Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/43

35 works, his "I and E" (a cave-man love—story) and "Lesnaya Deva" (which, as Markov writes, "is written as if in an imaginary prehistoric tongue" ). In 1912 began one of his first attempts to provide theoretical justification for what he had been doing. It may seem inappropriate to return at this point in our analysis to Khlebnikov's "Teacher and Pupil", since it has already been discussed in connection with the poet's break from the Symbolists in 1909. Although it referred back to about this time, however, it was not in fact written until three years later, and it has a bearing not only on Khlebnikov's ideas on time and fate, but also on the philosophical implications of his primitivism. There is also a hint as to what Khlebnikov saw as the connection between these ideas and his championship of the spoken—as opposed to the written—word.

"Teacher and Pupil" contained a series of "scientific-looking" tables, with the names of contemporary writers listed in columns, their work categorized under various headings. In each case a stark contrast was drawn between these writers—and the anonymous authors of Russia's folk—songs. Writers such as Sologub, Andreyev, Artsybashev, Merezhkovsky, Kuprin and Remizov were accused of seeing only "horror" (uzhas) in life. Only the folk-song saw beauty. Again, the contemporary writers were accused of prophesying only death; only the folk-song stood for life. The contemporary writers were non-Russian in spirit; only the folk-song was genuinely Russian. The real dichotomy, as Khlebnikov presented it, was not between recent Russian literature and the literature of an earlier age: it was between the folk-song and the whole of written literature as such. "Why", asks the 'pupil', "do the Russian book and the Russian song prove to be in different camps?" In the same year Khlebnikov wrote: "I yearn for a bonfire of books."