were "died—out" and “non—existent") had been made for "suicides and cripples".[1] It did not serve to penetrate or conquer the distances and spaces separating people from one another, but, on the contrary, enormously increased them:
- Who would travel from Moscow to Kiev via New York? And yet is there one line of contemporary bookish language which is free of such detours?[2]
But with the development of "the study of lightning", the coming of "radio-telegraph" and "Radio", the “language of lightning" and the "gift of spark—speech"—-technological inventions which Khlebnikov’s sound—experiments and "transrational language" were designed to match—communication could take place "in the twinkling of an eye."[3] Inventors-people who accelerated the historical time—flow, people who hungered and fought for time—could begin to challenge proprietors or acquirers—people who froze the time-flow, people who owned landed estates, who defended "frontiers" and hungered only for the parcelled-out spaces of the Terrestrial Sphere. These spaces were now being shot through and through by "people-rays". Futurists communicating by radio—telegraph planned to occupy the estates of "people of space" and encircle the globe like waves. The ground was being pulled–literally—from under the feet of the "people of space". For all the world's space was being shrunk into a tiny ball:
- Nobody will deny that I carry your terrestrial globe on the little finger of my hand.[4]
Consequently, terrestrial ownership or “property” was becoming an absurdity, an impossibility. The right to space was being
- ↑ Neizd P p 437. Khlebnikov's lines about "suicides and cripples", written in 1912, are paralleled in Mayakovsky's first play, "Vladimir Mayakovsky, A Tragedy", whose premier was held on December 2, 1915. Here a "chorus of cripples" plays an important role, as does the theme of suicide. See: Stahlberger, op cit, Chapter One (pp 20—43).
- ↑ SP V p 228.
- ↑ Slovo Kak Takovoe.
- ↑ SP IV p 114. Kfilebnikov is here anticipating McLuhan's "Global Village" slogan; but of course it was also in a sense anticipated by Apollinaire and others (see above, chapter Seven).
