PREFACE TO FRAGMENTS VI/VII OF DOSKI SUD’BY

ANDREA HACKER

This issue contains the last two fragments of Velimir Chlebnikov’s cosmo-logical text Doski Sud’by. As in the previous three instalments (Russian Literature LXIII-I, LXIV-III/IV, and LXVI-III), the Russian text faces the English translation by Aoife Gallagher and myself, which is followed by annotations in both languages to provide information on the events, people, and natural phenomena that Chlebnikov mentions. Again, the layout attempts to reflect the manuscript formatting as closely as possible, retaining line-breaks wherever feasible, representing inserted text in italics, and offering crossed out text in angular brackets. The peculiarity of this last instalment lies not only in its size (Fragment VI alone is nearly twice as long as the previous two fragments put together),1 but also in the intact, two-part structure of Fragment VII. This 35 leaf manu-script, which contains large amounts of mathematical information, verbal text and graphics, is clearly divided into two parts. The first features the heading ‘Measure Face of the World’ and the second bears the title ‘The Little Skies of the Alphabet’. The material evidence is unequivocal: this is the largest connected text among the fragments of Doski Sud’by.2 Fragment VI, on the other hand, is more in keeping with the hetero-geneity of the previous material: it contains a large variety of mathematical equations, verbal discourse and even some drawings attributed to an artist and friend of the poet, Sergej Isakov.3 There is likewise no shortage of tables

Russian Literature LXVIII (2010) I/II

0304-3479/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

www.elsevier.com/locate/ruslit

doi:10.1016/j.ruslit.2010.10.019

2 Andrea Hacker

with data and formulas. As in other files, fair copies and drafts are liberally mixed, which becomes evident from a variety of passages in the original manuscript that were edited with different colour ink. Additionally, two large portions of the manuscript are double: one version is written by Chlebnikov, the other is in an unknown hand – probably Nikolaj Stepanov’s.4 This edition follows the original. Fragment VI, ‘Ž. The Sceptre of Life’, can be divided into two major thematic blocks: the first is dedicated to death, and begins with ‘Tot. Death and executions. Deaths’.5 The second part is dedicated to life overall, and birth in particular, featuring treatises such as ‘Chains of births’ and ‘On births’. Sandwiched between the two parts on death and life is an essay titled ‘About something. How scholars live’, which correlates the temporal coor-dinates of scientists, socialists, thinkers and philosophers. In the first twenty leaves of this fragment, Chlebnikov lists the natural deaths, assassinations, and executions of historical figures. Much of the material consists of lists of dates, the number of days between related events and how these intervals may be integrated into formulas based on the number three. Following the introductory remarks of ‘How do they die?’, Chlebnikov explores the relation between numbers and death. He announces that the lives of great historical figures will serve as examples to illustrate the legitimacy of his hypotheses concerning their relation. Two essays on this issue follow: ‘Affairs on earth No. 1’, which juxtaposes executions of political revo-lutionaries and freedom fighters, and ‘No. 2 Affairs on earth’, which relates the executions of religious revolutionaries like Jan Hus and Mirza Bab. Next are computations of dates and temporal intervals relating to the deaths of socialists, assassinations of monarchist politicians and the executions of monarchs. The second half of ‘Ž. The Sceptre of Life’ is devoted to life. Chleb-nikov begins with the introductory text, ‘On births’, where he suggests that mankind’s greatest ideas materialize in regular intervals along with the thinkers that introduce them. In other words, the lives of thinkers with like ideas are mathematically predetermined. Chlebnikov offers a formula that expresses the frequency of these occurrences. The following 31 leaves in the archival file are in considerable dis-order: Leaf 25 has a text, ‘On the harmony of ancient numbers’, written in lavender ink. Leaves 26-36 are a transcript of the larger part of ‘Chains of birth – laws of Ua’ in N. Stepanov’s handwriting. Chlebnikov’s original, most of which was written on DinA5 sized paper in lavender ink, is filed im-mediately afterwards on leaves 37 through 52. The textual arrangement of these two versions differs at the beginning. The main divergence stems from a passage (leaves 37 to 39, three leaves written in black ink), which in the transcript in the unknown handwriting appears earlier than in Chlebnikov’s

