleague
and close companion, the avant-garde artist Olga Rozanova, the cover de-
sign employs a primitivist style to depict a scene of impending pedophagy
reminiscent of the deeds of Kronos. (See figure 14.) A sharp-toothed figure,
who demonstrably resembles Aleksei Kruchenykh, seems about to devour a
struggling infant. If he is the diabolical figure in this scene, then the infant is
the ‘speechcrafter.’
Indeed, the Futurist poets followed the lead of Aleksei Kruchenykh in
constructing the ‘infant/child’ through the framework of infantile primitivism
as the ‘speechcrafter’ par excellence. The Futurists regarded the borderline
figure of the ‘infant/child’ as a means of access to the future of language and,
thus, as an admirable example of how to create the poetry of the future.
The primitivist gaze involves a certain ambivalence, however, as shown by
Rozanova’s provocative portrayal of savagery and cannibalism. Primitivism
constructs the ‘other’ in necessarily limited ways, whether putting it forth as
an example for emulation or making the ‘other’ into the object of consump-
tion by bringing it into galleries, circulation, and the public discourse. The
62
Infant Word
Figure 14. Chort i rechetovortsy (The Devil and the Speechcrafters),

cover design by Olga Rozanova for book by Aleksei Kruchenykh, 1913
sinister underside of the Futurist fixation on their construction of the child

becomes evident in examples celebrating savagery toward children or paedo-
phobia, such as when Mayakovsky writes in “Ia” (“I”) (1913), “I love to watch
children dying” (Ia liubliu smotret’, kak umiraiut deti).2 The performance of
brutality evident here, and the desire for dramatic effect, deliberately run
counter to the prevailing forces that align to glorify and celebrate the child.
Mayakovsky’s declaration draws attention precisely to the centrality of the
child as battleground and victim in contemporary cultural constructions and
in the avant-garde’s attempts to fashion itself in contradistinction to all pre-
ceding forces.
All this is to say that the Futurist child is neither the swaddled babe
of times past nor the Romantic child in a country pastoral; if the child is a
noble savage for the twentieth century and the Neo-Primitivists, then, for the
Futurists, the emphasis is on savage. The Futurist child is the enfant terrible,
as abundantly shown in the example of Aleksei Kruchenykh, whose Futurist
exploits and radical poetry reveal that he self-consciously constructed himself
63
Figure 15. Portret A. E. Kruchenykh (Portrait of A. E. Kruchenykh), graphic work

by Mikhail Larionov, 1912. 14.2 × 9.5 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
and his work in this manner, even as his primitivist practice delivered the
same glorification of the infantile. Kruchenykh recognized that the savage
child constructed by infantile primitivism contained tremendous subversive
power through its revolutionary challenge to traditional notions like chrono-
logical time. Yet, like the baby that turns into a pig in the arms of Alice in
Wonderland, this child has a strident squeal; perhaps it isn’t a baby at all.
The Cubo-Futurist poet Aleksei Kruchenykh exemplified the infantile
primitivism of the early avant-garde in his person, practice, and poetics. (See
figure 15.) Though Kruchenykh is infamous as the author of the poem “Dyr
bul shchyl” that radically puts forth a doctrine of sound over sense, little at-
tention has been given to the role of his primitivist interest in children’s lan-
guage for the development of his radical poetics.3 In fact, however, beginning
in 1913 and continuing over the next decade, Kruchenykh became involved
with various publication ventures intended to draw attention to the language
of children, while he cast himself as collector, collaborator, and coauthor with
64
Infant Word
children. During the most intense period of his career, while he was develop-
ing a radical new approach to language and poetry, Kruchenykh displayed a
continuous and wide-ranging interest in children’s language. He invested in
the recognition of its worth under the aegis of Futurism and as part of the
Futurist project. Kruchenykh, who occupied a position at the forefront of
Futurist experimentation, constructed the ‘infant/child’ as an ideal source of
linguistic and poetic renewal.
In this chapter I show how a Futurist construct of the ‘infant/ child,’
most evident in a fascination with ‘babble’ and the language of children, sig-
nificantly influenced the development of radical Futurist poetics. I argue that
children’s language, or rather the notion of children’s language constructed
within the framework of infantile primitivism practiced by Kruchenykh and
other Futurist poets, provided one model for how Futurist poetry could ac-
complish a liberation from conventional signification and achieve the lin-
guistic renewal that was the Futurist aim. During the development of trans-
sense (zaum’) language and poetry, Kruchenykh used children’s language
as one example of how to issue a challenge to signification and thus open
new discursive territory for the avant-garde. In this way the development of
Cubo-Futurist poetry toward trans-sense language parallels the movement
toward abstraction displayed by the artists of Neo-Primitivism treated in the
previous chapter.
This chapter begins by introducing Aleksei Kruchenykh through auto-
biographical writings and the accounts of his contemporaries, before turn-
ing to early collaborations with Velimir Khlebnikov that set the stage for
Kruchenykh’s independent literary experiments. The body of the chapter
then analyzes the infantile primitivism of the Cubo-Futurists. It probes the
depth and breadth of the Futurist interest in children’s language and ex-
plores its influence on the linguistic innovations of Futurist poetry and for
the development of Kruchenykh’s trans-sense poetics. The analysis also in-
corporates the reactions of a number of critics from the areas of literature,
linguistics, and theory, as evidence that many observers took notice of the
infantile primitivism of the Cubo-Futurists at the time. In fact, many con-
temporaries demonstrably subscribed to similar notions of the ‘infant/child.’
Finally, the chapter concludes by explicating later writings by Kruchenykh
and his most ardent followers that reflect back upon the infantile primitiv-
ism of the Futurists in its heyday. The retrospective glance affords these
writers critical distance that reveals the centrality of certain constructs more
explicitly.
The widespread Cubo-Futurist interest in children’s writings derives
from a deep interest in the linguistic creativity of children. Alongside con-
temporary linguists and theorists, the Futurists took a particular interest in
the idea of children’s babble and the early expressions of the ‘infant/child,’
65
who is on the verge of acquiring language. Well known in the Russian as

well as international context for his work on children’s thought and psychol-
ogy, Lev Vygotsky would go on to investigate children’s language in ways
that evolve out of some of the same influences and assumptions that pre-
vailed in the time of the Futurists.4 In Thought and Language (Myshlenie i
rech’) (1934), Vygotsky notes that “the pre-intellectual character of an infant’s
babbling is well known”5 and posits a pre-intellectual and a prelinguistic
stage in the development of children’s language and thought that might in-
form this study of the avant-garde’s use of children’s language and logic.6 He
observes that a child’s first words are “as yet inseparable from the ‘intentional
tendency’ of speech; the two are still a homogeneous whole.”7 Vygotsky main-
tains that “observation and empirical studies indicate that [the child under
two] grasps only much later the relation between sign and meaning, or the
functional use of signs”8 and cites other studies, including studies of deaf-
mute children, that show that
the discovery by the child of the tie between word and object does not
immediately lead to a clear awareness of the symbolic relation of sign and
referent, characteristic of well-developed thought; that the word for a long
time appears to the child as an attribute or a property of the object rather
than as a mere sign; that the child grasps the external structure object-
word before he can grasp the internal relation sign-referent.9
Only later does the child make what William Stern calls in his 1914 study of
the psychology of early childhood “ ‘the greatest discovery of his life,’ that
‘each thing has its name.’ ”10 At this point the child “seems to have discovered
the symbolic function of words.”11 Vygotsky’s concepts of the prelingual and
pre-intellectual language, which build on critical debates of the early twen-
tieth century, might be applied retrospectively to illuminate the avant-garde
view of children’s language and the relationship of signifier and signified.
In later years, twentieth-century literary critics have focused on the
state before language from a psychoanalytical perspective, including Julia
Kristeva, who builds upon the work of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan to
develop ideas of the ‘preverbal’ state that precedes language.12 Kristeva’s con-
cept of the semiotic ‘chora’ also expresses the psychoanalytical conception
of a linguistic unity, before the separation of signifier and signified articu-
lated by structural linguistics. It still belongs to “the period of indistinction
between ‘same’ and ‘other,’ infant and mother, as well as between ‘subject’
and ‘object,’ while no space has yet been delineated (this will happen with
and after the mirror stage—birth of the sign).”13 Trapped within the signify-
ing process, or “the prison-house of language,”14 critics, too, idealize a time
before signification, where everything coexists in a unified state. Legends of
a Golden Age of linguistic unity, including Genesis and the Tower of Babel
66
Infant Word
before the divisions brought on by names, boundaries, and language, betray

the same nostalgia and anxiety with regard to the separations that mark the
onset of language. The mystique of the prelingual thus underlies the his-
torical fascination with children’s ‘babble.’
The Oxford English Dictionary inextricably links ‘babble’ to the ‘child’;
one definition reads, “To talk childishly, to prattle; to talk incoherently or
foolishly; to utter meaningless words.” Interestingly, the etymological specu-
lation on the origin of ‘babble’ seeks the onomatopoetic origins of the word
in children themselves: “Probably formed (with frequentative suffix -le; cf.
prattle) on the repeated syllabic ba, ba, one of the earliest articulate sounds
made by infants, fitly used to express childish prattle.” The hypothetical ety-
mology thus enacts a similar turn to children’s own language as that which
informed the poetics and practice of the Futurists. Led in this regard by
Aleksei Kruchenykh, the Futurists turned their attention toward infantile
babble and became intrigued by the semantically unconstrained verbal form
that celebrates the child’s entrance into language. The Dictionary of Con-
temporary Russian Literary Language defines the equally onomatopoetic
term for babble in Russian, “lepet,” through its connection to children’s
speech—“Incomprehensible, incoherent speech (of a child)” (Nevniatnaia,
nesviaznaia rech’ [rebenka])—and through literary quotations that abound
with the earliest voicings of the ‘infant/child.’15 First to take an active interest
in the poetic utterances of the child, the Futurists recovered the voice of the
‘infant/child’ from the realms of the unspoken and effectively elevated pre-
verbal babble to the level of high art through their valorization of linguistic
infantilism.16
The avant-garde’s interest in children’s creativity also derives from
their transformation of play for the sake of play—“le jeu pour le jeu”—into
an aesthetic principle. Driven by their desire for linguistic experiment, the
Futurists took an interest in children’s play with language, whether in the
form of babble, neologisms, or wordplay. They pursued the origins of lan-
guage in order to accomplish the renovation of language and word, or “slovo-
novshestvo,” that was the only positive directive in their 1912 manifesto.17
In seeking the renewal of language in a construct of the ‘infant/child,’ the
Futurist poets, as well as critics like Kornei Chukovsky, Roman Jakobson,
and Viktor Shklovsky also treated herein, seem influenced by the linguist
Baudouin de Courtenay, who famously proposed that children’s linguistic in-
novations foretell the future state of language.18 Neologisms, wordplay, and
other play with sounds and signification represent only a few types of linguis-
tic experimentation that poets and critics of the time noted as commonalities
shared by Futurist poetry and children’s language.
Through an infantile approach to language modeled on the child’s first
confrontation with language, the Futurists emphasized the materiality of lan-
67
guage. In so doing, they celebrated a metaliterary awareness of linguistic

form. The creative productions of children, as well as avant-garde practice in
general, foregrounded the aesthetic awareness inherent in play, which itself
always contains the metacommunicative message “this is play.”19 A metalin-
guistic awareness of linguistic form and, thus, the materiality of language,
also has been noted in the playful language of children.20 In fact, such play-
fulness of form and the inherently unstable and subversive signification of
the avant-garde style later made it appear threatening to Soviet authorities,
who decried these features through the charge of ‘formalism.’
Even as play and experiment opened new artistic possibilities, the
avant-garde gaze upon the child as primitive ‘other’ provided new ways for
it to regard and fashion itself. Modern critical theory shows how, through
the act of constructing the primitive ‘other,’ the observer actually projects
an image of itself that occludes the ‘other’ from view. Indeed, for the avant-
garde, the ‘infant/child’ served as an imagined ‘other’ that, even while framed
as an ideal example, was constructed in a way that reflected the avant-garde’s
own aesthetic principles and advanced its own agenda. In this sense the
primitivist eye is like the colonizing one; the discovery and occupation of new
territory appeared to offer a fresh start free from the literary past rejected
by the Futurists, who proclaimed, “Throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and
so on and so forth from the Steamship of contemporaneity.”21 By taking over
the position of the ‘infant/child,’ whose “un-speaking” nature could not resist
such occupation—“not having the right to speak” (ne imeiushchii prava go-
vorit’)22—the avant-garde repossessed the child’s territory. Usurping the posi-
tion of the ‘child,’ the Futurists sought to seize the future for themselves and
stage a revolutionary revolt against linear time. A basic paradox and ambiva-
lence persists, however, since the child represents both hero and enemy—an
example for emulation as well as the rightful occupant and obstacle to the
repossession of desired territory. This paradox may explain the sometimes
violent antipathy toward children that occurs simultaneously with the ide-
alization and imitation characteristic of infantilism, both in Cubo-Futurism
and the absurdist writings of Daniil Kharms and OBERIU, as we shall see.
MA N O F M A NY EP I T H ET S
The autobiographical writings of Aleksei Kruchenykh betray a construction

of personality typical of the Futurists, who, like others before them, defied
the separation of life and art to engage in “life-creation” (zhiznetvorchestvo).
Kruchenykh’s autobiographical prose thus ought to be read as an artistic
text whose imagery and aims provide programmatic reflections of his views
in light of his other work. Here Kruchenykh delights in constructing and
68
Infant Word
characterizing himself as an enfant terrible. With primitivist glorification,

he portrays himself as a child savage, entitling one autobiographical piece
“Autobiography of a Wild Man” (“Avtobiografiia dichaishego”; 1928). The
English translation does not capture the sense of the superlative degree
of wildness conveyed by the original and retains neither its aural associa-
tions with the verb dichat’, meaning “to run wild,” “become wild” nor with
the noun dich’, which can refer to the wilderness, or nonsense more col-
loquially. Nevertheless, all of these associations illustrate the type of image
Kruchenykh wishes to project in his “life-creation.”
Born in 1886 in Kherson Province, Aleksei Kruchenykh came into being
not entirely ex nihilo, as he implies one might expect of a Futurist who denies
the value of the past. In “Autobiography of a Wild Man” he writes, “First
of all, strange to say, I did have parents” (Vo-pervykh, kak eto ne stranno,
u menia byli roditeli).23 The concession to biology indicates that even the
Futurist radical has parents who belong to a past generation, just as any new
poetic school has predecessors it may childishly try to deny. In his own de-
scription, Kruchenykh was a wild and wayward child who roamed free over
the steppes.24 Once constrained by the institution of school, he began to
earn his first epithets. He became “chief clown, rowdy and daredevil,” and
his teacher remarks that he “was rightly called ‘Kruchenykh,’ ” or ‘twisted.’25
Presenting the story of his schooling in this way, Kruchenykh provides a min-
iature model of how society deals with a “born Futurist” like him. Finally,
adding to the sequence of earned epithets, Kruchenykh himself seizes upon
the word ‘savage’ to describe himself as a child: “To add to all my mischief, I
was an extreme lover of liberty; I couldn’t stand restrictions, and I was naively
truthful—a real savage. Yes, the right word found!”26 Having characterized
himself in childhood as an authentic savage, Kruchenykh takes a moment
from his narrative to reflect on the artistic primitivism of his time.27 That he
in this context compares the reductivism of Suprematist art to primitive art
not only demonstrates his own self-identification as a primitivist, but also
proves illustrative for the Futurist pursuit of linguistic extremes and the fun-
daments of language. The interrelatedness of the verbal and visual experi-
ments of this time cannot be overstated, especially since, as Kruchenykh re-
marks, most of the Futurists were educated as artists28 and the leading figures
of Neo-Primitivism and Cubo-Futurism were in constant collaboration.29
In his account of the “Childhood and Youth of the Budetlyane” (“Det-
stvo i iunost’ budetlian”; 1932), Kruchenykh anthropomorphizes the Futurist
movement as a whole and describes each of his Futurist contemporaries as
childlike in some way. Infantilizing his colleagues and depicting himself as
a child savage, Kruchenykh constructs himself and the Futurists as right-
ful occupants of the child’s position. He thus appropriates the infantile and
turns the primitivizing gaze upon himself and his colleagues. The construc-
69
tion of personality that earned Kruchenykh the title “enfant terrible,”30 in

addition to wild behavior and a constant defiance of convention, also neces-
sarily includes new perspectives and fresh approaches to things. Comparable
to other marginal figures, such as the holy fool,31 the enfant terrible proves
to be in an ideal position to deliver social critique. If the holy fool represents
such critical potential, a safety valve for the release of tension, and, in the
words of Sergey Ivanov, “a mute reproach to civilization,”32 then the Russian
avant-garde, in a similar way, ventriloquizes through the speechless child a
mute reproach to modern society.
At times provoking the disapproval of society through his outra-
geous exploits and writings, and at others successfully attracting its atten-
tion through his clownish behavior, Kruchenykh accumulated many epithets
over his poetic career. Kruchenykh’s Futurist contemporary Sergei Tretyakov
addressed the reactions provoked by Kruchenykh in a retrospective article
bearing the title of another of Kruchenykh’s epithets, “The Bogeyman of
Russian Literature” (Buka russkoi literatury; 1922). Tantalizingly close to
words for “letter” (bukva) and “alphabet” (azbuka), the term buka here re-
fers to Kruchenykh’s notorious reputation through the connotations of the
“bogeyman” or “bugaboo” (buka), a fantastic being used to scare children.
Tretyakov effectively summarizes the reaction provoked by Kruchenykh
and his work when he writes, “Most likely, not one of the futurist poets re-
ceived as many curses, accusations, laughs, and cheap attacks, as did Aleksei
Kruchenykh.”33 Tretyakov contextualizes this reaction in a description that
reminds us of the shock value of the early Futurist publications: “Remember
his first debuts in 1912–13 with strange books, where among tumbling, and
often completely unpronounceable, letters and syllables, there suddenly ap-
peared / Dyr bul shchyl / Ube[sh]shchur / Skum! / Vy so bu / R l ez.”34 Sergei
Tretyakov, however, feels that Kruchenykh’s genius must be recognized. He
attempts to articulate Kruchenykh’s unique poetic accomplishment and com-
pares him to a chemist with phonemes.
Phonetic development—this is the fundamental justification of Kru-
chenykh’s work. . . . Taking speech sounds and bending them into forms
never heard before, trying to catch the play of what is stuck to these sounds
owing to their usage in speech, association, and sensation,—Kruchenykh
acted with the enthusiastic perseverance of a laboratory chemist, carrying
out a thousand chemical combinations and analyses.35
Tretyakov thus acknowledges Kruchenykh’s considerable contribution to the
deconstruction and reinvention of language to which Futurists aspired.
Poems dedicated to Kruchenykh by his Futurist colleagues paint an-
other portrait of Kruchenykh, one that is at the same time more intimate,
playful, and pointed. Not only telling descriptions, these often provide subtle
70
Infant Word
commentary on Kruchenykh’s legacy. Noteworthy among these is Boris

Pasternak’s January 5, 1928, contribution to a “Tournament of Poets” (Turnir
poetov) (1928) that required contestants to find rhymes with “Kruchenykh.”
With inventive rhymes like prikruchennykh (“bound, tied, or fastened to”)
and nepriruchennykh (“untamed”) and other wordplay, Pasternak mocks the
simplicity of the task.
Kruchenykh! / Yes, and what for? / Rigid and brittle / To all a Siberian
nickname . . . Supposing I dash off / a dozen ‘chenok’s [diminutive suffix], /
Allow ‘barchenok’ [son of a nobleman] weave in / ‘devchenok’ [little girl] . . .
‘arapchenok’ [little Arab] . . . Moreover, that’s without touching / the sly
world of beasts / Domestic, as well as undomesticated, / To pass with you
along the line / of the young . . . [Kruchenykh! / Da i k chemu? / Negibkoe i
lomkoe / Vsemu sibirskoe prozvan’e . . . Dopustim, ia s desiatok ‘chenkov’ /
skomkaiu, / Pushchu ‘barchenka’, pripletu / ‘devchenok’ . . . ‘arapchenok’ . . .
Pritom ne khitrost’ mir zverei / zatronuvshi / Ruchnykh, ravno kak i nepri-
ruchennykh, / Proitis’ s toboi po linii / detenyshei . . .]36
Pasternak mocks the rhyming task by employing a string of inexact rhymes,
where “Kruchënykh” is rhymed with the “-ënok” ending typical of baby ani-
mals and the young. Considering Kruchenykh’s constant engagement with
children, the references to “a little girl” and “To pass with you along the
line of the young” seem pointed references to Kruchenykh’s infantile primi-
tivism.37 Still more polemical is Pasternak’s commentary to accompany the
poem, where he attacks rhymes of “assonance.”
Response to an offer to participate in a contest of rhymes with the name
Kruchenykh, proposed by the one who possessed it. If you consider as-
sonance a rhyme, then decidedly every animal in its youth rhymes with it
(‘volchenok’ [wolf cub], ‘verbliuzhenok’ [young camel], ‘sobachenok’ [little
dog], etc.) and only in maturity do they lose this ability. Consequently,
these rhymes probably number in the hundreds and do not present any
difficulty. No hint and no insult is contained in this observation: a still
greater amount of nonsense rhymes with my name. [Meaning ‘durak’ (fool)
and ‘Pasternak’.]38
Observing that all animals in their youth rhyme with Kruchenykh, Pasternak
hints at Kruchenykh’s obsession with children’s language, which conven-
tional belief and early children’s literature filled with excessive diminutives.
Pasternak’s remarks on the simplicity of the rhyming task represent a barely
veiled critique of Kruchenykh’s obsession with experimentation and tech-
nique, even as Pasternak’s harshness toward inexact rhymes reflects his own
poetic development away from the assonance of his own earlier period. At
the same time, however, Pasternak’s sarcastic employment of the cliché
71
“losing this ability in maturity” polemicizes with a societal valorization of in-

fantile facilities. Though Pasternak denies any hint or offensive intent and
ends on a humorous and self-deprecatory note, the veiled layers remain in
the text of this playful poem.
Similar layering of hints and veiled critique emerge in poems dedicated
to Kruchenykh by his colleague, collaborator, and erstwhile rival, Velimir
Khlebnikov. The familiarly titled poem “To Alyosha Kruchenykh” (“Aleshe
Kruchenykh”; 1920) begins playfully, speaking of “Play in hell and work in /
heaven” (Igra v adu i trud v / raiu)39 in a reference to one of Khlebnikov and
Kruchenykh’s earliest collaborations, the narrative poem Play in Hell (Igra
v adu; 1912). Later that year, Khlebnikov dated the poem “Someone wild,
someone crazy . . .” (“Kto-to dikii, kto-to shalyi . . .”) by writing “Ten-year
‘celebration of a lie’ [prazdnik lzhi] December 25, 1920.”40 In commentary
on this poem Sergei Sukhoparov offers the explanation that Khlebnikov con-
sidered this tenth-year celebration of Kruchenykh’s literary activity to be the
celebration of a lie.41
The bitterness of these sequential poems culminates in Khlebnikov’s
poem “Kruchenykh” (1921).42 As it opens, Kruchenykh is called “a naughty
boy at 30 years of age” (Mal’chishka v 30 let)43 in an aptly infantilizing
move.44 It continues with a number of harsh and pointed remarks, includ-
ing the accusation: “Deftly you catch the ideas of others, / To take [them] to
their end, to / suicide” (Lovko ty lovish’ mysli chuzhie, / Chtob dovesti do
kontsa, do / samoubiistva).45 Khlebnikov insults Kruchenykh’s integrity and
originality, before concluding this bitter critique with an equivocal com-
parison, “But his girlish eyes are full of tenderness at times” (No devich’i
glaza poroiu nezhnosti polnyi), and a dubious compliment, “You are a fasci-
nating writer—/ Burlyuk’s negative double” (Vy ocharovatel’nyi pisatel’—/
Burliuka otritsatel’nyi dvoinik).46 The venom and animosity expressed here
may derive from the rivalry between two men, who similarly aim to renew
language but choose different paths. Kruchenykh steers a course toward
babble and moves ever further from meaning, while Khlebnikov derives his
neologisms from the morphemes in a deep linguistic structure. Importantly,
however, Khlebnikov also was influenced by infantile language, such as chil-
dren’s nonsense rhymes47 and the prelingual babble of children.48 Hence
Khlebnikov’s need for aggressive affectation, lest he too be mistaken for
Kruchenykh’s double or vice versa. As hinted by this series of increasingly
acrimonious poems, Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov had a troubled history of
conflict during the infancy of Cubo-Futurism. For the Futurists the revolu-
tionary urgency was particularly keen; it was nothing less than the future of
language that was at stake in the Futurists’ acrimonious disputes and search
for new models.
72
Infant Word
TH E C O L L A BO R AT I O N O F KR U CH ENYKH
A N D K H L EBNI KO V
The collaboration of Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov begins with

their first attested encounter in February 1912.49 According to Kruchenykh,
their first meeting included Khlebnikov’s sudden and unexpected additions
to Kruchenykh’s original draft of the poema titled Play in Hell (Igra v adu).
If Kruchenykh is to be believed, “This is how we unexpectedly and invol-
untarily [neozhidanno i neproizvol’no] became coauthors.”50 Kruchenykh
generally characterizes their collaborations as problematic and rarely seems
willing to acknowledge Khlebnikov’s contributions. He takes full credit, for
instance, for the neologism mirskontsa (worldbackwards), which expresses in
a word the counter-chronological or regressive strain of infantile primitivism.
The same sort of dispute arose among us over the name of his play “Olya
and Polya.” ‘This is ‘a heartfelt word,’ not Futurism!—I protested, and
proposed one more pointed and more suitable for the play—Mirskontsa
[Worldbackwards], which also was made the title of our 1912 collection.
Khlebnikov agreed, broke into a smile, and immediately began to decline
it: ‘Mirskontsa, mirskontsoi, mirskontsom.’51
If Kruchenykh seems reluctant to grant credit to Khlebnikov, however, the
fact that he does attribute to Khlebnikov key poetic lines about “listening
to children” in “The Devil and the Speechcrafters” (“Chort i rechetvortsy”)
amounts to a believable confession.
We discussed my brochure “The Devil and the Speechcrafters” together.
He and I looked over what I had already written, and went about cor-
recting, adding. . . . Many of the lines inserted by him sparkle with the
sharpness of a jeer, of word invention. In this way, Khlebnikov reinforced
my petrolization of the bog of Sologubovisms [neftevanie bolot sologubov-
shchiny] with . . . “I hearken to you, my children, / having ascended the pa-
ternal throne [Ia vam vnimaiu, moi deti, / vossev na otcheskii prestol] . . .”52
Indeed, it does seem that Kruchenykh may owe a good deal to Khlebnikov
with respect to the initial inspiration for “listening to children” and other new
approaches to language innovation that grant Futurism the throne.
For instance, correspondence surrounding the 1912 publication of the
early Futurist collection Hatchery of Judges II (Sadok sudei II)53 gives evi-
dence that Khlebnikov at this early date already was resolved that the child’s
poetic voice ought to be heard. Khlebnikov’s views on the matter of the
thirteen-year-old poet Militsa are preserved in letters to Mikhail Matiushin,
dated October 5, 1912, and December to January 1913.54 The earlier letter
73
from Khlebnikov begins, “I beg of you, I entreat you by all that’s holy to
include these two poems. . . . These poems from a child’s heart may well
give us some sense of what to expect from the youth of 1917—at 19 years.”
Khlebnikov here shows that he regards the child’s prophetic voice as a tempo-
ral passage to an uncertain, but somehow already extant future. The second
letter shows remarkable perseverance and devotion to publishing Militsa’s
work; Khlebnikov suggests, “I’m sure you can always find a place for it if you
leave out one or two of my short poems” and insists that they take the space
required and not be sequestered in any children’s section.55 Kruchenykh
refers to this unusual incident in “Meeting the Burlyuks, Mayakovsky and
Khlebnikov.” Though he expresses disapproval, Kruchenykh’s remarks show
that he was aware of Khlebnikov’s position on the inclusion of a child’s poetic
voice in a Futurist publication before he himself had attempted such a thing.
These letters thus provide evidence that Khlebnikov’s interest in children’s
poetic voice may predate Kruchenykh’s engagement with children’s language,
but, as we shall see, Kruchenykh takes this interest further, “to the end, to
suicide.” Indeed, he takes his experiments so far beyond the bounds of lan-
guage and poetry that he approaches their very annihilation.
By the following year, 1913, Aleksei Kruchenykh, who “deftly catches
the ideas of others,” was coauthoring a book of poems with a still younger
child, the eleven-year-old “Zina V.”56 Though the initial impetus for explor-
ing children’s poetic voice may have come from Khlebnikov, who sought to
publish and defend a thirteen-year-old’s poem, Kruchenykh took infantile
primitivism further. Kruchenykh surpassed Khlebnikov’s fleeting interest
in the nearly adult compositions by Militsa. Fearlessly radical, he collected
childish work with unusual and experimental features from ever younger
children until he was approaching early speech and the babble that precedes
it. Moreover, his serious engagement with children as poetic subjects went
as far as coauthoring books and collaborating on individual poems with chil-
dren. In these senses, Kruchenykh took infantile primitivism far beyond the
experiments of other Futurists.
F IRS T F U T U R I S T S
Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov were not the only Futurist poets who en-
gaged themselves with children’s own poetic production. Vasily Kamensky
collected children’s art, as Vladimir Markov notes,57 and in 1914 included
a poem in Tango with Cows (Tango s korovami; 1914) that he claims to
have written when he was eleven years old.58 The poem “Barefoot on the
Grass” (“Bosikom po Krapive”) bears the note “(this poem was written . . .
when I was 11 years old).”59 (See figure 16.) Childish features in the poem
74
Infant Word
Figure 16. “Bosikom na krapive” (“Barefoot on the Grass”), visual poem in

Vasily Kamensky’s Tango s korovami (Tango with Cows), 1914
The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2567-605)
include a conspicuous lack of capitalization, the Larionov-like misspelling of

“childhood” (detsvo instead of detstvo), wordplay on the roots of his name,
and details of Kamensky’s childhood that also appear in his autobiographi-
cal writings.60 Here and elsewhere Kamensky cultivated a childlike persona,
as evident in preserved letters from “Vasya” to the paternal figure Nikolai
Kulbin. In a childish scrawl, and using arbitrary and emphatic capitalization,
Kamensky writes “and until fiNd probably will die GOT LOST like a child
and don’t know where to set myself up.”61 Kamensky’s example illustrates
how many poets in this period constructed themselves as childlike, particu-
larly in the context of the Futurist cult of youth.
Several critics of the Futurists also displayed an interest in children’s
language during this period, which they aptly related to the trans-sense ex-
periments of the Futurists. The future linguist Roman Jakobson included ex-
amples of children’s language and lore among trans-sense sources he brought
on his first visit to Khlebnikov’s apartment in December of 191362 and con-
tinued to supply new materials for comparison through his correspondence.63
75
In an early article on “The Futurists” (“Futuristy”; 1914), the critic Kornei

Chukovsky cites a number of important figures who were giving attention to
children’s creations at this time; in addition to Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh,
he lists the Cubists, Burliuk, Blaue Reiter, Kulbin, and Severyanin.64 As
Chukovsky explains it, “Today’s rage for the primitive has brought con-
temporary people to children” (Nyneshniaia zhazhda pervobytnogo privela
sovremennykh liudei k detiam).65 The critical attention children’s own poetic
production received from a variety of artists, writers, and critics at the time
must be considered alongside the Futurist desire for innovation in language.
Incidentally, many commentators have responded to Futurist work
with the comment that the first zaumnik (trans-sensist) futurists were not
Kruchenykh or Khlebnikov, but children. Typically, Suren Gaisarsian pro-
poses, “the first Russian futurist-zaumnik appeared in Russia long before
Kruchenykh,” perhaps in the shape of the four-year-old brother of Baron
Delvig, who recited his two-line poem “Indiiadi, Indiiadi, Indiia! / Indiiadi,
Indiiadi, Indiia!” before Aleksandr Pushkin.66 Roman Jakobson also regarded
a child as a Futurist and sent Kruchenykh an annotated copy of a composi-
tion entitled “Futuist” [sic] by a seven-year-old boy. It begins with rhymes
and wordplay,
there once was a man one year old. He joked and smoked. He sang, fotur-
ist, foturist, reederist . . . and others they repeet, reederist, . . . futurist [sic]
[byl muzhik godovik. On shutil i kuril. On pel, foturist, foturist, cheta-
list . . . a drugie poftariaiut, chetalist, . . . futurist].67
Others framed children as better interpreters of Futurist or avant-garde
work. Kornei Chukovsky made such an observation in 1914, at a time when
critics and audiences still did not know how to receive them. In “The Futur-
ists” (“Futuristy”; 1914), he comments on their reception.
Only one was not afraid—Yura B. He is himself a Futurist of the same
sort. . . . This Egofuturist turned four already this past year, and I am sure
that . . . he would be an indispensable interlocutor. The poet just better
hurry up about it, before Yura turns five; at that point his word creation
[slovotvorchestvo] will be exhausted.68
He also offers examples of Yura’s neologistic speech to support his argument.
Chukovsky emphasizes the urgency, marking the age of five as the end of the
child’s most linguistically creative period. Significantly, Chukovsky, who later
would complete a book-length study on this topic,69 had displayed a fascina-
tion for children’s language as early as a 1911 article that included a section
“On Children’s Language” (“O detskom iazyke”).70
Igor Terentyev also uses the example of children to shame adults who
have difficulty understanding Futurism. He claims that children automati-
cally respond well to Kruchenykh’s bright paper collages and are not afraid of
76
Infant Word
Kruchenykh’s compositions if they come to an exhibit of Futurist paintings.71

Adults are filled with horror, he suggests, only because they fail to recognize
themselves or the future in the new art. In essence, the implication is that
adults must become “as little children,” accept the unknown and the unrec-
ognizable, and take a playful approach to the artistic work. Adults must ac-
cept the forcible infantilization of their audience that abstract art and trans-
sense language accomplish through their challenges to interpretation. These
comments reveal that Terentyev constructs children as the ideal audience
for avant-garde experiments, in part because he acknowledges that Futurist
work is inspired by and indebted to children’s own creativity. Terentyev thus
applies the idea of the “worldbackwards” (mirskontsa) as a fundament of fu-
turism. Time is reversed and the principles of our world are turned on their
head; adults ought to learn from children how to respond to Futurist work,
or how to enjoy play for the sake of play, just as Futurists have learned from
children. Indeed, Velimir Khlebnikov poetically dramatizes such a reversal of
the roles of child and adult in the play Worldbackwards (Mirskontsa; 1912),
which reverses linear time and metamorphoses an old couple into infants
who are silently wheeled around in baby carriages.72
E A RLY V ENT U R ES
The year 1913 marks the rapid emergence of Kruchenykh as a trans-sense

theorist at the same time that he begins to demonstrate a primitivist ob-
session with the idea of “actual language.” It is this interest in “sobstvennyi
iazyk,” a term meaning “actual language” or “one’s own language,” that leads
him into the realms of the primitive and the language of children. The essen-
tial ambiguity of the term applies to the subjective language of the primitive
emotional self or of another. Primitivism, possessiveness, and the assertion
of voice by the unheard or the unacknowledged all inform the meaning of
this term as used here. Similarly, its echoes in the idea of “a language of one’s
own” also are fitting, particularly when applied to the attempted recovery of
the language of a silent ‘other.’
The search for a qualitatively different language motivates the phrasing
of the introduction to the seminal triptych of trans-sense poems that appears
in Pomade (Pomada) (1913) (see figures 17 and 18). These include the famous
poem “Dyr bul shchyl,” which became the poetic manifesto of the trans-
sense movement. Written in what appears to be actual handwriting is the
introduction riddled with misspellings, “3 poems / written in / own language /
differing from others: / its words do not have / a fixed meaning” (3 stikho-
tvoreniia / napisanyia na / sobstvenom iazyke / ot dr[ugikh] otlichaetsia: /
slova ne imeiut / opredelenago znacheniia).73 Here Kruchenykh uses the
modifier “sobstvennyi” in a way that endows it with new significance, based
77
Figure 17. Lettering and illustration by Mikhail Larionov from

in part on its opposition to the “other” language and also connected to the
characteristics by which it is being defined. Soon to be termed zaum’,74 the
poetic language being developed here is one where “words do not have a fixed
meaning,” or signifiers lack a fixed signified. This type of separation of signi-
fier and signified has its precedent in marginalized forms of discourse, such
as that of children. The primitivist aspect of Kruchenykh’s search for actual
language emerges most clearly in the second of Kruchenykh’s three poems
in his “own language.” The least trans-sensical of the three, it contains the
lines “black language / that existed also among wild tribes” (chernyi iazyk /
to bylo i u dikikh plemen) that hint at the search for an unknown and in-
comprehensible language among the wild tribes of the primitive. During the
ensuing period Kruchenykh would pursue his primitivist interest in the actual
language of children, or “children’s own language” (sobstvennyi iazyk detei).
As Gerald Janecek points out in his rigorous study of Zaum: The Trans-
rational Poetry of Russian Futurism, serious attention was being given to
78
Infant Word
Figure 18. Lettering by Mikhail Larionov from

children’s language by linguists and psychologists at the end of the nine-

teenth century.75 A number of Russian studies had been published, and
Russian intellectuals also knew Western work on the subject. Both Viktor
Shklovsky and Roman Jakobson, as Janecek notes, cite James Sully’s psycho-
logical Studies of Childhood (1896)76 in critical articles that draw attention to
the infantile language of the Futurists. Indeed, Sully’s lengthy discussion of
“The Little Linguist” reveals a number of notions also present in the Futurist
understanding of children’s language, such as searching for the origin of lan-
guage in children’s speech77 and a notion of the purely emotive and plea-
surable nature of “primordial babbling.”78 Sully concludes his discussion of
“Prelinguistic Babblings” with a number of assumptions and associations also
present in the Futurist understanding of babble. He writes:
Indeed we have in this infantile ‘la-la-ing’ more a rudiment of song and

music than of articulate speech. The rude vocal music of savages consists
79
of a similar rhythmic threading of meaningless sounds in which as in this

infantile song changes of feeling reflect themselves. We may best describe
this infantile babbling then as voice-play and as rude spontaneous singing,
the utterance of a mood, indulged in for the sake of its own delight, and
serving by a happy arrangement of nature as a preliminary practice in the
production of articulate or linguistic sounds.79
Sully thus might be regarded as a potential source for the association of

babble, infant, savage, and sound play practiced by the Futurists and the Fu-
turist critics. In a sense, he situates the origin of poetry in infancy and chil-
dren’s babble.
Significant not only for Kruchenykh’s poetic oeuvre and the develop-
ment of zaum’, the year 1913 also marked the unprecedented poetic col-
laboration of child and adult in the collection Piglets (Porosiata).80 (See figure
19.)81 Attributed equally to its eleven-year-old and adult authors, “Zina V. i
A. Kruchenykh,” this collection displays the depth of Kruchenykh’s engage-
ment in children’s language. The collection begins with a short quatrain that
welcomes the reader into “the ignominy of nonsense” with a “bouquet of
piglets,” as appropriate to the title and theme of the collection—“v pozore
bessmysliia / zhizn’ mudretsa / dorogi golove lysoi / tsvety porosiat” (in the
ignominy of senselessness / the life of a sage / roads for a bald head / flowers
of piglets).82 After the pithy preparatory opening by the Futurist poet, the
next five pages are given to compositions attributed to “Zina V. (11 years)”
(Zina V. [11 let]). The eleven-year-old writer contributes three absurd prose
pieces.83 One tells the story of a philosopher who entered a water closet but
refused to lock the door, because if he died, he reasoned, no one would be
able to use it.84 Another matter of factly presents a speaker who has four pigs
in her pocket. Their cries perplex passersby until she explains, “pigs! . . I
answer” (svin’i! . . otvechaiu ia). The absurdity and disconnected logic of the
prose pieces by Zina V. defy narrative expectations through their abruptness,
lack of plot or development, and brevity. The works attributed to Zina V.,
whether written by an actual child or not, show that Futurists equated their
own work with child lore and children’s writing. They cultivated children’s
writing, or an infantile style, as providing new narrative avenues for avant-
garde writers. These short works provide a provocative comparison not only
with Kruchenykh’s writings in this same volume, but also with prose experi-
ments by later representatives of the avant-garde, just as children’s drawings
did in exhibitions of avant-garde art.
Kruchenykh’s own contributions to Porosiata include the entirely trans-
sensical poem “Vesna gusinaia” which imitates the sounds of a “goosey
spring.” Irregularly laid out on the page and lacking all punctuation or capi-
talization, the text of the poem reads: “te ge ne / riu ri / le liu / be / tl’k /
80
Infant Word
Figure 19. Cover of Porosiata (Piglets), by Zina V. and A. Kruchenykh

with illustrations by Kazimir Malevich, 1913. Cotsen Children’s Library,
Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.
Princeton University Library
tl’ko / kho mo lo / re k riukpl’ / kr’d kriud / ntpr / irk’iu / bi pu.” From pro-
nounceable open syllables of stops and liquids followed by high vowels, the
poem moves toward increasingly unpronounceable consonant clusters, such
as “ntpr,” until it concludes with the simple sounds of the labials “bi” and
“pu.” Here, the “language” of birds grants Kruchenykh liberty for his trans-
sense artistic experiments in a way comparable to that of Khlebnikov in the
supersaga “Zangezi” (1922) which opens with trans-sensical bird calls. This
kind of search for an alternative expressive register devoid of meaning sheds
light on the Futurist interest in the less semantically bound language of chil-
dren, a comparison also made by Kornei Chukovsky in the chapter “Ekikiki”
of Malen’kie deti (1928).85 The second edition of Porosiata published in 1914
also included one more prose piece by “Zina V.” and an additional poem
entitled “Ia zhrets ia razlenilsia” (“I’m a Hierophant I’m Idling”)86 as the
penultimate piece.87 Equally attributed to “Zina V.” and “A. Kruchenykh,”
this coauthored poem demonstrates that Kruchenykh’s interest in children’s
81
language went beyond a willingness to collaborate with a child on a volume of

poetry to a willingness to collaborate on a single poem. Or, at the very least,
to publicly claim that he has. The contents of the collection Porosiata thus
demonstrate the depth of Kruchenykh’s interest in the substance and process
of children’s poetic production, as well as his desire to publicize the infantile
primitivism of the Futurists.
The development of trans-sense language in this same year thus
proves inextricably linked to the Futurist interest in children’s language,
just as infantilism in painting helped move the artists of Neo-Primitivism
toward increasing abstraction. For instance, the final pages of commentary
in Porosiata extol the trans-sensical innovations displayed in that book, and
of the Budetliane in general, in the style of a manifesto.
We, the Moscow poets futurists . . . for the first time have given the world
poems in transrational, universal, and free languages. We have amazed the
universe. [My, moskovskie baiachi budetliane . . . vpervye dali miru stikhi
na zaumnom, vselenskom i svobodnom iazykakh. My porazili vselennuiu.]
Kruchenykh thus uses a volume coauthored with an eleven-year-old girl as
a representative example of Futurism, as well as a platform for expressing
the evolving Futurist aesthetic. The literary collaboration of poet and child
preceded the famous manifesto The Word as Such (Slovo kak takovoe; 1913),
signed by A. Kruchenykh and V. Khlebnikov, which puts forth the trans-sense
doctrine and the concept of “trans-sense language” (zaumnyi iazyk).88 This
manifesto returns to the idea of the renewal of language and attaches the
epithet “speechcrafters” (rechetvortsy) to “budetliane,” the original Russian
name for the Futurists. Also emphasized by the title “The Devil and the
Speechcrafters” (“Chort i rechetvortsy”; 1913) from the same year, this term
glorifies language creation, the quality of children’s language valorized by
Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov, as well as by Futurist poetics in general. The
title of Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov’s poem Play in Hell (Igra v adu; 1912)
similarly juxtaposes the diabolic imagery of hell with the creative force of
play, semantically associated with children.
The trans-sense declaration at the end of Porosiata reveals certain illus-
trative aspects of the search for zaum’ that help to explain its origin. Associating
the qualities of universality and freedom with trans-sense language—“in
transrational, universal, and free languages” (na zaumnom, vselenskom i
svobodnom iazykakh)—the commentary to the volume links its experiment
with children’s language to these key concepts.89 The search for a universal
language articulated here and in other commentary also motivates the sec-
ond part of Kruchenykh’s apocalyptic poem “The world has died. . .” (“Mir
konchilsia . . .”) printed in Croaked Moon (Dokhlaia luna; 1913). The title
“Heights” (“Vysoty”), which evokes the Tower of Babel, is followed by the
parenthetical explanation “(universal language)” (vselenskii iazyk) and a text
82
Infant Word
composed solely of vowels: “e u iu / i a o / o a / o a e e i e ia / o a / e u i e i /

i e e / i i y i e i i y.” Indeed, as linguistics establishes, basic vowel sounds do
represent fundamental components of all languages. At the same time, such
an utterance also precedes language since it would not be beyond the capac-
ity of an infant capable only of cries.
A quest for the universal basis of language through its fundamental
building blocks also lies at the basis of many of the poetic experiments of
Velimir Khlebnikov, such as “Zangezi” (1922), which applies trans-sense
principles productively within the greater context of a “supersaga” (sverkh-
povest’). In various “planes” (ploskosti), it explores the signifying possibilities
of numbers and letters, phonemes and morphemes. The desire for univer-
sal language that drives Futurist poets to the extremes and fundaments of
language also motivates their study of children’s verbal abilities. One might
compare this to how linguists, like Roman Jakobson in later decades, devote
attention to children’s language acquisition in order to glean insights on the
structure and development of language in general.90 In “The Sound Laws of
Child Language and Their Place in General Phonology,” Jakobson presents
evidence for universal linguistic structure from the area of language acquisi-
tion. He writes,
Following step by step the formation of the child’s phonemic system, we
discern a rigid regularity in the succession of his acquisitions, which consti-
tute for the most part a strict and invariable temporal sequence. . . . Every
careful linguistic description provides equal confirmation of the fact that
the relative chronology of certain innovations remains always and every-
where the same.91
Further, he argues that the pattern of the child’s language acquisition cor-
responds to the general laws that “govern the synchrony of the languages
of the world.”92 Thus children’s language appears to the linguist as a kind of
universal substrate within all the world’s languages. The Russian Futurist
poets also approach children’s language as a universal language and a com-
mon linguistic experience, even as they harness this construct of the child to
their quest to return to the beginning of language and poetry. They seek to
investigate the spatial and temporal extremes of language in order to find a
source of language renewal at the periphery of the semiotic sphere.
S US TA IN ED I NT ER ES T, 1 9 1 4 – 1 9 2 3
The duration and expanding range of Kruchenykh’s engagement in the actual

language of children reflects the breadth of his interest. The 1914 collection
Children’s Own Stories and Drawings (figure 20; Sobstvennye razskazy i
risunki detei)93 included another improvisation by “Zina V.” as well as work
83
Figure 20. Cover of Sobstvennye razskazy detei (Children’s Own Stories

and Drawings), a collection edited by Aleksei Kruchenykh, 1914.
Cotsen Children’s Library, Department of Rare Books and
Special Collections, Princeton University Library.
by younger children. Interestingly, the 1914 collection already moves toward

the inclusion of even younger children than the thirteen-year-old Militsa de-
fended by Khlebnikov or the eleven year-old “Zina V.” who was Kruchenykh’s
supposed coauthor and collaborator in Piglets. A poem by a seven-year-
old girl “(Kot—Katia—7 let)” entitled “EVERYTHING PORRIDGE”
(“KASHEVARKA VSEGO”) is featured first in the section “Poems, stories,
tales” (“Stikhi, razskazy, skazki”) and shares many attributes of Kruchenykh’s
and other trans-sense poetry.94
These comparisons bare the infantile primitivism of many verbal experi-
ments of the Futurists. For instance, the use of capitalization in the child’s title
“EVERYTHING PORRIDGE”95 resembles that in many poems Kruchenykh
published in Explodicity (Vzorval’; 1913), such as the poem which begins
“FORGOT TO HANG MYSELF . . .” (“ZABYL POVESIT’SIA . . .”).96 Such
capitalization is also used in many poems Kruchenykh published in Trans-
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Infant Word
Figure 21. Cover of Sobstvennye rasskazy, stikhi i pesni detei (Children’s Own
Stories, Poems, and Songs), a collection edited by Aleksei Kruchenykh, 1923
Courtesy of the Russian State Library, St. Petersburg, Russia
Sense boog (Zaumnaia gniga; 1915), such as the heretical poem “EUGEN.
ONEGIN IN 2 LIN” (“EVGEN. ONEGIN V 2 STROCH”), which reduces
the masterpiece of Russian literature to five simple word fragments, as if
rendered in an infantile lisp or as a children’s counting rhyme: “ENI VONI /
SE I TSIA.”97 The child’s unconventional phonetic spelling resembles the or-
thographic liberties taken in some of the handwritten books of the Futurists.
Kruchenykh takes similar liberties in The Devil and the Speechcrafters when
he mocks venerable figures of Russian literature, such as Fyodor Sologub. The
author’s surname is misspelled or reprocessed as “Salogub,” which can mean
“Suet-lip,” and he is represented as whispering lines of babble that resemble
a child’s rhyme inspired by some of the first letters in the Slavonic alphabet,
“Az’,” “Buki,” and “Vedi.” It reads: “ ‘chur [away] chur [away] churashki buki
[beeches] bukashki [bugs] vedi tarakashki’ [cockroachies] sheptal [whispered]
Salogub [Suet-lip].”98
Some of the Futurists’ most radical poetic experiments have analogues
in the infantile language displayed in this collection. The child’s lines “V l’ka
85
il’kail’kamil’ka uaika ikachik chmk chika ukaika mik a ik”99 demonstrate the
type of repetition and recombination of sounds typical of Kruchenykh’s trans-
sense poetry, such as “goosey spring” (“vesna gusinaia”; 1913), or Khlebnikov’s
recombinatory nonsense in “Zangezi” (1922). The line “iiukengshshchorpip
aspi zkhshchiubdzhl’o,”100 in its bold arbitrariness of symbol and sound, merits
comparison with Roman Jakobson’s trans-sense poem that begins “mzglyb-
zhvuiu iikh’’ian’dr’iu chtleshchk khn fia s’’p skypolza” (1915). Similarly, Kru-
chenykh’s later graphic experiments during his time in Tiflis, as he moves
toward minimalist trans-sense poetry, resemble a child’s early scrawl or let-
tering exercises. Examples include the cover of the volume KLEZ SAN BA
(1918), which haphazardly assembles letters and lines on the page, and the
volume Learn Artists (Uchites’ Khudogi; 1917), which includes a page that
resembles a workbook page with lists of neatly printed word pairs: “boro /
choro / dva [two] / odin [one] / gam [din] / sham.”101
Such striking similarities certainly raise questions regarding the de-
gree of Kruchenykh’s participation or influence during the composition
and transcription of these “children’s” texts, or whether outright forgeries
may be included, as some would contend. The volumes themselves contain
evidence of an editorial presence, as was also true of Leo Tolstoy’s earlier
publication of peasant children’s writing in “Who should learn to write from
whom . . .” when a child protests, “Who’s writing here?”102 In the cases when
Kruchenykh includes observations about the initial form, some show loyalty
to the child’s oral delivery, as in works “transcribed from dictation” (zapi-
sano pod diktovku),103 while others are loyal to the manuscript version (“Po
rukopisi”).104 Most suspect, however, is the admission that one work is “tran-
scribed from memory” (zapisano po pamiati).105 Indeed, considerable influ-
ence from the editor must be assumed; even actual writings by children can-
not be presumed to be unadulterated. For in fact, nowhere does the practice
of primitivism succeed in its aim to display “untainted” samples of a primitive
existence. The primitivist display reveals the desire of the collector or of a
society to present itself in a certain way through the ‘primitive.’ For, in truth,
even the process of selection in these primitivist collections would provide
an opportunity to advance the Futurist agenda. Kruchenykh’s evident de-
sire to publicize similarities between children’s writings and the contempo-
rary trans-sense poems of the Futurists delivers the message that he equates
Futurism with his own construct of the ‘infant/child’ as “speechcrafter.”
Though scholars from Vladimir Markov to John Bowlt have questioned
the authenticity of the children with whom Kruchenykh supposedly collabo-
rated,106 an examination of the original 1914 collection reveals a number of
signatures attached to visibly authentic children’s drawings depicting heads,
faces, a house, a tree, a horse, and so on. These drawings and many others in
the volume bear the signature of “Nina Kulbina 8 years” (Nina Kul’bina 8 let).
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Infant Word
Figure 22. Drawing of faces by Nina Kulbina from Aleksei Kruchenykh’s

Sobstvennye razskazy i risunki detei (Children’s Own Stories and Drawings), 1914
(See figures 22 and 23.)107, 108 Nina Kulbina was the daughter of the doctor
Nikolai Kulbin, the World of Art artist and critic who publicly put forth his
laudatory views on children’s art, as discussed in the previous chapter.
Preserved in the Russian Museum archives, Nina Kulbina’s mem-
oirs about her father include mention of Nikolai Kulbin’s friendship with
Kruchenykh, who was a frequent guest in their home, and the fact that the
two men shared an interest in children’s art. 109 The memoirs provide evi-
dence that Nina Kulbina indeed would have been eight years old around
the year 1914. Leonid Vysheslavsky corroborates Nina Kulbina’s authorship
when he records his earlier comments on the collection in “A Few Words
About Aleksei Kruchenykh” (“Neskol’ko slov ob Aleksee Kruchenykh”;
1985).110 Reminiscences from an interview with Nina Kulbina’s son, the artist
Georgii Kovenchuk, includes his retelling of her accounts of associations with
Futurists, such as Mayakovsky.111 According to Georgii Kovenchuk, Nikolai
Kulbin was especially fond of Nina because of her artistic talents and loved
87
Figure 23. Drawing of a house by Nina Kulbina from Aleksei Kruchenykh’s

asking her questions. According to one anecdote, Kulbin once posed to her
the question, “What is point of view?” (Chto takoe tochka zreniia?). She im-
mediately answered, “I look at the wall, I see a point, that is my point of view”
(Ia smotriu na stenku, vizhu tochku, eto moia tochka zreniia), at which point
Nikolai Kulbin laughed. This anecdote illustrates precisely the new and de-
familiarizing perspective that children provided for Futurists and critics who
seriously attended to children’s voices and perspective in this time period.
Other contributors to Kruchenykh’s 1914 volume with identifying in-
dicators include the boy P. Bakharev and “M. E.” Although the boy’s first
name remains unknown, M. E. has been successfully identified112 as Mariana
Erlikh, the young niece of the Futurist poet Elena Guro, who also adorned
Guro’s posthumous collection Baby Camels of the Sky (Nebesnye verbliu-
zhata; 1914) with an illustration.113 (See figures 24 and 25.)114 Other books
from this period also employ children’s drawings for their cover designs, in-
cluding the anonymous child’s drawing engraved by N. Nagorskaia for the
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Infant Word
Figure 24. Drawing by M. E. [Mariana Erlikh] from Aleksei Kruchenykh’s

cover of Kruchenykh’s 1923 collection of Children’s Own Stories (see figure

21). Evidently, at least some actual children were involved.
A review published in Tiflis in 1917 discusses the contents of Kruchenykh’s
1914 collection as authentic samples of children’s work. It opens with the
statement that “the search for new techniques . . . brought the particular
interest of the Russian Futurists to the creations of children.” Its author, Iu.
Degen, who was close to Kruchenykh in Tiflis, remarks that “the composi-
tions by ten children” represent “as many individual personalities as there are
authors.”115 Such indications counter doubts as to the authenticity of the chil-
dren’s work. Indeed, at a time when the rising fields of linguistics and folklore
regarded children’s language and lore as a worthwhile subject for study, and
representatives of high culture and criticism were taking children’s creations
seriously, there would be no reason to doubt that Kruchenykh would seek to
publish the “actual” works of children. On the other hand, one must presume
89
Figure 25. Cover of Nebesnye verbliuzhata (Baby Camels of the Sky),

design by Mariana Erlikh for book by Elena Guro, 1914
a great deal of influence through the various stages of collection, selection,

transcription, and presentation. Naturally, Kruchenykh publishes only selec-
tions that advance his Futurist agenda; for instance, children’s writings that
appear conventional, imitative, or derivative are conspicuously absent. The
children’s work instead is chosen to reinforce the Futurist construction of the
‘infant/child’ as fundamentally avant-garde.
Kruchenykh makes questions of similarity and mutual influence still
more explicit in his 1923 collection of children’s work Children’s Own Stories,
Poems, and Songs (Sobstvennye rasskazy, stikhi i pesni detei).116 In this col-
lection, Kruchenykh publishes children’s written compositions exclusively,
demonstrating his continuing interest in children’s verbal invention. Near the
end of the collection, two poems call attention to the comparison between the
work of children and that of the Futurists through the parenthetical observa-
tions “(imitation of the Futurists)” (podrazhanie futuristam) and “(Imitation
of V. Khlebnikov)” (Podrazhanie V. Khlebnikovu).117 The poem by the ten-
year-old Elena indeed mimics Khlebnikov, as well as containing the imprint
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Infant Word
of Kruchenykh’s name in boldface no less than four times.118 In this it also re-
sembles Jakobson’s graphic poem published under the pseudonym Aliagrov in
Zaumniki (1922), which spells Kruchenykh’s nickname in boldface text diago-
nally across two short lines in the center of the composition—“KRUzhit’sia /
on CH. enykh.”119 By adding such metaliterary notations to the children’s
poems, Kruchenykh draws attention to the idea of the mutual influence of
Futurist and children’s writings.
Kruchenykh’s editorial comments also expose the biases of his poetic
interest in children’s compositions. Featured first in the 1923 collection, a
poem by a two-year-old girl (“Lilia-Elena—M., 2–kh let”) entitled “Ii” prob-
lematizes its own presentation.120 The transcription is so devoted to the child’s
actual language that it draws attention to the distinction between the child’s
target meaning and actual utterance. Furthermore, it destabilizes the first
transcription by presenting an alternate version in a note. Kruchenykh’s edi-
torial remarks here, or when he draws attention to the neologisms coined by
children, for instance, do little to clarify meaning, but rather draw attention
to the creative liberties taken in children’s writing.121 Indeed, many pieces
selected for the collection seem to prioritize sound over meaning and ex-
hibit a trans-sense impulse that effectively demonstrates the resemblance of
children’s own poetic production to the separation of signifier and signified
valorized by zaum’ poetics. This, presumably, was exactly Kruchenykh’s aim.
The 1923 collection presents both prose and poetry and orders them
roughly from youngest to oldest. Significantly, this volume encompasses the
complete range of language acquisition—from the babble, neologisms, and
earliest verbal creations of the two-year-old to the highly developed and more
conventional narrative abilities of the twelve-year-old. The structure of the
collection, as compiled by its editor, subtly creates a narrative arc that implies
that language begins with a combination of poetry and prose in the babble
of the two-year-old and then proceeds through early poetry to early prose,
before reaching the stage of advanced experimental poetry. Such a hierarchy
of development is in complete accordance with the literary agenda of the
Futurists. The infantile primitivism of the Futurists here reaches the end of
a hall of mirrors: a Futurist poet publishes children’s poetry imitative of the
work of Futurist poets, who themselves imitate children in a performance of
the infantile. In short, this amounts to an inescapable series of reflections of
the ‘other.’
ROMA N JA KO BS O N A S F U T U R I S T CRI TI C
In addition to relevant contact and correspondence with Kruchenykh and

Khlebnikov described earlier, Roman Jakobson also contributed to the rec-
ognition of infantile primitivism in his capacity as a critic. He devoted con-
91
siderable scholarly energy to the comparison of Futurist work with examples

of children’s own linguistic production. In his discussion of Khlebnikov’s po-
etics in the short volume “Modern Russian Poetry” (“Noveishaia russkaia
poeziia”; 1919), Jakobson identifies possible precedents for the trans-sense
experiments of the Futurists.122 In his analysis, he remarks that the Futurists’
poetic renewal of language depends on the discovery of “unusual words”
(neobychnye slova). For this reason Jakobson explores children’s linguistic
production and includes abundant examples of children’s language and lore
as part of his account of the development of trans-sense poetry. For instance,
he uses the children’s counting rhyme “sokhrun, mokhrun” as an example
of the creation of new suffixes123 and offers a number of linguistic examples
from “children’s folklore” (detskyi fol’klor) collected by Shein:
Potiagunushki potiagunushki. Poperek tolstunushki, a v nozhki khodu-
nushki, a v ruchki fatunushki. Postriguli pomiguli. Pivroshka drugoshka.
Pervenchiki drugenchiki. Preveliki drugeliki. Pervinchiki drugenchiki.
Pervenchiki drugeliki. Pervenchiki druginchiki ubili golubinchiki. Katun
ladun. [Stretchushkies stretchushkies. Across fattushkies, while at their
feet are walkushkies, and in their hands fatoonushkies. Choppity winkety.
Beerushka friendushka. Firstenlets otherenlets. Greatlets otherfaces.
Firstinlets otherinlets killed dovelets. Katoon ladoon.]124
Jakobson draws attention to the children’s chant “Kolia kolistyi. ‘Khi-kha-khi,
khi-kha’-khi / Siuda idut [here come] . . . achi, / Kha-khi, kha-khi, kha-khi,
kha-khi, / Siuda idut [here come] raz . . . aki”125 that shares features with ex-
amples of the generative power of laughter in works by Velimir Khlebnikov.126
He compares word-pairs, including a children’s counting rhyme about
“Vania-bania” (“Vanya-bathhouse”),127 with poetry by Elena Guro: “khor’ki-
borki, kotik-botik” (“ferrets-borkies, kitten-boat”).128 Throughout the article,
Jakobson links children’s speech to linguistic play and stresses that children
play with language for pure pleasure—“often without any reason at all but
verbal enjoyment alone” (chasto bez vsiakogo dazhe povoda radi odnoi
tol’ko slovesnoi zabavy).129 He echoes Sully’s ideas on babble as he identifies
purposeless and purely aesthetic play as a common element in children’s
language and Futurist poetics. In essence, he sees in children’s babble and
wordplay the origins of verbal art.
The final section of Jakobson’s article details the poetic word’s total lib-
eration from meaning. At this point he cites a child’s “plotless” (bessiuzhetnyi)
rhyme as a contrast to established poetry: “Momma, Momma, light a fire, /
My foot ended up in SH . . T” (Mamka, mamka, vzdui oGoN’, / Ia popal v
G . . No NoGoi).130 The scatological humor underlying this example, itself
associated with an early stage of child development and typical of children’s
humor, recurs in Kruchenykh’s later work.131 Jakobson indicates that chil-
dren’s rhymes such as these should be considered a precedent for the plot-
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Infant Word
less experiments and new approach to meaning practiced by the Futurists.

Alongside these examples, one might place the poems and plotless stories
by children coauthored, collected, and published by Kruchenykh. Jakobson
further remarks that, from such examples of euphony for its own sake, “there
is only one step to arbitrary language” (odin shag do iazyka proizvol’nogo).132
As his examples show, the Futurists and their contemporary critics regarded
children’s language as a poetic and scientific model of language revolution.133
In their desire to escape literary history and the rigid linearity of time
in order to forge a new artistic path for the future and accomplish an aes-
thetic revolution, the Futurist poets subscribed to a notion of children’s lan-
guage as an ideal source of linguistic innovation. By 1919, Kruchenykh wrote,
“ ‘I have an abdomen full of words’—spoken by a child!” (‘U menia polnyi
zhivot slov’—skazano rebenkom!).134 Clearly, Kruchenykh had pursued his
interest in the language of children as a trans-sense theorist and radical in-
novator of language. In the early speech, poems, and stories of children, he
sought new models for the linguistic experiments of the avant-garde. In 1921
Kruchenykh penned the manifesto “Declaration of Trans-Sense Language”
(“Deklaratsiia zaumnogo iazyka”) that crystallizes his trans-sense theories.
He here cites children’s babble, or detskii lepet, as a fundamental form of
zaum’ language.135 He thus openly acknowledges that children’s babble pro-
vided an important model for the poetic experiments of this poet-theorist
and collector of children’s language. Within the framework of the infantile
primitivism of the Russian Futurists, the language play of children, who are
in the process of acquiring and mastering language, serves as a model for the
trans-sense renewal of language.
In this, Kruchenykh was only the most radical of many Futurist poets
who looked to children’s language as an example of the language creation
and playful experimentalism to which they aspired as part of their avant-
garde practice. Along with the Cubo-Futurist poets Velimir Khlebnikov,
Vasily Kamensky, Elena Guro, and Roman Jakobson, and later members of
the Futurist camp, like Sergei Tretyakov, Ilya Zdanevich, and Igor Terentyev,
many contemporary critics of the Futurists drew attention to the affinity of
Futurist poetics to children’s language. These acute observers were either
close to their aims in theory and practice, like Roman Jakobson and Viktor
Shklovsky, or, in the case of the critic Kornei Chukovsky, shared fundamental
interests evidently not uncommon during the heyday of infantile primitivism.
F ORMU L AT I NG A ND R EF O R M U L ATI NG
TH E F U T U R I S T L EG A CY
In 1922 Sergei Tretyakov penned remarks that provide a contextualizing per-

spective on the importance of Kruchenykh’s zaum’ theory and the influence
93
of his radical ideas.136 In the article “The Bogeyman of Russian Literature,”

Tretyakov lists an “entire pleiad of Zaumniks” (tselaia pleiada zaumnikov)
engaged in trans-sense practice.137 He enumerates Malevich, Rozanova,
Terentyev, Alyagrov [Jakobson], and Zdanevich. He thus includes the avant-
garde artists Kazimir Malevich and Olga Rozanova, who also wrote poetry,
in the trans-sense ranks, again highlighting the cross-fertilization of art and
poetry at this time. Indeed, Kazimir Malevich, for instance, provided illustra-
tions for one of the most significant treatises of infantile primitivism, namely,
Piglets (Porosiata; 1913).138 Tretyakov quotes a section of Ilya Zdanevich’s
poem “Ianko krul’ Albanskai” (“Yanko King of Albania”; 1916) to illustrate
Kruchenykh’s zaum’ principles. He draws attention to an example of child-
ish speech full of euphony spoken by the frightened Yanko, who begins with
distortions of parental terms (“papasia mamasia”) and then proceeds to less
intelligible neologisms: “Ianko (ispugannyi [frightened]): / papasia mama-
sia / ban’ka kakuika viziika / budiutit’ka vas’ka mamudia / uiulia aviaka
zybititiushka!” In his commentary on the poem, Tretyakov uses the terms
“babble,” “children’s babble,” and “child language” to describe Zdanevich’s
use of language here.
In this reported babble, like a funny dialect, there actually is much taken
from children’s babble [iz detskogo lepeta], and phonetically it wholly com-
municates the rapid, frightened story of a child in its own child language
[rebiachii iazyk] (almost always transrational [zaumnyi] and expressive in
the sense of the correspondence of its sounds with the emotions provoked
in the child by a certain object or another).139
Here Tretyakov explicitly puts forth an example of childish babble as an ex-
emplar for transrational language.140
At the same time, he praises the expressiveness and direct emotional
response of the child, as typical for the late-stage theorization of trans-sense
language here and in the 1921 “Declaration of Trans-Sense Language.” For,
indeed, within the frame of infantile primitivism, the avant-garde constructs
the child as ‘primitive’ in a way that valorizes the primitive subject’s more
direct access to the primal world of emotions. It also idealizes the freedom
of the primitive subject, who lives as if before civilization and is not re-
stricted by conventions that hamper expression. Similarly, Futurists regard
language as more expressive when technically simple or ‘primitive.’ In her
1923 article “Salivation of a Black Genius” (“Sliuni chernogo geniia”), Tatiana
Tolstaia-Vechorka draws attention to Kruchenykh’s comment in Shiftology
(Sdvigologiia; 1922) that “we are still children in the technique of language”
(My eshche deti v tekhnike rechi).141 Note the violation of timely matura-
tion implicit in the use of “still,” hinting at retardation, arrested develop-
ment, and infantilism. For the Cubo-Futurist poets, or the enfant terrible at
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Infant Word
the forefront of its radical aesthetic, imitation of the ‘infant/child,’ as viewed

and constructed within the framework of infantile primitivism, provided an
opportunity for liberation from the restrictive conventions, including linear
time, that ran counter to the boundary breaking and innovative impulses of
the avant-garde.
By 1928, retrospective accounts of the heyday of Russian Futurism
provide succinct articulation of the centrality of the ‘infantile’ for early ex-
periments. In hindsight, these give a prominent place to the practice of in-
fantilism. Nevertheless, even as its proponents seek to defend, resuscitate,
and reformulate the Futurist project for new times, Aleksei Kruchenykh and
the trans-sense doctrine he takes “to the end, to suicide” risk becoming out-
dated, or worst of all for a radical activist of the avant-garde, ignored and
irrelevant. Through the practice of infantilism and a mutiny against time, the
unchanging and ageless enfant terrible of Russian Futurism risks becoming
an atavism, an anachronism trapped in a cycle of eternal recurrence. To stave
off the demise of the avant-garde, the Futurists tried to rethink and refor-
mulate their legacy, while facing the challenge of adjusting their avant-garde
practice to the rhetoric of new times. The provocateur now must go To Battle
Against Hooliganism in Literature (Na bor’bu s khuliganstvom v literature;
1926). (See figure 26.)
Perhaps most expressive of the Futurist reevaluation of the ‘infantile’
is the rebuttal of the Futurist Igor’ Terentyev to a critique of zaum’ language
by the critic A. Malakhov. In an article published in Kruchenykh’s 15 Years of
Russian Futurism (15 let russkogo futurizma; 1928) (see figure 27), Terentyev
quotes Malakhov’s criticism of the Futurists: “they are unable to bring any
kind of wealth into language . . . only a completely degraded psychotic per-
son would lead our conceptually most wealthy language down to the level of
children’s babble [do detskogo lepeta].”142 Through this vituperative attack
and insulting comparisons, Malakhov critiques the Futurist idea of bringing
language closer to babble. In his rebuttal, Terentyev turns the attack on its
head. He welcomes the associations intended to insult the Futurists and in
so doing reveals the full force of the infantilist primitivism of the Futurists:
This sounds completely wild in our time, when people have stopped re-
garding ‘children’s babble’ with contempt, when people have begun to
study the significant, and strong in its apparent primitivism, world of ‘child-
ish’ emotions [znachitel’nyi i sil’nyi v svoei kazhushcheisia primitivnosti
mir ‘detskikh’ emotsii].143
The Futurists do not scorn association with children or other marginalized
‘primitives,’ since they see a greater force and emotion in their verbal ex-
pression. Responding to Malakhov’s accusation that “the language of the
Zaumniks is the language of every primitive world, the language of the sav-
95
Figure 26. Cover of Na bor’bu s khuliganstvom v literature (To Battle

Against Hooliganism in Literature), design by Gustav Klutsis for book
by Aleksei Kruchenykh, 1926
age, the language of the child” (Iazyk zaumnikov — eto iazyk vsiakogo primi-
tivnogo mira, iazyk dikaria, iazyk rebenka),144 Terentyev takes a contrarian
position and delights in the characterization; “this, the healthy simplicity of a
savage, child, and proletarian,145 we gladly introduce into our literary labor.”146
At this late stage, the exchange between critic and defender of trans-sense
innovations dramatizes the reevaluation of the infantile accomplished by the
Futurists, who seek to reappropriate derogatory terminology. By this time,
however, the hegemonic discourse has changed; the Futurists can no lon-
ger reject society in the name of an abstract revolution, since revolution has
been concretized, realized, and now must be relegated to the past. Instead
Futurists struggle to remain relevant by employing the rhetoric of contempo-
rary politics to reframe and reformulate their construct of the ‘child’ as the
liberation of the oppressed.147 Such a statement yokes primitivism to poli-
tics quite directly and in a new way, but certain implicit links were present
still sooner.148
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Infant Word
Figure 27. Cover of 15 let russkogo futurisma (15 Years of Russian Futurism),
design by Gustav Klutsis for book by Aleksei Kruchenykh, 1928
In 1928, as part of the collection Talking Cinema: 1st Book of Poems

About Film (Govoriashchee kino: 1–ia kniga stikhov o kino), Kruchenykh
composed a poetic “screenplay-sketch” (stsenarii-eskiz) on “The Life and
Death of Lef” (“Zhizn’ i smert’ Lefa”). Talking Cinema proves a fitting conclu-
sion to the Futurist project to excavate the creative potential of the preverbal
state, since Kruchenykh compares the evolution of film to an infant’s linguistic
development. In the introduction to the volume, he speaks of silent film as a
mute on the verge of language acquisition. “The Great Mute [Velikii Nemoi] is
very close to beginning to speak. What’s more, he already has begun to make
utterances, although it is still onomatopoetic babble [zvukopodrazhatel’nym
lepetom]; most successful are his musical pieces of pure-sounds.”149 Here
Kruchenykh uses the onomatopoetic babble that marks the first stage of the
Great Mute’s speech development as a metaphor for early soundtracks. By
employing the metaphor of the “Great Mute” in this way, he compares the
collective category of cinema to a singular baby in a way that foreshadows
97
the singular personification of the collective LEF movement in the poetic

“screenplay-sketch” that concludes the volume.
An unusual work, “The Life and Death of Lef” proves a retrospective
view on the rise and fall of the Futurist branch of the avant-garde. Named
Lef, a homophone of the Russian name Lev, the hero represents the many
members of LEF, the LEft Front of Art (LEvyi Front iskusstva) embodied
as one individual. The cast of characters surrounding Lef comprises major
figures from the interconnected community of the avant-garde. From “The
Birth of Lef” (“Rozhdenie Lefa”), dated to 1909–13, to its final “Apotheosis,”
Kruchenykh personifies this avant-garde movement as an infant/child, and
a cantankerous, difficult child at that. Prevalent symbolism of birth, such
as “stillborn” (mertvorozhdennyi) and “newborn” (novorozhdennyi), helps
create this initial effect.150 From this point, the symbolism is carried out con-
sistently, until the point where Futurism the Child no longer needs diapers
or swaddling: “Subtitle: ‘Lef already left the swaddling clothes behind [vyshel
iz pelenok].’ ”151
The third section of part 1 of “The Life and Death of Lef” fills out
the metaphor of Futurism as a child. It displays the collaborative identity
ascribed to this symbolic ‘infant/child.’ Wearing Mayakovsky’s famous yellow
sweater, the young child labeled “Futurism” produces familiar utterances.
A four year-old child in a yellow sweater with the subtitle: “Futurism”
waddles, smiles, as a surprised mob grows before his very eyes. He squeaks
(subtitle): “Bo-be-obi.” Then growls (subtitle): “Dyr-bul-shchyl.”152
Thus, in Kruchenykh’s account, the young child who is the symbolic embodi-
ment of Futurism speaks its first babble with quotations from two trans-
sensical poems, Khlebnikov’s poem “Bobeobi sang the lips . . .” (“Bobeobi
pelis’ guby . . .”; 1908–9) and “Dyr bul shchyl,” the first purely trans-sensical
poem by Kruchenykh. Looking back on this poetic movement after it has
come of age, Kruchenykh recalls Futurism as a babbling child, with the new
poetry of “zaum’ ” on its lips.
The actualization of this metaphor, which equates Futurist experi-
ments with the babble of a child, throws into full relief the constructedness
of the notion of the babbling ‘infant/child.’ For, just as all children’s work
is not playful, radical, and experimental, despite Kruchenykh’s attempts to
foreground these features in selected works he published, children’s “actual
language” does not resemble the trans-sense cacophony of Kruchenykh’s
most radical poetry. A babbling infant does not produce the sounds “dyr bul
shchyl,” since these sound combinations require unusual articulatory effort.
In actuality, these trans-sense lines do not resemble the repetitive euphony
and ease of utterance that actually mark the babbling stage in the infant’s
linguistic development. In this sense, Khlebnikov comes closer to infantile
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Infant Word
babble and children’s speech than Kruchenykh when he offers sounds like
“bobeobi” and less radical and more morpohologically motivated neologisms
derived from Russian roots.
Once Futurism the Child begins to speak, it is taken out into the world.
Three proud parental figures lift the baby as if showing it off triumphantly
and symbolically claiming parentage; “Mayakovsky, Burliuk, and Khlebnikov
raise the baby [mladenets] high above the crowd.”153 The mob endangers
infant Futurism, but its defenders protect it, pronouncing, “He was born
and he will live.”154 “Futurism the Child” (Rebenok-futurizm)155 thus enters
a world where the crowd presents a threat to the existence of the enfant ter-
rible. Nor does Futurism hesitate to strike out against even helpful critics, or
bite the hand that feeds it, including the critic Chukovsky. A litany of Futurist
figures enliven the story of the growth of Futurism the Child. Kruchenykh
makes his dramatic entrance into the screenplay accompanied by a favor-
ite quotation about himself: “Chukovsky unfurls the subtitle: ‘Kruchenykh
is our entire epoch. He is grandiose and formidable [grandiozen i grozen].’
The figure of Kruchenykh with a club and a trumpet, out of which zaum’
words are flying: ‘Ua-me-gon-e-byu.’ ”156 Kruchenykh unabashedly recycles
this quotation to declare himself the symbol of the epoch. The screenplay-
sketch on “The Life and Death of Lef” might be regarded as an expression of
Kruchenykh’s retrospective view on the infancy and childhood of Futurism.
In this retrospective account that casts him as a hero, tsar, and foun-
dational figure, Kruchenykh also grants a large place to the late Khlebnikov.
When revolution occurs and Mayakovsky, Burliuk, and Tretyakov chase away
the old poets, the mob turns against one of their number, but at this point
an army of trans-sense children commanded by Khlebnikov storm the scene.
From underfoot, from the rooftops, from every direction, small colorful,
happy children [malen’kie pestrye, veselye rebiatki] leap forth. In the rear,
in the distance is the monumental figure of Khlebnikov. Subtitle: “The
laughlings.” [“Smeiunchiki.”] . . . The laughlings surround the Futurists.
A round dance.157
The swarm of “laughling” children refer to Khlebnikov’s poem “Incantation
by Laughter” (“Zakliatie smekhom”; 1908–9), which conjures a plethora of
words, including the tiny “laughlings,” out of just one root—“smekh” for
“laughter,” as if a language exercise or linguistic play by a child. The mob
pronounces Khlebnikov’s death, but the happy children sing him back to
life defiantly. Thus disaster is averted and Futurism is born again in “The
Second Birth of Lef,” which marks the clustering of Futurist figures and the
publication of the first issue of the magazine Lef in 1922. However, when
publication initially is refused, Khlebnikov dies in horror, but, as small com-
fort, free-floating letters grant him the grandiose title he requested for his
99
epitaph, “Chairman of the Earthly Orb” (Predsedatel’ zemnogo shara),158 thus

emphasizing the imperialist aims of Futurism. A subtitle highlights the im-
mortal power of the word, “He has died, but his word lives on [slovo ego
zhivet],” conjuring association with Jesus Christ or, in accordance with the
times, with the idea that, though Lenin has died, his “deed” (delo) lives on.159
Indeed, by 1928 Kruchenykh sought to immortalize the Futurist legacy, tak-
ing these ideas to the end, to suicide.
If Khlebnikov’s death marks one death of Lef, still this hardy child is
reborn three times, including “The Third Birth of Lef,” until Lef achieves
an imagined victory in “The Victory of Lef.” The third part of the screen-
play, entitled “Revolution in Life and Word, 1917–1922,” shows Mayakovsky
transformed into a teacher, to whom children listen with great attention.160
As a subtitle points out, “Futurism conquers,” insofar as this moment of
transfer to a younger generation marks the victory of Futurism, as it had
for Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. In the “Apotheosis” the fertility of Futurism is
emphasized in a similar way, for many “young Lefovites” (molodye lefovtsy)
crowd around the Lef booklets, journals, and publications, and are joined by
many other young people and revolutionary youth.161 The already anachro-
nistic factions of the avant-garde tried to create a place for themselves in the
new order of revolutionary art groups and LEF. In this way, the retrospective
account of “The Life and Death of Lef according to Kruchenykh” grants the
Futurists immortality and the sense of continuity that would represent the
fulfillment of his own wishes.
A desperate jockeying for place and legacy characterized the situa-
tion of early avant-garde groups like Futurism by the 1920s. In fact, the
entire story of “The Life and Death of Lef” proves to be a sad fantasy by
Kruchenykh, who is witnessing the death of “Futurism the Child,” and who
is himself passing into oblivion as a forgotten and irrelevant anachronism
who outlives his time. As a retrospective, “The Life and Death of Lef” shows
Kruchenykh’s continued belief in the value of the avant- garde ideas pio-
neered by the Futurists. It most vividly incarnates the metaphor of Futurism
as a child—as a fierce enfant terrible that would bite the hand that feeds
it. In so doing, it reveals through Kruchenykh’s retrospective glance how
the construct of the ‘infant/child’ as savage played a role throughout the de-
velopment of Futurism and serves to unify the avant-garde cult of youth
and Futurist ideas of language renewal, word creation, and the reduction
of poetry to infantile babble. In creative form Kruchenykh expresses how
the child was a guiding model for Futurism as a poetic movement all along.
This final manifestation of infantile primitivism also conclusively underscores
the paradoxicality of the quest that is infantile primitivism. For, although
Futurism has occupied the subject-position of the ‘infant/child’ in order to
articulate its own relation to language and the future of art and to reflect
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Infant Word
upon its own life and death as a movement, the actual child remains irre-
coverable and unrecognizable in the Futurist caricature of it. It has been
consumed in the cannibalistic jaws of Kronos.
While the end of the poetic influence of Aleksei Kruchenykh may
have marked the end of the stage of infantile primitivism embodied by Neo-
Primitivism and Cubo-Futurism, it also marked the earliest manifestation
of the ‘infantilist’ aesthetic of the Russian avant-garde. From the primitivist
interest in the child as an objectified ‘other’ to be examined, collected, stud-
ied, and exploited, the avant-garde had begun to defend the ‘infant/child’ as
part of a newfound attention to oppressed subjects in this later period. The
eloquent defense of the worth of the infantile and other marginalized per-
spectives by the late Futurist apologists of infantile primitivism foregrounds
the revaluation that has occurred. From an anthropological distance from
which the adult gaze regards the ‘infant/child’ as object and primitive ‘other’
and the means to creating a new identity and future, the infantile primitiv-
ism of the Futurists now begins to evolve into a reexamination of the ‘infant/
child’ that begins to acknowledge its existence as a creative subject. The de-
rogatory aspect of the primitivist view of the ‘infantile’ object thus begins
to evolve into a consciously ‘infantilist’ perspective that moves toward the
empowerment of the child as subject.
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Chapter Three
Infant Eye: Viktor Shklovsky, the Naive

Perspective, and Formalist Theory
The word “enfant” (in the same way also as
the Old Russian “otrok”) in a literal translation
means “unspeaking” [negovoriashchii].
—Viktor Shklovsky. “The Resurrection of the
Word” (1914)
IN HIS FIRST PUBLICATION, “The Resurrection of the

Word” (“Voskreshenie slova”; 1914), the budding Formalist critic Viktor
Shklovsky recovers the lost poetry buried in the morphology of words by
using an example that proves particularly provocative in the context of my
study of the infantile aesthetic of the Russian avant-garde. Like thinkers from
Saint Augustine to the present day, Shklovsky seizes upon the etymology
of the “infans qui non farer,” in Augustine’s terms, and “one who cannot
speak” in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s.1 Shklovsky adds to the Latinate forms
of infans the nearest Russian equivalent “otrok” (отрок), which is similarly
derived from the negative prefix (ot) and the root for speech (rok/rek/rech’).2
Although it now signifies ‘adolescent’ or ‘youth’ and earlier could be applied
to those without a right to speech or a vote, such as a worker or servant,3
the Russian “otrok” also has historical ties to the state of childhood.4 For
instance, in his 1777 ode “On the Birth in the North of a Porphyry-Born
Infant” (“Na rozhdenie v Severe porfirorodnogo otroka”), the poet Gavrila
Derzhavin uses the term “otrok,” as well as the still more archaic “otrocha”
to refer to a newborn infant, namely, the future Alexander I,5 while in 1784
Catherine II defines the states of childhood in relation to each other as fol-
lows: “The child [ditia] until seven years is a babe [mladenets], after seven
a child [otrok], after fifteen a youth [iunosha].”6 In Russia also, as Shklovsky
highlights, convention has defined the infant, child, or youth, as well as those
placed in a similar position of powerlessness, by their literal and symbolic
muteness. Belonging to a state before the acquisition of speech has been as-
sociated with the figurative lack of a right to speak.
With the passion of a linguist and lover of form, Shklovsky highlights
the poetry buried in this word’s morphology: un-speaking. This “linguistic
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Infantilist Aesthetics
embryology” helps to illustrate his point that “the newborn word [tol’ko chto
rozhdennoe slovo] was alive and picturesque,”7 which again uses the language
of infancy to express his point about the symbolic potency of the unspeak-
ing state in the context of his own primitivist idealization of the earliest days
of language. In this chapter I discuss how Viktor Shklovsky uses infancy as
a device in the context of what has come to be known as Russian Formalist
theory, as well as in his own wide-ranging literary endeavors. I argue that
Shklovsky uses infancy as part of a strategy to produce a conceptual dislo-
cation, or “sdvig,” which destabilizes conventional assumptions, alters one’s
perspective, and shifts the peripheral to the center of one’s attention. From
the Cubo-Futurist concept of the sdvig, or feat of dislocation, Shklovsky ab-
stracts an entire “theory of dislocation [sdvig].”
I trace Shklovsky’s use of infancy as device from his earliest linguis-
tic and theoretical interest in the extremes of language exemplified by the
unspeaking state, and the confrontation with language evident in infantile
babble and children’s language play, to an attention to the infantile subject
position evident in his celebration of the naive perspective in his later theo-
retical work and creative writings. Throughout, I argue that Shklovsky’s use
of infancy as device helps him accomplish the strategic dislocation that is
the goal of his avant-garde theories.8 The trajectory of this material, and
Shklovsky’s theoretical interest, thus replicates not only the infant’s path
from voicelessness to voice and from objecthood to subjecthood, but also
the avant-garde’s course from a facile infantile primitivism to a theoretically
sophisticated infantilist aesthetic.
Shklovsky’s use of infancy as device and his theoretical privileging
of the naive perspective marks the birth of the infantilist aesthetic of the
Russian avant-garde, since, in the context of my study of avant-garde infan-
tilism, this idea marks a meaningful shift, or dislocation, from a primitivist
view of the child as object to a regard for the child as subject and locus of
a unique perspective on the world. If Mikhail Larionov, in the context of
Neo-Primitivist art, and Aleksei Kruchenykh, in the context of Cubo-Futurist
poetry, collected, publicized, and imitated children’s art and language, they
still viewed the child as an object. With the use of the infantile employed
by Viktor Shklovsky in the context of Formalist theory, and later by Daniil
Kharms in the context of OBERIU literature of the absurd, the avant-garde
first recognizes the child ‘s subject position or vantage point and then comes
to acknowledge the child as a subject of its own. This later stage of avant-
garde infantilism might thereby be termed infantilist (on the model of femi-
nist) insofar as it asserts the independent value of the child as a subject in
its own right. At the same time, however, the limitations governing the con-
struction of the child as strange ‘other’ remain, since the child is being con-
structed by the adult observer in particular ways to advance particular goals.
At this early stage of the infantilist aesthetic, the ‘infant/child’ remains an
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Infant Eye
unspeaking subject whose subject position is occupied to advance a certain

critical agenda.
The concept of the ‘naive’ has a long history of semantic closeness to
the ‘infant/child.’ According to the Oxford English Dictionary, naive origi-
nally meant “natural, artless, or innocent” and later acquired the sense of
“lacking in experience, judgment, or wisdom.” Within the study of art, the
word can be applied to an artist who lacks formal training, or to a work of
art “produced in a bold, straightforward style that avoids sophisticated tech-
niques.” Etymologically, ‘naive’ derives from Old French ‘naif,’ meaning
naive, natural, or just born and deriving in turn from the Latin ‘nativus,’ liter-
ally born, innate, or natural. All of these senses, including the innocence and
inexperience that are linked to the innocent eye, thus relate to the natural
and artless state of the newly born. If infantile primitivism constructs the
‘infant/child’ as an idealized representative of a naive state of ‘originariness,’
the infantilist aesthetic valorizes the naive perspective in hopes of regaining
through it the innocent eye and its fresh perceptions of the world.
Initially, the use of infancy as a device in Shklovsky’s early theoretical
work continues in the same vein as the infantile primitivism of the avant-
garde. His grand aims resemble those of the avant-garde practitioners whose
work he analyzes. He seeks to create a new critical language and holistic
conception of art and literature that articulates the accomplishment of avant-
garde art. Recall Yuri Lotman’s remarks on the semiotics of the avant-garde:
The avant-garde started as a ‘rebellious fringe,’ then it became a phenom-
enon of the centre, dictating its laws to the period and trying to impose its
colours on the whole semiosphere, and then, when it in fact had become
set in its ways, it became the object of intense theorizing on the metacul-
tural level.9
In a similar manner, the avant-garde practice of infantile primitivism, which
originally may have seemed to be a peripheral artistic phenomenon, gradu-
ally develops into the infantilist aesthetic, which is theorized on a higher level
in Formalist theory and applied by Shklovsky to all of the arts. Shklovsky
thus creates a new critical language and holistic conception of art and litera-
ture that effectively explains the accomplishment of the avant-garde, includ-
ing infantile primitivism, even as it subjugates the entire history of art to an
avant-garde model. Formalist theory thus proves avant-garde and imperialist
in its ambitions.
S H K L OV S KY ’ S A RT I S T I C V I S I O N
Shklovsky’s notes for his first public talk, when he was a young student about
to establish himself as an avant-garde critic, reveal a revolutionary impulse to
107
overturn conventional ways of looking at things. His language and aspirations

include a metaphorical directive “to invert” (perevernut’) the image in order
to improve perception: “To turn the painting upside down, in order to see the
colors, to see as the artist sees the form, and not the story.” (Perevernut’ kar-
tinu, chtoby videt’ kraski, videt’, kak khudozhnik vidit formu, a ne rasskaz.)10
His idealization of the artist’s perception of form—“to see as the artist sees
the form, and not the story”—borrows from the older artistic concept of the
innocent eye. The art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) coined the phrase “the
innocent eye” in order to express the need for the artist to restore an infantile
state where everything is seen as if for the first time.
The whole technical power of painting depends on our recovery of what
may be called the innocence of the eye; that is to say, a sort of childish per-
ception of these flat stains of colour, merely as such, without consciousness
of what they signify—as a blind man would see them if suddenly gifted
with sight.11
Ruskin claims that “a highly accomplished artist has always reduced himself
as nearly as possible to this condition of infantile sight.”12 For Ruskin the in-
nocent eye serves as a metaphor for artistic vision—the ability to perceive
things as they are, without awareness of what things signify.
In his critical approach to the avant-garde, Shklovsky applies a similar
idea of artistic vision and privileges a concept of the innocent eye that per-
ceives things “as if seen for the first time.”13 While Ruskin remarks that “we
always suppose that we see what we only know” and actually “have hardly
any consciousness of the real aspect of the signs we have learned to inter-
pret,”14 Shklovsky argues that “we do not see, but recognize”15 and words for
us actually serve as mere “algebraic signs” since they become “habitual and
their internal (formal) and external (sound) forms cease to be experienced.”16
Shklovsky later declares that the aim of artistic form is not to deliver mean-
ing, but to force the viewer to perceive it as if for the first time.17 Whether
termed “the innocent eye” or the naive perspective, this type of approach to
art privileges the perceptual receptivity of the ‘primitive,’ novice, or child,
who perceives something for the first time.
Using the metaphor of turning the image upside-down, Shklovsky ideal-
izes the ability to see and perceive form with a fresh perspective. The simple
mechanism described herein effectively shifts the brain hemisphere being
used in the perceptual processing of the image. This alternative perspective
on the object, paradoxically, reveals its component parts, colors, and form
with more clarity, as if shifting the analysis of literature into space rather
than time. In the Russian and Orthodox context, Shklovsky’s idea of turning
the painting upside-down also might be related to concepts of the “inverted
perspective” in iconology. Coined by Oskar Wulff in 1907, the term “inverted
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Infant Eye
perspective” is applied to naive or primitive art that reverses one of the basic
rules of realistic perspective in rendering relative size or shape.18
The theologian and philosopher Pavel Florensky, who served as an in-
fluential historian of art and teacher of artists in Shklovsky’s time, analyzed
the unique representational system at the basis of supposedly ‘naive’ or
‘primitive’ forms of art in a study of icons he entitled “Inverted Perspective”
(“Obratnaia perspektiva”), which was published in 1919. It thus appeared after
some early work by OPOIAZ, the Society for the Study of Poetic Language
(Obshchestvo izucheniia POeticheskogo IAZyka) to which Shklovsky be-
longed, and before other, later articles by the group. Florensky here counters
the views of those who identify the appeal of icons in “the naivete [naiv-
nost’] and primitiveness [primitivnost’] of the art, still infantile and carefree
in its artistic grammar” and who “compare icons to darling children’s babble
[detskim lepetom].”19 Comparing artistic representation in icons to the aper-
spectival or inverted perspective drawings of children, Florensky concludes
that they subscribe to a similar “method of representation, deriving from
the nature of [their] perceptual synthesis of the world.”20 He concludes the
article with a resounding defense of the infantile perspective:
Insomuch as infantile thinking [detskoe myshlenie] is not inferior thinking,
but a certain type of thought, and capable, moreover, of attaining varied
degrees of perfection, up to and including genius, and even principally
related to genius, then it becomes imperative to acknowledge that the in-
verted perspective in the representation of the world also . . . is precisely
an original apperception [okhvat] of the world.21
His view of infantile thinking thus acknowledges and values the subjective
experience of the child, thus showing other approaches to the infantile and
artistic perception in the same general period as OPOIAZ was active. In later
years, Florensky repeated his artistic views on creativity and the infantile in
a 1937 letter to his daughter.22
The secret of creation lies in the preservation of youth. The secret of genius
lies in the preservation of childhood and an infantile condition throughout
life. Such a condition also provides genius with an objective perception of
the world that does not gravitate toward the center—a kind of inverted
perspective and for this reason complete and real.23
Such statements, which echo Baudelaire’s claim that “genius is nothing more
than childhood recovered at will,”24 illustrate how infantile cognition contin-
ues to occupy an idealized place in the formulations of artists and critics even
at this comparatively late date.
The conscious stripping away of convention and of visual and cognitive
processing, and Shklovsky’s idea of turning the picture upside down, might
109
also be compared to the basic mechanics of vision, which include the in-
verted and reversed projection of an image on the retina that also interested
Mikhail Larionov in his Rayonist re-creation of rays of light on the retina.
Indeed, in avant-garde art, language, and theory, we see how a primitivist
view on the child as object, subject, and subjectivity provide avant-garde
practitioners with a means of reconsidering the process of perception from
new and different vantage points, including the naive perspective of the
‘primitive’ or child.
The language of the artist predominates not only in Shklovsky’s meta-
phors, but also in his metaphorical use of ‘form’ and ‘vision.’ The symbolic
importance of ‘vision’ appears through the threefold repetition and, in one
instance, italicization of the verb “see” (videt’). In fact, Shklovsky’s use of ital-
ics often attempts to restore meanings to words and underscore the symbolic
significance of language—turning the painting upside down, the act of see-
ing, the idea of form. Indeed, Shklovsky’s ongoing attention to vision, form,
perspective, and perception likely date from his own experience as a prac-
ticing artist.25 In his memoirs Shklovsky reflects on his artistic training and
remarks, “I was not made into a sculptor, but learned much.”26 He observes
that it was during his study of sculpture that he learned “what exactly form is”
(chtó takoe forma) and was taught “to seek universal form” (iskat’ obshchuiu
formu).27 Indeed, an artistic vision of form ( forma) underlies the theoretical
approach of Viktor Shklovsky.
S H K L O V S KY A S AVA NT- G A R D E CRI TI C
Of vital importance for Shklovsky’s later literary theories is the fact that he
himself came of age in the heyday of the avant-garde and, being very close
with avant-garde practitioners, was favorably disposed toward its artistic and
poetic experiments. In fact, when Shklovsky began his theoretical career in
1913, his identification with the Futurists was complete; “At that time I was a
Futurist.”28 Shklovsky’s fascination for Futurist poetry even extended to writ-
ing it himself.29 The same applies to the linguist and critic Roman Jakobson,
who also took pride in his avant-garde affiliation until the end of his life
and whose Futurist poetry was remarkably experimental and, as discussed
here, even shares resemblances with poems by Kruchenykh and by children
he published. Like Shklovsky, Jakobson also noted the infantile primitiv-
ism of the Futurists in many ways, including in his 1919 article “Modern
Russian Poetry” (“Noveishaia russkaia poeziia”), which, as mentioned earlier,
offers abundant examples of children’s language and lore as possible prece-
dents for the trans-sense experiments of the Futurists.30 As with Jakobson, a
poetic view of language persists in Shklovsky’s critical thought and writings,
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Infant Eye
as well as in his literary works. This poetic approach, augmented by his lin-
guistic training and academic interest in children’s language and lore, aided
Shklovsky in recognizing the relationship of Futurist poetry to children’s lin-
guistic innovations. Thus Formalism gained much from its study of Futurism,
including, I would argue, its practice of infantile primitivism.
In one anecdote Shklovsky presents himself as the only person able to
understand the significance of an arcane detail in an early Futurist publica-
tion. Having noted that Velimir Khlebnikov dated a 1913 publication with
the anachronistic final line “Somebody 1917” (“Nekto 1917”),31 Shklovsky fix-
ated on this deliberately inaccurate and enigmatic date. He grasped that the
Futurist rejection of the past and passion for the future actually transformed
anachronism into a poetic device. Encountering the quiet Khlebnikov at a
performance, the young Shklovsky ventured his interpretation:
“The dates in the book,” I said, “are the years of the destruction of great
governments. Do you mean that our empire will be destroyed in the year
nineteen hundred and seventeen? (Slap [“A Slap in the Face of Public
Taste”] was published in 1913.) Khlebnikov answered me, almost without
moving his lips: “You are the first one to have understood me” [Poniali
menia pervym].32
Khlebnikov’s reaction, as retold by Shklovsky, indicates that Shklovsky is the
first person to grasp his intention. As Shklovsky writes, Khlebnikov “wanted
to comprehend the rhythm of history [khotel poniat’ ritm istorii],”33 and in
Shklovsky’s rendition of these supposed events, he succeeded, since history
bears out his fixation on the revolutionary year 1917.34 If Khlebnikov here
emerges as a Futurist prophet of the future, then Shklovsky presents himself
as the one person who could properly comprehend the prediction of the
misunderstood prophet. This account thus dubs him an ideal critic and inter-
mediary for these avant-gardists of the future.
The three years that Viktor Shklovsky spent studying literature and
language in the Philological Department of Petrograd University with one
of the leading linguists of the day, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, significantly
influenced his critical approach to language, as well as that of close col-
leagues. The linguistic background that these young scholars acquired in
their studies informed their perspective on children’s speech utterances, as
becomes evident in 1919 and 1921 articles by Shklovsky’s close colleague,
Lev Yakubinsky. Though these articles postdate some early work by the bud-
ding theorists, they display some of the fundamental linguistic assumptions
and views of children’s language that they acquired in their studies and which
attracted their attention in parallel with other work.
As Shklovsky recalls in his memoirs, his esteemed teacher Jan Baudouin
de Courtenay took an interest in language in all of its manifestations, includ-
111
ing contemporary literature and the poetic experiments of the Futurists.35

Thus Shklovsky takes his cues from his linguistic mentor when he sets out
to make sense of the Futurist project,36 but the young scholar approaches
the subject with greater insight than his mentor who rejects trans-sense in-
novations.37 The established linguist shows himself to be out of step with
contemporary movements, though his commentary on Futurist experiment
seems apropos, if misdirected, when he voices the objection, “Actually, chil-
dren, and illiterates generally, are able to comprehend and even compose
poetic works.”38 The linguist thus displays an acute awareness of children’s
linguistic potential and creativity, even as he fails to identify the infantile
primitivism of the Futurists or perceive its significance.
The scholarship of Baudouin de Courtenay demonstrates an ongoing
interest in children’s language, including the study of children’s coinages in-
cluded in his early volume Observations on Child Language (1868).39 In an-
other early article, Baudouin de Courtenay remarks, “The language of chil-
dren is a subject for a special field of study, which we may call linguistic
embryology.”40 The idea of “linguistic embryology” alludes to the ontogenetic
underpinnings of his interest in children’s language. The same idea recurs in
the inaugural lecture he made in St. Petersburg in 1870.
The linguistic development of an individual illuminates the primordial
formation of language, since we are taught by the natural sciences that the
individual recapitulates, on a smaller scale, the changes of the species. Of
primary interest here is the observation of the infant, of the young child,
beginning to babble (revealing from the earliest age the rudiments of his
future language).41
The linguist employs the idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny to argue
that the study of children’s speech is valuable and illuminating for the study
of language in general.
Similarly, Baudouin de Courtenay believes that children’s linguistic in-
novations represent the future of language. He claims that “the most radical
changes take place in the language of children”42 and places the “innova-
tion” of children’s language in opposition to the “regressive” language of
adults: “As children’s language comes to resemble that of adults, the child
regresses, so to speak, in the field of alternations; he loses the most innova-
tive variants.”43 These beliefs recur in his briefer “Statement of Linguistic
Principles,” where he states, “The child . . . reaches into the future, anticipat-
ing in his speech the future state of the national language. . . . The impetus
for essential changes in the national language comes principally from the
language of children.”44 Such statements by a leading linguist display the
contemporary basis for the avant-garde belief, espoused by Futurists and
Formalists alike, that children’s language not only illustrates something about
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Infant Eye
the origins and nature of language and poetry, but also serves as a privileged
site for linguistic innovation and, thus, the future of language. Children thus
represent the linguistic avant-garde.
A theoretical basis in linguistics and a scientific approach to language,
art, and perception provided the basic tools and structural framework for the
Formalists as they embarked upon their study of language and art. From the
pioneering structural linguist Baudouin de Courtenay, Shklovsky and his col-
leagues gained not only a fundamental understanding of sounds, words, and
language, but also acquired a sense of the indicative potential of marginal
linguistic forms and children’s language. In his memoirs, Shklovsky recalls
Baudouin de Courtenay’s teachings on marginal forms of discourse, such
as glossolalia,45 or the practice of speaking in tongues.46 Having taken his
teacher’s lessons to heart, he remarks, “This is a pathological phenomenon,
but one pointedly illustrating several features of ordinary [language].”47 The
concept of glossolalia, which, like children’s babble, prioritizes sound over
sense and celebrates the signifier rather than the signified, impressed itself
upon Shklovsky to such a degree that it found a place in his earliest articles
on Futurism.48
Other contemporary theorists, closely linked to Shklovsky, also took an
interest in children’s language and glossolalia, as evident in articles from 1919
and 1921 by Lev Yakubinsky. Baudouin de Courtenay’s favorite student and
Shklovsky’s colleague in OPOIAZ, Yakubinsky offers a highly precise eluci-
dation of the workings of children’s language in an article, “Accumulation of
Similar Liquids in Practical and Poetic Language” (“Skoplenie odinakovykh
plavnykh v prakticheskom i poeticheskom iazykakh”; 1919).49 Citing children’s
language as a key example, he writes, “The accumulation of liquids is found
in the words of infantile language, quite understandably, since, in infantile
language, volitional effort plays a significant role and the automatism of
speech has not yet been established” (181). Yakubinsky cites a number of ex-
amples of such ‘infantile’ forms, including “affectionate names [laskatel’nye
imena] such as lelya, lyulya formed in accordance with the tendencies of
infantile language.”50 Yakubinsky’s usage of “automatism” (avtomatizm) here
begs comparison with Shklovsky’s concepts of habituation and automatization
of perception. Yakubinsky shows that he believes that infantile language pre-
cedes such automatism and thus approaches the Formalist ideal more closely
than adult language. After all, the Formalist description of poetic and literary
language exists in opposition to the habituation and automatism represented
by “ordinary language” (obychnyi iazyk).
Yakubinsky ends his article “Where Poetry Comes From” (“Otkuda
berutsia stikhi”; 1921) with an answer to the naive question he poses. When
he proclaims that “poems originate in children’s babble” (stikhi proiskho-
diat iz detskogo lepeta), he echoes Sully’s views on children’s babble.51 Like
113
Shklovsky, whose previous work he cites along with his own, Yakubinsky
mentions the ecstatic speech of religious sects, that is, glossolalia, as he stud-
ies linguistic situations where sound dominates over sense.52 Yakubinsky
also cites the Freudian assertion of the importance of the infantile, as he
discusses children’s speech, babbling, and childhood speech impressions, as
well as other “assorted childhood ‘infantile’ impressions.”53 Yakubinsky sub-
ordinates all other forms of liberated expression that he mentions, that is,
dreams, mental illness, and glossolalia, to the recovery of infantile speech
experiences. He argues that it is the return of infantile speech that, in combi-
nation with conscious language, “creates new types of speech phenomena.”54
He claims that this is why there are “many more commonalities between
poetry and children’s speech” than between poetry and dreams, mental ill-
ness, and glossolalia.55 Among the common features that he cites are the
“rhythmicality of infantile monologues during babble,” sound association,
emotional implication, use of complex sound combinations, and the pleasure
of babble for the sake of babble: “the intrinsic value [samotsennost’] to the
infant of his babble: he babbles in order to babble; babbling gives him plea-
sure, with both pronunciation and hearing playing a role here.”56 Yakubinsky,
under the influence of Freud, concludes that infantile speech impressions
reappear during exceptional states of consciousness and combine with ordi-
nary language to endow a new body (telo) of speech with their speech pecu-
liarities, thereby yielding poetry.57 In other words, “the conscious task during
poetic creation consists of conjoining infantile material with the ordinary.”58
Due to their linguistic framework and their sympathetic perspective
on Futurism, Viktor Shklovsky and other Formalists proved not only able
to understand the significance of the Futurist project personally, but also
to convince others of its value and importance. For instance, a review by
D. Filosofov of the first collection published by OPOIAZ, Poetika: Collection
on the Theory of Poetic Language (Poetika: Sbornik po teorii poeticheskigo
iazyka; 1916), gives credit to Shklovsky for helping the author “to understand
the tasks of Futurism.” Filosofov writes, “Reading the article by Shklovsky
about trans-sense language, I, at least, begin to ‘systematically’ understand
the missions of Futurism. I am able to judge and evaluate it not askance, but
from the point of view of the goals set by Futurist poetry itself.”59 The critical
work of Shklovsky and his colleagues in OPOIAZ helped turn the tide in
the contemporary reception of the Futurists, since the serious regard and
understanding of Formalist theorists allowed scandalized audiences to look
differently upon the radical exploits of the Futurists. With their linguistic and
theoretical insight into the unique value of marginal forms of language, the
Formalists demonstrated the profundity of Futurist poetry.
Shklovsky was barely twenty when he entered into the society of the
young artists and poets mounting a revolution in art and literature. A rhetoric
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Infant Eye
of youth predominates in his own account and that of others, as common

with respect to the avant-garde generally, as Nina Gurianova notes.60 Though
not always focused on the infant or child specifically, this emphasis on youth
still belongs on the same continuum that motivated the avant-garde turn to
the child. V. Piast noted how young Shklovsky seemed, as if arriving straight
from the nursery: “he seemed like a boy, as rosy-cheeked as an apple, who
had leapt out of the nursery [detskaia] directly into Futurism.”61 Viktor
Shklovsky speaks of his early career in similar terms. After witnessing the
Futurists’ exploits for the first time, he found himself perplexed and fasci-
nated and recalls, “I wanted to explain it all, since I was young [molod].”62
Intrigued, the young student of philology set out to grasp the significance of
these avant-garde experiments and “to explain the devices of the young art
[priemy molodogo iskusstva]” with which he identified.63 Out of this impulse
emerged Shklovsky’s critical debut and his first publication, which also served
as the impetus for the founding of a theoretical society.
As a young philologist, Shklovsky reacted to the new poetry of the
Futurists with a desire to understand it. His first critical impulse bore fruit
in a public presentation that led to his first publication—“The Resurrection
of the Word” (1914). According to the manuscript version of Shklovsky’s
memoirs, a few copies were decorated with drawings by Futurists Olga
Rozanova64 and Aleksei Kruchenykh.65 This detail demonstrates how closely
interlinked are the branches of the avant-garde, when no boundaries exist
between creative and theoretical works, and where embellishment provided
by illustrations and stylized orthography perform the sensual renewal of the
graphic word. Shklovsky’s first work thus received a symbolic blessing from
leading representatives of avant-garde art and literature, as the torch passes
from Neo-Primitivist artist and Cubo-Futurist poet to the young theorist
and future founder of what would become known as the school of Russian
Formalism.
In his reminiscences, Shklovsky recalls his article “The Resurrection of
the Word” as follows:
I wrote the booklet “The Resurrection of the Word” . . . It cited instances
of glossolalia—words, exclamations, sound gestures, not conveying mean-
ing, sometimes as if they were preceding the word [italics mine]. This was
what the Cubo-Futurists, who brought forth ‘the word as such,’ the word
as an end in itself, were entertaining themselves with at the time. For the
brochure were selected many utterances by poets, examples of the sound
play of children, examples from proverbs and nonsensical sounds that had
been used among religious sects.66
To analyze the discourse of the Futurists, the young scholar juxtaposes it to
other marginal speech phenomena, all of which he subsumes under the term
115
“glossolalia.” He investigates the boundaries of language through examples

“preceding the word,” or belonging to an un-speaking state. In his own recol-
lection, Shklovsky filled his work with examples of “nonsensical sounds,” in-
cluding the sound play of children. His own account thus emphasizes his
immediate identification of the resemblance of Futurist poetry to children’s
language and other marginal forms of discourse. Recall that it was in this
same, earliest publication that he fastens on the poetic potential of the
etymology of “enfant” (and “otrok”) as denoting “unspeaking” (negovoria-
shchii).67 With its attention to the unspeaking state of the prelingual infant,
this etymological recovery not only exhibits Shklovsky’s sensitivity to the
poetic potential of the infantile, but also positions him as the ideal spokes-
person or speaker of the unspoken.
The preserved program from Shklovsky’s 1913 debut lecture, “The Place
of Futurism in the History of Language” (“Mesto futurizma v istorii iazyka”),
contains many of Shklovsky’s later theoretical formulations in a nutshell.
Relationship of criticism to new movement. Word as elementary form
of poetry. Word-form [Slovo-obraz] and its petrifaction [okamenenie].
Epithet as means for renewal [podnovlenie] of the word. . . . Fate of works
by old artists of word same as fate of word itself: they complete a course
from poetry to prose, cover themselves with glassy armor of habitualness
[privychnosti]. ‘Market art’ as proof of death of old art. Death of things.
Strangeness [strannost’] as means of struggle against habitualness. Theory
of dislocation [sdvig]. Task of Futurism is resurrection of things, return-
ing [vozvrashchenie] of experience of world to person. . . . Connection
of devices of Futurists with devices of general language thought. Half-
comprehensible language of archaic poetry. Language of Futurists. . . .
Resurrection of things.68
Here death is linked to habituation, while resurrection is linked to the idea
of the return [vozvrashchenie] of the experience of the world to the person.
Significantly, the term “return” implies that the person once was able to truly
experience the world, whether in childhood or before the onset of habitua-
tion, thus revealing the nostalgic aspect of Shklovsky’s view on an idealized
naive experience of things. Shklovsky’s solution to the sinister forces of death
and habituation appear here in an embryonic form when Shklovsky hints at
a “theory of dislocation [sdvig]” he derives from the avant-garde concept
of the sdvig.69 In fact, the idea of the sdvig effectively sums up Shklovsky’s
perceptual goal and conceptualizes the idea of a device itself. As I will show,
Shklovsky, like all of the other avant-garde actors in this book, uses infancy as
such a device of dislocation, whether temporal, conceptual, or logical.
The symbiotic relationship between Futurism and Formalism, or
between a misunderstood movement and the associated critics who clarify
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Infant Eye
their mission and build theories on their work, or infantile primitivism and
the infantilist aesthetic, also manifests itself in another of Shklovsky’s earli-
est pieces of critical writing, “About Trans-Sense Language” (“O zaumnom
iazyke”; 1913). It opens, “Dedicated to the first investigator of this question,
the poet Aleksei Kruchenykh. / The stone cast aside by the builders, becomes
the cornerstone.”70 In his approach to trans-sense language, Shklovsky views
Kruchenykh’s Futurist innovations in poetry, including his treatment of ex-
tremes of language like children’s babble, as exposing deeper truths about
language. The metaphor in the dedication, which derives from the Old
Testament,71 describes the effective reversal that occurs when something
previously rejected acquires central and indispensable structural significance.
From a semiotic perspective, it shows how the peripheral might suddenly
move toward the center, where it comes to play a significant role. Such a
dislocation, or sdvig, relates to the usefulness of the ‘other,’ situated as it is
outside the boundaries of the dominant discourse. This quotation thus aptly
characterizes the radical avant-garde, which aims to become central to the
future of art, and also illuminates why the avant-garde employs the ‘infant/
child’ as strange ‘other’ and exemplary model. In the case of Formalist theory,
Shklovsky derives from his view of the ‘infant/child’ theories of artistic per-
spective and perception that accomplish a theoretical dislocation and revalu-
ation of the avant-garde, and offer a new view of art. This maneuver shifts
avant-garde practice and theory, and their view of the ‘infant/child,’ from the
margins to the center of a new critical discourse.
Significantly, the strangeness of the marginal perspective often has
critical implications as a privileged site for critique of the center. This dy-
namic model also merits comparison with a “knight’s move” in chess, a sym-
bolic metaphor which Shklovsky used for the foreword and title of his 1923
essay collection Knight’s Move (Khod konia).72 (See figures 28 and 29.) In the
foreword, he explains:
The book is called knight’s move. The knight moves sideways. . . . There are
many reasons for the strangeness [strannost’] of the knight’s move and the
main one among these is the conventionality [uslovnost’] of art. . . . I write
about the conventionality of art.73 The second reason is that the knight is
not free—he moves sideways, because the straight road [priamaia doroga]
is forbidden to him.74
Here Shklovsky displays the symbolic links between the metaphor of the
“knight’s move” and emigration, the exiled perspective, and evasive maneu-
vers in response to censorship.75 His choice of words, such as “strangeness”
(strannost’) and “conventionality” (uslovnost’) relate to his theoretical views,
where he regards strangeness (ostranenie) and the artifice of art as a means
of struggling against habitualness. For Shklovsky, the strangeness of the
117
Figure 28. Cover of Khod konia (Knight’s Move), by

Viktor Shklovsky, 1923.
Viktor Shklovsky, Khod konia: Sbornik statei (Berlin: Knigoizdatel’stvo Gelikon, 1923).
Used with permission of the Shklovsky estate.
knight’s move accomplishes the dislocation, or sdvig, that provokes a new

perspective and transforms the rejected stone into the cornerstone.76 I would
argue that the use of the ‘infant/child’ as strange ‘other,’ or infancy as device,
provides Shklovsky and Russian Formalism with the means of accomplishing
this knight’s move.
In later works, such as “Art as Device,” Shklovsky’s theoretical frame-
work gradually expands beyond ideas of the marginal perspective and the
potential of the naive to cause conceptual dislocation. As his Formalist theo-
ries develop, Shklovsky begins to conceive of a semantic change that accom-
plishes a “knight’s move” for perception. “The goal of parallelism, like the
goal of figurativeness [obraznost’] generally, is the transfer of the object from
its usual perception to a new perceptive sphere [sfera novogo vospriiatiia],
i.e., a distinctive semantic change [semanticheskoe izmenenie] of sorts.”77 The
naive perspective creates such a shift, or sdvig, by transferring the object
from an old sphere of habituation to a new sphere where it appears strange.
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Infant Eye
Figure 29. Page from Khod konia (Knight’s Move)

Viktor Shklovsky, Khod konia: Sbornik statei (Berlin: Knigoizdatel’stvo Gelikon, 1923).
Used with permission of the Shklovsky estate.
When Shklovsky articulates the concept of a semantic change through a

transfer between spheres, his ideas prefigure in part the semiotic school of
theory, though the semiotic school would apply basic principles of the study
of signs and signification to all cultural phenomena.
Needless to say, this valorization of the naive perspective and the in-
fantile subject position relies on a romanticized notion of the naive; it does
not account for the fact that appreciation and understanding—even of the
avant-garde through critical movements like Shklovsky’s—often depend on
habituation to the new, unfamiliar, and strange. This oversimplified model of
the naive thus relies on a romantic and nostalgic stance toward a simplicity
and purity of experience for which the disenchanted adult facing a troubling
new century might long. In truth, such an experience never existed in child-
hood either, just as no child revels in his or her own naïveté. Indeed, this
example raises the question of how all portrayals of childhood represent a
nostalgic fantasy of childhood and an adult’s artificial and imaginary ideal. We
might think here of Baudrillard’s comments on childhood:
119
If, going against every assumption, you maintain the little Utopian fact
that childhood does not exist and that the child is perhaps the only one to
know it, then everything blows up in your face. . . . Women, children, ani-
mals—we must not be afraid of assimilations—do not just have a subject-
consciousness, they have an objective ironic presentiment that the category
into which they have been placed doesn’t exist.78
TH E BI RT H O F T HE I NFA NT I LI ST A ESTH ETI C
If Shklovsky identifies the problem of artistic decay to be the phenomenon

of petrifaction, then the solution to the problem of art lies in the relationship
between habituation and the strange. For Shklovsky, the penetrating insight
of the naive perspective performs a restorative function and recovers the per-
ceptions of the new, newly born, and strangely extraordinary in the old, dead,
and ordinary. In typical avant-garde fashion, the negative valence belongs
to the dominant and established old term, while a revolutionary revaluation
endows the younger and more marginal term with positive valence and new-
found worth. When in “The Resurrection of the Word,” Shklovsky writes,
“The newborn word was alive and picturesque,” he uses organic metaphors
that render the newborn word, literally “just born” (tol’ko chto rozhdennoe)
and belonging to the temporal present, as if it were alive.79 In this newborn
state, the word is more picturesque, figurative, or graphic. For Shklovsky,
the infantile art form possesses the beauty, poetry, and power of its original
form. For the poet creating a neologism or the child confronting language,
the word retains its fullness of form. In fact, Shklovsky argues that artistic
vision and poetry itself depend upon the ability to perceive the form of the
newborn word with a naive perspective—the innocent eye.
“The Resurrection of the Word” opens with the depiction of these very
oppositions, from the most ancient (drevneishii) poetic creation by mankind
to imagery of dead words and the cemetery of language, and finally to the
newborn word that is full of life and form. It offers the solution to the bleak
fate of petrifaction in the holy infancy of the word. Indeed, a religious model
appears within the metaphors of the holy infant and the stone that is cast
aside, all of which have biblical precedent and apply to the child. These imply
that hope and the future of poetry lie in the newborn word and a return to
origins. Shklovsky maintains that “every word in its foundation is a trope”
(kazhdoe slovo v osnove trop)80 and thus discovers poetry in morphology, lit-
erally “the study of form.” As cited earlier, Shklovsky offers as an example
of the hidden poetry contained within words the etymologies of “enfant”
and “otrok,” which “in a literal translation means ‘unspeaking [negovoria-
shchii].’ ”81 Enamored with the symbolic potential of its etymology, he waxes
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poetic, “when you regain the until now already lost, erased form [obraz],
placed at some time at the foundation of the word, then you are struck by its
beauty—a beauty that once was and already is no more.”82 With a poetic ap-
proach to morphology, Shklovsky here expresses the Futurist and Formalist
idealization of the newborn word and poetic language in its infancy. With its
sensitivity and fascination for the unspeaking, prelingual state of the infant,
this etymological recovery betrays Shklovsky’s interest in the poetic potential
of the infantile. He also positions himself as an ideal spokesperson for the
unspoken and of the unspeaking state.
Though apparent already in his earliest notes and published articles,
Shklovsky’s debt to Futurist experiments with language and their practice
of infantile primitivism appears most fully in the article “About Poetry and
Trans-Sense Language” (“O poezii i zaumnom iazyke”; 1916).83 This article
not only aided the reception of the Futurists and the literary avant-garde, but
also proved seminal for the development of the infantilist aesthetic which
Shklovsky derives from infantile primitivism. The article begins with a study
of expressions of the inexpressible. In this aspect it resembles Shklovsky’s
early interest in marginal linguistic forms and the poetic and symbolically
laden etymology of ‘enfant’ or ‘otrok,’ which absorbed him at the beginning
of “The Resurrection of the Word.” In the initial portion of the article, and
throughout, Shklovsky cites poetic expressions of this greater theme that
show the limits of language. The article itself begins with the statement:
“Some types of wordless thoughts [mysli bes slov] languish in the soul of the
poet and can not be fully illuminated either by image [obraz] or by concept
[poniatie].”84 Shklovsky then uses poetic examples of the failure of words,
along with many others included in the body of the article, to embark upon
his discussion of issues of sound and sense related to poetry and trans-sense
language. Drawn to the limits and limitations of language, Shklovsky takes
a linguistic and semiotic approach to deriving meaning from phenomena of
the periphery.
Shklovsky’s treatment of this theme has a certain precedent in
“The Resurrection of the Word,” which displays his interest in “semi-
comprehensible” (poluponiatnyi) forms of language. In speaking of Futurist
language as incomprehensible, difficult, impossible to read, he elaborates
further on “this new language.”
It does not even resemble Russian, but we are too accustomed to making
intelligibility an indispensable requirement of poetic language. The history
of art shows us that (often, at least) the language of poetry is not compre-
hensible language, but semi-comprehensible [poluponiatnyi] language.85
Shklovsky proceeds to venture an explanation for the phenomenon he
identifies. He claims, “The explanation for these facts is that such semi-
121
comprehensible [poluponiatnyi] language appears more figurative [obraznyi]

to the reader, according to the strength of its unusualness [neprivychnosti].”86
In a sense, this fascination for the barely intelligible or semi-comprehensible
seems a fitting conclusion for the etymological explication of the unspeaking
state expressed by infans. According to Shklovsky’s views on perception, then,
the prelingual state before language and the uncomprehending state before
recognition and understanding represent privileged states of perceptive-
ness. They place the ‘infant/child’ in an ideal position for artistic perception.
Likewise, the role of art, in Shklovsky’s view, is to artificially reconstitute this
state by placing its audience in an infantile position, as the avant-garde does.
The privileged place of the ‘infant/child’ in the aesthetic being devel-
oped by Viktor Shklovsky becomes clear in the body of the article “About
Poetry and Trans-Sense Language,” where Shklovsky cites numerous ex-
amples of infantilism. In order to advance his thesis about the growing
prominence of sound over sense in trans-sense poetry, Shklovsky draws on
abundant quotations from canonical Russian writers, Futurist poetry, and
children’s speech and folklore. He begins with quotations from Aleksei
Kruchenykh’s “Declaration of the Word as Such” (1913), including semi-
nal statements from the manifesto influential for Shklovsky’s thinking,
such as “4) THOUGHT AND SPEECH CANNOT KEEP PACE WITH THE
EXPERIENCING OF THE INSPIRED” (MYSL’ I RECH’ NE USPEVAIUT
ZA PEREZHIVANIEM VZDOKHNOVENNOGO).87 In quoting this state-
ment by Kruchenykh, to whom he dedicated the first version of this article,
Shklovsky links his own theoretical emphasis on the importance of “experi-
encing” language to Kruchenykh’s poetics. He also quotes the Futurist slo-
gan “5) WORDS DIE, THE WORLD IS ETERNALLY YOUNG” (SLOVA
UMIRAIUT, MIR VECHNO IUN), which articulates a shared compulsion to
rescuscitate moribund language and art with a spirit of youth and renewal.88
Shklovsky thus reveals his inspiration in the infantile primitivism of the
Futurists, as well as his subscription to a rhetoric of youth that values the
“eternally young.”
The first quotations from Futurist poetry that Shklovsky cites in the
article are from Aleksei Kruchenykh’s “Dyr bul shchyl” (1913) and Elena
Guro’s “Three” (“Troe”; 1913). The excerpt from Guro’s poem includes the
following euphonic lines: “Lulla, lolla, lalla-lu, / Liza, lolla, lulla-li . . . Tere-
dere-derer. . . Khu! / Kole-kule-neee.”89 Such examples of the trans-sense
poetry of the Futurists also exhibit infantile features in their resemblance to
babble and the overall elevation of sound over sense and signifier over signi-
fied. As Shklovsky notes, “the sounds themselves, as such, possess a particular
power.”90 These examples celebrate the signifying process, or babbling for
the sake of babbling, rather than observing the conventional emphasis on
signification.
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Infant Eye
Shklovsky continues to pursue this theme and the infantile language of

the Futurists throughout the article, beginning with the topic of neologisms
and invented or newly coined words. He first establishes the need for words
without meaning, claiming that “people need words also outside of meaning”
(liudiam nuzhny slova i vne smysla)91 and then offers numerous literary ex-
amples. He cites Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths (Na dne; 1902), where
the character Satin has tired of all human words and fastens on the invented
word “Sikambr” instead,92 and Gorky’s autobiographical volume In the World
(V liudiakh; 1916), where the word “Umbrakul” and “strange words” (stran-
nye slova) are invented and repeated continually as if “maybe meaning would
be revealed in the sounds” (v zvukakh otkroetsia smysl)?93 Shklovsky also of-
fers other examples of what he calls nonsense, or “bessmyslitsa,” concluding
with an example from the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun’s novel Hunger
(Sult; 1890) that serves as a kind of manifesto for trans-sense language and
the assertion of the signifier over the signified.
In Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, the author invents the word ‘kuboa’ in a state
of delirium and admires the fact that it is fluid, not having a determinate
meaning [opredelennogo znacheniia]. “I myself invented this word,” he
says, “and I am fully entitled to give it whatever meaning that comes into
my head. I myself still don’t know what it means.”94
Significantly, when Shklovsky uses the words “determinate meaning” (opre-

delennogo znacheniia) to describe the fluidity and instability of this word, he
employs the same language as Aleksei Kruchenykh in the triptych “Dyr bul
shchyl” (1913), who writes “the words do not have a determinate meaning”
(slova ne imeiut opredelennogo znacheniia).95
A more subjective language, where the occluded word itself, or “word
as such,” reappears and again becomes perceptible emerges as an implicit
poetic ideal for Shklovsky. In this way, he justifies the need for words “out-
side of meaning” and nonsense itself. Shklovsky’s glorification of these playful
and nonsensical neologisms that revel in their own lack of meaning can be
juxtaposed to the creative liberties he takes as a theorist and writer. For he
himself coins new words, such as “ostranenie,” in the pursuit of theoretical
clarity and renewed language and perception.96 Indeed, both Futurism and
Formalism share this typical feature with children’s language, which is char-
acterized by the use of improvised neologisms in order to create a fitting
word when words are lacking or the child’s vocabulary fails. As linguist Eve
Clark observes,97
young children start with very small vocabularies, so they have many gaps
to fill. One option is to coin new words, making use of familiar roots and
affixes in derivations and compounds. Indeed, as children’s coinages show,
123
when they don’t yet know the conventional term for a meaning, they often
coin one.98
Neologisms thus represent an intrinsic part of children’s language; they are
a characteristic response to the moments of speechlessness that result when
a child encounters lacunae during early confrontations with an unfamiliar
language. Children’s neologisms are not purely instrumental, however, as
Chukovsky’s studies of children’s language show.99
From his treatment of neologisms, Shklovsky moves on to other literary
examples that assert sound over sense. He cites numerous situations where
the limited understandability of semi-comprehensible (poluponiatnyi) words
causes other effects he considers to be positive. Significantly, the instances
he offers represent actual childhood perceptions later described by promi-
nent authors. In this way, he shows the limited comprehension of the naive
perspective to be a privileged state for the experience and perception of
sound over sense. As his first example, he cites Prince Peter Vyazemsky’s
memory that “in childhood” (v detstve) he loved to read the wine- cellar
catalog since he enjoyed the euphonic names. As Shklovsky retells it, “He
especially liked the name of one sort of wine, Lacryma-Christi; these sounds
stroked his poetic soul.”100 Shklovsky claims that this is only one of many
examples: “And we generally hear from many poets of previous generations
about their responsiveness to the sound component of words that provoke
in them a certain mood and even a certain understanding of these words
independent from their objective meaning.”101 Shklovsky cites the work of
Baudouin de Courtenay and adds that this novel approach to words “is not
the privilege [privilegiei] of poets alone,” observing “also non-poets are able
to savor sounds outside of meaning and even be intoxicated by them.”102
The non-poets Shklovsky mentions as further examples of the privi-
leged experience of sounds outside of meaning are children with limited un-
derstanding of what they hear. His logic thus links poets and children; it is
children who are the non-poets capable of poetic perception. Their inexperi-
ence, ignorance, or naïveté interact with creativity, associative fertility, and a
playful desire to dream up the rest. As an example, Shklovsky quotes Vladimir
Korolenko’s description of the power a “hypnotic word” (gipnotiziruiushchee
slovo) exerts over schoolchildren in general and one schoolboy in particular
during a German language lesson.103 Shklovsky again regards this as typical
rather than exceptional and bolsters his claim with the observations of F. F.
Zelinsky (Tadeusz Zielinski)104 on Latin poems used for teaching.
I used them myself when I was a teacher of first grade: I remember how
the fanciful combination of wise words and the amusing rhymes provoked
the healthy childish laughter of my students, especially when at the end
of the lesson I made them repeat the rhymed rules in chorus; and since I
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Infant Eye
acknowledged healthy humor as a very useful ‘vehicle’ (as doctors say) for
teaching in the younger grades, then these lesson finales transformed into
a kind of fun game.105
This situation, where children face something semi-comprehensible to them,

forms another prime example of the privileging of sound over sense that
Shklovsky treats in his article on poetry and trans-sense language. Aided by
fanciful combinations and amusing rhymes, the children’s encounter with
unfamiliar language dissolves into “childish laughter,” “healthy humor,” and
“a kind of fun game.” In this way, children familiarize themselves with the
unfamiliar and make it their own by transforming it into their own culture of
laughter, humor, and games.
After discussing such examples of children’s linguistic creativity,
Shklovsky treats children’s culture itself. To advance his thesis that trans-
sense language already exists, he draws attention to the existence of “in-
teresting examples of ‘the trans-sense speech of children [zaumnykh re-
chei u detei].’ ”106 As sources of these, he cites the 1901 Moscow edition of
James Sully’s Studies of Childhood (1896).107 He also offers four examples
of Russian children’s counting rhymes from E. A. Pokrovsky’s Detskiia igry
preimushchestvenno russkiia (1887),108 for example, the rhyme “Pero /
Nero / Ugo / Tero / Piato / Soto / Ivo / Sivo / Dub [Oak] / Krest [Cross]” from
Viatskaia Province.109 In his study of zaum language, Gerald Janecek also
notes Shklovsky’s comparison of zaum speech with children’s folklore, which
he calls “an area very important for Futurism and zaum,”110 and notes the
“links to glossolalic utterances, folk incantations, and especially children’s
counting rhymes.”111 Indeed, Shklovsky justifiably highlights the significance
of children’s language as an important source of inspiration for the infantile
primitivism of the Futurists. At the same time, for his own critical purposes,
Shklovsky uses these examples to support his claim that “ ‘trans-sense lan-
guage’ exists” (‘zaumnyi iazyk’ sushchestvuet).112 In so doing, he bares the
Futurist debt to children’s creativity, even as he displays his own attention to
children’s relationship to language and children’s folklore as an orally trans-
mitted mass phenomenon.113 He regards examples of child lore to be “fully
analogous to literary compositions,” thereby asserting the literary qualities of
children’s own verbal creations.
As an illustrative example, Shklovsky traces the formation of nonsense
verse by children through an excerpt from Maxim Gorky’s autobiographical
work Childhood (Detstvo; 1913). According to his description, “it is shown
how a poem, in the memory of a boy, existed in two forms simultaneously:
in the form of words and in the form of what I would call sound spots
[zvukovymi piatnami].”114 Shklovsky quotes the boy’s distorted reproduc-
tion (vosproizvedenie) of a poem into the nonsensical sequence of words
125
“Dorogo, dvuroga, tvorog, nedotroga, / Kopyta, popy-to, koryto . . .” (expen-

sive, two-horned, cheese curds, thin-skinned person / Hoofs, some priests,
washing tub . . .),115 which resembles the counting rhymes he provides above.
He comments, “In the process, the boy very much liked it when the incanta-
tory poems had been deprived of any sense of meaning [lishalis’ vsiakogo
smysla].”116 Shklovsky employs this example of children’s nonsensical verse
in the process of being created to show how trans-sense language is created
and, in so doing, emphasizes its infantile nature.
In treating the subject of glossolalia, Shklovsky juxtaposes the glosso-
lalia of a religious sect with that of children’s songs. He comments that “this
example of glossolalia is interesting in that it proves the close relationship
of children’s songs with the samples of speaking in tongues by sects.”117 As
he points out, “It begins with a children’s song and ends with ‘trans-sense
chant [zaumnym raspevtsem].’ ”118 The children’s song “Ten’ ten’ poteten’,”
which is largely dominated by the repetition of sounds, enjoys two different
conclusions that illustrate the domination of sound over sense. In an example
of glossolalia, the continuation by religious sectarians includes the nonsense
words “Savishrai samo / Kapilasta gandria / Daranata shantra / Sunkara
purusha,” while the conclusion to the same song by children includes the
reduplicative trans-sense words “Ziuziuka, ziuziuka.”119 Thus Shklovsky, in
attempting to explain and justify the trans-sense poetry of the Futurists, es-
tablishes the fact that it has precedent in forms of glossolalia, among which
he prominently includes children’s folklore and verbal inventions. For com-
parison, in Boris Eikhenbaum’s retrospective summation of “The Theory of
the Formal Method” (“Teoriia formalnogo metoda”; 1925), he also notes that
the origins of transrational language are “observable in some aspects in chil-
dren’s language.”120
Shklovsky reveals great theoretical ambition and a sense of the wider
implications in his defense of the Futurists and the avant-garde desire for the
renewal of art and language. When he discusses the linguistic experiments of
the Futurists through literary examples of childhood perceptions, children’s
folklore, and glossolalia, his claims extend beyond the mere recognition of
the infantile primitivism of the Futurists or even the assertion of the infantil-
ist aesthetic of the avant-garde. He argues that the example of children’s neo-
logisms, rhymes, and lore, and the infantile experience of language as such,
unlock the very definition of poetry and art. Such a serious stance toward
children’s language was prevalent in this period among perspicacious crit-
ics, as exemplified by figures like Roman Jakobson, Boris Eikhenbaum, Lev
Yakubinsky, and Kornei Chukovsky. In Shklovsky’s Formalist view, poetry,
like children’s own language, asserts sound over sense and form over con-
tent. He thus reveals his belief that the privileged position with respect to
creating and viewing, not to mention analyzing, art is an infantile one, since
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Infant Eye
it offers the penetrating insights of a naive perspective at the margins and

replicates the greater awareness induced by semi-comprehensible language.
At the same time, we might note the contradictions and inconsistencies evi-
dent here in an act of viewing that Shklovsky constructs as both innocent and
analytical, naive and penetrating, marginal and privileged.121
TOL S TO Y A ND S HKL O V S KY ’ S T H EORY OF

TH E S TR A NG E
Shklovsky’s increasing emphasis on the infantile perspective reaches greater

prominence and takes on a more sophisticated theoretical form in his best-
known article, “Art as Device” (“Iskusstvo kak priem”; 1917). In the fruitful
environment of OPOIAZ and through his early studies of the Futurists and
their infantile primitivism, Shklovsky transforms the infantilism of the early
avant-garde into a theoretical construct that serves as the major contribu-
tion of avant-garde theory to the study of art and aesthetics. “Art as Device”
marks a major shift in scale in Shklovsky’s theoretical thought, since he here
begins to design a comprehensive critical approach to art and literature that
extends beyond the contemporary avant-garde and reappropriates literary
and philosophical history for its own aims.
The critical dimension of the act of making something strange be-
comes particularly clear when regarded within the context of the work of
one of Shklovsky’s most significant literary sources, Leo Tolstoy. An implicit
presence throughout avant-garde infantilism, insofar as his initial question
about “who should learn from whom?” and revolutionary challenge to aes-
thetics echo still in the twentieth century, Tolstoy enjoys an explicit revival
in Shklovsky’s theories of estrangement. In his pedagogical article, and in his
treatise on art “What Is Art?” (“Chto takoe iskusstvo?”; 1897) Tolstoy repeat-
edly uses peasants and children as touchstones and turns to folk art and chil-
dren’s art as models.122 He contrasts “our former art,” which neglected “the
enormous area of folk children’s art [narodnogo detskogo iskusstva]: jests,
proverbs, riddles, songs, dances, children’s games, and mimicry, not consid-
ering them worthy material for art,”123 to that of the “artist of the future”
(khudozhnik budushchego) who realizes that “to compose a fairy tale, a song
that moves, a lullaby, a riddle that amuses, a jest that brings laughter, or to
draw a picture that will delight dozens of generations or millions of chil-
dren and adults is incomparably more important and fruitful” than the art of
the past.124 Most significant for Tolstoy is the infectious power of art—“the
capacity to transmit briefly, simply, and clearly, without anything superflu-
ous, the feeling that the artist experienced and wishes to transmit.”125 His
artistic ideal thus emerges as that which infects its audience with immediate
127
emotion, as comparable to the innate experience of children. The idealiza-

tion of child and primitive becomes particularly evident when Tolstoy dis-
cusses a reindeer hunt dramatization by the Vogul tribe.
What I am saying will be seen as an irrational paradox . . . all these people,
with very few exceptions; artists, public, and critics, never, except in the
very earliest childhood and youth [v samom pervom detstve i iunosti], not
yet having heard any discussions about art, did not experience that simple
feeling familiar to the plainest person and even to a child [dazhe rebenku],
the sense of infection with another’s feelings, which compels one to feel joy
in another’s happiness, feel sorrowful about another’s sorrow, and merge
souls with another person, which forms the very essence of art.126
The connection between primitivism and authenticity, folk and child, recurs
here in Tolstoy’s treatment of the Vogul dramatization. Thus Tolstoy presages
the infantile primitivism of the avant-garde, both in being drawn to folk and
children’s forms and viewing them as aesthetic models. He also regards the
plainest person and the child as an ideal audience for true art. The unmedi-
ated impact of art valorized as part of Tolstoy’s view on the infectious nature
of art relates closely to avant-garde aesthetics and theory, which also focus on
impact and immediacy and relate this to the ‘infant/child’ in multiple ways.127
In The Aesthetics of Anarchy, Nina Gurianova also ties Tolstoy’s “What Is
Art?” to avant-garde aesthetics.128 She points out that Tolstoy’s new approach
“offers a new interpretation of folk, children’s, and naive art” 129 and states
that the “most radical and productive feature of Tolstoy’s essay was his evalu-
ation of children’s drawings, folk and naive art . . . as on par with any object
of classical or contemporary European art.”130 She observes that “Tolstoy’s
challenge to aesthetics prompted Futurists’ and Neoprimitivists’ ‘everything-
ness,’ a new methodology of artistic practices influenced by the avant-garde’s
discovery of children’s drawings and folk art.”131 To this list, we might add the
revaluation of children’s writing spearheaded in Tolstoy’s pedagogical article
(“Who should learn from whom. . .”) mentioned previously.
Although Shklovsky’s first theoretical questions originate in avant-
garde practice, his theoretical solutions to deeper questions about the nature
of art and ‘literariness’ derive first and foremost from his study of Tolstoy’s
literary style. The artistic solution to the habituation to everyday life that
Shklovsky offers—the idea of making strange, or ostranenie, as the essence
of art, participates in a theory of the strange that pervades his work from
the earliest glimmerings of theory to the most diverse creative works. In
“Art as Device,” Shklovsky constructs Leo Tolstoy as a master of estrange-
ment, whose extreme tendencies eventually estrange his own audience. He
remarks that Tolstoy’s ability to “see things removed from their context”132
eventually “resulted in something strange, monstrous.”133 Shklovsky scruti-
128
Infant Eye
nized the prose of Tolstoy with keen attention to the effect of estrangement
and derived his initial ideas on the defamiliarized view from various examples
of Tolstoy’s prose.134
The problem of petrifaction that Shklovsky identifies in his earliest
theoretical works gradually comes to be articulated in a more general ar-
tistic sense as habituation to everyday life, an idea he initially derives from
the writings of Tolstoy. He first quotes Tolstoy’s personal writings about how
unconscious everyday actions disappear into oblivion,135 then rephrases this
idea in his own terms, reiterating Tolstoy’s own statement. “In this way, life,
changing into nothing, disappears. Automatization consumes things, cloth-
ing, furniture, your wife, and fear of war. ‘If the whole complicated life of
many people passes by unconsciously, then it’s as if this life never was.’ ”136
Inspired by this notion, Shklovsky takes a critical stand and proposes that the
solution to the problem of the automatization of life, the process of habitua-
tion, and the petrifaction that results from it lies in estrangement:
And thus in order to return the sensation of life, to sense things, in order
to make the stone stony, there exists that which we call art. The goal of
art is to give the sensation of things as seen, and not as recognized; the
device of art is the device of the ‘estrangement’ [ostranenie] of things and
the device of laborious [zatrudnennyi] form, increasing the difficulty and
length of perception, such that the perceptive process in art is a goal in
itself and must be prolonged; art is a means of experiencing the making of
things, while the already made in art is not important [iskusstvo est’ sposob
perezhit’ delan’e veshchi, a sdelannoe v iskusstve ne vazhno].137
The influential concept of ostranenie marks the culmination of his theory
of the strange and returns to the importance of the “experiencing” of art to
regain the process of signifying rather than the signified and the perception
of form rather than the recognition of content. Relatedly, Shklovsky advances
the notion of “laborious form” (zatrudnennaia forma) that prolongs and com-
plicates perception. What laborious form actually does, then, is to render the
observer naive and force the observer into a naive perspective that recovers
the artfulness of that which is perceived. In this sense, in Shklovsky’s view, art
might be seen to infantilize its audience.
Shklovsky thus clarifies his aesthetic ideal as being the conscious expe-
riencing of life and the acute perception of things as they are. The central
role of the naive perspective becomes evident when Shklovsky employs a
series of analogies to express what kinds of perception are preferable to those
dulled by habituation. For it is the naive perspective and “innocent eye” he
describes when he repeatedly contrasts perception deadened by habit to the
intense experience of doing something “for the first time.” Venturing into the
realm of experimental psychology, he writes:
129
If we begin to investigate the general laws of perception, then we see that,

as they become habitual, actions become automatic. Thus all of our habits
depart into the medium of the unconscious-automatic; if a person remem-
bers the sensation which he experienced, holding a pen in his hands for the
first time or speaking a foreign language for the first time, and compares
it to the sensation which he experiences in continuing to do it the ten-
thousandth time, then he will agree with us.138
Shklovsky privileges the acute experience of first impressions that accompany

the first initiation into language, whether this takes the form of writing or of
speaking a language for the first time. The newness of the experience allows
it to retain a fundamental strangeness according to which it is fully perceived
as it is. Of course, his description applies to any new undertaking, whether
the novice is an adult or a child. At the same time, however, the experienc-
ing of things for the first time predominates in infancy and childhood, while
it becomes more of a rarity in adulthood. Thus the Formalist emphasis on
defamiliarized sensation and experience at its essence privileges the position
of the ‘infant/child,’ who still retains the naive perspective in all things.
As a key illustration for the concept of ostranenie, Shklovsky employs
Tolstoy’s story “Kholstomer: A Horse’s Story” (“Kholstomer: Istoriia loshadi”;
1885).139 An unusual narrative situation, this story describes the life of the
horse Kholstomer from the horse’s own perspective. This unusual pre-
text provides Tolstoy with an ideal vantage point from which to expose the
strangeness of the most familiar elements of human society. The old horse
Kholstomer tells his own story in his own voice, beginning by describing his
first impressions as a newborn foal.
I must have been born at night; by morning I, already licked clean by my

mother, stood on my own feet. I remember that I was full of a constant
desire for something and how everything seemed extraordinarily surprising
[udivitel’no] and at the same time extraordinarily simple.140
The newborn foal exhibits the naive wonder of the infantile perspective as
he regards the world as wondrous and simple. Indeed, it is his innocent eye
and equine perspective on the human behavior he observes that provides
the penetrating insights and wisdom delivered by this story, in which the
author forces readers to question the assumptions to which they are habit-
uated. Tolstoy uses children’s perspective to similar effect with respect to
adult assumptions in the posthumously published The Wisdom of Children
(Detskaia mudrost’; 1909), which offers numerous examples of an ingenu-
ous Tolstoyan child who naively speaks a great truth “from the mouths of
babes,” as it were.141 In “Art as Device,” Shklovsky comments on Tolstoy’s
usage of defamiliarization in “Kholstomer.” “Tolstoy used the methods of de-
130
Infant Eye
familiarization [ostranenie] constantly: in one of these cases (“Kholstomer”),

the story is told from the point of view of a horse, and things are defamilar-
ized [ostraneny] not by our, but by the horse’s, perceptions of them.”142 In
fact, Shklovsky includes in the article substantial quotations in the voice of
the horse Kholstomer as the most lengthy literary example of the device
of ostranenie.
This story provides a critique of the human concept of property from
the horse’s-eye view. The horse’s naive perspective results in a failure to com-
prehend; he cannot grasp the meanings of words expressing possession or the
institution of property: “At the time I could not comprehend what it meant
when they called me the property of a person. The words: my horse, as re-
lated to me, a living horse, seemed to me as strange [stranny] as the words:
my earth, my air, my water.”143 Only later in life does Kholstomer come to
understand the meaning of “these strange words” (etim strannym slovam)
and his laborious explanation of the familiar concept defamiliarizes these
human institutions.144 Just as he exploits his memory of himself as a swaddled
infant to make a statement about freedom,145 Tolstoy uses the horse’s per-
spective to deliver a multivalent societal critique, not only questioning the
treatment of animals, but also people’s ownership of other people as slaves or
serfs and other instances of human hypocrisy. In this sense, it also resembles
Sergei Aksakov’s treatment of the strange idea of property from the naive
perspective of a young child in The Childhood Years of Bagrov Grandson
(Detskie godi Bagrova-vnuka; 1858), another formative depiction of child-
hood in the Russian tradition.
The device of defamiliarization which Tolstoy applies through the
naive perspective of the horse, and which Shklovsky here terms ostrane-
nie, effectively makes things strange. Indeed, the horse Kholstomer often
perceives and describes as “strange” the things he does not comprehend.
Michael O’Toole notes how Tolstoy unmasks all the charades and pretenses
of culture and tradition by means of “the innocent gaze—and, of course, by
the innocent language—of a child or an uneducated person.”146 We might
think here also of the holy fool’s “mute reproach to civilization,” as in the ex-
ample of the holy fool Grisha, who is closely linked to the child protagonist
in Tolstoy’s Childhood (Detstvo).147 In this sense too, then, Tolstoy provides a
precedent for the avant-garde and comes full circle in avant-garde theories.
The innocent eye, or naive perspective, exposes the strangeness of society,
while infantile or naive language renders the familiar unfamiliar. As used in
“Kholstomer,” this formula borrows from the Enlightenment device used
to critique societal conventions or fables designed to deliver an alternative
perspective to a naive audience. It also relates to the Romantic tradition of
exposure by the innocent eye, such as when the child exposes adult artifice
in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” While Tolstoy
131
partakes in these Enlightenment and Romantic traditions, twentieth-century

incarnations of defamiliarization do not share their polemic intent or deliver
pointed societal critique. Instead, defamiliarization becomes a purely for-
mal issue, or an avant-garde device, just as the avant-garde generally adopts
Tolstoy’s revolutionary implications and primitivist technique, but ignores the
moral content of his messages. For the avant-garde, the focus is on an aes-
thetic revolution and the ‘infant/child’ represents a means to this end.
In contrast, the Tolstoyan maneuver uses the naive perspective of a
social ‘other,’ such as a horse or child, to expose the strangeness of society
and critique its conventions. From concrete examples of deliberate strange-
ness like these, Shklovsky abstracts his concept of defamiliarization and ap-
plies it to other writings that more subtly re-create the effect of the naive
perspective.
In the works of L. Tolstoy the device of estrangement consists in the fact
that he does not call a thing by its name, but describes it as if seen for the
first time, or an event—as if happening for the first time; moreover, in the
description of the thing he uses not the accepted terms for its parts, but
designates them in the way that corresponding parts of other things are
designated [italics mine].148
By avoiding conventional imagery or language, a defamiliarizing description
replicates the infantile experience of events—and of language. By fabricating
the naive perspective and using the innocent eye as a self-conscious device,
such language prolongs the signifying process to increase awareness of the
signified and thus place its audience in something akin to an infantile posi-
tion with respect to art, language, and meaning. The notion of defamiliariza-
tion thus celebrates the infantile vantage point, the naive perspective, and
in some sense the child’s subject position. At the same time, the artificial
fabrication of the infantile effect and occupation of the infant subject under-
mines the whole idea of the artless ‘naive.’ This underscores the paradoxical
nature of the avant-garde’s celebration of the infantile and construction of
the ‘infant/child’; this is the staging of infantile experience by the adult.
Once Kholstomer dies, Tolstoy, and Shklovsky, continue to use the un-
expected equine perspective, thereby transforming the ungainly old horse
into a critical device reminiscent of a “knight’s move,” or “khod konia”
which more literally evokes the steed (kon’) at its basis. The infantile part
in this equine triangulation includes Shklovsky’s evocation in his memoirs
of a cardboard Trojan horse whose “devices are bared” by a child: “Children
(young literary schools likewise) always wonder what is inside a cardboard
horse. After the work of the Formalists, the insides of paper horses and ele-
phants are clear.”149 If Shklovsky bares the devices applied by Tolstoy, then
Shklovsky’s memoirs here identify the child’s desire to see through to the
132
Infant Eye
form of things with the approach of the Formalists even if the naive experi-
ence and “innate” mystery of the new are compromised by exposing its con-
struction. Infancy too has become a critical device independent of its initial
motivations.
When Shklovsky derives from major and minor works of Leo Tolstoy
some of his main theoretical insights, including the influential notion of os-
tranenie, avant-garde theory not only responds to the infantile primitivism
of avant-garde predecessors like the trans-sense poets of Futurism, but also
returns to an originary source that helped inspire this turn to the infantile.
For Tolstoy was in some senses first to employ the child as a critical de-
vice and reverse the hierarchy governing relations between child and adult,
such as when he asked, “Who should learn to write from whom, the peasant
children from us or we from the peasant children?” or spoke of “the pure
primitive soul of a peasant child,”150 thereby revealing his conflation of peas-
ant and child as idealized primitive ‘other.’ Though, in practice, Tolstoy did
choose to write for children and with children in the naive style of fables and
tales, one might note that the aristocratic child self in his earlier, debut novel
Childhood (Detstvo) is self-conscious, manipulative, and artificial. Indeed,
like other avant-garde actors who engage with Tolstoy’s reevaluation of child-
hood and aesthetics, Shklovsky simply exploits and reappropriates parts of
the Tolstoyan mechanism for the very different and aesthetically oriented
purposes of the avant-garde. Shklovsky uses infancy as a device to accomplish
a strange dislocation that puts the avant-garde—and the child—in the front
and center of aesthetics and the future of art and language.
Though Shklovsky bases his later theoretical conclusions first and fore-
most on Tolstoy’s authorship, he insists that “the device of estrangement is
not specifically Tolstoyan.”151 In fact, Shklovsky grounds his theoretical study
of Tolstoy and the story of “Kholstomer” in a deeper concept of the naive per-
spective that sees things “as if for the first time,” an artificial reconstruction
of what the infant eye does by definition. Shklovsky’s theory of the strange,
after all, grows organically out of his study of avant-garde distortions of lan-
guage where he first identifies the problem of petrifaction and privileges
the infancy of words, the infantile experience or language, and the innocent
eye. Shklovsky thus traces the history of infantile primitivism backward from
its realization in avant-garde practice to its earliest origins in the work of
Tolstoy. In so doing, he applies the principles of infantile primitivism to all
art, in what amounts to an exponential expansion of the scope of the infantil-
ist aesthetic articulated by Viktor Shklovsky and Formalist theory. Though
he couches his attempt “to approximately determine the boundaries of its
application” in humble language, Shklovsky clearly believes that there are no
bounds to this infantilist theory, which embraces the wondrous and strange
results of the naive perspective. “I personally believe that estrangement is to
133
be found almost everywhere where there is form” (Ia lichno schitaiu, chto
ostranenie est’ pochti vezde, gde est’ obraz).152 The imperialism of the infant
eye, in Shklovsky’s view, is thus far-reaching.
F ORM A ND T HE I NFA NT EY E
As Shklovsky develops his theoretical ideas, the idea of form becomes in-
creasingly prominent in his work. Though present from his early formula-
tions to his ongoing emphasis on the formal features of art, Shklovsky’s theo-
retical idea of form evolves alongside the theoretical development of the
infantilist aesthetic. Related to the naive perspective, the infant eye privi-
leged in Formalist theory also implies a greater perceptive sensitivity to form.
According to the model of signifier and signified employed by structural lin-
guistics, the naive experience of language involves the intensive experience
of the signifier, since the inexperienced observer cannot immediately appre-
hend the signified represented by the signifier. From the naive perspective,
an observer fully perceives the form of the signifier during the struggle to
interpret the “semi-comprehensible” (poluponiatnyi) sign. Interpretation of
the avant-garde takes precisely such a “laborious form,” since its goal is for
the perception of sound to take precedence over sense, signifier over sig-
nified, and form over content. Avant-garde aesthetics, with its attempts to
shock and be perceived anew, thus re-creates the effect of the innocent eye.
Evidence of Shklovsky’s particular attention to children’s apprecia-
tion for the formal aspects of art and language also appears later in “Art as
Device,” where he remarks on the child’s curious apprehension of language
and form. Over the preceding decades, as Shklovsky seems well aware, evi-
dence from the linguistic study of language acquisition had already revealed
major insights about the child’s overextension of a limited vocabulary to en-
compass objects similar in form. In “Art as Device,” he offers precisely such
an example, where a child calls a round object a watermelon.
When a girl calls a round ball a watermelon (D. Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii.
Iazyk i iskusstvo. SPb. 1895. C. 16–17) . . . a watermelon instead of a round
lampshade or a watermelon instead of a head is only the abstraction from
the object of one of its characteristic and in no way differs from head =
sphere, watermelon = sphere.153
Although Shklovsky here uses this example to another purpose, illustrating
the differences between poetic and prosaic speech, his analysis of a child’s
word formation reveals his reflections and analysis of the peculiarities of chil-
dren’s speech and what they reveal about cognitive processes. He acknowl-
edges that it is the formal similarities that justify the child’s overextension of
a limited vocabulary, or early attempt at artistic metaphor.
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Infant Eye
Shklovsky here reveals his intellectual debt to Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky,

from whose study he borrows numerous references to children’s language,
including, it would seem, the etymology of enfant/infans/otrok.154 Shklovsky
also adopts from Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky an illustrative example of chil-
dren’s speech, originally from Potebnya, on the basis of which Osvyaniko-
Kulikovsky even equates Shakespeare with the child.155 Other analyses of the
child’s relationship to language, new words, and form discussed in this article
also may have influenced Shklovsky’s thought. As Plato employs the example
of the form of the table in his discussion of Forms, so Osvyaniko-Kulikovsky
speaks of the child’s concept of the ‘table’ and how, upon seeing later ones,
the child “recalls the form [obraz] of the first table.”156 We might compare
this to Schopenhauer’s idea that the young child confronts the ideal genus
in the particular, so that the child’s first encounter with the form of a thing
proves a formative experience with Form itself.157
Shklovsky’s concept of the internal form of words also has a counter-
part in what linguistic analysis and the study of child lore reveal about the
etymological deductions of children. In Russia in this same time period, the
critic and writer Kornei Chukovsky was collecting and publishing examples
of children’s strange use of language, beginning with his writings “About
Children’s Language” (“O detskom iazyke”; 1911).158 With respect to chil-
dren’s language, Chukovsky declares, “We must listen to it, we must learn
from it” (Nuzhno prislushivat’sia k nemu, nuzhno u nego pouchit’sia), 159
nearly repeating Tolstoy’s formulation. With an appreciation for the creativity
and logic behind children’s mistakes, Chukovsky details the mistakes that
arise from perfectly logical etymological deductions made by children, such
as “liud’ ” being the singular form of liudi (people), the irregular plural for
“chelovek” (person)160 He also provides many examples of unusual but lin-
guistically logical overapplications of etymological principles which have gone
awry, such as the coinages obutki for botinki (boots) and odetki for odezhda
(clothing)161 or improper forms like zhgit’ (burn), vsekhnyi (everyone’s), and
loshada (horse).162 Chukovsky’s contemporary study of children’s language, as
well as the continued study of linguists, shows that children indeed are highly
attuned to the form and apparent etymology of words, whether they are en-
countering them for the first time and attempting to comprehend them, or
whether they find their linguistic stores insufficient and themselves coin a
neologism to deal with a new situation.163 In this sense, children’s neologisms
and linguistic distortions, this truly distorted [krivoi] form of speech, might
be regarded, on the one hand, as a creative response to a frustrated state
of speechlessness, itself expressed by the etymology of infans. The struggle
for voice then causes the linguistic dislocation, or sdvig. At the same time,
however, as Shklovsky, Chukovsky, and Jakobson show, children’s language
creation is also at times a purely playful and aesthetic enterprise—a childish
manifestation of the same aesthetic impulse out of which all art is born.
135
At the conclusion of “Art as Device,” Shklovsky acknowledges his

debt to the literary experiments of the avant-garde. He asserts the poetic
and theoretical value of Futurist experiments with language when he states,
“Finally there has appeared a strong tendency toward the creation of ex-
pressly poetic language [spetsial’no poeticheskogo iazyka].”164 This language
is defined as “distorted speech” (krivoi rech’): “In this way, we arrive at a
definition of poetry as speech that is impeded, distorted [zatormozhennoi,
krivoi]. Poetic speech is speech-construction [rech’-postroenie].”165 Like in-
fantile speech, distorted speech presupposes an acute awareness of the for-
mal qualities of language and thus represents language in its most poetically
and artistically self-aware state. Similarly, the ‘infant/child,’ who sees things
for the first time, by definition apprehends the world in a poetic and artistic
mode. By extension, anyone who attains infantile perception through the use
of naive perspective also achieves the greater awareness of form that defines
artistic vision.
According to the Formalist view, the ‘infant/child,’ who is defined by a
lack of language and experience, claims as a birthright an artistic apprehen-
sion of the world. The relationship of the infant eye, or the infantile appre-
hension of the world, to an awareness of form, predicated on the child’s very
innocence, inexperience, or ignorance, thus sheds new light on the formal
awareness evident in the radical experiments of the avant-garde in its prac-
tice of an infantile primitivism. For these works of art display a unique at-
tention to form. They reveal their own process of construction, re-create the
creative moment, and replicate aesthetic apperception in exactly the manner
valued most highly in the Formalist theory of Viktor Shklovsky and OPOIAZ.
A N D R EI B ELY A ND T HE S Y M BOL I ST CH I L D
Shklovsky’s continued study of prose reveals his keen attention to the naive
perspective in the works of canonical writers within the Western tradition.
Published alongside “Art as Device” in Shklovsky’s 1925 collection Theory
of Prose (O teorii prozy), these articles represent some of Shklovsky’s
most significant prose studies.166 Several major literary works he analyzes
in his articles “How Don Quixote Is Made” (“Kak sdelan Don-Kikhot”),167
“The Parodistic Novel” (“Parodiinyi roman”),168 and “Ornamental Prose”
(“Ornamental’naia proza”)169—Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Sterne’s Tristram
Shandy,170 and Bely’s Kotik Letaev, respectively—in some sense exemplify
artistic uses of the naive perspective, but none more so or more innovatively
than Andrei Bely’s novel Kotik Letaev (1917–18).
In his article “Ornamental Prose,” Shklovsky discusses Andrei Bely’s
Kotik Letaev as a novel that employs temporal retardation to create a for-
136
Infant Eye
mally experimental narrative. Written from an infant viewpoint, this unusual

book artifically gives voice to an infantile perspective in a fluid and mutable
state of development as it traces the protagonist’s interior experience of the
world from his conception and entrance into existence through infancy to
earliest childhood. As Shklovsky writes, “Kotik Letaev is a story about a boy; it
begins even before his birth, although it is narrated from the first person.”171
According to Shklovsky, Bely’s experimental and ornamental prose is moti-
vated by its creative attempt to re-create infantile consciousness: “ ‘chaos and
order [roi i stroi]’—life and consciousness are connected through linguistic
means and motivated by infantile consciousness [detskim soznaniem].”172 The
chaotic swarm (roi) representing infantile consciousness results in a particu-
larly ornamental prose.173 Indeed, Shklovsky rightly identifies the crucial
poetic device of Bely’s novel as being this foray into infantile consciousness.
In this sense, Bely participates squarely in the infantilist aesthetic of
the Russian avant-garde, though he belongs to a less closely connected and
more expansive modernist branch. In terms of the continuum from infan-
tile primitivism to the infantilist aesthetic traced in this study, Bely belongs
at the far end of the infantilist aesthetic insofar as his novel ventures fully
into the subjecthood and subjectivity of the ‘infant/child’ when he experi-
mentally occupies and re-creates infantile consciousness from within. The
very ornamentality of Bely’s prose, which Shklovsky highlights, displays the
impossibility of this task and the artificiality of its accomplishment. Though
its adult sophistication, ornamentality, and poetic quality accomplish the im-
possible by giving voice to voicelessness and turning preverbal conscious-
ness into poetry, the paradox remains. For this is a hybrid entity, combin-
ing infantile consciousness and adult language in a manner that yields not
purity but a strange and monstrous, if beautiful, hybrid. Here again, the text
is doubly encoded and redolent with a paradoxical duality, like the “duality”
(dvoistvennost’)174 Shklovsky identifies in the simultaneous use of naive and
worldly perspectives in Don Quixote.
As Julia Kristeva and psychoanalytical perspectives on language articu-
late, the impossibility of uniting these is defined by language or signification
itself. For instance, at the opening of Bely’s novel Kotik Letaev,175 the adult
narrator slides down “a steeply slicing line”176 (na krutosekushchii cherte)177
to face his infant self. At the moment when the adult writer and “pseudo-
autobiographer”178 faces “self-consciousness, like the infant in me” (samo-
soznanie, kak mladenets vo mne),179 he embraces this “first consciousness of
childhood” (pervoe soznanie detstva) and offers a familiar greeting that at
the same time defamiliarizes this strange ‘other’: “Hello, you, strange one!”
(Zdravstvui ty, strannoe!).180 This quotation warmly acknowledges the infant
self at the same time that it distances him as a strange and neuter ‘other,’
due to the linguistically signaled separation of the I and thou. This phrase
137
simultaneously embraces and estranges the infant other and, in so doing,

effectively summarizes how Andrei Bely uses the infantile as device in Kotik
Letaev and associated Symbolist writings. Bely both approaches and dis-
tances the infant/child as subject and as object, even as he forges new ground
in creating a hybrid infant/adult self that grants access to the child’s earliest
consciousness but expresses itself through sophisticated adult language.
Inescapably, though, the adult pseudoautobiographer’s greeting to his
infant self remains language-bound and thereby perpetuates the discourse
of the adult, which divides the self into inescapable categories defined by
difference. The question, then, is whether Bely’s hybrid creation of infant/
adult represents, to borrow the terms of Martin Buber, an “I-Thou” (Ich-Du)
or “I-It” (Ich-Es) relationship.181 Is the infant self regarded as a true sub-
ject, equal, and interlocutor, or is it a mere object and regarded as a thing?
Or, to put it another way, does this carnivalesque overturning of the hier-
archy governing the relations of children and adults, which grants voice to
the voiceless infans and literary authority to the unknowable consciousness
of the child, merely reverse the terms about the same axis, as Caryl Emerson
alleges in her Bakhtinian critique of Tolstoy’s question “who should learn
from whom?” Does Bely’s hybrid creation in any way approach a true dia-
logue between subjects that challenges the monologic discourse of adults
and brings them into dialogic interrelation? Or do we remain trapped in the
prison-house of language that defines and divides I and thou, self and other?
For, after all, even the adult pseudoautobiographer’s language-bound greet-
ing to his infant self remains trapped within the language categories of the
adult which define the infant/child as a “strange one.”
In addition to being informed by a considerable artistic, literary, philo-
sophical, and scientific prehistory,182 Bely’s use of the infantile in Kotik Letaev
also resonates conceptually with his Symbolist writings, both early and late,
all of which would have influenced Shklovsky’s and avant-garde notions of
the ‘infant/child’ as well. As these treatises show, Symbolism profoundly
motivates the initial approach to the child by Bely and others. In his 1909
essay “Magiia slov” (“The Magic of Words”), Bely links language and crea-
tion conceptually and literally through his discussion of language creation
and neologisms.183 This Symbolist view of language draws him to the child,
whom Symbolism places in a privileged position with respect to language.
For instance, in “The Magic of Words,” Bely claims that “playing with words
is a sign of youth” (Igra slovami—priznak molodosti) and concludes that “our
children will forge a new symbol of faith out of luminescent words” (Nashi
deti vykuiut iz svetiashchikhsia slov novyi simvol very).184 This displays the
linguistic license and liberation from convention that language play and an
infantile approach to language seem to offer for modernists. Indeed, Kotik
Letaev is replete with experimental structures, punctuation (e.g., dashes),
138
Infant Eye
and neologisms.185 In this it resembles the writings of Marina Tsvetaeva, who

also gravitated toward the linguistic infantile in her prose and poetry.186
Bely’s gravitation toward the child in this essay also merits comparison
with the approach to the infantile evident in Aleksandr Blok’s essay “O sovre-
mennom sostoianii russkogo simvolizma” (“About the Contemporary State
of Russian Symbolism)” which was published in the following year, 1910.187
Blok compares the new school of Symbolism to “first youth”—“This is first
youth, the infantile newness of first discoveries” (Eto pervaia iunost’, detskaia
novizna pervykh otkrytii).188 Blok also espouses a neo-Romantic or even
primitivist notion of an unspoiled inner child as a site of renewal. He writes,
“But there is something ineradicable in the soul—in the place where it is an
infant” (No est’ neistrebimoe v dushe—tam, gde, ona mladenets).189 Thus,
Blok concludes, “We must learn anew from the world and from that infant
that lives still in [our] charred soul” (Dolzhno uchit’sia vnov’ u mira i u togo
mladentsa, kotoryi zhivet eshche v sozhzhenoi dushe).190 The structure of
this statement offers another distant echo of Tolstoy’s question about “who
should learn from whom.” Blok’s conclusion is unequivocal; the Symbolists
should go to the child within. No writer goes further toward the inner infant/
child, however, than Andrei Bely in Kotik Letaev, nor more deeply explores
the paradoxical impossibility of an infantilist aesthetic.
Bely’s verbose later title “Pochemu ia stal simvolistom i pochemu ia
ne perestal im byt’ vo vsekh fazakh moego ideinogo i khudozhestvennogo
razvitiia” (“Why I became a Symbolist and why I never stopped being one in
all the phases of my conceptual and artistic development”; 1928)191 echoes
the sentiment expressed earlier in Blok’s essay that “You can only be born a
Symbolist” (Simvolistom mozhno tol’ko rodit’sia).192 Here Bely remarks,
The question about HOW I became a symbolist and WHEN I became
one, I answer in all conscience: IN NO WAY DID I BECOME and
NEVER was I becoming; rather, I always WAS a symbolist (before en-
countering the words “SYMBOL,” “SYMBOLIST”); the later, conscious
symbolism of perception was, in the games of the four-year-old child, the
innermost precondition of the infantile consciousness [Na voprosy o tom,
KAK ia stal simvolistom i KOGDA stal, po sovesti otvechaiu: NIKAK NE
STAL, NIKOGDA ne stanovilsia, no vsegda BYL simvolistom (do vstrechi
so slovami “SIMVOL,” “SIMVOLIST”); v igrakh chetyrekhletnego rebenka
pozdneishe osoznannyi simvolizm vospriiatii byl vnutrenneishei dannost’iu
detskogo soznaniia].193
If, as Blok and Bely agree, one can only be born a Symbolist—or if, as
they imply, every child is a Symbolist—then the child takes on a privileged
position in Symbolist theory. For instance, Bely’s final lines draw a parallel
between the adult’s “conscious symbolism of perception” and the “innermost
139
precondition of the infantile consciousness,” which comes to the child as

easily as child’s play. Indeed, this link between creativity and child’s play par-
ticipates in a long artistic and philosophical tradition, which also motivates
the modernist turn to the child.194
Similarly, in Kotik Letaev the narrator treats childhood as a conceptual
and symbolic state. He describes how “childhood returns. Only this return
is by other means”195 (vozvrashchaetsia detstvo. Tol’ko etot vozvrat—po
inomu), which amounts to an admission of its artificiality.196 This presup-
position about the inherent connection between the infantile consciousness
and Symbolism reappears when Bely describes “Symbolism as it sang in my
soul from earliest childhood” (simvolizma tak, kak ona pela v moei dushe s
rannego detstva).197 In short, Bely and Blok not only construct the child as
the ideal Symbolist, but also make the totalizing claim that all children are
Symbolists and that, therefore, everyone was once a Symbolist, whether they
have forgotten it or not.198 The adult Symbolist, then, is one who can return to
and recover this infantile relation to language and symbol. Kotik Letaev rep-
resents Bely’s answer to this Symbolist summons and mission—to approach
the child in order to attain symbolic unification in infantile consciousness.
In his later revisitation of the same themes and variations, Bely ex-
plicitly links this self-definition of Symbolism to his aim in Kotik Letaev.
The basis for this book, and this turn to the child, which also is informed
by anthroposophical views on the child and metempsychosis, the biogenetic
law, and microcosmic theory, becomes clear when Bely describes how he
himself “reexperienced the period of the most archaic cultures in the pro-
cess of becoming a self-conscious ‘I’ ” (Tak perezhivalsia mnoiu konkretno
period drevneishikh kul’tur v stanovlenii samosoznaiushchego ‘Ia’).199 The
infantile microcosm serves as the ideal symbolic site for the recapitulation
of all history through the recovery of lost memory. He notes, “I relate this in
more detail in KOTIK LETAEV” (ob etom tochneishe ia peredal v ‘KOTIKE
LETAEVE’),200 and states how this book “describes the sensations of a three
year-old” (risuet oshchushchenie trekhletnego).201 He further equates his
own child’s play to “a GAME—in symbolization” (IGRA—v simvolizatsii).202
This view of play returns to the intrinsic link established between symbolism
and the child. Importantly, he notes that “he played with symbols at the age
of four; but he was not able to initiate either adults or children into these
games” (Chetyrekh let ia igral v simvoly; no v igry eti ne mog posviatit’ ia
ne vzroslykh, ni detei).203 His formulation constructs the child as a sage, or a
bearer of wisdom and mysteries fundamentally inaccessible to others. Bely’s
highlighting of the inaccessibility of the infantile consciousness indicates that
this both intrigues and inspires him to conduct his own Symbolist experi-
ment—by creatively occupying this unknowable but uniquely fascinating
symbolic territory. Kotik Letaev attempts exactly such an initiation into the
supremely symbolic infantile consciousness.
140
Infant Eye
As the narrative of Kotik Letaev continues at the beginning of chap-

ter 1, “Bredovoi labirint” (“The Labyrinth of Delirium”), the adult and in-
fant selves have become one. After the separate selves on both sides of the
mirror face and embrace, they fuse into a hybrid infant/adult self with the
experiential insight of the one and the sophisticated voice of the other.204
Here Bely performs a reversal of the Lacanian mirror stage; the adult looks
in the mirror and transcends the specular space between adult and infant
selves, as if passing through the mirror and rejoining the infant self in a state
before the dividedness necessitated by language. If I and Thou really do meet
here, then subject and object fuse, and, in this specular wonderland, adult
language and child consciousness unite. Nonetheless, the essential paradox
and impossibility of giving voice to this voiceless state remains. Indeed, it
is doubly encoded as infantile, in its substance, and adult, in its representa-
tion. In this sense Bely differs from the avant-garde figures discussed here,
since he focuses on infantile consciousness or content rather than infantile
aesthetics, or form.
The problematic aspect of Bely’s pseudoautobiographical paradox be-
comes clear as “The Labyrinth of Delirium” opens with the biblically reso-
nant Old Church Slavonic “Ty—esi,”205 or “Thou Art.”206 This echoes the
earlier explication of this specular moment:
You are like me: thou—art; in each other we—have recognized each other:
all that was, that is, and that will be, is between us: self-consciousness is in
our embrace . . . 207
[Ty, kak ia: ty—esi; my drug v druge—uznaem drug druga: vse, chto bylo,
chto est’ i chto budet, ono—mezhdu nami: samosoznanie—v ob’’iatiiakh
nashikh . . .]208
The tone of this declaration might be juxtaposed to Bely’s conviction, which
he expresses in an earlier article, “The Magic of Words,” that language is
creation. Indeed, in a biblical sense, where the Logos precedes Creation (“In
the Beginning was the Word . . .” (V nachale bylo Slovo . . .) (John 1:1), the
signifier brings the signified into being. Yet the divine creative power that
here declares “Thou—art” is the voice of the adult pseudoautobiographer
which still rings out from the foreword as the novel itself begins. Thus the es-
sential dividedness separating “I” and “thou,” adult and infant, self and other,
still remains, although the subject position has shifted, as evident in the
opening line “The first ‘thou—art’ grips me in imageless deliria”209 (Pervoe
“ty—esi” skhvatyvaet menia bezóbraznymi bredami).210 The statement about
the subject’s existence is made by another, and the self—“me” (menia)—is
a mere object of the verb that grips at it and pins it to a word—and, thus,
to existence. The language thus constructs the infant/child, who has been
occupied by the adult narrator, as an object of an action, of the voice that
141
declares it into existence. Here, however, the divine creative force with the
power to conjure a being into existence with a word is the adult author and
autobiographer, whose dominion over language and being is truly godlike. Is
the infant/child a true subject here, or merely subjugated by language and
occupied by an adult who usurps its voice? Is a dialogic relationship even
possible when such a basic inequality exists on either side of the mirror? For
one side has authority, authorial power, and voice and the other has voiceless
potentiality but is powerless to resist occupation by its speaking ‘other.’ This
puzzle remains in all infantile aesthetics.
The paradox of giving voice to the “unutterability”211 (neizrechen-
nost’) of the infant consciousness recurs throughout Kotik Letaev, such as
212
when the precocious child, whose rich interior world provides the material
for an entire novel, struggles to speak. The earliest occurrence of this theme
dramatizes this voiceless state.
That’s what the little child would have said if he could have spoken, if
he could have understood; but—he could not speak; and—he could not
understand; and—the little child cried out: why?—they were not under-
standing, they did not understand.”213
[Tak skazal by mladenets, esli by mog on skazat’, esli b mog on poniat’;

i—skazat’ on ne mog; i—poniat’ on ne mog; i—mladenets krichal: otchego,
— ne ponimali, ne poniali.]214
Bely’s portrayal of the tragic inability of the infant to communicate merits

comparison with that which Tolstoy depicts in his autobiographical frag-
ments, such as “Moia zhizn’ ” (“My Life”).215 Even in this way, then, do
modernist writers like Andrei Bely in their use of the infantile follow in the
footsteps of Tolstoy’s recognition of the plight of the voiceless child—and
Tolstoy’s attempt to reevaluate the terms in the hierarchy.
The deliberateness of Bely’s attempt to reverse the hierarchy that gov-
erns the relations of adult and child becomes evident near the end of the
novel when adults fail to access the rich contents of Kotik’s mind. Adults re-
gard the highly precocious Kotik, in their words, as “stupid” (glup), “a dunce”
(durachok), “always silent” (vse molchit), and “doesn’t have his own ideas”
(ne imeet suzhdenii svoikh), as they command ” say something” (skazhi chto-
nibud’) and ask “Why are you silent?”216 (Otchego ty molchish’?).217 In some
sense, the novel Kotik Letaev offers Bely’s retort to adult ignorance about
the inaccessible interiority of the child. Indeed, he does, in a manner without
precedent in world literature, give voice to the child’s consciousness and state
before language.
A certain duality and irreconcilable dividedness remain, however, in
this summation of a paradox that is the expression of infantile consciousness.
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Infant Eye
Even if Bely, echoing the ideas of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, seeks to describe
a time when there was there was “no division into I and Not-I, no space,
no time”218 or “ne bylo razdeleniia na ‘Ia’ i ‘ne—Ia’ ne bylo ni prostran-
stva, ni vremeni . . . , ”219 this dividedness remains inherent in the nature of
language itself (bound to space, time, and existence), not to mention in the
autobiographical duality of the infant/adult hybrid self. Similarly, a phrase
like “In that far-distant time ‘I’ didn’t exist . . .”220 or “V to dalekoe vremia ‘Ia’
ne byl . . .”221 is in itself impossible, since the subject is conjured into exis-
tence by the language that would negate it, as Bely himself argues in “The
Magic of Words.” The split and paradox already exist in the prison-house of
language and the opposing forces upon which Kotik will be crucified—at the
intersection of infant mind and adult language—are destined to prevail and
split him apart as he enters adult language.
We might recall here Bely’s self-consciousness of being born Na ru-
bezhe dvukh stoletii (On the Boundary of Two Centuries).222 He sees the fin
de siècle not as the intermingling or synthesis of two eras, but as a struggle
between warring forces.
In much we are incomprehensible, we children of the boundary; we are
not the “end” of one century, nor the “beginning” of a new one, but the
skirmish of two centuries in the soul; we are the scissors between cen-
turies. [Vo mnogom neponiatny my, deti rubezha; my ni “konets” veka,
ni “nachalo” novogo, a—skhvatka stoletii v dushe; my—nozhnitsy mezh
stolet’iami.]223
The violent image of these shears, which unite independently moving blades
and themselves have the power to cut, does not resolve these oppositions but
marks their violent coexistence. It seems Bely himself doubts whether there
can be a peaceful reconciliation between opposing forces in this inescapable
conflict, in the same way that his autobiographical and pseudoautobiographi-
cal selves undergo an inevitable crucifixion by forces, including language it-
self, that would, as if by Solomon’s judgment (1 Kings 3: 16–26), tear apart
the infant self. In fact, is it possible to achieve a true dialogue and interplay
between the adult self and infant other, who are divided by issues of power
and voice? Is language, by definition, incapable of pinning down the elusive
infant subject without eradicating or altering its essence? According to Bely
himself, the only hope for achieving such a symbolic synthesis and the height
of Symbolist theory and praxis lies in moments of poetic clairvoyance, when
the adult can “by other means” recover the infantile consciousness. Such a
moment is the novel Kotik Letaev, particularly its earliest portions, which
stage a reversal of the progress of time and provide the Symbolist prehistory
to the crucifixion, as Bely conceives of it, that is necessitated by the entrance
into language. It allows the adult to pass through a mirror-like surface to
143
approach and embrace his estranged infant ‘other’—or what actually proves
to be a mere reflection or projection of his own self.
Shklovsky’s interest in Bely’s novel in itself illustrates his own atten-
tion to the infantilist practice of the avant-garde in a far wider frame even
than the closely interlinked avant-garde actors who are the main subjects of
this book. Indeed, though his early career was squarely based in art, linguis-
tics, Futurism, and the avant-garde, Shklovsky’s mature theoretical attention
grows to encompass a far wider range of literary explorations of the infan-
tile—Cervantes, Sterne, Bely, Tolstoy, Gorky, to name only a few. Indeed, as
Shklovsky shows in the scope of his theoretical writings and insights, infantil-
ist aesthetics are limited neither to the avant-garde, Symbolism, metaphysical
poetry, twentieth-century literature, Bely, Gorky, or Tolstoy, nor to the pan-
theon of Russian writers; for the same interest in the naive perspective and
utilization of its defamiliarizing effects exist in writers of the entire Western
tradition and beyond.
In its very nature, the infantilist aesthetic is imperialist, as if when art-
ists, writers, and theorists trace things back to their earliest origins and strive
toward the earliest onset of memory, they hubristically aspire to find a to-
talizing universal experience in a dimunitive universe and the fundamental
basis of language and art. The search for the origins of language, art, and
consciousness and new perspectives that lead to rebirth and resurrection of
language and of art, whether undertaken by the avant-garde in its relentless
pursuit of the radically new and a space without precedents, or by any other
literary or artistic movement, consistently returns to humanity’s universal and
individual origin in infancy.
IN FA NT I L I S M I N S H KL O V S KY ’ S OW N W RI TI NGS
The significance of certain literary predecessors, particularly Laurence

Sterne and Leo Tolstoy, extends even beyond the development of Shklovsky’s
critical thought insofar as they also influence Shklovsky’s own style of fic-
tion. Resemblances to the rambling digressions and formal awareness of
Sterne and the jarring abruptness of Tolstoyan defamiliarization abound,
though Shklovsky also develops his own unique prose style characterized
by short segments, abrupt shifts, and unexpected transitions as evident,
aptly, in Knight’s Move. These provoke a state of defamiliarization in the
reader and even replicate the nature and effect of the infantile, despite their
self-conscious and laborious construction. Infantile moments abound in
Shklovsky’s memoir Third Factory (Tret’ia fabrika; 1926),224 which opens by
dwelling in the infantile sphere of a child’s toy,225 includes his remarks that,
for the infant, things are “completely perceptible” (oshchutima vsia),226 and
144
Infant Eye
contains a subsection entitled “Second Childhood (“Detstvo vtoroe”) that de-

picts his “reexperiencing” of the world from the infantile perspective. At one
point, in typical style, Shklovsky retells, “My son laughs. He laughed when
he saw a horse for the first time. He thought it was a joke that it was making
four legs and a long face.”227 The child reacts with laughter to the unfamiliar
form of the horse; unlike the habituated adult observer, he still sees the four
legs and long muzzle of the horse and finds them strange and comic. Like the
horse “Kholstomer” who defamilarized the world of men, here the child de-
familarizes even the horse. Thus, even in his autobiographical writing, does
Shklovsky display the interest in the child’s perceptions that underlies his
theoretical interest in the naive perspective.
Curious specimens of Shklovsky’s theoretical positions also occur
among Shklovsky’s writings for children. In fact, these late creative works for
children228 serve as an alternative expressive outlet for Shklovsky’s theoretical
ideas after he came under pressure and was forced to officially recant his
Formalist views in 1930.229 Here the strangeness and wonder of the infantile
viewpoint on the world coalesce with more theoretical ideas of defamiliariza-
tion and the naive perspective. In Shklovsky’s children’s stories, these ideas
find their embodiment in simpler metaphors that form a synecdoche for the
theoretical concepts they represent. Shklovsky’s key ideas related to infantile
perceptions, the naive perspective, and estrangement or defamiliarization
find a new life in literature for children and picturebooks for the very young,
such as when the writer uses the exiled perspective of a displaced ostrich to
speak about civil war in Nandu II (1928)230 or relates the infantile perceptions
of a confused puppy existentially overwhelmed by the world and its phe-
nomena in A Story About Shadows (Skazka o teniakh; 1931).231 Interestingly,
Shklovsky’s short and segmented prose with its abrupt and unexpected transi-
tions lends itself well to the absurd text and picturebook form; his trademark
prose style thus proves itself to be naive and infantile in essence. Upon close
examination, Shklovsky’s children’s books offer unexpected theoretical and
philosophical depth buried in Aesopian language.232
Shklovsky’s 1928 story “The Ostrich” (“Straus”), about an ostrich who
witnesses civil war, for instance, can be regarded in the context of Shklovsky’s
theoretical interest in the naive perspective and the infantilist aesthetic more
generally. Published under the title “Straus” in an early issue of the chil-
dren’s magazine Ezh (Hedgehog),233 this story also appeared as a separate
illustrated volume under the title Nandu II in the same year.234 (See figure
30.) The selection of an ostrich as protagonist, the main device in the story,
relates to the concept of estrangement, or ostranenie. If Shklovsky here ren-
ders the concept of ostranenie in a naive and hyper-intelligible manner, then
this is the result, in some part, of a censorship that restricts Shklovsky to
the simplest forms of expression. Like others subject to the infantilization
145
Figure 30. Cover of Nandu II, design by N. Tyrsa

for book by Viktor Shklovsky, 1928
Russian State Library, St. Petersburg, Russia. Used with permission of the Shklovsky estate.
that gradually befell all the Russian avant-garde fleeing from increasing cen-
sorship and political pressure to children’s literature, where greater crea-
tive freedom still existed, Shklovsky takes recourse in Aesopian language,
which cloaks sophisticated ideas in a naive surface that may innocuously pass
the censors unnoticed. Thus Shklovsky returns to the methods of some of
Tolstoy’s early defamiliarizing devices, including Enlightenment fables or di-
dactic children’s stories. Playing the part of an ostrich with his head in the
sand, the author explores an innocent medium as he expresses some of his
theoretical ideas in a different form.
The selection of an ostrich as the focal point of a detached account of
war places the locus of perspective in a naive observer in a way that defamil-
iarizes the actual subject. Recall how in the article “Art as Device,” Shklovsky
draws attention to the strangeness of war, to which humans, perhaps even
more strangely, become habituated. He writes, “Automatization devours . . .
the fear of war” (Avtomatizatsiia s’’edaet . . . strakh voiny).235 The needs of
child readers also motivates Shklovsky’s choice of protagonist, since the os-
trich’s limited understanding of the circumstances around him resembles
that of a child with regard to war, or of an infantile perspective with regard
to the world more generally. The narrative thrives on the duality created by
the tension between what the ostrich knows and does not know. The ostrich
146
Infant Eye
thus acts as a comically naive hero, not unlike a Don Quixote for children
in an animal form. Clearly Shklovsky’s decision to deliver an account of the
Civil War from the naive perspective of an ostrich draws from Tolstoy’s ear-
lier story “Kholstomer,” whose defamiliarizing effects Shklovsky subjected to
prolonged analysis in “Art as Device.”
Shklovsky’s story is set in the steppes below Melitopolis, the site of
altercations between the Whites and the Reds during the Civil War. As the
story begins, the reader encounters this new setting along with the hero who
has recently arrived from abroad. “When the ostrich arrived from Hamburg
to the steppes below Melitopolis, he was most of all surprised at the migra-
tory birds: they were there in countless numbers. If he had not been brought
here, he would not have come of his own will.”236 Like that of a travel ac-
count, this opening defines the protagonist as an exile. Like Shklovsky,
who lived abroad as an émigré in 1922 and 1923, the ostrich arrives from
Germany.237 Indeed, the comparison of exile and exotic animal is one
Shklovsky made before, namely, in the epistolary novel Zoo; Or, Letters Not
About Love (Zoo, ili pis’ma ne o liubvi; 1923) which he published while liv-
ing in emigration in Berlin.238 In “Pis’mo shestoe” (“Letter Six”) of this early
novel, which amounts to a symbolic account of the émigré experience,239
not to mention that of people imprisoned anywhere, the émigré protagonist
identifies with the monkey behind the bars of the cage.
The rest of the time the monkey climbs the bars of his cage, squinting at
the public. I am doubtful, do we have the right to hold this distant relative
of ours in prison without trial? And where is his consulate? The monkey
probably longs for the forest. Humans seem like evil spirits to him. And all
day this poor foreigner sits bored inside the Zoo.240
As the protagonist of the aptly named Zoo identifies with “this poor for-
eigner,” so Shklovsky positions the reader to identify with the ostrich who
will serve as the locus of perspective in Nandu II. This similarity reveals an
essential continuity between Shklovsky’s prose for adults and children, in
addition to apparent conceptual commonalities with his critical writings.
As the ostrich begins to feel the impact of war, the narrative expresses
these new observations from his uncomprehending and defamiliarized view-
point. For instance, hearing the sound of gunfire, Nandu’s reaction is to con-
fuse it with natural phenomena like thunder and lightning: “Meanwhile, in the
sky was thunder without lightning and rain. It simply rumbled on its own.”241
As he notes in the case of Tolstoy, Shklovsky uses names for things convention-
ally used for other things to defamiliarize what he is describing. His pseudo-
primitive formulation defamiliarizes gunfire and acts of war through a naive
focalizing consciousness by employing natural analogies to make something
fundamentally unnatural seem strange again. By the final sections of the story,
147
however, even the ostrich has become habituated to gunfire, just as Tolstoy
writes of the habituation to war, “Nandu II was not afraid of gunfire. He had
gotten used to it,” and then shifts away from the interior perspective of the
ostrich in an abrupt shift of tone with a comic effect: “And, moreover, his head
was very small.”242
Naive moments, however, such as the infantile ingestion of inappro-
priate objects and other examples of uncivilized ostrichry, form comic high
points in the story. For instance, the disruption in Nandu’s life caused by
the effects of the Civil War is best expressed by him roaming free and, like a
child gleefully disobeying his protectors, eating as many rocks and as much
garbage as he likes. “Nandu II walked around in the yard and took advantage
of the fact that there were now more stones and garbage on the roads in
the park. Nobody was watching over him and he gulped down stones to his
heart’s desire.”243 Resisting petrifaction, he certainly experiences the stoni-
ness of stones. The ostrich has an infantile response to the freedom allowed
by wartime disruptions and a revolutionary moment.
The comic conclusion of the story, and Nandu’s closest encounter with
history and important historical figures, is also related to the infantile theme
of indiscriminate ingestion. Having swallowed a soldier’s watch and an impor-
tant message, thereby interfering with history, the ostrich reacts innocently
with no comprehension of his crime: “The ostrich stood, blinking his pink
eyelashes.”244 After a chase, he escapes in a scene described in defamiliar-
izing prose characteristic of Shklovsky’s style but with a reversal: rather than
comparing the athlete to the ostrich, the ostrich is compared to the athlete.
“The ostrich ran quietly, his breathing inaudible. His eyes were calm. He ran
with free, gymnastic bounds, like a long-legged English athlete in running
shoes. And inside him ticked the clock.”245 Here the ostrich encounters the
war hero Budenny glorified by the story. Thus the naive perspective comes
face to face with history, uncomprehendingly, and provides a fresh and inno-
cent perspective on events and their implications. The ostrich’s innocent eye
yields a perspective that is simultaneously animal, naive, and infantile. Like
the clock in the belly of Captain Hook’s crocodile nemesis in Peter Pan or
the watch of the White Rabbit in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, time
here represents a defining symbol of adulthood. Though the adult’s subju-
gation by time is often mocked in children’s literature, clocks also act as an
involuntary reminder to the adult, who, like J. M. Barrie or Viktor Shklovsky,
flees time, reality, or censorship through a construct of the child or in chil-
dren’s literature, that the nostalgic return to Never Land is a mere illusion;
the clock continues to tick and the political time bomb and historical back-
drop remains.
While Shklovsky’s Civil War story about an ostrich uses a naive per-
148
Infant Eye
Figure 31. Cover of Skazka o teniakh (A Story About Shadows),

design by T. Lebedeva for book by Viktor Shklovsky, 1931
spective to illuminate something strange and unfamiliar to an audience of

school-aged children, a picturebook Shklovsky wrote a few years later em-
ploys a naive vantage point to address a still younger audience. Brightly illus-
trated by the artist T. Lebedeva (see figure 31), the rare picturebook A Story
About Shadows (Skazka o teniakh; 1931) treats the theme of the shadow
from a perspective accessible to even very young children. Both the book
itself and its intended audience are closer to the infant experience of the
world. Shklovsky again situates the narrative perspective in a naive animal in
A Story About Shadows, although in this case it resides in a puppy, an unini-
tiated young dog not yet experienced in worldly phenomena. Everything he
sees, he sees for the first time, and therefore interprets literally. The puppy’s
simplicity actually results in greater profundity as well, since the symbolism
and philosophical portent of the puppy’s ontological dilemmas attain exis-
tential proportions.
Shklovsky’s picturebook “story about shadows” takes as its subject a
“completely foolish puppy” (sovsem glupyi shchenok),246 who cannot even
remember his master’s last name (Shklovsky, we might suspect, based on
their resemblance). The story begins with a simple and abrupt tone typical of
avant-garde writing for children at this time.
149
On Alexandrovsky Alley there lived a completely foolish puppy. / . . . And

they called him Roshchik. / Roshchik’s Master was a writer, he had a wife
and three children. / Count them. / Roshchik couldn’t yet remember his
master’s last name. / Roshchik is three months old. / He’s a completely fool-
ish puppy.247
The verbal and visual presentation of the setting and characters of the pup-
py’s world, complete with a direct command to the child reader to count
them, concludes with a repetition of the statement that Roshchik is a com-
pletely foolish puppy. But this time the explanation for the puppy’s foolish-
ness has been provided; he is only three months old.
Thus, in actuality, the puppy merely proves to be naive, or “com-
pletely” (sovsem’) lacking in any experience of the world. Despite the out-
right pronouncement of the character’s foolishness, the story actually takes
as its subject a naive and infantile perspective, since an anthropomorphized
puppy represents an equivalent of the ‘infant/child.’ In this sense, this pic-
turebook for very young children also employs the naive perspective inher-
ent within Shklovsky’s theoretical concept of defamiliarization. Likewise, his
comparison of “the device of defamiliarization” to describing an object “as if
seen for the first time”248 applies to the experience of this “foolish” character.
Figure 32. Illustrations by T. Lebedeva for Skazka o teniakh

(A Story About Shadows)
150
Infant Eye
Figure 33. More illustrations by T. Lebedeva for Skazka o teniakh

(A Story About Shadows)
Completely lacking in experience or empirical knowledge, he sees everything

for the first time. All everyday occurrences are to him strange and unfamiliar
and the conflicts in the story arise from his attempts to understand worldly
phenomena from this naive perspective. He thus provides Shklovsky with
a useful vantage point from which to defamiliarize the subject of ‘shadows’
and play with absurd and existential interpretations of the puppy’s empirical
observations about shadows. (See figures 32 and 33.)
At first, the puppy’s foolishness is presented as ignorance and a para-
lyzing uncertainty about the unknown. The puppy is portrayed as so lacking
in knowledge that he does not know which paw he should lift first when it
is time to get up in the morning. He is so paralyzed by the overwhelming
array of possibilities (four) that he cannot move at all. “He is so silly that
in the morning he doesn’t know which paw to get up with. / With the right
front? Or the back left? / And he has four paws. / So he lay there until 12
o’clock pm, shuffling his paws.”249 Despite the appearance of comic simplic-
ity, the surface actually belies philosophical depth, for this absurd situation
amounts to a philosophical conundrum akin to Zeno’s paradox, which itself
is a logical puzzle and classic example of reductio ad absurdum. His problem
amounts to residing in the mind rather than the body and therefore being
paralyzed by indecision. In this way, Shklovsky’s story resembles the works of
151
contemporary avant-garde writers, such as those of OBERIU treated in the

next chapter, who take on existential themes through the guise of the absurd.
At the same time, the cognitive challenge it poses engages the child’s logic in
a participatory experience of the story and construction of its meaning, like
the invitation to count. The text thus empowers the child by the experience
of knowing more than the puppy and identifying the absurd.
While the story purports to treat the subject of shadows, time becomes
an increasingly prominent theme. Interestingly, the puppy himself acts as the
gnomon of a sundial.
Roshchik went to bed and fell asleep. / He woke up. / For people in the
city it was 4 o’clock. / Roshchik looked around, his shadow was very very
long, because the sun was low. / But Roshchik didn’t know this. He thought
he himself was that big. / “How big I am!” he says. / As if I’m not a puppy,
but a bear. / And how I am beautiful. / He lay and looked at his shadow.250
Seeing shadows “for the first time,” the puppy Roshchik interprets them quite
literally. He assumes an equivalent correspondence between an object and
its shadow. In an allusion to narcissism, the impressionable puppy admires
his own sizeable shadow. Lacking knowledge to draw upon, as if in Plato’s
cave, he bases his conclusions directly on his infantile perceptions or simple
empirical observations of the world. Though absurd from a sophisticated or
experienced point of view, the conclusions he draws are all eminently logi-
cal from the naive and limited perspective of innocence. He simply cannot
distinguish between the philosophical concepts of phenomena and noumena.
Through the puppy’s naive perspective, everyday encounters with an object
and its shadow and other evidence of movement or the passage of time are
defamiliarized, taken out of their everyday context, and singled out for philo-
sophical questioning. The puzzling phenomena provoke simple questions of
a Socratic nature, the childish form of wonder that leads toward philosophy.
In a way reminiscent of Kandinsky’s description of the child’s view of things,
Shklovsky here stages an entry into a naive vantage point.
The puppy’s literal interpretation of the phenomena he observes at
times results in existentially terrifying conclusions. Having concluded that
he is large since his shadow is large, Roshchik then must confront the situa-
tion where his shadow shrinks and disappears.
The sun rose. Roshchik’s shadow got shorter. . . . / “I’m so small!” says
Roshchik. / And the sun went still higher. / “I am no more,” said Roshchik. /
And if I am no more, then anyone can harm me; I’ll go and hide myself. /
He started to cry and hid himself. / He hid, hid, hid, peeked out, turned
over. / There’s a shadow already.251
On the one hand, the book illustrates how frightening the world appears
from the infantile or naive perspective that lacks familiarity with what it en-
152
Infant Eye
counters, has no empirically established expectations, and lacks the basic

conceptual framework to deal with new information and threats to its pre-
vious assumptions. Thus, in this infantile character’s existential confrontation
with the unknown, Shklovsky reveals other more paradoxical aspects of the
innocent eye, which he does not acknowledge in his theoretical work. After
all, the idealized innocence, inexperience, and ignorance of the infant eye
renders the world bewildering and overwhelming; the strange and unfamiliar
does not only provoke wonder, but also existential terror. The truly naive and
infantile subject actually seeks knowledge, experience, and understanding in
facing a strange and unfamiliar world, rather than celebrating ignorance and
fresh impressions. This book thus offers a critique of Shklovsky’s idealization
of the naive perspective.
The simplicity of the book’s form and the light comic touch belies its
serious existential themes. Such a statement as “I am no more” in fact hints at
the theme of self-obliteration that increasingly becomes part of the trajectory
of the avant-garde as well as the forcible infantilization of it. It also reflects
how the Formalist theorist himself, who had risen to his full powers and
proudly admired his large shadow, saw his reputation shrink away to nothing
and felt an existential threat. In this very period, Shklovsky was being pres-
sured to distance himself from his critical convictions. Like many others,
he responded by seeking refuge in children’s literature. This example re-
veals the paradoxical depths to be found in such simple forms of expression.
Here, as in much children’s literature written in this period, the text can
be read allegorically and found to contain subtle gradations of meaning and
Aesopian depths. The puppy’s narcissism and despair thus also might reflect
Shklovsky’s own experience during the fall from grace he experienced in the
same period that he turned to writing for children.
Despite its existential implications, the approach to cognitive develop-
ment in A Story About Shadows is unusually absurd and playful compared
to other writings for children by Shklovsky. This less serious tone might be
attributed to the spirit of the children’s journals Ezh (Hedgehog) and Chizh
(Siskin) and the influence of avant-garde writers who were major contribu-
tors at this time. Resemblances to cognitive and visual puzzles regularly fea-
tured in these magazines, for instance, hint at such an influence. Consider
the following cognitive challenge:
A cab was driving past. / “It would be great to ride a cab,” thinks Roshchik:
no need to sort out your paws. / I will sit on its shadow and have a ride. /
He ran up and sat. / The shadow went away. / He ran up again and sat. /
The shadow went away. / “Unlucky,” thinks Roshchik and went homeward
and out of this book. / This is the end.252
Here the narrative gently mocks the puppy that cannot distinguish between
objects and their projections and thus tries to ride on a shadow, viewing the
153
shadow, as does Peter Pan, as a material thing. Meanwhile, the child reader
is challenged to outwit him. After a curt and abrupt description of events,
a sudden metapoetic end grants the puppy an escape from the book that
is both material and immaterial. The unnecessary pronouncement that the
reader has reached the end of the story, “This is the end” (Zdes’ konets), also
reflects the tone of avant-garde contemporaries like Kharms, discussed in the
next chapter. Projected onto Shklovsky’s own experience, namely, his own
status as a fellow traveler of the avant-garde and its revolutionary aesthet-
ics and the abrupt end of his expressive possibilities as a Formalist theorist,
however, this statement becomes all the more symbolic. The avant-garde’s
aspirations and Shklovsky’s Formalist ambitions had disappeared, like a mere
shadow, from beneath his feet.
Indeed, once “Formalism” had come under pressure in the late 1920s,
Shklovsky invested his energies in areas like children’s literature, as did many
other prominent writers facing similar circumstances. Ideological pressure
and censorship thus marginalized and infantilized the avant- garde in its
practice and theory. Despite the sensitivity leading avant-garde figures like
Shklovsky had shown to the subject position of the child, the avant-garde was
itself radically infantilized. Forced underground, the avant-garde, like “the
knight” who is not free and “moves sideways, because the straight road is for-
bidden to him,” sought refuge among children. In a final “knight’s move” or
sdvig, children’s literature became the last bastion of the infantilist aesthetic
of the Russian avant-garde, but, as I argue in this book, the avant-garde was
infantile all along.
By this point, when the truly infantile met the infantilist, the avant-
garde’s use of infancy as device found unexpected outlets. Still, the confron-
tation between the theoretical construct of the child and the implied readers
who were the audience of these picturebooks also highlights how artificial
and detached from reality are the theoretical formulations of the Formalists.
For the infant does not revel in the unspeaking state and the child does not
celebrate the strangeness of the naive perspective; rather, the child seeks a
voice and knowledge of the world to combat the fear of the unknown. This
highlights how the trajectory of infantilism, which seeks to reverse time and
return to an idealized state of infancy or childhood, actually proves to be
nostalgic and ultimately quixotic. The construction of the child in Russian
Formalism does not do justice to the child, or to the child’s own goals and
trajectory; rather, like all primitivisms, it merely projects a reflection of the
self in the space where that strange voiceless ‘other’ is purported to be.
Yet, at the same time, the accomplishment of the infantilist aesthetic
is real in the sense that, out of an interest in infancy as device, has arisen a
recognition of the infantile subject as such. The Formalist privileging of the
naive perspective, and concomitant desire to occupy the infantile subject
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Infant Eye
position, though in itself impossible and to a certain extent suspect as the

colonization of a strange ‘other,’ still marks significant movement along the
continuum from infantile primitivism toward an infantilist aesthetic insofar
as it posits the possibility of an infant subject. Though the ‘infant/child’ does
not achieve voice and is not granted subjectivity, since an artificial re-creation
could never realize such a feat, the infantile aesthetic of Russian Formalist
theory does move the avant-garde construction of the ‘infant/child’ signifi-
cantly along a trajectory from voicelessness to voice and from objecthood to
subjecthood. As typical of the avant-garde, an infantile model—in this case
infancy as a device of strategic dislocation and the paradoxically penetrating
naïveté of the infant eye—becomes enshrined as an absolute and totalizing
standard for all art and criticism.
155
Chapter Four
Infant Mind: Daniil Kharms, Childish Alogism,

and OBERIU Literature of the Absurd
“I spent four months in the incubator. I
remember only that the incubator was made
of glass, transparent, and had a thermometer.
I sat inside the incubator on cotton wool. I
remember no more than that.”
—Daniil Kharms, “Incubation Period”
IF HENRI BERGSON first links laughter and the comic to “a

revival of the sensations of childhood,”1 then Sigmund Freud pushes this
thought to its logical conclusion when he links the comic to the infantile state
of mind. In Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious (1905), Freud traces
the development of wit to the impulse “to elude reason” and “substitute
for the adult an infantile state of mind,”2 while in his theoretical discussion
of “The Infantile and the Comic,” he defines the comic as “the awakening of
the infantile” or the “regaining of ‘lost infantile laughing.’ ”3 Nowhere could
such a bond between comic laughter and the infantile, and against the rule
of reason, be more evident than in the absurdist literature of the Russian
poet and prose writer Daniil Kharms (1905–1942). (See figure 34.) For the
writings of this late avant-garde writer exhibit an infantile defiance of adult
reason that employs childish alogism to comic effect.4 Whether writing for
children or for adults, Kharms authors infant nonsense populated by infants
and children, pervaded by infantile play and humor, and influenced by chil-
dren’s logic and lore. Thus giving voice to the infantile under the guise of
the comic and through metatextual play, Kharms advances the infantilism
of the avant-garde to the level of an ‘infantilist’ aesthetic. His darkly comic
prose also contains existential and ethical dimensions; by writing the infan-
tile, Kharm grants voice to the un-speaking subject who heretofore has re-
mained voiceless. The paradox remains, however, since, as Jakovljevic says,
“infancy can’t be remembered, only figured. Itself mute, the infant is given to
language. Once it acquires language, it can’t speak its muteness.”5 Like Bely,
Kharms remains trapped in the infantilist paradox.
In the prose fragment “Incubation Period” (“Inkubatornyi period”;
156
Infant Mind
Figure 34. Photograph of Daniil Iuvachev Kharms, by Levitskii, 1906

Published in Marina Durnovo, Moi muzh Daniil Kharms, ed. Vladimir Glotser
(Moscow: B.S.G. Press, 2000). Personal archive of Vladimir Glotser;
used with permission of the publisher.
1935) quoted above, Kharms makes the ludicrous claim that he remembers
the view he saw as a premature infant confined to an incubator for the first
four months of his life.6 This patently absurd account of preternatural mem-
ory and precocious self-awareness counters the widespread and widely docu-
mented psychological phenomenon of infantile amnesia,7 and instead en-
dows the premature infant with awareness, thought, and memory. As a result,
it evokes an image of a self-aware homunculus held captive in an incubator,
or an adult mind in an infant body. In this and the other supposedly auto-
biographical fragment that precedes it, the narrative substitutes the infantile
for the adult and the adult for the infantile. Forced by the narrative into
experiencing this jarring substitution, the reader faces a comic disjuncture
that revives “lost infantile laughing,” to borrow the words of Freud written
thirty years before.
In this sense we see that the workings of Kharmsian humor accord with
the views on the comic and infantile represented by his contempories Henri
157
Bergson and Sigmund Freud. Kharms’s aesthetic devotion to pleasure and

play with respect to language and logic, as well as his comic usage of repe-
tition and inversion, seem distinctly Bergsonian,8 while the darker features
of Kharmsian humor evoke the theories of Freud. Freud makes a similar
distinction, though he oversimplifies Bergson.
If we still continue with our attempt to find the nature of the comic in the
foreconscious association of the infantile, we have to go a step further than
Bergson and admit that the comparison resulting in the comic need not
necessarily awake old childish pleasure and play, but that it is enough if it
touches childish nature in general, perhaps even childish pain.9
Indeed, the dark humor and comic cruelty of Kharmsian prose writings do
conjure childish pain; the laughter they provoke often verges on Schaden-
freude or slapstick humor. In this respect they resemble the casual cruelty of
child lore, the uncensored form created by children themselves, and stand
in contrast to the Tolstoyan child.10 Kharms often employs naively vulgar
and scatological jokes, which are also typical of infantile humor and aim to
provoke childish embarrassment.11 Comic embarrassment, in which Freud
claimed “we feel again the helplessness of the child,”12 proves a central
mechanism for Kharmsian comedy, itself highly attuned to the powerless-
ness of the child.
The clear confines of the game, which label it as unserious—“this is
play”13—help to limit emotional response and maintain a certain distance,
aiding the comic effect, since, as Bergson claimed, “laughter has no greater
foe than emotion.”14 However, if the reader admits its deeper implications,
another layer of meaning appears and reveals that this laughter is not with-
out its ethical correlative and, in the writings of Kharms, the infantile sub-
ject serves as one persistent key to these ethical dimensions. The infantile
represents not only a source of laughter and the comic; the ‘infant/child’
also serves as a symbolic victim with the potential to reveal the ethical and
existential implications of the text. Issues of power related to the marginal
position of the ‘infant/child’ prove prevalent on deeper levels of the text.
This chapter traces how the authorship of Daniil Kharms seeks to grant voice
and agency to the ‘infant/child’ even as it enters into a playful simulation of
infantile cognition.
MULT I L AY ER ED A D D R ES S
In the absurd writings of Daniil Kharms, an initial resistance to interpretation

subsequently yields to interpretive riches that demand the engagement and
participation of the sophisticated interpreter in the construction of meaning.
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Infant Mind
Such an ambivalence characterizes the profound simplicity that represents

the achievement of the infantilist aesthetic of the Russian avant-garde. The
practice of infantile primitivism has resulted in a simplification of means that
first problematizes the relations of signifier and signified and then liberates
the signifying process from the need for resolute meaning. The absurd alo-
gism of Kharms takes this to the next level, since the divide between signifier
and signified is no longer at the level of the word, but on the level of plot or
the expectations of logic and causality. The formally simplified and abstracted
artistic work presents a minimalist surface that belies the interpretive depths
and disruptive revolutionary implications of its art. Through recourse to
Aesopian language as an evasive manuever,15 the avant-garde aesthetic now
goes underground. The surface has the potential to deflect the obtuse censor
and invites the child reader to appreciate the pleasure of the text, while the
production of meaning on a deeper level depends on the sophistication and
active participation of a savvy reader, who can decipher the “sense in non-
sense,” to borrow Freud’s phrase.16
Interestingly, the recourse to multivalent Aesopian language resembles
what has been theorized in children’s literature research as “dual address.”17
Like censored writing, children’s literature always must address a dual audi-
ence comprised of both children and the adults who must be appeased in
order to gain audience with children. A similar situation and imbalance of
power provokes both types of stylistic ambivalence. On one level the text, by
necessity, must address the hegemony that exerts authority and a censoring
influence, while the other level is reserved for the initiated few, who read
the text in part for its subversive implications. In the case of Soviet children’s
literature, twice as many levels of address may occur. The oppositional nature
of these levels also resembles the formulations of Freud, when he acknowl-
edges the forces of play, nonsense, and absurdity in opposition to the censor-
ing influence of critical reason or logic. Facing societal repression, Kharms
writes in a way that indeed demonstrates Freud’s idea of “the use of absurdity
as a restorer of old liberties.”18 For Kharms, the child at once symbolizes the
supreme vulnerability of victimhood, as shown in his writings for adults, and
the revolutionary and liberating forces of play, active agency, and a voice of
protest, as demonstrated in his writings for children.
For Kharms the ‘infant/child’ thus amounts to a source of laughter,
a symbolic victim, and a liberated form of discourse. As we shall see, the
‘infant/child’ also represents a strange other,19 and an estranged perspective
ideal for the production of nonsense, trans-sense, and the absurd. Indeed,
the literature of Kharms offers an early contribution to the wider tradition
of the absurd, all too rarely recognized in Western criticism. Significant
points of contact exist, however. For instance, in his seminal study of The
Theatre of the Absurd20 in the Western context, Martin Esslin links the ab-
159
surd to the nonsense tradition and the nursery rhymes and lore of children
in a way equally apt for analysis of the earlier writer Kharms. Esslin argues
that nonsense tries to “burst the bounds of logic and language” and batter
at the enclosure around “the human condition itself,”21 and, like Freud,
he identifies the “liberating effect” of nonsense, since it opens up “vistas
of freedom from logic and cramping convention.”22 In the Russian context,
however, this protest is not merely an existentialist issue, but an actual re-
taliation against the great pressures coming to bear upon Kharms and other
imperiled writers of the late avant-garde. In the 1930s the consolidation of
Soviet power extended its reach to literature and the arts and, as Socialist
Realism became official doctrine in 1932, the avant-garde was increasingly
imperiled, both aesthetically and physically, as the Stalinist purges took hold
and intellectuals, writers, and artists began to be intimidated, imprisoned,
and killed. By this time, members of the avant-garde knew their days were
numbered. Unbeknownst to them, the NKVD, the precursor to the KGB,
had collected the only anthology of the works of Kharms and his colleagues
in “Case P-81210, Volume 2,” which bore the subtitle “The Collection of
Counter-Revolutionary Works of the Illegal Anti-Soviet Group of Children’s
Writers.”23 As the NKVD recognized, the subversive potential of the absurd
provided a voice of protest for the voiceless.
Previous scholarship has established the close relationship of Kharms
and his fellow OBERIU (Association for Real Art) writers to the earlier stages
of the avant-garde24 and sought to situate Kharms in the context of absurd-
ism, whether in the Russian tradition,25 from a philosophical perspective,26 or
in comparison with Western works.27 With the notable exception of Thomas
Grob’s extensive and wide-ranging German monograph, Daniil Charms’
unkindliche Kindlichkeit (1994), however, only sporadic attention has been
given to the infantile aspect of his authorship,28 particularly in ways that re-
late his writings for adults and his writings for children; although, as many
have noted, no fundamental differences exist between Kharms’s writings for
adults and children, nor, for that matter, between his writings for an audi-
ence and for himself. In Daniil Kharms: Writing and the Event, Branislav
Jakovljevic devotes several pages to the subject of infancy/birth and to the
study of children’s literature by Kharms and remarks that the “avant-garde
renewal of verbal (and not only verbal) expression was marked by an ana-
lytic movement that was often recognized as a regression to infantilism and
primitivism.”29 Importantly, however, Kharms’s usage of the infantile makes
it possible to link his writings to earlier avant-garde practice and thereby gain
important insights into the origins of his absurdism. I intend here to build
upon the work of these scholars, who establish the status of Kharms with
respect to his avant-garde predecessors, prove that he ought to be regarded
within the larger context of the absurd, and first draw attention to the infan-
160
Infant Mind
tile mode in his work.30 The present study aims to delve more deeply into the
manifestations and significance of the Kharmsian infantile and argue for its
centrality as part of a synthetic understanding of Kharms in the avant-garde
and international contexts.
The existential dimension of the Kharmsian absurd amounts to a pro-
test against the confines, not only of logic, but also of post-revolutionary
Soviet civilization closing in upon the last expressions of the revolutionary
avant-garde. Kharms finds in the infantile and childish, not to mention in
literature for children, a comparative freedom of expression. Within an aes-
thetic based on the childish and the infantile, Kharms voices a protest for the
powerless veiled in the appearance of comic frivolity. Part of the subversive
element in the literature of Kharms derives from the tonality of oral culture,
including child lore and other oral forms of comedy, such as “anegdotes” or
“epigarms” [sic] in the writer’s own distorted spellings.31
Though the increasingly repressive situation surrounding the avant-
garde continually reduces its opportunities and forces it further underground,
Kharms finds comic license in the infantile. This is not to say, however, that
he finds refuge in infantilism as a last resort. As I have argued throughout this
study of the development of the infantilist aesthetic, the practice of infantil-
ism was part of the avant-garde aesthetic from its beginnings. At this late
stage, however, as the avant-garde faced increasing pressure, Kharms em-
ploys a construct of the ‘infant/child’ as strange other in order to strike back
against the restrictive pressures of language and logic, critical reason, and the
forces that would censor the playful experiment and free expression of the
avant-garde. Through absurdity accomplished by childish alogism, Kharms
partakes in what Esslin calls the “ ‘anti-literary’ movement of our time.”32 He
subverts language, logic, and the construction of meaning in a grand finale of
Russian avant-garde aesthetics.33
RH E TOR I C S U R R O U NDI NG T HE ‘ CH I L D ’
The prominent, albeit negative, role that children play in Kharmsian rhetoric
paradoxically serves to underscore their significance in his aesthetic universe.
In a provocative fashion typical of avant-gardists in this period, Kharms pro-
fessed to feel dislike or downright hatred for children. This despite or per-
haps precisely because of the fact that he was known to his contemporaries
largely as a writer for children. His rhetoric of paedophobia counters the cult
of childhood holding sway in Russian literature, art, and culture, from the
writings of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to the infantilism of the Russian avant-
garde explored in this study. In fact, Tolstoy’s legacy may serve as the polemi-
cal counterpoint for Kharms’s outrageous statements, such as when Kharms
161
attacks the puerile and the senile—“I do not love children, old men, old
women, or the prudent elderly”—or declares: “To poison children would be
cruel. But, honestly, something has got to be done with them!”34 Branislav
Jakovljevic summarizes and condenses such statements by Kharms as follows:
In Kharms’s works we find children who burn and fly into the sky . . .
they are thrown into a cesspit and then splashed with quicklime; they are
sprayed with turpentine and nitric acid; they are torn apart by mad dogs;
they break their skinny legs; they are poisoned, calcified, and deemed
worse than corpses; they are considered disgusting when they play; they
are screaming and scabby; a newborn has a watch dial instead of eyes; a
child falls from a bench and breaks both jaws, another is beaten with a tub,
and yet another has its face rubbed against a brick wall; a young boy eats
filth from a spittoon; the rat is considered a useful animal because it bites
infants in their cradles.35
Dark humor pervades these expressions of paedophobia. On the one hand,
they represent rhetorical provocations intended to counter the prevailing
cult of childhood, but at the same time, these statements by Kharms betray
his own fixation on the child, regardless of its valence, or basis in sympathy
or antipathy. The focus on one’s earliest origins in infancy amounts to an anti-
existential impulse toward regressive self-annihilation, just as in Kharms’s
own words “an inclination toward children is almost the same as an inclina-
tion toward the embryo, and inclination toward the embryo is almost the
same as an inclination toward excrement.”36 If infancy for Kharms represents
self-annihilation, then this explains both his irresistible if involuntary attrac-
tion to the subject and his antipathy.
Indeed, the existentially marginal subjects he purportedly hates—chil-
dren, old men, and old women—serve as some of the most typical dramatic
subjects in the Kharmsian text.37 Though the senile, puerile, and infantile
form the fodder for cruel comedy, an underlying sympathy for their irrel-
evance, vulnerability, and powerlessness also predetermines their place as
the symbolic victims in his writings. As Jakovljevic observes, “Animals, chil-
dren, and the elderly are relegated to the weak side. Helpless and speech-
less, they all reside at the border of the livable. The granular self is mute and
defenseless.”38 Similarly, Daniil Kharms’s personal battles with impotence,
censorship, and writer’s block present an extreme symbolic contrast to Leo
Tolstoy’s fecundity, authority, and prolific authorship. His lack of voice and
power leaves him closer to the situation of the ‘infant/child’ than Tolstoy, who
claimed to speak as the advocate of the powerless from a powerful position
of entitlement. As a writer, the author of prolix and weighty epic works in
some sense also represents the polar opposite of Kharms’s terse comic min-
iatures. To the nihilistic writer of anti-literature, Tolstoy is the anti-Kharms,
and Kharms the anti-Tolstoy.
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Infant Mind
Kharms certainly revolts against the pedagogical didacticism of Tolstoy

in the sphere of children’s literature. Kharms’s own writings for children reject
the moral, didactic, and edifying and stand in contrast to Tolstoy’s didactic
aim and moral impulse. His anti-pedagogical stance instead resembles the
subversive impulse of children’s own lore. In this way, Kharms, despite his
rhetoric of hatred for the child, supports the subversive elements of children’s
own culture instead of an idealized construct of the child, such as that put
forth by Tolstoy in the nineteenth century. Not unlike Mayakovsky, another
eccentric avant-garde figure who wrote poetic lines about watching children
dying but also wrote several books for children,39 Kharms himself resembled
an overgrown child, as many of his contemporaries remarked.40 Iakov Druskin
recalls how Kharms reacted during an encounter with actual children.
When Kharms and I were walking one sunny day past the Greek church,
two boys aged about eight or ten were sitting on the church porch; they
were well-dressed in velvet jackets and were very seriously burning holes
in their jackets with a magnifying glass. Kharms was very taken with this
scene and he said, “Although I don’t like children, I am quite struck by
these boys.”41
This interaction reveals that Kharms in fact had a certain respect for the
unconventional, irrational, and even self-destructive behavior of some chil-
dren, namely, mischievous ones. Druskin adds his own opinion on the matter,
“When he performed with Vvedensky, or with Oleinikov, he used to go down
marvelously with the children. He could scarcely have managed this if he had
hated all children.”42
For these reasons, Kharms’s professed hatred for children must be re-
garded as inflammatory rhetoric and a deliberate provocation. It also repre-
sents a backlash against an overdetermined cult of childhood in his time that
he ascribes to the influence of Tolstoy. The polemical context of Kharms’s
rejection of traditional constructions of childhood becomes especially appar-
ent in prose miniatures and literary anecdotes that stage a comic confronta-
tion with the Tolstoyan legacy. In the story “The Fate of a Professor’s Wife
(“Sud’ba zheny professora”; 1936), Tolstoy appears in a dream and is made
ridiculous by brandishing a chamber pot with infantile pride, proclaiming
“Look what I’ve done,” and seeking to show it to all the world.43 Kharms
thus reduces Tolstoy’s legacy to a most infantile accomplishment and egotis-
tical sense of pride and, literally, to excrement. After a nod to Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and his legacy, Kharms also takes up the issue of swaddling, a sym-
bol of radical disempowerment that moved Rousseau and Tolstoy to pas-
sions,44 and later were alleged to affect all of Russia’s people according to
so-called psychohistory.45 Kharms’s position is still more extreme: “About
children I know for certain that they do not need to be swaddled at all; they
need to be annihilated” (O detiakh ia tochno znaiu, chto ikh ne nado vovse
163
pelenat’, ikh nado unichtozhat’).46 For this purpose he suggests the construc-
tion of a central pit into which he would throw all the children (brosal by
tuda detei) and then further elaborates on how he would do away with all
children. Here Kharms enters the debate over swaddling brought into the
Russian context from Rousseau by Tolstoy and, subverting all expectation, re-
duces it to absurdity by dramatically changing the stakes from issues of voice
and power to the question of existence itself. Each of these prose pieces
employs typically Kharmsian reductio ad absurdum for a comic effect while
simultaneously leveling a blow at Kharms’s venerated predecessor. Such
mockery of Tolstoy’s infantile qualities and impassioned interests positions
Kharms against the tradition of child worship that originates with Tolstoy and
against the cult of the child in which the avant-garde also partook.
Like Kharms’s polemical stance and comic parody of Tolstoy, this
rhetoric surrounding children seems to indicate that Kharms acknowledges
the tradition that precedes him, notes the constructedness of notions of
the ‘child,’ and engages in a subversive battle against these conventions.
Moreover, it alerts us to the fact that his own writings challenge established
constructs of the ‘infant/child,’ as he depicts everything from the Tolstoyan
pedagogical devotion to children to the Mayakovskian paedophobia that
would make children into victims. Under the umbrella of comic absurdism,
Kharms secures poetic license to explore the construction of the ‘infant/child’
and negotiate the child’s ambivalent position as helpless object or active
subject. His interest in the child also involves more dramatic and totalizing
stakes, like those now facing the avant-garde, such as nonexistence, death,
and annihilation.
C ON CR ET ENES S A ND CO G NI T I ON
Despite his claimed antipathy toward children, Daniil Kharms and his col-
league Aleksandr Vvedensky and other writers of the avant-garde group
OBERIU, or the Association for Real Art (Ob’’edinenie real’nogo iskusstva),
met with great success as children’s writers. I would argue that this suc-
cess derived in part from a fortuitous alignment of the artistic principles of
OBERIU with those underlying children’s own lore, as well as their similarity
to the logical and cognitive play of children. Based in Leningrad, OBERIU,
which was active from 1927 to 1930, had arisen as a result of efforts by
Kharms and Vvedensky to unify the Leningrad literary and artistic avant-
garde. After their January 1928 debut with “Three Left Hours” (“Tri levykh
chasov”) at the House of the Press (Dom pechati), and a collection called
Archimedes’ Bath (Vanna Arkhimeda), planned in 1929 but never realized,47
many of the members of OBERIU found their only publication outlet in chil-
164
Infant Mind
dren’s literature. In addition to Kharms and Vvedensky, Nikolai Zabolotsky,

Nikolai Oleinikov, and Yuri Vladimirov successfully reapplied their OBERIU
principles in this new sphere.
The poets of OBERIU called themselves “poets of a new world per-
ception [mirooshchushcheniia] and a new art” and claimed, “We are the cre-
ators not only of new poetic language, but also the founders of a new sen-
sation of life and its objects.”48 They outlined a path to this new language
and sensation of the world through the concrete object and therefore called
themselves “people of the concrete world, object, and word.”49 Their claim
to answer the real demand of their times serves to justify the name they give
to themselves.50 The aesthetic principles outlined by OBERIU in their mani-
festoes and statements oppose contemporary pressure to create comprehen-
sible art. The “OBERIU Declaration” revolts against such a prescriptive ap-
proach: “The demand for universally understandable art accessible in its form
even to a country schoolboy—we welcome, but the demand for only such art
leads into a labyrinth of most terrible mistakes.”51 Here OBERIU posits a
child, a country schoolboy not unlike Tolstoy’s idealized student/teacher, as
a touchstone for understandable and accessible art, even while it bristles at
any restrictions on its own creative possibilities. Such demands contradict the
goals of OBERIU, which buries meaning more deeply in sounds and symbols
and represents concrete reality through the absurd. “In our art we are widen-
ing and deepening the meaning of the object and the word [smysl predmeta i
slova], but do not in any way destroy it.”52 Such demands are anathema to the
group’s aesthetics, since it, like the avant-garde generally, seeks to challenge
interpretation, now on a deeper, cognitive level.
The manifesto also takes issue with current proponents of a trans-sense
poetry, and those who would link it to OBERIU. In a typical show of anxi-
ety of influence, they declare, “There is no school more hostile to us than
zaum’ ” (Net shkoly bolee vrazhdebnoi nam, chem zaum’).53 In truth, however,
OBERIU leaders Kharms and Vvedensky had both participated in the circle
of Zaumnik (Trans-Sensist) poets headed by Aleksandr Tufanov.54 Likewise,
much of their artistic practice, such as instances of nonsensical language, de-
fiance of convention and expectation, and alogism itself, clearly draws on the
earlier trans-sense (zaum’) experiments of Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir
Khlebnikov, but takes them to the next level. The title of Kharms’s children’s
poem “Zaumnaia pesenka” (“Trans-Sense Ditty”), for example, shows how
avant-garde principles enter into his work, even when writing for children.
These polemics with predecessors and inimical forces, which are highly
characteristic of the avant-garde, from its inflammatory rhetoric and earliest
manifestoes, help OBERIU to clarify and articulate its own principles, while
blowing dust in the face of anyone trying to trace their lineage. The newly
created leftist group celebrates concreteness:
165
The concrete object [konkretnyi predmet], purified of its literary and

everyday husk, is made the property of art. In poetry the conflict of verbal
meanings [stolknovenie slovesnykh smyslov] expresses the object with the
exactitude of mechanics. It’s as if you begin to retort that this is not that
object which you see in life? Approach it a bit closer and touch it with your
fingers. Look at the object with your naked eyes [golymi glazami] and you
will see it for the first time [vpervye], purged of ancient literary gilt.55
Concepts like “naked eyes,” seeing something “for the first time,” and “purged
of ancient literary gilt” demonstrate OBERIU’s close relationship with For-
malist theory, the innocent eye, and restoring infantile perception, in a
sense. At its conclusion, this assertion of the illogical resembles a defiant
Dostoevskian celebration of the freedom to be irrational. For OBERIU, it
leads to a defense of deviant logic.
Maybe you will claim that our topics are “un-real” and “il-logical” [‘ne-
real’nyi’ i ‘ne-logichny’]? Well, who said that ‘worldly’ logic [‘zhiteiskaia’
logika] is obligatory for art? . . . Art has its own logic, and it does not de-
stroy the object, but helps it to be known. [U iskusstva svoia logika, i ona
ne razrushaet predmet, no pomogaet ego poznat’.]56
In this way OBERIU asserts the independence of art and its internal logic.
These writers argue that, though alogism may seem to destroy the object, it
actually helps the object to be known.
The desire to make the object known, rather than merely recognized,
again recalls the Formalist principles of Viktor Shklovsky, just as the aim
of “widening and deepening meaning” instead of making art transparent
and understandable seems consonant with the Formalist principle of “za-
trudnenie,” or “making difficult.” Likewise, the concept of purification from
a “literary and everyday husk” recalls the struggle against habituation in
Shklovsky’s Formalist theory, just as an idealization of the naive perspec-
tive appears in OBERIU’s desire to see the object with naked eyes as if
for the first time. Nevertheless, the late avant-garde group elaborates its
own version of the avant-garde path when it emphasizes the concreteness of
objects.57 Seeking a basis in tangible properties sensible when one palpates
an object experimentally, OBERIU incorporates the role of empirical ob-
servation and a physical experience of the world in a way akin to the child’s
perceptual experience of the world in its more concrete stages of cognitive
development.
The “OBERIU Declaration” espouses the conscious juxtaposition of
contradictory elements through its ideas regarding “the conflict of verbal
meanings” and alogism. The assertion of a different and less mundane logic
166
Infant Mind
and reality and defiance of expectations also proves akin to the Western liter-
ary traditions of nonsense and alogism, particularly Edward Lear and Lewis
Carroll.58 For OBERIU, such disruption of patterns and logic prove ideally
suited for the construction of logical and literary puzzles for an audience
of children, and for encoding multiple layers of meaning in the text. As the
place of nonsense and alogism in the history of children’s literature might
indicate, disruptions of narrative expectation engage the child reader in a
playful dialogue with the text attuned to the developmental level of younger
children, particularly in the areas of logic and cognition.
Indeed, scholars of educational psychology and cognitive development,
like Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, argue that children proceed through dis-
crete stages of development in thought as well as language. According to
Piaget, the advance from one stage to the next occurs once the child has
reached a stage of cognitive maturity and undergoes a period of disequilib-
rium, where earlier beliefs are challenged and replaced by a more sophisti-
cated framework for understanding. A period of disequilibrium thus marks
the transition from one stage to the next, such as from the pre-operational
period of the young child to the concrete operational stage of the older
child.59 Though Piaget’s rigidly structural approach to development has been
critiqued, including by Vygotsky, the capabilities and inabilities associated
with early stages, such as the concrete operational, align with the emphasis
on concrete objects espoused by OBERIU. Likewise, Piaget’s idea of dis-
equilibrium might be compared to the cognitive challenges produced by the
practice of alogism in OBERIU absurdism.
The early work of Piaget also dwells upon the pre-logical world of the
child. In 1923 Piaget planned to write four books, a two-part series, Studies
in Child Logic, of which The Language and Thought of the Child (1923)
was to be the first volume and Logic and Reasoning in the Child (1924) the
second. These then were to be followed by a two-part work analyzing cau-
sality and the function of reality in the child. Instead, Piaget found himself
fascinated by the pre-logical child rather than children’s logic and, like many
avant-garde figures under discussion here, moved further back toward in-
fancy in a search for origins.60 Only in the 1930s did he return to his focus
on child logic and enter into a more rigid structural phase, which radically
incubates infancy and childhood from adulthood according to scientific laws.
Thus Piaget’s own work and interests betray a fascination for the child’s lim-
ited framework for logical understanding. Indeed, the young child’s rudimen-
tary logic, or lack thereof, resembles the deliberate choice by OBERIU to
eschew the principles of “worldly logic.” The absurd alogism of OBERIU
represents a protest against the deterministic principles of philosophy,
science, history, and politics as it takes refuge in infantile logic.
167
In an introduction to selected short pieces by Kharms for children and

adults, Viktor Shklovsky remarks on the alternative logic of children and poets.
Children and poets love to ask the question “Why?” The world is connected
not only by causal connections—it is connected by habitual connections.
Things, variously appearing and found nearby appear to be logical. But
poets and children see it otherwise. [Deti i poety liubiat zadavat’ vopros
‘pochemu?’ Mir sviazan ne tol’ko prichinnymi sviazami—on sviazan
privychnymi sviazami. Veshchi, razno voznikshie i okazavshiesia riadom,
kazhutsia logichnymi. No deti i poety vidiat ikh inache.]61
Thus equating poets and children through their alternative logic, Shklovsky
observes that Kharmsian and childish alogism provide an alternative way
to approach the world—“a model of a new way of perceiving the world”
(model’iu novogo vospriiatiia mira).62 Childish alogism thus leads to a new
approach to perception and cognition.
At the same time, OBERIU writings demonstrate striking deviations
from the model of cognitive development described by Piaget. In his discus-
sion of the infantile universe in “The Construction of Reality in the Child”
(1937), Piaget describes the understanding of the world acquired by the child
through cognitive development.
A world composed of permanent objects constitutes . . . a spatial universe
obeying the principle of causality . . . without continuous annihilations or
resurrections. Hence it is a universe both stable and external, relatively dis-
tinct from the internal world and one in which the subject places himself
as one particular term among all the other terms.63
Such a spatially and causally bound universe stands in diametric opposition
to the unstable reality rendered by Kharms in his own absurdist writings,
which are rife with alogism. In this way, Kharms may be seen to describe
an infantile world before these categories and physical and causal laws find
universal application. Kharms subversively rejects the structure of cognitive
development or the rhetoric of pedagogical progress and instead celebrates
pre-logical cognition, which exists outside of the political calculus and, in
fact, throws a wrench into its works.
The work of Piaget was well known in Russia, as evidenced by the
thorough analysis and critique of “Piaget’s Theory of the Child’s Speech
and Thought” (1934) mounted by the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky.64
Vygotsky regards cognitive development within a social framework and rec-
ognizes the scaffolding that the expert offers the apprentice. His notion of
“the zone of proximal development,” which provides an ideal framework for
the child to accomplish a cognitive leap, resembles the structured play and
challenge of OBERIU aesthetics. These often present a cognitive puzzle that
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Infant Mind
demands the interaction of the child reader and which might be paralleled to
the provocation and interpretive challenge the text poses for the adult reader.
By fostering play and subverting causality, OBERIU engages in a disruptive
paidia alternative to the state’s developmental strategy.
Importantly, Vygotsky defends the importance of play and articulates a
theory of “Play and Its Role in the Mental Development of the Child” (1966)
when he argues that the imaginative situation assists in the child’s develop-
ment by manipulating the relationship of object/action and its meaning, as
well as serving as the means for developing abstract thought.65 More recently,
Erik Erikson observed, “ ‘dramatic’ play in childhood provides the infantile
form of the human propensity to create model situations in which aspects of
the past are re-lived, the present re-presented and renewed, and the future
anticipated.”66 Cognitive scientists of the present day widely believe that pre-
tend play lies at the basis of the human ability to use symbols and thus help
the child to develop an understanding and appreciation of language, art, and
other symbolic systems during cognitive development.67 Such work under-
scores how the cognitive play and logical challenges of OBERIU prove highly
appropriate for the cognitive level of the child, according to early and late
twentieth-century beliefs about children’s development. Within an avant-
garde framework, however, OBERIU uses such childish alogism to further
the Futurist destabilization of signifier and signified by challenging the re-
spective relationships of an object or action and its meaning.
S TRA N G E I NFA NCY
Kharms makes ludicrous claims about his own infancy in the short prose
pieces that comprise his fictional autobiography, such as when he claims that
he was born three times in “Now I will tell you how I was born . . .” (“Teper’
ia rasskazhu, kak ia rodilsia, kak ia ros . . .”; 1935)68 or states that he was born
prematurely and spent his first four months in an incubator in “Incubation
Period” (“Inkubatornyi period”; 1935).69 This is the comic as Henri Bergson
defined it, full of palpable absurdity, unreasonable rigidity, and the “mechani-
cal encrusted upon the living.”70 In fact, when he claims to remember his
experience as a premature infant confined in an incubator, this portrayal lit-
erally presents a living body encrusted with a mechanical device, even as it
explores the conflict of the living and the mechanical on a deeper level.
The preternatural memory and conscious awareness expressed by
the focalizing voice renders the whole scenario even more absurd, before it
ends with repetition and understatement that underscores the absurdity of
the claim. Kharms’s absurd autobiographical vignette and literal dramatiza-
tion of the ‘ludicrous’ aptly expresses an infantilist aesthetic by occupying
169
infantile consciousness. Indeed, when Kharms claims to remember the view

from the incubator as a premature infant, he rivals even Leo Tolstoy’s claim
to recollect the feeling of being bound when he was a swaddled infant. 71
Though these supposedly autobiographical narratives differ in intent, one
being comic and the other polemic, both construct the infant as a self-aware
homunculus to advance a particular aim. Ultimately, each endows the infant
with consciousness, awareness, and memory that far surpass societal expec-
tations. Though his mode is comic, Kharms goes further than Tolstoy in his
self-identification with the premature and precocious; he also grants memory
and voice to the preverbal and pre-logical. Kharms thus posits the existence
of the infant mind, cognition, and consciousness, even as he moves to oc-
cupy them.
Indeed, Kharms often employs the vantage point of a preverbal sub-
jectivity trapped in the state of a powerless object. He inverts power roles
in his pursuit of absurdity in a way akin to the ‘topsyturvydom’ Bergson de-
scribes as a feature of the comic scene. When Bergson describes the comi-
cally reversed situation or inverted roles and offers as examples the prisoner
lecturing the magistrate and a child presuming to teach its parents,72 the situ-
ations he describes reveal the underlying rhetoric of power that Kharms and
absurdism combat through its comic inversion. For Daniil Kharms and the
writers of OBERIU, the ‘infant/child’ represents the pinnacle of powerless
vulnerability, precocious consciousness, and self-aware subjectivity trapped
in a state of objecthood. As a powerless subject, like several others employed
by Kharms, the ‘infant/child’ effectively stands in for the child reader, dispos-
sessed intellectual, or the threatened avant-garde itself.
At the same time, however, Kharms’s touch is light, comic, and ap-
parently unserious, since the tone is marked by ambiguity and interpretive
instability. In Bergson’s words it would be termed equivocal, a situation
“which permits of two different meanings at the same time, the one merely
plausible, which is put forward by the actors, the other a real one, which
is given by the public.”73 Indeed, on the one hand, the absurd piece seems
to be a simple and ludicrous vignette; on the other hand, however, engag-
ing with it more deeply frequently exposes hidden philosophical, rhetorical,
and political depths. Nonetheless, if the censor looms, it can be defended
as simple absurdity. This truly is reductio ad absurdum; for the expressive
possibilities of the avant-garde have been limited to absurdities and, like a
rhetorical feint, this absurdism disguises a subversive attack true to the revo-
lutionary impulse of the avant-garde.
As true of many other avant-garde figures, Kharms treats his life, self,
and very existence as creative materials of a story. In this way, the absurdi-
ties of his own existence prove inseparable from the absurd existentialism of
his writings.74 Likewise, his supposedly “autobiographical” writings have no
170
Infant Mind
resemblance to actual events, but serve as comic illustrations of the creative

principles and philosophy he espouses in his writings. His devotion to an
infantilist aesthetic emerges also in these purportedly autobiographical frag-
ments, especially through his use of strange and unusual perspectives like
the infant’s-eye view.
The story “Now I will tell you how I was born, how I grew . . .” be-
gins with an air of spontaneous oral delivery, as if a casual autobiographi-
cal account told to a sympathetic listener. Yet it immediately undermines
its own authority to defy the conventions of autobiography.75 It violates all
pretensions of humility to make the arrogant proclamation that its author
will recount “how the first indications of genius were revealed in me,”76 in a
mockery of the self-aggrandizing aims of autobiography. At this point, having
established and disrupted a conventional autobiographical tone, the narrative
descends rapidly into the absurd; “I was born twice. This happened as fol-
lows . . .”77 Comparison with the original manuscript underscores the delib-
erate nature of these stylistic choices and exaggerations. In the original text
the narrator’s promise to tell “his biography” (svoiu biografiiu) is changed
into a more conversational tone and the milder expression “indications of
talent” (priznaki talanta) is replaced by the more radical claim regarding
“indications of genius” (priznaki geniia).78 These editorial changes show that
Kharms deliberately cultivates a hyperbolic and provocative style.
As the strange narrative continues, the hero of the autobiography is
revealed to be not Kharms himself, but his father. Actually a sober and spiri-
tual man, Kharms’s father here appears to be an exceedingly infantile indi-
vidual who values prediction, coincidence, and jest above human contact or
emotion; the comedy derives from this odd replacement, as Freud might
say. After marrying Kharms’s mother, the fictional father develops the idée
fixe that his child must be born on New Year’s Day. “My dad married my
mom in 1902, but my parents only brought me into the world at the end
of 1905, because my dad wanted his baby to be born obligatorily at New
Year’s.”79 From this desired birth date, the father calculates backward to de-
termine the desired date of conception to be the first of April. In a reversal
of human values, quantitative factors outweigh qualitative considerations.
“Dad calculated that conception should occur on April 1st and only on this
day approached my mom with a proposal to conceive a baby.”80 The absurd
joke of Kharms’s conception continues when his father’s devotion to jest
prevails to such an extent that he spoils his own chances to conceive a child
by pretending to Kharms’s love-starved mother that his sexual advance was
only an April Fool’s joke. “My dad approached my mom for the first time
on the 1st of April, 1903. Mom had been waiting for this moment for a long
time and was frightfully overjoyed. But Dad, apparently, was in a very jocular
mood and could not restrain himself and said to Mom, ‘April Fools!’ ”81 His
171
mother is so insulted that she will not allow his father to approach her that
year or the next. Thus Kharms’s conception occurs only two years later; “And
so my conception occurred on April 1st 1905.”82 Thus concludes a series of
jokes on calculation and incalculability that precede the hero’s conception,
in a parody of the motifs and jokes of Tristram Shandy, a novel Shklovsky
also admired and which itself takes an infantile viewpoint. The miracle of
conception here becomes mechanical, while existence and nonexistence be-
come arbitrary.
Once he has been conceived, however, the embryonic narrator begins
to express his own jocular personality and exert his own agency. His father’s
son, he thwarts his father’s carefully conceived plans by being born prema-
turely; “However, all my dad’s calculations came to naught, because I turned
out to be premature [ia okazalsia nedonoskom] and was born four months
before my time [ran’she sroka].”83 Whereas the hero’s premature perspec-
tive and will appear quite adult, his father proves himself entirely infantile,
first through his inability to accept the untimely birth of his son and, then,
through his consequent attempt to reinsert the newborn.84 In addition to his
psychological immaturity, the father displays an infantile understanding of
physiology, as well as sexuality and childbirth. He behaves like an uniniti-
ated child, and displays the self-centered personality and responses of an
egocentric child who, in a display of something like sibling rivalry, wants to
return the new baby. Once the mother clamors for the return of her new-
born and Kharms “again came into the world” (vtorichno vyshel na svet),85
the father continues to protest. “Then dad again flew into a rage, saying you
can’t call this a birth, that this still isn’t a person but sooner a half-embryo
[eto, mol, eshche ne chelovek, a skoree napolovinu zarodysh] and that one
should either stuff it back in or put it in an incubator.”86 In this judgment and
request, the father of the newborn is appeased; “And they put me in an incu-
bator.”87 The battle that has raged between adult and powerless infant ends
with the thwarting of the infant’s desires and the victory of the father.
In the story, the idea of calculated conception is opposed to the human
emotions of the mother, as the premature baby’s unexpected birth is op-
posed to the father’s scheduling of its birthday on New Year’s Day. In this
way the premature infant (nedonosok) exerts an independent will and agency
when he thwarts the father’s careful calculations. The infant’s agency and
consciousness, if anything, form “the first indications of genius” alluded to
in the opening sentence of the “autobiography.” Indeed, the symbolism of
conception, genius, and the idea that acquires a will of its own also apply
to the artistic process, just as the creative process merits comparison with
pregnancy, fetal development, birth, and infancy. Infantile egotism on the
part of artist and art, however, are shown to be at odds. The infant stands for
artistic inspiration, the father is the writer, and the maternal body represents
the material creation of art. Thus, in this emblematic story, both female preg-
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Infant Mind
nancy and male impotence88 become symbolic of the creative process, and
the fetal figure of Kharms is the artistic conception that behaves according to
a will of its own. At issue here is personhood and the onset of identity, but if
père and fils have opposing views, the narrative point of view takes the side
of the newborn self.
The literary symbolism of these themes also applies to the continuation
of the embryonic autobiography in the very short piece “Incubation Period.”
The concept of an incubation period itself can be applied to the state of an
idea not yet fully formed, as well as for the fetal form the author claims to
remember. Thus Kharms constructs his identity through the fits and starts
of abortive attempts at conception and then defines his first identity as a
fetus, or work of art, that makes a premature entrance into a strange and
unexpected world unwilling to receive him, as if an anachronism in reverse.
Dwelling unusually long on the circumstances of his conception, premature
birth, and incubation, Kharms creates an unusually vivid newborn identity
and consciousness for himself. As a premature infant or nedonosok, literally
“not carried to [term],” he marks himself as unconventional, eccentric, and
defiant even in the womb. He defies the biological, paternal, and maternal
scripts; he is himself an ingenious work of art (even if cut short in the course
of his natural development, just as the avant-garde also was).
The hero’s final four months of fetal development thus take place in
a machine with a thermometer, rather than in the emotional warmth or
physical embrace of the maternal womb. This environment resembles the
mechanical approach to childbirth of his father, who sees birth as something
quantifiable and reversible, as opposed to the human emotion of his mother
who craves love and intimacy from her husband and demands the newborn
baby that has been misplaced; “Then began a frightful confusion. The new
mother yells: Give me my baby!”89 It is the hero’s deeply human mother who
is revealed to be the victim of the strange narrative impulses of her husband
and infant son, and of the author of the pseudo-autobiographical vignette. It
is her body that is the site of the absurd reversal of the birth process and the
misplacement of the baby; her body is the site of writing and rewriting by
others. She demands the baby to whom she has given birth, the product of
her labors, but the reality of her experience is denied by those present. An
absurd dialogue ensues:
“Your baby,” they say, “is located inside you.” “What!” yelled the new
mother. “How could the baby be inside me, when I just gave birth to it!”
“But,” they say to her, “Maybe you are mistaken?” “What!” yells the mother.
“Mistaken! As if I could be mistaken! I saw with my own eyes that the baby
was lying on the sheet just now!” “That’s true,” they say, “But maybe he
crawled away somewhere.” In a word, they did not themselves know what
to say to the new mother. And she made a row and demanded her baby.90
173
Thus the father and mother dispute about both conception and birth, while
the very existence and personhood of the mute focalizing consciousness
hangs in the balance. The conflict here is both existential and ontological,
between the earthly realities of the maternal experience and the spiritual
denial caused by purely abstract linguistic and philosophical speculation. In
this sense, it exemplifies literature of the absurd.
Kharms also renders absurd the psychological significance of the birth
trauma and the initial separation of mother and child, which is predicated
on the irreversibility of birth. He challenges the spiritual and metaphysical
implications of birth by rendering it as an arbitrary, reversible, and repeat-
able transition from within the body to outside the body, even as the human
drama is made mechanical and comic, in the terms of Bergson.91 The baby’s
reluctance to be born, birth trauma, and desire to return to the womb are
here made ridiculous in a way that destabilizes all metaphysical, psycholog-
ical, and spiritual definitions of this key transition in the life of the individual.
The reversal of the act of bringing forth life from an earthly body also con-
jures the mythological account of Gaia, Mother Earth, and her son and lover
Uranus, who buries her children in the earthly underworld of her body after
their birth, until Gaia conspires with her child Kronos to end his father’s
dominion over her body and his children. Thus, Kharms, like Kruchenykh,
takes upon himself the mantle of Kronos, who suspends time, thwarts au-
thority, and determines his own course, eternally struggling against father
figures, predecessors, and even the authority of causality, logic, and language.
In this sense, Kharms’s own myth of origins, like all his authorship generally,
resembles a carnival, in the sense of the Greek Kronia, the Saturnalian festi-
val of reversals in ancient Rome, or the medieval “feast of fools.”92
Unlike conventional infants who are born only once, the eccentric
Kharms claims to have been born twice, and by manipulating definitions and
inventing bizarre circumstances, this figure is increased to three in the second
autobiographical piece, “Incubation Period.” The fetal Kharms thus acquires
a kind of mystical status, as thrice-born, thrice-risen. In the end, his final
birth does occur on January 1, 1906, when he is removed from the incuba-
tor. This is quite close to the actual birthdate of the author, Daniil Ivanovich
Yuvachev, on December 30, 1905.93 “They pulled me out of the incubator
after four months. As it turned out, they did this on the 1st of January, 1906.
In this way, it was as if I was born a third time. They started to consider the
day of my birth precisely the 1st of January.”94 Ultimately, the father did cor-
rectly foretell his son’s third and final mechanical birth, so father and son
are revealed to have a supernatural prophetic or narrative gift. More sig-
nificant, however, than the script written by his father, who computed the
future birthdate of his son, is the day of conception. In fetal form the author
exerts his own agency and authorial impulse to prematurely leave his moth-
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Infant Mind
er’s womb. Ultimately, Kharms constructs his own identity and infant self
as an April Fool’s baby, who, from conception, proves a jester. And play the
fool he does, in his life and writings. The Kharmsian ‘infant/child’ also plays
the role of such a jester figure—fluid and mutable, but always subversive.
IN FA N T V O I CES
As we see in these pseudo-autobiographical pieces, Daniil Kharms consis-

tently employs infants as literary characters to utilize the particular comic
and metaphoric possibilities of the infant identity. In such works, the seem-
ingly frivolous comic surface belies a keen sensitivity to the deeper implica-
tions of the infant as symbol of powerlessness. In this aspect, he can also be
compared to his close friend and OBERIU colleague Aleksandr Vvedensky.
By employing infant voices in their works, these writers overturn the inno-
cent vulnerability or spiritual holiness of the ‘infant’ in order to exploit the
pathos of the unspeaking subject to tragicomic dramatic effect. Moreover, for
this faction of the avant-garde, the ‘infant/child’ serves as the ideal mouth-
piece for expressing the involuntarily unspeaking state.
Daniil Kharms explores the speechlessness of the infant directly in a
work written entirely from the perspective and interior world of a very young
subject. Entitled “Volodya was at a Christmas party . . .” (“Byl Volodia na
elke . . .”), this short prose piece was written in the mid-1930s.95 The central
and interior consciousness in the story belongs to a preverbal and not yet
ambulatory infant. The narrative grants the reader access to the infant’s cog-
nitive processes and, although literature rarely grants babies a subjectivity of
their own, Volodya expresses a distinct personality driven by strong desires.
The narrative shows the infant Volodya’s awareness of what fun things others
are allowed at the Christmas party; the syntax underscores their opportuni-
ties and his deprivations. “Volodya was at a Christmas party. All the children
were dancing, but Volodya was so little that he still didn’t even know how
to walk. They put Volodya in a baby seat.”96 Neither verbal nor ambulatory,
Volodya is a passive object of an action, rather than the active subject of a
verb. Outside language, he is placed outside the social circle in a predefined
space that confines him.
Entirely loyal to Volodya’s perspective, the narrative shows a series of
desirable objects parade before Volodya’s eyes, representing a world of de-
sirable things that are forbidden to him. The gun that so appeals to Volodya
serves as a subversive symbol of his protest against the infantile role in which
he is trapped. “Then Volodya caught sight of a gun: ‘Give! Give!’ [Dai! Dai!]
he yelled. But he can’t say ‘Give,’ because he is so little that he still can’t talk
[on takoi malen’kii, chto govorit’-to eshche ne umeet].”97 He feels an acute
175
desire for something, but cannot express his demand because he remains
confined to a preverbal helplessness. The story thus dramatizes the paradox
of thought before language or language before speech; in fact, the text per-
forms the relationship of desire and language theorized by Kristevan psycho-
analysis.98 The tragedy lies in the overabundance of desirable things in the
world in contrast to the infant’s inability to communicate his profound desire.
“But Volodya wants everything: he wants an airplane, an automobile, a green
crocodile. He wants everything!”99 Though the names for his desires are clear
to Volodya himself, he is unable to articulate them, unspeaking subject or
infans that he is.
Volodya sits outside the social circle at this exciting event, ostra-
cized because of his youth or literally because of his size—“so little” (takoi
malen’kii). From this perspective, he sees what all others have within their
grasp and, out of incommunicable desire, becomes acutely aware of his in-
ability to express himself. For him, the gun he so desires represents the ul-
timate symbol of power for a powerless infant. He also wants an airplane
and an automobile, symbols of adult civilization and high-powered transpor-
tation coveted by the immobile infant strapped into a baby seat. The final
item in the sequence, however, executes a shift in the signifying process, for
the green crocodile with its specified color seems most clearly to be a toy, a
simulacrum of the real.100 Thus the identity of all of these symbolic objects
is destabilized; they now seem either real or unreal, adult symbol of power
or children’s toy.
The usually stable categories of adult and infantile here become uncer-
tain, yielding a tragicomic, or even monstrous, destabilization of identities,
desires, and roles; for this is an infant with adult desires, or an adult mind
in an infant body. Indeed, the OBERIU aesthetic aims to shock and juxta-
pose the incongruous and illogical. Despite Volodya’s all-consuming desire
for these symbols of adult power, he receives only a rattle. This token, the
accoutrement of the infant, keeps him in his infantile role. “He wants every-
thing! ‘Give! Give!’ cries Volodya. They gave Volodya a rattle.”101 In intel-
lectual context, we might also compare this infantile state to the manner
in which Petr Chaadaev characterizes Russians in his “First Letter on the
Philosophy of History” (1829):
On the few occasions when we do rouse ourselves, we do so neither in

