Khlebnikov and Sukhovo-Kobylin. On the Problem of the Textology of Russian Cosmism

The study was conducted as part of the Russian Science Foundation project No. 19-18-00353, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Khlebnikov and Sukhovo-Kobylin are artists that can be described using Khlebnikov's definition: a “self-valuable word”. Utopia as a dramatic penetration of the philosophy of creativity into practical life is the main point that distinguishes Khlebnikov and Sukhovo-Kobylin from pre-symbolists, symbolists, modernists and brings them close to each other. Yuri Tynyanov called Khlebnikov the “Lobachevsky of words”. S.T. Aksakov perceived Sukhovo-Kobylin as a “mad mathematician”. Perhaps, Vyacheslav Ivanov was first to intuitively put Khlebnikov and Sukhovo-Kobylin on a par with each other. In his dialogue on the complexity of consciousness and connection with cosmos, he speaks about the classification of types of civilization according to the level of technological development. Ivanov considers Sukhovo-Kobylin to be the forerunner of modern reflections on this subject. Sukhovo-Kobylin's cosmism fits into a corpus of texts, the framework of which is limited by three components: the philosophy of Vsemir, Hegel's translations and the theatrical cycle. All of Khlebnikov's gestures, enshrined in the word, have the energy of cosmos, among which The Boards of Fate is the most representative, cosmos-forming. It is a book that combines chronological tables of historical events, dates of the lives of great people, algebraic formulas with the equations of writers' lives (“The Equation of Gogol's Life”), poems, philosophical arguments, thoughts and notes from notebooks. It also has numerous draft notebooks, albums and separate drafts with notes of calculations. Sukhovo-Kobylin and Khlebnikov are connected by a constant desire to structure and streamline the universe. This general tendency is differently realized in different periods, it has different biographical and creative motivations. Khlebnikov's and Sukhovo-Kobylin's search for orderliness and a single logic often revolved around historical events, names and dates. Particular sensitivity to number series also united them. Each followed his own way of thinking in search of algorithms with rigorous mathematical proof. The world of numbers appears in both Sukhovo-Kobylin's and Khlebnikov's works as belonging to the theater, acting, masquerade. Khlebnikov and Sukhovo-Kobylin, in a sense, are directors of a universal performance and intermediaries and translators in creating a special “language of cosmos”. Both create a “speech transfer”, transcribing everyday speech in mathematical signs and symbols. Numbers and words in this system of “Russian cosmism” reliably and clearly convey the “multi-extended unity of the world”. The use of the authors' archives (Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Institute of Russian Literature) allows outlining the contours of the original life of handwritten sources, reconstructing the original environment of the works and revealing more fully the meta-links with other texts.

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