What do avant-garde poetry and aviation have in common? At first glance, almost nothing. But at the beginning of the twentieth century, they went hand in hand. Futurism or "will-lianism" (in its Russian-language interpretation), as an artistic direction, glorified technical progress. Aviation at that time was the personification of the power of the scientific and technological revolution. Man was able to rise into the air, become the ruler of the sky, and all this thanks to technical inventions. The word "plane" is also of futuristic origin. It was invented by Vasily Kamensky - one of five, along with Velimir Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky, David Burliuk and Alexei Kruchenykh, “pillars” of Russian futurism. A man of amazing destiny and exceptional talents. Poet and aviator. One of the first Russian aviators.
Russian futurism - one of the most interesting literary trends in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century - was actually a translation of the traditions of Italian futurism onto Russian soil. It was the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) who expressed the basic principles of the new movement in his Manifesto of Futurism, published in the Paris Figaro on February 20, 1909. Marinetti praised "machine progress", talked about the onset of the "era of machines." Artists - futurists painted trains, cars, factories, poets composed real odes to technical progress. Marinetti was a big fan of aviation. In the end, in the 1920s, already in fascist Italy, Marinetti's admiration for the "conquest of the sky" resulted in the appearance of "aerial painting", which sought to convey the speed and dynamics of air flight.
Despite the fact that Italy was not one of the most important world powers of that time, at the beginning of the twentieth century it became one of the centers of European aviation. Pilots from many countries of the world, including Russia, studied at Italian flying schools. It is not surprising that the aviation theme attracted avant-garde poets. Futurism, which emerged in Italy, received a "rebirth" in distant Russia. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's ideas found grateful followers in Russia. Only the Russians still understood futuristic ideas in a slightly different way, not focusing on the cruelty and belligerence of technical progress, but rather relying on "good progress" that would make people's lives better. At the origins of Russian futurism was the artist and poet David Burliuk, around whom a unique circle of Russian futurists was formed.
In 1909, one of them, the poet Vasily Kamensky, at the next meeting of the futurists vowed to become a pilot: “The wings of the Wright, Farmanov and Bleriot are our wings. We, Budelians, must fly, must be able to control an airplane, like a bicycle or mind. And now, friends, I swear to you: I'll be an aviator, damn it. One could have taken this oath as usual for avant-garde bravado, but it was not there - Kamensky really decided to devote himself to flying art.
Vasily Vasilyevich Kamensky (1884-1961) was born in the Perm Territory on April 17, 1884 - on a steamer that followed the Kama River. The captain of this ship was the grandfather of the future poet - the father of his mother Eustolia Gabriel Serebrennikov. Kamensky's father, Vasily Filippovich, worked as a caretaker at the gold mines of Count Shuvalov. Very early, Vasily Kamensky Jr. lost his parents. He was sent to his aunt Alexandra Gavrilovna Truschova, whose husband Grigory Trushov was in charge of Lyubimov's tugboat shipping company in Perm. Perhaps it was his childhood spent among steamers and sailors that influenced the further life of Kamensky, who was always enthusiastic about any "ships and captains", be it sea or river steamers or airplanes that took to the sky. Nevertheless, Kamensky did not become a sailor or a river boatman - he had to work from the age of sixteen in various offices. Back in 1904, twenty-year-old Kamensky began to collaborate in the newspaper Permsky Krai. Then, having become interested in Marxism, he adopted socialist views. But the boring life of a clerk did not appeal to the ambitious young man. At first he became interested in theater and got a job as an actor in one of the troupes that traveled around Russia. Along the way, he did not forget about political activity - he participated in agitation work among the workers of the railway workshops in the Urals and even led the strike committee, for which he ended up in prison. However, soon Kamensky was released and, before arriving in Moscow, he even managed to make a fascinating journey to the Middle East - to Istanbul and Tehran. From Moscow, Kamensky moved to St. Petersburg, and from 1908 he began to work as deputy editor-in-chief at the Vesna magazine. It was there that he became acquainted with the futurists.
