By Aleksey Calvin

Vasiliy or, to use the name's “cutesy diminutive” form, “Vasya” Kamenskiy, one of the most high-flying poets of a high-minded era, was born into the family of a gold-field inspector aboard a steamship captained by his own grandfather. The stately ship which bore the infant poet sailed up and down the great Russian river Kama between the city of Sarapul in the Udmurtian Republic and Perm in the Urals. This illustrious beginning, echoing of adventure, set the pattern for much of the poet's subsequent life, barring its rather tragic final stage. But we shall return to that later... While being raised by his aunt after his parents died when he wasn't even five yet, the precocious little maverick began writing poetry at the ripe age of eleven. In 1902, having only recently become a “man” in some conventional sense, he chose to spit on both convention and expectation by absconding from his job as a railroad company clerk and joining up with a traveling theater troupe. Within weeks he resurfaced in the role of a talented intriguing actor going under the pseudonym “Vasilkovskiy” (possibly after the vasilek, a striking bright-blue or violet flower known in the English-speaking world as Centaurea Cyanus or “the cornflower”). After romping through innumerable classic and contemporary stage-works, the youthful “Vasilkovskiy” ended up in a troupe headed by one of history’s greatest theatrical directors Vsevolod Meyerhold (a wildly famous character whose name in the early 20th century Eastern Europe became synonymous with avant-garde theater).

One day, feeling unsatisfied with the quality of the writing in a poetic monologue he was given for one of his scenes Kamensko-Vasilkovsky decided to compose an original replacement. Quickly and nervously the young actor worked on it, without sleep or food. When he finally recited it during a rehearsal the following night, the replacement monologue so impressed Meyerhold, who saw himself as having keen taste in modern literature, that the director advised “Vasilkovsky” to immediately quit theater, for he would certainly become a poet of great consequence in no time at all. Deciding that it was not in his best interests to disagree with such a legendary personage, the young artist put actor “Vasilkovsky” to death that very night (undoubtedly via some elaborate ritual involving stage props) and from then on once more became Kamenskiy, a poet once reborn. Looking from the vantage point of the future, we might be right to question whether Meyerhold really heard something in Kamenskiy’s early verse or if he just used it as a pretext to fire the inexperienced monologist. There’s no way to know for sure, though subsequent successes do vouch for the poet. But, quite typically of almost any poet's life (besides Anna Akhmatova's), these successes did not arrive immediate and after deserting the actor’s craft Kamenskiy was, once again, forced by economic necessity to work for a railroad company.

This time, guided along by the natural radicalism of his personality, he got in with the resident railroad Marxists and soon became their committee representative during a massive strike. Unfortunately, the Revolution was still some years down the road and being a working class hero only resulted in Kamenskiy (along with a number of his new comrades) being promptly carted off to prison. Still, this early history of active Marxist credibility did help Kamenskiy stand out (in a good way, unlike the majority of poets and artists) once the Revolution actually arrived. After all, Stalin himself was a young, moderately famous, locally anthologized poet before he ever became a revolutionary or a tyrant, so he may have viewed people who combined the two beginnings with a certain favor (as long as they were squarely on the Bolshevik side and Kamenskiy was... close enough, at least to stay safe from persecution when push came to shove for his fellow poets). But the Revolution was still over a decade away and it’s difficult to say whether the younger Kamenskiy viewed his revolutionary experience in a positive light during the long year he was forced to spend under lock and key because of it, enjoying a diet of brick-hard bread and suspiciously brown water.

When he finally got out in 1906 he wandered around the country for a while and eventually ended up in the capital Saint Petersburg where he decided to enter a university and major in agricultural studies (the idea of growing his own food may have appealed to him after a year of near-starvation). Luckily for the lifelong artiste, the university also happened to provide top notch courses in fine art: a subject in which Kamenskiy instantly revealed himself as a prodigy. Within a few short years (which, nevertheless, may seem like an eternity in Saint Petersburg, a city that in its better days becomes an Eastern Paris) he became a well-known artist hanging up his work at popular art shows. One of the most memorable of these was the “Impressionists” exhibit which took place in 1909. Kamenskiy was far from an Impressionist and more of a fashionist passionist, if anything, but still managed to have great success exhibiting here.

