Page 71 - Making Books

one of the most important and original Russian poets together
with the great poet Velimir Khlebnikov (1885-1922), whom
Vvedenskii admired. In the early 1920s Vvdenskii studied with
famous Futurist avant-garde artists. In 1928 in Leningrad,
together with the famous absurdist Daniil Kharms (1905-1942),
Vvedenskii founded OBERIU: the Association for Real Art. As
his works could not be published because of Soviet censorship,
Vvedenskii, just as Kharms, turned to the children’s book and
worked for the State Publisher of Children’s Books (Detgiz) in
Leningrad which was led by Samuil Marshak (1887-1964), the
writer and editor who gathered the finest writers and illustrators
for children’s books and magazines of the Soviet Union in the
1920s and 1930s. In 1931 Vvedenskii was arrested, accused of
being an ant-Soviet writer, but he was released in 1932. In 1938
Marshak and his group of artists and writers was accused of
ant-Soviet behaviour by the Soviet authorities. Marshak moved
to Moscow and Vvedenskii to Kharkov where he was arrested
in September 1941 and died of pleurisy during his transport to
Kazan.

141. Elegy

142. A discussion about cards 148. On the death of Teosofka

149. A discussion on the absence of poetry 157. The merchants’ conversation
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