Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/28

20 his attack.

"I have sought the laws", he declares, "which govern the destinies of peoples." There follows, amazingly, a mathematical answer to the historical dilemma. With a mass of computations and formulae, it is argued that the major events of world history are not random events or the outcome of men's will or whims. They are subject to law, and to a law so rigorous that it can be expressed in an algebraic equation. Excitedly—in the tone of someone who has found the key to all the mysteries of the universe—the details are explained. The collapses of states and empires have occurred at regular intervals, the wave-length or lapse of time between each fall being calculable according to the formula "z = (365 + 48y)x"

where z is the period of years between the events, and x and y are low numbers, positive or negative in the case of y. The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, the Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066 and a mass of other dates are listed and their agreement with the formula explained. The computations conclude with a prediction which was to become famous:

"But in the year 554, the kingdom of the Vandals was subjugated. Should we not expect the fall of a state in 1917?"

Later in the year of this booklet's printing (1912), the first manifesto of the Futurists was published. This too included a table of Khlebnikov's dates in simplified form, placed one under the other. Shklovsky recalls: