Summary.
The thesis is primarily a study not of Khlebnihov's poetry but of his ideas. An attempt is made to make sense of the poet's lists of historical dates, his mathematical formulae, his Utopian declarations and related materials. The first part of the thesis is biographical in structure. The aim is to show the way in which Khlebnikov's unusual concepts and preoccupations originated. It is argued that his yearning to encompass the historical process in mathematical formulae stemmed in part from a reaction against the Symbolists' fatalism and historical sense of doom. The aim of his formulae—like that of his literary "formalism"—was similar in nature to the "magical" aims of pre-literate forms of art. Khlebnikov yearned to master human fate, to change the external world rather than merely reflect it. Khlebnikov's "primitivism", his "formalism" and his "magical" or "world-changing" aims are discussed in the context of similar tendencies characteristic of the wider European artistic revolution of the period, particularly that represented by French Cubist painting.
The biographical narrative is taken only up to the year 1912, when the main features of Khlebnikov's world-view had been formed. The remaining chapters develop the central theme of the thesis to which the title refers: the relationship between the past and the future in Khlebnikov's thought, and the bearing of this relationship on the question of language and communication. By "the problem of communication" is meant the question whether language can really overcome the loneliness of the individual "ego", the separation of one "I" from another. The Symbolists were pessimistic