the hope nor in the desire of achieving some common good, but with
the thoughtlessness of a child who sits up and stretches its hand for the
rattle held out by its nurse. [I esli my inogda volnuemsia, to otniud’ ne v
nadezhde ili raschete na kakoe-nibud’ obshchee blago, a iz detskogo legko-
mysliia, s kakim rebenok silitsia vstat’ i protiagivaet ruki k pogremushke,
kotoruiu pokazyvaet emu niania.]102
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Infant Mind
The vignette about Volodya and his rattle thus hearkens back to Chaadaev’s
original commentary on the infantile state of Russia with respect to the West.
Volodya, then, becomes an embodiment of Russia as “the babe of Europe.”
Ironically, the diminutive Volodya corresponds to the given name Vladimir,
which was borne by Vladimir Lenin for instance, and whose Church Slavonic
roots indicate great power (vlad’/vlast’), or in Vasmer’s interpretation “great
in one’s power” (velikii v svoei vlasti).103 This disempowered and voiceless
infans holds a rattle instead of a scepter.
Though acquiring the rattle represents a small accomplishment, still
Volodya has managed to cross a tremendous communicative threshold. His
desire induced him to make an utterance that led to the successful commu-
nication of desire. For now, Volodya is satisfied with that; “Volodya took the
rattle and calmed down. All the children danced around the tree, and Volodya
sat in his baby chair and rattled the rattle. Volodya really liked the rattle!”104
Using the rattle, Volodya is able to participate in the gaieties and produce a
sound that stands in for his developing speech and individual voice. The fact
that Volodya “calms down” at this point implies that he had been venting his
frustration in a tantrum of sorts, a detail belied by the fact that the narrative
again has expressed the baby’s viewpoint and interior consciousness using
the concrete words the preverbal infant lacks. In this case, as psychoanalytic
approaches to language regard it, desire precedes language. The acquisition
of the rattle represents the concretization and termination of his inchoate de-
sires. Language substitutes the finite for the infinite and Volodya is ushered
into the symbolic defile, in a Lacanian sense.
In short, the tragicomic narrative presents Volodya as an immobile sub-
ject who desires to move and act and a thinking subject incapable of commu-
nicating his thoughts. The infant thus embodies a physical and philosophical
state of incapacity with existential implications. The preverbal infant Volodya
also dramatizes the state of the ‘child’ confined to objecthood within infantile
primitivism. Through modernist and avant-garde experimentation, however,
the interior world of the ‘infant/child’ begins to be exploited as an alternative
subjectivity and effective tool for the dramatization of subject/ object rela-
tions. This recognition and exploitation of the interior subjectivity of children
marks the late and final stages of the infantilist aesthetic, as the avant-garde
seeks to usurp the subject position of the ‘infant/child.’
Kharms’s close colleague and friend Aleksandr Vvedensky also exploits
the possibilities of the infantile subject in the absurdist drama Christmas at
the Ivanovs (Elka u Ivanovykh; 1938).105 This play was intended for pub-
lication along with Kharms’s pseudo-autobiographical pieces in the hypo-
thetical collection Archimedes’ Bath (Vanna Arkhimeda) first conceived by
OBERIU in 1929.106 In many ways comparable to Daniil Kharms’s earlier
drama Elizabeth Bam (Elizaveta Bam; 1927)107 about the pursuit of a young
177
woman in her family home, Vvedensky’s work is also a highly unusual family
drama. As young Elizaveta is pursued in her family home and ultimately re-
moved from her childishly termed “Mamasha” and “Papasha,” so Vvedensky’s
drama brings absurd murder into the home setting of what structurally re-
sembles a family. These OBERIU writers, however, employ constructs of
infant and child identity in unconventional ways in order to produce sur-
prising juxtapositions and conflicts of meaning within the text, as well as in
the greater social and political context, where quite different constructs of
“infant/child” prevail.
In Christmas at the Ivanovs, a number of “children” have remained at
home while their parents are at a performance. They have been left in the
care of innumerable nannies; “Nannies, nannies, nannies wash the children”
(Nian’ki, nian’ki, nian’ki moiut detei).108 Something off-kilter about the fam-
ily’s structure emerges as early as the initial listing of the cast of characters.
Preceding the declaration of “Puzyreva—mother / Puzyrev—father,” a list of
people is categorized under the rubric “children”:
Petya Perov—one-year-old boy / Nina Serova—eight-year-old girl / Varya
Petrova—seventeen-year-old girl / Volodya Komarov—twenty-five-year-
old boy / Sonya Ostrova—thirty-two-year-old girl / Misha Pestrov—seventy-
six-year-old boy / Dunya Shustrova—eighty-two-year-old girl.109
This list of children is then followed by the declaration of “Puzyreva—
mother / Puzyrev—father.”110 The children all have different but vaguely
similar rhyming surnames, none of which matches the father’s or mother’s
name. All are included in the category “children” but the detailed description
of the age of each “child” becomes odd once the age-specific titles “children”
(deti), “boy” (mal’chik), and “girl” (devochka) are given to characters beyond
the age of one, eight, and possibly seventeen years old. Individuals at 25, 32,
76, and 82 years of age certainly exceed the conventional age boundary for
being called a “child,” “boy,” or “girl.”
In fact, fixating so precisely on exact age is highly unusual with adults,
though common with regard to children.111 Faced with such a specific list,
one involuntarily wonders about the age of the parents who have children
ranging from the age of one to eighty-two, but the age for these adults is
unspecified, as conventional for adults. By reducing the category of “child”
and exact markers of age to this degree of absurdity, the presentation of char-
acters interrogates the categories established by social conventions by misap-
plying and thus defamiliarizing them. The mechanical attachment of an age
marker to the name of the “child” becomes comic and absurd when applied
to older individuals. It also suddenly destabilizes the oppositional definition
of children and adults, usually based on age, demonstrating that it is clearly
based on something else instead—dependency and power, for instance.
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Infant Mind
In the wake of this absurd shift in signification and defamiliarization of

the construct of the ‘child,’ one might expect the role of child to be defined
by behavior or some other structural consideration. Indeed, the behavior of
the “children” in the play certainly does mark even the aged characters as pu-
erile, but one character conspicuously defies his infantile role. Significantly, it
is the youngest, the one-year-old infant Petya Perov, who appears most wise
and adult. The comic again finds an infantile embodiment and literal dem-
onstration of a Bergsonian and Freudian linkage between the infantile and
the comic. Presented first in the cast of characters, which lists the siblings
from youngest to oldest, Petya is immediately set apart, as is Volodya at the
Christmas party; “All the children sit in one large tub, while Petya Perov,
the one-year-old boy, bathes in a basin standing immediately opposite the
door.”112 The one-year-old is also given the first speaking part once the play
begins and immediately proves himself to be a morbid infant philosopher
who contemplates the essence of things. He poses the initial question, “One-
year-old boy Petya Perov. Will there be Christmas? There will. And what if
there won’t be? What if I die?”113 He contemplates possibility and impossibil-
ity, existence and nonexistence, and death. In this he prophetically foretells
the murder and death that will take place in the play.114 In the infant’s philos-
ophy and contemplation of death we see echoes of Zina V.’s composition in
Kruchenykh’s Piglets (Porosiata; 1913), where a philosopher contemplated
the possibility of sudden death when entering a water closet. As established
earlier, the casual treatment of existential topics and incorporation of themes
like dismemberment, death, and murder appear often within children’s lore.
The callous and gory tone of Vvedensky’s drama thus has some resemblances
with children’s own compositions, though it deviates dramatically from stan-
dards adults deem acceptable for children’s literature. There is no evidence
that these writings were ever intended for children, however, a fact that il-
lustrates how useful infant subjects were for OBERIU, regardless of whether
the intended audience was children or adults.
The paradox of the speaking infant in Christmas at the Ivanovs re-
sembles that in Kharms’s “Volodya was at a Christmas party . . .” As in Kharms’s
piece, this paradox is made explicit, in this case in a dialogue between
nanny and baby; “Nanny (dark like a skunk). Wash yourself, Petya Perov.
Soap your ears and neck. You still don’t know how to speak. [Ved’ ty eshche
ne umeesh’ govorit’].”115 Since the nanny’s comments follow Petya’s philo-
sophical statements, they serve to silence the infant philosopher and, as seen
in Kharms’s text, render him the object of washing, rather than the thinking
subject he considers himself to be. Strangely, however, the nanny addresses
the baby by first and last name, as is done for all the “children” in the cast
of characters, although most unconventional for a child or infant.116 Petya
responds grandiloquently; “Petya Perov. I can speak with my thoughts. [Ia
179
umeiu govorit’ mysliami.] I can laugh. What is it you want?”117 The infant
thus has supernatural powers of prophecy, a developed philosophical mind,
and the ability to speak with his thoughts. The question is whether others
recognize his abilities. At this point, the narrative remains ambiguous about
whether others are able to hear the wise words of the infant, this holy inno-
cent. He himself comments on how unknown he is: “Alone I will sit in the
arms of all the guests in turn, with an important and stupid expression, as if
understanding nothing. I and invisible God.”118 Comparing himself to the
divinity, and performatively recalling the iconography of the Holy Infant,
Petya Perov confidently proclaims his own worth and wisdom, whether or
not others recognize it or his fellow characters hear his words. The audi-
ence, however, hears every word spoken by the infant and thereby enters
into his cognition.
As consistent with the primitivist avant-garde principle of turning the
world backward (mirskontsa), the reversal of age roles in this play presents
Petya Perov as the first to awaken, concretely, and be enlightened, figura-
tively. He remarks: “I am the youngest—I awaken before everyone” (Ia
samyi mladshii—ia prosypaius’ ran’she vsekh).119 He contemplates issues
like the beginning of memory, and as a mere one-year-old comments, ab-
surdly, on memories from a year before his birth: “As I now recall, two years
ago I still didn’t remember anything” (Kak seichas pomniu, dva goda nazad
ia eshche nichego ne pomnil).120 This remark also conjures anthroposophic
or other spiritual notions of pre-birth existence, or metempsychosis, such as
those explored by Andrei Bely in Kotik Letaev. Adopting the cliché of an old
man, the baby exclaims, “What could surprise me at my age?” (Chto mozhet
udivit’ menia v moi gody?).121 By the time the one-year-old speaks a string
of words (reduplicative kinship terms) actually appropriate to a very young
child, “Papa. Mama. Uncle. Auntie. Nanny,”122 this comes as a shock to his
interlocutor and audience, who have come to expect more from him.
In this linguistic bottleneck, much as in Kotik Letaev, the infant’s exis-
tence narrows as actual language sets limitations on the conceptual infinity
of earliest consciousness before language. The dog, his only interlocutor, also
defies conventional expectations of his abilities, when he responds, “What
are you saying? Collect yourself.”123 Petya’s words seems laden with profun-
dity and symbolism when he continues: “I’m now one year old. Don’t forget.
Papa. Mama. Auntie. Fire. Cloud. Apple. Stone. Don’t forget.”124 At the age
of one year, he strives against the forgetting and falling away of his expansive
consciousness before words. Memory and forgetting thus emerge alongside
existence, nonexistence, and death as prime topics of interest for the one-
year-old philosopher. His sophisticated thoughts build up a sense of expecta-
tion that then endows even the simplest words with profundity. Each word
is whole unto itself and the syntax that strings them together attenuates that
180
Infant Mind
perfect perception. Logical relations seek to replace the loss of the perfect
consciousness of the unspeaking subject.
Petya Perov fills the role of prophet in the play. He predicts the blood-
shed that will occur and his somber presentiments at the beginning of the
play are proven correct. Just before his sister Sonya Ostrova is murdered by
the nanny in the first scene of the play, he comments, “And you feel for a
short moment, how your skin is torn apart and how your blood is spurting.
And what you will feel next is unknown to us.”125 He violates all preconceived
notions of his infantile role and becomes monstrous through his detached
description of violence and cold philosophical depth, which thus have greater
shock value. At the end of the play he predicts every death in turn, including
his own. In the last scene he tries to soothe his mother and speaks the words
of a wise old sage: “It’s nothing, nothing, Mommy. Life passes quickly. We
will all die soon.”126 The infant’s words, however, are no abstract comfort but
a literal prediction of the subsequent death of each member of his family
in turn. In a reversal of the directionality of life and time, as typical of the
avant-garde artists and writers discussed here, the play ends with the death
of the two youngest children followed by that of their parents. In its philo-
sophical themes and casual treatment of sexuality, violence, existence, and
death, Vvedensky’s cheerily titled Christmas at the Ivanovs proves to be a
dark tragedy intended for adults. The infantile thus represents a comic as
well as tragic aesthetic mode being used strategically and symbolically to
probe the limits of existence for an adult audience.
IN FA N T I L I S M I N P O ET RY
The strangely wise infant characters who are given voice in absurdist OBERIU
writings serve as a literal embodiment of the infantilist aesthetic. In the case
of Daniil Kharms, other aspects of this infantilist aesthetic appear also on
subtle levels of style and diction as early as Kharms’s juvenilia and first poetic
experiments, which reveal their deep roots in Kharmsian poetics and estab-
lish a continuity between his early poetry, the explicit principles of OBERIU,
and his later writings for children. Indebted to his avant-garde predecessors
and further enriched by folk forms and child lore, Kharmsian innovations
bring the infantilist aesthetic of the avant-garde to its logical, or illogical,
conclusion.127
Kharms’s earliest preserved work is the poem “In June Somehow in
Our Summer . . .” (“V iiule kak to v leto nashe . . .”; 1922),128 which was signed
with the early pseudonym “DCH,” representing the Latin initials of “Daniil
CHarms.”129 This comic poem features speaking characters referred to by
the informal nicknames “Kolya” and “Yasha,” who appear to be two young
181
brothers. The frequently repeated sounds of their names, from the first it-
eration in the phrase “Two brothers Kolya and Yasha were walking” (Shli
dva brata Kolia s Iashei) to the strange insertions of their names as terms of
address, replicates the sound of spontaneous oral performance.130 The collo-
quial vocabulary and anecdotal structure also resemble folklore or child lore.
Structured around a simple narrative, the first stanza introduces the char-
acters and the comic situation. “And they met a big pig” (I vstretili svin’iu
bol’shuiu).131 The jocular narrative continues as the brothers dispute the rela-
tive obesity of the pig and their father, more comically called “papasha.”
“Look what a pig is walking in that field” remarked Kolya to Yasha / “By the
looks of it, Kolya, she’s probably fatter than our old Pop” [“Smotri svin’ia
kakaia v pole / Idet” zametil Kolia Iashe / “Ona pozhalui budet Kolia / Na
vid tolstei chem nash papasha”].132
The claim that the pig is fatter than their father provokes conflict and a dis-
pute ensues between the two brothers. In a comic turn, however, it is not
filial piety that provokes their argument, but their dispute as to the degree of
obesity and swinishness of their father.
But Kolya muttered: “No way, Yasha, / Why would you blurt out such a
phrase? / Such swine as our old Pop? / I have never seen at all” [No Kolia
molvil: “Polno Iasha, / K chemu sboltnul ty etu frazu? / Takikh svinei kak
nash papasha / Ia eshche ne vidyval ni razu”].133
The anecdotal form of the poem, along with the authentic sound of the
young brothers’ dialogue, riddled as it is with colloquial expressions, terms of
address, misspellings, and unpunctuated interjections, produces the effect of
a casual joke retold. In this Kharms betrays his debt to folk genres like child
lore, with its riddles, quips, and unexpected traps. The attack on an elder
adult and paternal authority figure also resembles the anti-hierarchical and
subversive spirit of child lore.
Other early poems display stylistic features and peculiarities that, in
fact, resemble Kharms’s later poetry for young children. The poem “about
how ivan ivanovich made a request and what happened as a result” (“o tom
kak ivan ivanovich poprosil i chto iz etogo vyshlo”; 1925)134 lacks capitalization
and limits its punctuation even more obviously than the previous poem. Its
descriptive and didactic title also resembles oral delivery in that it announces
what is about to be told. This is reinforced by the opening that thrice repeats
the command to “tell the story [rasskazhi]”: “tell the story ivan ivanych / tell
the story kika and koka / tell the story on the fence” (ivan ivanych rasska-
zhi / kiku s kokoi rasskazhi / na zabore rasskazhi).135 The lack of syntactical
structure, reinforced by a lack of clarifying punctuation, produces ambigu-
ity regarding the subject of the story, the object of address, and the setting
182
Infant Mind
versus location of respective persons. As evident from the first stanza, the
form of the poem is extremely repetitive and employs tautological rhyme at
the end of every line: “[they] used to call him ivan / and his dad [was called]
ivan / so [you] also call him ivan” (bylo zvat’ ego ivan / i ottsa ego ivan / tak i
zvat’ ego ivan).136 Along with an undeveloped and repetitive syntax, disregard
for orthographic conventions, a colorful colloquial vocabulary, including one
elided expletive (“ ‘V originale stoit neprilichnoe slovo’ [Primech. avtora]”),
and erroneous forms loyal to sound, such as “khochim” instead of “khotim,”
“protchim” instead of “prochem,” “chtozhe” instead of “chto zhe,” combine
to create a childishly colloquial story.137 A certain naive perspective is also be-
trayed, as in the stanza that reads: “and he had himself a wife / not a mommy,
but a wife / NOT A MOMMY BUT A WIFE” (u nego byla zhena / ne ma-
masha, a zhena / NE MAMASHA A ZHENA).138 The capitalized interjection
emphasizes the infantile confusion between mother and wife. As in many ex-
amples of Kharms’s poetics, the naive tone and style are belied by adult sub-
ject matter or implications. Thus the use of an immature perspective and
other childish features amount to a performance of the infantile that maxi-
mizes the contrast and shock value of discordant elements combined within
the texture of one literary piece. These features help create the juxtaposition
and conflict of verbal meanings articulated as part of OBERIU aesthetics.
The poem “From Grandmother to Esther” (“Ot babushki do Esther”;
1925)139 traces a biographical narrative that leads from an originary familial
female to Kharms’s first wife, Esther Rusakova. The poem begins with in-
fantile speech sounds like “babalia” that resemble a form of bilabial babble.
The syllables of babble are then attached to the speaking subject at the cen-
ter of the poem in the phrase, “babalya boy (babalia mal’chik), that forms
the first line of the poem.140 At a point of high tension in the poem, marked
by the capitalized command “LET” (“PUST’ ”), another form of babble ap-
pears in the phrase, “balaboshes grandmamma” (balaboshit babushka).141
Here, the syllables of babble reassemble to form the playful-sounding neolo-
gism “balaboshit”142 and the kinship term “grandmother” (babushka), which
itself may be derived from the infant’s reduplicative syllables “baba.”143 In
the context of the title “Ot babushki do Esther” (“From Grandmother to
Esther”), this phrase links the child’s bilabial babble “babalia” to the early
reduplicative word “baba” and to the “babushka,” or “grandmother,” who
is posited by the title as an originary familial figure. By the conclusion, the
babble of nursery language has become the trans-sense syllables of a chant-
ing child: “makhan’kim [tiny] persikom [peach] / vikhr [whirlwind]’ taban’
[back water] / al’dera shishechka / mindera bul’ / ul’ka i fan’ka / i sitets i ia
[calico and I].”144 With the existential inclusion of the self, “i ia” (and me),
at the end of the rhythmically enumerated sequence of largely meaning-
less words, this poem resembles a children’s counting rhyme.145 Concluded
183
with the pronouncement “[THAT’S] ALL” (VSE), this poem is the earliest
to employ Kharms’s trademark conclusion.146 The childishly formulaic and
metatextual announcement of “The End” of the piece becomes an infantilist
convention employed in much of Kharms’s later writings. The poem “From
Grandmother to Esther” thus seems to derive much from children’s language
and specific features of child lore.
In this it can be compared to other early poems, such as “Kika i Koka”
(1925),147 the two “Van’ki vstan’ki” poems (1926),148 and “Polovinki” (1926),149
whose titles conjure children’s word pairs and counting rhymes. Each also de-
scends liberally into patterned trans-sensical expression that resembles chil-
dren’s speech, like those brought forth by Jakobson and Shklovsky. Similarly,
“Miserliness” (“Skupost’ ”; 1926)150 employs children’s language as it treats
the theme of sleep typical in all children’s genres, from the lullaby on. In its
opening it employs the trans-sensical word-pair “urly-murly”151 to modify
people’s sleep: “People sleeping / urly-murly / above the people / eagles soar-
ing” (Liudi spiat / urly-murly / nad liud’mi / pariat orly . . .).152 The phrase
“urly-murly” (compare “hurly-burly”) suggestively describes restless sleep
and unconscious dreams, even as syntactical parallelism contrasts “urly-
burly” to the elevated motifs of traditional poetry, such as the eighteenth-
century poetic cliche of “eagles soaring” (pariat orly).
The oral language of children also plays a role in the largely trans-
sensical poem “Chopped” (“Sek”; 1925).153 It opens in the speaking mouth
of the highly diminutivized character “Mishen’ka,” who may have just been
breeched: “And says little Mikey / even opening his mouth / —shishilya ki-
shilya / I’m dressed up in pants.—” (I govorit Mishen’ka / rot otkryv dazhe /
—shishilia kishilia / Ia v shtany riazhen.—).154 After painting a scene and
delivering one meaningful phrase, the poem descends into almost purely
trans-sensical rhythmic speech.
I ty et ego [And you et him] / fin’t’ fan’t’ fun’t’ / b m pil’neo / fun’t’ fan’t’
fin’t’ // Ia Ia Ya / N N N / Ia poly myla [I washed floors] / N N N / drib zhrib
bobu / dzhin’ dzhen’ baba [ding dong grandma] / khles’ khlias’—zdorovo
[healthy]— / razdai mama! [give ‘em out mama!] / Vot tebe [Here you go]
shisheliu! / fin’t’ fan’t’ fun’t’ / nakosia kisheliu! / fun’t’ fan’t’ fin’t’.155
The childishly trans-sensical speech in this poem also creates a playfully pro-
vocative relationship with the reader, since the poem challenges the reader
to utter and interpret meaningless words among meaningful ones, even flirt-
ing with vulgarity (i.e., “shisheliu”). At the same time, it accomplishes an
infantilization of the audience, since the uncomprehending reader is put in
the position of enjoying the aural pleasure of the text and experiencing the
pure sounds and materiality of language, thus simulating the experience of
language acquisition.
184
Infant Mind
As if to guide our interpretation, Kharms concludes the poem “Polka

occiputs (breakdown)” (“Pol’ka zatylki [sryv]”; 1926)156 with the lines: “you
woolly public don’t condemn / the loud nickame / of Kharms—a child” (ne
osudi sherstianaia publika / gromkuiu kichku / Kharmsa—dite).157 A note
from Kharms steers our reading of the meaningless word “kichka,” since he
specifies that “kichka” (nickame) should not be corrected to “klichka” (nick-
name), but left as it is; “imenno kichka a ne klichka (Primech. avtora).”158
In so doing, he directs the reader to the similarity of his neologism to the
word “nickname,” which fits here semantically, even while forbidding this
interpretation. He thus paralyzes signification through a strong suggestion
and negation. Since this disallows any alternative interpretation, the meaning
effectively becomes: “the loud nickname of Kharms—a child.”
Many other poems employ young characters, a child-centered situa-
tion, or a naive tone. Significantly, this description does apply to Kharms’s
first published work, the poem “Incident on the Railroad” (“Sluchai na zhe-
leznoi doroge”; 1926),159 which appeared in a collection published by the
Leningrad branch of the Russian Union of Poets.160 It opens by showing a
child’s everyday reality and includes a fragment of didactic address.
somehow grandma waved / and just then the locomotive / drove up to the
children and said / drink your porridge and the trunk. / in the morning the
children went back. / the children sat on the fence and said . . . [kak-to
babushka makhnula / i seichas zhe parovoz / detiam podal i skazal / peite
kashu i sunduk. / utrom deti shli nazad. / seli deti na zabor / i skazali . . .]161
As the poem continues, it remains loyal to the children’s perspective and

experience of events, maintaining an incoherent and free-flowing syntax
throughout.
The poem “Fire” (“Pozhar”; 1927)162 also sets a scene with the simplic-
ity of a detached and naive view of events.
the room. the room is burning. / the child emerges from the cradle / eats
up his porridge. up above / under the very ceiling / nanny fell asleep topsy-
turvy. / the wall is burning [komnata. komnata gorit. / ditia torchit iz ko-
lybeli / s’’edaet kashu. naverkhu / pod samym potolkom / zasnula nian’ka
kuvyrkom. / gorit stena].163
The simple telegraphic phrases conjure a feeling of panic, although the emo-
tional timbre does not rise above the level of flat statements. When the young
hero is endangered, the father and nanny express their feelings for the boy,
as if in a child’s fantasy of parental retribution/regrets.
father is running. father: ‘fire! / my boy boy Petya’s in there . . . wherever
would I find a monkey / instead of a son?’ [bezhit otets. otets: “pozhar! /
185
von moi mal’chik mal’chik Petia . . . gde b naiti mne obez’ianu / vmesto
syna?”] Nanny’s running in a fright / searching for Petya and the ham-
mock. / “where are you Petya dear boy / why didn’t you eat up your por-
ridge?” [Nian’ka begaet v ispuge / ishchet Petiu i gamak. / “gde zhe ty Petia
mal’chik milyi / chto zh ty kashu ne doel”].164
The morbid conclusion exemplifies the strange juxtaposition of Kharms’s in-

fantilist elements with adult tragedy not traditionally considered appropriate
for children, especially as it features a child as victim.165 His poetry is thus
oddly encoded as both infantile and adult.
Firemaster: Your Petya’s near / he’s lying by the zeppelin / He burned to

death and dad groans: / poor son. / Nanny: Oh! / He burned to death—and
quietly groans / quietly falls on the moss [Brandmaior: Tvoi Petia riadom /
on lezhit u tseppelina / On sgorel i papa stonet: / zhalko syna. / Nian’ka:
Okh! / On sgorel—i tikho stonet / tikho padaet na mokh].166
Kharms’s early poems show that he employs infantile devices as an aesthetic

choice, quite apart from considerations of audience or publication that would
arise later. For Kharms, the ‘infant/child’ represents a poetic construct ideal
for the tragicomic and absurd tone he desires to strike.
The prevalence of such features and devices in the juvenilia and early
adult poetry of Daniil Kharms indicates that his infantilist aesthetic was not
a product of mere necessity, but inherent to his personal style, as well as a
poetic legacy that he inherited as one of the last representatives of the avant-
garde. His early poems demonstrate infantile features such as the use of
children’s babble, sound play, and invented words, as well as deliberate mis-
spellings, simplifications of orthography (e.g., lack of punctuation and capi-
talization), and undeveloped syntax. His poems also play with the illusion of
oral delivery, cultivated through colloquial expressions and varied forms and
diction. On the level of the narrative, poetic infantilism influences the selec-
tion of simple and concrete themes that often include young characters or
child-centered situations, the usage of a naive perspective or tone, and simi-
larities to oral and folk genres such as child lore. These recurrent character-
istics, which are demonstrably evident in Kharms’s earliest preserved poetry,
prove prevalent throughout his oeuvre, whether he is writing poetry or prose
for adults, for children, or for himself.
Kharms’s later adult poetry displays many of the same infantilist fea-
tures. Although often less trans-sensical outright, these poems are far more
playful and comic, and infantilist features take on an even greater artistic
role in the text. Perhaps traceable to the influence of Kharms’s writings for
children, which pushed him in the direction of even more concrete and sim-
plified texts, these poems show that the infantilist aesthetic of Daniil Kharms
undergoes a full cycle of evolution. The poem “A person is constructed out
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Infant Mind
of three parts” (“Chelovek ustroen iz trekh chastei”; 1930)167 employs a casu-

ally childish tone to make sweeping statements about the nature of man. The
poem begins like a song, with repetitions based on the number three.
A person is constructed out of three parts, / Out of three parts, / Out
of three parts, / Kheu lya lya / Dryum dryum tu tu / Out of three parts
a person [Chelovek ustroen iz trekh chastei, / Iz trekh chastei, / Iz trekh
chastei, / Kheu lia lia / Drium drium tu tu / Iz trekh chastei chelovek].168
Like a children’s song, the poem descends into rhythmic trans-sense sounds
resembling babble, drumming, or onomatopoetic sounds. At the same time,
however, the dramatic presentation of the simple statement begs for more
profound analysis. The number three, for instance, is rife with symbolic im-
plication, including the Holy Trinity. In terms of the essence of man, how-
ever, the tripartite conception of man traditionally refers to body, mind, and
soul. As typical of Kharmsian prose, once narrative patterning has created a
logical expectation, this pattern is defied and deconstructed. The poem on
the three parts of man thus descends into childish alogisms and increasing
absurdity. The requisite parts of the person are not, as one would expect, the
body, mind, and soul, or even three main body parts, such as head, torso, and
limbs. Instead, these are listed as beard, eye, and an absurd number of arms.
Beard and eye and fifteen arms, / And fifteen arms, / And fifteen arms, /
Kheu lia lia / Drium drium tu tu / Fifteen arms and a rib [Boroda i glaz
i piatnadtsat’ ruk, / I piatnadtsat’ ruk, / I piatnadtsat’ ruk, / Kheu lia lia /
Drium drium tu tu / Piatnadtsat’ ruk i rebro].169
After the sound of a chant and excess of arms conjure a powerful Hindu di-
vinity, the addition of the fourth term, “rib” (rebro), to the sequence restores
a biblical tone and system of signification; this one highly symbolic word im-
mediately conjures Adam’s rib. The third stanza belatedly negates the fifteen
arms in another rhythmic spate of repetition; the most ludicrous touch is thus
added and removed, as if the poet changes his mind or corrects himself dur-
ing oral delivery. The inclusion of unnecessary verbiage is also exemplified in
a stanza from earlier variants of the poem,170 which misdirects the construc-
tion of meaning, emptying the content from what the poet is saying.
But by the way I’m talking about the wrong thing, / Talking about the wrong
thing, / Talking about the wrong thing / Kheu lya lya / Dryum Dryum tu
tu / Talking about the wrong thing [A vprochem ia ne o tom govoriu, / Ne
o tom govoriu, / Ne o tom govoriu / Kheu lia lia / Drium drium tu tu / Ne
o tom govoriu].171
Literally, however, the expression “about the wrong thing” means “not about
that,” which still leaves open the possibility that something else is meant.
Kharms thus employs childish alogism and playful negation to systematically
187
deconstruct meaning. He establishes logical expectations only to defy them,

and to leave the reader grasping at nothing. He thereby mounts a playful and
cognitive challenge by constructing and deconstructing a text and experi-
menting with the power of language and the outer bounds of the narrative
imagination. Even if meaning is undermined and expectation is subverted,
logic defied, and causation violated, still language emerges as all-powerful, as
does the voice behind the story.
A third poem from this period, “Fadeyev Kaldeyev and Pepermaldeyev”
(“Fadeev Kaldeev i Pepermaldeev”; 1930),172 also borrows from the sound of
oral lore and children’s fairy-tale narrative. It presents three characters, whose
sequentially grouped and increasingly ridiculous names share an extended
feminine rhyme (a[l]déyev) and create constant internal rhymes when their
respective actions, reactions, and accoutrements are detailed: “Fadeyev in
a top hat Kaldeyev in gloves / and Pepermaldeyev with a key on his nose”
(Fadeev v tsilindre Kaldeev v perchatkakh / A Pepermaldeev s kliuchom na
nosu).173 The poem opens by placing the characters in a dense, nearly im-
passable forest (“dremuchii les”), the classical fairy-tale setting pregnant with
potential. “Fadeyev Kaldeyev and Pepermaldeyev / went walking in a dense
forest one time” (Fadeev Kaldeev i Pepermaldeev / odnazhdy guliali v dre-
muchem lesu).174 Various provocations appear to frighten the characters and
the poem enumerates the reactions of each. Unpredictable and vaguely ridic-
ulous nouns fill out the poem’s uniform grammatical symmetries, whose re-
petitive structure mimics the rigid structural form of fairy tales described by
Vladimir Propp in Morphology of the Folk Tale (Morfologiia skazki; 1928).175
The poem’s indebtedness to fairy-tale form and the feel of oral delivery be-
comes most clear in the fourth stanza, where an audience of children is di-
rectly addressed in a semi-didactic interactive moment. An ungrammatical
rhetorical question is posed to a distinctly plural audience; but “Is it worth
being afraid think it over yourselves [No stoit li trusit’ podumaite sami].”
The conclusion to the poem delivers the message that it is not; the three
characters instead erupt into nearly trans-sensical laughter, as the tension is
broken by a carnivalesque release: “Fadeyev, Kaldeyev and Pepermaldeyev /
laughed haha, hohoho, hi-hi-hi!” (Fadeev Kaldeev i Pepermaldeev / smeialis’
khakha, khokhokho, khi-khi-khi!). The poem thus employs the conventions
of children’s literature and culture and brings these into adult poetry. In this
comparatively late poem, Kharms may employ the seemingly benign conven-
tions of children’s forms to make his ideas acceptable, since, in an earlier vari-
ant of the poem, which met with resistance from the censors,176 the ridiculed
Fadeyev, Kaldeyev, and Pepermaldeyev are employees of a certain publisher.
Here the performance of the infantile, though deeply rooted in Kharms’s
poetic aesthetics, also becomes a strategic maneuver. Such similarities across
genres indicate that Kharms’s writings, whether for children, adults, or for
188
Infant Mind
himself, draw upon similarly infantile and absurd elements to create new
expressive possibilities, enhance dramatic contrast, and thwart expectations,
just as avant-garde principles like trans-sense syllables and laughter like
Khlebnikov’s “Incantation by Laughter” resurface in works for children.
ME TA L I T ER A RY P L AY
Daniil Kharms’s later writings for young children, which appeared in the
context of the avant-garde children’s magazines Hedgehog (Ezh)177 and Siskin
(Chizh),178 reveal the influence of children’s language, logic, and lore still
more clearly. Founded in 1928, the first of these journals, Hedgehog (Ezh;
see figures 35 and 36), was intended for young school-age children [“dlia
detei mladshego shkol’nogo vozrasta”]. The journal was so successful that a
second journal for still younger children was founded in 1930. Aimed at the
Figure 35. Cover of Ezh (Hedgehog), no. 1 (1928). Cotsen Children’s Library,
189
Figure 36. Cover of Ezh (Hedgehog), no. 12 (1928). Cotsen Children’s Library,
youngest children [“dlia detei mladshego vozrasta”], the second publication,

Siskin (Chizh; see figure 37), outlasted the earlier Hedgehog, which was dis-
continued in 1935. The publication of Siskin continued until the compara-
tively late date of 1941 and sheltered many writers under its meager wings.179
Many of the remaining representatives of the artistic, literary, and
theoretical avant-garde found a rare publication outlet in these innova-
tive journals for young children. Their numbers included the Futurist poet
Mayakovsky and the Formalist theorist Shklovsky, who occasionally graced
the pages of these children’s magazines, and all the writers of OBERIU, who
appeared frequently. In short, these children’s magazines boasted stories and
poems by the best writers of the day, including established children’s writers
like Kornei Chukovsky, Samuil Marshak, and Evgeny Shvarts and illustrious
adult writers like Mikhail Zoshchenko, Evgeny Zamyatin, and Maxim Gorky.
The lifeblood of these magazines, however, was provided by the younger
members of the late avant-garde group OBERIU.
The avant-garde writers of OBERIU were recruited to the task by edi-
190
Infant Mind
Figure 37. Cover of Chizh (Siskin), no. 12 (1930). Cotsen Children’s Library,
tors, such as Samuil Marshak, who saw their potential with an audience of
children. From an inside eye on the publishing world, Lydia Chukovskaya
comments on Marshak’s recognition that Kharms and other members of
OBERIU could offer the playful elements of child lore to children’s litera-
ture. Note how she connects their work to trans-sense and children.
What good, one might ask, could you extract from trans-sense art for a
children’s literature demanding content and clarity? “But it seemed to me
that these people could inject caprice [prichudu] into children’s poetry,
the same caprice as in children’s counting rhymes, the repetition and
chorus that enriches children’s folklore the world over,” Marshak later
retold. Beyond their young, provocative experimentalism, he was able to
discern talent and a great sensitivity to words. In their “transsensmum-
bling” [zaumnichan’e] he detected something extremely valuable for chil-
dren’s literature—a tendency to verbal play. It is generally known that in
the life of every child there is a stage of development when play is the
191
main activity, when with the help of play he . . . grasps reality, learns to
count, studies his native language. It’s not for nothing that there are so
many counting rhymes and taunts in folklore worldwide. The meaning of
play in children’s upbringing, especially preschoolers’, was always clear to
Marshak—and he considered it necessary to give children the material for
play of any kind, including verbal.180
Like Chukovskaya’s father, the children’s writer Kornei Chukovsky, Marshak

saw the artistic merit of child lore and verbal play, noted its similarities to
avant-garde infantilism, and considered it an ideal source of inspiration for
successful children’s writing. For the infantilist avant-garde, Marshak’s invita-
tion proved especially fitting and fortunate. It led to lasting literary success
with generations of children and provided for the sustenance and survival
of these endangered writers, who were already facing severe pressures and
censorship.
In addition to literary material by these writers, as well as classical writ-
ers Russian and foreign, the magazines also published children’s own letters,
drawings, stories, and poems. (See figure 38.) In this sense, these magazines
granted an opportunity for creative expression to children consonant with
the aims of the earliest figures associated with the avant-garde, who printed,
published, and displayed children’s own work as part of their practice of an
infantile primitivism.181 The editors’ serious interest in children’s own works
and opinions also displays a willingness to level the hierarchy governing the
relations between adults and children. In fact, for the last issue of Hedgehog
for the year 1930,182 the editors prepared a questionnaire aimed at determin-
ing what children liked best—which stories, poems, and rebuses they liked,
whether they liked feuilletons and do-it-yourself projects, whether they pre-
ferred more text or more illustrations, illustrations with text or multicolor
double-spreads, and so on. Though their questions were largely directed at
adult intermediaries, the editors and writers demonstrate a great interest
in how the artistic and textual innovations in the journal were received by
their audience.
The pages of these magazines also include visual and cognitive puzzles,
games, and challenges that engage the child reader on a cognitive level.
Rebuses and other forms of wordplay frequently occur, as do puzzles involv-
ing visual perception in the series “Sharp Eyes” (“Zorkii glaz”). (See figure
39.) Here “zorkii” means “sharp-sighted” or, in a figurative sense, “perspica-
cious,” “penetrating,” or “vigilant”—traits valued in a perspicacious reader.
Interestingly, one explanation for the “Sharp Eyes” exercise reads: “We look
upon many things several times a day and still do not notice them,” echo-
ing Tolstoy’s and Shklovsky’s ideas.183 In this sense, the children’s magazines
first and foremost cultivate a new audience of children by treating them as
192
Infant Mind
Figure 38. Published children’s drawings from back covers of Ezh (Hedgehog),
(1928–1935). Cotsen Children’s Library, Department of Rare Books and
worthy of address, acknowledging the worth of their contributions, and pro-

voking their creativity through puzzles and projects. Moreover, these maga-
zines train an audience of children to be visually perceptive observers and
perspicacious readers and interpreters of all forms of text. These avant- garde
magazines were unprecedented in their cultural caliber, high-quality literary
offerings, clever games and advertisments, and the general playfulness of
their approach, which appeared to incorporate children into every aspect of
the magazine.
The content of the magazines, whether stories, poems, puzzles, comics,
or advertisements, engages children directly on their own terms. Creative
materials, like magazine advertisements that target children through humor
and play, address the child directly and include the reader in the playful de-
velopment of the narrative or in the act of interpretation. Significantly, the
magazines also grant the child entrance into the creative workshop, trans-
forming editors and writers into literary characters and transforming liter-
ary characters into part of the staff. The line between literature and reality
becomes blurred as realities become entirely relative.
These innovative magazines bring the child reader into the creative
193
Figure 39. “Zorkii glaz [Sharp Eyes] Activity” from the back cover of Ezh
(Hedgehog), no. 3 (1929). Cotsen Children’s Library, Department of Rare Books
and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.
laboratory, by revealing the construction and constructedness of the work of

art, addressing the child as a worthy audience, and asking for and responding
to the child’s own opinions and responses to its efforts, as well as by publish-
ing the creative work of children. They thus grant voice and agency to actual
children, even as they incorporate the child into art and narrative. In one
case, it seems that the names of real children who submitted their own stories
to the magazine become the raw material for a poem announcing awards:
Listen to / Who / For an excellent / story / receives / Today / Prizes / From

us: / Galya Chizhova, Nika Sineva, Marta Kravtsova, Valya Popov, / Zhukova
Galya, / Sadovskaya Ira, / Karsovskaya Zhenya / And Lenya Bobkov. . . .
Yura Shevchenko, / Nina Butenko, / Vasya Pokrovsky / And many more.
[Slushaite, / Kto / Za khoroshii / rasskaz / poluchit / Segodnia / Podarki /
Ot nas: / Galia Chizhova, / Nika Sineva, / Marta Kravtsova, / Valia Popov, /
Zhukova Galia, / Sadovskaia Ira, / Karsovskaia Zhenia / I Lenia Bobkov. . . .
Iura Shevchenko, / Nina Butenko, / Vasia Pokrovskii / I mnogo drugikh.]184
Whether or not these euphonically arranged names belong to real children,

the magazine has successfully blurred the boundary between reality and fic-
194
Infant Mind
tion for its readers, thus seemingly bringing the reader into the printed text
and across the fourth wall of the proscenium, as it were.
Daniil Kharms dabbled in all of the various creative forms repre-
sented in these children’s magazines and applied his energies to every aspect
of Hedgehog and Siskin. Examples where Kharms involves the child in the
narrative abound and anticipate the interactive forms of “text” presented to
children in the postmodern era. Significantly, the interactive nature of the
narrative also resembles the spontaneity and responsiveness of the oral form,
including child lore and other textual forms that try to entrap, trick, or fool
the interlocutor, who is challenged to escape the trap. Many of Kharms’s
stories provide challenges for the child’s interpretation that may or may not
be understood, depending on the child’s cognitive maturity. These stories
thus function on multiple levels of meaning capable of engaging readers of
all ages, from child to adult.
Cognitive challenges also appear in a wide range of forms indebted
to child lore. On the simplest level, these are short prose pieces that re-
semble riddles, like the tellingly titled “On a Visit: Think up a Story” (“V go-
stiakh: Pridumai skazku”) (Chizh 1938: 11),185 “What Was That?” (“Chto eto
bylo?”) (Chizh 1940: 3),186 “Who Fooled Whom?” (“Kto kogo perekhitril?”)
(Chizh 1941: 3),187 and many others. The range of cognitive and interpre-
tive challenges extends also to profound poetic pieces, such as the interpre-
tive inclusion of the child reader in the poem “From that house there left
a man” (“Iz doma vyshel chelovek”) (Chizh 1937: 3),188 which involves the
child in the mysterious disappearance of a man by asking for the reader to
urgently share any information they might come across. The poem ends:
“But if somehow you / Should happen to meet this man, / You better hurry
up, / You better hurry up, / Hurry up and tell us too” (No esli kak-nibud’
ego / Sluchitsia vstretit’ vam, / Togda skorei, / Togda skorei, / Skorei skazhite
nam).189 The simple surface of this “children’s” poem belies its Aesopian
depths. Significantly, this story of the inexplicable disappearance of someone
close to the narrator was published during the Great Terror of 1937. It not
only tragically foretold Kharms’s own final arrest and disappearance, along
with many others’, but also proved fateful for his only means of sustenance.
Indeed, N. Gernet recalls that it was the publication of this poem that caused
the authorities to recommend that these childen’s magazines no longer pub-
lish the works of Kharms.190
Like the valorization of the young and powerless that occurs in folk-
tales, where a typical protagonist may have only cleverness to rely on, the
typical Kharmsian children’s story thematizes the clever child. In his work, a
number of strong child characters successfully masquerade as adults, outwit
others, or manage to seize control of the narrative itself. Perhaps the best
example of the use of this device, however, is the character “Clever Masha”
195
(“Umnaia Masha”),191 who quickly outgrows the stories and cartoons in which
she first appears. She then enters metapoetic advertisements and becomes
a de facto member of the editorial staff, exerting her presence in the nebu-
lously fictional and real space of the magazine. In this way, the magazines
Hedgehog and Siskin were the first works of Russian literature to address
the child directly—as reader, writer, consumer, and demographic group—in
such a playful and interactive manner.
The success of the children’s magazines Hedgehog and Siskin depended
largely upon the creative contributions of members of OBERIU. Nikolai
Oleinikov, who served alongside Evgeny Shvarts as magazine editor, was a
key leader for the magazine and Aleksandr Vvedensky and Daniil Kharms
were avid contributors. Interestingly, the members of OBERIU gradually
shifted their energies to the magazine for younger children known as Siskin,
thus demonstrating their interest in very young, preschool-aged children as a
worthy audience for their creative endeavors. Preschoolers now begin to ap-
pear in poems and stories sensitive to their still greater powerlessness when
compared to schoolchildren. At the same time, this shift showed that pub-
lishing for the youngest children had become the only remaining outlet for
playful avant-garde work. By this time, the avant-garde had been driven into
the final refuge it would find —publishing for the very youngest audience.
When increasing ideological restrictions began to influence the mate-
rial published in the magazines, particularly in Hedgehog, which was intended
for older children, the new audience of children who had achieved voice
through its pages was not complacent. Instead, they inundated the magazine
with expressions of free speech, voicing their protest against the increasingly
bland nature of the nonfiction and political materials being published in its
pages. Telling quotations from readers’ letters appear in responses published
in the final issue for 1933.192 By listening to children and publishing their
drawings, stories, and letters, and symbolically incorporating them into the
process, the editors of these children’s magazines had opened the floodgates.
Now readers felt entitled to make many specific suggestions, but ultimately
this invitation and empowerment of children, due to the shifting political
context, proved to be a fiction.
The editors of Hedgehog admit the justness of children’s accusations
that they had not fulfilled their promises. They write, “You are also right
when you write that in the beginning of 1933 we promised a lot of stories and
poems, but published few of them in the first half of the year.”193 Responding
to the detailed criticism of a child named Lenya Bondarenko, the editors
promise to improve in these regards “in order not to bore children to death
with only articles and advice [sovety].”194 In fact, the magazine Hedgehog for
older children did not survive much longer, overburdened as it had become
by didacticism mandated by increasing restrictions on literature concretized
196
Infant Mind
by the 1932 declaration of Socialist Realism as official state policy in the arts.
Evidently, these older, literate children lamented the absence of the playful
and creative writings of OBERIU, who had responded to the increasingly
restrictive times by turning their attentions to the magazine for younger chil-
dren. Having been granted voice and had their opinions solicited and heard
by these children’s magazines, these older children voiced their protest. The
times had already changed, however, so their requests went unheeded. After
Hedgehog ceased publication in 1935, only the very youngest children still
had access to the works of the avant-garde, which was itself becoming in-
creasingly infantilized by political pressures driving it out of existence.
ME TATEX T UA L I T Y A ND V O I CE
Writing for Hedgehog and Siskin in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Daniil
Kharms did not consider the young age of his audience a hindrance for his
impulse to play in the strange world of the text. On the contrary, he em-
ployed the naive and estranged perspective of the child in order to accom-
plish his poetic purposes. By destabilizing the respective positions of child
and adult through textual games of mimicry, mockery, and metatextual play,
Kharms created a subversive space, where hierarchy and expectations are de-
fied. Rupturing the textual frame and blurring the boundaries within the text,
he allowed for the strange intermingling of the worlds of play and reality,
child and adult, and reader and writer. In this way, Kharms not only brought
avant-garde and modernist experiments to the child, but also empowered his
readers by training children, and any other reader alongside them, to read
on multiple levels and see beyond the boundaries of the text. In many cases,
Kharms seems to be mocking himself, his colleagues, and adults in general,
as he asserts the intelligence of children and empowers them through play.
Throughout his writings, he shows great sensitivity to young children’s feel-
ings of powerlessness, such as in the affronts: “Entrance for schoolchildren /
[is] open, / For preschoolers— / [it’s] closed” (Vkhod dlia shkol’nikov / ot-
kryt, / Dlya doshkol’nikov— / Zakryt)195 and “You better grow up a bit first, /
The likes of you I can’t allow” (Vy snachala podrastite, / A takikh pustit’
nel’zia).196 As writers faced increasing restrictions and exclusion, their posi-
tion increasingly approached the powerlessness of young children, and the
avant-garde found its own voice being silenced.
When Kharms engages the child reader as an equal in sophisticated
metatextual play, Kharms helps to highlight the autonomy and artificiality of
the artistic text by applying a typical modernist device unusual in literature
for children.197 The longer story “About How an Old Lady Went Shopping for
Ink” (“O tom, kak starushka chernila pokupala”; 1928) provides an example
197
of such sophisticated metatextual play. It follows the lost thread of a story into
the magical space of the publishing enterprise before providing the metafic-
tional resolution that neatly sews together the story, its end, and its origins.
The story “About How an Old Lady Went Shopping for Ink”198 appeared in
the final issue of Hedgehog in the magazine’s first year of publication.199 In
1929 it was republished as a twenty-seven-page book with abundant illustra-
tions by Eduard Krimmer (see figure 40).200 In this version, playful pen-and-
ink drawings, engravings, and prints serve as iconic images and illustrations
that interrupt, invade, and insert themselves into the text. (See figure 41.)
Like rebuses, puzzles, or a key, these symbols invite the reader to treat the
text itself as a game. In fact, the Wonderland or Looking-Glass nature of the
story is reinforced visually by the repeated depictions of the absent presence
that is the central symbol of this story about writer’s block—a bottle labeled
“ink” instead of “drink me.”
The cover of the book About How an Old Lady Went Shopping for Ink
features blurry watercolors depicting the “Old Lady” of the title holding a pen
and focused on a blank piece of paper. The front shows a hunched “Old lady
at many years old” (Starushke mnogo let) as she writes a “Letter to her son”
and the back shows a young girl with a braid, “Old lady at fifteen years old”
(Starushke 15 let) as she writes a “Letter to her grandfather.” The cover thus
hints, paradoxically, that the protagonist’s nominal identity as “an old lady”
(starushka) does not depend on her age, old or young.201 Rather, being an
“old lady” is an existential state—one of irrelevance and impotence to which
an unpublishable author like Kharms perhaps can relate. Life has passed her
by and she has been left without ink, or the means to write. However, the
wizened muse does not accept this initial lack. Instead, it serves as the para-
digmatic impetus for a tale of adventure, as the old lady braves the strange
new world on a quest to find ink in order to write—and complete the story.
Kharms here employs the figure of the “little old lady” (starushka) for
its comic and tragic potential. Destined to become a stock character, “old
women” (starukhi)” also abound in his later prose for adults, such as the short
piece “Old Women Tumbling Out” (“Vyvalivaiushchiesia starukhi”; 1936–37)
that appears in Incidences (Sluchai),202 and his important longer prose work
“The Old Woman” (“Starukha”; 1939).203 Made irrelevant by time and cir-
cumstance, the old lady (“starushka”) in his children’s book is regarded as
a “loony” by almost every person with whom she interacts. Each time she
is asked, “Did you fall from the moon, or something!” (Da vy chto, s luny
chto-li svalilis’!), a stylized illustration of this idiomatic expression looms in
the margins. Throughout the story, almost every character regards her as
senile, as comparable to infantile or puerile. Those she encounters want her
to step out of the center and return to the margins, until she meets a writer
who sees the possibilities of her estranged and peripheral perspective. At this
198
Infant Mind
Figure 40. Cover of O tom, kak starushka chernila pokupala

(About How an Old Lady Went Shopping for Ink). Cover design
by E. Krimmer for book by Daniil Kharms, 1928
point the constantly disparaging association of the old woman and the moon
undergoes re-vision, as she fills the role of muse and transcendental inspira-
tion for the writer.
During the old lady’s quest for the means of writing, she encoun-
ters the literary phenomena of nonsense, trans-sense, and the absurd. At a
market she asks a saleswoman for ink. Seemingly accomodating, the sales-
woman responds, “What kind of ink—red or black?”204 but proves to have
neither and no reason to ask the question. Later, the old woman steps out
onto “a wide and very noisy street”205 that must be Nevsky Prospekt, where
she is assaulted by the strange sounds of modern vehicles. As if declaiming
trans-sense poetry, an automobile pronounces “Tarar-ararar-arar-rrrrr!,”206
a tramcar “Dzhen-dzhen! Din’-din’-din’!,” and a motorcycle “Pyr-pyr-pyr-
pyr!”207 After barely crossing the central thoroughfare alive, the old lady has
an absurd encounter with a gray old man. She politely asks him if he knows
where ink is sold. He stops, raises his head, thinks deeply, rolls a cigarette,
smokes a bit, and pronounces “with a toothless mouth”: “Sheshishi poshai-
utsia v makashishe,”208 an incomprehensibly distorted version of “Ink is sold
in the store” (Chernila prodaiutsia v magazine). The old lady understands
nothing in this absurd and Jabberwockyan-sounding exchange and goes on.
199
Ironically, however, the toothless old man was simply unable to understand-
ably pronounce his legitimate answer to her query; thus he serves as a tragic
metaphor for another state of poetic incapacity relevant for the avant-garde,
a failure to be understood. The debilitating incapacity, ignorance, and de-
crepitude of senility thus serve as a perfect counterpoint to the debilitating
incapacity, ignorance, and immaturity of the puerile state richly dramatized
elsewhere in Kharms’s writings.
Having resolved to inquire about ink in a store, the old lady eventu-
ally locates a bookstore on the busy street. She immediately perceives the
relationship of writing, ink, and books, although she expresses it anachronis-
tically; “After all, books are written with ink” (Ved’ knigi-to, chai, pishutsia
chernilami).209 Her statement highlights the metatextual symbolism of ink,
which represents the realization of inspiration and the means of expression.
In order to enter the metafictional world of the bookstore and building, the
old lady must pass through a series of defamiliarized obstacles, beginning
with a revolving door. Like a magical passageway, the entrance tests the forti-
tude of the old lady, who is bewildered by “glass doors of some strange kind”
(dveri stekliannye i strannye kakie-to)210 that spin her around before she nar-
rowly escapes with her life.
The old lady’s head spun, she walked and walked and herself didn’t know
where she was going. And around, all the time, just doors, doors, all of
them spinning and pushing the old lady forward. [Zakruzhilas’ u starushki
golova, idet ona i sama ne znaet, kuda idet. A krugom vse dveri, dveri, vse
oni kruzhatsia i starushku vpered podtalkivaiut.]211
The interminable experience of passing through these strange-looking glass
doors transports the old lady to a metafictional Wonderland, as underscored
by the description of her state, “exactly like in a dream” (sovsem kak vo sne).212
Inside this strange space, she has more symbolic encounters with de-
familiarized trappings of modern life—a man at a clock, an iron-lattice door,
and an elevator that has her completely perplexed. She compares the ele-
vator to a “cupboard” (shkaf ), in a loaded literary allusion to Raskolnikov’s
apartment, and in it undergoes another magical passage.
The old lady stood, not daring to move, and it felt like a stone had begun
to grow in her chest. She stood and could not breathe. Through the door,
people’s arms, legs, and heads could be glimpsed, and around her was a
drone like a sewing machine.213
Significantly, the “drone like a sewing machine” that she detects in this clair-
voyant moment recalls the history of the Dom Knigi building, which was the
Russian headquarters for the Singer Sewing Machine Company until the
Revolution. Thus the defamiliarized and dreamlike description of the fic-
200
Infant Mind
tional world abounds with recognizable hints of a specific and real location.214
The store’s location on Nevsky Prospekt, the many books on display in its
“Windows as big as entire walls” (Okna bol’shie, v tseluiu stenu),215 the revolv-
ing door and iron-lattice elevator, the sound of sewing machines, and the old
lady’s eventual emergence on the sixth and top floor (“Pozhaluista, priekhali,
shestoi etazh, vyshe nekuda”),216 clearly signpost the fictional character’s ar-
rival into an actual space. This space, in fact, was the actual headquarters of
children’s literature publishing in Leningrad—atop Dom Knigi, the House
of the Book.217
The old lady ended up in a big, well-lit room. She looks around—in the
room are small tables, and behind the tables people are sitting. Some, their
noses buried in their papers, are writing something, and others are pound-
ing away on typewriters. It’s as noisy as in a smithy, only a toy one. [Shum
stoit budto v kuznitse, tol’ko v igrushechnoi].218
Thus, the lost thread of the story has found its way to the inner work-
ings of the editorial world located in “The House of the Book” or “Dom
knigi.” In this metatextual playground, Kharms describes the encounter of
the old lady in the story with actual children’s writers, one of whom suffers
from writer’s block. He is Daniil Kharms, listed as the author of the book;
this is underscored by the accompanying plate illustrated by E. Krimmer.
(See figure 41.) It depicts a larger man with glasses and hair resembling that
of the editor-in-chief Samuil Marshak as he sits on an armchair beside the
old lady stiffly seated on a chair. A thin figure stands with his back to them
as he writes on the wall and reveals a dark profile that resembles Kharms,
including the author’s typical pipe.219 Having drawn a picture on the wall
that shows an old lady leaving home, the man is writing the first lines of the
present book, “On Kosobokaya Street, in House No. 17 lived an old . . .” (Na
Kosobokoi ulitse, v dome No. 17 zhila odna sta . . .).220 The drawing and text
reveal that the old lady has come like a muse to the writer with writer’s block.
Thus the symbolic representation of a lost narrative has found the literary
means she needs to be written.
By showing the writer the strangeness of the world she sees, she pro-
vides him with the material for a story. She grants him the defamiliarized
perspective of a character from the margins:
I came in the cupboard—said the old lady. —In what cupboard?—the
fat man and thin man asked at the same time. —In the one, that rides up
and down in the staircase here—said the old lady. —Oh, the elevator!—
laughed the thin man.221
While the editor judges her by declaring, “You must have fallen from the
moon!” (Da vy priamo kak s luny na zemliu svalilis’!),222 the thin writer values
201
Figure 41. Illustrations by E. Krimmer for a book by Daniil Kharms,

O tom, kak starushka chernila pokupala (About How an Old Lady
Went Shopping for Ink), 1928
and adopts her perspective, as metaphorically shown when he removes, pol-

ishes, and replaces his spectacles.
The thin man took off his glasses, breathed on them, wiped them with a
handkerchief, put them back on his nose and said to the old lady: “Tell
us about how you went shopping for ink, and we will write a book about
you and give you ink.” The old lady thought about it and agreed. And so
the thin man wrote the book: ABOUT HOW AN OLD LADY WENT
SHOPPING FOR INK.223
The symbolically charged story thus contains at its conclusion the supposed
metatextual secret to its own origins; its last line is the title of the book itself.
Beyond the bounds of the story, the old lady’s supply of ink has been re-
stored—and her voice has been heard. In this way, the story has brought the
child into the creative laboratory and trapped its reader in the eternal loop
of the metatextual moment. Kharms thus engages the child in metatextual
play with the origin and autonomy of the text. In this way, he grants the child
entrance into the writing process, and writing, in the specular loop of this
moment, becomes self-aware.
202
Infant Mind
The final stage of empowerment of the child reader is shown in an-

other late metatextual piece224 where Kharms grants the omnipotent voice
of the writer to a young girl.225 Bearing the generic, or highly symbolic, title
“Story” (“Skazka”),226 this short piece also treats the process of writing and
makes writing self-aware. It begins, “ ‘Here,’ said Vanya, putting a notebook
on the table, ‘Let’s write a story.’ ”227 A number of abortive attempts to begin
a story follow this opening. Three times Vanya proposes a hackneyed open-
ing, such as “There once was a king . . .” (Zhil-byl korol’ . . .),228 but each time
Lenochka claims that the story already exists and runs away with the narra-
tive, finishing the story in one logorrheic breath. That Lenochka is a confi-
dent and verbose girl recalls the girl-child muses, named and unnamed, of
early avant-garde figures discussed here, including Khlebnikov’s Militsa and
Kruchenykh’s Zina V., as well as Nina Kulbina and Mariana Erlikh. The gen-
der dynamic of their creative partnership replicates that of Lewis Carroll
and the influential Alice character he created on the model of the real Alice
Liddell. Indeed, in the foundational modernist text that is Alice’s Adventures
in Wonderland, Alice, after being plunged into a symbolic infancy of voice-
lessness and powerlessness re-created by the nonsense and absurdity of
Wonderland logic, gradually develops voice and agency to the extent that she
dispels the illusion of the text and wakes from it as a dream.
In Kharms’s “Story,” Vanya finally proposes to write a story about him-
self in a final attempt to gain some autonomy over its course, but Lenochka
and the text outwit him again. Lenochka announces, “ ‘There’s also a story
written about you already’ ” (‘I pro tebia uzhe skazka napisana’).229 Vanya
retorts that this is impossible and demands to know where it is printed, but
Lenochka is ready with the exact answer: “ ‘Just buy No. 7 of Siskin, and there
you will read a story about yourself,’ said Lenochka. Vanya bought No. 7 of
Siskin and there he read the same story that you just finished.”230 Here the
young girl seizes an omnipotent authorial voice and displays a visionary per-
spective that transcends the boundaries of the text. Even apart from her
conclusive victory over her interlocutor, she has managed to dominate the
entire course of the narrative, which encompasses three stories, as well as
their frame. The children’s story thus emerges as a metatextual tour de force,
even as it dramatizes the child’s acquisition of voice within the infantilist
experiments of the avant-garde.
At the same time, however, Kharms’s story reveals that one person’s sei-
zure of voice often comes at the price of another’s loss; Lenochka’s mastery of
narrative comes at the expense of Vanya’s narrative impulse. This seizure of
voice from the subject who seeks to speak certainly has a sinister aspect. He
cannot speak his own story, because he—a young Ivan everyman child and
aspiring writer—has already been written into a narrative that grants him
no creative freedom and no escape. Read allegorically, this bleak view also
203
might be applied to the plight of the author of the apparently lighthearted

story. On the other hand, the implicit critique it contains on behalf of the
disempowered subject also might be leveled at the avant-garde, which in
some sense usurps the child’s position, perspective, and voice in its pursuit
of an infantilist aesthetic. As the avant-garde writers of OBERIU seek a last
measure of artistic expression, they occupy the subject-position of the child
as a mouthpiece and ventriloquize through the child. Voiceless, to paraphrase
Marianna Torgovnick, the child allows the avant-garde to speak for it. For
OBERIU, the ‘infant/child’ indeed serves as a ventriloquist’s dummy. In this
aspect, the avant-garde represented only one group out of many factions of
the new Soviet society who used the ‘infant/child’ in order to seize control
over a new future. As so often the case, children are conscripted to be the
foot soldiers of ideology, for, as William Ross Wallace phrased it in his 1865
poem, “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Is the Hand That Rules the World.”
Still, the playfully modernist “Story” demonstrates to what extent
Kharms respected his child audience and showed a sensitivity to the power-
less position of children as he empowers one with voice. Kharms brings the
child reader into the laboratory of fiction and lays bare the workings of logic,
cognition, and narrative, even while he models how the powerless can ac-
quire voice. He grants the children the metatextual insight to take on the
omnipotent authorial position themselves and thereby attain an awareness
of the structures that hold the subject captive. In his imitation of children’s
cognition and alogism, Kharms also extends critical cognitive training that
encourages the child, like the text, to subvert and defy the confines of logical
expectations and to become a sophisticated reader or writer who personally
participates in the construction of meaning. Not only does Kharms engage
children as equals in metatextual games, assert their power and intelligence,
and allow them to masquerade as adult and author; he even does this at
the expense of adults, who emerge as a puppetlike mockery of themselves
and the world of grown-ups. The empowerment of the child subject, in fact,
comes at the expense of adults and other authorities, marking its most sub-
versive feature in an authoritarian time.
In a grand conclusion for the infantilist aesthetic of the Russian avant-garde,

Kharms’s absurd writings for children and adults empower the reader and
model the acquisition of voice. The comparison of the existentially marginal
senile, puerile, and infantile shows how Kharms’s writings for children and
adults are productively treated in combination, though the fate of his “sta-
rushka” (little old lady) for children is considerably more upbeat than that
of his “starukha” (old woman) written for adults. Ultimately, the assertion of
the unique insights and creativity that originate in the peripheral perspec-
tive, along with the maximal comic and tragic effect of juxtapositions from
204
Infant Mind
different semiotic spheres, show to what extent Kharms’s original OBERIU

principles underlie his children’s works.
When Kharms cultivates a metatextual reader and grants a literary
voice to a child, he completes the task begun with the acknowledgment of
the infant subject. An interest in the child as object, subject, and subjectivity
has led the avant-garde into new artistic and linguistic territory, liberating
it through the example of infant babble, children’s language, and childish
alogism. From the un-speaking or unheard/unheeded infants who provide
a strange perspective on the world in Kharms’s autobiographical writings to
Kharms’s and Vvedensky’s dramatizations of the infant who is monstrously
aware, the late work of Kharms approaches the child on his or her cogni-
tive level, and employs the devices of children’s language, logic, and lore to
challenge the reader, whether child or adult, to participate in the construc-
tion of meaning and explore another narrative dimension that offers escape,
empowerment, and voice through writing and the participatory process of
interpretation. Through these metatextual experiments and his construction
and deconstruction of the text through alogism, Kharms anticipates much
absurdist literature and participates in modernist literature in the wider
Western tradition. At the same time, his avant-garde roots in the baring of
devices and subverting of expectation remain strong.
In the end, the infantilist aesthetic has led Kharms to the realms of
alogism and absurdity. Even while continuing the traditions of his admired
Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, and Knut Hamsun,231 Kharms forges new
ground. His work not only offers a precocious contribution to the literature
of the absurd, which later arises to express the unique trials and existential
questions of the modern age, but also achieves the profound simplicity that
is the crowning achievement of the infantilist aesthetic of the Russian avant-
garde. Led by its espousal of infantile primitivism, infantilist viewpoints,
and infant consciousness, the Russian avant-garde has charted a course to
abstraction, achieved a separation of signifier and signified, accomplished a
revaluation of the naive and peripheral perspective, and tested the limits of
language, logic, and signification. At this point the avant-garde conclusively
and irrevocably drives a wedge between the object and its meaning on a path
toward self-obliteration.
At the same time, however, the avant-garde deconstruction of art has
profound implications for interpretation and the production of meaning. As
the multilayered texts of Daniil Kharms show, productive juxtapositions from
different semiotic spheres and the contrast between a simple surface and
the deepening and widening meaning of objects yield a tremendous sym-
bolic potential. The avant-garde alters the nature of interpretation, even as
it draws attention to the materiality of the artistic text. Upon closer analysis,
the apparent simplicity, concrete objects, and empty spaces at the basis of the
205
Figure 42. Photograph of Daniil Kharms in his final years, 1938.

Published in Marina Durnovo, Moi muzh Daniil Kharms, ed. Vladimir Glotser (Moscow:
B.S.G. Press, 2000). Personal archive of M. V. Durnovo; used with permission of the publisher.
Kharmsian text open up into an internal universe of symbolic, existential, and

metatextual signification. Where we might have expected to find the end of
interpretation, we find its beginning.
Nevertheless, the fate of the avant-garde had been written on the
walls from its earliest beginnings. Born in the revolutionary ferment of a
society on the verge of upheaval, its radical and subversive aesthetics grew
to be increasingly at odds with any totalizing authoritarian system, such as
the Soviet state had become by the 1930s. Daniil Kharms, like his compan-
ions and close collaborators in OBERIU, fell victim to the totalitarian state.
Arrested on August 23, 1941, Daniil Kharms died of starvation in a prison
psychiatric hospital on February 2, 1942.232 (See figure 42.) With the end of
OBERIU, which represented the last gasp of the avant-garde, the evolution
of the avant-garde met an abrupt end. If Kharms’s absurdist experiments for
adult audiences had accentuated the end of causality, logic, and narrative
while the word remained all-powerful, and his children’s literature had em-
powered children and the weak or powerless with agency and voice, then the
206
Infant Mind
dark, existential, and self-annihilating themes of his adult literature and the
powerlessness and voicelessness depicted in his writings for children proved
most predictive. Having first been marginalized and then rendered voice-
less, the avant-garde was now definitively silenced. Still, as an epitaph in an
infantile voice that draws attention to finality and the ultimate end, and the
limits of existence, logic, language, and the text, it seems fitting to offer the
final word to Kharms, thereby ending with a self-obliterating conclusive word
that marks the limit of language, the end of narrative, and yet says everything
all at once:
“[THAT’S] ALL” (VSE).
207
Conclusion
The End Point of the Infantilist Aesthetic
IN MANY SENSES, the work of Kazimir Malevich, like the

late 1920s painting Black Circle (figure 43; Chernyi krug), represents an ex-
treme, if not chronological, end point of avant-garde aesthetics. As with the
Suprematist art of Malevich, the infantilist reductionism of form also leads
toward the most basic, minimal, and fundamental components of art and sig-
nification, as might be represented by this perfect circle.1 If poetic language
has been characterized as being babble, doodle, charm, and riddle, then
the avant-garde highlights the infantile nature of these basic components of
art.2 While this study has endeavored to show how Mikhail Larionov’s Neo-
Primitivism reduces art to a child’s scribble, Aleksei Kruchenykh’s Cubo-
Futurism reduces poetry to infant babble, Viktor Shklovsky’s Formalism re-
duces art to the naive perspective, and Daniil Kharms’s absurdism reduces
prose to childish alogism, Malevich offers an example of the infantilist simpli-
fication of means in extremis. Just as Daniil Kharms’s trademark conclusion,
not to mention Shklovsky’s infantile announcement of “The End” (Konets) of
his children’s story, proclaim that the artistic work has ended and reality now
resumes, Malevich’s dramatically minimalist designs, if not chronologically
final, still put the period at the end of this history of the infantilist aesthetic.
This blindingly dark spot contains the profundity of an all-engulfing singular-
ity in a black hole, but perhaps also the all-encompassing originary egg and
primordial cell from which modern art and a new approach to meaning may
be born again.
As we have seen, each of the figures discussed in this study traces a
course toward minimalist form through their practice of artistic infantilism
in the period discussed here, if not over the entire extent of their career, or
after the advent of Socialist Realism.3 More expansively expressed, Mikhail
Larionov reduces art according to the formal principles of children’s own
drawings and eventually approaches the simple scribble that artificially rep-
licates the rays of light that reach the infantile retina, thereby taking a sig-
nificant step toward non-objective art. Aleksei Kruchenykh reduces poetry
to the babble of the infant that marks the euphony and cacophony of the
208
Figure 43. Chernyi krug (Black Circle), Kazimir Malevich, ca. 1923.
Oil on canvas, 105.5 × 106 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Copyright © 2013, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
child’s entrance into language and the child’s independent oral play with
language, and in so doing hopelessly estranges the signifier and signified.
Viktor Shklovsky distills the very nature of art, literature, and theory to the
conscious experience of its form registered by the naive perspective that per-
ceives everything with a defamiliarized eye, thereby establishing the funda-
ments of new critical theory. Whether writing for adults or children, Daniil
Kharms constrains his use of language, causation, and meaning in a way that
resembles infantile language and children’s cognition, arriving at childish alo-
gism as the perfect vehicle to express the existential absurdity of an estranged
modern subject rendered as powerless as a child.4 In this way, the develop-
ment of each figure during the period studied herein follows a similarly de-
constructive course despite the generic boundaries between literature, art,
and theory that separate them. As Shklovsky observed in retrospective re-
flections, “Transrational language is a language of pre-inspiration, the rus-
tling chaos of poetry, pre-book, pre-word chaos out of which everything is
209
Conclusion
born and into which everything disappears,”5 underscoring precisely why the
prelingual state of infans marked a key stage of the avant-garde’s trajectory.
Ultimately, then, the infantilizing aesthetic of the Russian avant-garde
moves toward self-obliteration and self-annihilation. The regressive move-
ment of infantile primitivism leads the adult to the child, infant, and embryo
in its reversal of the universal developmental trajectory and, unchecked,
moves relentlessly onward toward nonexistence.6 Using the model of the in-
fantile, the avant-garde explores the limits of art, language, and logic and
deconstructs perception, aesthetics, and interpretation. The historical con-
text of a revolutionary time, both politically and aesthetically, incipient and
retrospective, is overlaid with eschatological elements of an apocalyptic time
that, in a religious framework, augurs resurrection, redemption, and rebirth.
Thus the symbolism of “the resurrection of the word” and the neologism
itself—“In the beginning was the Word.” Indeed, modern art passes through
the infancy of language and art in its trajectory toward a singularity that, like
a wormhole, opens into a new aesthetic universe.
The example of Malevich also brings us full circle with respect to the
history of art in Russia. He returns to and revives archaic and originary mod-
els of art at the same time that he renews them for the twentieth century.
In the old Orthodox world of the holy icon, an indissoluble bond existed
between the signifier and Signified that comprised one signifying holy whole.
According to this model, signification occurred through the holy transcen-
dence of art, rather than through a process of interpretation that links sig-
nifier and signified. The modern art, literature, and theory of the Russian
avant-garde breaks this bond and liberates form from meaning, returning,
in a grandly sweeping cycle, to archaic art. The Russian avant-garde clearly
borrows from the Orthodox regard for form, just as it also borrows from the
Platonic tradition of ideal Forms.7 For instance, Malevich calls his square
“the creation of intuitive reason [intuitivnogo razuma],”8 as if immaculately
conceived within the mind. Avant-garde experiments with form and mean-
ing, in their preference for the former, drive a wedge ever deeper between
signifier and signified—to the point of eclipsing, effacing, and erasing the
signified, even as the signifier becomes simplified to the extreme, moving
toward minimal components in different spheres, and toward the null set. As
I have argued in this book, the Russian avant-garde’s use of infantile primi-
tivism and an infantilist aesthetic irrevocably alters the historical relationship
between form and meaning and infantilizes art to the very point of origin.
Clearly, however, the avant-garde construction of the ‘infant/child’ is a
paradoxical one. It includes both the infans, whose unspeaking state serves
as a representation of the prelingual unity of signifier and signified and an
ideal state of signifying wholeness, and the puer loquens, whose defamil-
iarizing and playful encounters with the limits of language are used by the
avant-garde adult to highlight the divide between signifier and signified and
210
recover an awareness of the signifying process. Ideally situated before the

conventions of verbal and visual representation and the reification of signi-
fication that turns limitless experience into arbitrary language, the ‘infant/
child’ serves as a flashpoint for an aesthetic revolution, a liberating force, and
a carnivalesque outlet for modern art, literature, and theory. Thus infans,
the ‘infant/child,’ and child are employed as a strange ‘other’ in order to
defamiliarize the world of art, the world of adults, and the world at large. In
short, the child’s example serves to destabilize the entrenched relationship of
signifier and signified and helps the avant-garde to achieve a simplification of
form, challenge the conventions of signification, and fundamentally alter the
nature of interpretation itself.
The babbling infant and scribbling child—on the verge of art and lan-
guage, visual and verbal representation, and language and artistic represen-
tation—represent pure potentiality and maximal expressiveness and impres-
sionability in the optimistic and revolutionary spirit of the early avant-garde
in the pre-revolutionary years. Meanwhile, the tragic view of the ‘infant/
child’ as helpless and powerless victim trapped in an inescapable circum-
stance offers an expressive metaphor that resonates during the final years of
the avant-garde, as it becomes increasingly infantilized, marginalized, and,
finally, forced out of existence. Some writers, like Larionov, continued their
work in the emigration, divorced from their original environment and audi-
ence. Kruchenykh in many ways persisted with his labors, though rendered
irrelevant, and instead became a sort of anachronism and eternal archivist
of the early avant-garde. Shklovsky, subjected to considerable pressure, offi-
cially recanted his Formalist views, thus achieving longevity despite the gov-
ernment’s control over literature and the arts. Kharms, however, met a tragic
and untimely end, revealing how high the stakes really were in the last years
of the avant-garde.
The optimistic discovery, occupation, and usurpation of the ‘infant/
child’ gradually capitulates to the recognition of the futility of the paradoxi-
cal quest to grant voice to the unspeaking, even as the avant-garde has itself
been infantilized, rendered powerless, voiceless, and silent. Yet, while the
infans represents the pure potentiality of the prelingual unity of signifier and
signified in a constructed and abstracted manner brought forth in extreme
avant-garde ventures, the deepening interest in the viewpoint and interior-
ity of the child continued to offer a creatively productive subject position in
parallel, if less radical, modernist experiments elsewhere. In Russia specifi-
cally, though, the potential of the infant subject position to express the pathos
of the unspeaking state applies not only to the disempowered child but also
to the censored avant-garde writer, whose aesthetic trajectory reached its
end, arrested irrevocably in its development and cut short, in some sense,
in its infancy.
Aesthetically speaking, the simplification of form realized in artistic
211
Conclusion
artifacts of this time increases the interpretive potential exponentially as it

distances the signified from the signifier, prolongs the signifying process, and
demands sophisticated and interactive interpretation by the modern audi-
ence. Over the signified favored by a transcendent view of art, the signifier
instead gains predominance as form becomes the new model and driving fea-
ture of modern art. The end result of the avant-garde aesthetic, as Malevich
shows, is the infantilization of art. This simplification of form and reduction
to minimal components, however, also yields a greater profundity. When
Malevich boxes art into a corner by reducing it to a simple square (see figure
44) and puts it on display like an Orthodox icon in the “holy corner” of the
exhibit hall, he expresses a deep reverence for form, art, and transcendent
meaning at the same time that he supplants the Orthodox worship of the sig-
nifying whole with an open-ended signifier. Form now takes precedence over
meaning, while previously meaning had taken precedence over form. Like
the avant-garde as a whole, Malevich thus symbolically and revolutionarily
reverses the historical relations of form and meaning, signifier and signified,
moving artistic development back toward zero.
This book thus argues that infantile primitivism and the development
of the infantilist aesthetic helped drive the course to a profound minimalism
where art becomes the mere frame around the simple profundity of minimal
form. Malevich himself displays a deliberate and self-conscious infantiliza-
tion of art when he reflects on artistic evolution “From Cubism and Futurism
to Suprematism” (“Ot kubizma i futurizma k suprematizmu”; 1915).9 He calls
the square “the face of the new art!” (litso novogo iskusstva!) and terms it
“the first step of pure creation in art” (pervyi shag chistogo tvorchestva v
iskusstve).10 Having reduced art to this most basic component, even the mere
shape of the frame that surrounds it, Malevich regards the square as the face
of a newborn art now in its infancy. He employs the metaphor of the child’s
“first steps” to express the uncertain beginnings and basic actions that mark
the start of a journey on this new artistic path. His conscious equation of the
square with the infancy of the new art becomes most evident, however, when
he declares, “The square is a living regal infant” (Kvadrat zhivoi tsarstvennyi
mladenets),11 thus circling back to the history of the representation of the
holy infant in Orthodox icons. Similarly, in a letter to M. V. Matiushin, he
calls it “the embryo of all possibilities,” emphasizing the interpretive fertil-
ity of earliest existence.12 Thus Malevich’s own words indicate that his most
famous work and visual manifesto of avant-garde art partakes in the wide-
spread infantilism of the avant-garde.
Significantly, the “regal infant” is the only infant who has royal rights
and powers that make it possible to transcend the powerless role of the un-
speaking subject.13 Even “regal” proves an insufficient translation, however.
Based on the term “tsar” for the emperor of all Russia, alternatively spelled
212
Figure 44. Chernyi kvadrat (Black Square), Kazimir Malevich, ca. 1923. Oil on
canvas, 106 × 106 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Copyright © 2013, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
“czar” in a way that bares its actual origins in “caesar,” the term “tsarstvennyi”
is not merely regal, but imperial. Enthroned by the infantile primitivism and
infantilist aesthetic of the Russian avant-garde, infant art, infant word, infant
eye, and infant mind have come to display an imperialism that is far-reaching.
Having ascended the throne of modern art and the avant-garde, this regal
infant claims the future as his own and aspires to expand his dominion over
the modern era, declared at its onset to be “the century of the child.”14
With the ascendancy of the square, Malevich declares, “Our world of
art has become new, non-objective [bespredmetnym], pure.”15 He rightfully
acknowledges the transition of art into pure abstraction or “nonobjective” art;
however, the same “purity” extolled by Malevich also merits due skepticism
and wariness. Such extremist rhetoric reveals the totalizing and totalitarian
implications of avant-garde art, as Groys argues in “The Birth of Socialist
Realism from the Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde.”16 According to such
213
Conclusion
logic, we might predict the birth of the Socialist Realist child hero from the
spirit of avant-garde infancy, where the avant-garde’s regressive return to
infancy passes through self-obliteration to be born again in a different guise
in a new Soviet world.
Indeed, in the uniform blackness and sharp edges of Black Square and
the revolutionary spirit of Malevich’s Red Square, we see the totalitarian im-
plications of a sterile art whose human individuality has been negated, just
as the ‘infant/child’ is depersonalized to such an extent that it becomes a
purely abstract construct and minimal geometric and mathematical point of
origin. The flattening of the human to two dimensions and pure geometry is
made evident by the additional subtitle of Red Square as “Pictorial Realism
of a Peasant Woman in 2 Dimensions” (“Krasnyi kvadrat: Zhivopisnyi real-
izm krest’ianki v 2–kh izmereniiakh”; 1915). The conscription and geometric
shaping of the child for the revolutionary cause, as well as the threat of con-
sumption and annihilation, is made clear in Mayakovsky’s poem “The Tale of
Little Red Riding Hood (“Skazka o krasnoi shapochke”) included in the col-
lection For the Voice (Dlia golosa) and illustrated by El Lissitzky.17 It warns,
“When you are going to engage in politics, children, / don’t forget the little
story of this cadet” (Kogda budete delat’ politiku, deti, / ne zabud’te skazochku
ob etom kadete), referring to the fact that the cadet was consumed by the
wolf—of revolution, as it were. Similarly violent and militaristic connota-
tions emerge in another of the avant-garde artist El Lissitzky’s revolutionary
works, including the revolutionary picturebook entitled Suprematist Tale of
Two Squares (Suprematicheskii skaz pro dva kvadrata; 1922), which makes
use of the red and black squares to tell a revolutionary story “For all / all /
little children” (Vsem / vsem / rebiatkam).18 Works like these both address
children and infantilize the audience of revolutionary and avant-garde art.
As in Vvedensky’s play, in the leveling aesthetic of avant-garde infantilism all
are regarded as children, no matter their age.
Though the uniquely rich and realized Russian example reaches revo-
lutionary extremes and moves in totalizing directions against an ever darker
historical and political backdrop, the new creative space surveyed by their ex-
ploration of the territory of infantile art, language, perception, and cognition
continues to be explored in the twentieth century by other modernists who
found particular creative and linguistic potential in the child’s consciousness.
The modern search for a common origin also explains the applicability of
the findings of this study more widely in a trans-European context where, as
mentioned earlier, children’s art has inspired groundbreaking modern artists
like Picasso, Klee, and Miró,19 and children’s language and consciousness has
provided a model for innovative writers like Proust, Woolf, and Joyce.20 In
short, though the Russian example is uniquely rich, pervasive, formative, and
telling, the implications of this study need not to be confined to the frame
214
that defines this one book. Though it focuses on four closely interrelated
avant-garde movements that define a certain trajectory, certain basic fea-
tures of the modern practice of infantile aesthetics prove universal. Indeed,
to paraphrase Shklovsky, I personally believe that infantilism is to be found
almost everywhere there is a modern aesthetic.21
Though at first it might seem that art here follows a self-annihilating
trajectory that leads indefatigably toward zero; nonetheless, alongside an
extreme sterility, a fecund fertility resides in emptiness. Even a seemingly
white canvas reveals pale shapes of greater and lesser whiteness and contains
an invitation to the viewer to participate in the construction of meaning by
transcending the frame of the painting and entering into the empty space
it defines. Even if, through artistic apocalypse and aesthetic revolution, art,
language, form, and meaning have collapsed along multiple dimensions, a
work of art like Malevich’s White Planes in Dissolution (figure 45; 1917–18)
opens up into new dimensions. Radically infantilized art that has virtually
obliterated itself, it inverts the act of interpretation by making the work of
Figure 45. White Planes in Dissolution, Kazimir Malevich, 1917–18, Amsterdam

Stedelijk Museum, The Netherlands
Courtesy Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
215
Conclusion
art into a negative space, while the world around it becomes art, thus forcing
the spectator to invert his or her own perspective and accept a new idea of
what art is by entering into the space of the frame, stepping through the
looking glass, and braving the interpretive void where art is born again. After
the infantilization and deconstruction of art, the audience of the avant-garde
must relearn how to approach art with a newborn eye, engage with it, and
participate in the reconstruction of art, language, and meaning. The annihi-
lation of art, then, through its equation with infancy, leads also to its rebirth
and resurrection. Indeed, like primordial chaos and the blackness of the cos-
mos, empty whiteness contains both nothing and everything, death and birth.
It is the pregnant silence of the unspoken and the voice of the unspeaking
subject, the space before meaning and the inchoate source of all art.
216
Notes to Pages 000–000
INTRODUCTION
1. Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. Edward Pusey (New York: P. F.

Collier and Son, 1914), 1.8.
2. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M.
Anscombe (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2001), 3.
3. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears
and B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge, 1961), 3.
4. Giorgio Agamben, Infancy and History: The Destruction of Experience,
trans. Liz Heron (London: Verso, 1993), 51.
5. Ibid., 5.
6. Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and
Art, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon Roudiez (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1980). See also Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language,
trans. Margaret Waller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).
7. See “Kristeva, Julia,” in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism,
ed. Vincent B. Leitch (New York: Norton, 2001), 2166.
8. Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life,
trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Knopf, 1962).
9. Chris Jenks, “Introduction: Constituting the Child,” in The Sociology of
Childhood: Essential Readings, ed. Chris Jenks (London: Batsford Academic and
Educational, 1982), 12.
10. Yuri Lotman, Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture, trans.
Ann Shukman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 134.
11. See Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Cul-
ture (London: Paladin, 1970).
12. Caillois explains that he has “chosen the word paidia because its root is
the word for child” and continually seeks examples of this form of play, or “spon-
taneous manifestation of the play instinct” in the child’s behavior; “For the child
it is a question of expressing himself, of feeling that he is the cause, of forcing
others to pay attention to him.” See Roger Caillois, Man, Play, and Games, trans.
Meyer Barash (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961), 27, 28.
217
13. Ibid., 9–10.

14. Ibid., 13.
15. Ibid., 27.
16. Ibid., 63.
17. Boris Groys, “The Birth of Socialist Realism from the Spirit of the Russian
Avant-Garde,” in Laboratory of Dreams: The Russian Avant-Garde and Cultural
Experiment, ed. John E. Bowlt and Olga Matich (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 1996), 193–218. Originally published as Boris Groys, “The Birth of
Socialist Realism from the Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde,” in The Culture of
the Stalin Period, ed. Hans Gunther (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990).
18. Nina Gurianova writes on the aesthetics of play and anarchy in the early
avant-garde, including in her 2012 book The Aesthetics of Anarchy. See Nina
Gurianova, The Aesthetics of Anarchy: Art and Ideology in the Early Russian
Avant-Garde (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012). See also Nina
Gourianova, “A Game in Hell, Hard Work in Heaven: Deconstructing Canon
in Russian Futurist Books,” in Russian Futurist and Constructivist Books, ed.
Deborah Whye (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002), 24–32; Nina Gouri-
anova, ed, Iz literaturnogo naslediia Kruchenykh, Modern Russian Literature and
Culture, Studies and Texts, Vol. 41 (Oakland, Calif.: Berkeley Slavic Specialties,
1999); Nina Gourianova, The Russian Futurists and Their Books (Paris: Le Hune,
1994), 44–59.
19. In many senses Lewis Carroll’s Alice plays the role of a White Rabbit in
leading modernist writers out of a chronologically linear time to a new linguisti-
cally constituted childhood space, where nonsense and alogism serve to sever
the signifier and the signified, thus auguring a brave new world for modern
literature. After her passage through the rabbit hole, Alice is reborn into a new
kind of infancy, where she is symbolically shrunk in size and is, insofar as she
is unheard and unheeded, effectively voiceless; eventually she matures, grows,
and asserts her voice and agency to such an extent that she escapes this simula-
tion of infantile incapacity. I am indebted to Chanel Miller for this comparison.
On the importance of Lewis Carroll’s work for modernist writers, particularly
Virginia Woolf, see Juliet Dusinberre, Alice to the Lighthouse: Children’s Books
and Radical Experiments in Art (London: Macmillan, 1999). She argues, “In the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, children’s books and writing about
children provided the soil from which Sons and Lovers, A la recherche du temps
perdu, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! and
My Antonía, The Voyage Out, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves all sprang. . . .
The argument is not that children’s books created books about children, but
that cultural change was both reflected and pioneered in the books which chil-
dren read. Radical experiments in the arts in the early modern period began
in the books which Lewis Carroll and his successors wrote for children.” Juliet
Dusinberre, Alice to the Lighthouse: Children’s Books and Radical Experiments
in Art (Basingstoke, Eng.: Macmillan, 1987), 5. Similarly, Robert Polhemus con-
218
nects Joyce, Waugh, Nabokov, Beckett, and Borges to Alice. Robert Polhemus,
“The Comedy of Regression,” in Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, ed.
Donald J. Gray (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 365. Michael Holquist notes
the connection to Surrealism and Louis Aragon, André Breton, Henri Parisot,
and Antonin Artaud, as well as Joyce, Borges, and Nabokov. Michael Holquist,
“What Is a Boojum? Nonsense and Modernism,” in Lewis Carroll, Alice in
Wonderland, ed. Donald J. Gray (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 389. Holquist
notes, as do I, that nonsense calls attention to language. Holquist, “What Is a
Boojum?,” 395.
20. This poster is reprinted as the back cover on Catriona Kelly’s encyclope-
dic account of the history of Russian childhood in the twentieth century. Catriona
Kelly, Children’s World: Growing Up in Russia, 1890–1991 (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 2007). See also Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, Small Comrades:
Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932 (New York: Routledge,
2001).
21. Jacqueline Rose, “The Case of Peter Pan: The Impossibility of Children’s
Fiction,” in Children’s Culture Reader, ed. Henry Jenkins (New York: New York
University Press, 1998), 58.
22. Ibid., 65.
23. Early Symbolist writings involving the infantile, which will be discussed
in more detail later, include Bely’s early Symbolist essay “Magiia slov” (1909) and
Aleksandr Blok’s essay “O sovremennom sostoianii russkogo simvolizma” (1910).
Andrei Belyi, “Magiia slov,” in Simvolizm: Kniga statei (Moscow: Musaget, 1910),
429–48. Aleksandr Blok, “O sovremennom sostoianii russkogo simvolizma,” in
Sobranie sochinenii v vos’mi tomakh (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo
khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1962), 425–36.
24. Andrei Bely, Kotik Letaev (St. Petersburg: Epokha, 1922). In English, see
Andrei Bely, Kotik Letaev, trans. Gerald J. Janecek (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
University Press, 1999).
25. Osip Mandel’shtam’s memoirs Shum vremeni (The Noise of Time) touch
upon the child’s sensibilities, as do specific poems, such as “Silentium.” Andrei
Platonov explores the theme of childhood extensively in Kotlovan (The Foun-
dation Pit) and engages in infantile subjects in selected stories, particularly
through the use of silence in “Reka Potudan’ ” (“The River Potudan”) and the
use of the child’s perspective in “Semyon.” Boris Pasternak engages in the poet-
ics of childhood in his poem “Tak nachinaiut. Goda v dva . . . (“So they start. At
two years of age . . .”) and in his memoirs Okhrannaia gramota (Safe Conduct),
as well as in his novel about a young girl, Detstvo Liuvers (The Childhood of
Liuvers). Marina Tsvetaeva’s autobiographical writings, especially “Moi Pushkin”
(“My Pushkin”) and “Mat’ i muzyka” (“Mother and Music”), engage in the theme
of childhood. For a sensitive analysis of the theme of child as poet in Tsvetaeva’s
writings, see the section entitled “Spor o detstve” in the second chapter of
Viktoria Shveitser, Byt i bytie Mariny Tsvetaevoi (Moscow: Interprint, 1992).
219
Notes to Page 13
26. For scholarly approaches to the novel in the context of a monograph,

see Vladimir Alexandrov, Andrei Bely: The Major Symbolist Fiction (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985); and Andrew Baruch Wachtel, The Battle
for Childhood: Creation of a Russian Myth (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 1990). See also Gerald Janecek, Poetic Devices and Structures in Belij’s
Kotik Letaev, Ph.D. diss. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1972).
27. See Ariès, Centuries of Childhood.
28. Alluding to the bold rhetoric of Philippe Ariès, who dates “the discovery
of childhood” to the eighteenth century, Andrew Wachtel claims “The advent
of a specifically Russian conception of childhood can be dated to September
1852, when Tolstoy’s Childhood appeared anonymously in the journal, The Con-
temporary.” Wachtel, The Battle for Childhood, 2. Max Okenfuss also employs
this phrase. Max J. Okenfuss, The Discovery of Childhood in Russia: The Evidence
of the Slavic Primer (Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1980).
29. Although Tolstoy’s significance as a founding figure for Russian repre-
sentations of childhood cannot be disputed, further indications of a contempo-
rary interest in the subjectivity of the child also exist. Other canonical accounts
of childhood include the dream of a return to childhood in Ivan Goncharov’s
“Oblomov’s Dream” (“Son Oblomova”; 1849) and Sergei Aksakov’s The Child-
hood Years of Bagrov’s Grandson (Detskie godi Bagrova-vnuka; 1859). A more
comprehensive list and short analysis of other works can be found in the chapter
“Other Childhoods in Russian Literature” in Alexander F. Zweers, Grown-Up
Narrator and Childlike Hero (Paris: Mouton, 1971), 113–42.
30. For a discussion of the inspirational role of children’s art in work by these
artists and others, including Russians Mikhail Larionov and Vasily Kandinsky,
see Jonathan Fineberg, The Innocent Eye: Children’s Art and the Modern Artist
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997). See also Jonathan Fineberg,
ed., Discovering Child Art: Essays on Childhood, Primitivism, and Modernism
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998).
31. The connection of the name “Dada” to the hobbyhorse of the nursery
in French is drawn in Hugo Ball’s 1916 “Dada Manifesto” and in Tristan Tzara’s
1918 “Dada Manifesto.” Robert Motherwell, ed., The Dada Painters and Poets:
An Anthology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989). The French
term ‘dada’ for hobbyhorse itself derives from a childish reduplication of ‘da’ for
“giddyap.” The Dadaist resistance to pinpointing a single origin for this term,
and Tzara’s consequent enumeration of meanings for the word in a variety of
languages, including a “children’s nurse” and a “double affirmative in Russian
and Rumanian,” demonstrates an attempt to speak a universal language, which
children’s babble and early word forms (frequently involved in the derivation of
the word ‘dada’ in various languages) also represent.
32. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2007).
33. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2005).
220
34. Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and
Terence Kilmartin (London: Chatto and Windus, 1992).
35. Peter Coveney credits Romanticism for turning the child into “an impor-
tant and continuous theme in English literature.” When the Romantic poets treat
the subject of childhood, he observes, “we are confronted with something essen-
tially new, the phenomenon of major poets expressing something they considered
of great significance through the image of the child . . . within the course of a
few decades the child emerges from comparative unimportance to become the
focus of an unprecedented literary interest, and, in time, the central figure of an
increasingly significant proportion of our literature.” Peter Coveney, The Image
of Childhood: The Individual and Society: A Study of the Theme in English
Literature (Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1967), 29. For the Romantic poets,
the child represents the perfect vehicle for dramatizing the confrontation of in-
nocence and experience. Wordsworth succinctly expresses the Romantic reversal
of values in his poetic statement, “The Child is the father of the Man.” William
Wordsworth, “My heart leaps up when I behold. . .” (1802), in The Complete
Poetical Works (London: Macmillan, 1888).
36. Despite its iconoclastic nature, Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Also
Sprach Zarathustra; 1883), in its spiritual and philosophical idealization of the
child, borrows something from the scriptural attitude toward children and its
reverence for the Christ Child. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin Books, 1978).
37. Baudelaire famously declared “genius is nothing more than childhood
recovered at will.” Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life” (1863), in
The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, trans. Jonathan Mayne (London:
Phaidon, 1965), 8. He exhorts, “Let us go back, if we can, by a retrospective
effort of the imagination towards our most youthful, our earliest, impressions”
since “the child sees everything in a state of newness . . . the genius of child-
hood—a genius for which no aspect of life has become stale.” Baudelaire, “The
Painter,” 7–8.
38. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1964), 449. Darwin’s scientific interests extended also to human
infancy. He published a detailed account of the development of his own infant
son, which makes an initial contribution to the dialectics of child and mirror that
later enters literary history in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass (1872)
and becomes enshrined in the psychoanalytical pantheon in Jacques Lacan’s “The
Mirror Stage” (“La stade du miroir”; 1936). Charles Darwin, “A Biographical
Sketch of an Infant,” in The Collected Papers of Charles Darwin, ed. Paul H.
Barrett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 196. First published in
Mind: Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy 2 (1877), 285–94. Jacques
Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I,” in Écrits: A
Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Routledge, 1977), 1–8.
39. In General Morphology (Generelle Morphologie; 1866) Haeckel writes,
221
“Ontogeny is the short and rapid recapitulation of phylogeny. . . . During its own
rapid development . . . an individual repeats the most important changes in form
evolved by its ancestors during their long and slow paleontological develop-
ment.” Cited in Stephen Jay Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 76–77.
40. For a comprehensive study of the history of this idea, see Gould, Onto-
geny and Phylogeny.
41. For instance, Freud compares the infant’s oral and anal stages to “early
animal forms of life” in Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
(1905), trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 1962), 96. Quoted
in Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny, 156.
42. See Sigmund Freud, The Sexual Enlightenment of Children (New York:
Collier Books, 1963).
43. In his study Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory from his Childhood, for
instance, Freud analyzes this prominent example of Renaissance genius through
his experiences in infancy and early childhood. Like the Romantics, Freud links
genius, child, and play when he comments, “the great Leonardo remained infan-
tile in some ways throughout his whole life. . . . As a grown-up, he still continued
playing.” Sigmund Freud, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory from his Childhood,
trans. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989).
44. Peter Coveney, Image of Childhood, 34.
45. Steven Marcus, Freud and the Culture of Psychoanalysis: Studies in the
Transition from Victorian Humanism to Modernity (New York: W. W. Norton,
1984), 23.
46. Coveney, Image of Childhood, 34.
47. For a discussion of the literary discovery of a child’s interiority through
the perspective of psychoanalysis, see Carolyn Steedman, Strange Dislocations.
Childhood and the Idea of Human Interiority 1780–1930 (London: Virago, 1995).
48. Sigmund Freud, “From the History of an Infantile Neurosis,” in Col-
lected Papers, trans. Alix and James Strachey, vol. 3 (London: Hogarth Press,
1949), 3:584. In detailing Freud’s construction of the psychoanalytic child, Massé
remarks that the 1918 article was a capstone for Freud’s previous work on the
subject. In her opinion, it kept his earlier work on infantile sexuality from being
washed away. See Michelle A. Massé, “Constructing the Psychoanalytic Child:
Freud’s From the History of an Infantile Neurosis,” in The American Child: A
Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Caroline F. Levander and Carol J. Singley (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 149–66.
49. For analysis of the phenomenon of zhiznetvorchestvo, see Michael
Wachtel’s chapter on “Zhiznetvorchestvo: The Conflation of Art and Life,” in
Michael Wachtel, Russian Symbolism and Literary Tradition: Goethe, Novalis,
and the Poetics of Vyacheslav Ivanov (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1994), 148–80.
222
50. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1997).
51. Rosalind E. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other
Modernist Myths (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997).
52. Ibid., 157.
CHAPTER ONE
1. The idea of the Revolution as the end of historical time has eschatological
interpretations as well. For an astute analysis of the biblical paradigms under-
lying revolutionary utopianisms, see Irina Paperno, Chernyshevsky and the Age
of Realism: A Study in the Semiotics of Behavior (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 1988).
2. Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov, Mirskontsa, illus. Nataliia
Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, et al. (Moscow: Kuzmin and S. D. Dolinskii,
1912).
3. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Boston: Bea-
con, 1969), 92.
4. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Ob-
ject (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
5. See I. Kliun, “Primitivy XX-go veka,” in Tainye poroki akademikov, by
A. Kruchenykh, I. Kliun, and K. Malevich (Moscow, 1915). For a more recent
republication, see A. E. Kruchenykh, Izbrannoe, ed. Vladimir Markov (Munich:
Vilhelm Fink Verlag, 1973), 191–92.
6. See Joseph Frank, “Spatial Form in Modern Literature,” in The Idea of
Spatial Form (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 5–66.
7. Wilfried Lippitz, “The Child’s Understanding of Time,” Phenomenology
+ Pedagogy 1, no. 2 (1983): 172. See also J. Piaget, Einfuhrung in die Genetische
Erkenntnistheorie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981).
8. Robert Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard University Press, 1986).
9. Bengt Danielsson, Gauguin in the South Seas, trans. Reginald Spink
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966).
10. Paul Gauguin, L’Echo (August 15, 1895). Cited in Fineberg, The Inno-
cent Eye, 25.
11. Vincent Van Gogh, The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1988), 20.
12. Paul Gauguin, Intimate Journals, trans. Van Wyck Brooks (New York:
Crown, 1936), 41.
13. Comments by “Prof. Nikolai Morozov” in “Khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvo
detei: O “Nashem zhurnale” (Prilozhenie),” in Nash zhurnal: Nasha pervaia
knizhka (Petrograd: Svobodnoe iskusstvo, 1916), 11
223
14. George Saiko, “Why Modern Art Is Primitive,” London Studio 7 (1934):
275. Cited in Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern Art, xx.
15. Examples of the older form of the ‘noble savage,’ or ‘man of nature’
who exemplifies Western Enlightment or Romantic ideals include François-René
de Chateaubriand’s Atala (1801) and James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking
Tales (1823). Embedded in Western narratives, these savages reflect contempo-
rary Western ideals. Twentieth-century Neo-Primitivism, in contrast, makes use
of startlingly “primitive” forms in order to reinject these clichés with new life.
16. Freud frequently draws such parallels. See, for instance, Sigmund Freud,
Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement Between the Mental Lives of Sav-
ages and Neurotics, trans. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989).
17. Fabian, Time and the Other.
18. Ibid., 61.
19. Lévi-Strauss, Elementary Structures of Kinship, 92.
20. Ibid., 63.
21. E.-T. Hamy, “La figure humaine chez le sauvage et chez l’enfant,”
L’Anthropologie 19 (1908): 385–86. Cited in Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern
Art, 22.
22. Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern Art, 145.
23. Marianna Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 9.
24. The limitations of this framework prove evident, for instance, in the prin-
ciples of selection that predetermine what artists will find in the works of these
‘primitives,’ who often amount to privileged and precocious children of artists
whose art reflects that of their parents.
25. “Khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvo detei: O ‘Nashem zhurnale’ (Prilo-
zhenie),” 11.
26. Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern Art, xxi.
27. M. Voloshin, “Vystavka detskikh risunkov,” Rus’, no. 76 (March 17, 1908).
A shortened version of the original article has been republished in Maksimilian
Voloshin, “Vystavka detskikh risunkov,” in Liki tvorchestva (Leningrad: Nauka,
1988), 271–72.
28. L. N. Tolstoi. “Komu u kogo uchit’sia pisat’, krest’ianskim rebiatam u
nas ili nam u krest’ianskikh rebiat?,” in L. N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochine-
nii v devianosta tomakh, vol. 8 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudo-
zhestvennoi literatury, 1936), 301–24. For English, see Leo Tolstoy, “Are the
Peasant Children to Learn to Write from Us, or Are We to Learn from the
Peasant Children?,” in Tolstoy as Teacher: Leo Tolstoy’s Writings on Education,
trans. Christopher Edgar, ed. Bob Blaisdell (New York: Teachers and Writers
Collaborative, 2000), 25–49.
29. Tolstoi, “Komu u kogo uchit’sia pisat’,” 307.
30. Aleksandr Benua, “Vystavka ‘Iskusstvo v zhizni rebenka,’ ” Rech’, no. 289
(November 26, 1908): 3.
224
31. Petr Ia. Chaadaev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i izbrannye pis’ma (Moscow,
1991). For English, see Petr Iakovlevich Chaadaev, “Letters on the Philoso-
phy of History: First Letter,” trans. Marc Raeff, in Russian Intellectual History:
An Anthology, ed. Marc Raeff (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966),
159–73.
32. Chaadaev, “First Letter,” 164.
33. Ibid., 163.
34. The idea that Russia has not yet succeeded in living up to its full potential
also has a counterpart in the implications of the telling titles of the eighteenth-
century drama The Minor (Nedorosl’; 1782) by Denis Fonvizin and the novel The
Adolescent (Podrostok; 1875) by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Both of these etymologies
communicate the idea of having failed to grow fully.
36. Ibid., 166.
37. One might also compare the founding legend of Rus’, as represented
in the Primary Chronicle (Povest’ vremennykh let), where the Varangians are
“invited” to rule over the Slavs to end their internecine conflicts. Povest’ vremen-
nykh let, trans. D. S. Likhachev, ed. V. P. Adrianova-Peretts (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo
Akademii nauk, 1950).
39. Ludwig Gewaesi, “V Mire Iskusstva,” Zolotoe runo, no. 2/3 (1909), 119.
Cited in Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art 1863–1922, ed. Marian
Burleigh-Motley (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), 119.
40. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘barbarous’ derives from
Latin barbar-us and Greek várvaros. As regards its origins, “The Gr. word had
probably a primary reference to speech, and is compared with L. balbus stam-
mering.”
41. Gewaesi, “V Mire Iskusstva,” 119.
42. Caryl Emerson argues, “That the hierarchy is flipped and Count Tolstoy
is at the feet of his peasants is not significant. The axis has not changed. It is still
the omnipresent, monologic kto kogo (‘who does what to whom’)—either I know
and teach you, or you know and teach me.” She concludes, “Tolstoy’s essay might
advocate abolition of hierarchy, but it is still cast in what Bakhtin would call a
‘pedagogical dialogue.’ ” Caryl Emerson, “The Tolstoy Connection in Bakhtin,” in
Rethinking Bakhtin: Extensions and Challenges, ed. Gary Saul Morson and Caryl
Emerson (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1989), 152.
43. Aleksandr Shevchenko, “Neoprimitivizm: Ego teoriia, Ego vozmoshnosti,
Ego dostizheniia,” in Ob iskusstve, by Mikhail Larionov, Nataliia Goncharova,
and Aleksandr Shevchenko (Leningrad: Fond ‘Leningradskaia galereia’ Iz
arkhiva russkogo avangarda, 1989), 62. For English, see Aleksandr Shevchenko,
“Neoprimitivism: Its Theory, Its Potential, Its Achievements, 1913,” in Russian
Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism 1902–1934, ed. and trans. John
Bowlt (New York: Viking, 1976), 41–54.
225
44. Shevchenko, “Neoprimitivizm,” 63.

45. Vladimir Markov, “Printsipy novogo iskusstva,” in Voldemar Matvei
(Vladimir Markov), Stat’i. Katalog rabot. Perepiska. Khronika deiatel’nosti
“Soiuza molodezhi,” ed. Irena Buzhinska (Riga: Valsts Makslas muzejs, 2002),
26–31. Originally published in Soiuz molodezhi, 1912: 1–2.
46. Markov, “Printsipy novogo iskusstva,” 27.
47. Cited in Gray, Russian Experiment, 7.
48. Shevchenko, “Neoprimitivizm,” 67.
49. Gray, Russian Experiment, 9.
50. Noteworthy writings on the subject of children’s art by World of Art
artists from the early period of Neo-Primitivist activity include Aleksandr Benua,
“Vystavka ‘Iskusstvo v zhizni rebenka,’ ” Rech’, no. 289 (November 26, 1908), 3;
Aleksandr Benua, “Povorot k lubku,” Rech’, no. 75 (March 18, 1909), 2; N. I.
Kul’bin, “Svobodnoe iskusstvo, kak osnova zhizni,” in Studiia impressionistov, ed.
N. I. Kul’bin (St. Petersburg: N. I. Butkovskii, 1910), 3–14; Lev Bakst, “Puti klas-
sitsizma v iskusstve,” Apollon, no. 3 (December 1909), 46–61. The earlier portion
of this two-part article appeared in Apollon, no. 2 (November 1909), 63–78.
51. For an artistic catalog and study of these artists’ relationship to children’s
art, including reproductions of works by artists and children, see Fineberg, The
Innocent Eye.
52. Yuri Molok, “Children’s Drawings in Russian Futurism,” trans. Sophy
Thompson, in Discovering Child Art: Essays on Childhood, Primitivism, and
Modernism, ed. Jonathan Fineberg (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1998), 55–67. For a later Russian publication, see Iu. A. Molok, “Detskii futurizm
(Sobstvennye risunki detei glazami khudozhnikov ‘Mir iskusstva’ i futuristov),” in
N. S. Goncharova i M. F. Larionov, Issledovaniia i publikatsii (Moscow: Nauka,
2003), 208–17.
53. Molok uncovers the identity of some of these, namely, the artist Nikolai
Rerikh’s son “Yurik,” the daughter of the organizer Dmitry Kardovsky, and
Benois’s two daughters Atya and Lelya. This detail reveals the nepotistic interest
Benois may have had in promoting the exhibition on “Art in the Life of the
Child.” Molok, “Children’s Drawings,” 56.
54. V. F. Kruglov, “Salony V. A. Izdebskogo,” in Vladimir Izdebskii i ego ‘sa-
lony,’ Gosudarstvennyi russkii muzei (St. Petersburg: Palace Editions, 2003), 8.
55. Anthony Parton, Mikhail Larionov and the Russian Avant-Garde
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 30.
56. Molok, “Children’s Drawings,” 58.
57. Kruglov, “Salony,” 13. If the previous exhibition used the Latinate and
foreign-sounding “internatsional’naia” and had a greater range of international
art, then the 1911 exhibition used the standard Russian “mezhdunarodnaia” even
as Russian avant-garde artists had greater prominence. The difference in these
terms thus marks a shift in perspective and orientation from a Western view to a
226
more Russian perspective. I am indebted to Barry Scherr for drawing attention

to this distinction.
58. Kruglov, “Salony,” 12.
60. See Vivian Endicott Barnett, The Blue Four Collection: At the Norton
Simon Museum (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), 41–44, 356–71.
61. Fineberg reproduces numerous children’s drawings from the collection
of Kandinsky and Münter. See Jonathan Fineberg, “In Search of Universality:
The Vasily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter Collection,” in The Innocent Eye:
Children’s Art and the Modern Artist. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1997), 46–81.
62. Birgit Jooss, “Kinder- und Laienkunst,” in Der Almanach “Der Blaue
Reiter”: Bilder und Bildwerke in Originalen, ed. Brigitte Salmen (Murnau:
Schlossmuseum, 1998), 121–22.
63. Ibid., 123.
64. Parton, Mikhail Larionov, 57.
66. See Jonathan Fineberg, “Mikhail Larionov and the ‘Childhood’ of Rus-
sia,” in The Innocent Eye: Children’s Art and the Modern Artist (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1997), 28–45.
68. Parton, Mikhail Larionov, 175–77.
69. For this invaluable research opportunity I am grateful for the aid of
Evgeniia Ilyukhina and Irina Shumanova at the Graphics Department of the
Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
70. This may refer to the wartime newspaper Rannee utro: Bol’shaia, ezhe-
dnevnaia, politicheskaia, obshchestvennaia i literaturnaia gazeta (Moscow: Pe-
chatnoe slovo, 1917–18).
72. Vladimir Markov, Russian Futurism: A History (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1968), 199.
73. M. Matiushin, “Russkie kubofuturisty,” in Stat’i ob avangarde: Arkhiv
russkogo avangarda, vol. 1, ed. N. I. Khardzhiev (Moscow: RA, 1997), 159.
74. Aleksandr Shevchenko, Printsipy kubizma i drugikh sovremennykh te-
chenii v zhivopisi vsekh vremen i narodov (Moscow: Izd. A. Shevchenko, 1913), 25.
75. Ibid.
76. John Willats. Art and Representation: New Principles in the Analysis of
Pictures. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997).
77. Ibid., 11.
78. Philippe Ariès and others have discussed the gradual shift from the rep-
resentation of children from “men on a reduced scale,” or homunculi, toward
more realistic representation. Philippe Ariès, “The Discovery of Childhood,”
227
in The Sociology of Childhood: Essential Readings, ed. Chris Jenks (London:

Batsford Academic and Educational, 1982), 32. Ariès calls the Infant Jesus “the
model and ancestor of all the little children in the history of art” and speaks of
how he too “is an adult on a reduced scale” before this style of representation
yields to an “evolution towards a more realistic and more sentimental representa-
tion of childhood.” Ariès, “The Discovery of Childhood,” 33. Though Ariès may
overstate the universal importance of the Infant Jesus, he certainly does serve as
the model for representing childhood in Russian art, historically resistant as it
was to artistic representation outside of religious iconography.
79. Many of Larionov’s contemporaries continue to employ religious ico-
nography in portrayals of mother and child, notably Pavel Filonov, and his own
primitivist colleague Natalya Goncharova, who depicted many religious motifs
in her art.
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid.
83. Gray, Russian Experiment, 105–6.
84. For a key study of the interplay of image and text, see Gerald Janecek,
The Look of Russian Literature: Avant-Garde Visual Experiments, 1900–1930
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984).
85. Fineberg, Innocent Eye, 34–36.
86. Ibid., 34.
87. David Burliuk, “Cubism (Surface-Plane), 1912,” in Russian Art of the
Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism 1902–1934, ed. and trans. John Bowlt (New
York: Viking, 1976), 77.
88. John Malmstad discusses its play with artistic tradition, including its use
of the Venus pudica position. He also makes a number of insightful points about
its relationship and borrowings from the Gauguin painting Te arii vahine, which
was in a private collection in Russia in Larionov’s time, and points out the bawdy
implication that results from the association of the color yellow with prostitutes.
John E. Malmstad, “The Sacred Profaned: Image and Word in the Paintings of
Mikhail Larionov,” in Laboratory of Dreams: The Russian Avant-Garde and Cul-
tural Experiment, ed. John E. Bowlt and Olga Matich (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1996), 164–66.
89. Willats, Art and Representation, 81.
90. Kovtun reproduces this 1913 photograph from the exhibition. Evgeny
Kovtun, Mikhail Larionov (Bournemouth, Eng.: Parkstone, 1998), 97.
91. Fineberg, Innocent Eye, 38.
92. Malmstad, “The Sacred Profaned,” 168.
93. Kornei Chukovskii, “Ot dvukh do piati,” in Sobranie sochinenii v piat-
nadtsati tomakh (Moscow: Terra-Knizhnyi klub, 2001), 5–388.
94. Ruth Weir, Language in the Crib (The Hague: Mouton, 1962).
228
95. The classic study of the tadpole figure is Norman Freeman, Strategies
of Representation in Young Children: Analysis of Spatial Skills and Drawing
Processes (New York: Academic, 1980). See also the earlier article by Norman
Freeman, “Do Children Draw Men with Arms Coming Out of Their Head?,”
Nature, no. 254 (1975), 416–17. For a later summary of research, see the chapter
on “The Tadpole Figure” in Maureen Cox, Children’s Drawings of the Human
Figure (New York: Psychology, 1993), 23–47.
96. In her discussion of children’s linguistic overextension, Eve Clark notes
that this phenomenon had already been described by nineteenth- and twentieth-
century diarists. Eve V. Clark, First Language Acquisition (Cambridge, Mass.:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), 88.
97. Viktor Shklovskii, “Iskusstvo kak priem,” in Gamburgskii schet: Stat’i-
vospominaniia-esse (1914–1933) (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1990), 61.
98. Shevchenko, “Neoprimitivizm,” 51–68.
99. Ibid., 56.
100. Ibid.
101. Ibid.
102. Ibid., 57.
103. Gurianova notes, “The fascination with children’s world perception
is evident in Kandinsky’s theoretical writings.” Gurianova, Aesthetics of An-
archy, 54.
104. V. V. Kandinskii, “O dukhovnom v iskusstve (Zhivopis’),” in Izbrannye
trudy po teorii iskusstva, 1901–1914 (Moscow: Gileia, 2001), 96–156.
105. Ibid., 109.
106. Mikhail Larionov, Luchizm (Moscow: Izdanie K. i K., 1913). Repub-
lished as Mikhail Larionov, “Luchizm: Moscow, 1913,” in Ob iskusstve, by Mikhail
Larionov, Nataliia Goncharova, and Aleksandr Shevchenko (Leningrad: Fond
Leningradskaia galeria, 1989), 13–22.
107. Larionov, “Luchizm,” 19.
108. The fact that “the image of the external world as projected on the
retina is upside down” was initially demonstrated by Johannes Kepler (1604)
and further studied by William Molyneux (1692) and Johannes Müller (1826).
Richard J. Herrnstein and Edwin G. Boring, eds., A Source Book in the History
of Psychology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 103. George
Malcolm Stratton’s classic experiment in 1897, when he inverted his own vision
for seven days, however, conclusively established the behavioral aspect of the
inverted retinal image. This recent experiment may underlie Larionov’s interest
in the phenomenon of inverted vision. For the scientific underpinnings of this
idea, see “Johannes Kepler on the Crystalline Humor as a Lens and the Inversion
of the Retinal Image, 1604” in Herrnstein and Boring, History of Psychology,
91–97; “William Molyneux on the Inverted Retinal Image, 1692” in Herrnstein
and Boring, History of Psychology, 97–100; “Johannes Müller on Subjective
229
Visual Size and Position in Relation to the Retinal Image, 1826” in Herrnstein
and Boring, History of Psychology; 100–103, and “George Malcolm Stratton on
Visual Localization and the Inversion of the Retinal Image, 1897,” in Herrnstein
and Boring, History of Psychology, 103–12.
109. Lise Eliot, What’s Going On in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop
in the First Five Years of Life (New York: Bantam Books, 2000), 206. See also
the chapter “Wiring Up the Visual Brain” in Eliot, What’s Going On in There?,
196–227.
110. Willats, Art and Representation, 98.
112. Establishing an accurate chronology for the paintings and periods of
development of this artist, who was guilty of pre-dating his own work, was one of
Anthony Parton’s main goals in his monograph on Mikhail Larionov and the task
he performed most admirably in his book, according to Maria Gough. See Maria
Gough, “Anthony Parton, Mikhail Larionov and the Russian Avant-Garde,” Art
Bulletin 80, no. 4 (December 1998): 752–55.
113. “Khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvo detei. O ‘Nashem zhurnale’ (Prilo-
zhenie),” Nash zhurnal: Nasha pervaia knizhka (Petrograd: Svobodnoe iskusstvo,
1916), 14.
114. Ia. Tugendkhol’d, “O detskikh risunkakh i ikh vzaimodeistvii so vzro-
slym iskusstvom. (Po povodu moskovskoi vystavki),” Severnyia zapiski, April–
May 1916, 124–25.
115. Aleksandr Benua, “O detskom tvorchestve,” Rech’, no. 144 (May 27,
1916), 2.
116. Gray, Russian Experiment, 107.
117. Ibid., 108.
118. Ibid., 108–9.
CHAPTER TWO
1. Arthur O. Lovejoy and George Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in

Antiquity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 73.
2. One theory, advanced by V. O. Pertsov, is that Mayakovsky here polemi-
cally engages with Francis Jammes’s poem, which appeared in a translation by
Ilya Ehrenburg in the same year. V. O. Pertsov, Maiakovskii: Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo,
3 vols. (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1976), 1:193–96. Fransis Zhamm,
Ot utrennego blagovesta do vecherni: Stikhi i prozy (Moscow, 1913).
3. Noteworthy exceptions include Gerald Janecek who devotes several pages
to the topic of “Children’s Babble, Language Learning, and Folklore” in his ex-
cellent study of the sources of trans-sense language. Gerald Janecek, Zaum: The
Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism (San Diego, Calif.: San Diego State
230
University Press, 1996), 21–26. Other scholars of the avant-garde mention the
subject briefly in passing, such as Vladimir Markov, who occasionally mentions
infantile primitivism in the course of his study of Futurism. Vladimir Markov,
Russian Futurism.
4. Lev Vygotsky, Thought and Language, trans. Alex Kozulin (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1992).
5. Ibid., 93.
6. Ibid., 83.
7. Ibid., 65.
8. Ibid., 60.
9. Ibid., 61.
10. Ibid., 82. Vygotsky cites William Stern, Psychologie der fruhen Kindheit,
(Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1914), 108. For English, see William Stern, The
Psychology of Early Childhood Up to the Sixth Year of Age (New York: H. Holt,
1930). See also C. Stern and W. Stern, Die Kindersprache (Leipzig: Barth, 1928).
11. Vygotsky, Thought and Language, 82.
12. See Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language. For a relevant discussion of
Kristeva as applied to the Russian avant-garde, see Clare Cavanaugh, “Pseudo-
Revolution in Poetic Language: Julia Kristeva and the Russian Avant-Garde,”
Slavic Review, 52, no. 2 (1993): 283–97.
13. See Kristeva, Desire in Language, 284.
14. This quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Gay Science is employed
by Jameson for his study of critical thought in this period. Frederick Jameson,
The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian
Formalism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972).
15. Slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo iazyka (Leningrad-Moscow:
Izd. Akademii nauk SSSR, 1957), 6:161.
16. My usage of infantilism and the infantile as applied to the language of
the Russian Futurists has some precedent in Russian scholarship, beginning with
Živa Benčić, who discusses the infantile as an aesthetic category in the work of
the Futurist poet Elena Guro. See Živa Benčić, “Infantil’noe kak esteticheskaia
i eticheskaia kategoriia,” Russian Literature 40 (1996): 1–18. Valerii Grechko
takes up the concept of infantilism again in his highly relevant article: Valerii
Grechko, “O nekotorykh obshchikh osobennostiakh infantil’nogo i zaumnogo
iazyka,” Russian Literature 48 (2000): 15–31.
17. D. Burliuk, Aleksandr Kruchenykh, V. Maiakovskii, and Viktor Khlebni-
kov, “Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu,” in Poeziia russkogo futurizma
(St. Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt, 1999), 617. Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov
signed this manifesto with alternative versions of their names rather than the
ones for which they would become most known.
18. “Baudouin proposed that by children’s innovations one can predict the
231
future state of language” (Boduen polagal, chto po detskim innovatsiiam mozhno

predskazat’ budushchee sostoianie iazyka). See S. N. Tseitlin, Iazyk i rebenok:
Lingvistika detskoi rechi (Moscow: Vlados, 2000), 160.
19. Gregory Bateson, “A Theory of Play and Fantasy,” in Steps to an Ecology
of Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972), 180.
20. The linguist Eve Clark comments on the particular metalinguistic aware-
ness children show when they are acquiring language. “They play with language,
with sounds and sound sequences; they make repairs, they announce achieve-
ments. It seems as if they are focussing on language and its elements, not only
in their own everyday usage but also in an increasing range of metalinguistic
reflections on language.” See Clark, First Language Acquisition, 124.
21. D. Burliuk, Aleksandr Kruchenykh, V. Maiakovskii, and Viktor Khlebni-
kov, “Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu,” 617–18.
22. In a metaphoric sense, the child has been called infans to represent its
lack of a right to speak. Analogously, the similarly derived proto-Slavic mean-
ing of “otrok” etymologically indicates “not having the right to speak.” Compare
“Praslav. *ot(")rok ‘ne imeiushchii prava govorit'.’ Iz ot i reku, rok (sm. Guier,
LF 40. 304; Mi. EW 274), Meie (Ét. 233) tolkoval kak kal'ku Lat. infans” [Proto-
Slavic *ot(")rok “not having the right to speak.” From ot and reku, rok (cf. Guier,
LF 40. 304; Mi. EW 274), Meillet (Ét. 233) interpreted it as a calque of the Latin
infans]. Maks Fasmer, Etimologicheskii slovar’ russkogo iazyka, trans. O. N.
Trubachev (Moscow: Progress, 1971), 3:172–73.
23. Aleksei Kruchenykh, “Avtobiografiia dichaishego,” in 15 let russkogo fu-
turizma, 1912–1927 gg.: Materialy i kommentarii (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Vseros-
siiskogo soiuza poetov, 1928), 57.
24. Aleksei Kruchenykh, “Detstvo i iunost’ budetlian,” in Nash vykhod, K
istorii russkogo futurizma (Moscow: Literaturno-khudozhestvennoe agenstvo
“RA,” 1996), 32. For English, see Aleksei Kruchenykh, “The Childhood and
Youth of the Budetlyane” (1932), in Our Arrival: Towards a History of Russian
Futurism, trans. Alan Myers (Moscow: Literaturno-khudozhestvennoe agenstvo
“RA,” 1995), 28–38.
25. Kruchenykh, Nash vykhod, 32.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., 33–34.
29. This is exemplified by the personal and professional partnership of the
poet Aleksei Kruchenykh and the artist Olga Rozanova.
30. Chebotarevskaia called Kruchenykh the “enfant terrible of Russian
Futurism” (enfant terrible russkogo futurizma). A. Chebotarevskaia, “O Kru-
chenykh,” in Stikhotvoreniia, Poemy, Romany, Opera, by Aleksei Kruchenykh
(St. Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt, 2001), 5.
31. Akin to the religious phenomenon of glossolalia, or speaking in tongues,
232
the nonsensical and incoherent speech of a holy fool signals his belonging out-
side conventional discourse, even as it provokes a blend of emotions in his audi-
ence. The comparison of child and holy fool thus helps expose the potential of
a marginal figure to challenge the dominant system. For a study of the posi-
tion of the holy fool with respect to society, see Harriet Murav, Holy Foolish-
ness: Dostoevsky’s Novels and the Poetics of Cultural Critique (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1992).
32. See Sergey Ivanov, Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond, trans. Simon
Franklin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); S. A. Ivanov, Blazhennye po-
khaby, Kul’turnaia istoriia iurodstva (Moscow: Iazyki slavianskikh kul’tur, 2005).
33. S. Tret’iakov, “Buka russkoi literatury,” in Buka russskoi literatury, by
Sergei Tret’iakov, David Burliuk, Tat’iana Tolstaia, and Sergei Rafalovich (Mos-
cow: Futuristy Kompaniia 41, 1923), 3.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid., 5.
36. Boris Pasternak, “A. E. Kruchenykh,” in Sobranie sochinenii v piati
tomakh, by Boris Pasternak (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1989),
2:535.
37. The play with the diminutivized form of child “detenysh,” which typically
refers to animal young, but here is applied to all sorts of infantilized forms, seems
a play with such conventions. Comparable here are Rudyard Kipling’s reversals
of forms like “animal baby” with “man’s cub” in The Jungle Book or “The Ele-
phant’s Child” in his Just-So Stories.
38. E. V. Pasternak and K. M. Polivanov, “Kommentarii,” in Sobranie so-
chinenii v piati tomakh, by Boris Pasternak (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia litera-
tura, 1989), 2:656.
39. Velimir Khlebnikov, “Aleshe Kruchenykh,” in Velimir Khlebnikov: So-
branie sochinenii v trekh tomakh (St. Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt, 2001),
1:270.
40. Velimir Khlebnikov, “Kto-to dikii, kto-to shalyi . . . ,” in Sobranie sochine-
nii v trekh tomakh, 1:271.
41. “According to Kruchenykh, on that day the tenth anniversary of his
literary activity was being celebrated. Khlebnikov regarded this celebration as
the ‘celebration of a lie’ ” (Po svidetel’stvu Kruchenykh, v tot den’ prazdnoval-
sia 10–letnii iubilei ego literaturnoi deiatel’nosti. Khlebnikov vosprinial eto
torzhestvo kak ‘prazdnik lzhi’). Sergei Sukhoparov, “Primechaniia,” in Aleksei
Kruchenykh v svidetel’stvakh sovremennikov, ed. Sergei Sukhoparov (Munich:
Verlag Otto Sagner, 1994), 237.
42. Velimir Khlebnikov, “Kruchenykh,” Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh,
1:362.
43. Ibid.
44. The word “mal’chishka” is literally a diminutive form of ‘boy,’ but in
233
many usages includes a slightly derogative association, like ‘urchin,’ ‘whipper-

snapper,’ or ‘hooligan.’
45. Khlebnikov, “Kruchenykh,” Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh, 1:362.
46. Ibid.
47. Ronald Vroon, Velimir Khlebnikov’s Shorter Poems: A Key to the Coin-
ages, Michigan Slavic Materials, no. 22 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan,
1983), 188.
48. Natal’ia Pertsova, Slovar’ neologizmov Velimira Khlebnikova, Wiener
Slawistischer Almanach, Sonderband 40 (Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1995),
62–63. Quoted in Janecek, Zaum, 138.
49. Aleksei Kruchenykh, “Meeting the Burlyuks, Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov”
(1932), in Our Arrival: Towards a History of Russian Futurism, trans. Alan Myers
(Moscow: Literaturno-khudozhestvennoe agenstvo “RA,” 1995), 49.
50. Sukhoparov, “Primechaniia,” 239.
51. Ibid., 239–40.
52. Ibid., 240
53. For the poem “Want to die” (“Khochu umeret’ ”), which was signed
“Ukrainian girl Militsa age 13” (“Malorossiianka Militsa 13 let”) and presented
as a child’s creation (“Detskoe tvorchestvo”), see the collection D. Burliuk, V.
Burliuk, N. Goncharova, and E. Guro, Sadok sudei II (St. Petersburg: Zhuravl’,
1912), 106–7.
54. See Velimir Khlebnikov, “Letters,” in Collected Works of Velimir
Khlebnikov, trans. Paul Schmidt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1989), 1:67. The original Russian reads, “Umoliaiu! Zaklinaiu vsem khoroshim
pomestit’ eti dva stikhotvoreniia . . . Mozhet byt’, eti veshchi detskogo serdtsa
pozvoliaiut razgadyvat’ molodost’ 1917–19 let.” Velimir Khlebnikov, “Pis’ma,” in
Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh, 3:335–36.
55. Khlebnikov, “Letters,” 70–71. The original Russian reads, “Ved’ mesto
dlia nego Vy vsegda mozhete naiti, iskliuchiv odno ili dva moikh melkikh stikho-
tvoreniia . . . Vsego stranitsu, bez vsiakogo detskogo otdela, s podpis’iu ‘Militsa,
13 let’ Moskva.” Khlebnikov, “Pis’ma,” 336.
56. The identity of “Zina V.” has been the subject of some dispute. L. F.
Katsis, for instance, assumes that Zina’s identity is spurious when he constructs
another interpretation of Porosiata that involves Vasily Rozanov and Zinaida
Gippius; but in this he does not consider the fact that Kruchenykh’s other pub-
lications involving children demonstrate an extended interest in children’s own
writings that should be considered alongside this claim. He also does not address
the fact that Zina V. also appears on the pages of Kruchenykh’s 1914 collection of
children’s own writings and drawings, some of which are signed. See L. F. Katsis,
Vladimir Maiakovskii, Poet v intellektual’nom kontekste epokhi (Moscow: Iazyki
russkoi kul’tury, 2000), 683–701.
234
57. Markov, Russian Futurism, 199.

