Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/18

10 IN HIS ST. PETERSBURG STUDENT DAYS, Khlebnikov's apparent psychological problems and speech-difficulties remained as severe as ever. The composer Matyushin met him in the autumn of 1908 and became one of Khlebnikov's few relatively-close friends. He recalls: "He was extraordinarily quiet and in a permanent state of concentration. His forehead seemed contorted with a stupendous inner labour (even when in fact he was composing the merriest of jokes). When spoken to, he became embarrassed and responded incoherently and in a whisper. In his relations with his comrades he was extraordinarily reserved, and livened up only in a discussion over some new publication or common enterprise... In his everyday life V. Khlebnikov was as helpless as a child, and terribly absent-minded. During dinner he would raise to his mouth a box of matches instead of his bread, and in leaving he would forget his hat. He was so quiet and shy that one often forgot he was there at all...

Working days on end on his numerical researches in the public library, Khlebnikov would forget to eat or drink and sometimes came home so exhausted—looking grey from hunger and loss of sleep—and yet in such a deep state of concentration, that it was only with difficulty that one could tear him from his calculations and sit him down to eat."

At the same time, the young poet was apparently going through a personal crisis. His letters to his parents throughout the second half of 1909 speak repeatedly of his feelings of "tiredness", "deathly boredom" and "age". To Ivanov he wrote on June 10: