Bruno Jasieński

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bruno Jasieński

Bruno Jasieński (Бруно Ясенский, real name Wiktor Zysman) (1901 – 1938) was a Polish and Russian poet; leader of the Polish futurist movement.

Bruno Jasieński was born Wiktor Zysman on July 17, 1901 in Klimontów near Sandomierz in southern Poland, to a Polish family of Jewish and German roots. His father, Jakub Zysman, was a local doctor and a social worker, one of the members of the local intelligentsia and elite. He converted to Protestantism, mostly to be able to marry a Catholic girl, Eufemia Maria Modzelewska, a descendent of Polish nobility, with whom he had three children: Bruno, Jerzy and Irena. Today one of the streets of Klimontów is named after him.

Little is known of Jasieński's early life, especially as he did not describe it in his later works. In 1914 his family moved to Russia, where Bruno graduated from the Mikołaj Rej secondary in Moscow. There his fascination with Igor Sivieranin's ego-futurism started, followed by lectures of works by Velimir Chlebnikov, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Alexiey Kruchonykh's Visual poems. In 1918, after Poland regained its independence, Bruno returned to Kraków, where he applied for a position in the philosophical faculty of the Jagiellonian University. However, he suspended his studies to join the volunteer unit of the Polish Army and took part in the disarming of Austrian and German soldiers. After the Polish-Soviet War (February 1919 – March 1921), he returned to University and studied at various faculties (including philosophy, law and Polish literature). He also became one of the founders of a club of futurists named Katarynka. In 1921 he published one of the first of his futurist works, Nuż w bżuchu (Nayf in the Abdomen) and, together with Stanisław Młodożeniec became known as one of the founders of the Polish Futurist movement. The same year he published a number of other works, including manifestos, leaflets, posters and all kinds of new art, formerly unknown in Poland. Also, a volume of poems entitled But w butonierce (Shoe in a Buttonhole) was published in Warsaw.

The same year he gained much fame as an enfant terrible of Polish literature and was well-received by the critics in many Polish cities, including Warsaw and Lwów, where he met other notable writers of the epoch. Among them were Marian Hemar, Tytus Czyżewski, Aleksander Wat and Anatol Stern. He also collaborated with various newspapers of the time, including the leftist Trybuna Robotnicza, Nowa Kultura and Zwrotnica. In 1922 another of his works was published, the Pieśń of głodzie (Song of Hunger), followed by 1924 Ziemia na lewo (Earth Leftwards). In 1923 he married Klara Arem, daughter of a notable merchant from Lwów.

They moved to France, where they settled in Paris in Passage Poissonniere. The couple lived a humble life, making ends meet as journalists and correspondents of various Polish newspapers. Although Bruno Jasieński did not seek contacts with the local Polonia, together with Zygmunt Modzelewski he formed an amateur theatre for the Polish worker diaspora living in Saint Denis. He also wrote numerous poems, essays and books, many of which were quite radical.

In 1929 Jasieński wrote Palę Paryż (I Burn Paris), a futurist novel describing the collapse, decay and social tensions within the city of Paris and capitalist societies in general. The novel was also a humorous reply to Paul Morand's pamphlet I Burn Moscow published shortly before. It was published in French by the leftist L'Humanité newspaper and instantly translated into Russian. The novel gained Jasieński much fame in France, but also became the main reason why he was deported from that country. Not admitted to Belgium and Luxembourg, he stayed in Frankfurt am Main for a while and - when the extradition order had been withdrawn - returned to France only to be expelled once more. In 1929 he moved to the USSR and settled in Leningrad, where he was greeted almost as a national hero. The first Russian edition of I Burn Paris was issued in 130,000 copies and sold out in... one day. The same year his son was born and Bruno became the editor in chief of Kultura mas (Culture of the Masses), a Polish-language monthly and a journalist of the Soviet Tribune. The following year he divorced Klara, allegedly because of numerous scandals she was involved in. Soon afterwards he married Klara Berzin, with whom he had a daughter.

In 1932 he was moved from the Polish division of the French Communist Party to the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and soon became a prominent memer of that organization. He moved to Moscow and was quickly promoted by the communist authorities. During that period he served at various posts in the branch unions of communist writers. He was also granted honorary citizenship of Tajikistan. By the mid-1930's he had become one of the strongest supporters of Genrikh Yagoda's purges within the writers' community. Jasieński is often mentioned as the initiator of the persecution of Isaak Babel. However, in 1937 the tide turned and Yagoda himself was arrested and Jasieński lost a powerful protector. Soon afterwards Jasieński's former wife, Klara, who had had an affair with Yagoda, was also arrested, sentenced to death and executed. Jasieński was expelled from the party, and soon afterwards he was also caught up in the purges. Sentenced to 15 years in a lager, he was executed on September 17, 1938 in Butyrka prison in Moscow.

His second wife Anna was arrested the following year and spent 17 years in various Russian concentration camps. Jasieński's son was stripped of his identity and sent to an orphanage, but managed to escape during World War II. After the war he went on to become a prominent figure in Russia's criminal underwold. He eventually discovered his true heritage though, and under a Polish name became a member of various illegal organizations in opposition to the Communist authorities. He was killed in the 1970's.

Bruno Jasieński remains one of the most notable Polish futurists and as such is still acclaimed by members of various modernist art groups as a patron. A yearly futurist Brunonalia festival held in Warsaw is named after him.