and expressed an unwillingness to commit himself. The group had offered to publish a prose-piece of Khlebnikov's—probably "Zverinets"[1]—in "Apollo". "I pretended to be very glad", wrote the young author, "but didn't care".[2] When eventually the work was not published after all, the indifference was only under-scored.
What was it which caused Khlebnikov to drift away from the Symbolists? It would be a mistake to look to particular Symbolist innovations in technique as grounds for his disagreement. Even many of the Symbolists' most distinctive philosophical ideas and themes would have seemed valid to Khlebnikov at this time.[3] There is hardly an outstanding feature of Khlebnikov's futurist and subsequent work which, taken in isolation, cannot be found in some form or in germ among the Symbolists. Khlebnikov's unease was on more general—and at first only vaguely identified—grounds.
Much though Khlebnikov admired and learned from the techniques, themes and speculations of his "teachers", the overall implication of their work began to disturb him. In a few years' time, his articles would make it clearer what concerned him. In their acceptance of silence, their retreat into solitude and their melancholy resignation to fate, Khlebnikov sensed in the Symbolists a death-wish which he could not share.
Admittedly, Khlebnikov experienced feelings of "dying", as we have seen. And there is evidence that he thought it was necessary for the poet to "die" in order to bequeath to the world his art.[4] This was a familiar Symbolist idea. Blok, for
