Introduction to Velimir Chlebnikov's Doski Sud'by

Russian Literature LXIII (2008) I

www.elsevier.com/locate/ruslit

INTRODUCTION TO VELIMIR CHLEBNIKOV’S DOSKI SUD’BY

ANDREA HACKER

AbstractThe introduction to Velimir Khlebnikov’s late cosmological magnum opus DoskiSud’by (Tables of Fate) traces the genesis of the work from its 1905 inception, when Khlebnikov set himself the task of finding the laws of time, to his premature death in 1922. The essay presents an overview of the archival materials and their publishing history; it considers the most pertinent questions of textual arrangement and stylistic characteristics; it introduces the fundamentals of Khlebnikov’s cosmological theory as well as his vision of the future; it also includes a discussion of editorial issues pertinent for this version of Khlebnikov’s modernist epic. Keywords: Khlebnikov; Doski Sud’by; Tables of Fate

Denn wie jede große Idee hat es eigentlich keinen Anfang, sondern ist, eben der Idee nach, immer dagewesen. Wir finden es als Idee, als Ahnung und Wunschbild schon in manchen frühen Zeitaltern vorgebildet, so zum Beispiel bei Pythagoras, dann in der Spätzeit der antiken Kultur, im hellenistisch-gnos-tischen Kreise, nicht minder bei den alten Chinesen, dann wie-der auf den Höhepunkten des arabisch-maurischen Geistes-ebens, und weiterhin führt die Spur seiner Vorgeschichte über die Scholastik und den Humanismus zu den Mathematiker-Akademien des siebzehnten und achtzehnten Jahrhunderts und

0304-3479/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.ruslit.2008.02.003

6 Andrea Hacker

bis zu den romantischen Philosophien und den Runen der ma-gischen Träume des Novalis.

(Hermann Hesse)

In October 1904, at the peak of the Russo-Japanese war, the Russian Baltic fleet embarked on a colossal journey from St. Petersburg around Africa, across the Indian Ocean, and up the Yellow Sea to meet their Japanese enemies in what became one of the bloodiest clashes in Russian maritime history: the Sea-battle at Tsushima of May 1905. 21 Russian ships sank and more than 4300 Russian sailors died in a single day. Combined with the terrible losses the Russian infantry had suffered at the battle of Mukden in Northern China two months before, the Russian campaign in the Far East was practically over. The Russian empire was defeated.1

The news of Tsushima quickly reached Russia’s western parts, where the populace reacted in disbelief and horror to the event. Among them was the young Viktor Chlebnikov. Unlike anyone else, however, Chlebnikov decided that day to find the laws of time according to which events unfold, particularly those of a belligerent nature.2

He set out on his quest immediately. For the next fifteen years he feverishly looked for historical patterns and numeric clues in the intervals be-tween events that would offer a way into the mathematical structure, which underlies, as he was convinced, all things temporal. His difficult search would take over his life and permeate all his writings, including his most famous poetic output. Eventually, in 1919, his persistence was rewarded. While he sat in a session of the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku, he found what he had been looking for: a common mathematical law that seemingly worked for all his data. He writes:

20 ,, ,

,.

(The pure laws of time were found by me in 20, when I was living in Baku, in the country of the flame, in a tall building of the marine boarding house, together with the artist Dobrokovskij.)

He immediately began to draw together all his materials.3 Now more than ever his vision informed all of his work. Chlebnikov was convinced he had found the laws of time. At the core of these compositions lie tracts in fragmentary forms, otryvki,which are bundled under the title Doski Sud’by (Tables of Fate). These frag-ments are dedicated entirely to the explication of his cosmology.

Introduction to Chlebnikov’s ‘Doski Sud’by’ 7

The intensity with which Chlebnikov pursued his self-set task becomes clear from the amount of material he produced over the years. The holdings in Moscow’s Russian State Archive of Literature and Art alone count over 1100 manuscript pages that pertain to this work. They are filled with mathematical information, prose, poetry, tables, drawings and long lists of historical events. Considering the fact that not all of Chlebnikov’s manuscripts are catalogued by or even in the holdings of RGALI’s collection and that strict delineations be-tween Chlebnikov’s works are impossible to make, the sheer volume of material relating to Doski Sud’by is immense. But not only the volume of material is overwhelming: to aptly express his alternative understanding of temporal flux and mankind’s destiny in it, Chlebnikov pushed the limits of traditional discourse. His computations and ruminations include data and information from fields as disparate as nuclear physics, the history of Korea, organic chemistry and the oscillation of vowels, to name but a few. Despite this enormous backdrop, the actual cosmological theory of Doski Sud’by is quite compact and can be summarized in two sen-tences: Chlebnikov suggests some basic laws of time according to which all events unfold in the universe. They are based on exponential expressions of the numbers two and three, where two stands for positive and three for negative occurrences. The cosmology, regardless of its actual accuracy or even probability, is formulated with an extraordinary discursive method: in Doski Sud’by Chleb-nikov creates a unique mix of numbers, graphics and text, and seamlessly changes from prose to poetry, from non-fiction to fiction. The result is a mo-dernist epic montage reminiscent of the mixed media collages of avant-garde art. In other words, Doski Sud’by reflects the boundless intellectual and artistic opportunities of its time, and it does so sometimes with humor, sometimes in the matter of fact language of science, and sometimes with the sublime ima-gery of a gifted poet. Chlebnikov was not destined to finish his task. Although he had worked tirelessly since his epiphany in 1919 and made every effort to get the work into print, he would not see it on any bookshelves. The problematic publishing situation in Moscow, his tense relations with some of his literary colleagues, his long absence from the contemporary literary scene (during the three years prior Chlebnikov had been traveling extensively within Russia as well as in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Persia and the Caucasus), and the complex nature of the piece itself seem to have made it impossible to secure a book deal. In his biographical sketch of Chlebnikov in 1922 Ronald Vroon writes the following about the poet’s troubles upon his return to the capital:

It was not long, however, before Xlebnikov discovered how difficult it could be to push one’s way into print – his principal reason for coming to Moscow. No immediate assistance was forthcoming from his old com-

8 Andrea Hacker

rades, all of whom were anxiously promoting themselves and their own favourite causes.4

The only option open to Chlebnikov was to publish parts of Doski Sud’by as individual brochures. But Chlebnikov was at this point gravely ill. He managed to review only the first fragment (‘Otryvok iz dosok sud’by’) before he died in the small village of Santalovo on June 28, 1922. After his death, his friends Petr Mituri , Sergej Isakov and A.N. Andrievskij brought about the publication of two more fragments drawn from the body of materials constituting Doski Sud’by. For many decades these three fragments were all that was available in print of Chlebnikov’s magnum opus. When scholars (re-)discovered Chlebnikov in the nineteen sixties, they reproduced various excerpts from the manuscript collection in RGALI. The bulk of Chlebnikov’s cosmology, however, remained unpublished until the summer of 2000, when the late Vasilij Babkov brought out a book titled DoskiSud’by. It included both a transcription of the first seven fragments and Bab-kov’s ruminations on the work. In this laudable, if problematic edition the Rus-sian reading public was able for the first time to gain access to Chlebnikov’s ideas, his search and the remarkable work he crafted almost eighty years prior. The English reading public has, until now, only had access to the first fragment in a translation by Paul Schmidt.5

The present new edition offers the first Russian-English critical and annotated version of Chlebnikov’s Doski Sud’by. The text is based on roughly the same corpus of manuscripts as Babkov’s version was, albeit with significant differences (see below). This introductory essay will offer an overview of Chlebnikov’s vision, before introducing the corpus of texts, its characteristics and discussing issues of editing and will be followed by a note of the translator.

Chlebnikov’s Vision

Doski Sud’by contains Chlebnikov’s theories on the numerical structure of time, which he thought he had discovered. The work elaborates a cosmology in which all phenomena subject to time unfold according to mathematical regu-larities. At the core of the theory lies the conviction that one event is followed by another related event after a mathematically determinable interval. The length of these intervals is based on exponential expressions of twos and threes. Like events are affirmed or repeated every 2n days and contrary events happen at intervals of 3n days. He writes in the fourth fragment:

.


(My task is to build for the second time a world from beams of threes and twos.)

With the discovery of these temporal patterns Chlebnikov thought he had found the key to all events and occurrences, which are subject to temporal flux. This encouraged his exploration of the most diverse subjects: chemical reac-tions, religious figures, births and deaths of mathematicians, poets and kings, planetary orbits, scientific discoveries, and political revolutions. Vja sl vVsevolodovi Ivanov describes the manuscripts of Doski Sud’by as follows:

. – . ,

, -.6

(Side by side with his compilation of columns with dates and equations of history are pages with calculations of laws governing planetary movements. He wanted the laws of time to be universal, that they unite nature and history.)

Chlebnikov reached his conclusion after exploring vast amounts of empirical data in the search for temporal regularities. He had begun his quest with an investigation into the history of man. At the beginning of the first fragment he recounts taking on the quest:

,,

..

(The first decision to seek the laws of time appeared the day after Tsushima, when news of the battle of Tsushima reached Jaroslav region,where I was living at the time in the village of Burmakino. I wanted to find justification for the deaths.)

Chlebnikov’s initial intention, therefore, was to find out the temporal law that governed military events such as the terrible maritime battle off the Russian Pacific coast in 1905. Most of his calculations, therefore, pertain to historical events. They fall into two major categories: The first are investigations of political occurrences, namely defeats, conquests, battles on land and sea, revolutions (particularly those in Russia and France), the rise and/or fall of em-pires (Roman, Greek, British, Russian, Indian, Spanish, Korean, Japanese), as well as dates pertaining to the communist and socialist movement the world

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over. The second category considers the fates of individuals. Chlebnikov draws on biographical data of luminaries throughout time. Political figures from all eras, such as heads of states, military leaders or revolutionaries, scientists from Euclid to Loba evskij, or writers including Shakespeare and Burljuk, appear in numerous calculations and treatises. There are also religious figures: Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed are the most pertinent, but we also find semi-mytho-logical personages such as Fu-Si or figures from Egyptian mythology. Chleb-nikov is particularly interested in the intervals between four cornerstones of these historical lives: Their birth, the peak of their prowess, their death and their reincarnation. Chlebnikov was convinced that great historical figures re-turned in what he called the transmigration of souls: Hammurabi, for example, was reincarnated in Mohammed, and Plato in Skovoroda.7

As encyclopedic as Chlebnikov’s historical investigations of political history and individual biographies alike may seem, they are limited – not in time, but in space. His main areas of interest are defined by his notion of “the law of the see-saw”, “zakon ka elej”, an ebb and tide of conquests between East and West.8 Accordingly, the majority of events and figures featured are drawn from Russian, European and Asian history.9 Very little is said about the history of America or Africa and virtually nothing is mentioned about the past in Central and South America or Australia. Chlebnikov may have concentrated mainly on historical dates, but the reduction of time-intervals to mathematical formulas allowed him to explore other fields of human knowledge as well: if a pattern can be detected in the occurrences of crucial historical events, then there is no reason why compar-able patterns should not likewise occur elsewhere in the phenomenal world. Consequently, Chlebnikov moved his field of investigation from history to science. He explains his shift in the first fragment:

, ,,

, ,“ ” ,

,

,,

.

