The youngest Burlyuk brother: the Futurist Nikolay Burlyuk

This paper constitutes the first ever study of this topic in both Russian and international studies of literature. O. Bogdanova examines the poetry of N. Burlyuk (1890–1920), the younger brother of the famous ‘Burlyukian tribe’ of artistic siblings David, Vladimir, and Lyudmila, all of them radical early representatives of the Russian avant-garde and fellow members of the Futurist group Hylaea. Considered by contemporaries (N. Chukovsky) as an ‘outlier’ among the Futurists, he authored poetry dismissed by some as pale and soft, and his manner was described as too traditional and at odds with the avant-garde. The study sets out to trace the extent to which the poetry of the ‘quietest’ Burlyuk aligned with the strategies of the Hylaea collective and whether his verse was indeed “inspired but outdated” (B. Lifshits). In her analysis of Burlyuk’s poems, Bogdanova disproves the hypothesis that his work was guided by the principles of Symbolism or Acmeism and argues that the poet used Futurist devices extensively, albeit in a manner more reserved than that of A. Kruchyonykh or V. Khlebnikov.

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