Johanna Drucker - Iliazd: A Meta-Biography of a Modernist

Iliazd

Hopkins Studies in Modernism

Douglas Mao, Series Editor

A Meta-Biography of a Modernist

Johanna Drucker

Johns Hopkins University Press

Baltimore

2020 Johanna Drucker

All rights reserved. Published 2020

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Johns Hopkins University Press

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Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Drucker, Johanna, 1952author.

Title: Iliazd : a meta-biography of a modernist / Johanna Drucker.

Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020. | Series: Hopkins studies in modernism | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020019939 | ISBN 9781421439631 (hardcover ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781421439648 (paperback ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781421439655 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Iliazd, 18941975. | Authors, Georgian20th centuryBiography. | Literature, Experimental20th centuryHistory and criticism. | Modernism (Literature) | Futurism (Literary movement)

Classification: LCC PG3476.I45 Z58 2020 | DDC 891.73/42 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019939

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Frontispiece: Hlne Douard (later Zdanevich) with Iliazd in Venice in 1962. Courtesy of Franois Mair and the Fonds Iliazd.

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Ilia Zdanevich, known professionally by the contracted version of his name, Iliazd (pronounced il-ee-ahzd), was a writer and publisher whose career began with the early twentieth-century Russian avant-garde and ended in late-century European modernism. Iliazds creative work in modern art had a unique focus on the book formatas a poet, typographic artist, designer, and printer, as well as a publisherand my interest in Iliazd was fostered by my own experience making books. In 1985, when this project began, I was in my early thirties and had been printing letterpress work for more than a decade. I felt an affinity with Iliazd since I had been a writer-artist working in the print shop, at the type case, and within the networks of relationships required for bringing a book into being.

I came to know Iliazd and his work through the research described here. I finished an initial draft of this biography in the early 1990s, and the project was scheduled for publication, but economic shifts caused changes in the publishers lists. Though already under contract, the book was canceled. The project lay fallow for many years, with intermittent revivals of interest on my part and that of others. But only in winter 2019, in the quiet afforded by a Beinecke Fellowship and the isolation of a New Haven winter, did the opportunity arise to pay attention to the work againthis time with a reflection on biography as part of the framework.

Iliazd is not unknown. In 2019, his work was the subject of multiple exhibitions. Among them was one curated by Boris Fridman, Iliazd: The 20th Century of Ilia Zdanevich, at Moscows Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. Another was in Mlaga, Spain, and another at Columbia Universitys Rare Book & Manuscript Library. His books are well known among bibliophiles, curators, and collectors. He is neither obscure nor unduly prominent within the history of the twentieth-century avant-garde, and his recognition does not depend upon my contribution. At this point in the early twenty-first century, his work belongs to a particular historical moment, formulated within the frameworks of twentieth-century modern art, within which he worked. This is well-worked territory, known, charted, and disputed. But our relationships with these periods and their characterizations are always changing. I see modernism very differently now than when I started this research more than thirty years ago, as will be clear as the account unfolds.

But methods and approaches to scholarship also change. For decades, I have written about artists books, visual poetry, letterpress aesthetics, and related topics in the history of art and literature of the modern period. But I can no longer simply write about things, whether they are historical events, objects, or aesthetic positions, as if they exist independently of the processes by which they are assumed to exist as things, events, objects, or positions. The attention to the meta-level of knowledge permeates my thinking. At this point, having a chance to pay systematic attention to how biography produces its supposed subject, as well as a chance to reflect on the events of what is now another historical period, the 1980s in which the research began, is what motivated me to return to this work. But above all, it is the encounter with Iliazd through that research that is the focus of this study.

In its current form, this project mixes meta-reflections, descriptive biography, and accounts of how I came to know Iliazd through the documents, conversations, and people I encountered. The sections on Iliazds life and work progress chronologically, as is the expectation in a biography. The commentaries on the process of writing a biography do not map directly to this chronology. They introduce issues that are present throughout the project, part of its intellectual infrastructure at every point, though more vividly evident at some moments than others. Anecdotes and stories are intermittent, linked to appropriate points in the narrative.

The privilege of access to the Iliazd archive remains one of the unique experiences of my life as a scholar, and for this I am indebted to the generosity of Iliazds widow, Madame Hlne Zdanevich. I am grateful for her faith in me and willingness to engage my navet as well as my sincerity at the outset. We worked side by side for many hours in her living space in the rue Mazarine. Those days of shared work built a respect and affection that remains, though she passed away in 1992.

The original biography was drawn on materials assembled between 1985 and 1989. Scholarship on Iliazds zaum (an invented language based in sound symbolism), futurist poetics, and related topics produced in the past thirty years is assembled in an appendix and also finds its way into my notes. If I were beginning this project now, I would survey every scholarly work that includes a reference to Iliazd. I have included everything that feels compellingly relevant, but my bibliography is not exhaustive with regard to current scholarship. All research is a moving target, and the interest in Iliazd will continue to unfold dimensions of his work that were not known decades ago or even as I reworked this text. The Carnets of the Iliazd Club, edited in the past thirty years through the efforts of the family (first Hlne, then her brother, Henri Douard, then her son, Franois Mair) with the work of many scholars, most notably and consistently Rgis Gayraud, are an invaluable resource. Andr Markowicz has shown incredible dedication to translating Iliazds poetry and other texts from Russian into French.