Konstantin Kedrov: biography, works, scientific work

He often says that every poet is a philosopher, but not necessarily every philosopher is a poet. With his work he proves the absolute truth of this statement. About who Konstantin Kedrov in his primary essence, the poet or philosopher, reason, do not come to an unambiguous conclusion, even people who know him for a very long time. Doctor of Philosophy, the inventor of the terms "metacode" and "metametaphor" expresses his views on the world order in the form of a logical and thought-out theory, whose ideas permeate all his poetic lines.

From the roots

He was born in 1942, in Rybinsk, Yaroslavl region, where his parents who worked at the local drama theater were evacuated. Father - director and actor Alexander Berdichevsky, a student of Meyerhold, mother - actress Nadezhda Yumatova. On the line of the mother, the family goes back to the noble branch of the Chelishchevs, among whom were associates of Alexander Nevsky and Dmitry Donskoy.

The cousin of the poet was an outstanding Russian artist, one of the founders of surrealism Pavel Fedorovich Chelishchev. Konstantin Kedrov even inherited several paintings by Chelishchev, which he had to sell when he was out of work.

Capabilities for word-making were noticed in Constantine from early childhood - the family remembered his attempts to rhyme at the age of 6 years. Therefore, his desire to obtain a literary education was logical: after school he entered the MSU, in 1961, at the Faculty of Journalism.

Moscow - Kazan - Moscow

From the very first poems Konstantin Kedrov wrote in his youth, it became clear his fascination with the work of the Russian futurists of the beginning of the century - V. Khlebnikov, A. Kruchenykh and others, a tendency to search for new forms in poetry, freedom in choosing themes for poetry. In 1958 in the newspaper Komsomolets of Tataria a collection of Kedrov's poems was published, among which were lines:

Each country talks about freedom,

Freedom of France orders to kill freedom of Algeria.

But does freedom have freedom?

Freedom is the homeland of the whole world.

Give me the only freedom - freedom not to kill!

Such ideas were too out of ideologically verified publications of that time, so a year after studying at Moscow State University, Kedrov was offered to move away from the capital - to Kazan University. But even there he was expelled from the faculty of journalism, allowing as an auditor to graduate from the History and Philology Department. Kedrov did not have the right to a scholarship, to a hostel, etc.

He miraculously graduated this course, and the theme of his thesis was also extraordinary: "Lobachevsky's geometry, Einstein's theory of relativity and Velimir Khlebnikov's poetry."

He returned to Moscow in 1968 and entered the graduate school of the Literary Institute, which he graduated in 1973, defending his Ph.D. thesis. From 1974 to 1986 Konstantin Kedrov worked as a teacher at the Department of Russian Literature in the Literary Institute, but poetry became the main business of his life.

Community of avant-gardists

To be published, to perform poetry reading at that time was allowed only with the permission of the Writers' Union, and only with works that had been thoroughly tested for conformity to communist ideology. Therefore, the creativity of Kedrov - avant-garde in form and independent in content - was semi-legal. Nevertheless, soon around him a circle of young poets was created, united by a common view of life and poetry.

Among them were: Alexey Parshchikov, Alexander Eremenko, Ilya Kutik, Alexey Khvostenko. Konstantin Kedrov, whose biography is the topic of our review, was later closely associated with other prominent contemporary poets - Andrei Voznesensky and Henry Sapgir. He became the creator of the real manifestoes of the new Russian poetry - the poem The Computer of Love (1983), the book Poetic Cosmos (1989), and others.

Metametaphore

This term was first introduced by Kedrov in the late 1970s. He defined it as an inversion - an eversion, an insider - of the concepts "man-space". It is associated with metaphysical search for poetry of the beginning of the century, when in any phenomenon of temporal mortal life there was seen an inseparable connection with the eternal, global, universal. Konstantin Kedrov, a poet, expressed it this way:

Man is the back of the sky,

The sky is the underside of man.

Cedar philosopher in the article "Starry Sky" (1982) introduced the concept of metacode. This is the further development of the concept of the unity of all that exists, the single genetic code underlying the universe. On the basis of the most modern scientific achievements, proclaiming the similarity of the principles on which the macrocosm and the smallest elementary particles, born by a single Big Bang, are arranged, he brings a philosophical base to the poetic quest for new avant-garde artists.

Voluntary Society for the Protection of Dragonflies

The experimental, word-making, non-ordinary character of Kedrov's poetry found expression in the creation of an amazing poetic community, designated by the abbreviation DOOS. It first appeared in 1984 as an abstract poetic image. Subsequently, she received a decipherment and meaning, originally associated with a string of Ivan Krylov's fable "Dragonfly and Ant": "Did you sing all? This is the case ... "The proclamation of singing as the main thing for a creative person, not connected with either political or moralizing meaning, was voiced at the very outset only after the collapse of the Soviet system.

The DEP, changing in composition, exists for more than 30 years. Its permanent members are Kedrov and Elena Katsyuba. At different times, he belonged to Voznesensky and Sapgir, Igor Kholin and Vadim Rabinovich, Kirill Kovalzhi and Alexei Khvostenko and many others. They were published in the "Poets' Journal", founded at the DOE, and in a variety of poetry collections published under its auspices.

Freedom of thinking, the search for new forms, based on word-making - palindromes, anagrams, games, a combination of texts and visual images - all this is common to poems of the poets of the DOOS group. Metametaphore organically enters them as the basis of a single poetic view.

Dean of the Academy of Poets and Philosophers

The formation of Kedrov's creative worldview was influenced by his acquaintance with the great philosopher, the pupil of Pavel Florensky, Alexei Fedorovich Losev. Kedrov's poetry was highly appreciated by Andrei Voznesensky, Sergey Kapitsa, Yury Lyubimov.
The poet and philosopher Kedrov is widely known throughout the world. Konstantin Alexandrovich was awarded various international prizes, there is information that he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Konstantin Kedrov, whose private life is deliberately not advertised to them, actively responds to the most important events in the country's politics and art. It is regularly published in the media, participates in public events.
He is the dean of one of the oldest non-state educational institutions under the leadership of Natalia Nesterova. In his name - the Academy of Poets and Philosophers - the two main components of the life of the Russian thinker Konstantin Aleksandrovich Kedrov were united.