PATAPHYSICS-THE-POETICS-OF-AN-IMAGINARY- SCIENCE_C_Bok

Russolo, the Futurist composer, evokes with his own
intonarumori:
"machines create today such a large number of
varied noises that pure sound, with its littleness and its
monotony, now fails to arouse any emotion" ( 5 ) .
Marinetti thus attempts to arouse such emotion with an
automated invective that abolishes standard grsmmar in order
to evoke the "zang-tuuum tuuumb orchestra of the noises of
wsr swelling with anger under a note of silence" (1987:79).
Just as Marinetti privileges telegrammatic abbreviations
enhanced by such sound-effects as "2000 steam pregnancies
tata~loomploom flac flac" ( 1987: 63) ,11
so also does Russolo
replace the antiquated repertoire of symphonic sonograms
with "the rumblings and rsttlings of engines breathingt ...],
the rising and falling of pistons, the stridency of
mechanical saws" (8). Such noise is more surrational than
irrational, providing the basis for what Khlebnikov might
cal1 the zaum of a "transrational" language (the zaumn~i
iazsk) --not nonsense, but " beyonsensef1--a "language si tuated
beyond the boundaries of ordinary reason" (383).
Khlebnikov suggests that, for science, the noisiness of
zaum can no longer be dismissed as an exceptional
irrelevance:
"[tJhe plenitude of language must be analyzed
in terms of fundamental units of 'alphabetic verities,' and