Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/105

97 Chapter Thirteen:

THE WORLD AS A LIGHT-RAY: KHLEBNIKOV AND THE ELECTRONICS REVOLUTIOH.

Khlebnikov's technological "futurism" was far more advanced than that of his "urbanist" contemporaries such as Narinetti. Khlebnikov drew little or no inspiration from the nineteenth-century steam-age and iron-age industrial revolution. But the electronics revolution, the invention of radio and the theories of Einstein—all connected, in one way or another, with the idea of electro-magnetic waves—were something different. In this chapter it is suggested that Khlebnikov's concept of "people-rays", his idea of the whole of humanity as "inhabiting" a "light-ray of fate" and his enthusiasm for radio were interconnected, and reflected a profound consciousness of the importance of the "inventions" and scientific discoveries which formed the background to the Cubist revolution in art.