Portal:Constructed languages/Language of the month/June 2016

Zaum (зáумь) are the linguistic experiments in sound symbolism and language creation of Russian-empire Futurist poets such as Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh. Coined by Kruchenykh in 1913, the word zaum is made up of the Russian prefix за "beyond, behind" and noun ум "the mind, nous" and has been translated as "transreason", "transration" or "beyonsense" (Paul Schmidt). According to scholar Gerald Janecek, zaum can be defined as experimental poetic language characterized by indeterminacy in meaning.

Kruchenykh, in “Declaration of the Word as Such (1913),” declares zaum “a language which does not have any definite meaning, a transrational language” that “allows for fuller expression” whereas, he maintains, the common language of everyday speech “binds.” He further maintained, in “Declaration of Transrational Language (1921),” that zaum “can provide a universal poetic language, born organically, and not artificially, like Esperanto."

Examples of zaum include Kruchenykh's poem "Dyr bul shchyl", Kruchenykh's libretto for the Futurist opera Victory over the Sun with music by Mikhail Matyushin and stage design by Kazimir Malevich, and Khlebnikov's so-called "language of the birds", "language of the gods" and "language of the stars". The poetic output is perhaps comparable to that of the contemporary Dadaism but the linguistic theory or metaphysics behind zaum was entirely devoid of the gentle self-irony of that movement and in all seriousness intended to recover the sound symbolism of a lost aboriginal tongue. Find out more...