and so on, it will be appreciated how intrinsic to the nature of writing is its permanence, its fixity and its lack of ambiguity—«as ideals if not always necessarily in practice. It would obviously seem absurd to Sign an unfinished document, enforce a partly—written law or purchase an incomplete title to property. In other words there can be no question, in any of these cases,of dealing with a linguistic Braces . The written words mustcomprise a definite thing.[1]
A finished "thing" is, almost invariably, what Khlehnikov's writing is not. Khlebnikov loved new beginnings—and hated endings. Mandel'stam put it beautifully when he commented:
- ...each line is the beginning of a new poem.[2]
With Kruchenykh, Khlebnikov explicitly attacked the idea of finish and polish: in his view, true poets
- should write on their books: after reading, tear it up.[3]
Khlebnikov was so true to this impulse that he was incapable of correcting printers' proofs of his own work. As Mayakovsky explains:
- You couldn't let him have anything to do with proofs: he would cross out everything completely and give you an entirely new text.[4]
Khardzhiev writes:
- Khlebnikov felt that every verbal construction was a process, not an object [5]
The activity of making sounds or communicating was the important thing, not the finished result. Writes Mayakovsky:
- ↑ In connection with all this, it would seem not accidental that in attacking "bookish" or "fossilized" language, Khlebnikov very often had the language of state officialdom and of commerce in mind. Khlebnikov thought of himself as leading "a troop of songs" into battle against the market-place"(see Mayakovsky's essay, V V Khlebnikov, in E J Brown, op cit p 86) See also his attack on street-signboard language (S V p 225)
- ↑ Quoted by Markov, The Literary Importance of Khlebnikov's Longer Poems, The Russian Reiew, Vol 19 No 4 Oct. 1960 p 353.
- ↑ Slovo kak takovoe, quoted in: Markov, Russian Futurism p 130.
- ↑ V. V. Khlebnikov in: E J Brown, op cit p 83.
- ↑ Quoted by Markov, The Longer Poems, p 32.
