Liberation Theosophy: Discovering India and Orienting Russia between Velimir Khlebnikov

and Helena Blavatsky

Author(s): ANINDITA BANERJEE
Source: PMLA, Vol. 126, No. 3 (May 2011), pp. 610-624
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41414133
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Liberation Theosophy: Discovering India and
Orienting Russia between Velimir Khlebnikov
and Helena Blavatsky
ANINDITA BANERJEE
ANINDITA BANERJEE, assistant professor
of comparative literature at Cornell Uni-
versity, specializes in literary and media
cultures of Russia, Eurasia, and the In-
dian subcontinent. She is particularly
interested in the ways that technology
mediates the circulation of bodies, texts,
ideas, and images across these areas. In
addition to her book Science Fiction and
the Making of Modernity in Russia (Wes-
leyan UP, forthcoming), she has written
articles on the Trans-Siberian Railroad,
electrification, travel writing in hybrid
Islamic-Orthodox Christian traditions,
Bollywood and Soviet cinema, mediatic
retellings of the Indian epic Ramayana,
and Soviet children's culture in the
space age.
6lO j © 2011 BY THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA J
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[ PML A
^ I I ELENA BLAVATSKY WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO TRAVELED TO IN-
Il dia in search of what it means to be a Russian" 'Одна
I I Блавацкая поехала в Индию чтобы узнать, что такое
быть русским.'1 The statement seems particularly incongruous in a
pamphlet titled A New Lesson about War 'Новое учение о войне/
composed in 1916 by the futurist poet and philosopher of history
Velimir Khlebnikov (184). Why would Khlebnikov invoke Blavatsky,
the founder of a spiritual movement called Theosophy, in a medi-
tation on worldly violence framed by the First World War and the
impending October Revolution? And why would he single out India,
geographically and historically distant from Russia's upheavals in
the twentieth century, as a locus for discovering Russian identity?
Khlebnikov's own account of a journey to India, composed simul-
taneously with A New Lesson about War > provides a tantalizingly
complex answer to this enigma.
Unlike Blavatsky, Khlebnikov never actually visited India. As if
taking advantage of this fact, his short work of lyric prose "Есир"-
translated by Paul Schmidt as "Yasir," which means "captive" or
"slave" in Arabic, Tatar, and other Turkic languages- takes significant
liberties with the conventions of cartography and chronology. Set at
a conscious remove from Russia's metropolitan centers and the au-
thor's present, it recounts the travels of Istoma, a seventeenth-century
fisherman from a "half-wild . . . crescent-shaped island" 'на полу-
диком острове ... в виде полумесяца' on the estuary where the
Volga falls into the Caspian Sea (103; 187). A transformative encoun-
ter with an ascetic called Krishnamurti, who bears the same name
as Blavatsky 's internationally renowned acolyte, prompts Istoma to
venture across the breadth of Eurasia in search of an idea that would
 12 6.3 ] Aníndita Banerjee 611
"bring liberty to all oppressed
many recentpeople"
explorations дать
of Asia's constitu-
свободу всему народу' (107; 191).
tive role Wander-
in the formation of Russian identity.3
Breaking through thishe
ing through the Indian subcontinent, binary
fi-division, "Ya-
nally discovers this principle encoded
sir" reveals indynamic
a multifaceted the of contact
andAdvaita
nondualistic metaphysics of continuity between
Vedanta, the two. Blavatsky 's
founded by Shankaracharya disciple(or Shankara)
Krishnamurti motivates Istoma, the
fictional
in the eighth century, which alter ego of
regards theKhlebnikov,
self to contem-
as indistinguishable fromplate
the Russia's
world fluid Asiatic
and peripheries,
hu- while
man existence as a journey the Volga- Caspian
through frontier animates the Rus-
successive
sian reception
veils of illusion, or maya. Not of Advaita thought. Though
coincidentally,
it is
"Shankara's science of love," asevident from A New tes-
Blavatsky Lesson about War

that Theosophy
tifies, inspired the foundational tenetsmediated
of thethe poet's access to
Indian religious
Theosophical movement as well (54, 55, philosophy,
89, 91)."Yasir" demon-
In narrating his own strates
quest thatfor Shan-
Blavatsky 's movement also came
kara's philosophy, Khlebnikov abandoned
to represent more than a source of exotic
the initial Russian title "A Fisherman's Tale" metaphors for him. Khlebnikov's discovery
'Ловецкий рассказ' for one that privileges of India from the margins of the Russian Em-
the languages of Russia's vast Asiatic empire, pire reveals the unique historical and political
stretching from the Caspian to the Pacific. sensibility that he brought to Blavatsky 's in-
The term Khlebnikov chose for the new title, sights on "Shankara's science of love." Plotted
yasir , foreshadows the extraordinary hetero- in the trajectory of travel and woven through
glossia of the account that follows, saturated the polylingual fabric of the text is a remark-
with Tatar dialects of the lower Volga and able alignment between two premises of lib-
Turkic languages of Central Asia, on the one eration: the spiritual emancipation promised
hand, and classical Sanskrit, on the other. The by Theosophy and the anti-imperialist goals
conspicuous correlation between the protag- of the unfolding October Revolution.
onist's unusual itinerary and the languages Khlebnikov's reinterpretation of Leninist
that permeate and ultimately overtake his internationalism through Blavatsky may not be
native Russian makes it impossible to inter- as eccentric or isolated as it seems. Historians
pret the text as merely another instance of the are paying increasing attention to the crucial
poet's well-known proclivity for "oriental" role spiritual and ethical communities played
themes and motifs.2 On the contrary, "Yasir" in mobilizing political resistance against co-
illustrates Khlebnikov's critical stance toward lonialism. Partha Chatterjee, for example,
an undifferentiated concept of the Orient by documents how the recuperation of classical
staging a series of dialogues between Russia's Sanskrit texts by diverse religious groups in
imperial borderlands and the mysterious East British India facilitated the conceptualization
of the European imagination. of nationhood outside the dominant colonial
Khlebnikov's imaginary journey chal- paradigm (76-115). Leela Gandhi's study of
lenges not only the cartographic and histori- Indo-British "affective communities," which
cal separation of Russia's Orient from that of are motivated by a shared rejection of colonial
Europe but also their conceptual estrange- difference and animated by "the yearning for
ment in contemporary postcolonial critique. an other-directed ethics and politics" (7), can
"Britain's overseas colony," which Edward be used to frame Khlebnikov's novel Utopian
Said classified as an Orient "categorically dif- alliance formed at the intersection of Russia's
ferent" from Russia's land-based "contiguous and Britain's imperial peripheries. Khleb-
nikov's imagined community of trans-Asiatic
empire" ( Culture 10), remains invisible in the

