Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/209

201 On the other hand, if—as the Russian futurists advocated—the human "word" and its associated "forms" were to come first, seizing, clothing and reshaping the naked city and terminating its reign of terror over man, then, correspondingly, the artist should naturally see himself politically in revolutionary terms. He should lend his talents to the task of revolutionizing society and subordinating machines to the requirements—communicative and aesthetic as well as material—of human beings.