But even if he could have been suddenly hailed as Russia's Picasso or Van Gogh, Kamenskiy would still probably have given up visual art for poetry. It seems that after his short-lived acting experience Kamenskiy decided that squiggly letters and strange, exotic words always came first. And though successes, whether upon the stage or the canvas, seemed to come fairly easily to him, his advent as a poet of note turned out to be even more mercurial. Early in 1908, he was asked by the journalist Shibuev to contribute something to an anthology of young authors entitled Spring. By the fall of that same year Kamenskiy already served as an editor of a magazine also entitled Spring, after the anthology. The magazine served a purpose similar to the book, but served it month after month. While working on this novelty-brimming publication the young poet came to meet many fellow luminaries of his field. One need only imagine him playing cards with Aleksandr Blok and Fyodor Sologub, exchanging jokes and poems. Around this time Kamenskiy came to befriend several of the artists and poets with whom his name became forever entwined within the annals of history: the future “Futurists”, of whom a pair which deserves a special mention are painter David Burlyuk (who started out giving Kamenskiy lessons in fine art) and the great avant-garde poet Velimir Khlebnikov (“Do seek out his inimitable verse in these very pages, friends!” - Editor). Khlebnikov, who was already becoming one of the great poetic innovators of the age, owed his first popular publications to the editorial influence of his new friend Kamenskiy in Spring and his connections to a couple of other literary organs. And, as the wild springtime of 1910 bloomed with rainbow flowers and flew on the wings of fast-talking magpies, Kamenskiy’s verse exploded out of the aether and into the pages of an early Russian Futurist anthology which also included works by Khlebnikov, David Burlyuk, his brother poet Nikolay Burlyuk, and the great composer of absurdist prose poems Elena Guro.

As every Russian lit-major is (probably) well-aware of, one of Kamenskiy’s great claims to mass fame is his legendary coining of the Russian word for “airplane”. This word samolet, which literally translates as “self-flier”, remains in the common usage across the country (and world) to this very day. When a small child walking with his grandpa sees a high-flying plane leaving a trail across the blue sky he may yell out “Look grampa, samolet!. The grandpa would then reply, “Yes, little one. It’s a samolet!” And it’s thanks to Vasiliy Kamenskiy that Russian language possesses such an expressive word for 20th century’s definitive flying contraption. Kamenskiy’s relationship to planes and flying is not limited to etymology. As early as 1911, when the pursuit of piloting was still in its infancy, Kamenskiy acquired an early airplane model with the help of the famous Russian aviator Vladimir Lebedev. After taking piloting courses and passing a flying examination in Warsaw, Kamenskiy embarked on a flying tour of Europe. Arriving in numerous cities big and small, the poet would proceed to show off incredible aerial maneuvers above gathered wowed crowds. But what goes up typically must come down and on May 29th of 1912, in an obscure Polish town, Kamenskiy’s plane tumbled from great height into a swamp. The next morning’s papers all across Europe lamented the death of a great modern poet and aviator. But thankfully, it often happens that those who choose not to live like the rest of us don’t die like the rest either. And lo and behold: Kamenskiy’s bloodied, bruised, but still breathing and nervously smiling body was promptly retrieved from the green depths of Polish swampland. Though the poet made a remarkably swift recovery, his storied airplane was not so fortunate. It was last seen in the corner of a Warsaw junkyard and was probably remelted into weaponry in the course of the Great War. Meanwhile, having been robbed of his wings by fate itself, Kamenskiy decided to abandon a life amidst the clouds. After trying himself out as an architect and a builder (“Of his own designs?!” - Ed.), he decided to travel in his grandfather’s footsteps and become sailor... of sorts. Of course, the famous innovator couldn’t be satisfied with just any boat; certainly not a steamship. No, Kamenskiy had to personally oversee the construction of a hovercraft. And what a sight it was once completed! Kamenskiy rested in his bed and dreamt of the whole Europe marveling at the news.