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6i2 Liberation Theosophy [ PMLA
wanderers, however, is more ambitious in its
ing the continental divide of the Urals or
polylingual and interreligious the ecological opposition between maritime
scope.
To understand the radicalSaint
potentials
Petersburg andofthe isolated, landlocked
steppe. Such
such a community in Khlebnikov's spatial
time andhypotheses, in turn,
assess its value for the politics of resistance
metamorphosed into theories of the histori-
cal and in
today, we need to consider "Yasir" cultural separateness of Russia's met-
relation
ropolitan
to the contentious place of Asia in centers-
the Rus- settled, civilized, with
sian imagination. a trajectory comparable to Europe's- from
the eastern periphery, a nomadic, prehistoric
terra incognita. Conscious distancing from
Russia's Orient and Khlebnikov's
Asia persisted even in militant movements
Discovery of India
such as Slavophilism, which sought to sepa-
In Russia the cartographic rate
and the conceptual
nation's destiny from the universal-
separation of Europe and Asia
ized is freighted
telos of European modernity (4-8).
with existential anxiety. The lackOnof
the acusp
physi-
of the twentieth century, Rus-
cal frontier between the metropolitan
sia turned its centers
gaze toward the East, which had
been virtually
of Saint Petersburg and Moscow and the expunged
vast from the national
imperial territories stretchingconsciousness. The geopolitical source of the
east heightened
the nation's ambivalence about its cultural newfound interest might be traced to Russia's
identity. Haunted by the Mongol occupa-increasing presence in Central and East Asia
tion of Kievan Rus between the twelfth and
following the failed alliance with European
fifteenth centuries and marked by Russia's powers in the Crimean War (1853-56). Its stra-
reverse expansion since Ivan the Terrible's tegic ascent in the Pacific led to confrontations
time, the Asiatic plains beyond the Urals rep- with Japan and culminated in the infamous
resent a unique geographic other that might naval defeat of Tsushima, in 1905, which oc-
have contaminated the body politic with alien curred simultaneously with a failed revolution
racial elements and infused its soul with cha- in Saint Petersburg. Framed by these catastro-
otic, rebellious violence. Peter Chaadayev's phes, the Russian preoccupation with Japan,
famous Philosophical Letters of 1836 epito- and to a lesser degree China, has garnered far
mizes this anxiety. Blaming Russia's indeter- more scholarly attention than the remarkable
minate location between Europe and Asia for appearance of India in the geographic and
its marginality in world history, Chaadayev cultural consciousness of the same period (Lo
calls the nation a "blank space" 'пустота' Gatto; Nivat; Mirsky 36-48; Ram, "Poetics"
overtaken by the nomadic steppe (41). 210-11; Vroon and Hacker). Khlebnikov him-
A rich body of recent scholarship illus- self identified Tsushima as the defining mo-
trates that for well-nigh three centuries-ever ment that transformed him from a poet to a
since Peter the Great opened a "window to philosopher of history. Critics interpret Khleb-
the West" and resolved to put Russia on the nikov's transformation as "a turn from pan-
map of the modern world- the definition of Slavism to pan-Asianism" or as the genesis of
Russian identity has involved staving off its an expanded Euro-Asiatic "continental subjec-
troublesome Asiatic subconscious (Bassin; tivity" (Cooke 140; Ram, "Poetics" 216-17).
Frank; Wolff). For example, eighteenth- and Khlebnikov's continental subjectivity
nineteenth-century geography texts, exam- subversively appropriates the geopolitical
ined by Mark Bassin, construct elaborate logic of the Great Game, the contestation
models of naturalized difference between over the Eurasian heartland between Russia
"European" and "Asiatic" Russia by invok- and Britain in the late nineteenth century.