Preface to Fragments VI/VII of ‘Doski Sud’by’ 3

own manuscript. However, since the latter is not paginated and the leaves are loose, it is distinctly possible that the chronology of the original is arbitrary.6 Of particular interest in this conglomerate are the last three texts, which are bundled within a folio with the title ‘Equations of the lives of Gogol’, Puškin and V. Chlebnikov’. In the first of the treatises, ‘I and Chaucer’, Chlebnikov brings the event of his own birth into relation with the births and deaths of literary figures and philosophers. The following text, ‘Gogol’s life equations’, which is written on different paper and in black ink, leads into a treatise on Gogol’s and some of Puškin’s work and how they relate to the laws of time. Chlebnikov ends with intervals between the writing of some of his own works in exponential expressions of two and three. As voluminous as ‘Ž. The Sceptre of Life’ may be, it does not offer many new concepts. The major part of the manuscript is taken up with Chlebnikov’s empirical data. He mainly relates the historical coordinates of famous men of the past (distant and recent) in formulas based on 2n for life and 3n for death. However, a few interesting ideas and aspects deserve special mention. As stated above, Chlebnikov draws up formulas governing the deaths of famous men. These are not figures chosen randomly, but men whose ideational worlds are related.7 One of the connections Chlebnikov explores is that of teachers and followers. The first part of ‘Ž. The Sceptre of Life’, ‘Tot. Death and executions. Deaths’, contains a treatise exploring the demise of eminent socialists Lassalle, ernyševskij, Marx, Engels, Mehring, Liebknecht, and Mirabeau, all of whom Chlebnikov refers to as “fathers of teachings on equality”. Observing how the laws of these deaths and the formulas that express the intervals of days between them are a mirror image of those governing the deaths of rulers, he writes of the “deadly empirical law”:

It is very similar to the law by which people of freedom execute [are quite equal is equal] people [throne occupiers] in power. And in this wa<y>, the equal sign unites tsars and anti-tsars. <T>he great source of equality is time [<illeg>] of both friends of equality and friends of inequalit<y> looks like a series of similar points<.>

As the ultimate equalizer, time, so Chlebnikov, stands even above man-made ideas on equality. Considering this passage was written with the intention of publishing it during the years of the Russian Civil War that followed the communist revolution, such a stance is remarkable. There can be no doubt that Chlebnikov sympathized with the socialist/communist cause, but seem-ingly to him it was just another historical occurrence in a much longer string of events that would eventually bring about equality among all people. If we

4 Andrea Hacker

take his writings literally, then Chlebnikov’s vision and understanding of the universe was indeed too wide in order to subscribe to one specific cause, be it religious or ideological. Another aspect of ‘Ž. The Sceptre of Life’ that deserves mention is Chlebnikov’s integration of his own biographical coordinates into his theory. Already in the piece, ‘I and Chaucer’ it becomes clear that Chlebnikov places himself on a par with Kant, Newton, Copernicus, Zwingli, Goethe, Dante and, of course, Chaucer. The last three manuscript pages of the file rank his literary output with that of Gogol’ and Puškin. In other words, Chlebnikov the discoverer of the laws of time, as well as Chlebnikov the poet exist within the harmonious system of temporal regularities. Moreover, neither his work nor his life is coincidental – they are an integral and inevitable part of the harmonious universe he describes. Due to its clear, two-part structure, Fragment VII is much easier to follow. Nevertheless, this connected text is not entirely unequivocal and poses the question whether we are dealing with one fragment or two. Each part could stand on its own and their thematic interconnection is nowhere near as obvious as, for example, the division of ‘Ž. The Sceptre of Life’ into the topics of death and life: The first part of Fragment VII, ‘Measure Face of the World’, explores temporal, worldly matters, whereas the second part, ‘The Little Skies of the Alphabet’, is devoted to the relation of astronomical and linguistic phenomena. The opening text is addressed to the “citizens of sound town” and written in the tone of a manifesto. Who these citizens are becomes clear in the very first sentence:

Number [truly] serves as the one and only clay between the artist’s fingers; From it, we order to mould the peaceful face of time in profile! The <f>ace over which mankind has long suffered, brooding on it in all its reveries of times past, it will be made from this clay of the future.8

Once more Chlebnikov picks up his idea of a unified universe as an organic whole, propagating the idea of “light”, a harmonious world (or light) system that will tie together “every point in the nearby sky and the beautiful blood globule inside us”.9 ‘Measure Face of the World’ is in many ways a summary of the theories Chlebnikov developed in the earlier fragments. The first part of the text reiterates specific temporal regularities touching on the birth and death of historical figures from the realms of politics, religion and science. However, here he offers a third coordinate which proves to be significant in the lives of those people:

Preface to Fragments VI/VII of ‘Doski Sud’by’ 5

Besides birth and death, there is a third point in life – the flourishing of activity, which undoubtedly moves in the direction –1 towards the whole of life, (the lateral axis of life)<.>

Taking Euclid’s Elements as an example, Chlebnikov writes: Thus Euclid’s writing of the book “Elements” is ascribed to the years 306-283 before the birth of Christ.

The example reiterates an important aspect of Chlebnikov’s theory, which first appeared in Fragment V, ‘Herald’: the laws of time regulate not only singular events like birth and death, but also processes that might last a moment, a year or a century. However, Chlebnikov never explains how the various lengths of events impacts on the reliability of his formulas. Although much of the information in ‘Measure Face of the World’ repeats ideas that were explored in other essays, it is important to note that Chlebnikov now tries to bind together his numerical findings in various fields. This attempt at bundling is the only relation between the first part of the fragment and the second, ‘The Little Skies of the Alphabet’, where Chlebnikov attempts to bring astronomical phenomena into a mathematical relation with sound. This second text of Fragment VII can be divided into five parts: an opening verbal text, three chapters under Roman I, II, III, and several tables. In the first part, Chlebnikov ties phonetics, particularly vowels, into his temporal theories. In his article on the semantics of vowels Ronald Vroon writes on this subject:

-

– “ ” – - ,

. 1910- . , ,

, .10 (The utopian project of developing a common theory of temporal succession – the “pure laws of time” – became the catalyst for a new endeavour, which was aimed at revealing the hidden meaning of vowels. Towards the end of the 1910s, the poet arrives at the idea that if spatial conceptions dominate the semantics of consonants, then temporal conceptions may hold the key to the meaning of vowels.)

For his mathematical manipulations Chlebnikov depends, as Vroon pointed out, on the empirical research of Lev Vladimirovi Š erba, a famous

6 Andrea Hacker

pupil of Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, which was published in Š erba’s mono-graph Russkie glasnye v ka estvennom i koli estvennom otnošenii. Here Chlebnikov found a table “v kotoroj privodjatsja ‘rtovye rezonansy’ ottenkov udarnych russkich glasnych, izmerenie v gercach ili (ispol’zuja terminologiju tech let) ‘vibration double’ (v.d.)”11 (which reflected the “oral resonances” of the nuances in the stressed Russian vowels, measured in Herz or [using the terminology of the day] in “vibration double” [v.d.].) Chlebnikov attempts to show how the numeric values of Š erba’s mea-surings are reflected in the words that contain them. He takes the common denominator of Š erba’s results, the number four and names therefore ¼ se-cond as “the day and night of sound” (“sutki zvuka”). Vroon argues the rea-son for this may be “potomu, to imenno tot otrezok vremeni naibolee to no predstavljaet srednjuju dlitel’nost’ zvu anija glasnogo pri proiznesenii v nor-mal’noj re i”12 (because this slice of time specifically represents the average length of a vowel sound in normal speech pronunciation). Chlebnikov then operates with one fourth of the original values found by Š erba. For example, 432 v.d. is the first result on Š erba’s table for the vocalic resonance of u, as in “nesu”. Chlebnikov divides that sum by four to arrive at the articulational resonance in the actual speech act, i.e. 108, which serves him as a numeric equivalent of the vowel. In the text at hand Chlebnikov unites these sounds, or rather the nu-meric values he assigned to them, in a formula with one variable. Depending on the value for the variable, the result will be the measurements of one or the other vowel. Thus for the sounds a and u:

Now the multiplier u is 108, the multiplier a = 245<.> They are united by the equation s2<:> s2 = 19 · 5 · 2n + (19 – 5)22n – 1 = z where n = 0, z = 108 and results in u, where n = +1, z = 245 and results in a<.>

Chlebnikov takes the words for “mother” in German (“Mutter”), Egyptian (“Mut”), and Russian (“mat’”) and draws conclusions on the “tonal soul” (“zvukovaja duša”) of these nations:

If in German mat’, mother, = mutter, and in ancient Egyptian mat’ <=> Mut, then for the sonic soul of Russians in the equation s2, n is equal to +1 (n = +1), but for the soul of Germans and Egyptians, the exponent n in the same equation is equal to 0 (n = 0)<.>

The passage shows quite clearly how Chlebnikov interlaces different subjects through numbers and formulas: by means of their measurability vowels can give an empirical value to words, which in turn allows him to relate them

Preface to Fragments VI/VII of ‘Doski Sud’by’ 7

mathematically to all other occurrences in time. Vroon writes: “Prežde vsego, Chlebnikovskoe issledovanie glasnych podtverždaet ego predpoloženie, to klju ko vsemu suš emu ležit v oblasti isel”13 (“Most of all, Chlebnikov’s investigations of vowels support his suggestion, that the key to everything that exists lies in the realm of numbers”). Under Roman numeral one (I), we find a relatively short text formu-lating four more equations for vowels. These equations have one variable, n; the value n assumes in order to arrive at the numeric result expressing one or the other vowel is either 1 or 2. This “chapter” assigns tonal qualities to the vowels:

We see... that s10, the more delicate sounding equation for a and i, lives the powerful life of two, but the harsh and rough s13 lives the fickle life of 3 and is motionless relative to two. From this we conclude that the coarseness of the sound<,> for example, when y replaces i<,> is created by the steady life of three, and its delicacy by the life of the power of two.

Chlebnikov then offers a function with two variables, which can express the vowels a, o, u, i, various aspects of which he then discusses. The investigation of vowels and their numeric values as expressed in the previously established formulas continues under Roman numeral II. Chlebnikov explores vocalic binary oppositions, as in the Russian verbs “vyjti”, “to exit” and “vojti”, “to enter”, suggesting that the oppositional meaning is directly linked to the numeric values of n in the equation, which ties the vowels together.14 Applying this binary thought to the Hindu word “Oum”, he arrives at the conclusion that this entire religion is reflected in the pronunciation of two vowels: to get the mathematical value associated with the vowel o, the variable in the equation has to equal 1 (n=1). To get the vowel u, n has to be zero (n=0). The consonant m represents, according to Chlebnikov, “a partition into countless parts”. Hence, he arrives at the fol-lowing binary reading of “oum”:

the sacred babble of the Hindus means<:> “I, an individual, become nothing, through infinite division and contraction.”

In a similar approach, Chlebnikov applies his idea to the first cry from a newborn, which he renders as “ua” (In English this would be written as something like “oua”). Chlebnikov concludes that this cry means something like “I arrived”. This is the same “Ua” as on the cover sheet of the second part of ‘Ž. The Sceptre of Life’, where the diphthong is juxtaposed with another, the sound for pain, written as “au”, which according to Chlebnikov’s deduction means something like “I was”.

8 Andrea Hacker

In the text following the Roman numeral III various sounds are then related to the movements of the planets. The formulas that express these relations are reduced (as usual) to exponential equations of two and three. Here it becomes clear once more that Chlebnikov perceives the universe as an organic whole. He writes:

The simplicity [surprising beauty] of the times uniting [<uniting>] stars and human speech shows that the [lightning bolt] lightning bolt of measure, the lightning bolt of measuring constantly unites all the ends of the universe, unaware of the barriers of the sciences, stacking up the values in a single great act.

