Ego-Futurism

[1] In 1909, the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti began the Futurist movement by publishing the Manifesto of Futurism; it called for a total break with the past, in favour of a completely modern world.

In 1910, Marinetti went to Russia to lecture on his ideas; it was this year that one of the earliest Russian Futurist groups began: led by David and Wladimir Burliuk, it was called 'Hylea', and its members included poets who would later become Cubo-Futurists, the rivals of the Ego-Futurists.

[6] The four original members - Severyanin, Konstantin Olimpov (Fofanov's son), Georgy Ivanov, and Graal Arelsky - then issued a manifesto illustrating their intentions, now calling themselves the 'Academy of Ego-Poetry'.

[9] In November 1912, after an argument with Olimpov and a new member, the poet Ivan Ignatiev, Severyanin officially left the group; nonetheless, he still identified himself as an Ego-Futurist, and continued to publish in their almanacs.

[10] From the beginning, there were several differences between the Cubo-Futurism and Ego-Futurism; for example, in their almanacs, they published Symbolist poetry alongside their own, whilst the Cubo-Futurist poets completely rejected the past,[8] going so far as to declare that famous authors, for example Fyodor Dostoevsky, had to be "pushed off the steamboat of modernity"[11] immediately.