“When over the field glow green...” by V. Khlebnikov: The memory of the genre vs. experiment

The paper analyzes the poem by Velimir Khlebnikov “When over the field glow green...” (1911–1912) concerning the issue of how the sonnet genre functions in the author’s verse. This genre, present in the works by futurists and their followers, has been scarcely studied and requires serious scrutiny. The chosen text is a French type sonnet with relatively small formal deviations from the form (a change of the meter in verse six, occasional caesures in verses two, three, ten, and fourteen, the extra-pattern stress in verse ten, the absence of a recurrent rhyme in the second stanza, and misalignment of the syntax and stanza structures). All the deviations from the strict pattern of the sonnet are directly connected with the lyric story and are markers of important/critical events. The advent of the evening followed by the night in Khlebnikov’s universe is shown as spatial-temporal palimpsest, in which all the phenomena may occur both sequentially and synchronously, and the individual correlates with the universal based on the principle of “metaphoric tautology”: dawn  – stars – a candle – fire. The violation of formal rules creates a structural tension; all the changes occur according to the principle of accumulating static energy, followed by a dynamic shift. However, in general, the sonnet framework is retained, and, in the final, a harmonic point dominates – the last verse is written with the strict iambic tetrameter. The logical sequence of the sonnet – thesis, thesis development, antithesis, synthesis – is retained with certain variations, whereas the sonnet’s subject does not contradict the tradition of the philosophic verse based on landscape descriptions. The death of a moth in the candle flame means reincarnation and return to the natural elements. Special emphasis is placed on the optical aspect, which presents the world to the eye as an object that is seen through, and the vision becomes super-vision, which can perceive existential truth. Generally, V. Khlebnikov follows the traditional rules of composing a sonnet, and all the deviations from the canon are connected with the artistic intention of the futurist poet.

: V. Khlebnikov, poetry, “When over the field glow green...” (1911–1912), sonnet, tradition and genre transformation