As early as in 1908, Khlebnikov had mentioned (in a letter to Kamensky referred to in Chapter One) his ideal of creating a "pan-Slavic language".[1] In the same year, he had linked the idea of the poet's right to create new words with the "right" of the Russian people to converse in a pan-Slavic tongue.[2] Now in 1913 Khlebnikov returned seriously and methodically to this idea. In March, he wrote an article arguing against great-Russian nationalism in favour of an Asian-continental language and culture.[3] In the following year, he made his famous furious attack on Marinetti and the Italian's Russian admirers who were bending, as he put it, "the noble neck of Asia under the yoke of Europe.“[4] In 1916, he wrote his "Letter to Ewe Japanese", speaking as if on behalf of the youth of Russia to the youth of Japan and calling for a "world union of youth" and a "war between the generations.“ He explained his own position by saying:
- I can more easily understand a young Japanese speaking in the old-Japanese language, than certain of my own countrymen speaking in modern Russian.[5]
He deplored the fact that Asia lacked, as it were, its own "I", and urged the continent's youth to join him in the struggle to write in huge letters: “I—Asia". For Asia, as he put it, "has her own will."[6] Appended to the letter was a list of proposals for, among other things, the construction of a round-Himalayan railway-line, the pan-Asian use of a "language of numbers", particularly useful for communication by radio-telegramme, and the establishment of an "Asian Daily of Songs and Inventions." Articles in this Daily would be published in all languages, transmitted from the four corners by radio-telegraph and translated once a week.[7]
