Airplane singer. Poet and aviator Vasily Kamensky
Russian futurism, one of the most interesting literary movements in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, was in fact a translation of the traditions of Italian futurism onto Russian soil. It was the Italian, the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) who expressed the basic principles of the new trend in his “Futurism Manifesto”, published in the Paris Le Figaro 20 of February 1909. Marinetti sang "machine progress", spoke about the advent of the "era of machines". Futurist artists painted trains, cars, factories, poets composed real odes to technical progress. Marinetti was a big fan of aviation. In the end, in the 1920-s, already in fascist Italy, Marinetti's admiration for the “conquest of the sky” resulted in the emergence of “air painting”, which sought to convey the speed and dynamics of air flight.
Despite the fact that Italy was not among the most important world powers of that time, at the beginning of the twentieth century it became one of the centers of European aviation. Pilots from many countries of the world, including Russia, were trained in Italian aviation schools. Not surprisingly, the aviation theme attracted poets - avant-gardists. The futurism that arose in Italy received a “second birth” in faraway Russia. The ideas of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti found grateful followers in Russia. Only the Russians nevertheless understood futuristic ideas in a slightly different way, without focusing on the cruelty and militancy of technical progress, but to a greater degree relying on “good progress”, which would make people's lives better. At the root of Russian futurism was an artist and poet David Burliuk, around which a unique circle of Russian futurists was formed.
In 1909, one of them, the poet Vasily Kamensky, at the next meeting of futurists swore to become a pilot: “Wings of Wright, Farmanov and Blerio are our wings. We will have to fly, we must be able to control the airplane, like a bicycle or a mind. And so, my friends, I swear to you: I will be an aviator, damn it. ” One could take this oath as a bravado common to avant-garde artists, but it was not there - Kamensky really decided to devote himself to flying art.
Vasily Vasilyevich Kamensky (1884-1961) was born in the Perm Krai of 17 on April 1884 of the year - on a steamer that followed the Kama River. The captain of this steamer was the grandfather of the future poet - the father of his mother Eustols, Gabriel Serebrennikov. Kamensky's father, Vasily Filippovich, worked as a caretaker at the gold mines of Count Shuvalov. Very early Vasily Kamensky Jr. lost his parents. He was sent to her aunt Alexandra Gavrilovna Trushchova, whose husband Grigory Trushchov led the Lyubimov towing shipping company in Perm. Perhaps it was childhood spent among the steamboats and sailors that influenced the future life of Kamensky, always enthusiastic about any “ships and captains”, whether sea or river steamers or airplanes rising into the sky. However, Kamensky did not become a sailor or riverman, he had to work from sixteen years in various offices. Back in 1904, twenty-year-old Kamensky began to collaborate in the Perm Krai newspaper. At the same time, becoming interested in Marxism, he took socialist views. But the boring life of the clerk of the ambitious young man did not deceive. At first, he became interested in theater and got an actor in one of the troupes that traveled in Russia. Along the way, he did not forget about political activities - he participated in campaigning among workers of the Ural railway workshops and even led the strike committee, for which he ended up in prison. However, Kamensky was soon released, and he even managed to make a fascinating journey to the Middle East - to Istanbul and Tehran, before arriving in Moscow. From Moscow, Kamensky moved to St. Petersburg, and from 1908 he began working as deputy editor-in-chief in the magazine Spring. It was there that his acquaintance with the futurists happened.
Poetry was not the only hobby Kamensky. When the aviation school opened at the Gatchina airfield in St. Petersburg, Kamensky began attending her classes and soon went up to the sky for the first time, along with one of the first Russian pilots, Vladimir Lebedev. Obsessed with a dream of conquering the sky, Kamensky managed to find money to buy the French Blerio XI airplane. In order to master the nuances of controlling an airplane, he went to France - to the world-famous aviation school of Bleriot. Here he made familiarization flights with an instructor - as a passenger. The poet recalled his first flights at Bleriot school: “before the flight, he drank a glass of brandy in case of easier parting with the bustle of life, the aviator himself drank. The flight turned out to be drunker: I was completely turned off my head, and I - it seems - screamed at the top of my mouth from the influx of enthusiasm. ” However, the leaders of the school did not trust Kamensky on their own to manage the airplane - they were afraid that the beginning Russian aviator would smash an expensive car. The school authorities asked Kamensky to pay an impressive amount as a pledge - only in this case he could be allowed to ascend into the sky on his own. But Kamensky, who spent heavily on acquiring an airplane, could no longer draw that amount. Therefore, he had no choice but to return to the Russian Empire. He was going to take a pilot qualification exam in his home country - where it was not necessary to invest so much money. In Russia, at that time, aviation was developing at a rapid pace, the number of young and not-so-many people who were trying to get a new profession, very unusual for those times, was growing.
Vasily Kamensky arrived in Warsaw, where he entered the Aviata flight school. The main instructor in this school was the famous pilot Chariton Slavorossov. Aviator Khariton Nikanorovich Slavorossov (Semenenko) (1886-1941) was two years younger than Kamensky, which did not prevent him from becoming a real teacher for the pilot-poet. Previously, Khariton Semenenko, the son of a janitor from Odessa, swam as a machinist on a steamer, then became a cyclist and achieved great fame in this field, speaking under the pseudonym "Slavoross". In 1910, he arrived in St. Petersburg, where he became a mechanic at the pilot Mikhail Efimov, and then moved to Warsaw, where he got a job as a mechanic at the Aviata aviation school. Ibid Slavorossov passed the exam for the qualification of the pilot and was soon transferred to the position of instructor. He began to train students entering the school. One of them was Vasily Kamensky, with whom Khariton Slavorossov became very friendly.
