Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/195

187 that Khlebnihov was not simply a primitivist, and that he infact saw a kind of identity of past and future, so that tohim there was no contradiction between his primitivism on the one hand and his futurism on the other. There is no reason tosuppose that Khlebnikov in 1912 would have felt philosophicallydisinclined to put his name to the "Slap" manifesto on account of its technological futurism as such, although it is truethat its "urbanist" and "machine—age" flavour set it at acertain distance from Khlebnikov's more advanced "electronic age" inclinations.

Apart from this "urbanist" flavour, however, it seems difficult to find anything in the Slap manifesto that Khlebnikov could possibly have disagreed with. The opening lines about "Time's Trumpet" remind one strongly of Khlebnikov's time—theories and of his "Martian Trumpet" written in 1916. The general "loudness" and "rudeness" of the manifesto––and the note of bragging associated with the word "We"––may be thought uncharacteristic of Khlebnikov and more in tune with the attitudes of the "urbanist" Mayakovsky. But then, Khlebnikov was quite capable of the same sort of "loudness", bragging and use of the word "We", having written two years earlier:


 * "We are a new species of people-rays. We have come to light up the universe. We are invincible."

The exaggerated claims of the Slap manifesto seem mild by comparison. Again, the string of insults against the enemies of the Futurists might be thought untypical of Khlebnikov's style—-were it not for the fact that he himself had written:


 * "We recognize only two classes-the class of 'We', and our accursed enemies..."

As far as concerned the latter, Khlebnikov urged that the devil should pour hot lead down their throats.