The intended irony in all this is obvious.
What Khlebnikov opposed in language was precisely the tendency caricatured in his "language of numbers" idea: the use of language only to transmit ready-formed concepts, in such a way that nothing——neither the sounds of words, their associated emotional values or anything else—is actually experienced at all. this is what Khlebnikov meant when he wrote:
- The desire to "rationally"-as opposed to transrationally—understand the word has led to the destruction of any artistic relationship with the word. I cite this by way of warning.[1]
To Khlebnikov, a language capable of "uniting people" would have to penetrate beyond intellect to the realm of feelings.[2] It was inconceivable that a purely rational "language of numbers" could do this. That is why, in all Khlebnikov's work, the theme is returned to again and again that a transrational language will be necessary to unite the human race.
But there is yet another form in which Khlebnikov's "universal language" idea appears. This is the "gift of spark-speech", the "language of lightning"—the "Radio of the future". The idea of modern science and technology as "uniting mankind" was sometimes conceived in more general terms, as when Khlebnikov wrote:
- The people's international we conceive through the international of the ideas of science.[3]
But, when it came to a specific invention, it was always Radio (or, earlier, radio—telegraphy) to which Khlebnikov most en—