(If there exist pure laws oftime, then they must rule everything, that flows in time, whether it be the soul of Gogol’,


Puškin’s Evgenij Onegin,the heavenly bodies of the solar world, shifts in the earth’s crust and the terrible change from the kingdom of the snake to the kingdom of humans, the changefrom the Devonian period to a time that marked the interference of man in the life and structure of the globe.)

But while the results of his historical investigations may have been encourag-ing, the shift was probably based on more practical concerns: historical data is very problematic and can often yield questionable results. There are instances in Doski Sud’by where dates are wrong, calculations yield intervals that are not quite correct, or Chlebnikov is forced to round up or down allowing for a “fudge factor” to meet the result his formulas dictate. In a passage in the se-cond fragment Chlebnikov tries to justify the lack of conciseness by postul-ating the irrelevance of a few hundred days in the greater scheme of things:

, , , 373 (“ ”

9 VIII 378 ) 223 + 214 + 213

. ,, , 223 .

214 213.

(The second migration of peoples, the great movement to the west, was if related to 373 [the “German danger” was on 9 VIII 378] 223 + 214 + 213 after the stream of the peoples of Pangu. It is clear that one can roughly define it, the verst of these two times in 223 days. Beside the gigantic cliff of this time the trifling matters of the additional powers 214 and 213 vanish.)

In this instance Chlebnikov would dismiss approximately 67 years (24576 days) in order to achieve the desired result. Historical data from the more distant past is even more unreliable: the emergence of semi-mythological figures such as Adam or Fu-Si can yield very interesting conceptual results when brought into mathematical relation, but operating with the exact years of birth of these figures seems hazardous if the objective is to maintain scientific credibility. As V.V. Ivanov pointed out, the considerable problems regarding the accuracy of distant historical data could explain why the vast majority of materials Chlebnikov collated between 1920 and 1921 focuses on contem-porary events, the dates of which were readily available and documented.10

12 Andrea Hacker

This explains why most of the historical data for Doski Sud’by is taken from Russia’s turbulent first two decades in the 20th century. Another problem that appears with much of Chlebnikov’s historical data is the question whether certain events can be associated with one specific day: a battle often lasts more than 24 hours, as do revolutions. Such events are in and of themselves processes that continue for several days, if not weeks. Chlebnikov is not very clear on the issue. He writes on the one hand in the fifth fragment:

, ,.

, – . , “ ”, ,

, “ ”.

(The life of every event has its midday, full of strength, its morning dawn and its evening sunset. Some events last moments, others – for centuries. And so the fundamental law lies in the fact that the rising of the event occurs under the law of “two”, and the setting of the event, its evening, is built in the country of number “three”.)

On the other hand he relies heavily on events, the duration of which is pre-sumed not to exceed one day. At the end of the first fragment, for example, he offers a reference table with “one day is a unit” (“Edinica den’”) calculated roughly (using 365 days as the length of a year) and precisely (using 365.25 days as the basis). But while this last example shows that Chlebnikov was undoubtedly aware of the problematic impact vagueness would have on his theory’s credibility, the resulting dichotomy, like many other methodological problems, remained ultimately unresolved. None of the difficulties Chlebnikov faced with historical information ap-plies to scientific data, and hence it comes as no surprise, that he steered his investigation in this direction. The acoustic measurements by the linguist Lev Vladimirovi Š erba, the orbits of planets, or atomic weights in molecular formulas all provided Chlebnikov with a numeric conciseness, which is diffi-cult to attain in historical events and which can furnish results with the desired scientific reliability. The vast majority of Chlebnikov’s scientific data is culled from the field of physics, although there are some brief forays into organic chemistry and geometry. But physics had clearly caught Chlebnikov’s imagination. That is hardly surprising: the field had seen extraordinary developments in his day. The discovery of radioactivity or the theory of relativity, for example, entirely changed the world’s understanding of the cosmos. These discoveries hinged on mathematical evidence and employed, for the most part, accurate values. The


combination is perfect for Chlebnikov’s cosmological purposes: Physics offer-ed Chlebnikov a wealth of widely accepted temporal and material coordinates which were expressed in numbers, while mathematics not only expresses but also connects the manifestation in the phenomenal world with man’s under-standing of it. Considering the problems of reliability Chlebnikov faced with historical data, his investigations into phenomena such as planetary orbits, light-waves, or radioactivity are a logical development. The results Chlebnikov harvested from these empirical investigations supported his notion of the universe as a harmonious system, which is govern-ed by a unifying temporal matrix of numerical regularities. Moreover, this system, event-interval-event, suggests the existence of a certain cosmic beat, a rhythm at the source of all existence. The engineer .N. Andrievskij, a man who spent some time with Chleb-nikov in Kharkov during the fall and winter of 1919-1920, says Chlebnikov was convinced that all entities in the universe pulsate and that all of them are related:

, , -, ,

. ,.

. -

., -

. .11

(The suns pulsate, the community of stars pulsates, atoms pulsate, as do their nuclei and electronic shells, as well as every electron that enters them. But the rhythm of our galaxy’s pulsation is so great, that it is impossible to measure it. Nobody can determine the beginning of this rhythm and witness its end. The rhythm of the electron, on the other hand, is so small that it cannot be measured with any existing devices. Once this rhythm will be determined as a result of some ingenious experiment, someone will mistakenly attribute a wave-character to the electron. Thus a theory will emerge about the rays of matter.)

The two subfields of physics that interested Chlebnikov the most are ideally suited for the investigation of rhythms: astronomy and acoustics. In astronomyhe is looking mainly at measurable data, such as quantities and temporal intervals: planetary orbits, the mass of planets, or the distance from one planet to another. The data on acoustics offer the possibility to simultaneously em-ploy his semantic interpretations of vowels and the scientific measurings, which he borrowed from Š erba.12

14 Andrea Hacker

But Chlebnikov did not merely try to find regularities within one or the other discipline: one of his main goals is to find a way to interrelate them. Much of the third fragment, for example, is based on the idea that acoustics and astronomy are connected.13 The combination of these two fields is, of course, not new. On the contrary, here perhaps more than anywhere else, Chlebnikov attaches his cosmology to a well-established tradition. The notion of harmonia mundi harks back to the ancient Greek philosophies of Plato and Pythagoras. Both philosophers not only heavily influenced Chlebnikov’s cosmology, they are also mentioned by name in Doski Sud’by as, for example, in the third fragment:

,

.;

.

(If Pythagoras heard the stars as sounds and sought the starry skies in sounds, he did so because in his consciousness the exponent could have been negative and positive. His sense of the year turned to sounds and back; for the majority of people it is only positive.)

But the shift from history to science was not the only attempt at moving the paradigm: Chlebnikov also attempted to work with amounts. The weight of planets was already mentioned, but Chlebnikov ventured further: He also at-tempted to work with population numbers, or the amount of works by specific authors. This expansion into the realms of quantities is emphasized in the third fragment:

,

,1) , 2) , 3) .

(When we dare to fly out of the chicken coops of science, We will see the same face of number like a wise, ruling spirit, his same tree, on three planes 1) time, 2) space, 3) multitudes or crowds.)


The idea for population numbers was to group humans into large categories, such as their nationality, their language or their religion and to reduce the resulting numbers, like all other numeric values he operates with, to exponen-tial expressions of 2 or 3. But operating with large quantities, such as the population of a continent, is problematic, because it is, of course, as prone to lack of precision, or even error as data derived from history books. Therefore, Chlebnikov’s calculations of quantities, such as, for example, the creative output of famous literati, are far from extensive and the experiments with the amount of poems written by Aleksandr Puškin cover only a couple of pages.14

All these stabs at different fields of knowledge and sources of data show that Chlebnikov was not content with a small number of categories. Moreover, the fact that he tried to relate acoustic and astronomical phenomena proves that the next step for his cosmology was even larger than to find the regularities within, say, history or physics: By formulating mathematical correlations be-tween intervals of various nature and from various fields of knowledge, he was building a kind of unified field theory. This idea must have come shortly before his death, because most of the calculations regarding interserial correspondences in Doski Sud’by only cover the combination of astronomy or acoustics with various phenomena: by virtue of their related mathematical expressions astronomical occurrences are con-nected to political events, individual fates, thoughts and the amounts of poems by one or the other author. Acoustics, on the other hand, are connected with political events, national identity, geometry and organic chemistry. The prominence of these correlations in the material shows that Chleb-nikov worked concurrently on finding intervals and relating them immediately to his existing data, rather than to venture into unrelated fields. A few sporadic attempts, such as trying to connect Gogol’s work to historical events, relating the circumference of the Earth with the circumference of a drop of blood, or combining radioactivity with planetary orbits and with the emergence of religious figures, suggest brief excursions fuelled by curiosity and creativity rather than deep analyses based on established and proven patterns. There are a few hints in Doski Sud’by and its related archival material that suggest where Chlebnikov would have intended to venture next, had he had the chance to do so. There are sporadic notes on topics such as, for ex-ample, electricity, the history of astronomy, finances and the worth of gold, as well as musical compositions. There are also various lists and tables of con-tents which can give clues to the plan beyond the seven fragments we have. But before examining what could have been included in Doski Sud’by, it makes sense to look at what was not elaborated at length, namely predictions. It had been the original purpose of Chlebnikov’s endeavor to foretell the future so it could be planned and war would be avoided. Doski Sud’by would not only redefine the temporal regularities in the universe’s processes, but on a

16 Andrea Hacker

more immediate level afford humanity the opportunity to foresee its own destiny and hence avoid pitfalls in the future. Chlebnikov began his quest by exploring the past. Once he found his formulas, there was no reason why they should not work beyond the present and yield results for events to come. The idea that the temporal intervals between events can be determined, because they follow repetitive patterns, implies that historical time is accessible in both directions – into the past as well as into the future. But instead of offering predictions, Chlebnikov concentrates on esta-blishing the formulas based on existing data. Only here and there he ventures into the future and predicts the date of some significant coming event. Since some of these calculations concern events in the twentieth century, the verification of their accuracy is not only inviting, but also possible. The most prominent examples can be found on the graphic scheme ‘Vzor na 1923-ij god’ (‘A Glance at the Year 1923’), variants of which can be found twice in the second, once in the fourth and once in the fifth fragment. Various aspects of this augury are important. The very fact that the graphic scheme is preserved as a lithograph shows that it was obviously in-tended for distribution, which in turn attests to Chlebnikov’s certainty as re-gards their accuracy. Moreover he predicts not distant events, but ones likely to fall within the lifespan of his contemporaries. Should he be wrong, they would doubtlessly discredit him. But earlier successful predictions probably instilled him with confidence: his 1912 anticipation of the November revolution of 1917 in his dialogue ‘U itel’ i u enik’ (‘Teacher and Student’) had brought him fame amongst his colleagues.15 A prediction made in 1920 that Soviet power would be established in Azerbaijan in January 1921 was certified by officials in the Baku Morpolitbjuro and later he used it as a kind of “proof” in a short piece on predictions called ‘Predskazanija’ (‘Auguries’).16

Nonetheless Chlebnikov proceeds very cautiously in describing future events in ‘A Glance at the Year 1923’. For the tenth of March 1923 he predicts a “great Soviet day” (“Bol’šoj Sovetskij den’”). For November 8, 1923 he pre-dicts a “shift to the right” (“Sdvig vpravo”). Neither formulation is very pre-cise and leaves a lot of room for speculation. In fact, considering the small number of predictions overall in Doski Sud’by and their laconic description we may conclude that Chlebnikov never developed a proper methodology or even vocabulary to express concisely what would happen on the future dates projected by his formulas. He was more interested in carving formulas out of regularities of past events so as to provide the tools with which the future could be conquered. The application of his findings and their implementation of the “laws of time” would come later. This becomes clear from the following, high-ly interesting document:


.

