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Abstract: This article deals with the problem of intermediality of the Russian literary avant-garde, the significant aspects of which are examined by the author using the example of a widely known poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky. The intermedial approach, chosen as an analytical strategy, is determined by the very object of research – the poem “Could you?”, created by the poet during his fascination with Cubo-Futurism and requiring consideration not only from literary, but also from interdisciplinary positions. The methodological basis includes biographical, historical-functional, hermeneutical-interpretative research methods and intermedial analysis. The study reveals that since the first decades of the 20th century, Russian avant-garde poets began changing the perception of literary creativity by breaking the boundaries within art and incorporating other, primarily visual, techniques into their works. The author demonstrates how simultaneous vision, multi-perspective, and cubist principle reshape the perception of reality by poets and artists and influence the composition of the text. It is noted that in literary practice, avant-garde writers do not orient on classical fine art, but rather on abstract painting, collage, and other forms of modern art, as well as on archaic and artistic primitivism in the form of popular art, and, following the example of artists Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova, discover new and relevant aspects in these forms. As a result, the author concludes that Mayakovsky’s revolutionary approach to literature is influenced by the compositional methods and styles of painting, which he incorporates into his literary works using various visual techniques. The experience of intermedial reading of Mayakovsky’s poem shows that its lyrical plot is more than just a fictional ekphrasis; it is an aesthetic program expressed by artistic means and demonstrating the propensity of the Cubo-Futurists and the avant-garde as a whole for the synthesis of various kinds of art and for the unity between art and life and axiologically important genre-and-style dominants both in the traditional and the newly created art.

About the author(s) :

Ekaterina S. Shevchenko

Samara University (Samara, Russian Federation)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2400-6856

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 06.07.2026; date of publication: 31.10.2026

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