Images of Language in Manifestos of the Italian, Russian and American
Avant-garde

The paper traces the transformation of the manifesto genre and distinguishes
the features of the avant-garde manifesto as an interdiscursive genre
combining typological features of political and poetic texts. The article considers
images of language in the Italian, Russian and American avant-garde manifestos.
These manifestos are characterized by active metalinguistic reflection
that makes it possible to identify a range of contexts distinguishing the images
of the language in the avant-garde from the images prevailing in the classical
literature. All traditional images of language such as “language-storage”, “language
as an object with an instrumental purpose” and “language-scene, or platform”
receive nonconventional embodiment in these manifestos. Thus, the traditional
representation of the image of language as “storage” is reflected by avantgardists
as belonging to penitentiary system (prison), denounced by the presumption
of guilt (violence) or diagnosed as a disease (paralysis, neurosis).
As a recipe helping to save from the loss of language, avant-gardists offer radical
measures for its breakdown and reconstructing. Language appears as the
image of cumbersome, unlivable construction. Image of language as an object
that is to be uninstalled and cardinally restructured is realized in a concept of
Babylon that was particularly relevant at the beginning of the 20th century.
There are three basic strategies of the existing language deformation and “new”
language creation characteristic for the Italian, Russian and American avantgarde
in this context. First, it is “the second Babylonian confusion”, that occurs
in the 1910–1920s and characterized by the quest for the total desistemization
of language and its immersion in semiotic chaos. Then, in the 1930s the cosmopolitanism
in the Italian futurism aesthetics gives way to the “language autonomy”
strategy. In the course of this strategy an image of the Italian language is
formed as unique, which must be detached from foreign influences. Unlike the
formation of the image of the “unique” language in the Italian futurists manifestos,
manifestos of the Russian and American avant-garde embodied the desire
to create the “universal” language, which can be referred to as the “proto-
Babylonian integration” strategy. One more traditional image of “language as
scene” that is commonly understood as communication means and manners is
transformed in avant-garde: the emphasis is shifted from the language proficiency
to the need for active linguistic actions on the part of speaker.