Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/154

146 If the world of dreams lies beyond the reach of literacy and the state, the opposite is the case in relation to the "governing" layers of the mind. Khlebnikov sees the “sunlit” or "rational", everyday or literate layers of language and consciousness as "ruling over" the starry, transrational layers just as governments rule over people. His "transrational language" is designed to reach the "people" as if "over the heads" of the "government":


 * If one may distinguish, within the soul, the government of intellect from the stormy people of feelings, then charms and transrational language are an appeal over the head of the government straight to the people of feelings, a direct cell to the twilight regions of the soul or the highest point of popular sovereignty in the life of the word...

This, of course, throws important new light on Mandel'stam's comment that Khlebnikov sees language as a state. Two kinds of state are involved — as Handel'stam pointed out. But Khlebnikov sees the struggle between these two as in a curious way paralleling, on the one hand, the conflict between peoples and governments, and, on the other, the conflict between the intellect and the deeper, "twilight" or "star-world" layers of the mind.

Under the conditions of “the present", Khlebnikov is aware, it is the governing or intellectual layers of the mind which have the upper hand. But this, for him, is precisely what is wrong with the world: these governing layers represent the rule of the "states of space". The language of these mental layers is not "self—governing". It is governed from outside, serving "reason" and hence the “governments” as opposed to the "people" of the Terrestrial Sphere. The way in which Khlebnikov derives his political conclusions from linguistic premises is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in the following lines, written in 1915, where the poet explains the implications, for him, of the slogan of the "self-sufficient word":