The poet Velimir Khlebnikov (1885–1922), “the eternal prisoner of consonance,” “chairman of the globe,” “budetlyanin” (from the word “will”), as he called himself, truly turned out to be a man of the future. His creative searches largely determined the development of not only Russian, but also world culture of the twentieth century, and the “laws of numbers”, “laws of time”, and other discoveries he found turned out to be visionary. His short life is surrounded by legends, behind which lie facts even more fantastic than the legends themselves. Sofia Starkina, a researcher of the Russian avant-garde, a specialist in the work of V. Khlebnikov, for the first time attempted a holistic biography of the poet. In addition to a strictly documented chronicle of Khlebnikov’s life and analysis of his main works, the biography includes numerous memoirs of the poet’s contemporaries, his letters and diaries.