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 12 6.3 ] Anindíta Banerjee 613
As strategic territories deep nineteenth-century
in CentralSlavophiles,
Asia whose vo-
came into Russian hands, India started to cabulary of authentic, non-Eurocentric iden-
emerge as an important locus in the imperial tity derived from Orthodox belief, fin de siècle
imagination. K. P. Pobedonostsev, the foreign thinkers programmatically embraced the
minister of Alexander III, envisioned India as non-Slavic, non-Christian East. For academ-
the ultimate destination of Russia's eastwardics such as Nikolay Danilevsky, Konstantin
march (576). In cultural discourse, however, Leontiev, and Vladimir Lamansky, as well as
the Indian subcontinent remained conspicu- eschatological millenarians such as Vladi-
ously dissociated from political intent. Fol- mir Soloviev, identifying Russia with Europe
lowing the opening of the Suez Canal, in was a destructive act of self-colonization that
1869, a proliferating corpus of travel accounts could only be reversed if Russia reclaimed its
began to feature India as a "cradle of civili- historically repressed Asiatic face (Banerjee,
zation" 'колыбель цивилизации/ whose "Trans-Siberian Railroad" 26-29). In the aes-
mystical appeal was marketed in "volumes thetic repertoire and political lexicon of many
of ancient Hindu wisdom decorating shop modernists, therefore, a genealogical nostalgia
windows in Petersburg" 'книги о древнейfor the steppe fed the enthusiasm for Indian
индусской мудрости в витринах Петер- religious philosophy. Ivan Bunin, for instance,
бургских магазинов* (Tartakovskij 23). attributed his "love for India, the mysterious
The Theosophical Society anchored the East and spiritual cradle of humanity," to his
Russian obsession with India. Maria Carl- "organic ancestral ties to the Orient." During
son has extensively documented the society's the revolution the symbolists Valéry Bryusov
role as the chief purveyor of "ancient Hindu and Aleksandr Blok invoked the Buddha as a
wisdom" to a heterogeneous community composite
of metaphor of poet and moral pre-
ceptor alongside the steppe horseman. While
academics, translators, and gifted writers and
denouncing the "bourgeois mysticism" of pre-
artists. Key figures of the movement- not just
Blavatsky but also her follower Annie Besantvious generations, the futurist movement - of
which Khlebnikov was a founding member-
and Besant s young protégé Jiddu Krishna-
murti, who bears the same name as Istoma's
and its avant-garde offshoots nevertheless de-
fictive interlocutor in "Yasir"- achieved cult clared that their affinity for "ancient India"
was an instrument for overcoming "our ser-
status among people who were at the forefront
of the modernist revolution in Russian art vile subservience to Europe" (Bowlt 171).
and letters (188-205). Theosophical concepts Britain's overseas colony was more at-
derived from Vedanta philosophy resonatedtractive than Japan or China because it of-
with the symbolists' quest for the noumenon, fered an additional potential for redeeming
the futurists' transrational language, and the the Asiatic element of national identity.
visual nonobjectivism of Kazimir Malevich While sharing the status of an ancient non-
and Vasily Kandinsky (Bowlt; Douglas). European civilization with Russia's Far East-
An unexplored political dimension, how- ern neighbors, India was untainted by the
ever, also underlies the remarkable appeal specter of the Mongol past. It represented a
of Theosophy in Russia. The reason Indian purer Orient that ameliorated the history of
spirituality held greater promise there thanself-colonization and obscured Russia's impe-
among the movement's primary audience, inrial enterprise on the steppe.
the English-speaking world, becomes clear For all Russia's purported self-
when the Russian fascination with India is orientalization, therefore, its perception of
juxtaposed with a coeval shift in national- India differed little from the Europeans'. Geo-
ist philosophies of history. In contrast withgraphic distance from the steppe froze the

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6i4 Liberation Theosophy [ PMLA
Like Istoma
Indian subcontinent in an a priori in "Yasir," he was born on an is-
antiquity
of "ancient Hindu wisdom" and made it con- land near Astrakhan. After spending many
ceptually indistinguishable from the British years in Saint Petersburg- where he moved
orientalist mode of "holding [India] at arm's in 1907 to study mathematics and linguistics,
length as a mere object of beauty" (Spurr 59).including a year of Sanskrit- he joined a Red
The paradox is more than apparent in two op- Army contingent sent to Azerbaijan and Iran
to assist local uprisings. During this "final
positional figurations of the East in the work
of Vladimir Soloviev, a philosopher and poet pilgrimage" to Asia, Khlebnikov introduces
at the vanguard of the Asiatic turn who ex- the wandering holy man into his work as an
erted tremendous influence on several gener- important template for the self.4
ations of modernists. "Panmongolism"- the The peripatetic ascetic without a fixed
title for a poem of 1894 and an essay of 1899- home, a stock element of the orientalist imag-
posits, in a Nietzschean idiom, the death of ination then and now, acquires an urgent au-
European Russia's chimera of civilization at tobiographical dimension in Khlebnikov's
the hands of its own repressed eastern past, political quest. Indeed, the fictional Krishna-
personified by a yellow horde led by the Japa- murti first connects the borderlands where
nese. In contrast, the poem "Ex Oriente Lux" the poet was born with the distant subconti-
(1890) depicts the regeneration of the nation nent he never visited by revealing the parallel
on a pilgrimage to India. Soloviev literalizes forms of imperial power that operate in both
the famous image from Goethe, analyzed by spaces. Far from remaining a passive object
Said in Orientalism (19), of humanity gath- in the ahistorical landscape of the mysteri-
ered on the banks of the Ganges. ous East, therefore, the holy man in "Yasir"
Khlebnikov's engagement with India evolves into a catalyst for three radical ob-
differs fundamentally from that of his intel- jectives. The first is to imbue the contact be-
lectual predecessors and coevals. Instead of tween Britain's colony and Russia's eastern
relegating it to a distant space and time un- frontiers with an unprecedented epistemic
sullied by anxiety about Russia's Asiatic heri- potential. Krishnamurti's momentous ad-
tage, the poet treats Britain's overseas colony vent in Istoma's life- which reverses the con-
as a potent medium for delving into his na- ventional trajectory of the Western traveler
tion's foundational history of imperial vio- arriving in the timeless East- shocks the fish-
lence. In a letter to his fellow futurist Aleksey erman into admitting that his people belong
Kruchyonykh, Khlebnikov speaks of under- to a global community of the enslaved. The
taking a pilgrimage to India not to discover second objective is to use Istoma's newfound
its timeless spirituality but rather "to take a consciousness to question the dichotomous
look at the Mongol world" 'заглянуть в мир cartography of the East and the West, medi-
монголов' (qtd. in "Есир" 425). ated by European imperialism and internal-
While some Russian bohemians made ized by the Russian national imaginary. The
"pilgrimages" to Western art capitals, the
third and most significant aim, encoded in
Holy Land, and even North Africa (Bowlt the protagonist's own peregrinations across
178), for Khlebnikov nomadism was notAsia,
so is to liberate subjectivity from territo-
rial boundaries and conceive of an alternative
much a fashionable cult as an inescapable
existential condition. Instead of pointing
ontology generated from constant movement
elsewhere, his arc of displacement follows a
between multiple imperial peripheries.
cyclical course inward, beginning and culmi- These objectives are visible even in
the opening sentences of "Yasir." Istoma's
nating in the multiethnic, multilingual, and
crescent-shaped habitat on Russia's Islamic
multireligious borders of the Russian Empire.

