Hidden Dialogue of Mayakovsky and Marinetti

The article is devoted to the contacts and mutual evaluations of the leaders of Russian and Italian Futurism, Mayakovsky and Marinetti. If the early period (the so-called historical avant-garde) is deeply studied, then the relations between the two Futurists in the 1920s are not sufficiently documented. Two important documents stand out: a long interview given by Mayakovsky to Enrico Cavacchioli, a special correspondent of the Roman newspaper Messaggero in Moscow (March 1924), which became known in Russian translation only in 2008, and “Letter from an Unidentified Person to Marinetti with an Inquiry on the Political and Literary Positions of the Italian Futurists,” for the first time published in our translation from French. This archival document was attributed and printed in the original (1979) by Professor C. De Michelis as a list of Mayakovsky’s questions to Marinetti, prepared for their meeting in Paris in June 1925. However, the content of their conversation remained unknown, announced in October 1925. The archival document published by us allows us to reconstruct the course of the conversation and the nature of the creative dialogue between Mayakovsky and Marinetti. The article provides evidence of the authenticity of Mayakovsky’s questions and their connection to his “Letter on Futurism,” addressed to L.D. Trotsky on September 1, 1922, and a similar letter of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci dated September 8, 1922 (included in Trotsky’s book Literature and Revolution, 1923). The article shows the role of political circumstances in the interpretation of socio-cultural and biographical aspects of this topic.