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of world history are repetitions, on a different plane, of events which occurred in the distant past. As he explained to Matyushin, his premise was:
The assumption that a particular war is a repetition of age-old times preceding it... [1]
Another premise-flowing from this-—was:
- that, as regards the naval war of 1914, one must turn to the century of battles waged by Islam against the West from the beginning of the Crusades to 1095.[2]
A third assumption was that, once a correspondence between two events has been established, the same correspondence would be found to extend to cover yet further events.
Having admitted his mistakes, Khlebnikov did not abandon his attempts but plunged deeper into them. He later described how he had to be rescued from his obsession by his friends:
- Khlebnikov drowned in a bog of calculations, and was forcibly saved.[3]
In 1916 he wrote to two friends of the ultimate aim of his researches:
- The summit—the whole of knowledge in a single equation the size of √-1[4]
- ↑ Neizd. P p 375.
- ↑ Ibid p 376. There seems to be an important relationship between Khlebnikov's theory of temporal correspondences and a central theme of the Symbolists. In the case of the latter, "correspondences" were established, by means of the sounds and symbols of language, between “this world" and "other worlds" conceived to exist on other planes in a preponderantly timeless, motionless state of being. The Symbolists' language was thought of as suffused with the light from these other worlds, into which the reader was thereby brought into contact. Khlebnikov's peculiar transformation of this idea was primarily based on its re-construction, as iNeizd. P p 375.t were, along a time—axis. This would have been in accordance with his call: "Replace the concept of space everywhere with the concept of time"—1915—16 SP V p 159. Thus it was the future with which his language was suffused: "Learn: upon language the future's shadow is cast"—1914, SP V'p 193; "...the homeland of creation is the future. It is from there that the word—gods blow their wind"—6P II p 8. The "other world" into which his work ushered humanity was this future, with which there were "correspondences" with the pre-historic past.
- ↑ SP V p 307.
- ↑ SP V p 307.
