Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/30

22 incomprehensible fate. The "pupil" accordingly addresses "the enemy" in triumph:

""Fate! Is not your power over the human race weakened, now that I have stolen the secret code of laws through which you govern...?" SP V p 178. The "trapping" of fate by means of "equations" was to remain a persistent theme of the poet until the end of his life. In 1916 he wrote that the Futurist (budetlyanin) had "no right" to evade the task of measuring man's fate and throwing a noose around "the fat leg of destiny". In this brief article he described with a touch of humour how fate would seem once the task had been accomplished. It would resemble a poor little creature, "caught in a mousetrap, looking at people in fright. It will gnaw at the mousetrap with its teeth, visions of escape rising before it. But the Futurist will say to it sternly: 'Oh, no you don't!', and, thoughtfully bending over it, will study it, puffing out clouds of smoke." (SP V p 144). In 1917, the two Russian revolutions gave an enormous boost to Khlebnikov's hopes of gaining mastery over humanity's fate. In a "conversation" dated April 19, 1917, Khlebnikov reports a fictional character praising him as follows: "You have chained the god of battles in fetters of equations, and he lies there in chains, condemned by you, his head hanging low. He is the captive of your project to measure the ray of humanity for the purpose of constructing the first star-state... I see that 517 years is the true wave of the ray of time and that it is as if you carried at your belt a mousetrap in which fate had been caught. Resolve to call yourself a fate-catcher, just as people call green-eyed black oats mouse-catchers. From your learning there arises a single human race, not one divided up into peoples and states"—Razgovor. Vzirashchii na osudarstva. (NP 457–58). The Title for Khlebnikov's famous "War in a Mouse-trap" poem-sequence was of course another expression of this theme. Despite his early optimism, Khlebnikov later felt that his task had still to be accomplished. At the beginning of 1921 he wrote to his sister: "This year will be the year of the great and final battle with the serpent" (SP V 315). In April 1922—shortly before his death—he wrote to his mother of his projected world-shattering book of equations: "it's got stuck on the first page and won't go any further" (SP V 325)."

Russian art, in Khlebnikov's view, must utilize this new knowledge and power. It should throw off its fatalism and despair, stop thinking about death and champion life instead. As the "pupil" exclaims at the end of the pamphlet: ""I don't want Russian art to walk at the head of a crowd of suicides!""