«Если я обращу человечество в часы…» Велимира Хлебникова: Опыт комментария
«If I Turn Mankind into a Clock…» by Velimir Khlebnikov: Experience of Commentary

Summary/Abstract: he article offers a detailed analysis of one of Velimir Khlebnikov’s final poems — “If I Turn Mankind into a Clock...” — first published by the author himself in the manifestlike pamphlet The Herald of Velimir Khlebnikov, No 1 (March 1922), and later included as a poetic prologue to The Tables of Fate (Doski Sud’by), a cyclopean yet unfinished prognostic work that the utopian poet labored on for many years until the end of his life. The commentary glosses aim to decipher the obscurities of the text while also highlighting its special status. The poem is imbued on multiple levels with the pathos of a demiurge who has uncovered the laws governing not only human existence but the Universe as a whole. It may be regarded as a kind of summation of Khlebnikov’s broader anti-militarist corpus, one of whose central aims is the dismantling of the state as an institution that obstructs the unification of humanity.

• Details
• Contents