Война в творческой биографии В. Хлебникова : заметки к теме
Authors: Starkina Sofiâ Vâčeslavovna 
Published: October 2023

In literary criticism of the Soviet time it was accepted to connect the periodization of a creative work of any poet or writer to political events. So, if the activity of the author fell on the year of Bolshevik Revolution, creativity was subdivided into the period till 1917 and period after 1917. This rule was applied to Chlebnikov also, and it safely has lived up to now. Undoubtedly, the Revolution of 1917 has affected creativity practically of all authors living in Russia, but, certainly, the Revolution was not the unique factor stimulating creativity. In Chlebnikov case, from our point of view, it is possible to speak, that other political event of global scale has affected his creativity, has divided it into two large stages. I mean the First world war. The subject is too large, so in my lecture I want to analyse only the titles of Chlebnikov’ s creations which content the word War. (Unfortunately, the concordance to Chlebnikov’s texts is not made yet, so we can’t analyse all contexts).

One of the shorter poems published in 1916 in the collection Four birds (Chetyre ptitsy ), referred to as Written before war (other name is Pecheneg’s Goblet <Kubok pechenezhskij> ). The title is very remarkable. Since then all his creativity before 1914 Chlebnikov comprehends this way. And, may be, the most important in this period there are poems connected to search of the “laws of time”. Many products of the first period (before the war) are warlike enough. Anyway, the word warrior (voin) is one of frequently meeting in Chlebnikov’s texts, but it always has positive meaning (for example, Warrior of the not come kingdom, or surname of the hero of early prose, author’s alter ego -Voejkov (Enja Voejkov )).

From products of the first period only in the title of one longer poem we see the word war : War the death (Vojna -smerť) (for the first time is published in 1913 in the collection Union of youth (Cojuz molodezhi), but is written, probably, earlier). Though, A. Kruchenyh in his memoirs writes, that this is editorial title, author's title is Revolution. In any case, it is rather original sight on war and revolution, the poem is full of coinages and it is similar to early “coinage texts”.

In texts written during the first world war, we meet at once some names with a word war, and the genres of these texts are very remarkable. It is New doctrine of war (Novoe uchenie o vojně) -prosaic composition devoted to search of the laws of time ; then it is a cycle of poems War in a Mousetrap (Vojna v myshelovke). We suppose, it is a cycle of shorter poems exactly, though this text publishes as a longer poem and as the sverhpovest’ (Chlebnikov’s original genre). In this poem Chlebnikov has collected the products of 1915-1917, where the war is the main subject. At last, one more text of an unusual genre -Verses made from war (Stihi iz vojny). The text is unpublished. This "poem" represents the table similar to ones in A Duel with Hammurabi (Poedinok s Hammurabi) or He today (On segodnja). There are columns of commensurable historical events : Initial year, com¬ mensurable year, the measure, and, at last, last column -auto-comment (au¬ thor specifies, what event he means). Further he makes the note : "the metre : (n + e) X 317 years".

All these creations are closely connected among themselves. The main Chlebnikov’s task is to catch war “in a network of the equations”, subordinate it to the laws of time and to show the result to people. It is interest¬ ing how the modality of the text varies accordingly to the author’s intention : whether the author determines the text as "verses", or "doctrine" or somehow else.

After War in a Mousetrap only in the title of one shorter poem we meet the word war : How I have seen the war ? (Как ja uviděl vojnu ?). It was written in 1921, during the Civil war in Russia. The poem is traditional enough, it describes one of sequences of war.

So, the first world war was the event around of which and, strangely enough, due to which, are created and grouped the major Chlebnikov’s texts. He discovers a new material, thus expanding our notion of art creativity.