The Muse Writes the Poet: Gender Politics and Decentralized Authorship in the Russian Avant‐Garde

Abstract This article investigates the changing gender politics of the Russian avant‐garde, focusing on the Futurist manuscript books of the 1910s and their legacy in the artist’s book edition of Backbone Flute , created by Lilia Brik and Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1919. It contends that the misogynist rhetoric of early Russian Futurism, which echoed the positions of F. T. Marinetti, shifted in the mid‐1910s, in part due to the artistic collaborations between male and female avant‐garde artists on the manuscript books. As a collaborative enterprise involving multiple co‐authors, these books advanced innovative ideas regarding decentralized authorship and handwriting. The article argues that these ideas and practices found a potent expression in the 1919 Backbone Flute , which recreated Mayakovsky’s eponymous poem (1915–16) in the tradition of Futurist manuscript books. The deployment of Brik’s handwriting to visualize the text of the poem and the relocation of the lyrical I’s experiences into the illustrations in this artist’s book re‐ascribed the authorship of the poem to its muse. This book is thus viewed as an attempt to rethink the creative relationship between the poet Mayakovsky and his “muse” Brik, as well as the gender politics of the Russian avant‐garde at large.