Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/104

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Khlebnikov blamed the War on the world's "states of space“, which he likened to the cannibalistic gods of an earlier age:

Here in the name of all humanity
We turn to negotiations
With the states of the past:
If you, 0 states, are so fine,
As you love to describe yourselves,
And as you force your servants to describe you,
Then why this food-of-the-gods?
Why do we, the people, crunch in your jaws—
Between your canine teeth and your molars?[1]

In the future, explained Khlebnikov, these states would be destroyed: a Government of Poets would have taken their place, forming a State of Time. But that day had yet to be reached:

And in the meantime, mothers,
Carry your children away
Should a state anywhere appear.
Young people—run off and hide in the caves,
Or in the depths of the sea
Should you anywhere glimpse a state.
Young girls and all those who can't tolerate the odour of death,
Fall into a swoon at the word "frontiers":
It stinks of corpses.[2]

In Petrograd in the spring of 1917 a grandiose "Carnival of the Arts" was staged. Writes Kamensky:

...writers, artists, composers and actors moved slowly down the Nevsky in a procession of automobiles strewn with flowers. Bringing up the rear of this 'carnival' procession of vehicles was a big lorry, on the side of which was inscribed in chalk:

THE PRESIDENT OF THE TERRESTRIAL SPHERE.

In the lorry in a soldier's greatcoat, sitting hunched-up, was Khlebnikov.[3]

  1. Choix de goemes, p 102. In another version of the "declaration" Klebnikov wrote: "If you, states, are well-behaved—then why this food-of—the—gods? Why do we crunch between your jaws—we soldiers and sailors? But then if you are bad, 0 states, who among us will raise a little finger to prevent your destruction?"—SP V p 163.
  2. Choix de poemes, p 102.
  3. Put' entuziasta, M 1931, pp 256—7; quoted by Stepanov, introd to IS p. 49