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The King of Time
Velimir Khlebnikov, who died in 1922 at the age of thirty-six, is one of the great, untranslated Russian poets of this century. Hailed by his contemporaries and by later writers and scholars as the creative genius behind the Russian Futurist movement, Khlebnikov is famous more for his inaccessibility than for the excellence of what he actually produced. Even Russians are generally baffled by him.
Now, in a powerful American rendition, we are given access to the strange and beautiful world of Khlebnikov, "the word's wild highwayman." Trained in the natural sciences and mathematics and by temperament an artist, Khlebnikov thought he had discovered the Laws of Time and Tables of Destiny, by which enlightened humans could live in harmony with themselves and with nature. He coined the terms "Futurian" and "Presidents of Planet Earth" for himself and his friends, and he devoted all of his short, restless life to finding a language appropriate to his vision. Experiments with words became magical paths to a reinvigorated future, and produced some of the most extraordinary poems in the Russian language.
These goals and researches were variously embodied as well in stories, plays, and visionary essays in which Khlebnikov advances architectural plans for mobile cities, a new alphabet based on universal meanings of sounds, and communication by way of vast television networks. The result is poetry of startling originality, modernity, and linguistic virtuosity--a true challenge to translators and one that has been met brilliantly here by Paul Schmidt and Charlotte Douglas.
The King of Time is a representative sampling of Khlebnikov's writings, taken from the translation of his complete works prepared under the auspices of the Dia Art Foundation. It includes many pieces, among them the full text of the astounding poem-play Zangezi, never before translated. General readers will be introduced to the legendary Khlebnikov, and cognoscenti will applaud the inventiveness of the rendering.
Now, in a powerful American rendition, we are given access to the strange and beautiful world of Khlebnikov, "the word's wild highwayman." Trained in the natural sciences and mathematics and by temperament an artist, Khlebnikov thought he had discovered the Laws of Time and Tables of Destiny, by which enlightened humans could live in harmony with themselves and with nature. He coined the terms "Futurian" and "Presidents of Planet Earth" for himself and his friends, and he devoted all of his short, restless life to finding a language appropriate to his vision. Experiments with words became magical paths to a reinvigorated future, and produced some of the most extraordinary poems in the Russian language.
These goals and researches were variously embodied as well in stories, plays, and visionary essays in which Khlebnikov advances architectural plans for mobile cities, a new alphabet based on universal meanings of sounds, and communication by way of vast television networks. The result is poetry of startling originality, modernity, and linguistic virtuosity--a true challenge to translators and one that has been met brilliantly here by Paul Schmidt and Charlotte Douglas.
The King of Time is a representative sampling of Khlebnikov's writings, taken from the translation of his complete works prepared under the auspices of the Dia Art Foundation. It includes many pieces, among them the full text of the astounding poem-play Zangezi, never before translated. General readers will be introduced to the legendary Khlebnikov, and cognoscenti will applaud the inventiveness of the rendering.
270 pages, Paperback
First published October 30, 1985
About the author
Velimir Khlebnikov
110 books65 followersVelimir 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 21, 2018
I believe Velimir Khlebnikov’s brains functioned as an entire paranoid ward in some advanced mental asylum…
Majority of his poems are opaque and inaccessible but they run like cascades of words and they hypnotize the same way as the great masses of falling water.
For the absence of any analogies he was labeled as futurist but his poems is more like sculptures chiseled out of the huge rock of language. Sometimes they may seem shapeless but they always charm.
All the great poets are matchless but some great poets are more matchless than the others…
On this day of sky-blue bears
Running across quiet eyelashes,
I divine beyond the blue waters
In the cup of my eyes an order to wake.
The silver spoon of my extended eyes
Offers me a sea buoying a storm petrel;
And I see how the Russian bird flies
Through unknown lashes to the roaring sea.
Majority of his poems are opaque and inaccessible but they run like cascades of words and they hypnotize the same way as the great masses of falling water.
The naked freedom is coming
Casting flowers on our hearts
And, keeping in step, with heaven
We talk, having equal rights.
We, soldiers, will strike in a strict way
At stern shields with our hands:
Let the people become the king now,
Forever, in all lands!
Let maidens sing at the windows
Amid the songs of the ancient campaign
About the Sun’s true people – The autocratic men.
For the absence of any analogies he was labeled as futurist but his poems is more like sculptures chiseled out of the huge rock of language. Sometimes they may seem shapeless but they always charm.
All the great poets are matchless but some great poets are more matchless than the others…
February 18, 2023
Avant-garde meets alchemy. I have little sympathy for the occult idea that words or numbers are a key to all mysteries.
May 1, 2022
Voice of Consciousness Thought conquers all. Loneliness is thought's companion. You have to keep your distance from people.
Voice of Sight Pigeons fly into the garden. Pigeons fly away.
Voice of Hearing The gate is opening again.
Voice of Will I won't say a word. I am keeping my distance from people.
And from now on you remember: whenever you kill a bird, you kill something in yourself.
The bullwhip, which is a close cousin to the bolo they use further north, was something he was a real expert with; he used it the way the Kirghiz tribesmen do. He used it to hunt wolves. His trained eagles were more relentless than Borzois, and they would track the wolf out into the steppe and follow him till he was worn out and didn't care anymore what happened to him.
Then the obedient ambler would quicken his pace to a gallop, and Gali would lean down and finish off the wolf with his bullwhip.
His eyes, too openly expressive of nothing, might tell you that he was a hunter, indifferent to human society and even bored by it.
Once they had reached their destination the boat was turned upside down and during the day it served as a shelter, supported on iron rods.
We tried to stay clear of trains and kept hearing the drone of Sikorsky airplanes.
April 3, 2016
"At the end of his life he believed he had indeed found a general law that held true for many different types of phenomena, and on the basis of this discovery he even felt able to make general predictions about the nature of future events. And he saw this not as limiting our notion of human possibilities, but rather as liberating us from the blindness of fate."
December 11, 2012
high highs and low lows.
December 11, 2024
foreslår at man inkluderer apene i menneskeslekten og tildeler dem visse borgerrettigheter
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews