Konstantin Kedrov: biography, works, scientific activity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

He often says that every poet is a philosopher, but not necessarily every philosopher is a poet. With his work, he proves the absolute truth of this statement. About who Konstantin Kedrov is in his primary essence, a poet or a philosopher, they argue without coming to an unambiguous conclusion, even people who have known him for a very long time.

Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, inventor of the terms "metacode" and "metametaphor" expresses his views on the world order in the form of a logical and thoughtful theory, the ideas of which, respectively, permeate all his poetic lines.

From the roots

He was born in 1942, in Rybinsk, Yaroslavl region, where his parents, who worked in the local drama theater, were evacuated. Father - director and actor Alexander Berdichevsky, a student of Meyerhold, mother - actress Nadezhda Yumatova. On the mother's side, the family goes back to the noble branch of the Chelishchevs, among whom were associates of Alexander Nevsky and Dmitry Donskoy.

The great-uncle of the poet was an outstanding Russian artist, one of the founders of surrealism, Pavel Fedorovich Chelishchev. Konstantin Kedrov even inherited several paintings by Chelishchev, which he had tosell when he was out of work.

The ability to word-creation was noticed in Konstantin from early childhood - the family remembered his attempts to rhyme at the age of 6 years. Therefore, his desire to receive a literary education was logical - after school, he entered Moscow State University in 1961, at the Faculty of Journalism.

Moscow - Kazan - Moscow

From the very first poems that Konstantin Kedrov wrote in his youth, it became clear his passion for the work of Russian futurists of the beginning of the century - V. Khlebnikov, A. Kruchenykh and others, a tendency to search for new forms in poetry, freedom in choosing topics for poetry. In 1958, the Komsomolets Tatarii newspaper published a selection of Kedrov's poems, among which were the lines:

Every country talks about freedom, Freedom of France orders to kill the freedom of Algeria.

But does freedom have a homeland?

Freedom is the Motherland of the whole world.

Give me the only freedom, the freedom not to kill!

Such ideas were too out of line with the ideologically verified publications of that time, so a year after studying at Moscow State University, Kedrov was asked to move away from the capital - to Kazan University. But even there he was expelled from the faculty of journalism, allowing him to graduate from the Faculty of History and Philology as a volunteer. Kedrov had no right to a scholarship, a hostel, etc.

He miraculously completed this course, and the topic of his thesis was also extraordinary: Lobachevsky's geometry, the theory of relativityEinstein and the poetry of Velimir Khlebnikov.”

He returned to Moscow in 1968 and entered the graduate school of the Literary Institute, from which he graduated in 1973 with a Ph. D. From 1974 to 1986, Konstantin Kedrov worked as a teacher at the Department of Russian Literature at the Literary Institute, but poetry became the main business of his life.

Avant-garde community

Printing, reading poetry at that time was allowed only with the permission of the Writers' Union, and only with works that had passed a total check for compliance with communist ideology. Therefore, Kedrov's work - avant-garde in form and independent in content - was semi-legal. Nevertheless, a circle of young poets soon formed around him, united by a common outlook on life and poetry.

Among them were: Alexei Parshchikov, Alexander Eremenko, Ilya Kutik, Alexei Khvostenko. Konstantin Kedrov, whose biography is the subject of our review, was subsequently closely associated with other prominent contemporary poets - Andrei Voznesensky and Genrikh Sapgir. He became the creator of real manifestos of new Russian poetry - these are the poems "Computer of Love" (1983), the book "Poetic Cosmos" (1989), etc. The concept that unites their work becomes clear - metametaphorism.

Meta-metaphor

This term was first introduced by Kedrov in the late 1970s. He defined it as an inversion - inversion, insideout - of the concepts of "man - space". It is connected with the metaphysical search for the poetry of the beginningcentury, when in any phenomenon of temporary mortal life, an inextricable connection with the eternal, global, universal was seen. Konstantin Kedrov - a poet - expressed it like this:

Man is the other side of the sky, The sky is the underside of man.

Kedrov-philosopher in the article "Starry Sky" (1982) introduced the concept of metacode. This is a further development of the concept of the unity of all things, a single genetic code underlying the universe. On the basis of the most modern scientific achievements, proclaiming the similarity of the principles according to which the macrocosm and the smallest elementary particles are arranged, born of a single Big Bang, he brings a philosophical basis for the poetic searches of new avant-garde artists.

Voluntary Dragonfly Conservation Society

Experimental, word-creative, extraordinary nature of Kedrov's poems found expression in the creation of an amazing poetic community, designated by the abbreviation DOOS. She first appeared in 1984 as an abstract poetic image. Subsequently, she received a decoding and meaning, initially associated with a line from I. A. Krylov’s fable “The Dragonfly and the Ant”: “Did you sing all the time? This is a matter…” The proclamation of singing as the main thing for a creative person, not connected with either political or moralistic meaning, was voiced at the top of his voice only after the collapse of the Soviet system.

DOOS has existed for more than 30 years, changing in composition. Its permanent members are Kedrov and Elena Katsyuba. At various times, Voznesensky and Sapgir, Igor Kholin and Vadim Rabinovich, KirillKovaldzhi and Alexey Khvostenko and many others. They were published in the "Journal of Poets" founded under the DOOS and in many poetry collections published under its auspices.

Freedom of thinking, search for new forms, based on word creation - palindromes, anagrams, game, combination of texts and visual images - all this is common for the poems of the poets of the DOOS group. Metametaphor organically enters into them as the basis of a single poetic view.

Dean of the Academy of Poets and Philosophers

The formation of Kedrov's creative worldview was influenced by his acquaintance with the great philosopher, a student of Pavel Florensky Alexei Fedorovich Losev. Kedrov's poetry was highly appreciated by Andrey Voznesensky, Sergey Kapitsa, Yuri Lyubimov. The poet and philosopher Kedrov is widely known all over the world. Konstantin Alexandrovich has been awarded various international prizes, there is evidence that he was a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Konstantin Kedrov, whose personal life is deliberately not advertised by him, actively responds to the most important events in the politics and art of the country. He regularly publishes in the media, participates in public actions. He is the dean of one of the oldest non-state educational institutions under the leadership of Natalia Nesterova. Its name, the Academy of Poets and Philosophers, combines two main components of the life of the Russian thinker Konstantin Alexandrovich Kedrov.