Rejecting “The Sun of Cheap Appearances”: Journey Beyond “Zero” with Kručenych, Malevič, Belyj, Jakobson and Jean-Luc Godard

The present essay addresses the “zero” symbolism in the Russian avant-garde's discourse, unparalleled in other 20th century avant-gardes, that includes, besides contributions by Malevich and Kruchenykh, ideas and images created by Andrei Belyi and interpretive involvement of Roman Jakobson. This discussion leads to the illumination of the place that Kruchenykh's libretto for Victory over the Sun occupies in the international avant-garde's topos of the symbolic attack on the natural sources of light – the moon and the sun. This “onslaught on the luminaries” is expressed by what is identified in the essay as the “avant-garde gesture” of aesthetic defiance, traceable in the international avant-garde from Marinetti to Jean-Luc Godard.