The Songs and Legends of the "Scythian" Futurism ("Budetlianstvo"): Nikolai Aseev in the children's magazine "Protalinka"

Abstract

This essay reconstructs the history of Nikolai Aseev's (1889 - 1963) collaboration with the children's magazine "Protalinka" of 1914-1915. Here he published stories and legends from Russian and Polish chronicles retold for the children. His work for the "Protalinka" was related to his departure from symbolism and his transition to futurism, or "budetlianstvo" under the influence of Velimir Khlebnikov's pan-Slavic ideas. The authors demonstrate a direct correlation between Aseev's prose written for children and his own poetry that manifested in his collections "Zor" (1914), "Letorei" (1915), and "Oksana" (1916). His stories included songs and poems written in the manner of the futurist "Scythianism," similar to Khlebnikov and his followers. In this regard, Aseev appears as a predecessor of prominent Soviet poets that wrote for children, specifically Osip Mandelshtam and the Oberiuty.

Keywords: children's literature, periodicals for children, Nikolay Aseev, symbolism, futurism, history of literature of the XX century, “Centrifuge”, Budetljanstvo, Sergey Bobrov, retellings