Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/93

85 KKhlebnikov studied the chronicle of Pushkin‘s life—and Gogol's—in order to construct still more equations. He made detailed notes of the exact times of the experiences of his own life and discovered perfect mathematical correlations. To Matyushin he wrote in December 1914, for example:
 * This year I notice a reverse relationship with the past. That is, the days which were gloomy for me last year have been bright this year.

Later he would ponder on the significance of the fact that "the number of bones in a human being is 48 times 5 = 240", and that “the surface of a red blood cell is equal to the surface of the earth divided by 365 to the power of ten."


 * Max Rychner writes of Joyce's Ulysses that in it:


 * Nothing is isolated or separate; even the most singular, the most incomprehensible thing makes itself felt in countless connections which at first are unrecognizable, but reveal themselves in their darkness to sympathetic men.

The same notion of universal interconnectedness runs through. Khlebnikov's work. His studies of the planets and stars are based on the firm belief that the laws governing their motions are the same as those governing the lives of men. As he put it himself:


 * The breath of the same mouth of time covers both the windowpanes of stars and the panes of human destinies; the same laws work in both.