Poetry was not Kamensky's only hobby. When an aviation school opened at the Gatchina airfield in St. Petersburg, Kamensky began to attend its classes and soon took to the skies for the first time - together with one of the first Russian pilots, Vladimir Lebedev. Obsessed with the dream of conquering the sky, Kamensky managed to find money to buy the French airplane Bleriot XI. To master the nuances of flying an airplane, he went to France - to the world-famous Bleriot flying school. Here he made familiarization flights with an instructor - as a passenger. The poet recalled his first flights at Bleriot's school this way: “Before the flight, he drank a glass of cognac in case of an easier parting with the hustle and bustle of life, and the aviator himself drank. The flight turned out to be drunker: I was completely giddy, and I - it seems - screamed at the top of my lungs from the influx of enthusiasm. However, the school leaders did not entrust Kamensky to independently manage the airplane - they were afraid that a novice Russian aviator would crash an expensive car. The school authorities asked Kamensky to deposit an impressive amount as a deposit - only in this case he could be allowed to climb into the sky on his own. But Kamensky, who had spent a lot on the purchase of an airplane, could no longer afford such an amount. Therefore, he had no choice but to return to the Russian Empire. He was going to take the pilot qualification exam at home - where it was not necessary to invest such a significant amount of money. In Russia at that time, aviation was developing at a rapid pace, the number of young and not so people who were striving to get a new, very unusual profession at that time, grew.
Vasily Kamensky arrived in Warsaw, where he entered the Aviat flight school. The main instructor at this school was the famous pilot Khariton Slavorossov. Aviator Khariton Nikanorovich Slavorossov (Semenenko) (1886-1941) was two years younger than Kamensky, which did not prevent him from becoming a real teacher for a poet-pilot. Earlier, Khariton Semenenko, the son of an Odessa janitor, sailed as a machinist on a steamer, then became a cyclist and achieved great fame in this field, acting under the pseudonym "Slavorossov". In 1910 he came to St. Petersburg, where he became a mechanic for the pilot Mikhail Efimov, and then moved to Warsaw, where he got a job as a mechanic at the Aviation school. In the same place, Slavorossov passed the exam for the qualification of a pilot and was soon transferred to the position of an instructor. He started teaching students who entered the school. One of them was Vasily Kamensky, with whom Khariton Slavorossov became very friendly.
“Among aviators - Slavorossov is the most remarkable … the most talented record-holder … I chose Slavorossov as my teacher-instructor … In my eyes - taking off vehicles. In the ears - the music of the motors. In the nose - the smell of gasoline and waste oil, insulating tapes in the pockets. In dreams - future flights”, - wrote Vasily Kamensky about Slavorossov. The poet became a favorite student and friend of Slavorossov. Under the leadership of the latter, Kamensky finally mastered the flying craft and successfully passed the qualifying exam for the title of pilot. This is how the dream of the poet - "Budelyanin", who strove to conquer the heavenly expanses, came true.
Having become an aviator, Kamensky was incredibly proud. He was one of the first in Russia to master the Bleriot XI monoplane. Kamensky drove passengers on an airplane. In April 1912, he toured provincial Poland, whose inhabitants, with rare exceptions, had not yet seen airplanes. Kamensky demonstrated his skill as a pilot, while giving lectures on aeronautics and aviation. On April 29, 1912, a demonstration flight of Vasily Kamensky was scheduled in the city of Czestochov. The event was attended by many people, including the governor and other senior city officials. The weather was pre-stormy, with a strong wind. Weather conditions made Kamensky doubt whether it was worth making the flight or whether it should be postponed for a more successful day. But the flight organizers insisted that Kamensky take off - they say that the governor himself was eager to see the skill of the pilot. But when Kamensky's airplane took off, a strong gust of wind overturned the car.
