Velimir Khlebnikov

Velimir Khlebnikov (Russian: Велимир Хлебников; first name also spelled Velemir; last name also spelled Chlebnikov, Hlebnikov, Xlebnikov), pseudonym of Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov (born October 28, 1885, died June 28, 1922), was a central part of the Russian Futurist movement but whose work and influence stretches far beyond it.

Khlebnikov belonged to the most significant Russian Futurist group Hylaea (along with Aleksei Kruchenykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky, David Burliuk , and Benedikt Livshits ), but had already written many significant poems before the Futurist movement in Russia had taken shape.

Khlebnikov is known for poems such as "Incantation by Laughter", "Bobeobi Sang The Lips", “The Grasshopper” (all 1908-9), “Snake Train” (1910), the introduction to the Futurist opera "Victory over the Sun" (1913), dramatic works such as “Death’s Mistake” (1915), prose works “Ka” (1915), and the so-called ‘super-tale’ (сверхповесть) “Zangezi”, a sort of ecstatic drama written partly in invented languages of gods and birds.

In his work, Khlebnikov experimented with the Russian language, drawing upon its roots to invent huge numbers of neologisms, and finding significance in the shapes and sounds of individual letters of the Cyrillic alphabet. Along with Kruchenykh, he originated zaum. He wrote futurological essays about such things as the possible evolution of mass communication ("The Radio of the Future") and transportation and housing ("Ourselves and Our Buildings"). He described a world in which people live and travel about in mobile glass cubicles that can attach themselves to skyscraper-like frameworks, and in which all human knowledge can be disseminated to the world by radio and displayed automatically on giant book-like displays at streetcorners. He was also fascinated by Slavic mythology and numerology, and drew up long "Tables of Destiny" decomposing historical intervals and dates into functions of the numbers 2 and 3.

Khlebnikov has been regarded as "a poet's poet", a maverick genius.

External Links

• Introduction to Khlebnikov (English)

• Internet edition of Khlebnikov, Tvoreniia, Moscow, 1986 (Russian)

• Poems by and articles on Khlebnikov (Russian)

• Selected works (Russian)

• Khlebnikov House-Museum in Astrakhan (Russian)

• Studies of Khlebnikov's life and works (Russian)

References

• Khlebnikov, Velimir, The King of Time (Schmidt, Paul, trans.; Douglas, Charlotte, ed.) Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-674-50516-6