The poetic image underwent a series of radical changes in early
twentieth century Russian poetry. It progressed from the status of a simple
image through metaphorical and then symbolic stages, becoming at last an
image in constant metamorphosis, with a direct, iconic relation to reality.
Fluid, iconic images abound in the work of the poet Velimir Khlebnikov
(1885-1922), the primary focus of this study. With many great Russian artists
of the period, including Filonov, Kandinsky, Petrov-Vodkin, Malevich, and
Matiushin, Khlebnikov shared the belief that art should be “organic” -
that is, inseparable from the experience of reality. The poet observed
nature not from the outside, as a spectator, but from the inside. Even
the word - the basic element of his art - he viewed as part of nature.
In the word he saw the meeting point of two myths - the perfect (the known)
and the future (the unknown), engaged in mutual discourse giving rise to
constant modification, with the future informing the perfect, and vice
versa.
The champions of organic art vowed not to dissociate themselves from the real world, but to explore it in greater depth. The will to project the creative self towards and into nature and the universe is here referred to as “projectivism”, a term borrowed from the philosopher Nikolai Fedorov. The artist strove for assimilation with nature in order to gain a deeper understanding of the universe. The work of art was viewed as living and active, an eternal source of creation. It encompassed simultaneously various points of view, united (or disunited) in a personal whole within the whole of the universe. The artists attached primary significance to vision above all other human senses. Art was the beginning of the act of seeing, capable of transcending the limits of the phenomenal world and expanding human knowledge. The power of art was thus seen as analogous to the capabilities of science.
While the first part of this study explores projectivist ideas and their relation to Khlebnikov's oeuvre in general, the concluding chapter presents a reading of the poem The Crane as a programmatic work in which the poetic image is kept in a state of perpetual metamorphosis, as an enormous and terrifying bird arises from the city of St. Petersburg. This work enters into a relation of mutual semantic amplification with Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman