Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Mayakovsky (Владимир Владимирович Маяковский) was born the last of three children in Baghdati, Russian Empire (now in Georgia) where his father worked as a forest ranger. His father was of Ukrainian Cossack descent and his mother was of Ukrainian descent. Although Mayakovsky spoke Georgian at school and with friends, his family spoke primarily Russian at home. At the age of 14 Mayakovsky took part in socialist demonstrations at the town of Kutaisi, where he attended the local grammar school. After the sudden and premature death of his father in 1906, the family — Mayakovsky, his mother, and his two sisters — moved to Moscow, where he attended School No. 5.
In Moscow, Mayakovsky developed a passion for Marxist literature and took part in numerous activities of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party; he was to later become an RSDLP (Bolshevik) member. In 1908, he was dismissed from the grammar school because his mother was no longer able to afford the tuition fees.
Around this time, Mayakovsky was imprisoned on three occasions for subversive political activities but, being underage, he avoided transportation. During a period of solitary confinement in Butyrka prison in 1909, he began to write poetry, but his poems were confiscated. On his release from prison, he continued working within the socialist movement, and in 1911 he joined the Moscow Art School where he became acquainted with members of the Russian Futurist movement. He became a leading spokesman for the group Gileas (Гилея), and a close friend of David Burlyuk, whom he saw as his mentor.
The 1912 Futurist publication A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (Пощёчина общественному вкусу) contained Mayakovsky's first published poems: Night (Ночь) and Morning (Утро). Because of their political activities, Burlyuk and Mayakovsky were expelled from the Moscow Art School in 1914.
His work continued in the Futurist vein until 1914. His artistic development then shifted increasingly in the direction of narrative and it was this work, published during the period immediately preceding the Russian Revolution, which was to establish his reputation as a poet in Russia and abroad.
Mayakovsky was rejected as a volunteer at the beginning of WWI, and during 1915-1917 worked at the Petrograd Military Automobile School as a draftsman. At the onset of the Russian Revolution, Mayakovsky was in Smolny, Petrograd. There he witnessed the October Revolution.
After moving back to Moscow, Mayakovsky worked for the Russian State Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) creating — both graphic and text — satirical Agitprop posters. In 1919, he published his first collection of poems Collected Works 1909-1919 (Все сочиненное Владимиром Маяковским). In the cultural climate of the early Soviet Union, his popularity grew rapidly. As one of the few Soviet writers who were allowed to travel freely, his voyages to Latvia, Britain, Germany, the United States, Mexico and Cuba influenced works like My Discovery of America (Мое открытие Америки, 1925). He also travelled extensively throughout the Soviet Union.
The relevance of Mayakovsky's influence cannot be limited to Soviet poetry. While for years he was considered the Soviet poet par excellence, he also changed the perceptions of poetry in wider 20th century culture. His political activism as a propagandistic agitator was rarely understood and often looked upon unfavourably by contemporaries, even close friends like Boris Pasternak. Near the end of the 1920s, Mayakovsky became increasingly disillusioned with the course the Soviet Union was taking under Joseph Stalin: his satirical plays The Bedbug (Клоп, 1929) and The Bathhouse (Баня, 1930), which deal with the Soviet philistinism and bureaucracy, illustrate this development.
On the evening of April 14, 1930, Mayakovsky shot himself.
“Che il tempo esploda dietro di noicome una selva di proiettili.Ai vecchi giorni il vento riportisolo un garbuglio di capelli.Per l'allegriail pianeta nostro è poco attrezzato.Bisogna strappare la gioiaai giorni futuri.In questa vita non è difficile morire.Vivere è di gran lunga più difficile.”
“There’s a monument due me by rank alreadyI’d blow the damn thing up with dynamiteSo strongly I hate every kind of dead thingSo much I adore every kind of life!”
“On I’ll pass,dragging my huge love behind me.On whatfeverish night, deliria-ridden,by what Goliaths was I begot – I, so bigand by no one needed?”
“You entered,Abrupt like “Take it!”,Mauling suede gloves, you tarried,And said:“You know,-I’m soon getting married.” Get married then.It’s all right,I can handle it.You see - I’m calm, of course!Like the pulse Of a corpse. Remember?You used to say:“Jack London,Money,Love and ardour,”--I saw one thing only:You were La Gioconda,Which had to be stolen! And someone stole you. Again in love, I shall start gambling,With fire illuminating the arch of my eyebrows.And why not?Sometimes, the homeless ramblersWill seek to find shelter in a burnt down house! You’re mocking me?“You’ve fewer emeralds of madnessthan a beggar kopecks, there’s no disproving this!”But rememberPompeii came to end thusWhen somebody teased Vesuvius! Hey!Gentlemen!You care forSacrilege,CrimeAnd war.But have you seenThe frightening terrorOf my faceWhenIt’s Perfectly calm? And I feel-“I”Is too small to fit me.Someone inside me is getting smothered.”
“It must be a little love, - a baby, sort of,It shies away when the cars honk and hiss,But adores the bells on the horse-tram.”
“Men, crumpled like bed-sheets in hospitals,And women, battered like overused proverbs.”
“Gentle souls!You play your love on the violin. The crude ones play it on the drums violently.But can you turn yourselves inside out, like meAnd become just two lips entirely?”
“There’s no grandfatherly fondness in me,There are no gray hairs in my soul!Shaking the world with my voice and grinning,I pass you by, - handsome,Twentytwoyearold.”
“Soon, sampled by everyone,Stale and pallid,I’ll come outAnd mumble toothlesslyThat today I’m“Remarkably candid.”
“Maria!How can I fit a tender word into bulging ears?”
“A line is a fuse that's lit.The line smolders, the rhyme explodes—and by a stanza a city is blown to bits.”
“The love boat has crashed against the everydayYou and I, we are quitsAnd there is no use listing mutual hurts, sorrows, and pains.”
“أقسم ألا أتحدث بعد الان باللسان المشين للتعقل والحصافة ...الان يمكن للمرء أن ينهض و ينطق , فتتردد كلماتة عبر العصور و التاريخ والبشرية جمعاء”
“[...] se volete, sarò tenero in modo inappuntabile, non uomo, ma nuvola in calzoni! [...]”
“If you likeI'll be furious flesh elemental,or- changing to tones that the sunset arouses- if you like-I'll be extraordinary gentle,not a man but - a cloud in trousers.”
“Listen! If stars are litIt means there is someone who needs it,It means someone wants them to be,That someone deems those specks of spitMagnificent!”
“Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed.The Milky Way streams silver through the night. I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegramsI have no cause to wake or trouble you. And, as they say, the incident is closed.Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind. Now you and I are quits. Why bother thenTo balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts. Behold what quiet settles on the world. Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.In hours like these, one rises to address The ages, history, and all creation.”
“They stood brow to brow, brown to white, black to black, he supporting her elbows, she playing her limp light fingers over his collarbone, and how he "ladored,"he said, the dark aroma of her hair blending with crushed lily stalks, Turkish cigarettes and the lassitude that comes from "lass." "No, no, don't," she said, I must wash, quick-quick, Ada must wash; but for yet another immortal moment they stood embraced in the hushed avenue, enjoying as they had never enjoyed before, the "happy-forever" feeling at the end of never-ending fairy tales.”