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The real Russian elemental language had always been represented by Russia‘s first and greatest epic poem—
- the living, graphic speech of the 'Lay of Igor's Campaign’, through and through secular, temporal and Russian at every turn...[1]
And when Velimir Khlebnikov, concludes Mandel'stam,
- a contemporary Russian writer, plunges us into that same thicket of Russian word-roots, into that etymological night, kind to the heart and intellect of the wise reader, there lives that same Russian literature, the literature of the 'Lay of Igor's Campaign’.[2]
Mandel‘stam's position, then, is that Khlebnikov's struggle was against a language—form that was written, priestly, foreign, centralized and intimately associated with the functions of the state. Khlebnikov's own language was anti—literate, secular, through-and—through Russian, decentralized and inimical to the existence of the state. This analysis is central to an understanding of Khlebnikov, and is confirmed by many of Khlebnikov's own statements, as well as in his poetry.
Khlebnikov wanted to inhabit a state of sounds.
- We are going to the sounds inhabited by people.
- A town of logs of sound,
- A town of stones of sound,
- There I lead you
- To the town whose food you can hear,
- The town where people eat sounds, let us go,
- Where there are logs of sound,
- Logs of laughter,
- And streets of song...
- Enough of idly straining
- Strings with one's hand
- Enough of catching and clinging
- To the sounds, hungry-eared,
- To listen to them.
- It is time mankind inhabited
- The state or sounds.[3]
