Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematic Forms in Intermedium Space of the 1920-1930th (Mykhailo Ivchenko’s Short Novel «In sunny circle»)

Abstract

Visual poetics of two late
literary works written by Mykhailo Ivchenko, «Pas d’Espagne» (1928) and «In sunny circle» (1929),
is caused with pictorial heuristics. The author points out that it was coded a circle in the titles of both
literary works. Suprematic image of this circle was highly appreciated by Kazimir Malevich and
followers of his artist manner in particular Anatol Petrytsky. The theory of symbolic forms of Ernst
Cassirer serves as an anthropological preamble of conceptualized literary-pictorial correlations.
A short novel «In sunny circle» is presented in genetic and contact relation with Kazimir
Malevich’s theoretical study «From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism» (1916) and the opera
«Victory over the Sun» (1913). The common characteristic of opera and short novel texts concerns
with the victory over the sun of cultural tradition, victory over the past that is associated with
female passive principle. The formula «in sunny circle» involves several semantic levels: visual,
psychological, mysterious, and myth-poetic one.
In three gradationally structured episodes of the short novel during the experiments with x-rays
(Rentgen’s or Puliui’s rays) the descriptions of visual effects deal with the direction given by Kazimir
Malevich: from cubism and futurism to suprematism when subject world gradually disappears leaving
on the surface geometrical abstractions and silhouettes. In such optical de-materialization physicist’s
creative thinking (the main character Ivan Semenovych Kosenia) is identified with demiurge mission
of the artist-abstractionist who comprehends the forms of the things, their stratified wreckage and
synthesized combinations that are interspersed in its focus as in a kaleidoscope.