Through mathematical manipulations Chlebnikov brings into relation the orbital time of the planet Saturn with what he refers to as “radium emanation” and “life of radium”, which in turn he ties together with the interval between the births of Christ and Mohammed.15 He relates all of this to the interval between the signing of the Magna Carta and the French revolution. ‘The Little Skies of the Alphabet’ closes with two tables listing inter-vals between points in time associated with crucial events in human history. Most of these events are not described, but only referred to with one word, e.g. “Japanese” and a number indicating the year when the event in question occurred. To aptly reflect the two-part structure of Fragment VII, we decided to publish it as VII-1 and VII-2. Technically, this means that the annotations will not be repeated, i.e. an entry is listed only the first time it occurs in the text of Fragment VII. The translation of this volume has posed a number of new challenges, the most pressing of which was finding an appropriate rendering for the vowels, which Chlebnikov imbues with meaning. For example, the juxtapo-sition of “Ua” and “Au” is not only important in terms of sheer sound; Chleb-nikov’s numeric interpretation would not work, if we rendered the diphthong with different or more vowels. Vice versa, an English native speaker will pronounce “au” rather differently from a Russian native speaker. We opted for losing the aural property in favour of retaining the original graphic re-presentation of the vowels and their combinations to ensure the numeric integrity of Chlebnikov’s calculations. The difficulties of graphic representation did not end with the above-mentioned diphthongs. Particularly Fragment VI had many graphic features that could not be reproduced, such as the dozens of partially illegible calcu-lations scribbled on leaf 24; we have rendered only those legible. Another example is the partial copy of the manuscript in a different handwriting. We

Preface to Fragments VI/VII of ‘Doski Sud’by’ 9

are pleased, however, that we can offer a reproduction of Isakov’s drawings, and Petr Mituri ’s last line that marked Chlebnikov’s premature death. I would like to thank Aoife Gallagher for her untiring collaboration over all these years; Natalia Gadalova for her thorough reading, and Willem Weststeijn for his patience and support in our long journey across the Khleb-nikovian universe. It was a pleasure to travel with you all.

NOTES 1 Where ‘Solitude’ (‘Odino estvo’) and ‘Herald’ (‘Glašataj’) consist res-

pectively of 17 and 14 leaves, ‘Ž. Sceptre of Life’ (Ž) is almost four times larger with 54 leaves.

2 With the exception of the first three and the last four leaves the entire fragment is written on the DinA5 sized leaves of an exercise book. These 28 leaves are held in folio (leaf 1) and are written in the same black ink. There are only a few corrections in different coloured ink and pencil.

3 For a reproduction see the first issue (Russian Literature, 2008, LXIII-I, pp. 40-41).

4 Leaves 26-36 and 53-54. 5 The word tot must have appealed to Chlebnikov as it starts with a “t”. Also,

there are two associations that come with it: firstly, “tot” is the German word for “dead”, which fits in with the rest of the title in terms of thematics. Secondly, of course, “tot” is a Russian pronoun. Chlebnikov experiments with neologisms based on this pronoun in his poem ‘Morskoj bereg’. For a discussion see Ronald Vroon, ‘“Sea shore” (“Morskoi bereg”) and the Razin constellation’, Russian Literature Triquarterly, 12, Ann Arbor, 1975, pp. 307-309.

6 The main question is whether leaves 37-39 begin a new sub-chapter (“Is islenie pjaten vremeni”, leaf 37) constituted by the text in lavender ink on leaves 40 to 46 (this is the order in Chlebnikov’s manuscript), or whether this light blue text follows ‘O soglasii drevnich isel’ (leaf 25) and the insertion in black ink follows after leaf 46 (this is the order in the transcript).

7 Women appear only rarely in the Tables of Fate. Among the historical lives Chlebnikov cites in support of his theories there are only a handful of female figures, among them Charlotte Corday, Jeanne d’Arc and Marie Antoinette. Among the many scientific breakthroughs at the turn of the century that find their way into Chlebnikov’s theory, Marie Curie’s discoveries of radioactivity and radium are not included. That this most significant discovery was of great importance to his theory Chlebnikov shows by his using Madame Curie’s

10 Andrea Hacker

results – the half time of radium appears repeatedly in his calculations. But the female scientist’s name goes unmentioned.

8 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, p. 365.

9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., p. 359. 11 Ibid., p. 357. Chlebnikov turns the linguist’s last name into “Š erbina”. The

source also appears in Fragment V, ‘Herald’. 12 Ibid., p. 360. 13 Ibid., p. 363. 14 It is extremely interesting that these values are 0 and 1, the binary system we

know from computer programming. 15 Chlebnikov is referring to the half-lives of radium isotopes, namely radium-

224, which has a half-life of 3.64 days (he writes on leaf 28: “[…] manacija radija/ dlitsja 3.85 sutok”) and radium-226, which has a half life of 1620 years (he writes on leaf 29 on the temporal interval between the births of Christ and Mohammed: “[…] prošlo 577 let ili D/3, tret’ žizni radija”).