ИСТИНА

«The Poetry Without a Single Epithet, Metaphor, or a Desire to be Reflected in a Symbolic Mirror»: A Whitmanesque Echo in Igor’ Terent’ev’s Poetry Igor’ Terent’ev is a minor Russian Futurist, a disciple and follower of Alexei Kruchenykh and Ilya Zdanevich, with whom in 1918 they formed a Futurist group «41º» in Tiflis (modern Tbilisi). While residing in Georgia with Zdanevich and Kruchenykh (that’s from 1917 up until the 1920s), Terent’ev would write books of poetry exhibiting an unusual typographic design as a means of enhancing the poetic effect. Sometimes the poems were accompanied by a treatise on a new poetic theory. In fact, as it turns out, Teren’tiev drew inspiration from Whitman, making references to him; a notable mention of Whitman is to be found in his «17 Nonsensical Tools» [«17 ерундовых орудий»] «Whitman created his poems by simply enumerating objects, and this was the poetry without a single epithet, metaphor, or a desire to be reflected in a symbolic mirror!» [«Уитмен делал стихи из одного перечисления предметов, и это была поэзия без единого эпитета, без метафор, желания символизироваться перед зеркальным шкафом!»]. Terent’ev, a Moscow-educated lawyer (1912-1914), might have heart about Whitman from Kruchenykh, who visited Chukovsky’s lectures on Whitman’s poetry, or might have had the chance to listen to Chukovsky himself. Nevertheless, it appears that for Teren’tiev Whitman would stand for a new poetic idiom, supplementing «tropes», «calling things by other names» (in Terent’ev phrasing) by «things». I will try to see what Teren’tiev takes from Whitman (and what are the lenses through which he «filters» Whitman’s poetry) and how he implements this «lesson» in his poetry.