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Imaginism was a literary association ofRussian poets of theSilver Age, which existed in 1918-1925. Representatives of imaginism stated that the purpose of creativity is to create an image. The main expressive means of imaginists is metaphor, often metaphorical chains that juxtapose various elements of two images: direct and figurative. The creative practice of the imaginists was characterized by outrageous, anarchic motives.
Imaginism was founded in 1918 inMoscow by a group of poets includingAnatoly Marienhof,Vadim Shershenevich, andSergei Yesenin, who wanted to distance themselves from theFuturists; the name may have been influenced byimagism.
Stylistically, they were heirs toEgo-Futurism. Imaginists created poetry based on sequences of arresting and uncommonimages. They wrote manyverbless poems.[1]
Other members of the group were the poetsRurik Ivnev,Alexander Kusikov,Ivan Gruzinov,Matvey Royzman, and the prominent Russian dramatistNikolay Erdman. In January 1919 they issued a manifesto, whose text was largely written by Shershenevich.
Most of the imaginists were freethinkers andatheists. Imaginism had its main centres in Moscow andSt. Petersburg. There were also smaller centres of imaginism inKazan,Saransk, andUkraine. Imaginists organised four poetry publishing houses, one of which was called simply Imaginism, and published the poetry magazineGostinitsa dlya puteshestvuyuschih v prekrasnom ("Guesthouse for travellers in the beautiful").
The group broke up in 1925, and in 1927 it was liquidated officially. Its heritage, though, is still strong in Russia. Poems by Yesenin and Shershenevich, memoirs by Marienhof, and plays by Erdman are still in print and always in demand.
After the disappearance of the group, the "young imaginists" declared themselves followers of this trend in the early 1930s, and so did the "meloimaginists" of the 1990s.[2]
