Autograph manuscript poem in Russian, entitled “Ананасы в шампанском,” signed by Igor Severyanin, twelve lines in three quatrains on a single leaf, with minor punctuation variations from the text originally published under the title Ouverture (Увертюра), inaugurating his collection Pineapple with Champagne (1915), from which it took its name.

A masterpiece by the whimsical poet Igor Severyanin, one of the most emblematic poems of Russian literature, embodying the “Ego-Futurism” movement founded by the poet at the end of 1911 — the very first Futurist movement established in Russia.

On the eve of the Revolution, this poem, both inspired and violently criticized by Mayakovsky, stands at the crossroads of Dadaist provocation, Futurist dynamism, and the dandyism of a bourgeois class soon to disappear.

The legend, recounted in Vadim Bayan’s memoirs, situates the creation of this poem in Simferopol, Crimea, during the First Futurist Olympiad. Curiously, it was the future herald of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Mayakovsky, who reportedly inspired this mythical work. After dipping a piece of pineapple into champagne, he is said to have encouraged Severyanin to do likewise: “Incredibly good!” And so the opening lines of a poem destined for enormous acclaim were born: “Pineapples, pineapples — dipped in champagne! Surprisingly tasty, sparkling, and keen!”

As Jean-Claude Lanne notes, Severyanin was the very first Russian artist to use the term “Futurism,” in his brochure Prologue Ego-Futurism (Пролог эго-футуризма) in November 1911. This poem, undoubtedly the most famous of his ephemeral movement, unfolds amidst the clatter of aeroplanes and the roar of motor engines through the streets of the world’s great metropolises — Moscow, Nagasaki, and New York. Severyanin embraced with enthusiasm and skill the current founded by Marinetti in Italy, paving the way for Russian Futurism, which would later manifest in many diverse forms. Yet his ego-futurist vision is highly personal, synthesising avant-garde poetry with the dandyism of the Belle Époque.

At the heart of this delightful catastrophe, the hero of Pineapple with Champagne claims the poet’s carefree spirit and exhorts the cultivation of selfishness: he “take[s] up [his] pen,” spending all his leisure “among skittish maidens and stylish grandes dames”. Playing on surprise and provocation, Severyanin aligns himself with the famous decadent, pessimistic, and ironic ego-poets: Wilde, whose sartorial style he emulated; Baudelaire, whom he translated into Russian; and Nietzsche, the inspiration for one of his celebrated neologisms, заратустриться (zaratustritsya, “to become Zarathustra”). He took individualism so far as to leave his own movement only a few years after its creation.

In his own language, Severyanin deployed the most distinctive expression of his Ego-Futurism, reshaping and warping poetic language to the cadence of his modernist soul. He is remembered for having devised his own vocabulary, inventing thousands of neologisms. Among the most celebrated in Pineapple with Champagne is грёзофарс — “fantasy-farce” or “farce-fantasy,” a portmanteau partly derived from French (фарс the transliteration of farce), appearing in the line “I’ll turn tragic life into fantasy-farce….” The word quickly entered common Russian usage, and was even employed as early as 1917 by Lenin to describe the fantastical views of his adversaries.

Yet individualism collided with collectivist ideology: Severyanin provoked the anger of the new revolutionaries, who accused him of ignoring the sufferings of countless Russians, victims of famine and the horrors of the bloodiest conflict in human history. Taken literally, his masterful mockery of the lifestyles of the nouveau riche, reveling in the extravagances of modern life, infuriated his critics.

In an ironic turn, Mayakovsky, the former revelry companion who had sampled this decadent fruit, came to make it a symbol of bourgeois vice: Mayakovsky’s response was to openly attack this self-proclaimed dandy and his followers, describing them as “insentient nonentities” who think only of their bellies, humming Severyanin’s verses with their “oily mouths” (Barbara Wyllie, From Imperial Pineapples to Stalinist Sausage: The Politics and Poetics of Food in Russian Literature). Severyanin’s pineapple appears in some of Mayakovsky’s most famous revolutionary cries: “Eat your grouse, eat your pineapple / your last day has come, bourgeois!” (public advertisement, 1917) “Give my life for you, with lips drooling with desire? / I would rather serve pineapple liqueur / to the prostitutes of Moscow bars.” (Вам! [To You!], 1915).

Severyanin became a victim of his own atypicality: too provocative for the old guard — he scandalised Tolstoy during a reading — but too bourgeois for the revolutionary poets. The art of the self, and especially apolitical art, no longer had a place in Russia soon to be freed from imperial rule. Yet the poem remained widely discussed and continued to fascinate: “A symbol of the era, of its unpredictable and incisive character, of its discoveries, its twists, its eccentric combination of previously incompatible elements. What concision, what liveliness, what expressivity!” (Natalia Borovskaya, Rostovskaya Elektronnaya Gazeta, n^o. 1 [79], 12 January 2002).

A rare autograph manuscript of the poet’s self-proclaimed masterpiece, the greatest success of this herald of a distinctly hedonistic strain of Russian modernism.

Pineapples, pineapples - dipped in champagne!
Surprisingly tasty, sparkling, and keen!
I’m in something Norwegian! Something from Spain!
Madly inspired! I take up my pen!

The rattling of airplanes! The roaring of cars!
Wind-whistling trains! Wing-soaring yachts!
This one gets kisses! That one gets scars!
Champagne and pineapples — pulse of the night!

Among skittish maidens and stylish grandes dames
I’ll turn tragic life into fantasy-farce…
Pineapples, pineapples - dipped in champagne!
Nagasaki to Moscow! New York to Mars!

(Boris Dralyuk)