Velimir Vladimirovich Khlebnikov

Velimir Vladimirovich Khlebnikov (born Oct. 28 [Nov. 9, New Style], 1885, Tundutov, Russia—died June 28, 1922, Santalovo, Novgorod province) was a poet who was the founder of Russian Futurism and whose esoteric verses exerted a significant influence on Soviet poetry.

Born into a scientific family, Khlebnikov studied both mathematics and linguistics during his university years. At that time he also began developing ideas for a renovation of poetic language. About 1912 he met the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, and the two became the centre of the Futurist literary movement, which was directed against the mysticism and narrowness of Symbolism and which regarded art as a social utility.

Khlebnikov, unlike other Futurists, retained a kind of mysticism—of things and words rather than of ideas and symbols. Through his verbal experimentation he devised a “translogical language,” creating a “new world of words” in his verse that makes it fresh and invigorating but difficult for the general reader. He was a poet’s poet, influencing others who extended his experimentation into their more accessible verse.

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Khlebnikov was a Slavophile who loved Russia and the Russian language; this led him to change his first name from Viktor (of Latin derivation) to Velimir. His popularity began to decline after the Revolution, although his influence persisted, as the works of Mayakovsky, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelshtam, and others clearly show. He died in a remote village in the province of Novgorod. After World War II Khlebnikov was attacked by Soviet critics as a “formalist” and “decadent,” and his name fell into complete oblivion. Following the death of Joseph Stalin, however, he was rehabilitated. An English translation of his work is available in the Collected Works of Velimer Khlebnikov, 3 vol. (1987–97).