Severyanin, whose real surname was Lotaryov, was born into a noble family; his father was an army officer. He had no formal higher education and published his first poems when he was only eighteen. In October 1911 Severyanin announced the foundation of Egofuturism, which, in addition to the Futurists’ strident rejection of all past culture, placed special emphasis on egoism and individualism as the vital moving force. He was an outstanding reader of poetry and during a poetry evening in Moscow he was elected “King of the Poets” in spite of the presence of Alexander Blok and Vladimir Mayakovsky. From 1913 Severyanin’s popularity was beyond description, though not long-lived. His poetry contains an extraordinary mixture of exhibitionism, a flaunting of neologisms, and an extraordinary poetic gift. There is no mistaking the poems of Severyanin for anyone else’s.
In 1918 he emigrated to Estonia where he lived in a fishing village keeping his distance from emigre politics and groups, but managing to publish from time to time in Berlin, Belgrade, Tartu, and Bucharest. He was crossed off the list of poets worthy of attention by the Paris legislators of emigre fashion but not forgotten by Russian readers in the Soviet Union.