But in spite of Kamenskiy’s wide range of interest he was always a poet first and foremost. During the summertime of 1913 David Burlyuk first introduced him to the young Vladimir Mayakovski, who was not yet at all famous, but was already as brilliant as he would ever be. Bonding at bohemian cafes, restaurants, and drinking halls, the Kamenskiy immediately hit it off with “Mayak”. Soon enough Mayakovski, Kamenskiy, Burlyuk, Burlyuk’s poet brother, as well as the irreplaceable Khlebnikov all set off on a grand tour around the country in the course of which they informed the unsuspecting connoisseurs of poetry that a previously unimaginable future was already here, reinventing society, technology, and, of course, art. Russia was already lingering on the precipice of the Great War, but in those days, before echoes of gunshots filled the newspaper pages and millions of youths filled French and Polish trenches, many still harbored the hope that it was possible to change the world with art alone. How quickly and dramatically things were about to change! Within a mere few years many of the former aesthetes, rebels, and artistic manifesto-penmen, from Blok to Mayakovsky, would venture deeper and deeper into the self-mobilizing culture of revolutionary mass politics, while others (like Gumilev) would stand in their opposition with a patriotic eagle tearing itself out through their chests (and in the eagle's eyes flamed the ghost of fascism).

But in 1913, in spite of many forebodings in the cultural and social airs, life still seemed bright for many Russians and it especially seemed bright for the young Futurists. By the following year, our lucky maverick Kamenskiy became the editor of the First Journal of the Russian Futurists which was published by David Burlyuk who was a real artistic dynamo and an impresario of sorts, always finding ways to frame the work of his friends (as well as his own work) in the most epic manner imaginable. 1914 was also the year Kamenskiy released one of his most famous collections entitled Tango with the Cows, in which he seemed to finally perfect his personal brand of extravagant verse which combined elements of futurist formalistic experimentation with mind-boggling proto-Surrealist semantic stunts. Throughout the following years he put out several longer epic poems such as “Stenka Razin” which explored the roots and the nature of the vibrant “Russian spirit” through detailing the poeticized character of a famous rebel known to the Russians from their history books.

Kamenskiy welcomed the coming of the Revolution with open arms and remained one of the few poets of the pre-revolutionary avant-garde who remained on good terms with the Soviet authorities well into his old age. This favorability to him in an era when more artistic innovators could be found in any single Gulag than the whole of Moscow could be partly explained by the fact that as he grew older Kamenskiy somewhat curbed his young drive to achieve extreme novelties within poetic form. He also stepped away from the occasionally quite-vitriolic satire and the unashamedly absurdist comedy found in his earlier work. His latter-day poetry rings in a much more earnest, straightforward, and less confrontational manner. His harmonious relation with the Soviet order is also explained by the simple fact that Kamenskiy genuinely believed that the USSR was becoming the best of all possible worlds, a country on its way to providing “the people” with freedom, equality, and prosperity. Though this sort of view may have presupposed a certain degree of ignorance on the part of the poet, we should remember that he was always, forever, and above everything a dreamer who lived more in a world of his own making than in any sort of an objective reality. As he aged, he wrote paeans to Soviet pilots and poetic biographies of colorful personages from Russian history. Eventually, he turned to his own exciting youth for material and wrote several books about his life as a wild Futurist. Unfortunately, a lifelong liveliness doth not equate physical invincibility. In the late 1940’s he was stricken by a stroke, lost his ability to speak, and became almost entirely paralyzed. However, Kamenskiy’s spirit prevailed and he eventually regained partial motion, such as the use of his arms. He continued to write and maintained his bright vision of a life in an era and a land which he saw as bursting with wondrous possibilities.