Poet. A leader of the Futurist movement and a linguistic original, he experimented with the Russian language in a manner comparable to James Joyce in English. Poet Vladimir Mayakovsky considered him his mentor, pre-war critics thought he was insane, and his fellow Futurists regarded him, in the words of scholar Clarence Brown, "a saint who sacrificed literally everything in life to poetry." Perhaps Khlebnikov's best-known poem, "Incantation to Laughter," consists almost entirely of every possible transmutation of the word "laugh." After the 1917 revolution, he volunteered his services to the Bolsheviks, and he travelled across the USSR on agitprop trains, reciting his poetry. The conditions were harsh, and on one agitprop tour, in the town of Santalovo, he died of malnutrition at 36.
Poet. A leader of the Futurist movement and a linguistic original, he experimented with the Russian language in a manner comparable to James Joyce in English. Poet Vladimir Mayakovsky considered him his mentor, pre-war critics thought he was insane, and his fellow Futurists regarded him, in the words of scholar Clarence Brown, "a saint who sacrificed literally everything in life to poetry." Perhaps Khlebnikov's best-known poem, "Incantation to Laughter," consists almost entirely of every possible transmutation of the word "laugh." After the 1917 revolution, he volunteered his services to the Bolsheviks, and he travelled across the USSR on agitprop trains, reciting his poetry. The conditions were harsh, and on one agitprop tour, in the town of Santalovo, he died of malnutrition at 36.
Bio by: Bobb Edwards
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