Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/169

161 :foresee everything, and the assumptions which he makes are endowed in his eyes with a richness in possible deductions which our adult logic could never allow them to possess.

It is not difficult to see that Khlebnikov's "infantilism" was not merely an affectation, or a characteristic of his language in much of his work, but was an important characteristic of his thought—processes and world—view, too. This may be looked upon as an intellectual failing, even if it constituted an essential part of the charm of his work. On the other hand, it might possibly be argued that a child's mode of thought expresses a freshness, an emphasis on the will and even a degree of insight lacking in the more habit—formed, resigned and routine mind of the adult, and that an element of such "childishness" was essential in a poet who was to express some of the sense of newness and optimism of the years of revolution. In those years, after all, Khlebnikov was not the only one to believe in the Possibility of inhabiting a more logical world and universe than mankind had experienced in the past,