58. Vasilii Kamenskii, Tango s korovami, illus. Vladimir and David Burliuk
(Moscow: Izd. D. D. Burliuka, 1914). Republished in Vasilii Kamenskii, Tango s
korovami, Zhelezobetonnye poemy (Moscow, 1914), illus. D. Burliuk (Moscow:
Kniga, 1991).
59. Kamenskii, Tango s korovami.
60. In his autobiography, Kamensky writes, “Around 11 years [I] wrote
poems about the orphan’s lot, about the misfortunes of mankind” (11–ti let pisal
stikhi o sirotskoi dole, o gorestiakh chelovecheskikh). See Vasilii Kamenskii,
“Avtobiografiia,” in Avtobiografiia, Poemy, Stikhi (Tiflis: Akts. O-vo “Zakkniga,”
1927), 5.
61. The original reads, “i poka naIdu naverno umru POTERIALSIA kak
rebenok i ne znaiu gde ustroitsia.” Vasilii Kamenskii, “Pis’ma Kamenskikh Vasiliia
i Fanni N.I. Kul’binu,” OR GRM, f. 134, ed. khr. 34, l.1.
62. Jakobson had compiled a collection of relevant excerpts, including
“children’s counting rhymes and preludes.” R. Jakobson,”Budetlianin nauki,”
in Iakobson-budetlianin, Sbornik materialov, ed. Bengt Jangfeldt (Stockholm:
Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1992), 19.
63. Around the spring of 1914, Jakobson wrote to Kruchenykh, “The most
interesting children’s [work], of all that I have, precisely ‘compositions in all
languages’ by a certain boy, was taken from me, someday soon I will send it
to you” (Samoe interesnoe detskoe, iz vsego imeiushchegosia u menia, a imenno
‘sochineniia na vsekh iazykakh’ odnogo mal’chika, u menia vziali, na dniakh
vyshliu vam). R. O. Iakobson, “Piat’ pisem k A. E. Kruchenykh (1914–1915),” in
Experiment/Eksperiment: A Journal of Russian Culture 5, ed. John Bowlt (Los
Angeles: Charles Schlacks, Jr., 1999), 60.
64. “Artists, especially the Cubists, study children’s drawings, try to imi-
tate them; poets piously publish specimens of children’s poetry. (. . . In ‘A Slap
in the Face of Public Taste’ D. Burliuk delights in children’s drawings, while
in ‘The Blue Rider’ children’s drawings are published as models and so on.)
Nikolai Kulbin in his lectures about art of the future reads the poems of a seven
year-old. / Igor Severianin also has a weakness for and is drawn toward little
ones . . .” (Khudozhniki, osoblivo kubisty, izuchaiut detskie risunki, probuiut im
podrazhat’; poety blagochestno pechataiut obrazchiki detskikh stikhov. (. . . V
‘Poshchechine obshchestvennomu vkusu’ D. Burliuk voskhishchaetsia detskimi
risunkami, a v ‘Sinem rytsare’ detskie risunki pechataiutsia v vide obraztsov i t.d.)
Nikolai Kul’bin s svoikh lektsiakh o griadushchem iskusstve chitaet stikhi semi-
letok. / Igor’ Severianin tozhe l’net i vlechetsia k maliutkam . . .) K. Chukovskii,
“Futuristy” (1914), in Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh, by Kornei Chukovskii
(Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1969), 6:210.
65. Ibid.
235
66. Sergei Sukhoparov, “V raznykh izmereniiakh,” in Aleksei Kruchenykh

v svidetel’stvakh sovremennikov, ed. Sergei Sukhoparov (Munich: Verlag Otto
Sagner, 1994), 11.
67. The full composition is included in the third letter in R. O. Iakobson,
“Piat’ pisem k A.E. Kruchenykh,” 60–61.
68. K. Chukovskii, “Futuristy” (1914), in Sobranie sochinenii v shesti to-
makh, 6:216.
69. The first edition of Chukovsky’s book-length study of children’s lan-
guage appeared under the title Malen’kie deti in 1928. See Kornei Chukovskii,
Malen’kie deti, Detskii iazyk, Ekiki, Lepye nelepitsy, illus. V. Belkin (Leningrad:
Krasnaia gazeta, 1928). The third, reworked edition appeared in 1933 under the
better-known title Ot dvukh do piati, and the volume appeared in a series of suc-
cessive redactions under this title. The twenty-first edition, printed posthumously
in 1970, was the last to be prepared for print by Kornei Chukovsky. See also
Kornei Chukovskii, “Ot dvukh do piati,” in Sobranie sochinenii v piatnadtsati
tomakh, 2:5–388.
70. In the section “O detskom iazyke,” for instance, Chukovsky writes, “we
adults are only hacks in our native language, while children are creators and
artists in it. For us words are already ready-made, cut out, and sewn up. . . .
For children, on the other hand,—this is a laboratory: nothing is ready-made,—
everything is being measured or sewn, everything is being created—every min-
ute anew, every minute from the beginning” (my, vzroslye, tol’ko remeslenniki
rodnogo iazyka, a deti v nem tvortsy i khudozhniki. Dlia nas slova uzhe gotovy,
skroeny i sshity. . . . A u detei—eto masterskaia: nichego gotovogo,— vse meritsia,
sh’etsia, vse tvoritsia—kazhduiu minutu zanovo, kazhduiu minutu snachala.”
Kornei Chukovskii, “Materiam o detskikh zhurnalakh,” in Kornei Chukovskii,
Sobranie sochinenii v piatnadtsati tomakh, 2:592. Chukovsky concludes, echo-
ing Tolstoy, “we must study children’s language . . . the language of our chil-
dren—of the most creative elements of humanity. . . . We must listen to it, we
must learn from it” (detskii iazyk my dolznhy izuchat’ . . . iazyk nashikh detei—
samykh tvorcheskikh elementov chelovechestva. . . . Nuzhno prislushat’sia k
nemu, nuzhno u nego pouchit’sia). Chukovskii, Sobranie, 594.
71. I. A. Terent’ev, Kruchenykh-grandiozar’ (Tiflis, 1919), 10.
72. Velimir Khlebnikov, “Mirskontsa,” in Sobranie sochinenii v trekh to-
makh, 2:425.
73. A. E. Kruchenykh, Pomada, illus. M. Larionov (Moscow: Izd. G. L.
Kuz’mina i S. D. Dolinskago, 1913).
74. Aleksei Kruchenykh, Stikhotvoreniia, Poemy, Romany, Opera (St.
Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt, 2001), 412–13.
75. Janecek remarks: “The study of childhood language acquisition became
very active in the latter part of the 19th century and included a number of studies
236
and reports by Russians (Simonovich 1880; Aleksandrov 1883; Blagoveshchensky

1886).” Janecek, Zaum, 21.
76. See James Sully, Studies of Childhood (New York: D. Appleton, 1896).
77. “If we proceed on the biological principle that the development of the
individual represents in its main stages that of the race, we may expect to find
through the study of children’s use of language hints as to how our race came by
that invaluable endowment.” Sully, Studies of Childhood, 133–34.
78. “This primordial babbling is wonderfully rich and varied. . . . The only
signification which this primitive articulation can have is emotional. . . . As this
impulsive articulation develops it becomes complicated by a distinctly intentional
element. . . . From this moment he begins to go on babbling for the pleasure it
brings. We see the germ of such a pleasure-seeking babbling in the protracted
iterations of the same sound.” Sully, Studies of Childhood, 136–37.
79. Ibid., 137–38.
80. Zina V. and A. Kruchenykh, Porosiata, illus. K. Malevich (St. Petersburg:
EUY, 1913).
81. Cotsen Children’s Library, Department of Rare Books and Special
Collections, Princeton University Library, Princeton, N.J.
82. Translation mine. For an attempt at the challenging task of translat-
ing Kruchenykh’s work into English, see Aleksei Kruchenykh, Suicide Circus:
Selected Poems, trans. Jack Hirschman, Alexander Kohav, and Venyamin Tseytlin
(Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2001).
83. In the reprinted edition in the following year, there are four prose pieces.
See Zina V. and Kruchenykh, Porosiata.
84. The juxtaposition of wisdom, philosophy, and child here recalls Leo
Tolstoy’s collection of dramatic dialogues tellingly entitled The Wisdom of
Children (Detskaia mudrost’), which was posthumously published in 1909. One
might wonder if this philosopher may even be a reflection and mockery of Tolstoy.
L. N. Tolstoi, “Detskaia mudrost’,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v devianosta to-
makh (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1956),
37:311–47, 386–91.
85. Kornei Chukovskii, Malen’kie deti, Detskii iazyk, Ekiki, Lepye nelepitsy,
illus. V. Belkin (Leningrad: Krasnaia gazeta, 1928).
86. This clever translation is borrowed from Aleksei Kruchenykh, Suicide
Circus, 52.
87. The prose poem also appeared in Soiuz molodezhi in March 1913. A.
Kruchenykh, “Ia zhrets ia razlenilsia,” Soiuz molodezhi, Pri uchastii poetov
Gileia, no. 3 (1913), 69–70.
88. A. Kruchenykh and V. Khlebnikov, Slovo kak takovoe (Moscow: EUY,
1913).
89. See also the statement at the end of Vozropshchem (1913), which reads
237
“V sleduiushchei knige budet ukazano chto: . . . ‘moskovskie futuristy’—Burliuki,

Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh, Maiakovskii—vpervye dali miru stikhi na svobodnom
iazyke, zaumnom i vselenskom.” A. Kruchenykh, Vozropshchem (Moscow: EUY,
1913).
90. In 1941 Roman Jakobson published a monograph entitled Kindersprache,
Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze, which included a study of children’s lan-
guage. See also Roman Jakobson, “The Sound Laws of Child Language and Their
Place in General Phonology,” trans. Rodney Sangster, in Studies on Child Lan-
guage and Aphasia (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), 7–20.
91. Jakobson, “Sound Laws,” 9–10.
92. Ibid., 11.
93. Cotsen Children’s Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Col-
lections, Princeton University Library, Princeton, N.J.
94. Aleksei Kruchenykh, ed., Sobstvennye razskazy i risunki detei (St. Peters-
burg: EUY, 1914).
95. Ibid.
96. Aleksei Kruchenykh, Stikhotvoreniia, poemy, romany, opera (St. Peters-
burg: Akademicheskii proekt, 2001), 58.
97. Ibid., 82.
98. Aleksei Kruchenykh, “Chort i rechetvortsy,” in Izbrannoe, ed. Vladimir
Markov (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1973), 125.
99. Kruchenykh, Sobstvennye razskazy i risunki detei.
100. Ibid.
101. For a reproduction of the image, see Knigi A. E. Kruchenykh Kav-
kazskogo perioda iz kollektsii Gosudarstvennogo muzeia V. V. Maiakovskogo
(Moscow, 2002), 25.
102. In open contradiction to Tolstoy’s insistence that the writing is the chil-
dren’s own, or his stated anxiety about having a corrupting effect, descriptions
of the collaborative writing process reveal evidence of his intervention. Telling
details revealing his influence include the admission of changes based on fallible
memory, suggestions by Tolstoy, structural intervention, and apologies for his
own unsuccessful contributions. L. N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v devi-
anosta tomakh, 8:307–8. In one case, he even records a child’s protest against his
overbearing presence—the student Fedka wishes to escape his teacher’s influ-
ence and demands, “I know it, I know it already! Who’s writing here?” Tolstoi,
Polnoe sobranie, 8:308.
103. Kruchenykh, Sobstvennye razskazy i risunki detei, 34, 44.
104. Ibid., 40, 48.
105. Ibid., 41.
106. One document preserved at RGALI, a handwritten notecard by A. A.
Prokofyev bearing the late date of September 2, 1946, claims that these col-
lections are counterfeit. Unfortunately, as it is written long after the fact and
238
Prokofyev gives no indication of a reliable source for his claim, it can be given
no more credence than a personal opinion. A. A. Prokof’ev, “Otzyv o knige A. E.
Kruchenykh ‘Sobstvennye rasskazy detei,’ ” RGALI, f. 1334, opis’ 1, delo 266.
109. Nina Nikolaevna Kul’bina, “Vospominaniia ob ottse N.I.Kul’bine”
[without date], OR GRM, f. 134, ed. khr. 95.
110. Leonid Vysheslavskii, “Neskol’ko slov ob Aleksee Kruchenykh,” in
Aleksei Kruchenykh v svidetel’stvakh sovremennikov, 115–16.
111. Georgii Kovenchuk, “Chto takoe formalizm v zhivopisi, i s nim kak boro-
las’ sovetskaia vlast’,” 812 Online, St. Petersburg, http://www.online812.ru/2009
/05/12/001/
112. Yuri Molok makes this attribution, writing, “It is possible that the latter
is Maryana Erlikh, daughter of Ekaterina Nizen (Guro), Elena Guro’s older sis-
ter.” Molok, “Children’s Drawings,” 61. These attributions are made more firmly
in the catalog that accompanied the 2002 exhibition on “The Russian Avant-
Garde Book 1910–1934” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. See Margit
Rowell and Deborah Wye, eds., The Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910–1934
(New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002).
113. Elena Guro, Nebesnye verbliuzhata, illus. Mariana Erlikh and Elena
Guro (St. Petersburg: Zhuravl’, 1914).
115. In his commentary to Vysheslavskii’s writings, Sergei Sukhoparov cites
the review by Iu. Degen that appeared on October 29, 1917, in the Tiflis news-
paper ‘Kavkazskoe’ slovo. Sukhoparov, “Primechaniia,” 273.
116. Aleksei Kruchenykh, ed., Sobstvennye rasskazy, stikhi i pesni detei
(Moscow, 1923). This was reset and republished with selections from the 1914
Sobstvennye razskazy i risunki detei as Aleksei Kruchenykh, ed., Sobstvennye
rasskazy detei (Berkeley: Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1996).
117. Kruchenykh, Sobstvennye rasskazy, stikhi i pesni detei.
118. “Zhil na svete Kruchik-Kruchen’, / Gadkoi kritikoi zamuchen, // No ne
ochen’, ochen’, ochen’ / Krucha etim ozabochen! // Vsegda vesel, lovok Krykh, /
Potomu chto—mnogo drykh! . . .”
119. Originally published in R. Aliagrov, “Kruzhit’sia . . . ,” in Zaumniki, by
A. Kruchenykh, G. Petnikov, and V. Khlebnikov, illus. A. Rodchenko (St. Peters-
burg, 1922), 16. This poem is reprinted in Gerald Janecek, The Look of Russian
Literature: Avant-Garde Visual Experiments, 1900–1930 (Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
ton University Press, 1984), 180. For more information on Jakobson as poet and two
other poems, “mzglybzhvuiu. . .” (1915) and “dissipation” (“rasseianost’ ”) (1915),
239
which were first published in A. Kruchenykh, Zaumnaia gniga (Moscow, 1915),

see S. R. Krasitskii, “Roman Jakobson,” in Poeziia russkogo futurizma, 326–27.
120. Kruchenykh, Sobstvennye rasskazy, stikhi i pesni detei.
121. On the poem by “Nikita F. (7 let),” Kruchenykh adds the note, “Pri-
mechanie: pchi-pchi—ochevidno, pridumano samim mal’chikom” and to the
poem by “Tania Gur . . . (11 let),” he notes, “Primechanie: vo 2–m stikhotvorenii
slovo ‘mepanskoi,’ ochevidno, vydumano samoi Tanei.” Kruchenykh, Sobstvennye
rasskazy, stikhi i pesni detei.
122. R. Iakobson, Noveishaia russkaia poeziia, Nabrosok pervyi, Moscow,
1919 (Prague, 1921).
123. Ibid., 41.
124. Ibid., 42.
125. Ibid., 42.
126. See Khlebnikov’s poem “Incantation by Laughter” (“Zakliatie sme-
khom”) (1909). Velimir Khlebnikov, ”Zakliatie smekhom,” in Sobranie sochinenii
v trekh tomakh (St. Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt, 2001), 1:115–16.
127. Iakobson, Noveishaia russkaia poeziia, 56.
128. Indeed, as Gurianova rightly notes in The Aesthetics of Anarchy,
“children’s creative psyches inspired most of Elena Guro’s oeuvre.” Gurianova,
Aesthetics of Anarchy, 54.
130. Ibid., 65.
131. See A. Kruchenykh, “Malakholiia v kapote,” in A. E. Kruchenykh,
Izbrannoe, ed. Vladimir Markov (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1973), 257–77.
Harsha Ram comments on the scatological humor and anal eroticism in “one of
Kruchenykh’s publications, ‘Malakholiia v kapote: Istoriia KAK anal’naia erotica’
(“Malacholia in a Housecoat: History AS anal eroticism”; 1918). Here Kruchenykh
reveals (and revels in) the presence of excremental imagery, specifically variants
of the word kaka, providing innumerable examples from Russian literature, from
Gogol’s hero Akaki Akakievich to the simplest of Russian conjunctions kak. . . . If
the mystical and the infantile had long been claimed as analogues to avant-garde
linguistic practice, they were now joined by the erotic and the obscene.” Harsha
Ram, “Modernism on the Periphery: Literary Life in Postrevolutionary Tbilisi,”
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 5, no. 2 (Spring 2004):
374. One might also add that the play on words here, whether interpreted as the
“history of KAKA” or “history AS,” amounts to scatology of an infantile variety,
just as the phonetic misspellings in the volume have an infantile effect.
133. In this sense, a comparable example to Futurism is the Dadaist move-
ment, which also pursued universal language and bears as its title a reduplicative
word from nursery language.
134. A. E. Kruchenykh, Rukopis’ poemy ‘Milliork’ (1919), OR GRM, f. 177,
ed. khr. 156, l.3.
240
135. A. Kruchenykh, Deklaratsiia zaumnogo iazyka (Baku, 1921).

136. S. Tret’iakov, “Buka russkoi literatury,” in Buka russkoi literatury, 3–17.
137. Ibid., 8.
138. Zina V. and Kruchenykh, Porosiata.
139. Tret’iakov, “Buka russkoi literatury,” 16.
140. As Janecek notes, Boris Gusman devotes several pages to Kruchenykh.
Boris Gusman, 100 poetov: Literaturnye poety (Tver’: Izd. Oktiabr’, 1923), 143.
Janecek observes that Gusman quotes his poem “‘Kotero / Pero / Byaso / Muro /
Koro / Poro / Ndoro / Po’ as an example of this ‘childlike simplicity and direct-
ness, combined with a childlike force and expressiveness’ and compares it with
the quotes from Pokrovsky’s Children’s Games used by Shklovsky in his article
on zaum.” Janecek, Zaum, 339. This example shows that contemporary read-
ers and critics recognized the kinship between trans-sense poetry and children’s
language.
141. Aleksei Kruchenykh, Sdvigologiia russkogo stikha (Moscow: MAF,
1922). One of Kruchenykh’s followers draws attention to this observation. Tatiana
Tolstaia-Vechorka, “Sliuni chernogo geniia,” in Buka russkoi literatury, 25.
142. I. Terent’ev, “O razlozhivshikhsia i polurazlozhivshikhsia,” 15 let russ-
kogo futurizma 1912–1927 gg., Materialy i kommentarii, by A. E. Kruchenykh
(Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Vserossiiskogo soiuza poetov, 1928), 65.
143. Ibid.
144. Ibid.
145. In 1928, Terentyev includes “proletariat” in the list of marginalized
and dispossessed figures who ought to be revalued, showing that the Futurist
heroes, savage and child, ought to be granted the same recognition and rights
granted to the proletariat by the Revolution. He thus employs the proletarian
critic Malakhov’s own rhetoric in order to justify Futurist innovations.
146. Terent’ev, “O razlozhivshikhsia,” 65–66.
147. The overtly political shift in approach might be compared to the trajec-
tory that Groys identifies in “The Birth of Socialist Realism from the Spirit of the
Russian Avant-Garde.”
148. Such an approach to the child as oppressed subject also had a certain
precedent in pre-revolutionary movements closer to the spirit of the avant-garde,
like anarchist groups that considered ‘pedism,’ or the liberation of the oppressed
class of children, to be one of their main goals for the creation of a more just
new world. Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1967), 177.
149. A. Kruchenykh, Govoriashchee kino, 1–ia kniga stikhov o kino, Stse-
narii, Kadry, Libretto, Kniga nebyvalaia (Moscow: Mossoveta, 1928), 3.
150. Ibid., 51. Indeed, Kruchenykh frequently employs imagery related to
birth in his poetry. In its bloodier aspects in particular this might be linked to
revolution.
151. Ibid., 53.
241
152. Ibid., 52.

153. Ibid., 51.
154. Ibid., 52.
155. Ibid.
156. Ibid., 53.
157. Ibid.
158. Ibid., 56.
159. Ibid.
160. Ibid., 55.
161. Ibid., 62.
CHAPTER THREE
The chapter epigraph is from Viktor Shklovskii, “Voskreshenie slova” (1914), in

Gamburgskii schet, Stat’i, Vospominaniia, Esse (1914–1933) (Moscow: Sovetskii
pisatel’, 1990), 36.
1. In Emile, Rousseau emphasizes the inherent weakness of infancy and ex-
trapolates on the unspeaking state in a philosophical sense. He draws attention to
the loaded etymology of infant/infans/enfant as he describes the transition from
speechlessness to language: “This is the second period of life, and now infancy,
strictly speaking, has ended. For the words infans and puer are not synonymous.
The former is contained in the latter and signifies ‘one who cannot speak’; this
is why puerum infantem is found in Valerius Maximus.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Emile, or On Education, trans. Alan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 77.
Here, as in his “Essay on the Origin of Language” (1781), Rousseau recognizes
the philosophical significance of the unspeaking state before language, thought,
and reason. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Essay on the Origin of Languages,” in On the
Origin of Languages, Two Essays, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Gottfried
Herder, trans. John H. Moran (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).
2. Etymologically, otrok is derived from the negative prefix (ot) and the root
for speech (rok/rek/rech’). In Materialy dlia slovaria drevne-russkago iazyka po
pis’mennym pamiatnikam, “otrok” is defined as “child, adolescent, youth” (ditia,
podrostok, iunosha), and the entry concludes with the note “cf. Lat. infans” (sr.
lat. infans). I. I. Sreznevskii, ed., Materialy dlia slovaria drevne-russkago iazyka
po pis’mennym pamiatnikam (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Aka-
demii Nauk, 1895), 2:764–65.
3. Similarly, infant or infante could be applied to soldiers, as in the historical
derivation of infantry.
4. In a metaphoric sense, the child has been called infans or otrok to repre-
sent its lack of the ability to speak. The etymological history of the Russian word
includes the proto-Slavic meaning of “otrok” as “not having the right to speak.”
Recall “Proto-Slavic *ot(‘‘)rok ‘not having the right to speak’. From ot and reku,
242
rok (cf. Guier, LF 40. 304; Mi. EW 274), Meillet (Ét. 233) interpreted it as a
calque of the Latin infans” (Praslav. *ot(‘‘)rok “ne imeiushchii prava govorit’. Iz
ot i reku, rok (sm. Guier, LF 40. 304; Mi. EW 274), Meie (Ét. 233) tolkoval kak
kal’ku Lat. infans”). Maks Fasmer, Etimologicheskii slovar’ russkogo iazyka, trans.
O. N. Trubachev (Moscow: Progress, 1971), 3:172–73. The comparison to the
Latin infans is also indicated, “(sr. lat. infans)” in Preobrazhensky’s Etymological
Dictionary of the Russian Language, which offers the same etymological inter-
pretation and explanation as “ne govoriashchii,” but also adds “bezslovesnyi,”
meaning nonverbal or illiterate. A. G. Preobrazhensky, Etymological Dictionary
of the Russian Language (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 669.
5. “Otrocha” means child (“rebenok” or “ditia”) in Old Church Slavonic.
Grigorii D’iachenko, ed., Polnyi tserkovno-slavianskii slovar’ (Moscow: Izda-
tel’skii Otdel Moskovskogo Patriarkhata, 1993). In Old Russian, it means the
same, but might also refer to a male child or a youth. R. I. Avanesov, ed., Slovar’
drevnerusskogo iazyka (XI-XIV vv.) (Moscow: Russkii iazyk, 1988).
6. This statement appears among the aphorisms Catherine II personally
compiled in 1784 for the edification of her grandson, the future emperor Alex-
ander I. Ekaterina II, Babushkina Azbuka, Velikomu Kniaziu Aleksandru Pav-
lovichu, ed. L.V. Tychinina (Moscow: MGI imeni E.R. Dashkovoi, 2004), 18.
7. Shklovskii, “Voskreshenie slova,” 36.
8. Nina Gurianova also considers Shklovsky and his theory of estrangement
within an avant-garde context. Gurianova, Aesthetics of Anarchy, 258–65.
9. Lotman, Universe of the Mind, 134.
10. A. Iu. Galushkin, “Kommentarii,” in Gamburgskii schet, Stat’i, Vospo-
minaniia, Esse (1914–1933), by Viktor Shklovskii (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’,
1990), 487.
11. John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing (New York: Watson-Guptill,
1991), 18.
12. Ibid., 19.
13. Viktor Shklovskii, “Iskusstvo kak priem” (1917), in Gamburgskii schet,
Stat’i,Vospominaniia, Esse (1914–1933) (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1990), 64.
14. Ruskin, Elements, 19.
15. Here Shklovsky incorporates a distinctly Bergsonian distinction between
perception and recognition, as refined by Henri Bergson in Matter and Memory
(1896). Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and
W. Scott Palmer (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1911), 105.
17. Shklovskii, “Iskusstvo kak priem,” 68.
18. O. Wulff, “Die umgekehrte Perspektive und die Niedersicht,” in Kunst-
wiss. Beitr. August Schmarsow gewidm (Leipzig, 1907). Cited in Rudolf Arnheim,
“Inverted Perspective in Art. Display and Expression,” Leonardo 5, no. 2 (Spring
1972): 126.
243
19. Pavel Florenskii, “Obratnaia perspektiva,” in Sobranie sochinenii, ed.

N. A. Struve (Paris: YMCA, 1985), 1:119.
20. Ibid., 139.
21. Ibid.
22. Nicoletta Misler cites this letter in “Toward an Exact Aesthetics: Pavel
Florensky and the Russian Academy of the Artistic Sciences,” in Laboratory of
Dreams: The Russian Avant-Garde and Cultural Experiment, ed. John E. Bowlt
and Olga Matich (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), 119.
23. Quotation taken from a 1937 letter from Florensky to his daughter Olga.
Pavel Florenskii, Detiam moim, Vospominan’ia proshlykh dnei, Genealogicheskie
issledovaniia, Iz solovetskikh pisem, Zaveshchanie (Moscow: Moskovskii rabo-
chii, 1992), 439.
24. Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life” (1863), in The Painter
of Modern Life and Other Essays, trans. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon,
1965), 8
25. In fact, some artistic training even includes turning an image upside-
down in order to induce the less dominant hemisphere of the brain to engage in
a more concrete perceptual analysis of the image. See Betty Edwards, Drawing
on the Right Side of the Brain (New York: Putnam, 1979).
26. Viktor Shklovskii, “Tret’ia fabrika,” in Gamburgskii schet (St. Petersburg:
Limbus, 2000), 102.
27. Ibid., 101.
28. Viktor Shklovskii, “O Maiakovskom” (1940), in Sobranie sochinenii v
trekh tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1973), 3:47.
29. In 1915, Shklovsky published two poems in the collection Vzial: Baraban
futuristov (Took: The Drum of the Futurists), as noted in Poeziia russkogo futu-
rizma, 324–25.
30. R. Iakobson, Noveishaia russkaia poeziia, Nabrosok pervyi (Moscow,
1919; Prague, 1921).
31. Viktor Shklovskii, “Zhili-byli,” in Gamburgskii schet (St. Petersburg:
Limbus, 2000), 437.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., 439.
34. Children represented a sort of prophetic access to the future for Khleb-
nikov. Recall his letter justifying the publication of two poems by a thirteen-
year-old girl as a way to understand the youth of the future. Velimir Khlebnikov,
“Pis’ma,” in Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh, 3:335–36. Children thus serve
as a kind of time machine to the future, as well as to an unencumbered and
unhabituated past, as evident with the Futurists and Neo-Primitivists.
35. Shklovskii, “Zhili-byli,” 431.
36. Baudouin de Courtenay writes two articles that mock the trans-sense
project and pedantically resist the idea of ‘the word as such’ and ‘the letter
244
as such.’ See I. A. Boduen de Kurtene, “Slovo i ‘Slovo’ ” (1914), in Izbrannye

trudy po obshchemu iazykoznaniiu (Moscow: Akademia nauk, 1963), 2:240–42.
See also I. A. Boduen de Kurtene, “K teorii ‘Slovo kak takovogo’ i ‘Bukvy kak
takovoi’ ” (1914), in Izbrannye trudy po obshchemu iazykoznaniiu (Moscow:
Akademia nauk, 1963), 2:243–45.
37. For instance, he resists the possibility of synaesthesia, a documented
phenomenon en vogue among Symbolists at the time, and cites the famous anec-
dote of a painting made by a donkey’s tail, without mention of the “Donkey’s Tail”
group which plays with this very idea. Boduen de Kurtene, “K teorii,” 244.
38. Ibid.
39. Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, “Einige Beobachtungen an Kindern,”
Beiträge zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung 6 (1868): 215–22. Jan Baudouin
de Courtenay, Spostrzezenia nad jezykiem dziecka, ed. M. Chmura-Klekotowa
(Wroclaw: Polska Akademia Nauk, 1974).
40. Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, “On Pathology and Embryology of Lan-
guage” (1885–86), in A Baudouin de Courtenay Anthology, The Beginnings of
Structural Linguistics, trans. and ed. Edward Stankiewicz (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1972), 122.
41. Baudouin de Courtenay, “Some General Remarks on Linguistics and
Language,” in Baudouin de Courtenay Anthology, 74.
42. Baudouin de Courtenay, “An Attempt at a Theory of Phonetic Alter-
nation,” in Baudouin de Courtenay Anthology, 208.
43. Ibid., 210.
44. Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, “Statement of Linguistic Principles,” in
Baudouin de Courtenay Anthology, 215.
45. A telling testament to this modernist interest in babble and glossola-
lia is the volume by the Symbolist writer Andrei Bely entitled Glossalolia [sic]
published in 1922 but written five years earlier in 1917. This “poema about
sound” begins with the claim, “Deep secrets lie in language” (Glubokye tainy
lezhat v iazyke) (11). Clearly, other Modernist movements, and particularly the
Symbolist Bely, were moving in parallel directions with the avant-garde figures
under discussion here regarding language, babble, and the child. Though this
book focuses on four closely associated avant-garde figures and the groups they
represent, this is not to say that other writers were not doing similar work. In the
case of Bely, an entire separate treatise could be written on the infantile in his
writing, especially Kotik Letaev, discussed briefly later in this book. Andrei Bely,
Glossalolia: Poema o zvuke (Berlin: Epokha, 1922). See also Thomas R. Beyer,
“Andrej Belyj’s Glossalolija: A Berlin Glossolalia,” Europa Orientalis 14, no. 2
(1997): 7–25. Andrei Bely, Kotik Letaev (St. Petersburg: Epokha, 1922).
47. Ibid.
48. Viktor Shklovskii, “Voskreshenie slova,” in Gamburgskii schet (Moscow:
245
Sovetskii pisatel’, 1990), 36–42. Janecek situates this interest in glossolalia in an

intellectual context. Janecek, Zaum, 25–31.
49. L. P. Iakubinskii. “Skoplenie odinakovykh plavnykh v prakticheskom i
poeticheskom iazykakh,” in Izbrannye raboty: Iazyk i ego funktsionirovanie, ed.
A. A. Leont’ev (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), 176–82.
50. Ibid., 181.
51. L. P. Iakubinskii, “Otkuda berutsia stikhi,” in Izbrannye raboty, Iazyk i
ego funktsionirovanie, ed. A. A. Leont’ev (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), 196. Originally
published in Lev Iakubinskii, “Otkuda berutsia sitkhi,” in Knizhnyi ugol: Kritika,
bibliografiia, khronika (Petrograd, 1921), 21–25
52. Iakubinskii, “Otkuda,” 195.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid., 196.
58. Ibid.
59. Cited in A. Iu. Galushkin, “Kommentarii,” Gamburgskii schet, Stat’i,
Vospominaniia, Esse (1914–1933) by Viktor Shklovskii (Moscow: Sovetskii pisa-
tel’, 1990), 489. Originally published in D. Filosofov, “Magiia slov,” Rech’, no. 265
(September 26, 1916), 3.
60. Nina Gurianova notes the constant mention of youth by early avant-
garde groups, beginning with the young artists of the Union of Youth, or Soiuz
molodezhi, and citing later examples from Khlebnikov in particular. Gurianova,
Aesthetics of Anarchy, 67. She compares this to the role of youth of Marinetti’s
declarations. Ibid., 299.
61. V. Piast, Vstrechi (Moscow, 1929), 277. Cited in Poeziia russkogo futu-
rizma, 324–25.
63. Galushkin, “Kommentarii,” 486.
64. A. Efros once wrote, “Rozanova was born a Futurist.” A. Efros, Profili
(Moscow, 1930), 229. Cited in “Ol’ga Rozanova,” in Poeziia russkogo futurizma,
ed. V. N. Sazhin (St. Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt, 1999), 322.
67. Shklovskii, “Voskreshenie,” 36.
68. A. E. Parnis and R. D. Timenchik, “Programmy ‘Brodiachei sobaki,’ ”
in Pamiatniki kul’tury, Novye otkrytiia, Ezhegodnik 1983 (Leningrad: Nauka,
1985), 221.
69. Aleksei Kruchenykh, Sdvigologiia russkogo stikha (Moscow: MAF, 1922).
71. This idea, from Psalms 118:22, also is revisited repeatedly in the New
246
Testament, such as in Matthew 21:42, Mark 12:10, Luke 20:17, and Acts 4:11,
where it is applied to Jesus Christ.
72. Viktor Shklovskii, Khod konia: Sbornik statei (Berlin: Knigoizdatel’stvo
Gelikon, 1923).
73. Ibid., 9.
74. Ibid., 10.
75. The idea of a knight’s move also captivated the writer Vladimir Nabokov,
a contemporary of Shklovsky’s in the Berlin emigration. Himself a composer of
chess problems, Nabokov also valued the knight’s move as a device.
76. Interestingly, Vygotsky also applies this biblical quotation to the place
of childhood and the childish in his own field of psychology: “The real aim of
psychology should be rather to discover the ‘historically childish.’ This stone that
the builders rejected should be the cornerstone.” Vygotsky, Thought and Lan-
guage, 57.
78. Jean Baudrillard, Baudrillard Live: Selected Interviews, ed. Mike Gane
(London: Routledge, 1993), 112.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid.
83. Viktor Shklovskii, “O poezii i zaumnom iazyke,” in Gamburgskii schet,
45–58.
84. Ibid., 45.
86. Ibid.
87. Shklovskii, “O poezii i zaumnom iazyke,” 45.
88. Ibid.
90. Ibid.
91. Ibid., 49.
92. Ibid.
93. Ibid., 50.
94. Ibid.
95. Kruchenykh, Pomada.
96. One might note, however, that Shklovsky’s own theoretical neologisms
are not as radical as those he celebrates in children or Futurist poetry. They
have more in common with those of Khlebnikov, since these strive to excavate
the deep meanings of the roots of words. Like Khlebnikov, Shklovsky seeks to
uncover this hidden poetry in words, one in which sound is not entirely devoid of
sense. His theoretical writings, on the other hand, do revel in children’s elevation
of sound over sense.
247
97. See the discussion of how children approach “constructing words” in Eve
V. Clark, First Language Acquisition (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University
Press, 2003), 273–300. Yet, the utilitarian function of language notwithstanding,
children also play with language, as mentioned earlier and as Clark herself notes.
Ibid., 124.
98. Ibid., 283.
99. Children’s neologistic prowess is evident in the abundant examples of
children’s language collected and published by the critic Kornei Chukovsky
in Malen’kie deti (1928) and then continued in editions of From Two to Five
(Ot dvukh do piati) published over subsequent decades. Kornei Chukovskii.
Malen’kie deti: Detskii iazyk, Ekiki, Lepye nelepitsy, illus. V. Belkin (Leningrad:
Krasnaia gazeta, 1928). Kornei Chukovskii. “Ot dvukh do piati,” in Sobranie so-
chinenii v piatnadtsati tomakh, 2:5–388.
100. Shklovskii, “O poezii i zaumnom iazyke,” 50. This reaction exemplifies a
naive perspective, at least in a certain sense, since the child’s love for the euphony
of the foreign term, which values the signifier over the signified, presupposes
ignorance of its darker connotations with respect to the “tears of Christ.”
101. Ibid., 50.
102. Ibid., 50–51.
103. Ibid., 51.
104. F. F. Zelinskii, Iz zhizni idei (Moscow: Ladomir, 1995).
105. Shklovskii, “O poezii i zaumnom iazyke,” 51–52.
106. Ibid., 52.
107. Sully, Studies of Childhood.
108. E. A. Pokrovskii, Detskiia igry preimushchestvenno russkie (Moscow,
1887). For a recent republication of the second edition published in Petersburg
in 1895, see E. A. Pokrovskii, Detskie igry preimushchestvenno russkie, Istori-
cheskoe nasledie (St. Petersburg: Firma ‘LANS,’ 1994).
109. Shklovskii, “O poezii i zaumnom iazyke,” 40. Gerald Janecek offers the
translation ‘onesie’ for “pero” (compare pervyi meaning ‘first’) and ‘fivesie’ for
“piato” (compare piat’ meaning ‘five’) (Janecek, Zaum, 95). To these might be
added “foursie” for “tero” (compare chetyre meaning ‘four’). Janecek, Zaum, 95.
110. Janecek, Zaum, 23.
111. Ibid., 95.
113. Ibid., 52.
114. Ibid., 53.
115. Ibid.
116. Ibid.
117. Ibid., 56.
118. Ibid.
119. Ibid.
248
120. Boris M. Ejxenbaum, “The Theory of the Formal Method,” in Read-

ings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views, ed. Ladislav Matejka
and Krystyna Pomorska, trans. I. R. Titunik (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan,
1978), 9. Boris Eikhenbaum, “Teoriia formal’nogo metoda,” in Literatura: Teoriia,
kritika, polemika (Leningrad, 1927).
121. I am indebted to Mary Nicholas for this and other observations.
122. L. N. Tolstoi, “Chto takoe iskusstvo,” in Sobranie sochinenii v 22 to-
makh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1978–85), 15:40–220.
123. Ibid., 199.
124. Ibid.
125. Ibid., 197.
126. Ibid., 162–63.
127. Pointing in some of the same directions that I explore in depth in this
study, Gurianova also briefly mentions Larionov’s inclusion of children’s drawings
in his exhibits and Kruchenykh’s 1914 publication of children’s own stories and
drawings. Gurianova, Aesthetics of Anarchy, 52, 54.
128. Ibid., 44–55.
129. Ibid., 45.
130. Ibid., 52.
131. Ibid., 54.
133. Ibid., 68.
134. Significantly, the most radical stylistic examples among Tolstoy’s writ-
ings occur in his writings for adults, rather than in his writings for children—or
writings with children—which, regardless of any of his proclamations about their
literary merit, prove quite conventional in style. As true of Neo-Primitivism and
Cubo-Futurism, the search for radical examples among children’s own artistic
production and that which is produced for them often has the opposite effect,
underscoring the conventionality and derivative nature of children’s work, which
cannot ever escape the influence of the adult “patrons” who commission it, select
it, and put it forward for public consumption in accordance with their own par-
ticular goals.
135. Notes from diary of Leo Tolstoy on March 1, 1897, Nikol’skoe.
137. Ibid., 63.
138. Ibid., 62.
139. L. N. Tolstoi, “Kholstomer: Istoriia loshadi,” in L. N. Tolstoi, Polnoe
sobranie sochinenii v devianosta tomakh, 26:3–37.
140. Ibid., 14.
141. L. N. Tolstoi, “Detskaia mudrost’,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii,
37:311–47, 385–90, 461–64. For “The Wisdom of Children” in English transla-
tion, see Leo Tolstoy, “The Wisdom of Children,” in Recollections and Essays,
249
trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 446–93. See
also Lyof N. Tolstoi, “The Wisdom of Children” (1909), in The Dramatic Works
of Lyof N. Tolstoi, trans. Nathan Haskell Dole (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell,
1923), 447–85.
143. Tolstoi, “Kholstomer,” 19.
144. Ibid.
145. L. N. Tolstoi, “Moia zhizn’,” in L. N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii
v devianosta tomakh, 23:469–70. See also L. N. Tolstoi, “Vospominaniia,” in L. N.
Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v devianosta tomakh, 34:345–93.
146. Michael O’Toole, “Russian Literary Theory: From the Formalists to
Lotman,” in Reference Guide to Russian Literature, ed. Neil Cornwell (Chicago,
Ill.: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998), 41.
147. L. N. Tolstoi, “Detstvo,” in L. N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v
sta tomakh, 100 vols. (Moscow: Nauka, 2000), 1:280–337.
150. Tolstoi, “Komu u kogo uchit’sia pisat’,” 307.
152. Ibid.
153. Ibid., 61.
154. D. Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii, Iazyk i iskussvto (St. Petersburg: Tipo-
Litografiia A. Rabinovicha i Ts. Kraiza, 1895), 24.
155. Ibid., 19–20.
156. Ibid., 15.
157. Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms, trans. R. J. Hollingdale
(New York: Penguin Books, 1988).
158. “O detskom iazyke” was included in Kornei Chukovskii, “Materiam
o detskikh zhurnalakh” (1911), in Sobranie sochinenii v piatnadtsati tomakh,
2:543–600.
159. Chukovskii, “Materiam o detskikh zhurnalakh,” 594.
160. Ibid., 595.
161. Ibid., 595–96.
162. Ibid., 591.
163. Children’s neologisms themselves contain evidence of the analytic pro-
cesses through which the child breaks down words during acquisition that later
form the elementary units reassembled to form infantile neologisms. See T. N.
Ushakova, “Causes of Children’s Word Invention (A Psychophysiological Model
of the Genesis of the Syntactically Structured Verbal Utterance),” in Soviet
Developmental Psychology: An Anthology, ed. Michael Cole (White Plains, N.Y.:
M. E. Sharpe, 1977), 516–37. First appeared in Voprosy psikhologii, no. 6 (1970).
For contemporary Russian scholarship on language acquisition, see Tseitlin,
Iazyk i rebenok. See also Clark, First Language Acquisition.
250

165. Ibid.
166. Viktor Shklovskii, O teorii prozy (Moscow: Federatsiia, 1929). A re-
print of this edition was published in 1977. See Viktor Shklovskii, O teorii prozy
(Leipzig: Zentralakvariiat der Deutschen demokratischen republik, 1977).
167. Shklovskii, “Kak sdelan Don-Kikhot,” in O teorii prozy, 91–124.
168. Shklovskii, “Parodiinyii roman,” in O teorii prozy, 177–204.
169. Shklovskii, “Ornamental’naia proza,” in O teorii prozy, 205–25.
170. Consider the childlike wonder and amazement of The Ingenious Gentle-
man Don Quixote of the Mancha (El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la
Mancha; 1605) at the mundane and ordinary world, which renews the perspec-
tives of those around him, or Sterne’s novel’s peculiar use of perspective as it fails
to actually treat The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760)
and instead digresses between the hero’s conception, birth, and baptism, confin-
ing the story entirely to the infancy of its narrator. Miguel de Cervantes, Don
Quixote, trans. Edith Grossman (New York: Harper Collins, 2003); Laurence
Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (New York:
Knopf, 1991).
171. Shklovskii, “Ornamental’naia proza,” 212.
172. Ibid., 207.
173. Ibid., 216.
174. Shklovskii, “Kak sdelan Don-Kikhot,” 101.
175. Page numbers listed for an English translation refer to Gerald Janecek’s
masterful translation of Kotik Letaev. See Andrei Bely, Kotik Letaev, trans.
Gerald J. Janecek (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1999). If no
English page number is given, then I have felt compelled to offer my own
translation, since my argument depends on nuances that require precision of a
different kind.
176. Bely, Kotik Letaev, trans. Janecek, 5.
177. Belyi, Kotik Letaev, 9.
178. The term is based on Andrew Wachtel’s notion of the pseudoauto-
biography as advanced in Andrew Baruch Wachtel, The Battle for Childhood:
Creation of a Russian Myth (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990).
180. Ibid., 14.
181. Martin Buber, I-Thou, trans. Walter Kauffman (New York: Scribner,
1970).
182. Andrei Bely’s interest in the child also derived from intellectual influ-
ences where philosophy (and in some cases science) meet art in the realm of
the child. Most importantly, at the time that he was writing Kotik Letaev (first
published in 1917–18), he was a devoted adherent of Rudolf Steiner at his
Anthroposophical Colony in Dornach, Switzerland. Steiner’s anthroposophical
ideas provide many of the fundamental premises which underly Bely’s Kotik
251
Letaev as philosophical experiment. Bely’s turn to the child might be regarded

alongside Steiner’s view, as expressed in “The Education of the Child in the
Light of Anthroposophy,” that man, like a plant that has not yet flowered, holds a
future state within its “hidden depths”; “They are present within man in the em-
bryo, even as the flowers are present in a plant that is still only in leaf.” Echoing
this embryonic and evolutionary interest, the underlying ideas of Haeckel and
Hegel also exert a formative influence on the role of infancy in Kotik Letaev,
as Andrei Bely indicates by naming them directly in his 1928 foreword to the
novel. He writes, “Haeckel, applied to the soul, and Hegel, or the history of the
development of the cultural phases of thought seen in the light of Haeckel—this
is the premise of Kotik.” Andrei Bely, Kotik Letaev, trans. Janecek, 222. Bely’s
application of the biogenetic law to the soul similarly emphasizes how significant
and illuminating a closer look at the embryonic development of the self might
be, offering answers to questions about the origin of life, mind, consciousness,
language, life, and soul. Bely’s debt to a Hegelian approach to the evolution of
thought also brings biological principles into contact with ideas and offers the
hope of a synthesis of seemingly irreconcilable parts and a divided self. In this
foreword, as in the body of the novel itself, Bely also cites Heracleitus, who
viewed the world as in eternal flux and the soul as existing in a state of being
and non-being at the same time, and Aristotle, whose Physics (8:2, 252b, 26–27)
contains the first attested usage of mikros kosmos, which contains the kernel of
the ancient idea that some microcosmic aspect of reality, such as man himself,
reflects the cosmos. These interrelated ideas all turn our attention to the micro-
cosm of early childhood and the embryonic self as a source of answers to the big
questions that Bely was asking at this time.
183. Andrei Belyi, “Magiia slov,” in Simvolizm: Kniga statei (Moscow: Musa-
get, 1910), 429–48.
184. Ibid., 448.
185. On Bely’s use of neologisms, see Lily Hindley, Die Neologismen Andrej
Belys (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1966).
186. See, for instance, Sara Pankenier, “Reborn in a Reappropriation of Cre-
ation: Marina Tsvetaeva’s Po nagoriiam,” Slavic and East European Journal 48,
no. 4 (2004): 607–26.
187. Aleksandr Blok, “O sovremennom sostoianii russkogo simvolizma,” in
Sobranie sochinenii v vos’mi tomakh (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo
khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1962), 5:425–36.
188. Ibid., 426–27.
189. Ibid., 435.
190. Ibid., 436.
191. Andrei Belyi, Pochemu ia stal simvolistom i pochemu ia ne perestal im
byt’ vo vsekh fazakh moego ideinogo i khudozhestvennogo razvitiia (Ann Arbor,
Mich.: Ardis, 1982).
252
192. Blok, “O sovremennom sostoianii,” 432.

193. Belyi, Pochemu ia stal simvolistom, 7.
194. The creative potential of play, and children’s play in particular, has
proved fruitful for artists, writers, and theorists over a long period. For a rhetori-
cal analysis of various theories of play that exposes the close relationship between
the child, play, and theories of play, see Brian Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of
Play (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001).
195. Bely, Kotik Letaev, trans. Janecek, 204–5.
197. Belyi, Pochemu ia stal simvolistom, 7.
198. The return to infantile consciousness not only represents a revolt against
the irreversibility of time (and maturation), but also amounts to an act of defi-
ance against the psychological phenomenon of infantile amnesia that bars us from
accessing our own earliest memories. The theorist of autobiography Philippe
Lejeune articulates the divisive challenge to selfhood and its representation posed
by the blank spaces of early memory; “The example that I have used gives us
some idea of the problems raised: is it really the same person, the baby who is
born in such and such a clinic, in an era of which I have no memory whatsoever—
and me?” Philippe Lejeune, “The Autobiographical Pact,” in On Autobiography
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 9. Autobiographers confront
the limits of early memory quite directly and have established literary conventions
governing its representation, but Bely here pushes beyond any literary conven-
tions that govern the literary representation of early memory. Instead, Bely unites
the divided autobiographical self posited by Lejeune and endows his preverbal
and preconscious self with awareness, thought, memory, and the adult linguistic
capabilities required to express it. The recovery of the infant self, and its memory
and awareness, would also grant access to the distant past, if one believes, as
Rudolf Steiner and the anthroposophists did, in the notion of metempsychosis
or the transmigration of souls. Bely displays his interest in this idea through his
epigraph to the foreword, where he slightly alters Natasha’s remarks in Voina i
mir (War and Peace). “Znaesh’, ia dumaiu—skazala Natasha shepotom . . . —chto
kogda vspominaesh’, vspominaesh’, vse vspominaesh’, do togo dovspominaesh’sia,
chto pomnish’ to, chto bylo eshche prezhde, chem ia byla na svete . . .” (L. Tolstoi.
Voina i mir, vol. II-i) (Compare “ ‘You know,’ Natasha said in a whisper . . . ‘I think
that when you remember and remember and remember, you remember back
to what it was like before you were on this earth’ ”; in Bely, Kotik Letaev, trans.
Janecek, 5). Seen in this anthroposophic light, infancy represents a transitional
state and forms a kind of bridge to the past narratives that the anthroposophist,
or one who believes in metempsychosis, would wish to access. On infantile am-
nesia in Bely’s writing, see Gerald Janecek, “Introduction” to Andrei Bely, Kotik
Letaev, trans. Gerald Janecek (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press,
1999), xix.
253

200. Ibid.
201. Ibid.
202. Ibid.
203. Ibid., 10.
204. This might be compared to theoretical approaches to early autobiog-
raphy, but in the case of infancy, this move is far more radical and problematic
due to the imbalance in voice and power.
207. Ibid., 8.
215. Tolstoi, “Moia zhizn’,” 23:469–470.
222. Andrei Belyi, Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii (Leningrad: Zemlia i fabrika,
1930).
223. Ibid., 167.
224. Viktor Shklovskii, “Tret’ia fabrika,” in Gamburgskii schet (St. Petersburg:
Limbus, 2000), 83–150.
225. Ibid., 83.
226. Ibid., 147.
227. Ibid., 87.
228. Shklovsky’s engagement with children’s literature proved long lasting;
in 1966 Shklovsky collected several decades’ worth of essays into a volume of
articles on children’s literature. Viktor Shklovskii, Staroe i novoe: Kniga statei o
detskoi literature (Moscow: Detskaia literatura, 1966).
229. By the late 1920s increasing pressure on the arts had forced him to
disassociate himself from the Russian Formalist school of theory he had helped
found and by 1930 circumstances even forced him to recant his Formalist views
in an article published in The Literary Gazette (Literaturnaia gazeta). See
254
V. Shklovskii, “Pamiatnik nauchnoi oshibke,” Literaturnaia gazeta, January 27,

1930.
230. Viktor Shklovskii, Nandu II, illus. N. Tyrsa (Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe
izdatel’stvo, 1928).
231. V. Shklovskii, Skazka o teniakh, illus. T. Lebedeva (Moscow: OGIZ
“Molodaia gvardiia,” 1931).
232. See Lev Loseff, On the Beneficence of Censorship: Aesopian Language
in Modern Russian Literature (Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1984).
233. Viktor Shklovskii, “Straus,” illus. N. Tyrsy in Ezh, Ezhemesiachnyi zhur-
nal dlia detei, no. 4 (April 1928), 9–15.
234. Shklovskii, Nandu II.
236. References refer to the book version. Shklovskii, Nandu II, 3.
237. During his years in Berlin, Shklovsky published his two most success-
ful novels, Zoo (1923) and A Sentimental Journey (1923), and this experience
also finds reflection in later essays published in the volumes Khod konia and
Gamburgskii schet.
238. Viktor Shklovskii, “Zoo, Pis’ma ne o liubvi, ili Tret’ia Eloiza,” in Gam-
burgskii schet (St. Petersburg: Limbus, 2000), 5–82.
239. Themes related to exile include the next generation’s ignorance of its
origins, the comparison of exile to captivity, and motifs like perpetual boredom,
estrangement from one’s surroundings, the consulate, and the need for émigré
newspapers.
240. Shklovskii, “Zoo,” 28.
241. Shklovskii, Nandu II, 9.
242. Ibid., 18.
243. Ibid., 10.
244. Ibid., 18.
245. Ibid., 18–19.
246. This sort of ridicule of a character, incidentally, can be compared to
Kharms’s “Anecdotes from the Life of Pushkin” (“Anegdoty iz zhizni Pushkina”),
and the idea of the vulnerable puppy is also intriguingly reminiscent of Maya-
kovsky’s signature doodle and animal-loving persona. Daniil Kharms, “Anegdoty
iz zhizni Pushkina,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, by D. Kharms (St. Petersburg:
Akademicheskii proekt, 1997), 2:356–58.
247. Shklovskii, Skazka o teniakh, 1.
249. Shklovskii, Skazka o teniakh, 2.
250. Ibid., 4.
251. Ibid., 5.
252. Ibid., 10.
255
CHAPTER FOUR
The chapter epigraph is from Daniil Kharms, “Inkubatornyi period,” in Polnoe

sobranie sochinenii, 2:84. All translations are mine, unless otherwise stated. For
a recent translation of writings by Kharms, see Daniil Kharms, Today I Wrote
Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms, trans. Matvei Yankelevich
(New York: Overlook, 2007).
1. Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, trans.
Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 1999), 65.
2. Sigmund Freud, Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, trans. A. A. Brill
(London: Routledge, 1999), 196.
3. Ibid., 364.
4. Aleksandrov connects the Kharmsian alogism to the child: “This alogism
from precisely the child and eccentric is always comic” (26). A. A. Aleksandrov,
“Chudodei,” in Polet v nebesa, by Daniil Kharms (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisa-
tel’, 1988), 7–48. On the alogism in Aleksei Kruchneykh, see Nikolai Firtich,
“WORLDBACKWARDS: Lewis Carroll, Aleksei Kruchenykh, and Russian
Alogism,” Slavic and East European Journal 48, no. 4 (2004): 593–606.
5. Branislav Jakovljevic, Daniil Kharms: Writing and the Event (Evanston,
Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2009), 161.
6. For an in-depth discussion of the theme of infantile amnesia in autobio-
graphical fragments by Kharms and Tolstoy, see Sara Pankenier, “The Birth of
Memory and the Memory of Birth: Daniil Kharms and Lev Tolstoi on Infantile
Amnesia,” Slavic Review 68, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 804–24.
7. For an excellent summary of previous scholarship on the issue that also
ventures an explanation of infantile amnesia, see Mark L. Howe and Mary L.
Courage, “On Resolving the Enigma of Infantile Amnesia,” Psychological Bul-
letin 113, no. 2 (1993): 305–26. They postulate that the autobiographical organi-
zation of information within a spatiotemporal context depends upon an indepen-
dent sense of self and a personal frame of reference.
8. Hilary Fink also addresses the Bergsonian comic in relation to Kharms,
but she focuses on its opposition to Kant. See Hilary L. Fink, “The Kharmsian
Absurd and the Bergsonian Comic: Against Kant and Causality,” Russian Review
57, no. 4 (October 1998): 526–38.
9. Freud, Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, 366.
10. Elizabeth Tucker cites Louise B. Ames’s 1966 study of “Children’s Stories”
(Genetic Psychological Monographs 73: 337–96) that found “a really remarkable
preoccupation with violence at all ages from two to five; moving up in age, the
form taken by violence changes from spanking to falling down and finally killing
or dying.” Louise B. Ames, “Children’s Stories,” Genetic Psychological Mono-
graphs 73 (1996: 396). See also Diana Heyer Gainer, “Eeny Meeny Miney Mo:
Violence and Other Elements in Children’s Rhymes,” Southwest Folklore, no. 4
256
(1980), 44–50. For more recent work on the subject, see Elizabeth Tucker, “Tales
and Legends,” in Children’s Folklore: A Source Book, ed. Brian Sutton-Smith
et al. (New York: Garland, 1995), 193–211. See also Ann Richman Beresin, “ ‘Sui’
Generis: Mock Violence in an Urban School Yard,” Children’s Folklore Review
18, no. 2 (1996): 25–35. For South Slavic examples, see Biljana Sikimic, “Violent
Death in South Slavic Children’s Folklore,” Etnolog 60, no. 1 (1999): 27–37.
11. In a 1995 article, Sylvia Ann Grider welcomes the fact that “scholars also
finally are investigating previously taboo topics such as children’s use of obscenity
and scatological materials.” See Sylvia Ann Grider, “Who Are the Folklorists of
Childhood?,” in Children’s Folklore, A Source Book, 16.
13. For the claim that play always contains within it the metacommunicative
message that “this is play” (180), see Bateson, “A Theory of Play and Fantasy,”
177–93.
14. Bergson, Laughter, 10.
15. See Lev Loseff, On the Beneficence of Censorship: Aesopian Language
in Modern Russian Literature (Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1984). Aesopian
language only applies, however, in the cases where stories were intended to see
the light of day. If something is written for the desk drawer, Aesopian language
would not be necessary, unless the censor has been internalized.
17. For the fundamental scholarship on “the ambivalent status of texts,” see
Zohar Shavit, Poetics of Children’s Literature (Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 1986). Barbara Wall expanded on these notions and forms of single,
double, and dual address in Barbara Wall, The Narrator’s Voice: The Dilemma
of Children’s Fiction (London: Macmillan, 1991). For a later collection of schol-
arly approaches to this topic, see Transcending Boundaries: Writing for a Dual
Audience of Children and Adults, ed. Sandra Beckett (New York: Garland, 1999).
This book also includes a relevant article by Larissa Klein Tumanov, “Writing
for a Dual Audience in the Former Soviet Union,” in Transcending Boundaries,
129–48.
19. Other scholars also identify such constructs of infant other. For instance,
the second chapter of Martin Calder’s study of French and English literature
dicusses the theme “The Infant Other: Feral Children and Civil Children” (77–
138). See Martin Calder. Encounters with the Other: A Journey to the Limits of
Languages Through Works by Rousseau, Defoe, Prévost and Graffigny (New
York: Rodopi, 2003).
20. Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (New York: Anchor Books,
1961).
21. Ibid., 241.
22. Ibid., 247.
257
23. Jakovljevic, Daniil Kharms, 19.

