BACKWARDS FUTURISMS: ARCHAIC ELEMENTS IN RUSSIAN AND ITALIAN FUTURISM

The essay deals with the problem of representing avant-garde visions of the future (visually or poetically) on the basis of mythical narrative structures, visions of the past, recollections of primeval symbols — real or imaginable. Comparative analysis of the most representative texts, such as Mafarka le Futurist and Victory over the Sun, shows that the futurist rhetoric intentionally uses traditional or quasi-traditional topoi, thus building up new canons, functionally similar to the established ones. Taking into account the idea of contemporary by Giorgio Agamben and relying on Mircea Eliade's interpretations of myth, the paper raises the question why and to what extent futurist temporality is rooted in the past, as well as differentiates between attitudes to the past and the future of Russian and Italian Futurists.