.17

(The tasks of the Presidents of Planet Earth List of capitals Transformation of measures Transformation of the alphabet The demise of languages akin to the claw on a wing The prevision of the future The calculation of work in units of heartbeats Man as a space-time point More than half of the body consists of water.)

This text represents the agenda of the “Predzemšary”, members of the “exe-cutive branch” of Chlebnikov’s utopia, the ones whose collective intellectual efforts would bring about the new world order.18 The most intriguing item in the context of this discussion is “Prevision of the Future” (“Predskazanie buduš ego”).

Doski Sud’by features altogether no more than a dozen scattered pre-dictions, including the ones on ‘A Glance at the Year 1923’. Two more can be found on a folio containing a draft of the graphic in the fourth fragment, where they are written on the lower half of the folio, but for some reason were not included in the reproduction. In hindsight the reader might wonder why – these are by far the most intriguing predictions of all:

11 XI 1917

29 I 1929

1962, 11 X

212

214

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11 XI 1917 Start of Soviet power

29 I 1929 days of Soviet power beyond the borders of Russia

trial 1962, 11 X Soviet power over the globe

212

214

Both projected dates can be associated with major events in Soviet history. January 1929, which Chlebnikov designates as the “days of Soviet power be-yond the borders of Russia”, saw Trockij’s deportation to Turkey. The second prediction is even more astounding. Chlebnikov envisions “the test case Octo-ber 11, 1962 – Soviet world power”. It was during that month that the world grappled with the Cuban missile crisis, the confrontation that brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of war. Chlebnikov’s forecasts are not an extraordinary occurrence in the mille-narian culture during the first two decades of the 20th century, not only in Russia, but all over Europe. In Russia symbolists like Belyj and Blok conjured up an apocalypse and the age of Sophia. Gurdžiev created his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in Tiflis. Visionaries and what Ulrich Linse calls so aptly “Inflationsheilige” (Inflation Saints) gave expression to the ca-tastrophes of two revolutions, a World War, Civil War and hunger.19 Chleb-nikov’s stab at prediction, however, is quite different from all the other prophe-sies of the time, because of their mathematical precision and their laconism. As with his poetic writings, he went his own way with what in comparison to other contemporary augury must appear as rational calculations based on the logic of mathematics. It is crucial to remember, though, that these calculations still came from the pen of a poet and if looked at more closely, Chlebnikov’s mathematics is, first and foremost, poetic.20 At the same time, however, it would be erroneous to simply categorize Doski Sud’by as a work of fiction or the attempts of a writer to cloak his poetic view of the universe in scientific expressions. Chlebnikov’s knowledge of mathematics as well as physics may have been that of an educated layman, but the purpose of this work was not to create merely a piece of art. He was genuinely convinced he had found an overlooked truth about time, which would eventually result in the rethinking particularly by scientists of the workings of the cosmos. But despite his conviction, he never deemed his first steps onto the “new continent of time” to be particularly sophisticated. Instead he likened his investigation to building a primitive hut out of rough wooden blocks rather than to construct the “cathedral of numbers” which he envisioned so often in Doski Sud’by (see


below). Building that monument would be the task of the “futurians” after him, who would continue his work with more developed skill and finer tools. Chlebnikov merely began the process – a circumstance he compared to primitive man lighting his first fire.

The Text and this Edition

Any new version of Chlebnikov’s writing relies to a large extent on the editing work that was done by previous scholars. This edition of Doski Sud’by is no exception: in its creation the three fragments put together first by Chlebnikov and then his friends, as well as the edition of all seven by Vasilij Babkov were indispensable. The same is true for the personal transcriptions by Evgenij Arenzon, Walter Comins-Richmond, Maksim Kiktev, and particularly Ronald Vroon, who generously shared their archival work over the years. Chleb-nikov’s manuscripts are notoriously difficult to decipher and to arrange (see below) and in many an instance these versions helped to clarify tricky pas-sages. As previously mentioned, the largest collection of Doski Sud’by manu-scripts (more than 1100 pages) is housed in Moscow’s Russian State Archive for Literature and Art (RGALI). There they are organized into two kinds of files: seven fragments, “otryvki”, (in the archival catalog each “otryvok” is called a “list”), and associated files which contain a plethora of draft materials at various stages of composition, from carefully formulated treatises on clean copies in legible handwriting to quickly written notes on “found” materials – cardboard, musical notebooks, loose sheets. None of the material has consist-ent pagination, or any other clues that clearly indicate what was supposed to go where. The first hurdle for any edition of Doski Sud’by lies therefore in suggesting a specific order in terms of chronology or logic of exposition. The second hurdle lies in withstanding the temptation of offering a definitive, “complete” version. Maintaining the looseness of the original material is cru-cial, because the fundamental premise of Doski Sud’by is Chlebnikov’s choice of genre: he specifically picked the open ended fragment, “otryvok”.21 The fragment suited this work perfectly, since the task of completing a cosmology of such dimensions was by its very nature destined to remain incomplete. He may have found encouragement for his choice in the view of the genre, which the German romantic and fellow cosmologist Novalis espoused:

Als Fragment erscheint das Unvollkommene noch am Erträglichsten – und also ist diese Form der Mittheilung dem zu empfehlen, der noch nicht im Ganzen fertig ist – und doch einzelne Merckwürdige Ansichten zu geben hat.

20 Andrea Hacker

(The unfinished seems most bearable as a fragment. Therefore this form of communication can be recommended to one who has not quite finished his work, but can already give a few strange views.) 22

Doski Sud’by corresponds well with Novalis’ notion. Chlebnikov’s attempt to write an exhaustive cosmology had to remain “unvollkommen”, even if he had lived longer than he did. Hence he could only ever offer excerpts, otryvki, as first glimpses into his understanding of the universe. If these theories of time were proven true, formulating the tremendous implications would be beyond any one person’s capability. The choice of the fragment as his genre made this implicit lack of completion, in Novalis’ words, certainly “am erträglichsten”.23

But while the seemingly random order of the material is counterpoised by Chlebnikov’s choice of genre, there remains the issue of its physical con-dition: if indeed Doski Sud’by was of the greatest importance to Chlebnikov, one might wonder why he did not make sure that his manuscripts were well taken care of? The disorder can be partially attributed to the poet’s own unstable situa-tion during the last three years of his life. He traveled constantly through a land traumatized and destroyed by revolution and Civil War, writing on the way. Paper and ink were scarce, and the poet made do with whatever material he could get. A contemporary describes Chlebnikov’s lifestyle as that of a bum:

c , c-c , , : , -

, - .24

(In the last years of his life he resembled a bum, was considered a pauper, careless, naïve: he never thought about his personal well-being, about convenience, about any kind of comfort in life.)

Another writes:

. .,

. ,.25

(He always lived badly. He was poor and without shelter. His best friends often looked the other way, unable to deal with his lack of practicality and organization. As a rule, he never had any money.)

About Chlebnikov’s manuscripts we read in the same source:


, , c -.26

(Chance editors would delve their hands into the disorganized heaps of his manuscripts and, once they pulled out a bunch, printed his poems like lists.)

Such impressions have created the legend that Chlebnikov was downright careless with his writings. However, the extreme circumstances of Chlebni-kov’s last years, his constant traveling during the Civil War, the poverty and devastation that engulfed Russia need to be considered before drawing any conclusions.27

When in the spring of 1922 Chlebnikov and Petr Mituri left Moscow for Santalovo, the latter had tried to convince the poet not to take his manuscripts. Chlebnikov, however, would not part with them. Mituri writes in his memoirs about the travel arrangements:

. . - ,, .

, 40 , .

. . 9, ,. c

. . – .

., , ,. .

, ,. [...] , -

, , .28

(Velimir agrees. We make preparations. I sell some things to buy as much food as possible, such as herring, sugar. But we have to reduce our baggage as best we can, since it is 40 verst from Borovenka station to the village of Santalovo and we have to get there fast. Velimir gathers his bag of manuscripts and carries it with me to the flat of my wife’s relatives, from where we will need to get to the station. The bag with the linen and the bag with manuscripts turn out to be very heavy. We cannot walk with such a load. We must take the linen – the women will clean it and fix it all once we get there. I suggest leaving the manuscripts in the relatives’ flat, where, of course, they will be perfectly safe until his quick return. Velimir categorically declines. He carried them in Persia, in the Caucasus and back to Moscow and he will not part with them here […] I obey his will and all his belongings, packed into two bags, come along.)

22 Andrea Hacker

Chlebnikov never returned to Moscow. After his death the manuscripts re-mained in the care of Petr Mituri . Eventually he and his second wife, Chleb-nikov’s sister Vera, would transfer the manuscripts to the editor of the five-volume set of the collected works, Nikolaj Stepanov.29 However, Doski Sud’bywas not included in this edition. Stepanov, so the story goes, never really dealt with the material and it lay dormant until Chlebnikov’s archive found its way into RGALI, where it was catalogued and stored. In view of these facts, the only point of reference in terms of order, composition and intent is the first fragment, because it is the only part of DoskiSud’by prepared for print by Chlebnikov himself. In his 1994 article on the publication history of the first three fragments Ronald Vroon writes:

The history of the publication of Otryvki iz Dosok Sud’by and the poet’s actual degree of involvement in the editing process is not so easily ascertained. The impending publication of the first fascicle was announced on the back cover of Zangezi, but it is not entirely clear when the booklet actually appeared […] Indirect evidence, however, suggests that Chlebnikov took a direct hand in editing and correcting the final printed version. It contains a number of significant emendations that are not reflected in either of the two known autographs, and the page proofs include at least two corrections which appear to have been made in the poet’s own hand.30

On the second fragment we read:

The editing and publication of the second fascicle probably was under-taken by Miturich with the assistance of A.N. Andrievsky, a young acquaintance of the poet from his Kharkov days, following Miturich’s return to Moscow. Dated December 14, 1922 […] it contains editorial notes and extrapolations that are not present in the original manuscript, as well as clear evidence of censorship.31

Mituri and Andrievskij, as archival evidence suggests, had help with the difficult task of editing and publishing these texts from Sergej Isakov.32 In a letter from Sof’ja Isakova to Mituri , dated August 12, 1922 we read: “Šlite rukopis’ kak možno skorej, nado pe atat’ Doski Sud’by” (“Send the manu-script as soon as possible, Doski Sud’by needs to be printed”).33 Also, in his letter of condolence to Vera Chlebnikova on July 7, 1922 Sergej Isakov asked her to write a biography of her brother.