24. See Jean-Philippe Jaccard, Daniil Harms et la fin de l’avant-garde russe
(Bern: Peter Lang, 1991). See also A. Kobrinskii, Poetika “OBERIU” v kontekste
russkogo literaturnogo avangarda, V dvukh tomakh (Moscow: MKL, 2000).
25. Bertram Müller, Absurde Literatur in Russland: Entstehung und Ent-
wicklung (Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1978).
26. Neil Carrick, Daniil Kharms: Theologian of the Absurd (Birmingham,
Eng.: University of Birmingham Press, 1998).
27. See the collection and article by Jean-Phillipe Jaccard, “Daniil Kharms
in the Context of Russian and European Literature of the Absurd,” in Daniil
Kharms and the Poetics of the Absurd: Essays and Materials, ed. Neil Cornwell
(New York: St. Martin’s, 1991), 49–70. A recent volume on the subject is D. V.
Tokarev, Kurs na khudshee: Absurd kak kategoriia teksta u Daniila Kharmsa i
Semiuelia Bekketa (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2002).
28. Kobrinskii notes the “infantilism” in Kharms’s works (120). A. Kobrinskii,
Poetika “OBERIU.”
30. An early remark on the topic of children’s speech, language creation, and
the infantile word in avant-garde practice is made by Lazar Fleishman as early as
1977. See L. S. Fleishman, “Marginalii k istorii russkogo avangarda, Oleinikov,
oberiuty,” in Stikhotvoreniia, by N. M. Oleinikov (Bremen: K-Presse, 1975), 3–18.
31. Daniil Kharms, “Anegdoty iz zhizni Pushkina,” in D. Kharms, Polnoe
sobranie sochinenii, 2:356–58.
32. Esslin, Theater of the Absurd, xxi.
33. Anthony Anemone writes eloquently on the anti-world of Kharms. See
Anthony Anemone, “The Anti-World of Daniil Kharms: On the Significance of
the Absurd,” in Daniil Kharms and the Poetics of the Absurd, ed. Neil Cornwell
(New York: St. Martin’s, 1991), 71–93.
34. Daniil Kharms, “Ia ne liubliu detei . . . ,” in D. Kharms, Polnoe sobranie so-
chinenii, 2:88. Originally included in A. Ustinov and A. Kobrinskii, “Dnevnikovye
zapisi Daniila Kharmsa,” in Minuvshee, Istoricheskii al’manakh, no. 11 (Paris:
Atheneum, 1991), 503.
36. Daniil Kharms, “Stat’ia,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii: Neizdanny
Kharms, Traktaty i statii, Pis’ma, ed. Valerii Sazhin (St. Petersburg: Akademi-
cheskii proekt, 2001), 23.
37. On the violence against women and children in Kharms’s writings, see
D. V. Tokarev, “Poetika nasiliia: Daniil Kharms v mire zhenshchin i detei,” in
Natsional’nyi eros i kul’tura, 2 vols., ed. G. D. Gachev and L. N. Titova (Moscow:
Ladomir, 2002), 2:345–403.
39. Mayakovsky’s books for children include What Is Good and What Is Bad?
258
Notes to Page 163
(Chto takoe khorosho i chto takoe plokho?; 1925); The Story About Sima, the Fat
Child, and About Petia, Who Is Thin (Skazka o Sime, tolstom rebenke, i o Pete,
kotoryi tonkii; 1925); and Not a Page Without an Elephant, Without a Lioness
(To ne stranitsa,—to slon, to l’vitsa; 1928). Vladimir Maiakovskii, Chto takoe
khorosho i chto takoe plokho?, illus. N. Denisovskii (Leningrad: Priboi, 1925);
Vladimir Maiakovskii, Skazka o Pete, tolstom rebenke, i o Sime, kotoryi tonkii,
illus. N. Kupreianov (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1925); Vladimir Maiakovskii,
To ne stranitsa—to slon, to l’vitsa, illus. K. Zdanevich (Tiflis: Zakkniga, 1928). For
an analysis of Mayakovsky’s rare picturebooks for children, see Sara Pankenier,
“Uncle Lighthouse: The Authorial Presence in Vladimir Mayakovsky’s Books for
Children,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 68, no. 3 (2008): 909–40.
40. His wife Marina Durnovo observes, “I see that much in his diary is
expressed in a completely childish manner [sovsem’ po-detski]. Yes, in Danya
there was this childishness [detskoe], and this was why he was as he was.” Marina
Durnovo, Moi muzh Daniil Kharms, ed. Vladimir Glotser (Moscow: B.S.G.,
2000), 55. His mistress Alisa Poret makes similar observations; she writes, “I
remember him as I myself knew him—like a big mischievious child [bol’shim
ozornym rebenkom], whose words and jokes adults repeat with a smile” (425).
Alisa Poret, “Vospominaniia o Daniile Kharmse” (1980), in Daniil Kharms,
Antologiia satiry i iumora Rossii XX veka, vol. 23 (Moscow: Eksmo, 2003),
428. Iakov Druskin also compares Kharms to a child, specifically the child in
Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” He writes, “Kharms is like that little
boy. He was not afraid to say, ‘But the king’s got nothing on.’ ” Iakov Druskin,
“On Daniil Kharms,” in Daniil Kharms and the Poetics of the Absurd: Essays
and Materials, trans. and ed. Neil Cornwell (New York: St. Martin’s, 1991), 23.
Druskin later speaks of Kharms’s “naive, almost infantile cynicism.” Druskin, “On
Daniil Kharms,” 25.
41. Druskin, “On Daniil Kharms,” 29.
42. Ibid., 29.
43. Daniil Kharms, “Sud’ba zheny professora,” in D. Kharms, Polnoe sobra-
nie sochinenii, 2:104–5.
44. Rousseau writes, “All our practices are only subjection, impediment, and
constraint. Civil man is born, lives, and dies in slavery. At his birth he is sewed
in swaddling clothes; at his death he is nailed in a coffin. So long as he keeps his
human shape, he is enchained by our institutions.” Rousseau, Emile, 42–43. He
later elaborates: “On the other hand, who does not see that the weakness of the
first age [infans] enchains children in so many ways that it is barbarous to add
to this subjection a further subjection—that of our caprices—by taking from
them a freedom so limited, which they are so little capable of abusing and the
deprivation of which is of so little utility to them and to us?” Rousseau, Emile,
88–89. Rousseau’s position has had an inordinate influence to the present day,
including in studies of “psychohistory” that extend Rousseau’s political metaphor.
259
See Lloyd de Mause, ed., The History of Childhood (New York: Psychohistory,
1974). This volume includes Lloyd de Mause’s discussion of the practice of swad-
dling in “The Evolution of Childhood” in The History of Childhood (37–38) and
Patrick P. Dunn, “Childhood in Imperial Russia” (386–87). Erik Erikson makes
an important contribution to the discussion of swaddling in Russia. Erik Erikson,
Childhood and Society (New York: Norton, 1975), 388–92. More recent stud-
ies, however, have documented the soothing physiological effects of swaddling.
See, for instance, Earle Lloyd Lipton et al., Swaddling, A Child Care Practice:
Historical, Cultural and Experimental Observations (Springfield, Ill.: Thomas,
1965).
45. See de Mause, “The Evolution of Childhood,” 1–73.
46. See Daniil Kharms, “Menia nazyvaiut kaputsinom . . . ,” in D. Kharms,
Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 2:134.
47. The planned collection was published in more recent years. See Konstantin
Vaginov, Nikolai Zabolotskii, Daniil Kharms, Nikolai Oleinikov, Aleksandr Vveden-
skii, and Igor Bakhterev, Vanna Arkhimeda, ed. A. A. Aleksandrov (Leningrad:
Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1991).
48. A. Vvedensky, K. Vaginov, I. Bakhterev, N. Zabolotskii, D. Kharms, and
B. Levin, “OBERIU (DEKLARATSIIA),” in Vanna Arkhimeda, 457.
49. Ibid., 459.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid., 456.
52. Ibid., 458.
53. Ibid.
54. A document attesting to Daniil Kharms’s participation in an October
1926 “Trans-Sensists’ Evening” (“Vecher Zaumnikov”) has been preserved in
the Kharms archive in the State Library of St. Petersburg. See A. V. Tufanov,
“ ‘Vecher zaumnikov’: Statia” (October 17, 1926), Gosudarstvennaia publichnaia
biblioteka (GPB), Otdel rukopisei (OR), Ia. S. Druskin Collection, f. 1232, ed.
khr. 369.
55. “OBERIU (DEKLARATSIIA),” 458.
56. Ibid.
57. Still, the emphasis on concreteness has some precedent in Acmeist poet-
ics, just as the belief in deeper meanings attached to objects and words shares
something with Symbolism. Acmeist and Symbolist essays also idealize the child’s
relationship with language. As mentioned earlier, see Andrei Bely’s “Magiia slov”
(1909) and Aleksandr Blok’s “O sovremennom sostoianii russkogo simvolizma”
(1910) in particular.
58. Lewis Carroll, himself a mathematician and logician, is a prime example
of this tradition and reception history, and also significant as one of Kharms’s
favorite authors.
59. Jean Piaget, “Logic and Psychology” (1952), in The Essential Piaget,
260
ed. Howard E. Gruber and J. Jacques Voneche (New York: Basic Books, 1977),
476–77.
60. Jean Piaget, The Essential Piaget, ed. Howard E. Gruber and J. Jacques
Voneche (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 63.
61. Viktor Shklovskii, “O tsvetnykh snakh,” Literaturnaia gazeta, no. 47
(November 22, 1967), 16.
62. Ibid.
63. Jean Piaget, “The Construction of Reality in the Child” (1937), in The
Essential Piaget, ed. Howard E. Gruber and J. Jacques Voneche (New York:
Basic Books, 1977), 250.
64. Vygotsky, Thought and Language, 12–57.
65. L. S. Vygotsky, “Play and Its Role in the Mental Development of the
Child,” trans. Catherine Mulholland, in Soviet Developmental Psychology: An
Anthology, ed. Michael Cole (White Plains, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1977), 76–99.
The original was published in Voprosy psikhologii, no. 6 (1966).
66. Erik H. Erikson, Toys and Reasons: Stages in the Ritualization of Ex-
perience (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 44.
67. See, for instance, Angeline Lillard, “Pretend Play and Cognitive Devel-
opment,” in Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Cognitive Development, ed. Usha
Goswami (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002), 188–205.
68. Daniil Kharms, “Teper’ ia rasskazhu, kak ia rodilsia, kak ia ros . . .”
(1935), in D. Kharms, Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh, ed. V. N. Sazhin (St.
Petersburg: Azbuka, 2000), 2:121–23.
69. Daniil Kharms, “Inkubatornyi period” (1935), in Sobranie sochinenii,
2:123.
70. Bergson, Laughter, 39.
71. Tolstoi, “Moia zhizn’,” 23:469–74.
72. Ibid., 88.
73. Ibid., 90.
74. The personal papers and diary writings of Kharms are remarkably indis-
tinguishable from his creative prose in style, subject matter, and tone. See Daniil
Ivanovich Kharms, Dnevnikovye zapisi (January 5, 1926–April 10, 1939), GPB
OR, f. 1232, ed. khr. 50. First published in Ustinov and Kobrinskii, “Dnevnikovye
zapisi,” 417–583.
75. Compare Philippe Lejeune, “The Autobiographical Pact” and “The
Autobiographical Pact,” in On Autobiography (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1989), 3–30, 119–37.
76. Kharms, “Teper’ ia rasskazhu,” in D. Kharms, Sobranie sochinenii, 2:121.
77. Ibid.
78. Daniil Ivanovich Kharms, “Avtobiografiia” (September 25, 1935), GPB
OR, f. 1232, ed. khr. 69.
79. Kharms, “Teper’ ia rasskazhu,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 2:121.
261
80. Ibid., 2:121–22.

81. Ibid., 2:122.
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid.
84. The subtle joke here, in its obscene and scatological aspects, also re-
sembles folklore or child lore.
85. Kharms, “Teper’ ia rasskazhu,” Sobranie sochinenii, 2:123.
86. Ibid.
87. Ibid.
88. Daniil Kharms’s diary writings give evidence that he was troubled by im-
potence along with writer’s block, which may explain the richness of these linked
motifs in his creative writings. Ustinov and Kobrinskii, “Dnevnikovye zapisi,”
417–583.
90. Ibid., 2:122–23.
91. Bergson, Laughter.
92. “The Kronia belong to the ‘Saturnalia-like’ festivals, as has often been
stated. As in the case of carnival or one of its medieval equivalents, ‘la fête de
fous,’ social and hierarchical roles are reversed: the fool is king and rules at will.”
H. S. Versnel, “Greek Myth and Ritual: The Case of Kronos,” in Interpretations
of Greek Mythology, ed. Jan Bremmer (London: Routledge, 1990), 135–36.
93. By the Old Style calendar, Kharms was born on December 17, 1905.
95. Daniil Kharms, “Byl Volodia na elke . . .” (1930s), in Sobranie sochinenii,
3:172–73.
96. Ibid., 3:172.
97. Ibid., 3:122.
98. See Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Lan-
guage and Art, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon Roudiez (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1980).
99. Kharms, “Byl Volodia na elke . . . ,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 3:122.
100. The crocodile is also a classic character of satire and children’s sto-
ries, from Dostoevsky’s Gogolian allegory Krokodil (1865) to Chukovsky’s Pri-
kliucheniia Krokodila Krokodilovicha (1917), as well as the long-lived humor
periodical Krokodil which began in 1922. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Crocodile,
trans. S. D. Cioran (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1985); Kornei Chukovskii, Prikliu-
cheniia Krokodila Krokodilovicha, illus. Re-Mi (St. Petersburg: Epokha, 1922);
Krokodilu—60 let. Iubileinaia letopis’ (Moscow: Pravda, 1983).
102. Chaadaev, “First Letter,” 163. Petr Ia. Chaadaev, Polnoe sobranie so-
chinenii i izbrannye pis’ma (Moscow, 1991), 1:90, 92–93.
262
103. Maks Fasmer, Etimologicheskii slovar’ russkogo iazyka, trans. O. N.

Trubachev (Moscow: Progress, 1971), 1:326.
105. Aleksandr Vvedenskii, “Elka u Ivanovykh” (1938), in Vanna Arkhimeda,
388–410.
106. For a recent publication of this collection as it might have been real-
ized by OBERIU, see I. Stepanov, ed., Vanna Arkhimeda (Leningrad: Khudo-
zhestvennia literatura, 1991).
107. Daniil Kharms, “Elizaveta Bam” (1927), in Sobranie sochinenii, 1:411–44.
108. Vvedenskii, “Elka u Ivanovykh,” 389.
109. Ibid.
110. Ibid.
111. Children’s creative works are often signed with the child’s name and
age, as seen in the collections of children’s art and writings presented by Neo-
Primitivism and Cubo-Futurism discussed in previous chapters. In this sense,
Vvedensky’s cast might be seen as a parody of such treatment of children, where
age becomes such a reductive signifier.
113. Ibid.
114. Wachtel discusses and thoroughly contextualizes Vvedensky’s play in
his aforementioned article. Among other interconnections, he rightly offers
Sergei Tretyakov’s “I Want a Child” (“Khochu rebenka”), written in 1926–27, as
a provocative contemporary intertext that exposes how the ‘child’ was of primary
symbolic significance politically as well. Andrew Wachtel, “The Theatrical Life of
Murdered Children,” in Plays of Expectations: Intertextual Relations in Russian
Twentieth-Century Drama (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 134.
116. That Petya’s surname derives from the word “pero” for “pen” seems
significant among the concretely descriptive surnames; others are based on the
words “stone” (petr-), “gray” (seryi), “mosquito” (komar), “island” (ostrov), “col-
orful” (pestryi), “nimble” (shustryi), and “bubble” (puzyr’).
118. Ibid., 390–91.
119. Ibid., 403
120. Ibid.
121. Ibid., 404.
122. Ibid.
123. Ibid.
124. Ibid.
125. Ibid., 390.
126. Ibid., 409.
263
127. For a discussion of Kharms’s poetry in the context of child lore, see Sara
Panken’er, “Poeziia Kharmsa v kontekste detskogo fol’klora,” in Detskii fol’klor v
kontekste vzrosloi kul’tury, ed. M. L. Lur’e and I. A. Sergienko (St. Petersburg:
SPGUKI, 2010), 202–8.
128. Daniil Kharms, “V iiule kak to v leto nashe . . .” (1922), in Sobranie
sochinenii, 1:21.
129. In addition to Daniil Kharms, and the signature DCH and D.Kh.,
other pseudonyms included the surnames Charms, Khorms, Khaarms, Shardam,
Zatochnik, and the first names DaNiil and Dandan. The last of these resembles a
reduplicative nickname like those coined by very young children.
130. Kharms, “V iiule kak to v leto nashe . . . ,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 1:21.
131. Ibid.
132. Ibid.
133. Ibid.
134. Daniil Kharms, “O tom kak ivan ivanovich poprosil i chto iz etogo
vyshlo” (1925), in Sobranie sochinenii, 1:22–24.
135. Ibid., 1:22.
136. Ibid., 1:22.
137. Ibid., 1:22–24.
138. Ibid., 1:23.
139. Daniil Kharms, “Ot babushki do Esther” (1925), in Sobranie sochinenii,
1:25–26.
140. Ibid., 1:25
141. Ibid., 1:26.
142. Compare “bálovat’ ” (pronounced “balavat’ ”) meaning “to spoil” and
“báloven’ ” (pronounced “balaven’ ”) meaning “favorite” or “spoiled child.”
143. In the article “Why ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’?,” the linguist Roman Jakobson
addressed the subject of “nursery language” as part of a discussion of widely
occurring kinship terms. He elaborates the universal priority of certain redupli-
cative forms (i.e., “baba”) in infant language development and shows how these
terms from nursery language influence and enter adult language. “Some of such
nursery forms overstep the limits of the nurseries, enter into the general usage of
adult society, and build a specific infantile layer in standard vocabulary.” Roman
Jakobson, “Why ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’?,” in Studies on Child Language and Aphasia
(The Hague: Mouton, 1971), 22.
144. Kharms, “Ot babushki do Esther,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 1:26.
145. Ibid.
146. Ibid.
147. Daniil Kharms, “Kika i Koka” (1925), in Sobranie sochinenii, 1:34–37.
148. Daniil Kharms, “Van’ki vstan’ki ‘I’ ” and “Van’ki vstan’ki ‘II’ ” (1926), in
Sobranie sochinenii, 1:44–49.
149. Daniil Kharms, “Polovinki” (1926), in Sobranie sochinenii, 1:49–52.
264
150. Daniil Kharms, “Skupost’ ” (1926), in Sobranie sochinenii, 1:62–63.

151. In his analysis of trans-sense poetry, Roman Jakobson offers numer-
ous examples of children’s word-pairs to show how the play and “pure verbal
enjoyment” of children’s oral forms is an example relevant to the new poetry
of the Futurists. He writes, “There are many examples in the humorous catch-
phrases with which, in the words of Shein, naughty children amuse themselves,
often without any aim but pure verbal enjoyment” (Mnogo primerov v pribaut-
kakh, kotorymi po slovam Sheina, shalovlivye rebiatishki poteshaiutsia, chasto
bez vsiakogo dazhe povoda radi odnoi tol’ko slovesnoi zabavy). R. Iakobson,
Noveishaia russkaia poeziia, 55.
152. Kharms, “Skupost,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 1:62.
153. Daniil Kharms, “Sek” (1925), in Sobranie sochinenii, 1:37.
154. Ibid., 1: 37.
155. Ibid.
156. Daniil Kharms, “Polka zatylki (sryv)” (1926), in Sobranie sochinenii v
trekh tomakh, 1:38–40.
157. Kharms, “Polka zatylki (sryv),” in Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh,
1:40.
158. Ibid.
159. Daniil Kharms, “Sluchai na zheleznoi doroge” (1926), in Sobranie so-
chinenii, 1:59–60.
160. Daniil Kharms, “Sluchai na zheleznoi doroge,” in Sbornik Leningrad-
skogo otdeleniia Vserossiiskogo Soiuza Poetov (Leningrad, 1926), 71–72.
161. Ibid., 71.
162. Daniil Kharms, “Pozhar” (1927), in Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh,
1:73–75.
163. Kharms, “Pozhar,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 1:73–74.
164. Kharms, “Pozhar,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 1:74.
165. On the other hand, child lore and cautionary tales like Der Struwwel-
peter (1845) do not hesitate to do so.
166. Kharms, “Pozhar,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 1:75.
167. Daniil Kharms, “Chelovek ustroen iz trekh chastei . . .” (1930), in So-
branie sochinenii, 1:197.
168. Ibid., 1:197.
169. Ibid.
170. V. N. Sazhin, “Primechaniia,” in Daniil Kharms, Sobranie sochinenii v
trekh tomakh, 1:510–11.
171. Kharms, “Chelovek ustroen iz trekh chastei . . . ,” in Sobranie sochine-
nii, 1:197.
172. Daniil Kharms, “Fadeev Kaldeev i Pepermaldeev . . .” (1930), in Sobra-
nie sochinenii, 1:184–185.
173. Ibid., 1:184.
265
174. Ibid.
175. Vladimir Propp, Morfologiia skazki (Moscow: Labirint, 1998). For
English, see Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, trans. Laurence Scott
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975).
176. This version reads, “Fadeyev, Kaldeyev and Pepermaldeyev / worked
at the publisher R.M.N.S. / Fadeyev as editor / Kaldeyev as coworker / and
Pepermaldeyev just went as he was” (Fadeev Kaldeev i Pepermaldeev / sluzhili v
izdatel’stve R.M.N.S. / Fadeev—redaktor / Kaldeev—sotrudnik / a Pepermaldeev
khodil prosto tak). V. N. Sazhin, “Primechaniia,” in Daniil Kharms, Sobranie so-
chinenii v trekh tomakh, 1:506.
177. Ezh, Ezhemesiachnyi zhurnal dlia detei mladshego shkol’nogo vozrasta
(Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1928–35).
178. Chizh, Ezhemesiachnyi zhurnal dlia detei mladshego vozrasta (Lenin-
grad: Gosizdat, 1930–41).
179. On the symbolic significance of the hedgehog and the siskin, deriving
from Krylov’s fable “Chizh i Ezh” (1814), see Sara Pankenier Weld, “Towards a
Genealogy of the Kharmsian Hedgehog,” in Till en evakuerad igelkott, Festskrift
till Maria Nikolajeva, ed. M. Lassen-Seger and M. Österlund (Stockholm: Maka-
dam, 2012), 65–74.
180. Lidiia Chukovskaia, “Marshak-redaktor,” in V laboratorii redaktora,
2nd ed. (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1963), 268–69.
181. As discussed earlier, these include World of Art figures and proponents
of Neo-Primitivism and Cubo-Futurism.
182. Ezh, no. 12 (1930).
183. Ezh, no. 9 (1930).
184. “Pochtovyi iashchik,” Chizh, no. 7 (1930), 27.
185. Daniil Kharms, “V gostiakh, Pridumai skazku” (1937), in Sobranie so-
chinenii, 3:58–59.
186. Daniil Kharms, “Chto eto bylo?” (1940), in Sobranie sochinenii, 3:71–72.
187. Daniil Kharms, “Kto kogo perekhitril?” (1941), in Sobranie sochinenii,
3:77–78.
188. Daniil Kharms, “Iz doma vyshel chelovek, Pesenka” (1937), in Sobranie
sochinenii, 3:53–54.
189. Ibid., 54.
190. N. Gernet, “O Kharmse,” Neva, no. 2 (1988), 204. Cited in V. N. Sazhin,
“Primechaniia,” in Daniil Kharms, Sobranie sochinenii, 3:239.
191. For example, see Daniil Kharms, “Kak Masha zastavila osla vezti ee v
gorod” (1934), in Sobranie sochinenii, 3:156–57.
192. The editors quote one in detail. “To you, Lenya Bondarenko, we are also
grateful for your letter. You write: ‘For the magazine ‘Ezh’ to be enjoyable and in-
teresting, I suggest that you create the following sections: ‘Young Naturalist’—in
which to print letters . . . stories, journals, and notes, . . . ‘Hedgehog Gloves’—in
266
this section maintain and improve your old work. The section ‘Master Hedge-
hog’—start it up again and write about crafts, school work, and about the in-
ventions of readers. The section ‘In Your Spare Time’—where you must print
riddles, rebuses, charades, challenges, games, and so on. The section ‘Club
Hedgehog’—leave it as it is . . .’ All your suggestions, Lenya Bondarenko, are
also correct” (32). “Pis’mo Ezha,” Ezh, no. 12 (1933), 32.
193. Ibid.
194. Ibid.
195. Daniil Kharms, “Strannyi borodach,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 3:74.
196. Ibid., 3:75.
197. A metatextual focus on the artificiality of the text is rare in children’s
literature before postmodernism.
198. Ezh, no. 12 (1928).
199. Appropriately enough, the story appeared in an issue on the theme of
eccentrics that featured a cover with a man and dog running in strange wheel-like
inventions. “It was not only this wheel that caused row and mockery among crit-
ics. There is almost no invention that was not attacked by people at its birth. And
it is only once the idea has grown fists that people start to respect it. In this issue
of ‘Hedgehog’ the article ‘Eccentrics’ is printed on pp. 19–24. It tells all about
various funny ideas, which then grew into serious inventions.” Ezh, no. 12 (1928).
200. Daniil Kharms, O tom, kak starushka chernila pokupala, illus. E.
Krimmer (Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1929). Pages numbers are from this edition,
since it is treated as an iconotext whole. See also Daniil Kharms, “O tom kak
starushka chernila pokupala,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 3:131–38.
201. This cover thus equates the position of the young and the old, or the
senile and the puerile.
202. Daniil Kharms, “Vyvalivaiushchiesia starukhi” (1936–37), in Sobranie
sochinenii, 2:309–10.
203. Daniil Kharms, “Starukha (1939),” in Sobranie sochinenii, 2:245–72.
204. Kharms, O tom, kak starushka (Leningrad, 1929), 12.
205. Ibid., 16.
206. Ibid.
207. Ibid., 17.
208. Ibid., 17–18.
209. Ibid., 18.
210. Ibid., 20.
211. Ibid.
212. Ibid., 22.
213. Ibid., 21–22.
214. The construction of a complex pattern of allusion through an aleatory
poetic method employed here is reminiscent of Knut Hamsun, who, along with
Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, was one of Kharms’s favorite writers and is cited
267
in the epigraph to the stylistically similar “Starukha.” Susan Scotto has published
a general comparative study that deals with some similarities of theme, plot,
and style in Kharms’s “Starukha” and Hamsun’s Mysteries. See Susan D. Scotto,
“Kharms and Hamsun: Starukha Solves a Mystery?,” Comparative Literature
Studies 23, no. 4 (Winter 1986): 282–96.
215. Kharms, O tom, kak starushka, 18.
216. Ibid., 21.
217. An excellent source on the layout and logistics of children’s publishing
in Leningrad in this period is Lydia Chukovskaya, who included a chapter on
“Marshak-redaktor” in the second edition of her book In the Editor’s Laboratory.
The chapter begins, “Leningrad. The House of the Book, the Children’s Depart-
ment of the State Publishing House. Early 1930s. The editorial offices occupy
three rooms on the fifth floor . . . S. Ia. Marshak has been in charge of the depart-
ment for some years now” (219). Chukovskaya mentions regular figures such as
Kharms (221) and his colleagues in OBERIU (268). The publishers of the chil-
dren’s magazines Ezh and Chizh were close colleagues working next door. Specific
details about the building at this time, such as its exact location, number of floors,
and revolving door main entrance also appear. “It is empty in the House of the
Book, on all of its six floors, in its hundreds of rooms. The main glass revolving
door, exiting onto Nevsky Prospekt across from the Kazan Cathedral, was locked
already long ago” (223). See Chukovskaia, V laboratorii redaktora, 219–334.
218. Kharms, O tom, kak starushka, 22–23.
219. In her reminiscences first published in 1980, Alisa Poret writes: “A
pipe was a constant accessory on his person” (Postoiannoi prinadlezhnost’iu ego
litsa byla trubka). Alisa Poret, “Vospominaniia o Daniile Kharmse,” in Antologiia
satiry i iumora Rossii XX veka, by Daniil Kharms (Moscow: Eksmo, 2003),
23:425.
220. Kharms, O tom, kak starushka, 25.
221. Ibid., 26.
222. Ibid.
223. Ibid., 27.
224. Daniil Kharms, “Skazka,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 3:160–62. It first ap-
peared in Chizh, no. 7 (1935).
225. Kharms’s close colleague Aleksandr Vvedensky engages in metatextual
experiments that are somewhat similar in nature. For instance, the story “Artists
and Writers” (“Khudozhniki i pisateli”) also includes the creative expressions
of its characters—the story, poem, and song of three characters and the artist’s
portrait that is their reward—and thus delivers a kind of art history for readers.
See Aleksandr Vvedenskii, “Khudozhniki i pisateli,” Chizh, no. 3 (1930), 2–6.
226. At its most specific, the Russian word “skazka” means “fairy tale,” but
the word is so common in usage that it also might mean “tale,” “story,” or even
“tall tale.” In this case I translate it as the more general “story,” since Vanya sug-
268
gests they “write a story” in what seems a general sense. The notion of “story” also
encompasses the children’s wide-ranging fictional and metafictional creations.
227. Kharms, “Skazka,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 3:160.
228. Ibid.
229. Ibid., 3:162.
230. Ibid.
231. In diary writings from November 1937, Kharms lists Edward Lear, Lewis
Carroll, and Knut Hamsun among his favorite writers. Ustinov and Kobrinskii,
“Dnevnikovye zapisi,” 501.
232. For details on the known circumstances of his final days, see Aleksandr
Kobrinskii, Daniil Kharms (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2008), 483.
CONCLUSION
1. In Zaum Gerald Janecek also compares transrational language to abstrac-

tion in art and Kruchenykh’s zaum to Malevich’s Black Square. He writes, “zaum
can be said to exist at the limits of language, and therefore an examination of it
is one way of getting at the roots (and limits) of human language itself.” Janecek,
Zaum, 3. In fact, as this book argues, all branches of avant-garde infantilism move
toward a similar end point.
2. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1957), 275.
3. Though I outline one aesthetic trajectory here, this is not to say that these
avant-garde figures did not pursue others earlier or later or, in some cases, have
long careers in the Soviet Union or in the emigration where they faced different
aesthetic alternatives or were forced to make certain compromises. This book is
a synchronic study of the nearly simultaneous manifestations of infantilist avant-
garde practice in the period from 1909 to 1939 rather than a study of their dis-
solution. It centers on the most extreme manifestations of the avant-garde explo-
rations of infantilism in art, language, theory, and logic and offers one dramatic
and anachronistic end point for a grand simultaneity that continued to dissipate
its forces even once the center was removed.
4. Branislav Jakovljevic notes, “Kharms conceives of nil as an infinitely
shrinking support, as the origin that permanently withdraws into itself.” Jako vlje-
vic, Daniil Kharms, 136.
5. Viktor Shklovskii, “O zaumnom iazyke, 70 let spustia,” in Russkii litera-
turnyi avangard: Dokumenty i issledovaniia, ed. M. Marzaduri, D. Rizzi, and
M. Evzlin (Trent: Università di Trento, 1990), 304. I am indebted to Nina
Gurianova’s work for bringing this quotation to my attention. The translation is
Gurianova’s. Quoted in Gurianova, Aesthetics of Anarchy, 158.
6. One might compare Gurianova’s assessment that “Suprematism offered as
a final goal ‘nothing,’ ‘zero.’ ” Gurianova, Aesthetics of Anarchy, 189.
269
7. Plato, The Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett (South Bend, Ind.: Info-
motions Inc., 2001).
8. Kazimir Malevich, “Ot kubizma i futurizma k suprematizmu, Novyi zhi-
vopisnyi realizm,” in Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh, by Kazimir Malevich
(Moscow: Gileia, 1995), 1:53. Originally published in K. Malevich, Ot kubizma i
futurizma k suprematizmu, Pervyi zhivopisnyi realizm (Moscow, 1915).
9. Malevich, “Ot kubizma,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 1:35–55.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. K. S. Malevich, “Pis’ma k M. V. Matiushinu,” in Ezhegodnik rukopis-
nogo otdela Pushkinskogo Doma na 1974, ed. Yevgeny Kovtun (Leningrad:
Nauka, 1976), 186. Quoted in E. F. Kovtun, “Kazimir Malevich,” trans. Charlotte
Douglas, Art Journal 41, no. 3 (Autumn 1981): 235.
13. Compare the term infante/infanta for the children born to Spanish and
Portuguese kings and queens, though not, strictly speaking, heir to the throne.
14. See Ellen Key, The Century of the Child, trans. Frances Maro (New
York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909). Ellen Key derived the title of her volume from
an excerpt from the drama The Lion’s Whelp (Lejonets unge; 1896) by Frida
Stéenhoff (writing under the pseudonym Harold Gote), which read “The next
century will be the century of the child. . . . When the child has achieved his/
her rights, morality will be perfected (Nästa århundrade blir barnets århun-
drade—liksom detta varit kvinnans. Och när barnet kommit till sin rätt är sed-
ligheten fullkomnad).” Frida Stéenhoff (Harold Gote), Lejonets unge (Stockholm:
Wahlström & Widstrand, 1906), 143. Cited in Ellen Key, Barnets århundrade
(Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1900). For English, see Ellen Key, The
Century of the Child.
15. Malevich, “Ot kubizma,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 1:35–53.
16. Boris Groys, “The Birth of Socialist Realism from the Spirit of the
Russian Avant-Garde,” in Laboratory of Dreams: The Russian Avant-Garde
and Cultural Experiment, ed. John E. Bowlt and Olga Matich (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1996), 193–218.
17. Vladimir Maiakovskii, Dlia golosa, illus. El’ Lisitskii (Berlin: Gosizdat,
1923).
18. El’ Lisitskii, Pro dva kvadrata: Suprematicheskii skaz v shesti postroi-
kakh (Berlin: Skify, 1922).
19. These artists and Jean Dubuffet and Cobra as well as Larionov and
Kandinsky in the Russian context are presented with numerous illustrations in
the study and catolog: Jonathan Fineberg, The Innocent Eye: Children’s Art and
the Modern Artist (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997).
20. On the relationship between nineteenth-century children’s books and
modernist literature, particularly Lewis Carroll and Virginia Woolf, recall Juliet
Dusinberre’s argument “that cultural change was both reflected and pioneered
270
Notes to Page 215
in the books which children read. Radical experiments in the arts in the early
modern period began in the books which Lewis Carroll and his successors wrote
for children.” Juliet Dusinberre, Alice to the Lighthouse, 5.
21. In “Art as Device,” Shklovsky writes, “I personally believe that estrange-
ment is to be found almost everywhere where there is form” (Ia lichno schi-
taiu, chto ostranenie est’ pochti vezde, gde est’ obraz.) Shklovskii, “Iskusstvo kak
priem,” in Gamburgskii schet, 68.
271
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296
Index
Page numbers in boldface refer to illustrations.
absurdism, 10, 11, 145, 159–60, 167. See Bely, Andrei, 156, 219n23, 245n45,
also Kharms, Daniil; OBERIU 251n182; Kotik Letaev, 12–13, 136–44,
Acmeism, 12, 260n57 180, 251n182, 253n198
adolescence, 105 Benčić, Živa, 231n16
Aesopian language, 145–46, 153, 159, 195, Benois, Alexandre, 26, 60, 226n53
257n15 Berenstam, F., 60
Agamben, Girogio, 3, 4 Bergson, Henri, 156, 157–58, 169–70, 174,
Aksakov, Sergei, 131, 220n29 179, 243n15
alogism, 156, 161, 165, 166–68, 187, 205, Blaue Reiter, Der, 33, 76
208, 209, 256n4 Blok, Aleksandr, 139–40
Ames, Louise B., 256n10 Bowlt, John, 86
Andersen, Hans Christian, 131, 259n40 Brancusi, Constantin, 16
Andreenko, Mikhail, 58 Buber, Martin, 138
Anemone, Anthony, 258n33 Budetliane. See Futurism
Ariès, Philippe, 5, 13, 220n28, 227n78 Bunin, Ivan, 13
Aristotle, 252n182 Burliuk, David, 43, 76, 99
Augustine, 3, 4, 105
avant-garde movement, 6–7, 15–16, 19, 20– Caillois, Roger, 6–7, 217n12
21, 56, 67, 107, 117, 128, 131–34, 144, Carroll, Lewis, 64, 148, 167, 203, 218n19,
153–55, 161, 165, 205–7, 208, 210–11, 221n38, 260n58, 270n20; Kharms and,
213–14, 269n3; children’s magazines and, 198, 199–200, 205, 260n58, 267n214,
190–92, 196–97, 204; originality and, 269n231
15–16. See also censorship and repres- censorship and repression of Russian avant-
sion of Russian avant-garde garde, 117, 145–46, 154, 159, 160, 161,
164–65, 170, 197, 206, 211
babbling. See under infancy Cervantes, Miguel de, 136, 137, 144, 147,
Bakharev, P., 88 251n170
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 28, 138 Chaadaev, Petr, 27, 176–77
barbarism, 28–30 Chebotarevskaia, Anastasiia, 232n30
Barrie, J. M., 148, 154 childhood, 5–6, 11–16, 22, 30, 120, 178,
Baudelaire, Charles, 14, 109, 221n37 220n28, 221n35; Catherine II’s stages
Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan, 67, 111–13, of, 105, 243n6; cult of, 161–62, 163–64;
124, 244n36 Piaget’s stages of, 167. See also infancy;
Baudrillard, Jean, 119–20 infant/child construct
297
Index
children’s art, 8–9, 9, 19, 21, 22–23, 25–26, Eikhenbaum, Boris, 126
29–35, 36, 37, 41–46, 49–51, 56, 58, 60, Eliot, Lise, 54
74, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 128, 192, 193 Emerson, Caryl, 28, 138, 225n42
children’s language and writing, 73–74, enfant terrible figure, 15, 63, 69, 70, 94–95,
75–76, 78–79, 80, 81, 82, 89, 92–93, 94, 99, 100, 232n30
96, 112–13, 131, 134–35, 192, 236n70, Erikson, Erik, 169, 259n44
238n102, 244n34, 249n134; anthologies, Erlikh, Mariana, 88, 89, 90, 203, 239n112
83–91, 263n111; lore, 92, 125–26, 135, Esslin, Martin, 159–60, 161
156, 158, 160, 163, 179, 181–82, 184, etymology, 5, 28, 105, 107, 116, 120–22,
187–88, 191–92, 195; songs and rhymes, 135, 225n40, 232n22, 242–43nn1–5,
126, 160, 183–84, 187, 192; violence in, 263n116
158, 256n10. See also infancy
children’s literature, 12, 133, 145–54, Fabian, Johannes, 20, 23
160–61, 163, 168, 189–97, 197–207, fairy tales, 188
249n134, 254n228, 257n17, 258n39; Fauvism, 32
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 8, 64, Feininger, Lionel, 33
141, 148, 160, 198, 200, 203, 216n19; Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 143
children’s magazines, 145, 153, 189–97; film, evolution of, 97–98
“dual address,” 159, 218n19, 257n17. Filonov, Pavel, 228n79
See also Carroll, Lewis Filosofov, Dmitry, 114
Children’s Protest (Komarov), 11, 12 Fineberg, Jonathan, 34, 42–43, 48
Chukovskaya, Lydia, 191–92, 268n217 Fink, Hilary, 256n8
Chukovsky, Kornei, 48, 67, 76, 81, 93, 99, Fleishman, Lazar, 258n30
124, 126, 135, 190, 192, 236nn69–70, Florensky, Pavel, 109
248n99, 262n100 folk art and lore, 31, 41, 122–23
Civil War, 147–48 Fonvizin, Denis, 225n34
Clark, Eve, 123–24, 229n96, 232n20, Formalism, 8, 9, 10, 46, 51, 68, 106, 111,
248n97 113, 115, 117–18, 126, 129, 132–33,
colonialism, postcolonialism, 23–24, 153–54, 166, 208
30, 68 Frank, Joseph, 20
Coveney, Peter, 14–15, 221n35 Freud, Sigmund, 14–15, 66, 114, 156, 157–
crocodile in Russian literature, 176, 58, 159–60, 171, 179, 222n41, 222n43,
262n100 222n48
Cubism, 8, 32, 35, 37, 76 Fry, Roger, 34, 58
Cubo-Futurism, 9, 33, 41, 57, 60, 61, 65, Futurism, 8, 16, 30, 35, 62, 65, 68–70, 82–
68, 72, 94–95, 115, 208 83, 84–85, 91–95, 98–101, 110–12, 114,
122, 231n16, 241n145. See also under
Dadaism, 13, 21, 220n31, 240n133 infant/child construct; Shklovsky, Viktor
Darwin, Charles, 14, 221n38
defamiliarization, 10, 108, 129–32, 144, Gaisarsian, Suren, 76
145, 150. See also strangeness Gauguin, Paul, 21, 30, 228n88
Degen, Iu., 89 Gernet, Nina, 195
Delvig, Anton, 76 glossolalia, 113, 114, 115–16, 126, 245n45
Derzhavin, Gavrila, 105 Gogol, Nikolai, 41, 240n131
Donkey’s Tail group, 30, 245n37 Goldwater, Robert, 21, 25
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 68, 161, 166, 200, Goncharov, Ivan, 220n29
225n34, 262n100 Goncharova, Natalya, 30, 31–34, 37, 47, 55,
Druskin, Iakov, 163, 259n40 58, 60–61, 228n79
Durnova, Marina, 259n40 Gorky, Maxim, 13, 123, 125–26, 144, 190
Dusinberre, Juliet, 218n19, 270n20 Gray, Camilla, 31, 41, 60–61
298
Index
Grechko, Valerii, 231n16 powerless subject, 170, 175, 177, 209,

Grider, Sylvia, 257n11 211, 241n148; child as primitive, 20,
Grob, Thomas, 160 21, 22–25, 26, 36, 52, 58–59, 63–64, 68,
Groys, Boris, 7, 213, 241n147 79–80, 94, 100, 128; child as sage, 140,
Gurianova, Nina, 115, 128, 240n128, 181; child as victim, 186, 211; Formalism
246n60, 249n127, 269nn5–6 and, 117, 118, 136, 154–55; Futurism
Guro, Elena, 35, 88, 90, 92, 93, 122, and, 62–68, 74–82, 86, 90–91, 93, 95–96,
231n16, 240n128 98–101, 122–23, 125, 133; OBERIU and,
Gusman, Boris, 241n140 178, 179, 181; perceptiveness, 52–54,
122, 127, 166; “regal infant,” 212–13,
Haeckel, Ernst, 14, 221n39, 252n182 270n13; Russia as child, 27, 176–77;
Hamsun, Knut, 123, 205, 267n214, Symbolism and, 136–44
269n231 infantile primitivism, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10–11,
Hamy, Ernest-Théodore, 24 19–101, 107, 133, 159
Hatchery of Judges II, 73 infantilist aesthetic, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 20, 26,
Hedgehog, 145, 153, 189–90, 192, 193–94, 101, 105–216
195–98, 266n192 Ivanov, Sergey, 70
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm, 252n182 Izdebsky, Vladimir, 32, 33
Holquist, Michael, 219n19
holy fool figure, 70, 131, 233n31 Jakobson, Roman, 67, 79, 91–93, 110;
Huizinga, Johan, 6 interest in children’s writings, 75, 76,
83, 92, 126, 135, 235nn62–63, 238n90,
icons, Marian iconography, 39, 109, 180, 264n143, 265n151; linguistic studies, 83,
210, 212, 228–29nn78–79 92, 264n143, 265n151; poetry by, 86, 91,
imperialism. See colonialism, post- 94, 110, 184, 239n119
colonialism Jakovljevic, Branislav, 156, 160, 162, 269n4
infancy: acquisition of language, 3–4, 22, Jammes, Francis, 230n2
48–49, 50, 65–67, 78–80, 83, 91, 97, Janecek, Gerald, 78–79, 125, 230n3,
112–14, 123–25, 134–35, 184, 208–9, 236n75, 241n140, 269n1
232n20, 236n75, 248n97; babbling, 4–5, Jenks, Chris, 6
22, 28, 30, 65–67, 72, 79–80, 92, 93, 94, Joyce, James, 13, 214
95, 97, 98–99, 113–14, 183, 211, 237n78,
244n45; infantile amnesia, 157, 253n198, Kamensky, Vasily, 35, 74, 75, 93, 235n60
256nn6–7; infantile cognition, 109, 158, Kandinsky, Vasily, 33, 34, 52, 152
167–69, 170, 180, 204; infantile con- Kardovsky, Dmitry, 226n53
sciousness, 137, 139–43, 170, 253n198; Katsis, Leonid, 234n56
inverted retinal image, 53–54, 109–10, Kharms, Daniil, 4, 8–10, 68, 106, 154, 156–
229n108; perspective, 4, 5, 9, 10, 36, 49, 91, 195–207, 208–9, 261n74, 262n88,
88, 106, 108–9, 119–20, 130–31, 137, 269n4; absurdist mode, 159–61, 164,
145–46, 153; preverbal or speechless 168, 170, 174, 205, 208; attitude toward
state, 3, 4–5, 10, 11, 24, 30, 65, 68, 70, children, 161–64; autobiographical
105–7, 116, 121, 142, 175–76, 242n1; mode, 157, 169–71, 173, 175, 183, 201;
savagery, 14, 15, 23, 69; subjectivity, 4, 5, children’s roles in his works, 161–62,
15, 109, 131, 177; time and, 21, 148 164; death, 206, 211; distorted spell-
infant/child construct, 3–4, 5–8, 10, 11–12, ings, 161, 186; infantile mode, 160–61,
14–15, 21–23, 25–26, 31, 37, 95, 132, 168, 169–70, 175, 181–89, 197, 204–5,
154, 158, 210–11, 214; child as critical 259n40; interest in children’s language
device, 131–32, 134, 154–55; child as and literature, 161, 184, 188, 204–5;
other, 6, 10, 23, 26, 30, 68, 91, 101, 106, Kronos, 174; portraits, 157, 202, 206;
138, 159, 161, 211, 257n19; child as pseudonyms, 181, 264n129
299
Index
works: About How an Old Lady Went 65, 72–74, 82; epithets, 70; interest in
Shopping for Ink, 197–202 (199, 202), children’s language and work, 64–65,
267n199; “about how ivan ivanovich 71, 74, 78, 80–91, 93; later career,
made a request and what happened as 211; portrait, 64; Shklovsky and, 115,
a result,” 182–83; “Anecdotes from the 117, 122
Life of Pushkin,” 255n246; “Chopped,” works: autobiographical writings,
184; contributions to children’s 68–69, 74; “Bobeobi sang the lips,” 98;
magazines, 195–96, 197–98; Elizabeth Children’s Own Stories and Drawings,
Bam, 177–78; “Fadeyev Kaldeyev and 83–89 (84, 87–89), 238n106, 249n127;
Pepermaldeyev,” 188; “The Fate of a Children’s Own Stories, Poems, and
Professor’s Wife,” 163; “Fire,” 185– Songs, 85, 89, 90–91; Croaked Moon,
86; “From Grandmother to Esther,” 82; The Devil and the Speechcrafters,
183–84; Incidences, 198; “Incident on 62, 63, 73, 82, 85; “Dyr bul shchyl,” 64,
the Railroad,” 185; “Incubation Period,” 70, 77, 98, 122, 123; Explodicity, 84;
156–57, 169–70, 173–75; “In June 15 Years of Russian Futurism, 95, 97;
Somehow in Our Summer,” 181–82; “goosey spring,” 80–81, 86; KLEZ SAN
“Kika i Koka,” 184; “Miserliness,” 184; BA, 86; Learn Artists, 86; “The Life and
“Now I will tell you how I was born,” Death of Lef,” 97–100; “Malacholia in a
169, 171–73; “The Old Woman,” 198, Housecoat,” 240n131; Piglets, 41, 80–82
204; “Old Women Tumbling Out,” (81), 84, 94, 179; Play in Hell, 72, 73, 82;
198; “A person is constructed out of Pomade, 57, 77, 78–79; Shiftology, 94;
three parts,” 186–88; “Polka occiputs Talking Cinema, 97; To Battle Against
(breakdown),” 185; “Polovinki,” 184; Hooliganism in Literature, 95, 96; Trans-
“Story,” 203–4, 268n226; “Trans-Sense Sense boog, 84–85; The Word as Such,
Ditty,” 165; “Van’ki vstan’ki” poems, 82, 122. See also Mirskontsa; trans-sense
184; “Volodya was at a Christmas party,” poetics
175–77, 179 Kruglov, Vladimir, 32
Khlebnikov, Velimir, 10, 81, 92, 93, 98– Kulbin, Nikolai, 75–76, 87–88
100, 165; attitude toward children, Kulbina, Nina, 86–88, 203
244n34; collaborations with Kruchenykh,
19, 20, 65, 72–74, 82; critique of Lacan, Jacques, 4, 66, 141, 177
Kruchenykh, 72 Larionov, Mikhail, 4, 8–10, 19–20, 25–26,
works: “Incantation by Laughter,” 99, 29–51, 53–61, 106, 110, 208; dating of
189; “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste,” works, 58, 230n112; later career, 58–59,
111; “Zangezi,” 81, 83, 86. See also 211; primitivist influence and techniques,
Mirskontsa 19–20, 37–41, 46, 51, 55–56; texts in
Kipling, Rudyard, 233n37 paintings, 41–44, 46–48, 56, 75
Klee, Paul, 13, 31, 33, 214 works: Autumn, 49–51; The Blue
Klutsis, Gustav, 96–97 Pig, 41; A Gypsy Woman in Tiraspol,
Komarov, Aleksei, 12 32, 37–41 (38); Head of an Eastern
Korolenko, Vladimir, 124 Woman with a Thick Neck, 56, 58,
Kovenchuk, Georgii, 87 59; Portrait of A. E. Kruchenykh, 64;
Krauss, Rosalind, 16 Portrait of Natalya Goncharova, 55, 56;
Krimmer, Eduard, 198, 199, 201, 202 “Rayonism,” 53; Rayonist Portrait, 57;
Kristeva, Julia, 4, 66, 137, 176, 231n12 Seasons cycle, 43, 46–51; Self-Portrait
Kronia, 174, 262n92 of Larionov, 55–56; Soldier on a Horse,
Kruchenykh, Aleksei, 4, 8–10, 35, 48, 57, 42, 43; Spring, 49–50; Summer, 49–50;
61, 62–65, 67–101, 106, 165, 174, 208–9, Universelet, 19, 20, 55; Venus, 43–45
232n29; birth imagery, 98, 241n150; (44), 50; Walk in a Provincial Town,
collaborations with Khlebnikov, 19, 20, 41; Winter, 47, 49–50; Woman in a
300
Index
Hat, 56, 57; Woman Passing By, 40; Neo-Primitivism (manifesto), 29–30, 51
Yellow Autumn, 45, 46, 50. See also Neue Künstlervereinigung, 32
Rayonism Nicholas, Mary, 249n121
Lear, Edward, 167, 205, 267n214, 269n231 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 14, 100, 221n36,
Lebedeva, T., 149 231n14
LEF, 98, 100; Lef magazine, 99 noble savage figure, 23, 224n15
Lejeune, Philippe, 253n198 nonsense, 3, 4, 13, 123, 156, 159–60, 167,
Lenin, Vladimir, 100, 177 219n19
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 19, 23
Lippitz, Wilfried, 21 OBERIU, 10, 68, 106, 152, 160, 164–69,
Lissitzky, El, 214 170, 176, 178–79, 181, 183, 206; chil-
Lotman, Yuri, 6, 107 dren’s magazines and, 190–92, 196–97,
Lovejoy, Arthur O., and George Boas, 62 204; Vanna Arkhimeda collaboration,
164–65, 177, 260n47
Malakhov, A., 95, 241n145 October Revolution, 19, 24
Malevich, Kazimir, 16, 94, 208, 209, 210, Oleinikov, Nikolai, 163, 196
212–15 (213, 215) OPOIAZ, 109, 113, 114, 127, 136
Malmstad, John, 48, 228n88 ostranenie. See strangeness
Mandelstam, Osip, 13, 219n25 O’Toole, Michael, 131
Marcus, Steven, 14 Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, Dmitry, 134–35
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 16, 246n60
Markov, Vladimir, 30, 35, 74, 86, 231n3 paedophobia, 63, 161–62
Marshak, Samuil, 190–92, 201, 268n217 Parton, Anthony, 32, 34, 35, 40, 58
Massé, Michelle A., 222n48 Pasternak, Boris, 13, 71, 219n25
Matiushin, Mikhail, 35, 73–74, 212 pedism, 241n148
Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 63, 87, 98–100, 163, pedophagy, 62
164, 230n2, 255n246; works for children, Pertsov, Viktor, 230n2
163, 190, 214, 258n39 Piaget, Jean, 21, 167–68
Militsa, 73–74, 203 Piast, Vladimir, 115
minimalism, 39, 55–56, 86, 159, 208, 212 Picasso, Pablo, 13, 24, 31, 214
Miró, Joan, 13, 31, 214 pigs in Russian art and literature, 41, 80,
Mirskontsa: anthology, 19, 48, concept, 73, 182
77, 180; play, 73, 77 Plato, 135, 210
modernism, modernity, 7, 13, 21–22, 33, Platonov, Andrei, 13, 219n25
197, 203, 205, 214–15, 218n19, 245n45, play, 6–7, 26, 67, 68, 92, 135, 140, 169,
270n20 191–92, 217n12, 222n43, 253n194,
Molok, Yuri, 32, 33–34, 239n112 257n13
Morozov, Nikolai, 22 Pokrovsky, E. A., 125, 241n140
morphology, 120–21 Polhemus, Robert, 218n19
Münter, Gabriele, 33 Poret, Alisa, 259n40, 268n219
powerlessness. See infant/child construct,
Nabokov, Vladimir, 247n75 child as powerless subject
Nagorskaia, N., 88–89 prehistoric art, 19, 22, 55, 56
naïveté, 107, 119, 124, 155 primitivism, 10, 14, 19–29, 31, 35, 37, 46,
neologisms, 67, 72, 76, 91, 94, 99, 120, 51–52, 62, 69, 78, 86, 101, 109, 154;
123–24, 139, 250n163 as strategic anachronism, 27–28, 56.
Neo-Primitivism, 8, 9, 19–20, 21, 25, 26, See also infantile primitivism; Larionov,
29–31, 37, 48, 51–52, 54, 59–61, 65, 128, Mikhail; Neo-Primitivism
208, 224n15; “discovery” of the child, Prokofyev, Aleksandr, 238n106
31–37 Propp, Vladimir, 188
301
Index
Proust, Marcel, 13, 214 Resurrection of the Word,” 105, 115–16,

Pushkin, Aleksandr, 68, 76, 85 120, 121–22, 210; A Sentimental Journey,
255n237; A Story about Shadows, 145,
Ram, Harsha, 240n131 149–54 (149–51), 208; Theory of Prose,
Rayonism, 30, 53–55, 56, 57, 110 136; Third Factory, 144–45; Zoo, 147,
Rerikh, Nikolai, 226n53 255n237
Romanticism, 14, 22, 23, 30, 131–32, Shvarts, Evgeny, 190, 196
221n35 signification (signifier/signified), 3, 4–5, 8,
Rose, Jacqueline, 12 10, 46, 56, 65, 66, 78, 91, 113, 119, 122,
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 22, 105, 163–64, 132, 134, 159, 210–12
242n1, 259n44 Siskin, 153, 189–90, 191, 195–97, 203
Rozanova, Olga, 62, 63, 94, 115, 232n29, slovonovshestvo, 67
246n64 slovotvorchestvo, 76
Rusakova, Esther, 183 sobstvennyi iazyk, 77
Ruskin, John, 108 Socialist Realism, 7, 197, 208, 214
Russia: as child, 27, 176–77; cultural “back- Sologub, Fyodor, 13, 25, 85
wardness,” 27–29; Eastern heritage, 28, spatiotemporality, 20–21, 23, 25, 27–28
29–30; rejection of West, 30–31, 226n57 spontaneity in modern art, 50
Steiner, Rudolf, 251n182, 253n198
Saiko, George, 22 Stern, William, 66
Scherr, Barry, 226n57 Sterne, Laurence, 136, 144, 172, 251n170
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 135 strangeness/estrangement, 116, 117–18,
Scotto, Susan, 268n214 120, 123, 127–34, 145, 192, 271n21
sdvig, 106, 116, 117, 118, 135, 154 Stratton, George Malcolm, 229n108
semiotics, 6, 107, 117, 119 Sukhoparov, Sergei, 72
Severyanin, Igor, 76 Sully, James, 79–80, 92, 113, 125
Shevchenko, Aleksandr, 29, 30, 31–32, 34, Suprematism, 69, 208, 269n6
35–37, 51–52, 60 Surrealism, 23, 219n19
Shklovsky, Viktor, 4, 8–10, 93, 105–37, swaddling, 163–64, 170, 259n44
144–54, 172, 184, 208–9, 215; “distorted Symbolism, 12–13, 26, 31, 138–40, 143,
speech,” 136; Futurism and, 110–17, 219n23, 260n57
121, 122–23, 125–26; idea of form,
134–36; interest in children’s language/ Terentyev, Igor, 76–77, 93, 94, 95–96,
literature, 50, 67, 79, 106, 111, 124–25, 241n145
134, 145, 153, 168, 190, 254n228; Tolstaia-Vechorka, Tatiana, 94
inverted imagery, 54, 108–10; linguistic Tolstoy, Leo, 13, 26, 31, 68, 127–29, 135,
training, 111–12; neologisms, 123, 138, 139, 142, 146, 158, 161, 165,
247n96; recants Formalism, 145, 153, 170, 249n134; Kharms and, 162–64;
211, 254n229; theory of dislocation, 106, Shklovsky’s use of, 128–33, 144, 147–48
116; use of italics, 110 works: “Are the Peasant Children
works: “About Poetry and Trans- to Learn to Write from Us . . .?,” 26,
Sense Language,” 121, 123–26; “About 28–29, 86, 225n42, 238n102; Childhood,
Trans-Sense Language,” 116–17, 220nn28–29; “Kholstomer,” 130–33, 145,
241n140; “Art as Device,” 118, 127–36, 147; War and Peace, 253n198; “What Is
146–47, 271n21; Knight’s Move, 117, Art?,” 127–28; “Wisdom of Children,”
118–19, 144, 154; Nandu II, 145, 146, 130, 237n84, 249n141
147; “Ornamental Prose,” 136–38; Torgovnick, Marianna, 24, 204
“The Ostrich,” 145–49; “The Place of trans-sense poetics, 65, 75, 76, 77–78, 80–
Futurism in the History of Language,” 82, 84, 86, 91, 92–95, 98–99, 112, 125,
116; poetry, 110, 244n29; “The 191–92, 269n1; Baudouin de Courtenay
302
Index
on, 112, 244nn36–37; Kharms and, 184, Vyazemsky, Peter, 124

186–87, 199, 260n54; OBERIU and, 165; Vygotsky, Lev, 66, 167, 168–69, 247n76
Shklovsky and, 114, 117, 121–26, 209–10 Vysheslavsky, Leonid, 87
Tretyakov, Sergei, 70, 93–94, 263n114
Tsvetaeva, Marina, 13, 139, 219n25 Wachtel, Andrew, 13, 220n28, 251n178,
Tufanov, Aleksandr, 165 263n114
Tugendkhol’d, Yakov, 60 Wallace, William Ross, 204
Weber, Lydia, 33
Union of Youth, 246n60 Weir, Ruth, 49
universal language, 82–83 Willats, John, 36, 55
Untitled (Cubist Girl), 8, 9 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 3, 4
Woolf, Virginia, 13, 214, 270n20
V., Zina, 74, 80–82, 83–84, 179, 203, Worldbackwards. See Mirskontsa
234n56 World of Art movement, 25, 31, 60, 226n50
Van Gogh, Vincent, 21, 30 Wulff, Oskar, 108–9
Vasmer, Max, 177
Vasnetsov, Viktor, 39 Yakubinsky, Lev, 111, 113–14, 126
Virgin of Vladimir, 39, 40 Yavlensky, Alexei, 33
Vladimirov, Yuri, 165
Voloshin, Maximilian, 25–26 Zabolotsky, Nikolai, 165
voicelessness, 4, 10, 11, 22, 24, 106, 137, Zamyatin, Evgeny, 190
138, 141–42, 154–55, 156, 160, 175–77, zatrudnenie, 46, 129, 134
204, 207, 211, 218n9 zaum. See trans-sense poetics
Vvedensky, Aleksandr, 163, 164–65, 175, Zdanevich, Ilya, 93, 94
196, 196, 205, 268n225; Christmas at Zelinsky, F. F., 124–25
the Ivanovs, 177–81, 214, 263n111, zhiznetvorchestvo, 15, 68, 222n49
263n114 Zoshchenko, Mikhail, 190
303

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Northwestern University Press

THE INFANTILIST AESTHETIC OF

Sara Pankenier Weld

northwestern university press / evanston, illinois

Copyright © 2014 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2014. All rights

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weld, Sara Pankenier, author.

Introduction From Voicelessness to Voice 3

Part I. Infantile Primitivism

Part II. Infantilist Aesthetics

Conclusion The End Point of the Infantilist Aesthetic 208

Figure 1. Untitled (Cubist Girl), drawing by child, grade six,

Figure 17. Pomada (Pomade), poem by Aleksei Kruchenykh with

Figure 35. Cover of Ezh (Hedgehog), no. 1 (1928) 189

Santa Barbara have inspired me and asked insightful questions. Influential

for allowing me access to their impressive collection of avant-garde art and

From Voicelessness to Voice

Non enim eram infans qui non farer, sed iam

THE IDEA OF INFANCY as an unspeaking state beyond the

relationships of signification. Lacking the order of this structural system, the

the ‘infant/child.’ As Chris Jenks flatly states, “Childhood is to be understood

audience, critics, advocates, and theoreticians; and, finally, is politicized and

Figure 1. Untitled (Cubist Girl), drawing by child, grade six,

adults. These examples demonstrate a wide-ranging avant-garde interest in

context of OBERIU literature of the absurd. By intellectually and artistically

unspeaking subject, or infans, to the deepening of this interest in a theo-

A testament to a tumultuous time, the early Soviet poster Children’s Protest

Figure 2. Miting detei (Children’s Protest), poster by Aleksei Komarov, 1923.

re-creation of childhood consciousness in Kotik Letaev (1917–18), which will

The twentieth-century artistic focus on the child itself, however, de-

modern understanding of mind. Through his psychoanalytically motivated

as Rosalind Krauss argues in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other

Infant Art: Mikhail Larionov,

BORN IN THE CREATIVE FERMENT between the begin-

Figure 3. Vselenochku . . . (Universelet . . .), graphic work by Mikhail Larionov in

modernity or a revolutionary rejection of the past, first brings modern artists

This old evolutionist strategy of arguing from ontogeny to phylogeny (and

The equation of lunatic, primitive, and child, as Lévi-Strauss observed, is

If the childlike native is a construct interrogated by postcolonial theory,

‘avant-garde,’ as well as in the ‘primitivism’ discussed in this chapter and ‘fu-

vzroslym u detei?).27 Voloshin here alludes to Leo Tolstoy’s 1862 pedagogi-

a significant role in leading him on a path toward a simplification of form

IN PRA I S E O F B A R B A R I S M A ND T H E I NFA NTI L E

Through primitivism, Russian artists attempted to end centuries of cultural

position. Rejecting a Westernizing emphasis on progress and imitation of

“this one of a kind, always profound and genuine primitive.” As he tallies

trend in the arts, Russian Neo-Primitivism arguably had more significant

Against the backdrop of an increasing attention to children’s creativity and

Cubo-Futurist poetry. Such phenomena hint at the regressive tendency of

A majority of the works on show at the Target were executed in a neo-

Drawings from the Collection of N. Vinogradov” (nos. 201–9, without the

The display of children’s drawings presupposes and depends upon a primitiv-

Figure 4. Anonymous child’s drawing, page from Aleksandr Shevchenko’s

Technically speaking, the drawing, which depicts a boat on a river

Close analysis of examples from Mikhail Larionov’s artistic practice, mean-

Figure 5. Tsyganka v Tiraspole (A Gypsy Woman in Tiraspol), painting by

Figure 6. Bogomater’ Vladimirskaia (Virgin of Vladimir), Russian Orthodox

them as primitive ‘other.’ At this early stage, however, Larionov’s painterly

bold approach to modelling.”82 The simplified rendering of the infant form

Figure 7. Soldat na kone (Soldier on a Horse), Mikhail Larionov, 1910–11.

Figure 8. Venera (Venus), Mikhail Larionov, 1912. Oil on canvas,