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 12 6.3 j Anindita Banerjee 615
borderlands, poised between land
to have and
traveled water
among the hovels of the dis-
and sheltering both animals possessed;and
and ofhumans,
Shivaji (1627-80), the leader
already embodies an elemental liminality:
of a successful guerrilla army that wrested
"Not far from the line of surf, on thestate
an autonomous crescent-
from the Moguls. The
shaped half-wild island of "news"
Kulaly,
strikes among
a surprising the
chord of empathy
drifting grass-covered dunes where
in the Volga a herd
fisherman. Krishnamurti s for-
of wild horses once roamed, stood and
eign language a fisher-
exotic stories, paradoxi-
man s shack" 'Недалеко cally,от are
чертыthe firstприбоя,
steps toward historicizing
на полудиком острове Кулалы, вытянутом
the predicament of Istomas own community.
в виде полумесяца, среди покрытых тра- The fisherman begins to follow the ascetic,
вой с песчяных наносов, где бродилwho
та-feeds stray dogs and frees a swan destined
бун одичавших коней, стояла рыбацкая
for slaughter. Noticing his persistence, the In-
хижина (103; 187). Combined with the dian title,
predicts, "[Y]ou will see my homeland
soon" 'Ты скоро увидишь мою родину' (191).
a linguistic interpellation the reader encoun-
ters before the narrative, KrishnamurtisAs
San-
if in fulfillment of this prophecy, Istoma is
captured by nomads and carried eastward into
skrit greeting, "Om," disrupts the naturalized
affiliation between language and national
the steppe. The first phase of the journey ex-
poses
identity: "'Om,' he whispered, bending over a him to layers of belief systems and ways
stalk of blue flowers. The swan of time, of life that have accumulated over the vast ter-
Kala-
Hamza, fluttered above him, over his ritories
grey into which Russia's eastern frontier
dissolves and over which Russia has laid impe-
head. He was very old. The two men under-
stood each other" 'Аум, тихо прошепталrial он,
claims since the time of Ivan the Terrible.
наклоняясь над колосом синих цветков. He wanders through Tatar villages, relics of
Лебедь времени, Кала Гамза, трепетал the Mongol над occupation that still claim auton-
ним, над его седыми кудрями.
omy Он
from был
the tsar; receives hospitality from
Old190).
стар. Оба поняли друг друга (106; Believers, who broke away from the Or-
Even though Krishnamurti thodox
takesChurch
the in the seventeenth century and
form of Kalahamsa, the Vedic personifica-
fled state persecution; and witnesses the seam-
less blend with
tion of eternity, when he first communes of shamanic, Buddhist, and Islamic
rituals of tribes who refuse to be assimilated
the protagonist, the sage initially disappoints
into the mys-
Istoma by refusing to dispense timeless, settled, civilized ways of the nation:
tical revelations. Instead, the holy man
"A snake be- silently over an inscription,
slipped
'There is no God but God' [the Shahada, the
comes an agent of historical consciousness.
He recounts "news" 'новости' about resis- Islamic confession of faith]

drank bozo, the black vodka of the Kalmyk

tance movements against the Mogul Empire
on the distant Indian subcontinent and de-
Then he performed the ritual libation of th
scribes the terrible repercussions sufferedsteppe God and poured sacrificial spirit int
by spiritual leaders who assumed a politicalthe sacred cup. 'May Genghis-Bogdokhan
role in them. Istoma spends a night hauntedhave mercy on me!' he said solemnly" 'Да змея
by tales of Nanak (1469-1539), the founder of бесшумно сколзила по надписи "Нет бог
the nondenominational movement of seekers, кроме бога." . . . Старый Калмык пил бозо -
or Sikhs, persecuted peasants who mounted черную водку Калмыков. Вот он соверши
armed rebellions against Emperor Aurangzebвозлияние богу степей и пролил жертвен
in the seventeenth century under Tegh Ba- ную водку в свиященную чашу. - "Пуст
hadur and Govind Singh; of the Sufi mysticменя милует Чингиз Богдо Хан," важн
Kabir (1440-1518), with whom Nanak is saidпроговорил он' (108; 193).

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6i6 Liberation Theosophy [ PMLA
between comes
A turning point in the journey travelogue and historiography,
philosophical
when an intrepid Sikh called Kunby joinsexegesis
the and mythopoesis, au-
nomads' caravan and eventually tobiography and speculative fiction through
leads Istoma
to the Indian subcontinent. The fishermanwhich Khlebnikov reimagines Russia's rela-
spends the next five years in the companytion to Asia. We can explore the rhetorical
of itinerant holy men of various denomina-and ideological dimensions of this new con-
tions. India does not fulfill his expectationssanguinity by setting Istoma's journey against
of a destination, however. Instead of regain-three constellations of texts: the Theosophical
ing an identity, he learns that all forms of ter-inspirations for the narrative; Khlebnikov's
ritorial, religious, or ethnoracial belongingextraliterary efforts to articulate the links be-
are ephemeral and therefore meaningless. tween empire, historiography, and national
Wandering through India opens his eyes toidentity; and a manifesto, composed simul-
Krishnamurti's credo of Advaita Vedanta. taneously with "Yasir," that offers a radical
Shankara s school of thought posits the self cartography of the postrevolutionary future.
(atma) as indistinguishable from the world
spirit or universal essence (Brahma). Ac-
Politicizing the Mysterious East
cording to Vedanta, life is a journey whose
objective is to dissociate the self from allEntering Istoma s world not with promises of
worldly indices of identity and reunite withtranscendental wisdom but with news of lib-
the Brahma: "All is vanity, all is deception.
eration movements organized by disenfran-
. . . And whatever you can see with your eye,chised minorities, Krishnamurti provides
the first clue toward assessing Khlebnikov's
whatever you can hear with your ear - all that
is universal illusion, maya; universal truth unique mode of engaging with Theoso-
cannot be seen by the human eye or heard by phy 's Indian sources. Jiddu Krishnamurti
the human ear. That truth is Brahma, the uni-(1895-1986) was an impoverished Brahmin
versal soul" 'Исчезнуть, исчезнуть boy whom Blavatsky's disciple Annie Besant
что ты можешь увидать глазом, и то, что elevated to international prominence. Dis-
ты можешь услышать ухом, - все это ми- covered on a lonely beach near Adyar, the
ровой призрак, Мая, а мировую истинуheadquarters
не of the society in India, he was
дано не увидеть смертными глазами, ни anointed the figurehead of a new movement
услышать смертным слухом. Она- миро- called "Star of the East." On a tour through
вая душа Брахма (114; 200). Europe and the United States in 1911- the
moment of Khlebnikovs immersion in San-
As if replicating the atma s circular
trajectory, Istoma's meanderings eventu-
skrit - Besant presented the young man as
ally bring him back to his birthplace aon
syncretic
the embodiment of Christ and the
Volga-Caspian estuary. The familiarity of generating much doctrinal debate
Buddha,
home, however, fails to stir feelings of in the
joy in Russian press (Carlson 97). What has
not been examined, however, is the Russian
the traveler. The narrative ends elegiacally:
"Stopping sorrowfully before the familiar
response to the profoundly political role that
waves, Istoma moved on. Where? - he did not
Theosophists were beginning to assume in
the distant Indian subcontinent. The turbu-
know" 'Грустно постояв над знакомыми
волнами, Истома двинулся дальше. lent years of the First World War led not only
Куда? - он сам не знал' (115; 201). to the Russian Revolution but also to the co-

