Osip Brik

Osip Maksimovich Brik(Russian:Осип Максимович Брик; 28 January [O.S.16 January] 1888 – 22 February 1945)was aRussian avant gardewriter andliterary critic, who was one of the most important members of theRussian formalistschool, though he also identified himself as one of theFuturists.
Brik was born and grew up in Moscow, the son of a wealthy Jewish jeweler.In the university, Brik studied law; his friendRoman Jakobsonwrote: "For his doctoral thesis he wanted to write about the sociology and juridical status of prostitutes and would frequent the boulevards. All the prostitutes there knew him, and he always defended them, for free, in all their affairs, in their confrontations with the police and so on."But he soon found himself far more interested in poetry andpoeticsand devoted all his time to it, becoming one of the founders ofOPOJAZand writing one of the first important formalist studies of sounds in poetry,Zvukovye povtory("Sound repetitions," 1917).
He had a strongly anti-author stance, once going so far as to say that ifPushkinhad not writtenEugene Onegin, somebody else would have; he wrote that "there are no poets or literary figures, there is poetry and literature."He was also interested in photography and film: "In 1918, Brik was a member of IZONarkompros(Visual Arts Section of the People's Committee for Education). ... Brik was especially close toAlexander Rodchenkoand did much to make his photographic work known."He was also active in films and wrote several screenplays, including one forPotomok Cingis-khana(The Descendant ofGenghis Khan) (with Ivan Novokshonov), directed byVsevolod Pudovkin(1928).
He met his future wife,Lilya Kagan, when he was 17 and she 14; they were married on 26 March 1912. (Her sisterElsawas a notable French writer and married toLouis Aragon)
Mayakovsky's sexual relationship with Lili lasted from 1917 to 1923, and afterwards he continued to have a close friendship with the couple: "For the rest of his life, 'Osia' Brik remained the poet's most trusted adviser, his most fervent proselytizer, and also a co-founder with him of the most dynamic avant-garde journal of the early Soviet era,Left Front of Art,"orLEF, which was also an official publication for the group with the same name, and a platform for RussianConstructivistart.
Brik was not only a literary modernist, he was strongly left-wing in politics. In December 1918 Brik was involved with Mayakovsky in discussions with theVyborg Districtparty school of theRussian Communist Party(RKP(b)) to set up a Futurist organisation affiliated to the party. NamedKomfutthe organisation was formally founded in January 1919, but was swiftly dissolved following the intervention ofAnatoly Lunacharsky.
Later, on 8 June 1920, he joined theCheka. Jakobson wrote of this period:
AfterJoseph Stalin's rise to power, the Communist regime openly encouraged exclusivelysocialist realismmethods and initiated a campaign to stamp out all culture the Communist Party perceived as dangerous. Most avant garde artists and thinkers suffered persecution, and Brik did not escape this fate. In the 1930s he eked out a living writing articles on Mayakovsky and book reviews; he died in 1945 of a heart attack while climbing the stairs to his Moscow apartment.His works were not republished in Russia until the mid-1990s. Edward J. Brown summed his career up thus: "He wrote little, but his articles on poetic form ... are brilliant formalist analyses of poetic language... and he was probably the most articulate exponent in Lef of the theories of 'social demand' and 'literature of fact.' A man of surpassing intelligence, he was apparently not strong either in performance or in principle."
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