Enter Tsar Vladimir

摘要

IN 1912 a group of Russian avant-garde poets, calling themselves futurists, published an almanac entitled "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste". On its last page Veli-mir Khlebnikov, one of the authors, listed dates for the collapse of the great empires. The last line read: "Nekto [someone or somewhere], 1917". "Do you believe that our empire will be destroyed in 1917?" asked Viktor Shklovsky, a literary critic, when he met Khlebnikov at a reading. Khlebnikov replied: "You are the first to understand me."