Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/53

45 THROUGHOUT EUROPE, the years immediately preceding World War One were a period of outward social stability and calm. Beneath the surface, however, forces were accumulating which threatened to blow sky-high the entire social, political and cultural structure of Europe and perhaps the world. Never before had the peculiarly "Russian" experience of the grip of 'byt' over an ocean of chaos so widely prevailed over Europe as a whole.

If we take Russian futurism—and particularly the Work of Khlebnikov—in its wider, European, context, it appears as a particular national manifestation of the art-movement known as "Cubism". Russian Futurism, as Pomorska writes, "transmitted the principles of Cubism into poetry." Benedict Livshits considered his own work "100 per cent cubism transferred to the area of organized speech." Virtually all the Russian Futurist poets were students of painting, or were originally inspired by the methods of painting. Khlebnikov had Cubism clearly in mind when he declared in 1912:

"We want the word boldly to follow painting."