Collected Works of Velimir Khlebnikov, Volume III: Selected Poems

by Velimir Khlebnikov, Paul Schmidt (Translator), Ronald Vroon (Editor)

Dubbed "a Columbus of new poetic continents" because of his search for a poetics as diverse as the universe itself, Velimir Khlebnikov is the creator of some of the most extraordinary poems in the Russian language. Sometimes surreal, sometimes esoteric, but always dazzlingly innovative, the 192 poems in this volume range broadly from the lyrical to the epic. One of the founders of Russian Futurism, Khlebnikov spent his entire brief life searching for a new poetic language to express his convictions about the rhythm of history and the connection between the truth of a poet's language and the cosmic truth about the universe. His poetry is characterized by often radical experimentation with language and words, a forceful utopian vision, complex theories of time and history, and multiple poetic from an infantry commander to a Carthaginian war hero, from Cleopatra's paramour to the letters of the alphabet. Completing the Collected Works of Velimir Khlebnikov , Selected Poems gives us insight into the imagination of a remarkable artist.

Genres: Poetry, Russia

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 10, 1998

About the author

Velimir Khlebnikov (Russian: Велимир Хлебников; first name also spelled Velemir; last name also spelled Chlebnikov, Hlebnikov, Xlebnikov), pseudonym of Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov was a central part of the Russian Futurist movement, but his work and influence stretch far beyond it.

Khlebnikov belonged to the most significant Russian Futurist group Hylaea (along with Vladimir Mayakovsky, Aleksei Kruchenykh, David Burliuk, and Benedikt Livshits), but had already written many significant poems before the Futurist movement in Russia had taken shape. Among his contemporaries, he was regarded as "a poet's poet" (Mayakovsky referred to him as a "poet for producers") and a maverick genius.

Khlebnikov is known for poems such as "Incantation by Laughter", "Bobeobi Sang The Lips", “The Grasshopper” (all 1908-9), “Snake Train” (1910), the prologue to the Futurist opera Victory over the Sun (1913), dramatic works such as “Death’s Mistake” (1915), prose works “Ka” (1915), and the so-called ‘super-tale’ (сверхповесть) “Zangezi”, a sort of ecstatic drama written partly in invented languages of gods and birds.
Khlebnikov's book Zangezi (1922).

In his work, Khlebnikov experimented with the Russian language, drawing upon its roots to invent huge numbers of neologisms, and finding significance in the shapes and sounds of individual letters of the Cyrillic alphabet. Along with Kruchenykh, he originated zaum.

He wrote futurological essays about such things as the possible evolution of mass communication ("The Radio of the Future") and transportation and housing ("Ourselves and Our Buildings"). He described a world in which people live and travel about in mobile glass cubicles that can attach themselves to skyscraper-like frameworks, and in which all human knowledge can be disseminated to the world by radio and displayed automatically on giant book-like displays at streetcorners.

In his last years, Khlebnikov became fascinated by Slavic mythology and Pythagorean numerology, and drew up long "Tables of Destiny" decomposing historical intervals and dates into functions of the numbers 2 and 3.

Khlebnikov died of paralysis while a guest in the house of his friend Pyotr Miturich near Kresttsy.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 2 out of 5]

When autumn comes to turn the trees,
to stain them crimson, rust, and copper,
and chill refractions in the waterfall
predict the triumph of the coming snow,
the trunks of birch trees shimmer white
in some last fevered vision,
and winter's heralds, birds in flight,
take a long leave of summer's green.
The slanting hillsides wear a shawl
of fragile gold, falling
among the ghostly naked slopes
that mark the white ravines;
the soft blue stillness seems to call
words from the poet's mouth—

[Eadweard · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5



You still do not understand that my word
Is a god howling in a cage
----





My bag breaks and everything falls to the floor.
It occurs to me the world is a grin
that flickers on a hanged man's face
----





When horses die, they sigh
When grasses die, they shrivel
When suns die, they flare and expire
When people die, they sing songs
----





The too-often reviewed book of my face:
white, white pages, two smudged moons.
Behind me, like a dirty peewee, bed-sheet
Moscow moans
----





You were exacting, and fired with spirit
I was the Danube, you were Vienna
----





A fist in the face, that's how I kiss
Red, redder than the rough rowan-berry
splashing splashes, a shaft of red
cherry blossom bough— split lips
And the air all howls
----





I have come like a butterfly
into the hall of human life
and must spatter my dusty coat
as signature upon its bleak windows
----





The fault is yours, you gods
you made us mortal, and for that we let fly at you
the poisoned arrows of our sadness
The bow is ours
----






We will want flowers to cover graves
and graves remind us we ourselves
are flowers- fleeting things, that nothing saves

[Tatyana · Rating 4 out of 5]

"His blue eyes full of sleepless nights,
like holes in an old blanket."

