Cvetaeva's Lyricism and Kručenych's Zaum'

Aleksei Kruchenykh's much publicized return from the Caucasus to Moscow in 1921 coincided with Marina Tsvetaeva's last year there before emigrating, and with a marked shift in her poetics toward a more avant-garde poetics. Taking the poets' possible intersection in Moscow's literary world as a point of departure, this essay traces similarities in their poetic techniques and in the philosophical-aesthetic notion that undergirds them – namely, that poetic language has its roots in primary psychological and emotional experience.