Велимир Хлебников
Заклятие смехом
О, рассмейтесь, смехачи!
О, засмейтесь, смехачи!
Что смеются смехами, что смеянствуют смеяльно,
О, засмейтесь усмеяльно!
О, рассмешищ надсмеяльных — смех усмейных смехачей!
О, иссмейся рассмеяльно, смех надсмейных смеячей!
Смейево, смейево,
Усмей, осмей, смешики, смешики,
Смеюнчики, смеюнчики.
О, рассмейтесь, смехачи!
О, засмейтесь, смехачи!
[1908—1909]
o laugh it out, you laughsters!
o laugh it up, you laughsters!
So they laugh with laughters, so they laugherize delaughly.
o laugh it up belaughably!
o the laughingstock of the laughed upon-the laugh of 8elaughed laughsters!
o laugh it out roundlaughingly, the laugh of laughed-at Laughians!
Laugherino, laugherino,
Laughify, laughicate, laugholets, laugholets, Laughikins, laughikins,
o laugh it out, you laughsters!
o laugh it up, you laughsters!
[transliterated by Gary Kern]
Poem, 1908-9, 0’48”.
Voice – Roman Jakobson
Recording – Harvard (USA), 1954
Velimir Khlebnikov on UbuWeb Sound
Velimir Khlebnikov, pseudonym of Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov (b. Toula 1885 - d. Governorate of Novgorod 1922) was one of the fundamental poets of Russian cubo-futurism, to the extent that some of his writings predate the futurist aesthetic, or at least the publication in 1909 of Marinetti’s futurist manifesto. Indeed, he boycotted Marinetti’s visit to Russia in 1914, distributing flyers that demanded another term be substituted for futurism, such as budietlianstvo [men of the future, or the future will be Slav] eliminating the differentiation between past-present-future and exploring his own Slavonic roots as an encounter with a “new universal language”. Following these principles, he developed ‘slovotvorcestvo’ [verbopoesis], employed in the etymological poem “Incantation by Laughter”, in which all the words derive from the root smech [rice] derived from all the languages of the Empire, leading him to invent verbs, adjectives and pronouns and to create a kind of exorcism-ritual, as if the person intoning the poem were a Shaman. The well-known philologist Roman Jakobson, also a futurist poet in his youth, met Khlebnikov in 1914 and described him as an “eternal seeker of analogies”, In 1919 he wrote a monograph on Khlebnikov’s verbal art, which was published in 1921. Khlebnikov was also an influence on Jakobson’s phonological theory, which approaches the sounds of the tongue as enigmas to be deciphered; he also maintained there were fifteen to twenty distinctive features common to all the languages of the world. It is Roman Jakobson who recites the poem on the CD, since there are no existing sound documents of Khlebnikov himself. Indeed Khlebnikov habitually refused to read his poems in public; other people, such as Mayakovsky - who considered Khlebnikov his master - had to read them instead.
Contributed by
Juan Pablo Macías