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Soon after the February 1917 Revolution, Khlebnikov convinced that his mathematical prophesies had been or were being realized——wrote ecstatically to his friend Petnikov:
- Is the universal roar of insurrections terrifying to us—when we ourselves are an insurrection still more terrible? You remember that a government of poets has been established, embracing the terrestrial sphere. You remember that a sonorous string of tribes has united Tokyo, Moscow and Singapore. We are like the sea’s waves during a grey storm, one moment swelling and towering high, the next rolling down and scattering wide. You recall that we have succeeded in discovering the harmony of destinies, which we need in order to lift humanity on the palm of our thought to the next plane of existence. You know, this wandering century-is going somewhere![1]
In April, Khlebnikov made a series of notes relating to an "appearance" to be made by himself and Petnikov on some occasion.
Among these notes were:
- Our answer to wars—the mousetrap.
- The rays of my name.
- The ray of humanity.
- People as rays.
- Beautiful waterfalls of numbers.
- An armful of equations of fate.
- The secret of humanity.
- The ray of Khlebnikov.
- The suicide of states.
- The seige of languages.
- Logs of time.
- The ray of the world.
- The world as a poem.
- We have come to yon from the future, from the distance of
- centuries. We gaze upon your time from the rock of the
- future.[2]
At about the same time, Khlebnikov composed his "Declaration of the Presidents of the Terrestrial Sphere":
- Only we, having rolled up—like a scroll—
- Your three years of war, to form a terrifying trumpet,
- Sing and shout, sing and shout, _
- Drunk with the enchantment of the truth,
- That the Government of the Terrestrial Sphere
- Already exists:
- It is—We.[3]
