Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/98

90 of 1914. Here the idea that "the time" had arrived was fervently expressed, even though introduced in the form of a question:


 * All in all, isn't it time to rush to Razin's boats? Everything is ready. We will form a Government of the Presidents of the Terrestrial Sphere. Prepare a list. Send it.

The "list", presumably, was to be of the names of the artists or others willing to "join" his supposed "Government." The central figure in the Government was obviously going to be Khlebnikov himself. The poet was allowing his "ego" to become inflated in his own dream—world to an extent which might have embarrassed even a Mayakovsky, or one of the most self-centred of the Symbolists. In 1916, Khlebnikov wrote, referring to his alter-ego, "Ka":


 * Ka became my teacher. Under his guidance, I gradually became the chief of the terrestrial sphere. I received a letter: "To the Chief of the Terrestrial Sphere"—there were no other words.

But in being expanded on this scale, Khlebnikov's "ego" was in a sense being turned inside-out and dissolved into an apparent one-ness with the entire human race. This paradoxical route to collectivism—through a carrying of egotism to impossible extremes—was also characteristic of Mayakovsky. As Trotsky notes in this connection:


 * The universalization of one's ego breaks down, to some extent, the limits of one's individuality, and brings one nearer to the collectivity—from the reverse end.

It was, of course, the same death of the "I" and birth of the "We" which we noted earlier that underlay this process. Trotsky's comment here is that "extremes meet", and it is this process of transformation of things into their opposites which explains why