Only half a day later, Vasily Kamensky woke up in the hospital. The poet miraculously survived - he was helped by the fact that the airplane fell into the swamp mud, which softened the fall. The accident in Czestochowa marked the end of Vasily Kamensky's aviation career. The poet collected what was left of his airplane and left for his native Perm. In 1916, Kamensky lived in the village of Kichkileika, Perm province, where he was improving his airplane.
The invaluable experience gained during the flights, Kamensky described in the play "The Life of an Aviator", which, by the way, has not yet been published. The topic of aviation is also raised in Kamensky's essay "Aeroporocity". For Vasily Kamensky, "airplanes", as he was the first to call airplanes, were not just machines that made it possible to move through the air. Kamensky saw in the conquest of the sky a special sign for humanity, with which he associated the coming transformation and improvement of people's lives. As a result of flying into the sky, a person, as Kamensky dreamed, will turn into an exalted being, akin to angels.
The aviation theme occupied Kamensky's imagination for a long time. In the period from 1912 to 1918. many of his poems reflect precisely the poetry of flight. Like other futurists - "Budlyans", Kamensky experimented with words, inventing new phrases. His "hobbyhorse" was neologisms related to aviation and aeronautics. So, Kamensky invented the word "airplane", which is now used in Russian for most air machines. But there were also less well-known word inventions - "wing-like", "flying away", "lethality", "lethality", "lethality", "flying". Kamensky's experiments with the form of the poem were also very interesting. The poet has a poem "Vasya Kamensky's flight in an airplane in Warsaw", which must be read from the bottom up. Its shape is pyramidal, that is, the letters decrease from line to line, which allows, in the author's opinion, to convey to the reader a picture of an airplane taking off.
Having dreamed that aviation would make a person kinder and more perfect, Kamensky took very negatively the news of the combat use of airplanes in the First World War, of the use of aviation for bombing enemy positions and enemy cities. He expressed his feelings in the poem “My Prayer”: “Lord, have mercy on me and forgive me. I flew an airplane. Now I want to grow nettles in the ditch. Amen . Like all futurists, Kamensky, all the more a man with a revolutionary past, warmly welcomed the victory of the October Socialist Revolution. She gave him new impressions and thoughts for creativity. Vasily Kamensky took part in cultural and educational work in the ranks of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army, joined the Left Front of the Arts (LEF) group, and published in various revolutionary literary publications. He also returned to aviation topics, devoting his poems to Soviet pilots. In the Soviet Union, Kamensky's poems and plays were published, although they did not forget to periodically recall his avant-garde past.
Although Kamensky lived to his advanced years, the last decades of his life were very difficult. In the late 1930s, he fell seriously ill. Thrombophlebitis led to the amputation of both legs, and on April 19, 1948, the poet suffered a stroke. Kamensky was paralyzed. For thirteen years, until his death on November 11, 1961, the poet was bedridden.
The life of a friend and aviation instructor Kamensky Khariton Slavorossov was also sad. He, unlike Kamensky, did not part with aviation - he continued to fly after the October Revolution. Slavorossov was in the first graduation of the Air Force Academy, worked as the technical director of the Central Asian branch of Dobrolet, then worked on the development of an air line project that was supposed to connect Moscow with Beijing. At the same time, he was one of the initiators of the revival of gliding in the Soviet Union. Since Slavorossov stayed out of politics, and his official activities were not related to political work, it seemed that repression could bypass him. But not bypassed. When in the thirties, one of the first leaders of the Soviet Air Force, Konstantin Akashev, who was a former revolutionary and anarchist, was arrested, as the Soviet authorities recalled to him, Khariton Slavorossov, a longtime friend of Akashev, was also arrested. One of the pioneers of Russian aviation was slandered by an old acquaintance, and Slavorossov was accused of spying for France. Slavorossov was sent to a camp in Medvezhyegorsk, where he worked in a "sharashka". In 1941, relatives were informed that Khariton Slavorossov had died in places of exile.
