ults sounded more Russian than Russian itself. Thus Mayakovsky was amazed when Khlebnikov yproduced about five hundred derivatives of the verb lyubit‘ (to love), all of them, according to Mayakovsky,
- absolutely accurate in their Russian construction, accurate and inevitable,
although strictly~speaking, of course, they were not "Russian" at all.[1]
Writing about the language of Joyce's Finnegans Wake, Max Eastman comments disparagingly that the reader experiences nothing of the author's inner life or mind through it. Asking (with reference to the author) "What is there that we experience in common with him?“, Eastman replies:
- A kind of elementary tongue dance, a feeling of the willingness to perform it.[2]
Other critics differ strongly, of course, but it would seem undeniable that this "tongue—dance" element, while not the only thing communicated by Joyce's language, represents one of its important characteristics. In Khlebnikov‘s "transrational language", this same element of tongue-dance, present to an extent in all poetry, likewise Comes to the fore. Shklovsky even seems to see it as the main source of enjoy— ment in poetry in general:
- In the enjoyment of the meaningless 'transrational word' the articulatory side, a sui generis dancing of the speech organs, causes most of the enjoyment which poetry brings.[3]
In many of his experimental lines, Khlebnikov took this tongue-dance (sometimes "tongue—twister") principle to extremes:
