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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]
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Choix de poemes, p 102.
- ↑ Put' entuziasta, M 1931, pp 256—7; quoted by Stepanov, introd to IS p. 49
