The Russian Futurists (Mayakovsky and some forgettable Russians) once wrote:The past is too tight. The Academy and Pushkin are less intelligible than hieroglyphics.
Throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc., etc. overboard from the Ship of Modernity.
'Less intelligible than hieroglyphics' - this is a line of genius! Like Modernity I've characterised below, what this line of thought attempts to do is pierce through the 'shell as hard as steel', to pierce through the essence of the pre-planning and deadly rational modern life, through the drudgery and shitness of modern life - let's not beat around the bush. Pushkin is of course the Russian Shakespeare - all too intelligible, and all too naive. Pushkin didn't have to live with the fact of being an epigone. But is that his 'fault'? Who cares, said the Futurists.
Adolescent rebellion against the Elders. They became legendary to themselves in striving to create legends. To us they cannot be legends in the sense that Shakespeare is a legend or Chretien de Troyes is a legend or Homer is a legend. The modern curse of reflection ruined their chance - as Kierkegaard noted. Their failure to create an actual body of legend was determined by the categories of Modernity, just as they kicked out against them in attempting to make the impossible possible. Did they care?
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