Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/144

136 Chapter Eighteen:

SOUND, TIME, LANGUAGE AND THE STATE.

The "political" implications of Khlebnikov's anti-literacy are discussed in terms which help show the underlying links between the various aspects of his world—view.

First, it is argued that his counterposition of a "state of time" to the existing "states of space" is consistent with his counterposition of oral language (arranged in temporal sequence) to writing (arranged in space).

Secondly, it is suggested that Khlebnikov's association of language-forms with state-forms is not devoid of a certain logic. Writing developed historically largely to meet new needs which emerged with the rise of the state. The state is a territorial unit (a "state of space"). To preserve fixed laws uniformly over wide areas of territory, a fixed, spatially arranged, durable and transportable language-form was needed. The written word, which met this need, may be thought to embody certain of the specific characteristics of the state as a historical form of social organization. In particular, its ideal of fixity can be seen as an expression of the state's ideal of the fixity of its laws and the permanence of its power.

Khlebnikov fought against his form of language—and saw his struggle against the "states of space" as a simple extension of that fight. The language to which he was opposed, Mandel‘stam associates in particular with the state in its Russian form. According to Mandel'stam, the Symbolists' language was that of the Church and the State, while—in struggle against it—Khlebnikov's language represented "the terrible and boundless elements of the Russian language, not accommodating themselves to any state or church forms." This was one expression of the fact that Khlebnikov's Russian was the oral form, "heard for the first time since a written Russian culture has existed.“

Opposing all "states of space" and harking back to the stateless, tribal past of Russia and mankind, Khlebnikov's linguistic efforts were directed towards restoring what he thought of as the archaic unity of the human race. But this restoration was to be accomplished through a revolution in which "inventions" such as Radio were to play a crucial part. The result would be a “state of time". Power would be in the hands no longer of the language-form and "reason" of the state, but of a transrational language of electronically-transmitted sounds, expressing the will of humanity and of "the starry sky".