Imaginism was a poetic flow inside Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n avant-garde which came about after the Revolution of 1917

Russian Revolution of 1917

The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...

. It was founded in 1918 in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 by a group of poets including Anatoly Marienhof

Anatoly Marienhof

Anatoly Borisovich Marienhof or Mariengof 1897 — 24 April 1962) was a Russian poet, novelist and playwright. He was one of the leading figures of Imaginism. Now he is mostly remembered for his memoirs that depict Russian literary life of the 1920s and his friendship with Sergei Yesenin.- Biography...

, Vadim Shershenevich

Vadim Shershenevich

Vadim Gabrielevich Shershenevich was a Russian poet.-Earlier years:Shershenevich was born in Kazan, Russia on 25 January 1893 . He was the son of professor of Law Gabriel Feliksovich Shershenevich, a Polish national and a deputy of the first State Duma from the Constitutional Democratic party and...

, and Sergei Yesenin

Sergei Yesenin

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin was a Russian lyrical poet. He was one of the most popular and well-known Russian poets of the 20th century but committed suicide at the age of 30...

, who wanted to distance themselves from the Futurist

Russian Futurism

Russian Futurism is the term used to denote a group of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism"...

s; the name may have been influenced by imagism

Imagism

Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry. This was in contrast to their contemporaries, the Georgian poets,...

. Stylistically, they were heirs to Ego-Futurism

Ego-Futurism

Ego-Futurism was a Russian literary movement of 1910s, developed within the Russian Futurism by Igor Severyanin and his early followers. Ego-Futurism was born in 1911, when Severyanin published a small brochure entitled Prolog . Severyanin decried excessive objectivity of the Cubo-Futurists,...

. Imaginists created poetry based on sequences of arresting and uncommon image

Image

An image is an artifact, for example a two-dimensional picture, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person.-Characteristics:...

s. They widely used metaphor

Metaphor

A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...

s, sometimes producing long chains of them in their poems. Other members of the group were the poets Rurik Ivnev, Alexander Kusikov, Ivan Gruzinov, Matvey Royzman, and the prominent Russian dramatist Nikolay Erdman. In January 1919 they issued a manifesto, whose text was largely written by Shershenevich. Most of the imaginists were freethinkers and atheists

Atheism

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

. Imaginism had its main centres in Moscow and St. Petersburg. There were also smaller centres of imaginism in Kazan

Kazan

Kazan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. With a population of 1,143,546 , it is the eighth most populous city in Russia. Kazan lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers in European Russia. In April 2009, the Russian Patent Office granted Kazan the...

, Saransk

Saransk

Saransk is a city in central European Russia and the capital of the Republic of Mordovia, as well as its financial and economic center. It is located in the Volga basin at the confluence of the Saranka and Insar Rivers, about east of Moscow...

, and Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

. Imaginists organised four poetry publishing houses, one of which was called Imaginism, and published the poetry magazine Gostinitsa dlya puteshestvuyuschih v prekrasnom ("Guesthouse for travellers in the beautiful").

The group broke up in 1925, and in 1927 it was liquidated officially. Its heritage, though, is still strong in Russia. Poems by Yesenin and Shershenevich, memoirs by Marienhof, and plays by Erdman are still in print and always in demand. After the disappearance of the group, the "young imaginists" declared themselves followers of this trend in the early 1930s, and so did the "meloimaginists" in the 1990s.

Literature

• Markov, V. Russian Imaginism 1919-1924. Gießen 1980.
• Nilsson, N. The Russian imaginists. Ann Arbor: Almgvist and Wiksell, 1970.
• Huttunen, T. Imazhinist Mariengof: Dendi. Montazh. Ciniki. Moscow: NLO, 2007.
• Ponomareff, C. "The Image Seekers: Analysis of Imaginists Poetic Theory, 1919-1924." The Slavic and East European Journal 12 (1986).
• Kudryavitsky, A. "Popytka zvuka." Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 35 (1999).