Igor Terentiev's biography of Ilya Zdanevich published in 1919 in Tbilisi.
The third volume of the bie bao series presents Igor Terentiev's Tenderness Record, a hagiography of Ilya Zdanevich published in 1919 in Tbilisi. In this slim book, Terentiev summarises the plots of Zdanevich's zaum dramas and portrays his artistic achievements as a product of collective creativity.
Alongside this, the third volume also presents a letter from Terentiev to Zdanevich from 1924. Sent from Leningrad, the letter sheds light onto various zaum projects at the Phonological Department at the GINKhUK and includes the only surviving script of Terentiev's zaum drama, Iordano Bruno.
The first-ever English translation of his writings is here presented with an extended introduction and extensive annotations, as well as with a short note by Giovanna Pagani Cesa, who initially discovered Ternetiev's letter in the Zdanevich Archives. The texts are further contextualised with commissioned essays by Adam Ranđelović, a poet, translator, and musician from Belgrade, and Ketevan Kinturashvili, a curator, art historian and a researcher of the Georgian avant-garde from Tbilisi.
The bie bao series will include eight publications, covering many layers of Zdanevich's rich theoretical and artistic output. Each volume consists of a bio-bibliographical introduction, a commentary, a translation with annotations, and artistic intervention.
Igor Terentiev (1892-1937) was a Russian poet, artist, stage director, representative of Russian avant-garde, member of the futurist group.
Iliazd (Ilya Zdanevich, 1894-1975) was a Russian poet, designer, typographer, theoretician, art critic, and publisher, close to the avant-garde circles and one of the promoters of
Futurism in Russia, author of a poetic work, drama written in
zaum abstract poetic trans-sense or "transrational" language, and novels.