While my summary does not fully con- alescence of the nationalist movement in Brit-

vey the unusual form and rich texture of ish India. Besant 's work on behalf of women
"Yasir," it reveals the discursive oscillations
and untouchables, which provided a powerful

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 12 6.3 ] Anindita Banerjee 617
basis for her alliance withriods
Gandhi, inspired
and regimes of violence, are particularly
significant
thousands of her followers to join thefor Khlebnikov's
Indian meditations on
National Congress (Vohra 131). time. Istoma's native region features promi-
The fictional rendition of Krishnamurti nently in both "Preceptor and Disciple" 'Учи-
indicates that Khlebnikov was keenly aware тель и ученик,' an essay published in 1912
of Theosophy's transformation from an eso- in the form of an ascetic's conversation with
teric spiritual fad into a dynamic field of po- his acolyte, and A New Lesson about War , in
litical activism. Krishnamurtis stories of the which Blavatsky is named as an important in-
Mogul Empire s brutal suppression of rebels tellectual predecessor of the author. In both
might be read allegorically as a testimony of works, correspondences between geopolitical
the British administrations intensified repri- shifts are used to advance the hypothesis that
sals against Indian nationalists. Representing the British inherited and replicated structures
the arrival of barbarity - or should one say of social and political oppression from Mogul
institutions ("Учитель и ученик" 288), just
history?- in Istoma's seemingly idyllic world,
the emissary of Theosophy transforms Rus- as Russia in the Great Game reenacted the
sia's and Britain's Orients from magical to sixteenth-century invasion of Kazan, the leg-
real places. The real Krishnamurtis appear- endary last bastion of the retreating Mongol
ance in the Russian media coincided with a Empire, not far from the estuary where "Ya-
profound shift in Khlebnikov's perception sir" is set (Новое учение о войне 185).
of himself, which Raymond Cooke describes An equally powerful counternarrative,
as the metamorphosis of a futurist "warrior" however, balances the overlapping networks
into a contemplative "prophet" (140). of violence in the two Orients. The close con-

The primary index of this transforma- junction in "Yasir" between Krishnamurti

tion is the poet's increasing and eventuallyand a historical personage from Astrakhan
all-consuming preoccupation with history. exemplifies the way in which the narrative
His experimental method, however, eschewsof resistance to imperial power unifies the
the conventional frame of causality in favorgenres of Khlebnikov's work. Immediately
of simultaneity, correspondence, layering, andafter Istoma and the Indian sage first meet,
repetition. Through mathematical matricesthey hear "Razin's name rippling in whis-
and algorithms, Khlebnikov connects contexts pers through the market town" 'Имя Разина
and periods that are not usually examined inпрошло шепотом по городу' (105; 191). Ste-
a continuum. Numeric logic rather than geo-pán Razin was a seventeenth-century Volga
graphic or historical proximity links largepirate who was publicly beheaded in Moscow
power structures from different eras and partsafter leading a failed separatist movement. An
of the world. Europe's presence in the East is important character in many of Khlebnikov's
integrated with Russia's expansionist activities poems (Vroon, "Velimir Khlebnikov's 'The
on its Asiatic margins, while modern imperi- Seashore'" and "Velimir Khlebnikov's 'Ra-
alism is correlated with preexisting patternszin'"), Razin provides the point of departure
of dominance and subjugation (Ivanov 105).for a lengthy meditation on India's past and
Krishnamurtis iconic figure, transposed from present in "Preceptor and Disciple." By add-
the twentieth century into the seventeenth anding up the constituent numbers of the years in
superimposed on the contested landscape ofwhich Razin staged his uprising, Khlebnikov
Astrakhan, provides a powerful example ofarrives at 317, the tentative date of the Bud-
Khlebnikov's spatiotemporal permutations. dha's enlightenment (285). This number is
Borderlands such as the lower Volga re-then placed on a matrix with 1526, marking
gion, which bear layered traces of multiple pe- the victory of the first Mogul emperor, Babar,

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6i8 Liberation Theosophy [ PMLA
ogy and
in the battle of Panipat (290). The folk memory over macrohistorical
correspond-
events,
ing number on the opposite side of thepitting germs of wisdom gleaned from
matrix,
significantly, is 1857, when Hindu and Mus-
accidental encounters with itinerant holy men
lim soldiers of the British East India Com- against knowledge painstakingly compiled
pany staged the infamous Sepoy Mutiny (291).by academic orientalists. Like the poet, Bla-
A New Lesson about War schematizes vatsky frequently abandons the vivid realism
the First World War, during which the of
poet
her travelogue for mythopoeic or allegori-
was briefly and unwillingly conscriptedcal
- he
modes encoding the "hidden," "figurative"
calls himself a "y°gi" enslaved by militarydimensions of her journey (9).
discipline (Vroon, Introduction 1) - in The a political immediacy with which the
numeric frame that positions Razin close to
Theosophist frames every aspect of her spiri-
the founder of the Theosophical movement. tual exploration identifies Caves and Jungles
Razin's proximity to Blavatsky seems coun- as an important source text for "Yasir." Bla-
terintuitive at first, since her most famous
vatsky credits a Krishnamurti-like figure,
works - Isis Unveiled (1877), The Secret Swami
Doc- Dayananda Saraswati (1824-83), with
trine (1888), and Keys to Theosophy (1889)-inspiring her journey. Dayananda, a renowned
are purported transcriptions of messages scholar of Advaita Vedanta, spearheaded a
from mahatmas, or "great spirits," who havereformist movement called the Arya Samaj.
Monism
little to do with worldly events in the past or provided the epistemic and moral
present. Her Theosophical writings contain basis for its grassroots activism against the
no direct references to Russian or Indian his-
caste system, illiteracy, and the oppression of
tory, even though Blavatsky was an American
women. On arriving in India and witnessing
of Russian origin who traveled extensivelythis
in mahatmas activities firsthand, Blavatsky
Russia and India. An exception is the lengthy
begins to apprehend the contemporary signifi-
cance of Shankara s ancient credo (16-37).
account of her first journey to her spiritual
destination, From the Caves and Jungles of Dayananda was also among the pioneer-
Hindostán , comprising live dispatches from
ing figures of the late nineteenth century who
British India that were serialized in Russian explicitly aligned anticolonial resistance with
translation in a popular weekly between 1879the recuperation of non-Western systems of
and 1886 (Zirkoff xxx). The Russian version knowledge (Vohra 103). Blavatsky whole-
of Caves and Jungles was republished in book heartedly embraces his dictum, gleaned from
form in 1912 (xxxi), precisely when Khlebni-Shankaras writings, to "know thyself" 'at-
kov was studying Sanskrit and beginning his manan biddhi' as the first step toward eman-
quest for a new philosophy of history. cipation from the ego. A return inward and
into one s own past, she contends, also consti-
tutes the political act of "freeing the self from
Transcending the Orient
its own myths inherited from the colonizers"
There is no critical commentary on Blavatsky s (20-21). Not coincidentally, the first insight
lengthy account of a self-defined "quest to that Khlebnikovs Volga fisherman gains in
know myself" in India (17). Yet even a cursory India is a street mystics chant: "Be yourself,
glance at Caves and Jungles reveals its remark- by yourself, by means of yourself, penetrate
able convergence with Khlebnikovs imagi- the depths of yourself" 'Будь сам, самым
nary journey. The Theosophist meanders away собой, через самого себя, углубляйся в
from well-trodden sites toward "caves and самого себя' ("Yasir" 112; "Есир"198).
jungles" as forgotten as Istoma s impoverished Among the exemplars of self-knowledge
borderlands. She privileges popular mythol- that Blavatsky cites are Nanak (209-38), Ka-

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 12 6.3 ] Anindíta Banerjee 619
bir (381-85), and Shivaji (60-69, 130-32),
Her ultimate the
aim is to offer a new epistemol-
same historical figures that Krishnamurti
ogy of the East that explicitly contests with
the European
introduces to Istoma at their firstimagination
meeting. and intellect. She
Dating back to the sixteenthderides
and "guidebooks and travelogues" on the
seventeenth
centuries- the period of Razin's uprising-
grounds that "everything they contain is re-
fracted through
they play a vital role in forging the the commercial and political
Theoso-
phist's close relationship interests
withof Dayananda.
Europeans come to India's shores,
obscuring
Blavatsky interprets the Arya Samajher real
as a vistas
mod-and her heart" (4-5,
10-11). Indeed,
ern manifestation of the spiritual to understand Advaita Ve-
movements
danta, Blavatsky
that contributed to the demise of the turns not to the pioneering
Mogul
Sanskrit
Empire. Blavatsky s idea of scholars William
reincarnated Jones and Max
re-
Muller but rather
sistance, although diametrically to indigenous
opposed to oral sources,
from Brahmins
Khlebnikov's mathematical logic, betrays an such as Dayananda to impov-
erished
approach to history startlingly yogis and to
similar street mystics. Whatever
his.
Their shared fascination with the Sikh com- the merit or accuracy of her interpretations,
munity is a case in point. Caves and Jungles the most remarkable feature of the The-
devotes a chapter to the Sikhs' transformation osophist's engagement with "ancient Indian
from a peaceable group of peasants, united philosophy" is her condemnation of oriental
under Nanak s ecumenical teachings, into a studies as an instrument of empire.
band of rebels fighting the oppressive regime Blavatsky 's knowledge of Indie languages
of Aurangzeb. This history from the Mogul is superficial at best. Nevertheless, she is not
period leads Blavatsky to predict that Sikhs, afraid to challenge professional philologists
who make up a large contingent in the Brit- on the grounds that commercial and political
ish Indian military, will one day turn against aspirations drove the European "discovery" of
the world s greatest imperial power (234-35). Sanskrit and resulted in the "blind objectifica-
In "Yasir" a Sikh takes on the important task tion" of Indian languages and history (92-102,
of conjoining Russia's Orient with Britain's. A 113-18). Blavatsky insists that her narrative be
traveling merchant called Kunby, who identi- read as an antidote on two levels, that of the
fies himself as a disciple of Nanak, serendipi- phenomenal world of experience and that of
tously arrives in the steppe to turn Istoma an allegory recounting her "inner" quest (9-
toward the Indian subcontinent. Recognizing 10). She warns that throughout the narrative
a fellow spirit, the Volga fisherman declares, the "superficial meaning" of words and con-
"I too am a Sikh" 'Я тоже Сикх' (112; 197). cepts offered by orientalists will challenge her
A similar impulse of merging with the own rendition of their "true meaning" (23).
other, also motivated by Shankara's teach- The nonobjectivism of Advaita, which inspires
ings, underlies Blavatsky 's refusal to per- her critique of signification, also seems evident
form the role of the typical visitor from the in the layering of language and meaning in
West. Positioning herself as an archaeologist "Yasir." In the light of Blavatsky 's indictment
of lost knowledge, the Theosophist declares of Indology, Khlebnikov's obsessive "search
in the first chapter of Caves and Jungles that for the authentic meaning of words" takes on
she will be looking for the "India unknown an urgent political purpose (Cooke 67-103).
to its conquerors" and producing a narrative Even more germane to Khlebnikov's
that dismantles "systematized portraits of the search is the criterion that Blavatsky sets for
eternal Orient" (12, 9-10). Blavatsky 's project accessing the "deeper truth" behind the lan-
thus does not end with the discovery of Ad- guages of India (185). She is convinced that
vaita as a philosophy of the historical present. authentic meaning is available only to those

