Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/167

159 KHLEBEIKOV'S LIFE AND HIS WORK were inextricably intertwined. It is often difficult to distinguish between the typical features of his poetry and his habits and characteristics in everyday life.

The impression of inarticulateness created by much of Khlebnikov's poetic language was also created, as we have seen, by his speech—behaviour on a personal level. If his work seemed incomprehensible at times, then it was in this respect true to its author, who was psychologically largely incomprehensible to his friends and has been misunderstood by most literary critics ever since.

In his poetic imagination, the poet roamed freely across centuries. This was no merely literary stance—it reflected a real incapacity to accommodate himself to life in what he called


 * that world and that century into which by the grace of good providence, I have been thrown...

As Mandel'stam put it: Khlebnikov does not know what a contemporary means. He is a citizen of all history, of the whole structure of language and poetry. He is an idiotic Einstein who cannot ma e out which is nearer, a railroad bridge or the Iyor Tale.

A parallel incapacity related to the dimensions of space.