[ ], a -

.34


(The requested information is important as material for a biographical sketch to be included with his work Doski Sud’by which is currently being published.)

As Vroon points out, these two posthumous publications reflect the difficulties Mituri and the others had coping with the material. The actual content and arrangement of the text in the printed version differs from that in the manuscript files, but who introduced these changes, and when, and according to what standards, remains unknown. Words and lines are omitted, line breaks are not observed, and headers are inserted where there are none in the originals. Vroon writes:

Already in the second half of 1922 Miturich had sorted through the manuscripts Chlebnikov brought with him to Santalovo, and had begun to order them into seven chapters or brochures that he hoped to edit and publish. His […] introduction to the unrealized collection sheds con-siderable light on Chlebnikov’s intentions regarding the work, and the difficulties facing Miturich and Andrievsky in deciding how to deal with it.35

Indeed, in the introduction “Ot redakcii”, which Vroon reproduces in full in his article, Mituri intimates that editing had to be done:

,.

(And I gathered the remaining material from the manuscripts, which had almost been finished for print by the author himself.)

But despite the fact that Chlebnikov had advanced quite far with the materials, Mituri felt overwhelmed by the task:

,, […] -

.36

(The current book offers not all the material that is in the remaining manuscripts, but it needs […] lengthy acquaintance before it can be shown.)

The second fragment appeared in December 1922. The third fragment finally appeared a year after Chlebnikov’s death. In a letter from Mituri to Vera Chlebnikova dated August 7, 1923 we read, “Ura, vyšel tretij list Dosok Sud’-by – Azbuka neba!”37

Vroon writes of the rest of the fragments:

24 Andrea Hacker

What remained was a body of material organized by the editors into four fascicles, making a total of seven, including the three in print. Already in the second half of 1922 Miturich had sorted through the manuscripts Khlebnikov brought with him to Santalovo, and had begun to order them into the seven chapters or brochures that he hoped to edit and publish.38

Considering this turbulent history of the material, its condition and chaotic arrangement are not surprising. But the resulting variety of shapes that DoskiSud’by could take poses a twofold problem for the editor:39 On the one hand looms the immense scope of the material, on the other hand there is no clear guideline or record of what exactly Doski Sud’by was intended to be. Chleb-nikov’s typical mix of styles and genres makes it impossible to propose a spe-cific form or exact content. Even his choice of genre is not as unequivocal as one would hope, since he seems to have begun with one intention for the work’s genre and ended up with another. In a letter to his mother written in April 1922 Chlebnikov mentions working on a book:

I’m once again in Moscow getting a book ready; I don’t know if it will appear or not; as soon as it’s printed I will be traveling through Astrakhan on my way to the Caspian: maybe everything will turn out differently, but that’s what I’m hoping. […] My book is my main con-cern, but it’s bogged down on the first sheet and isn’t getting any farther.40

To reconstruct this intended “book” is out of the question, for to do so, particularly in view of the fact that Chlebnikov himself prepared only the first fragment for print, would amount to little more than speculation. It is far safer and more realistic to consider questions about the size and contents of the existing seven fragments as they are housed by RGALI. This is what Miturihad planned, what Vasilij Babkov did for his version, and what serves as the point of departure for this edition, too.41 The decision to stick to the seven fragments was facilitated by the endless possibilities of textual combination. It seemed more reasonable to start, as it were, at the beginning, rather than to force a new composition. Considering how close a witness Mituri was of Chlebnikov’s work on Doski Sud’by, reproducing his collation is an acceptable compromise, particularly because in parallel to the printed edition in the present issue, there is a digital, hyperlinked version underway, which allows for a free combination of materials. This way the montage character of the material itself, which defies a controlled, linear organization, can be preserved. There are, however, important differences to existing editing approaches in the way the material is presented: The aim was to reproduce the manuscripts as faithfully as possible, particularly as far as their graphic layout is concerned. This called for three radical changes: firstly, Doski Sud’by is not represented as a continuous prose text. Secondly, the page breaks of the originals are preserv-


ed, in order to maintain the fragmentary character of the manuscripts. Thirdly, within any given page Chlebnikov’s original line breaks are maintained, because there is no clear delineation between prose and poetic passages.42

These changes are mainly motivated by the different modes of discourse, which Chlebnikov employs to express his vision: verbal text (prose and poe-try), mathematical text (formulas and other numerical data), and illustrations (graphics and tables). The layout of the writing itself is often helpful in distin-guishing these various modes; a table listing historical events, for example, is easy to tell apart from a poem. But such clues are not always as reliable as they seem, because frequently the modes of discourse overlap. There are cases in which mathematical formulas are woven into poems, or prose is part of a graphic. Hence it is impossible to determine an overarching modal character of Doski Sud’by. Rudol’f Duganov writes:

“ ”, -: –

, , ?43

(Reading Doski Sud’by you stop in wonderment at the impossibility of answering the simplest of questions: what is this before us – poetry or prose, philosophy or art, mathematics or mythology?)

Duganov’s experience served as a constant reminder in the creation of this edition to stick to simple questions, such as whether specific passages in this work can be classified as strictly prose, poetry or graphics, and where Chleb-nikov’s hybridization of genres and modes of discourse permeates the text. As uncomplicated as these questions may seem, they are anything but easy to answer.44 The great textual complexity of Doski Sud’by lies in the fact that numbers are not only added, but lie at the core of Chlebnikov’s discourse. All three textual categories (verbal text, mathematical text and tabular/graphic illustrations) are connected by Chlebnikov’s numeric ideas and findings. If we return to the first fragment as a point of reference, this issue of hybridization still seems manageable: it opens with two poems, “Esli ja obra-š u elove estvo v asy”45 and ‘Nu, taš isja, Sivka’. These are followed by two essays. The fragment concludes with four tables. There is little doubt about where the borders lie between prose, poetry and illustration. But as soon as the manuscript material is consulted, the delineation is anything but clear. Particularly difficult, on occasion, is the differentiation between prose and poetry. Chlebnikov often writes short lines (even on large sized paper), and although the contents may seem prosaic, these passages tend to have a strong rhythm to them, which brings them into the gray zone between free verse and rhythmic prose. Duganov writes:

26 Andrea Hacker

,,

.46

(Poems always folded easily into his prose, and not only as incrustations, but also via an uninterrupted transition from prose to poetic structure and back.)

In his discussion of the genesis of the “Sverchpovest’” Ronald Vroon also points to the difficulty of distinguishing between Chlebnikov’s modes of discourse:

[...] , [ - – A.H.] , – -

.47

(A sign for the elimination of this differentiation [between artistic and non-artistic discourse – A.H.] is the gradual approximation of poetic and prose discourse.)

There are very few passages which can be unequivocally classified as prose or poetry. ‘Trata i trud i trenie’ from the second fragment is such a case. There can be no question that it is indeed a poem. As a counterpart, the following passage from the fifth fragment may serve as an example for prose:

,

,.

(Time up to now has been assigned the sad fate of running errands for space, of being a kitchen boy in the service of space and of secretly sneaking out from the rear wing of equations, appearing from the black entrance and again disappearing.)

The rhythm, the repetitions and the line breaks do not suggest a lyrical pas-sage. And yet, Chlebnikov’s unusual use of metaphors and parallel construc-tions gives this excerpt an affinity with poetic prose, or even poetry. The principle of hybridization is employed throughout the collection. As a result of Chlebnikov’s liberal combination of various modes of discourse the borders not only between the artistic and factual, but also between the factual


and the scientific, the biographical and the theoretical, not to mention the mathematical and the verbal are virtually cancelled. This stylistic crossbreeding is particularly striking in the quasi-scientific passages, where the text is both explanatory and metaphoric. Doski Sud’by is based on empirical research, scientific truth and mathematical precision. How-ever, the style of the prose surrounding the mathematical findings is often anything but factual (in the modern scientific sense of the word). Instead, Chlebnikov employs highly metaphorical language to express his views and discoveries. An extraordinary prose example can be found in a passage from the fourth fragment:

..

.,

, ..

. “ ”.

. –

., ,

, , .,

,, .

..

(One day I sat pensively with pen in hand. The pen hung idly in the air. Suddenly along flew war and like a happy fly landed in the ink-well. Dying it crawled across the book and these are the tracks of its feet, when it crawled like a sticky little ball, all covered in ink. Such is the fate of war: War will drown in the writer’s ink-well. Formerly the coarse could always be substituted for the “delicate”. Yet war is the rough solution to the recurrent equation of time, war is a descriptive art similar to the ancient tables.

28 Andrea Hacker

Still, its numbers are written not with ink, but rather materially, with the matterof corpses, dead multitudes, razed capitals. The lesson that the roots of times are the essence of power of the nature of events is a stake from the future, driven into the present day. One and the same task of replacing an equilibrium can be accomplished both by the path of war and by the path of ink. The numbers of dead multitudes of war are not needed in the second case.)

Here the futility of war, which is a result of Chlebnikov’s discovery, finds a metaphoric expression, which in turn is (or seems to be rooted in) an auto-biographical incident. Chlebnikov weaves together various modes of discourse, which in modern scientific discourse would be incompatible. On the other hand there are innumerable passages throughout DoskiSud’by where the prose seems extremely exact, such as, for example, the fol-lowing excerpt from the last fragment:

¼ ,; ¼ “

”.

(We noted the existence of the individual unit in ¼ second, relative to which are measured all the sounds of the alphabet; ¼ second can be taken as “the unit of time for the stars of the alphabet”.)

In comparison to the previous passage this excerpt sounds rather factual. Although he introduces a collective “we”, Chlebnikov maintains a distance between himself and his topic on the one hand and the text and the reader on the other by assuming a “scientific” voice. The quoted passages illustrate the stylistic range Chlebnikov employs in the verbal discourse of Doski Sud’by. The fact that these different registers are pulled in close proximity to one another (at times even within one page) forces the reader to grapple with the resulting tension of fictional and non-fictional text. The challenge of distinguishing between prose and poetry is heightened, when mathematical text is added. How deep the interrelation of numeric and verbal expression reaches, is perhaps best illustrated by Chlebnikov’s metony-mical approach to his mathematical convictions and the centrality of three-dimensional space to his theory. This becomes particularly clear in his use of architectural and arboreal imagery.48 Both trees and buildings are part of


Chlebnikov’s central idea of three-dimensionality, not only in theory, but also on the very page he writes on. A graphic depiction of any exponential expres-sion on the two-dimensional plane of paper is always reminiscent of per-spective. This enhancement of three-dimensionality in textual representation is achieved by noting the numbers and their powers in larger and smaller-point type. Three to the power of three, to pick an example, suggests spatial depth when written down:

33

horizon

This idea of the crucial mathematical expression nn graphically representing a three-dimensional phenomenon permeates all of Doski Sud’by for the obvious reason that space and time are intimately connected in Chlebnikov’s all-en-compassing theory. He writes in the first fragment:

: ,, , , ,

, ,,

, ,.

,,

; , “ ” ,

,.

, ,,

,,

.49

(I saw them clearly: for space, mountains, the huge blocks of the base, on which, taking its ease, the bird of prey of the powers took a seat, the bird of consciousness, and time was like

30 Andrea Hacker

thin trunks of trees, twigs with flowers and live birds,flitting about on them. Space has an exponent which is cast in stone, it cannot be more than three, the foundation lives without limitation; on the other hand, time’s base is rendered “fixed” by two and three, but the exponent lives a complex life, the free play of values. Where earlier there had been isolated steppes of time, orderly polynomials suddenly sprang up, built on three and two and my consciousness was like the consciousness of a traveler, ahead of whom the jagged towers and walls of an unfamiliar town suddenly appear.)

The passage shows how the basics of Chlebnikov’s theory are metaphorically linked to architecture. There are images of organic growth relating to trees in numerous other passages, such as, for example, the following from the first fragment:

,

,.

(Time and space seem to form one and the same tree of calculation, but in one case the imaginary squirrel of calculation advances from the branches to the base, in the other, from the base to the branches.)

In the second fragment, these numeric trees, which represent space and time, eventually grow into a forest:

,, ,

.

..

, – ,

.


, , .

(Let us suppose that there is a great and sacred forest of numbers, where each number, interweaving complexly with the others, is the base number raised to a power for some numbers and the exponent for others. They live double and triple lives. These numbers grow like tree trunks and hang over like flakes of hop-plants. We enter like a curious savage, to whom everything that surrounds him is a mystery, into this sacred forest of twos and threes. In this forest interweave the trunks of different calculations and the prevailing will to a world near nothing, leaves only three numbers: one, two, three.

The difference between the architectural and the arboreal images is essential. The city in the first quotation is man’s creation, whereas the legendary forest Chlebnikov conjures up in the last quoted passage is natural.50 The question arises if his cosmology allows for a connection of the two. Apparently it does, as becomes clear from the following passage from the second fragment:

, ,!51

(The carpenter, who worked on the universe, held in his hand the operation of raising to a power!)

In other words, the universe is a construct built by a carpenter. The passage is important in two ways. First, it is one of the very few instances in the materials of Doski Sud’by where Chlebnikov may suggest the existence of the divine in his cosmology. The choice of a carpenter (rather than say an architect) as the builder of the universe triggers the association with Jesus Christ, but of course the matter is more complex and deserves to be treated at length elsewhere. Nonetheless, this quote implies that Chlebnikov’s universe was created by an agent and did not come about by chance. The second important aspect of this passage lies in its metaphorical consistency: the carpenter builds with wood, wood comes from trees, and it is trees that depict the exponential expression. Chlebnikov presented the text most crucial for the Doski Sud’by, namely the exponential equation, as three-dimensional not only conceptually, but also graphically. In his theory, as the quotes above suggest, time and space are reciprocally connected. The multidimensional character Chlebnikov assigned to time is expressed in metaphors of three-dimensionality: forests and cities.52

32 Andrea Hacker

These metaphors are not merely a poetic device to illustrate theory. Or-ganic multi-dimensionality lies at the very core of Chlebnikov’s cosmology. Doski Sud’by itself can be seen as an organic phenomenon, which does not exist outside of the world it describes. Contents, form, and Chlebnikov’s writ-ing of Doski Sud’by are all connected in time to the universe. This time is not necessarily linear, just as Doski Sud’by is not a linear treatise that begins at a specific point, progresses through chapters and arrives at a conclusion.RGALI’s corpus of manuscripts does not offer a specific beginning, or a passage that can serve as an opening chapter. Chlebnikov began the publica-tion process of this work with a fragment, which by its very nature cannot be considered as the start of a narrative in the traditional sense. This lack of linearity (two-dimensionality) on the one hand and the organic nature of the universe, the main feature of which is the connectedness of all things in a spatial concept of time, on the other hand suggest that Chlebnikov was attempting to create a three- (if not n-) dimensional text. This could shed light on some of the stylistic features of the work, such as the layered text, the repeated imagery and repetitive expressions, which are other-wise atypical for Chlebnikov. The architectural image of the hut, “izba”, for example, reoccurs throughout the manuscripts. Its significance becomes clear when looking at the following passage from the fourth fragment:

.

(The izba of the world could have been constructed by a skilful carpenter of thought only from beams of three and two.)

The hut is built by the aforementioned agent, a carpenter, who used the “trees” of twos and threes to construct this primitive dwelling. As an example for repetitive expressions in the verbal text may serve the construction “My vidim, to…” (“We see that...”), which opens eight para-graphs in the first three fragments alone. Most repetitions are, however, to be found in the numeric information. Since the entire theory is based on virtually two exponential expressions, 2n and 3n, it comes as no surprise that the ma-terials are full with different variations on these. But there are certain numbers and formulas, which occur over and over again. Chlebnikov’s central expression 365=35+34+33+32+31+30+1, for example, appears in every frag-ment. These stylistic features are by no means due to a lack of eloquence or even material on Chlebnikov’s side. If indeed Doski Sud’by was intended to be a three-dimensional construct, then repetitive features, such as reoccurring


formulas, phrasings, metaphors and the like can be understood as repetitive features in a building, such as columns or windows, or repetitive features in an organism, such as branches and leaves. Sergej Spasskij writes in his memoirs:

– “ ”, ,. -

.53

(The collected works of Chlebnikov contain “folders”, and drafts, and designs. And sometimes one work consists of such various floors.)

The “building” Spasskij alludes to was never completed. Like his experiments with the transrational language zaum’ the multidimensional text of DoskiSud’by remained an ongoing undertaking in Chlebnikov’s poetic laboratory:

“ ”, “ -” – -

. “ ,

”, -.

. .,

, , , -,

...54

(He has no “poetic housekeeping”, he has a “poetic observatory” – once Jurij Tynjanov said about him with astonishing accuracy. Chlebnikov’s circumspect critics T. Gric and N. Chardžiev rightly defined one of his creative peculiarities as follows: “He considered each of his verbal constructs not as a thing, but a process.” Meanwhile instead of introducing readers to Chlebnikov’s poetic observatory, those who published him mostly confronted us with his chaotic literary housekeeping…)

Doski Sud’by is a good example of a Chlebnikovian “slovesnaja konstrukcija kak process”. Like an organic entity it continued growing from within. The third and last category of discourse that Chlebnikov employs inDoski Sud’by are tables and graphics, which allowed him to arrange his data two-dimensionally or in various directions on the page. In terms of compositional complexity they range from simple tables, in which Chlebnikov juxtaposes data to illustrate empirical information and regu-larities, to multidirectional graphic layout of information (such as ‘A Glance at

34 Andrea Hacker

the Year 1923’) and carmina figurata.55 The borders between these different degrees of graphic complexity are as blurred as the borders between poetry and prose. Again, the main problem lies in the tension between quasi-scientific contents and motivation on the one hand and artistic representation on the other. In the case of verbal discourse or mathematical poetics the claim to aesthetic value and the resulting necessity of evaluation does not seem too far-fetched. In the case of Doski Sud’by’s graphics, however, the aesthetic moment may be less evident. Even if their contents were less abstract and more poetic in a traditional sense, they would be part of a marginal literary genre, namely figurative poetry. The issue is further complicated by the fact that the vast majority of graphics contain empirical and numeric information, such as dates and events as, for example, in this excerpt from a lengthy table in the fourth fragment:

3 20 . 1918 [ ][ ]

26 1905 17 1917

3 20 Jan. 1918 Dissolution of the constit assem

26 December 1905 17 March 1917 the tsar’s abdication

This example, which is not an isolated case, illustrates how difficult it is to consider Chlebnikov’s data-tables as literary or even poetic: the first entry abbreviates the month and the description of the event on the right hand side and does not offer the full date of the counter-event on the left hand side. In contrast, the second row features the exact opposite: a full record without abbreviations or missing data. As a result of such inconsistency many of the tabular entries are more akin to the schemata of a hurried scientist rather than the intricate composition of a poet. But just as with the abovementioned stylistic repetitions, it would be too easy to dismiss these tables as aesthetic negligence or poetic disinterest. On the contrary, the graphic representation of information has always been very important to Chlebnikov.56 In his chapter “O risunke i slove” (“About the Drawing and the Word”) Rudol’f Duganov discusses the coexistence of aes-thetic drawings and words (particularly neologisms) in Chlebnikov’s works. He writes:


, , -, […] -

, […] .57

(In contrast to Chlebnikov’s landscapes, portraits, auto-illustrations, which for the most part feel independent or paralleling the text, his poetic graphics are utterly inseparable from the text.)

A little later he refers to Chlebnikov’s graphic arrangements on the manuscript page as “poetic suprematism”, a term which seems particularly applicable to the graphic ‘Glance at the Year 1923’.58 Given the importance mimetic quality has for Chlebnikov’s writing and the central role of dates and numbers for the entire work, the poetic merit of the graphic elements in Doski Sud’by becomes obvious. The more elaborate graphics in particular belong to the rich tradition of figurative poetry.59

The countless tables with dates and formulas have their aesthetic merit, too. They offer Chlebnikov a way to compact the most critical information of his theory and represent a two-dimensional compromise between prose and strictly numerical information. Tables are an evolutionary stage in the develop-ment from verbal to numeric communication across cultures, which Chlebni-kov had envisioned for years. In an early piece, ‘Pis’mo dvum Japoncam’ (‘Letter to Two Japanese’), he writes:

., ,

,.

( ). -

. ..60

(The language of numbers will be the crowning accomplishment of the youth of Asia. We can use a number to designate every action and every image, and by allowing a number to be projected by a powerful spotlight, we can communicate with each other. In order to establish a dictionary for all Asia (for the traditions and images of all Asia) we rely on personal contact between members of the Assembly of Children of the Future. The language of numbers is especially suited to radio telegrams. Number-talk. The mind will free itself at last from the meaningless waste of its strength in everyday speech.)

36 Andrea Hacker

In the even earlier piece, ‘Predloženija’ (‘Proposals’), this idea is expanded to creating a global language based on numbers:

( !), , ( -

), . , -, ,

. -. .

. .61

(All the ideas of Planet Earth (there aren’t that many), like the houses on a street, should be designated by individual numbers, and this visual code used to communicate and to exchange ideals. Designate the speeches of Cicero, Cato, Othello, Demosthenes by numbers, and in the courts and other institutions, instead of imitation speeches that nobody needs, simply hang up a card marked with the number of an appropriate speech. This will become the first international language. This principle has already been partially introduced in legal codes. Languages will thus be left to the arts and freed from humiliating burdens. Our ears have become exhausted.)

Tables present an ideal middle ground for Chlebnikov between verbal and mathematical text. They allow him to present his laws in an efficient, clear and accessible way, in the anticipated move towards numeric communication. However, the use of tables does not only point to the future, but also to the past: by employing them as a central feature of Doski Sud’by, he undoubtedly points to the lineage of tables containing laws of the highest significance to civilization: the tablets Moses received on Mount Sinai and the tablets con-taining the legal code of Hammurabi. The latter is mentioned, for example, in the second fragment:

2250- . ..

(To the year 2250 BC belong the earthenware law tables of Hammurabi.)

Most clearly the association comes out in a document entitled ‘Poedinok s Chammurabi’, which can be found in the material published by Vladimir Markov in the Munich collection.62 Clearly Chlebnikov attempted to place his own work in a row with that of the ancient Persian ruler. Elevating his work to the level of some of the most significant docu-ments in human history may seem grandiose, but to Chlebnikov both function


as a cross-reference or rather as building blocks for his work. The laws of Moses and Hammurabi are organically and ancestrally related to Chlebnikov’s work both in terms of the general formulations and their graphic representa-tion. Doski Sud’by aspires to encompass the Babylonian and Israelite tables as much as it aspires to encompass all other occurrences in time.

A Futurian Vision

Despite the overwhelming amount of existing material and the challenges inherent to editing them, it is interesting to contemplate where Chlebnikov wanted to steer Doski Sud’by. Luckily, there are about half a dozen lists of topics and keywords placed throughout the manuscript material, which can be taken as outlines or tables of contents. They allow for a modicum of speculation on the structure, contents and extent which Doski Sud’by wassupposed to have. The most detailed and extensive of these was not written by Chlebnikov himself, but by his friend Petr Mituri . It is a fairly detailed document covering the first seven fragments, the first part of which was originally published with the third fragment.63 What follows is a transcript of the rest, covering frag-ments four through seven:

IV “ ”1) ... ( )2)3) 4) 212

5) 212 = 11 81 6) 48 7) 28)9)V1)2) “ ”3)4)5)VI1)2) 13) 24) 1053 +7695)

38 Andrea Hacker

6)7)8)9) : 12 III 1915

...10) :11) ( )12) “ ”13) VII1) , [...] ( )2) ( )3)4)5) II 6) III 7) [ ] [illegible] 8) [illegible] 9)

(IV Solitude 1) TRATA I TRUD…(poems) 2) Freedom 3) My task is to build a second time the world from the beams of threes and twos 4) 212

5) 212 = 11 years and 81 days 6) Surge of repeating waves after 48 days 7) 2nd row of governments 8) Third row of the chapter equations of governments 9) Measure of multitudes V Herald 1) Iron pen on a willow branch 2) Herald “Mending the brain” 3) There is a law of the invariability of numbers 4) Great trees of time 5) Man and surrounds VI Staff of Life 1) how do they die 2) affairs on earth 13) 2 affairs on earth 4) Sheaf of deaths 1053 +7695) Executions 6) who and what 7) Puškin and the pure laws of time 8) Equations of Gogol’s life


9) The law of time can also be traced on creative work: On 12 III 1915 I finished… 10) Chain of births: the law of ua 11) Calculation of (the spots) betrayals of time 12) Equation of the births of “the lights of mankind” 13) I and Chaucer VII Measure Number of the World 1) Once more, once more… (poems) 2) Citizens of sound town (poems) 3) Miracles of the first three 4) little skies of the alphabet 5) II 6) III little skies of the alphabet 7) Belligerent [illegible] 8) Solitude [illegible] 9) Sheet of invasions and shifts

Mituri ’s “Table of Contents” and the actual material in the files differ at various points. For the fourth fragment, for example, the poet’s friend lists under IV.1 the poem ‘Trata i trud i trenie’, but the printed version can already be found in the second fragment as it was published by Mituri himself. But despite these incongruities, which may be due to the material’s turbulent history, this document is particularly valuable due to the likelihood that it was drawn up just after Chlebnikov died and that hence indicates, like a snapshot, the point at which Chlebnikov left off his preparatory work for publication. Mituri ’s snapshot does not, however, convey the author’s notes for the further plans for Doski Sud’by. Clues concerning the latter can be drawn from outlines Chlebnikov draft-ed himself. They are filed in various places throughout the collection. Perhaps the most interesting example can be found at the beginning of the sixth frag-ment.

40 Andrea Hacker 40 Andrea Hacker


This document offers plenty of hints on contents, which are present in fragments as well as in files with preparatory drafts and notes. In terms of form it juxtaposes two possibilities of textual arrangement – on the left side a three-part structure, on the right side a more loosely connected list. Some of the entries are familiar: ‘Den’ Mertveca’ (‘Day of the Dead’), for example, refers to the first large text in the first fragment. ‘Sverstannaja kniga elove estva’ can be found in the second. ‘Gogol’, Puškin, Ja’ (‘Gogol’, Puškin, I’), ‘Roždenija, smert’’ (‘Births, Death’) and ‘Mir pervych trech isel’ (‘World of the first three numbers’) all appear in the other fragments. Then there are entries referring to texts that can be found in files with draft notes. On the right hand side of the table, for example, we find ‘666’. Chlebnikov investigates the number of the beast at length in RGALI’s file 83, where he tries on the one hand to find a mathematical expression that allows him to reduce 666 to an expression of 3n, and on the other to connect it to the history of Rome.64

There are several entries that can be associated with passages in various texts, but perhaps not with specific textual units. ‘Pascha’ (‘Easter’), for example, could refer to “Železnoe pero na vetke verby” (“Iron pen on a willow branch”) in the fifth fragment where Chlebnikov lauds Mituri ’s Easter dish, “syrnaja pascha”. Matters are a little more complex with ‘Ljubov’ i um’ (‘Love and Mind’). Here Chlebnikov’s intentions become clear through association and

42 Andrea Hacker

familiarity with his theories on the one hand and existing texts on the other. There is no passage in the material connecting the topics of love and mind, but it is not difficult to reconstruct the basic idea for this entry: There is a passage in the seventh fragment, where Chlebnikov offers the “formula for love”. It is a lengthy equation elaborating the perfect age for men and women to get married. “Mind”, on the other hand, might be connected with a mathematical expression for the speed of thought, which Chlebnikov mentions for the first time in the third fragment:

“ ” 0,1406 . = ( - )

218 ;65

(“Days and nights of thought” are equal to 0,1406 sec. = d (the time of perception of judgement or something of this kind) or the days and nights of Saturn are equal to 218 days and nights of the mind;)

‘Love and Mind’, therefore, was most likely a treatise which was supposed to relate the mathematical connection between these formulas, not unlike the combination of phenomena from astronomy and history that were mentioned earlier. Lastly, there are entries that cannot be easily attributed to specific pas-sages or texts, such as, for example, “bog” (“god”) and “duch” (“spirit”). The former could be connected to “Bogi isla” (“Gods of Numbers”), as Chleb-nikov refers to famous mathematicians in the seventh fragment. “Spirit”, on the other hand, is much more difficult to place or even associate, since there is no corresponding text in the material. It is possible that at some point Chlebnikov intended to add a deliberation on metaphysical questions. Another interesting outline can be found on the back of page 65 in RGALI’s file 89:

.i [sic]

I


II66

(LawsCathedralsFreedom BirthsDeaths of people Beginning of chronicles Centers of peoples Partition of the one into west and east. Death of the last Tsars of governments deified Tsars and their deaths Difficult cases I Path of similar points II path of points with different signs Majestic waves of planet earth)

This table is most likely an outline for the entire work. It contains most topics that can be found in the fragments. Unclear is the entry “Na alo letopisanija” (“Beginning of chronicles”), since Chlebnikov did not really explore the topic of chronicle writing other than in his formulas on “pervoljudi” (“firstpeople”), like Adam, Fu-Si et al. Also unclear is the entry “razdelenie edinogo na zapad i vostok” (“Partition of the one into west and east”), because there is no specific discussion anywhere in the material of the world’s partition into East and West. This is unfortunate, because a treatise on the beginning of time, history and historiography could afford some insight into Chlebnikov’s fundamental arguments and basic structures of his Weltanschauung, while an elaboration on why “the one”, which could very well be the world, only falls into east and west and not south and north would have been very helpful in order to under-stand more about Chlebnikov’s world view. This lack is not extraordinary: overall, Chlebnikov provides very little elucidation of the philosophical or methodological principles underlying his work. These entries here suggest that he either planned on integrating such a part, but did not manage to write anything on this topic, or did write something and the material was lost. There are three more complex outlines in the materials. All of them are located in file 88, which contains the aforementioned “Est’ osobyj mir pervych trech isel” (“There is a special world of the first three numbers”). The first one reads:

3 . . a 1 .

44 Andrea Hacker

67

(3 maj. of the inn. zone equation of the sky 1 maj. equation of Gogol’ BirthsWarsMasses Geology SoundSatellites of Stars Chemistry cities and sound)

The second one reads:

,, ,

, ,, , , 317

, ., , , ,

[co ] 68

(Alphabetvowel world, firstpeople births, equinox, life, sky, earth’s crust ruble, strings of the globe, step, 317 blood corpuscle, war in numbers. Poland, England, Equality, laws, cathedralChemistry year and day reverse action of death of leaves)


The last one reads:

[ ][ ] 3

365 317 9 11 (365+48)· (1/ )

48

[ ]

[ ]

35

, , [ ]

[ ] [ ] 191769

(NothingFirst 3 numbers stars and Years ReasoningTree of freedom Births and 365 317 grate of 9 and 11 in (365+48)· (1/ )Regulations of the world mountain Geology 48 days and governments DeathsManUniverse of multitudes celestial roles of man

46 Andrea Hacker

cathedrals cities AlphabetBirths match of the sun Satellites of the suns Children of the suns sketch of discovery Ground Fates of persons part Chronology 35 in war and fates Days and nights of stars Future Space and time England, Germany, Poland Russia Freedoms To the children of Russian freedom 1917)

These three outlines vary greatly in contents, size and the order of the respect-ive topics. Considering the fact that they were written in the same exercise book and their compositions most likely were not too long apart, a comparison makes clear how arbitrary any chronology and organization of the contents must be – regardless of whether it follows Mituri ’s table of contents or any of those Chlebnikov himself produced. The same holds true, of course, for a reconstruction. There are corresponding elements in all three, such as births (“Roždenija”) or wars (“vojny”). Then there are variants of topics that may be similar in contents, for example, “Zvuk” (Sound), “Glasnyj mir” (World of Vowels) and “Azbuka” (Alphabet). “Goroda” (Cities) and “Chram” (Cathe-dral) suggest that Chlebnikov may have intended to include a longer treatise on the abovementioned central ideas on three-dimensional construction. In addi-tion there are topics unique to each outline. In the first one we read “Geolo-gija” (Geology) and “Chimija” (Chemistry), implying a further expansion into fields of the natural sciences. The second outline has “rubl’” (Ruble) and “Struny šara” (Strings of the World). The latter could indicate plans for an expanded treatment of a brief passage in the second fragment:

. ,,

.,

,, , .