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620 Liberation Theosophy | PM LA
who organically belong to theidentification
East (484). As-to this day. Characteris-
system
tically, Khlebnikov
suming such an identity for herself, however, radicalizes the form and
the ideology
is more than a rhetorical gesture. As she of the
ap-questionnaire. He trans-
proaches the customs desk atforms
Bombay car-document of authentica-
the putative
rying American identification, Blavatsky
tion into a lyric reconfiguration of the self
defines herself as a "Russian and its confessional
savage" to the form into a conduit for
British officer (12). Her performances ofnational
relocating the the subject to the imperial
Asiatic frontier.
oriental subject, related with ironic relish
Combiningwith
throughout the work, always coincide the stylized diction of the
literal or metaphoric encounters
survey with one
with flights of fancy, Khlebnikov con-
structs
of two groups whose authority an elaborate
derives from tropology of his birth-
place. InIndia:
their expertise in "understanding" terms that
im-both invoke and subvert
the paradigmatic
perial administrators and Western Sanskrit-opposition between Euro-
pean and
ists. When Blavatsky calls herself a Asiatic
Russian Russia, he transforms the
savage, she seems to consciously
natural
appropriate
barriers of the Volga River and the
Caspian
British discourse about Russia Sea intothe
during polymorphous, dynamic
Great Game (Malia 92, 98). In thebetween
bridges debatesthem. Khlebnikov repeat-
with professional orientalists, however-
edly refers to his birth on Khanskaya Stavka
none of whom she met personally-
(Khanate Headquarters),
Russian a half-submerged
island to
and savage are further separated on the Volga- Caspian estuary similar
indicate
to Istoma's "crescent-shaped,"
the internal schism between European Rus- "half-wild"
sia and its Asiatic empire. Unlike Kulaly. many
The porous ofliminality of his native
the Russian modernists cited earlier in this place finds its counterpart in the poeťs own
essay, Blavatsky introduces a second level ofbody, with "Kalmyk blood" калмыцкая
colonial difference in situating herself. When кровь- the most repressed part of Rus-
she most crucially asserts her mastery oversia's genealogy- coursing through its veins
language and meaning, she invokes negative ("Questionnaire" 141; "Анкета" 58). The
stereotypes of the slit-eyed, broad-faced, flat-Kalmyks are also the first community from
nosed Asiatic, culled from Russia's internalRussia's Orient to embrace the protagonist
discourse of otherness, as referents of her own of "Yasir." As mentioned earlier, the chief of
body. At one point she states militantly thatthe Kalmyks inducts Istoma into their com-
her ancestors were not Slavs but Kalmyks (50). plex shamanic-Buddhist-Islamic worldview
Khlebnikov also claimed Kalmyk originsthrough a shared rite of intoxication.
in a remarkable deconstruction of his own Blavatsky 's and Khlebnikov's invoca-
image as a Russian citizen and national man tions of the Kalmyks parallel each other in
of letters. Between the start of the First Worldan unusual way. Whether through the The-
War and the Revolution, he composed a se-osophist's visage, Istoma's drinking from the
ries of short biographical sketches, the mostcommon pot of "black vodka," or the blood
detailed of which is "Questionnaire" 'Анкета'in the poet's veins, the body, rather than ab-
(1914). The анкета, or "survey," is a Russianstract categories of shared space and history,
institution with a long history. Dating backconstitutes the basis of the authors' identifica-
to the nineteenth century, when it was usedtion with the nomadic tribe. This incarnation
to catalog and regulate the non-Russian de- of the speaking subject radically intervenes in
mographic of the empire, the survey became the normative relation between mobility and
a powerful instrument of the Soviet gov- knowledge. Mary Louise Pratt eloquently de-
ernment and remains a part of the Russian scribes the European, usually male traveler

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 12 6.3 ] Aníndita Banerjee 621
assuming the enunciativeMuslim
position of athe
other disrupts dis-
hegemonic con-
embodied eye or I, whose struction
claim of twouniversal
to national identities, those of
Orthodox Christian
authority relies on its difference from Russiathe
and Hindu India,
concrete spaces and people
and that it up
opens them observes
to other spaces and voices.
and records (59).
The strategy of embodying the traveler
Liberation Theosophy
and the travelogue as the geographic, reli-
gious, and ethnic other also reveals
Through themakes
a ritual that me- Krishnamurti
diating role an iconic ur-text plays between
indistinguishable from the Kalmyk chief,
Khlebnikov and Blavatsky: Journey
Khlebnikov beyond
celebrates the liberating poten-
Three Seas (Хождение за
tialsтри
of thisморя),
trans-Asiatic the
polyphony. In Astra-
travelogue of Afanasy Nikitin, a fifteenth-
khan, the sage performs "a marriage pouring
century merchant from Tver on
the Ganges the
water intonorth-
the dark Volga, . . . just
ern Volga who arrived in southwestern India
as for many centuries camels have borne on
their
via Astrakhan and Iran in thebacks company
water from the two
ofrivers to in-
Central Asian merchants.termingle"
While 'Совершается
Blavatsky обриад свадбы
двух рек,
explicitly cites Nikitins account inкогда
theрукой жреца вода Ганга
intro-
проливается
duction to her narrative (3), his voiceв темные воды Волги . . . Как
perme-
ates the medium of "Yasir."ежегодно
Like Khlebnikov,
привозят верблюды священную
воду Ганга
the fifteenth-century merchant чтобы они
speaks in присоединялись'
an
extraordinary amalgam of Russian,
("Yasir" Arabic,
107-08; "Есир" 191). Soon afterward,
Farsi, and diverse Central
theAsian languages
nomad instructs Istoma in the worship of
and invokes Allah far more wind
often than
that flows he
across does
Eurasia. The elemental
the Christian God (Banerjee, "By
conjoining of Caravan").
wind and water, carried in the
caravans of
Nikitins journey from Russia to thetraders such In-
as Nikitin, dissolves
dian subcontinent is crucial for understand- the naturalized barriers between European
ing how Khlebnikov augments and ultimately Russia and its Asiatic territories and between