“Among aviators, Slavorossov is the most wonderful ... the most talented record-breaker ... I chose Slavorossov as my teacher-instructor ... In the eyes are the flying machines. In the ears - the music of motors. In the nose - the smell of gasoline and waste oil, in the pockets of insulating tape. Future flights in dreams, ”wrote Vasily Kamensky about Slavorossov. The poet became a favorite student and friend of Slavorossov. Under the guidance of the latter, Kamensky finally mastered the flying craft and successfully passed the qualifying exam for the pilot's title. So the poet's dream came true - “will be a man”, who sought to conquer the heavenly expanses.
Becoming an aviator, Kamensky was incredibly proud. He was one of the first in Russia to have mastered the Blerio XI monoplane. Kamensky katal passengers on the airplane. In April, 1912, he made a tour of provincial Poland, whose inhabitants, with rare exceptions, had not yet seen airplanes. Kamensky demonstrated his pilot skills as he read lectures on aeronautics and aviation. 29 April 1912 was designated as a demonstration flight by Vasily Kamensky in the city of Czestochowa. Many people gathered at the event, including the governor and other high-ranking officials from the city government. It was pre-storm weather with strong wind. Weather conditions forced Kamensky to doubt whether to make a flight or whether it should be postponed for a better day. But the flight organizers insisted that Kamensky rise into the air - they say, the governor himself was eager to look at the skill of the pilot. But when Kamensky's airplane took off, a strong gust of wind knocked over the car.
Only half a day later, Vasily Kamensky woke up in the hospital. The poet miraculously survived - it was helped by the fact that the airplane fell into the marsh mud, which softened the fall. The catastrophe in Czestochowa was the end of Vasily Kamensky’s aviation career. The poet collected what was left of his airplane and went to his native Perm. In 1916, Kamensky lived in the village of Kichkileyka in the Perm province, where he was engaged in improving his airplane.
Invaluable experience gained during the flights, Kamensky described in the play “The Life of an Aviator”, which, by the way, has not yet been published. The subject of aviation also rises in Kamensky's essay "Aeroporrorchest". For Vasily Kamensky, “airplanes,” as he first began to call airplanes, were not just machines that allowed movement through the air. Kamensky saw in the conquest of the sky a special sign for humanity, with which he connected the coming transformation and improvement of people's lives. As a result of flying into the sky, man, as Kamensky dreamed, would turn into an exalted being, akin to angels.
Aviation themes took Kamensky’s imagination for a long time. Between 1912 and 1918 many of his poems reflect precisely the poetry of flight. Like other futurists - “will”, Kamensky experimented with words, inventing new phrases. His “ridge” was neologisms associated with the subject of aviation and aeronautics. So, Kamensky came up with the word "plane", which now in Russian denotes the majority of air vehicles. But there were also less well-known inventions - “wing-covering”, “flying away”, “flying”, “flying”, “flying”, “flying”. Kamensky’s experiments with the form of a poem were very interesting. The poet has a poem “The Flight of Vasi Kamensky on an airplane in Warsaw”, which must be read from the bottom up. Its form is pyramid, that is, the letters from line to line are reduced, which allows, according to the author, to convey to the reader a picture of the airplane taking off.
Dreamed that aviation would make a person kinder and more perfect, Kamensky very negatively perceived the news about the combat use of airplanes in the First World War, about the use of aviation for bombarding enemy positions and enemy cities. He expressed his feelings in the poem “My Prayer”: “Lord, have mercy and forgive me. I flew an airplane. Now in the ditch I want nettle to grow. Amen". Like all futurists, Kamensky, especially a former man with a revolutionary past, warmly welcomed the victory of the October Socialist Revolution. She gave him new impressions and thoughts for creativity. Vasily Kamensky participated in cultural and educational work in the ranks of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army, joined the Left Front of the Arts (LEF) group, published in various revolutionary literary publications. He returned to aviation topics, devoting his poems to Soviet pilots. In the Soviet Union, Kamensky's poems and plays were published, although they did not forget to occasionally recall his avant-garde past.
Although Kamensky lived to be old, the last decades of his life were very hard. At the end of the 1930's, he became seriously ill. Thrombophlebitis led to amputation of both legs, and on April 19, the poet suffered a stroke on 1948. Kamensky was paralyzed. Thirteen years, until his death on November 11 1961, the poet spent bedridden.
The life of a friend and flight instructor of Kamensky Khariton Slavorossov also turned out sadly. He, unlike Kamensky, did not part with aviation - he continued to fly after the October Revolution. Slavorossov was in the first graduation of the Air Force Academy fleet, worked as the technical director of the Central Asian branch of Dobrolet, then he worked on the development of a draft air line, which was supposed to connect Moscow with Beijing. At the same time, he was one of the initiators of the revival of glider sport in the Soviet Union. Since Slavorossov kept himself out of politics, and his official activities were not related to political work, it seemed that repression could bypass him. But they didn’t get around. When Konstantin Akashev, one of the first leaders of the Soviet Air Force, was arrested in the thirties, in the past he was a revolutionary anarchist, and the Soviet regime remembered him, Khariton Slavorossov, a long-time friend of Akashev, was also arrested. One of the pioneers of Russian aviation was slandered by a long-time acquaintance, and Slavorossov was accused of spying for France. Slavorossov was sent to a camp in Medvezhyegorsk, where he worked in a sharashka. In 1941, relatives were informed that Khariton Slavorossov had died in places of exile.
Information