, ,.

(The ancients populated the sky with gods. The ancients said that the gods control us by events, so-called controlling events.


It is clear that these skies coincide with the operation of raising dates in time to a power and that the inhabitants of these skies, the exponents, are the gods of the ancients. It is thus possible to speak of the strings of fate, of the strings of centuries, of sound-people.

The entry “rubl’” has no corresponding treatise. There is only a poem in file 83, which brings up Russian money:

. – .

. ..

.

.70

(I owe you oh Fate Here is the money of my life. Five or one Ruble – take it. I am honest. I died. As if one could cheat in these matters. Man’s shift towards the main axis Of Miromach. Hail the black hoofs. Hail the youth that oversteps the border of mores.)

The third table of contents, which is much denser than the previous ones, has quite a few unique subjects, such as, for example, “Deti solnc” (Children of the Suns), “Buduš ee” (Future) or even (365+48)· (1/ ), a mathematical expression that has no corresponding table or development in the material. The topics listed most often in all these tables of contents are “birth”, “death” and “sky/planets”. These entries accurately reflect what Chlebnikov worked on until he died, because they correspond with the topics he covered most. The other topics mentioned in these lists allow us some insight into Chlebnikov’s plans for his Doski Sud’by¸ plans which he was unable to fully realize. Some of the entries shimmer through in certain passages without any deeper investigation; others are completely new. Chlebnikov listed them per-haps for his own future reference or as an orientation for coming generations of Budetljane who would continue his work.

48 Andrea Hacker

Conclusion

With its omissions, lack of organization, turbulent history and textual chal-lenges, Doski Sud’by is a peculiar text describing in very peculiar language the worldview of Velimir Chlebnikov, the self-styled Russian dervish. In his theory all events in time are related and therefore a war between, say, England and Spain was never a political coincidence, but a manifestation of a temporal law, which was not only calculable, but also predetermined. The same is true for the emergence of key cultural figures: Plato reoccurred in Skovoroda and Hammurabi in Mohammed. Nothing gets lost in Chlebnikov’s time and no-thing, more importantly, is left to chance. The universe is harmonious, rhyth-mical and structured – chaos theory has no place in Chlebnikov’s under-standing of how things work. If his results were accurate, the ramifications of his discovery would be immense. If the regular intervals between events were calculable, then all aspects of human understanding of the universe would have to be adjusted. Mankind’s destiny would be predictable and everything subject to the flow of time would have to be reevaluated. Chlebnikov was undoubtedly aware of this. Nevertheless, he does not offer suggestions what measures to take, should we know when the next belligerent event between two nations will take place. If his idea was to avoid war and massacres such as the sea-battle at Tsushima in 1905, then what would a circumnavigation of the next war imply for the theory? Would historical time as we know it simply cease to exist? Knowledge of future belligerent events beckons manipulation (either to avoid them, or to meet them with an advantage); what consequences would this have for the laws of time? The only answer Chlebnikov offers is in a passage from the seventh fragment, where he conjures up a utopian ideal, “svetostroj” (light system), which he directed at the inhabitants of the city of sound in an enthusiastic tone reminiscent of a manifesto:

,.

.

., , ,

, .,

. :: [,]

: .71


(We lengthen the fundamental laws with the ropes of the light-system, unite the deck of the globe and the axis of the North star.Let this ship sail from this day forward. With the rope of the light-system we unite each point of the near sky and the beautiful blood cell inside us. We, sailors of the globe, will sail, seeing constellations and its surf and the roar of the universe’s rollers, where the seagull of the future plucks at the foam. We will sink like oars into the surf of the stars, dogged oarsmen. Our laws are not needed amongst troops: New law making: they are not allowed to be destroyed, not allowed to be disobeyed: they can either be seen or not seen.)

Several aspects of this short excerpt are important. Firstly, it shows that Chlebnikov’s vision of the future was a state of revolution and new discovery, rather than an organized, orderly system. Secondly, the reason for wars, which he had set out to find in 1905, and the political future of mankind were at best part of his vision; in the last years of his life Chlebnikov expanded his in-vestigations far beyond human fate and tried to incorporate the entire universe into his vision. As a result, his goals appear at the same time more immediate and utopian: on the one hand, he does not elaborate, or even speculate beyond the state of discoveries and refinement of the laws of time. On the other hand, he foresaw an ultimate revolution instigated by his, Chlebnikov’s, discoveries, in which everything mankind knew before is toppled.

NOTES

1 The Russo-Japanese War Research Society, ed. Jeff Leser, 2002. 06. October, 2007, <http://www.russojapanesewar.com/tsushima.html>.

2 Velimir Khlebnikov, Collected Works of Velimir Khlebnikov, Volume 1. Letters and Theoretical Writings, trans. Paul Schmidt, ed. Charlotte Douglas, Cam-bridge, 1987, pp. 148, 171.

3 For a discussion of Chlebnikov’s writings in 1919 and his epiphany see Andrea Hacker, ‘To Pushkin, Freedom, and Revolution in Asia: Velimir Khlebnikov in Baku’, The Russian Review, 65, 3, 2006, pp. 439-470.

4 Ronald Vroon, Velimir Xlebnikov’s ‘Krysa’. A Commentary. Stanford Slavic Studies, 2, Stanford, 1989, p. 6.

50 Andrea Hacker

5 V silij B bk v. V limir Chl bnik v. D ski Sud’by, Moskva, 2000, and Khleb-nikov, Collected Works, Vol. 1, pp. 417-433.

6 Vja sl v Vs v l dovi Iv n v, ‘Chl bnik v i n uk ’, Puti v n zn m , 20, 1986, pp. 382-440.

7 For a detailed discussion of Chlebnikov’s ideas on reincarnation see Andrea Hacker, ‘Between H.G. Wells and Kalachakra. Velimir Khlebnikov’s Laws of Time’, Variantology, 2, Köln, 2006, pp. 281-301.

8 Barbara Lönnqvist discusses the “law of the see-saw” in her monograph, Barbara Lönnqvist, Xlebnikov and Carnival: An Analysis of the Poem ‘Poet’,Stockholm, 1979, pp. 29-32.

9 Russia is not really defined in Chlebnikov’s Weltanschauung as belonging exclusively to the East. In some equations on her past, she seems to represent the West. For a discussion of the Eurasian character of Chlebnikov’s Russia, see V.L. Skuratovskij, ‘Chlebnikov-kul’turolog’, Mir Velimira Chlebnikova. Stat’i i issledovanija 1911-1998, Moskva, 2000, p. 471-475.

10 Ivanov, ‘Chlebnikov i nauka’, p. 388. 11 .N. ndri vskij, ‘M i n ny b s dy s Chl bnik vym’, Družb n r d v, 12,

1985, pp. 237-238. 12 Lev Vladimirovi Š erba was a famous pupil of Jan Baudouin de Courtenay.

Chlebnikov relies mainly on Š erba’s monograph Russkie glasnye v ka est-vennom i koli estvennom otnošenii. Here Chlebnikov found a table in which the oral nuances of stressed Russian vowels was offered with measurings in Hertz and “vibration double” (v.d.). See Ronald Vroon, ‘ s m ntik gl snych v p tik V limira Chl bnik va’, P zija i živ pis’. Sb rnik trud v p mjati N. I. Ch rdži v , eds. M.B. M jl ch and D.V. S r b’jan v, Moskva, 2000, pp. 357-368.

13 There are at least seven more files containing extensive passages of Chleb-nikov’s ruminations and calculations on astronomy and sound, namely RGALI’s fond 527, opis’ 1, ed. chr. 75, 76, 77, 82, 84, 83 and 88.

14 These experiments find an echo in ‘Naša osnova’, where Chlebnikov takes the number of sonnets Petrarch wrote to his Laura as supporting proof for his theory that 317 is a crucial number in the numeric constitution of human existence (the Gamma Budetljanina):

,. 317 ,

318, 317.2 [...]. (Velimir Chlebnikov, Sobranie so inenij, ed.

R.V. Duganov, Moskva, 2006, Vol. 6, p. 180)

15 Chlebnikov, Sobranie so inenij, Vol. 6, p. 34. This early piece contains a few more predictions. For the year 2222, for example, Chlebnikov suggests a major battle between East and West “byt’ možet, u ernogo Madagaskara” (ibid., p. 40).

16 Ibid., p. 286.


17 Ed. chr. 89, l. 33. The excerpt was published in the fifth volume of Stepanov’s edition, which was reproduced by Vladimir Markov in the 1960s: V limir Chl bnik v, S br ni s in nij, ed. Vladimir Markov, 4 Vols., München, 1968-1972, Vol. 3, p. 265.

18 On the genesis of this society, which Chlebnikov founded roughly around 1912 see V.P. Grigor’ev, ‘Budetljanstvo i kubofuturizm (ot “Gilei” k Predzem-šaram)’, Budetljanin, Moskva, 2000, pp. 582-593. On the members and Chleb-nikov’s choices on who to invite see Petrovskij’s memoirs: Dmitrij Petrovskij, Povest’ o Chlebnikove, Moskva, 1926, pp. 8 ff. Petrovskij himself left the society in 1917, due to Chlebnikov’s random nominations of new members, which turned it into what Petrovskij calls a “Kunstkamera”. On the parallels of Chlebnikov’s society with that of H.G. Wells, see Andrea Hacker, ‘Between H.G. Wells and Kalachakra’, pp. 284-289.

19 Ulrich Linse, Barfüßige Propheten. Erlöser der zwanziger Jahre, Berlin, 1983, pp. 34 ff. Linse’s monograph offers an excellent insight into the millenarian culture of the twenties in Germany, which according to him brought forth such dissimilar figures as “Mutanten des Typus Hitler” and “Johannes Baader – der ‘Oberdada’”.

20 For a discussion of Chlebnikov’s poetic approach to mathematics, see my ‘Ma-thematical Poetics in Velimir Khlebnikov’s Doski Sud’by’, Vestnik Velimira Chlebnikova, Moskva, 2002, pp. 127-132.

21 Inspiration for this choice of genre most likely came from Chlebnikov’s reading of Novalis. See Andrea Hacker, ‘Novalis’ Fragments and Velimir Chlebnikov’s Doski Sud’by’, Russian Literature, 55, 1, 2004, pp. 217-227.

