Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/110

102 :divinity? If prophets existed on such a light-wave, they would glorify the scientist's power and flatter him: "You breathe——and the oceans move; you speak—and they flow back"; they would lament that they could not do this themselves.
 * Now, having studied the mighty rays of human fate, whose waves are populated by people, each single pulse lasting for centuries, human thought can aspire to apply to them the techniques of mirror-regulation, building a force consisting of a pair of convex and concave lenses. It may be imagined that the century-sized oscillations of our giant ray will be no less obedient to the scientist than infinitely small waves of light-ray. Then people will be at one and the same time both the population inhabiting the light—rayh-and the scientist directing the course of these rays, altering their direction at will.

If all this seems rather far-fetched, we should perhaps turn to a more convincing Utopian vision: Khlebnikov's "Radio of the Future", which deals less with time than with the conquest of space. To a certain extent, it is a vision which has already come true, but it is remarkable that it should have been written as early as in 1921:


 * The Radio of the future—the main tree of consciousness— will open up a knowledge of countless tasks and will unite all mankind.
 * Around the Radio's central station, this iron palace, where clouds of wires stream out like strands of hair, there will surely be posted a skull and cross-bones with the familiar inscription: 'Danger!‘ For the slightest halt in the working of the Radio would produce a spiritual swoon of the entire country, a temporary loss of its consciousness.
 * The Radio becomes the spiritual sun of the country, the great sorcerer and ensorceler.
 * Imagine the Radio's central station: A spider web of lines in the air, a cloud of lightning-flashes, now extinguishing themselves, now re-igniting, running from one end of the building to the other. A skyblue globule of circular lightning hovering in the air like a timid bird, tackle stretched obliquely.
 * Around the clock, from this point on the terrestrial sphere, flocks of news-items from the life of the spirit scatter like the spring flight of birds.
 * In this stream of lightning-birds, the spirit will prevail over force, good advice over intimidation.