"The too-often reviewed book of my face:
white, white pages, two smudged moons"

"Show me some loving, be good to me !
I am bleeding. You are my fatality.
I am nailed up to die on an old empty tree"

"it’s not that I’m empty
or especially awful—
I’m just worn out,
I’m not hot anymore.
I sit here. Warm me."

"… let the speech of someone’s singing hands
awake my own hands’ hearing."

"Days of abuse ! The dreadful cry of dreadful pain"

"I’ll angelize you when I die."

"Night’s color breeding darker blues
drifts over everything, all of it worthy of love,
and someone called out, the sound of it oppressive,
sobbing, full of the anguish of evening."

"I’m going out again today
into life, into the marketplace,
to lead a regiment of songs
against the roar of rat and race."

"I was the only physician left
in this madhouse, and I brought you
my medicinal poems."

"I am stabbed full of holes
by lances of spiritual hunger …"

[Griffin Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grow as governments destroy themselves, grow
through this book, let Planet Earth
be sovereignless at last! PRESPLANEARTH alone
will be our sovereign song.
I tell you, the universe is the scratch
of a match on the face of the calculus,
and my thoughts are a picklock at work
on a door, and behind it someone has shot himself . . .

[حسن · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading many poems in the first part titled Lyrics, but I didn’t like most of the second part from the collection Long Poems.

You boot-stomping workers in the poetry factory,
workplace where conveyor belts move thoughts,
shoulder your cargo of words:
heavy packing cases
where wedding rings
and maybe dead bodies
are stored away in sawdust;
cartons labeled "dead love"
packed with bits of scrap iron—
leftover angry ideas;
the sigh of a dying girl
as she falls back on her pillow;
the universe gleaming on the double wings
of damselflies by the lake,
bubbles of joy in their mouths—
shoulder them, ship them on underground roads— bales of rustling and noises,
of clatter and whistlings,
swarms of secret midnight sounds—
to closed eyes.
***

Genghis Khan me, you midnight plantation! Dark blue birch trees, sound in my ear!
Zarathuse me, you twilight horizons!
Mozarticulate me, dark-blue sky!
Goya, gloaming, glooming!
Rops, you midnight clouds!
But the storm of smiles vanishes
in cackling and the shock of claws
and leaves me to outface the hangman,
to brave the stillness of the night. (..)
***

I'm going out again today
into life, into the marketplace, to lead a regiment of songs
against the roar of rat and race.
***

When horses die, they sigh
When grasses die, they shrivel
When suns die, they flare and expire
When people die, they sing songs
***

I see them: Crab, Ram, Bull, and all the world
is only shell whose pearl and opalescence is my impotence.
A knock, a chirr, container of whistle and rustle,
and I realize then that waves and thought are kin. Here, there, in milky ways, women rise
through darkness drunk on drowsy prose.
On such a night, no grave is grim . . . and evening women, evening wine become a single diadem
whose baby boy I am.
***

I don’t know if Paul Schmidt’s translation is the the most faithful to Velimir’s poetic language, but when I read this poem in a different translation I was surprised. When comparing the two you can instantly notice how distinctive they are in every aspect (the syntax, the vocabulary, the tonality..)

Wind is song
Of whom and of what?
Of the sword's longing
To be the word.
People cherish the day of death
Like a favorite daisy.
Believe that the strings of the great
Are strummed by the East these days.
Perhaps we'll be given new pride
By the wizard of those shining mountains,
And I, of many souls captain,
Will wear a white snowcap of reason.
***
Paul Schmidt’s translation:

Wind whose song,
wound whose wrong?
Sweat of sword
to turn to word.
People fondle death
like a flower.
The East now plucks
the strings of power.
A shining-mountain magus
may refurbish our pride:
sheathed in reason like an iceberg, I become the people's guide!
***

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Khlebnikov was a master of invention--he invented his own language and wrote poetry in it. I found his earlier poetry (around the turn of the century) more arresting than the later work. I would recommend this volume as an entry point into Khlebnikov's ouvre.

[Ally · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not big on poetry, but truly enjoyed this.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weird and incomparable! For fans of Futurism and general weirdness. K. developed his own highly developed systems of temporal theory and cyclical history as well as concepts such as "beyonsense". His poems are virtually all astonishing.