A letter from D. Burliuk to N.A. Nikiforov as an entelechic self-portrait
Abstract
The article presents an interpretation of an unpublished letter from David Burliuk to the Tambov collector N.A. Nikiforov (1964) through the prism of the concept of entelechism developed by the “father of Russian futurism”. It establishes that the text under study is a unique epistolary document in which poetic, graphic and biographical registers intersect, allowing one to perceive the letter as a synthetic self-portrait of the artist at the end of his life. The language of Burliuk’s epistolary genre, which acts as the general theoretical basis of entelechy, reflects the linguistic features of the author’s handwriting, his worldview and self-image. At the same time, the concept of entelechy serves not only as an object of analysis, but also as a methodological tool that makes it possible to reconstruct the emotional and existential state of the author and demonstrate the heuristic potential of entelechy as a humanitarian method. The authors prove that the text of Burliuk’s letter reflects the features of personal auto-correction and a meaningful reassessment of his own creative path. Replacing the gloomy metaphor of death with the image of the “the delight of wandering” reveals the content of the letter as an act of philosophical reorientation: it contains the power of a gaze directed not towards the past, but towards the internally destined completion of the creative movement towards entelechy as the actualization of life in art.