num_pages: 427
description: If Dada and the European Avant-garde are your thing, then brace yourself for Gerald Janecek's ZAUM. According to Charlotte Douglas (Russian and Slavic Studies, NYU), Janecek’s Zaum "is an encyclopedic account of zaum or 'beyonsense,' the most distinctive feature of Russian avant-garde art and poetry early in the 20th century. Janecek has mined a myriad of arcane and inaccessible sources, gathered the entire historical record in one place, and made it readable and comprehensible. His account of zaum theory and practice will be indispensable for anyone interested in modern poetry and art. Certainly it will become a standard text for all students of Russian Futurism." REVIEWS " [Janecek's] book will be valuable for scholars studying the avant-garde throughout Europe... Janecek provide[s] a definitional vocabulary and meaningful framework upon which future researchers may build." Walter Comins-Richmond, Occidental College "Should such poetic brinkmanship be granted a place in poetry? Yes, argues Janecek, because it is a value working against the automatization of language and thus of life. More than eighty years after its inception, it is indeed remarkable that Zaum is still controversial, still avant-garde, still denigrated as having gone too far. In sum, Janecek's work is an extraordinarily comprehensive piece of scholarship, which succeeds in compressing several books' worth of research into one. He has raised the study of Zaum to a new level and in doing so has dampened none of its vitality." Crispin Brooks, University of London Gerald J. Janecek is Professor of Russian at the University of Kentucky. The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism (1996) | Gerald Janecek | ISBN 1-879691-41-8 | paper, 428 pp. | illustrated | US $32.95, list price | NEW SECOND PRINTING 2015
language: English
title: Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism
titlecomplete: Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism
ratings_count: 10
publisher: San Diego State University Press