transcends Blavatsky. Even though Caves and Hindu and Islamic India. The elements also
Jungles cites the fifteenth-century account, define the ultimate destination of the trav-
the extraordinary metamorphosis of the mer- eling subject: the "blank space" 'пустота of
chant s linguistic and spiritual persona has no Kalmyk cosmology (115, 195), identical with
real place in the Theosophist's quest for au- moksha , liberation from earthly existence, in
thenticity. Blavatsky s critique of philology Advaita philosophy.
as an imperial enterprise is revolutionary in The journey does not end with this revela-
itself. But her vision cannot accommodate the tion, however. Having penetrated "the silver
multiethnic, multireligious, polylingual com- fabric of deception" серебристая ткань об-
munity, moving through the vast stretch of мана' (113; 199), the Volga fisherman evolves
Eurasia, that guided Nikitin across the "three into an author composing "the greatest book
seas" and shaped his subjectivity. of blank pages, the book of nature written in
In contrast, "Yasir" relies on the mer- the clouds" лучшая книга, белые страницы,
chant s range of movement and transcul- книга природы среди облаков' (114; 200).
turation. Although Khlebnikov faithfully The worldly contents of this book might be
reproduces Nikitin's panoply of Islamic discerned in a manifesto that Khlebnikov con-
tongues, what distinguishes the poet s fictional ceived simultaneously with "Yasir." Under the
travelogue is these languages' interaction with title "Indo-Russian Union" 'Индо-русский
classical Sanskrit. The language of a shared союз,' the manifesto lays out the epistemic

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622 Liberation Theosophy [ PM LA
olence inherent
and political impact of the imagined in static, homogeneous con-
dialogue
between Russia's contiguous peripheries and
ceptions of national identity.
Britain's overseas colony. As Harsha Ram
notes, the manifesto re-Orients the interna-
tional dimension of the October Revolution.
What was expected to unfold first toward the
Notes
capitalist West is turned toward "a continuum
1. This and all other unattributed translations are mine.
of spaces in the East" ("Poetics" 224).
Proposing the establishment of a new 2. The early scholarship on Khlebnikovs relation to
"the Orient" (Loščic and Turbin; Mirsky; Tartakovskij)
political entity called the Asiatic Union of
is conspicuous not only for its lack of critical engagement
Socialist Republics (ASSU), spanning China, with the term but also for a kind of geographic totaliza-
India, Persia, Russia, and Afghanistan, "Indo- tion-whereby Japan, China, Persia, and India exist on
Russian Union" rebels against the mere resig- the same tropological and ideological plane as Central
nification of the nation as the Union of Soviet Asia or the Caucasus. The only full-length essay on "Ya-
sir," which pays particular attention to the story's "Orien-
Socialist Republics. Khlebnikovs imaginedtal" sources (Drews 154), operates in the same paradigm.
federation would be a "zone of free movement" In contrast, Vroon and Ram offer finely nuanced, histori-
across Asiatic territories estranged by geopo- cized commentaries on the contexts previously conflated
litical frontiers. The literal u-topia, or "no under the term Orient. This essay, examining a text that
has received little scholarly attention, seeks to add an es-
place," of ASSU can be interpreted as a terres-
sential dimension of comparison that also engages the
trial realization of the "blank space" inhabited author's own critique of the concept.
by Istoma at the end of his journey. It is not 3. While critics across the disciplines are paying in-
surprising, therefore, that Astrakhan- "a placecreasing attention to Asia's constitutive role in iterations of
Russian identity, scholars of literature and cultural history
that united the Aryan world and the Caspian
have been using postcolonial theory creatively to model
world, the triangle of Christ, Buddha, and Mo- a nationally specific orientalism. As Harsha Ram notes,
hammed"- defines the core of a new map that however, "read[ing] Said as a synecdoche of postcolonial
is predicated on contact rather than contain- criticism as a whole" significantly limits these scholars'

ment of spaces and populations (341-42). enterprise. Discussions of the relations between Europe's
and Russia's Orients, consequently, remain focused on
Mobile communities of the past and fu-
what Ram calls "mimetic-representational" influences
ture, which blur not only territorial, linguis- instead of extending into discussions of ideological and
tic, and religious boundaries but also the lines rhetorical formations ("Between 1917 and 1947" 832).
between commerce, spirituality, and politics, 4. The unusual convergence of mysticism and politi-
cal consciousness in the fictional figure of Krishnamurti
generate the critical geography of Khlebni-
is also evident in Khlebnikov's lyric imagining of Qurrat
kov's "Yasir" and incarnate its credo of liber-
al-Ayn, a radical Islamic mystic who led anticolonial up-
ation. Forged from asymptomatic couplings risings in Iran and Azerbaijan (Vroon, "Qurrat al-Ayn").
between the two Orients, the worldview em-
bodied by this work might have seemed radi-
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Bassin, Mark. "Russia between Eu
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