22 Josef Haslinger, Die Ästhetik des Novalis, Literatur in der Geschichte, Ge-schichte in der Literatur, 5, Königstein, 1981, p. 185.

23 Andrea Hacker, ‘Novalis’ Fragments’, p. 217. 24 I. B r z rk, ‘Vstr i s Chl bnik vym’, Zv zd , 1965, 12, p. 173. 25 S rg j Sp sskij, ‘Chl bnik v’, Lit r turnyj s vr m nnik, 1935, 12, p. 190. 26 Ibid.27 Sof’ja Starkina offers a detailed picture of Chlebnikov’s life and circumstances

during this time. See Sof’ja Starkina, Velimir Chlebnikov. Korol’ Vremeni,Sankt-Peterburg, 2005, pp. 305-388.

28 P tr Mituri , ‘V sp min nija Chl bnik v V limir i Chl bnik v j V r ’, N š N sl di , 39-40, 1997, p. 95.

29 Ibid., p. 105. According to Mituri ’s memoirs this happened upon Jurij Niko-laevi Tynjanov’s request five years after Chlebnikov’s death in the winter of 1927. Vera Chlebnikova and Petr Mituri got married in March, 1924. See S.F. B bk v, V r Chl bnik v . Živ pis’. Gr fik , Moskva, 1987, p. 40.

30 Ronald Vroon, ‘Velimir Khlebnikov’s Otryvki iz dosok sud’by: Notes on the Publication History and Three Rough Drafts’, Themes and Variations. In Honor of Lazar Fleishman, Stanford Slavic Studies, 8, Stanford, 1994, p. 327.

31 Ibid., p. 328. Vroon refers to one particular passage in the second fragment, where a sentence was omitted. He suspects that the reason for leaving it out was its religious contents. The passage in question is:

52 Andrea Hacker

,

, ,,

,

Three passages, all confined to a single page, expurgated from the printed version of the third fragment, support Vroon’s hypothesis. The exclusions are also confined to one leaf of the manuscript. Here are the relevant passages, with the censored parts given in italics:

,- .

Further down on the same list we find the following:

,. ,

.

Finally, there is the following passage:

, ,! [-]

.

32 Ibid., pp. 327-328. Vroon notes Isakov’s involvement in the editing process, but does not ascertain that it continued after Chlebnikov’s death.

33 Ed. chr. 334. 34 Ed. chr. 169. Vera Chlebnikova’s biography of her brother is dated July 19,

1922. It was published as an appendix to the first posthumous collection of Chlebnikov’s verse, Stichi, 1922, Jerusalem, 1986.

35 Vroon, ‘Otryvki’, p. 329. 36 Ibid.37 P tr Mituri , Z piski sur v g r list p chi v ng rd . Dn vniki, pis’m ,

v sp min nija, st t’i, Moskva, 1997, p. 30. The hypothesis that the third frag-ment appeared as late as 1925 may now be safely put to rest. See Vroon, ‘Otryvki’, p. 328.

38 Vroon, ‘Otryvki’, p. 329. 39 This dilemma is by no means confined to Doski Sud’by. Many Chlebnikov

specialists have attempted to reconstruct Chlebnikov’s works over the years and all major collections of his works, Stepanov’s Sobranie so inenij, Grigor’ev’s and Parnis’ Tvorenija, as well as Duganov’s six volume set, grapple with citing variants and drafts. See, for example, Duganov, Velimir Chlebnikov, pp. 335-


340, Ronald Vroon’s ‘Velimir Khlebnikov’s ‘Razin: Two Trinities’: A recon-struction’, Slavic Review, 39, 1, 1980, pp. 70-85 or Henryk Baran’s ‘A New Look at Xlebnikov’s Poem “O, ervi zemljanye…”: Contexts and Sources’, Readings in Russian Modernism. To Honor Vladimir Fedorovich Markov, eds. R. Vroon and J. Malmstad, Moskva, 1993, p. 11.

40 Velimir Khlebnikov, Collected Works, p. 138. Charlotte Douglas suggests in a footnote that the book in question is Zangezi. However, Zangezi was at that point already in print. The work in question is much more likely to be Doski Sud’by.

41 RGALI’s catalogue lists eight fragments, the last one as file 76 under the title “Doski Sud’by – l. VIII ‘Malye nebesa azbuki’ Avtograf v tetradi /1920-22/”. It contains a total of 14 manuscript pages. A closer look reveals these pages are drafts and notes for a large amount of text filed in file 75, which holds the seventh fragment, “Mera Lia Mira”. Still, the bibliographer who did the cata-loguing might intuitively have hit on the truth: “Malye nebesa azbuki”, as it is filed in file 75, could stand on its own. Ultimately, the question of how many fragments there should have been is extremely difficult to ascertain and will most likely remain unsolved. The late Maksim Kiktev, a renowned Arabist at Moscow State University and an established Chlebnikov specialist who has dealt intensely with the Doski Sud’by, was of the opinion that there might be ten or a hundred fragments. The point of the chosen genre, he said, was that it was open-ended not unlike an oral epic.

42 In the digital version, the premise goes even further: it includes passages that were inserted or crossed out by the author.

43 R.V. Dug n v, V limir Chl bnik v. Prir d tv r stv , Moskva, 1990, p. 300. 44 In his monograph on the life and work of Chlebnikov Raymond Cooke also

pointed to this dilemma. See Raymond Cooke, Velimir Khlebnikov. A Critical Study, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 161 ff.

45 The poem was published separately in the lithographic edition of Vestnik Velimira Chlebnikova, 1, Moskva, 1922.

46 Duganov, Velimir Chlebnikov, p. 306. 47 Ronald Vroon, ‘G n zis z mysl sv rchp v sti “Z ng zi”. K v pr su b

v ljucii liri sk g “Ja” u Chl bnik v ’, V stnik obš stv V limir Chl b-nik v , 1, Moskva, 1996, p. 149.

48 The importance of architecture is reflected in the opening sentences of Zangezi:“Povest’ stroitsja iz slov kak stroitel’noj edinicy zdanija. / Edinicej služit malyj kamen’ ravnovelikich slov” (Chlebnikov, Sobranie s in nij, Vol. 5, p. 306).

49 Another extended passage elaborating the idea of building a town with numbers can also be found in the fourth fragment.

50 These three-dimensional images appear also in Chlebnikov’s poem ‘Kto on, Voronichin stoletij’, as well as in both variants of ‘Derevo’. The architectural metaphor dominates in the former, whereas the arboreal dominates in the latter. See V limir Chl bnik v, S br ni s in nij, ed. V. Markov, Vol. 2, pp. 224-225, Vol. 3, pp. 103-106, Vol. 4, pp. 193, 417-418.

54 Andrea Hacker

51 There are several passages in the second fragment featuring a carpenter. A related passage appears also in Zangezi: “Chorošij plotnik asov, / Ja razobral asy elove estva, [...]” (Chlebnikov, S br ni s in nij, Vol. 5, p. 342).

52 Nik l j s v, ‘V limir Chl bnik v’, S br ni s in nij, 5 Vols., Moskva, 1965, 5, pp. 549-550. Aseev points to Chlebnikov’s visions of architecture in the future, as formulated in ‘My i doma’ as proof for the poet’s closeness to the developments in contemporary culture.

53 Sp sskij, p. 198. 54 l ks ndr L jt s, ‘Chl bnik v – k kim n byl...’, N vyj mir, 1973, 1, p. 232. 55 In file 80 is an elaborate manuscript page, where Chlebnikov’s layout

resembles a portrait of Aleksandr Puškin. See Andrea Hacker, ‘To Pushkin’. 56 For his zaum’, for example, the meaning of sounds was underlined by their

graphic representation. In his article on the world – skull paradigm in Chleb-nikov, Aage A. Hansen-Löve points out the graphic relevance of the Cyrillic letter “ ”, as in “ erep” (skull) or “ aša” (cup). In Chlebnikov’s semantization of consonants “ ” stands for “containment”, in other words, “a hollow form”, which the grapheme itself resembles. See Aage A. Hansen-Löve, ‘Das “Welt Schädel” Paradigma’, Velimir Chlebnikov (1885-1922). Myth and Reality. Amsterdam Symposium on the Centenary of Velimir Chlebnikov, ed. Willem G. Weststeijn, Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics, 8, Amsterdam, 1986, pp. 158-159.

57 Duganov, Velimir Chlebnikov, p. 170. 58 Ibid., p. 171. 59 For a thorough discussion and methodology see Ulrich Ernst, Carmen Fi-

guratum. Geschichte des Figurengedichts von den antiken Ursprüngen bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters, Köln, 1991.

60 Chlebnikov, Sobranie s in nij, Vol. 6, p. 256. 61 Ibid., p. 241. 62 This two-page work features two tables in which Chlebnikov juxtaposes the

births of historical figures. At the top of the first table the document is described as a “svod zakonov, dlja kotorych ne nužno pravitel’stv i sudej i cepej, no dostato no zvezd naverchu”. Here Chlebnikov offers “pary podob-nych ljudej, roždennych erez 365 let”, based undoubtedly on his idea of the transmigration of souls. The people he chose are mainly religious and cultural key figures from antiquity, ranging from Buddha to Sophocles, from Skovoroda to Raphael. The second half of the document is described as “Edinstvo ladov, vremjamerie. Po obrazcu i podobiju”. Chlebnikov enlists formulas for regularly occurring, related events. See Chl bnik v, S br ni s in nij, ed. V. Markov, Vol. 3, pp. 460-461.

63 Ibid., p. 521. 64 Ed. chr. 83, l. 12, 18, 19, 24-27, 29. Another place where Chlebnikov discusses

the number of the beast is in the essay ‘V mire cifr’ (Chlebnikov, Sobranie s in nij, p. 185). File 83, which has a cover sheet called “Moj Koran”, also contains a fair amount of material on the history of Russia, Germany and Poland. There are also calculations and events on the history of India, Ancient


Greece, and Japan in this file. England’s history, however, is investigated at length in file 77.

65 The nonchalance of “or something to that effect” (“ili to-to v tom rode”) with which Chlebnikov describes the nature of his empirical evidence, is typical for his chronic lack of cross-reference – he does not offer any clue as to where he found this information, or the exact nature of the experiment, which yielded this number.

66 Ed. chr. 89, ob. l. 65. 67 Ed. chr. 88, ob. l. 6. 68 Ed. chr. 88, ob. l. 7. 69 Ed. chr. 88, ob. l. 9. The text is very difficult to decipher, there is practically no

line space between the entries, some of which are underlined as indicated. 70 Ed. chr. 83, l. 3. 71 Ronald Vroon reproduced this text for his article on the semantics of vowels.

See Vroon, ‘O semantike’, p. 365.

Documents

Introduction to Velimir Chlebnikov's Doski Sud'by