Biography of Mayakovsky
Mayakovsky's poems
- About the Soviet passport
- Listen to me!
"All poems
Poems of Mayakovsky
- A cloud in your pants
- Flute spine
"All poems
Mayakovsky's Prose
- Reader!
- I went like this
"All prose
Mayakovsky's Plays
- Mystery Buff
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Biography of Mayakovsky (19.07.1893-14.04.1930)
He was born in the village of Baghdadi, Kutaisi province.
His father is a nobleman, served as a forester, his ancestors are from the Cossacks of the Zaporozhye Sich; his mother is from the Kuban Cossacks.
In 1902-1906, Mayakovsky studied at the Kutaisi gymnasium, in July 1906, after the death of his father, he moved to Moscow with his mother and two sisters, where he entered the IV class of the 5th classical gymnasium (he was expelled from the V class in March 1908 for non payment of tuition fees).
In Moscow, Mayakovsky met with revolutionary minded students, became interested in Marxist literature, joined the Bolshevik Party in early 1908, was arrested, spent 11 months in Butyrskaya prison, from where he was released in January 1910 as a minor.
In prison, Mayakovsky wrote a notebook of poems (1909), which was selected by the guards; the poet counted the beginning of his work from it.
After his release from prison, he interrupts his party work to "make socialist art".
In 1911, Mayakovsky entered the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where he met D. D. Burlyuk, the organizer of the futuristic group "Gilea", who discovered a "genius poet"in him.
Three years later, in February 1914, Mayakovsky, along with Burlyuk, was expelled from the school for public speaking.
In December 1912, Mayakovsky made his debut as a poet in the almanac "Slap in the Face to Public Taste", where his poems" Night "and"Morning" were published.
It also published the manifesto of Russian cubo futurists, signed by D. Burlyuk, A. Kruchenykh, V. Mayakovsky and V. Khlebnikov.
The manifesto proclaimed a nihilistic attitude to Russian literature of the present and the past: "To abandon Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc. and so on.
from the Steamship of modernity. (...)
To all these Maxims Gorky, Kuprin, Blok, Sologub, Remizov, Averchenkov, Cherny, Kuzmin, Bunin, and so on.
and so on.
all you need is a dacha on the river.
Such a reward is given by fate to tailors."
However, despite the declarations, Mayakovsky highly appreciated Gogol, Dostoevsky, Blok, and other writers who had a profound influence on his work.
The year 1913 became creatively fruitful for Mayakovsky, when his first collection "I" (a cycle of four poems) was published, the program tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky" was written and staged, and a great tour of the cities of Russia was made together with other futurists.
The collection " I " was written by hand, provided with drawings by V. N. Chekrygin and L. Shekhtel and reproduced by lithographic method in the amount of 300 copies.
As the first section, this collection was included in the book of poems of the poet "Simple as a Lowing" (1916).
In 1915-1917, Mayakovsky completed his military service in Petrograd at a driving school.
On December 17, 1918, the poet for the first time read the poems "Left March (to the Sailors)"from the stage of the Sailor Theater.
In March 1919, he moved to Moscow, began to actively cooperate in ROSTA (the Russian Telegraph Agency), designed (as a poet and as an artist) propaganda satirical posters for ROSTA ("Windows of GROWTH").
In 1919, the first collection of the poet's works was published — " Everything composed by Vladimir Mayakovsky.
1909-1919".
At the end of the 10s, Mayakovsky linked his creative ideas with "left art", appeared in the "Newspaper of Futurists", in the newspaper "Art of the Commune".
Mayakovsky's futurism from the very beginning to the end of the poet's days had a romantic character.
Even in Soviet times, Mayakovsky remained a futurist, although with new properties: a "comfut", that is, a communist futurist, as well as the leader of the Left Front of the Arts (1922-1928).
In 1922-1924, Mayakovsky made several trips abroad — Latvia, France, Germany; wrote essays and poems about European impressions: "How does a democratic republic work? "(1922)
; "Paris (Conversations with the Eiffel Tower)" (1923) and a number of others.
The poet will also be in Paris in 1925, 1927, 1928, 1929 (the lyrical cycle "Paris"); in 1925, Mayakovsky's trip to America will take place ("My Discovery of America").
In 1925-1928, he traveled a lot around the Soviet Union, performing in a variety of audiences.
During these years, the poet publishes many of his works: "To Comrade Netta, the steamer and the Man" (1926);
"Through the cities of the Union" (1927);
"The story of the caster Ivan Kozyrev..."
(1928).
Researchers of Mayakovsky's creative development liken his poetic life to a five act action with a prologue and an epilogue.
The role of a kind of prologue in the poet's creative path was played by the tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky" (1913), the first act were the poems "Cloud in trousers" (1914-1915) and "Flute spine" (1915), the second act—the poems "War and Peace" (1915-1916) and "Man" (1916-1917), the third act— the play "Mystery Buff" (the first version—1918, the second 1920-1921) and the poem "150 000 000" (1919— 1920), the fourth act—the poems "I Love" (1922), "About it" (1923) and "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" (1924), the fifth act the poem "Good!" (1927) and the plays " Bug "(1928-1929) and "Bath" (1929-1930), the epilogue—the first and second introductions to the poem "At the top of my voice" (1928-1930) and the poet's suicide letter "To Everyone" (April 12, 1930).
The rest of Mayakovsky's works, including numerous poems, tend to one or another part of this general picture, which is based on the poet's major works.
The artistic world of Mayakovsky is a synthetic drama, which includes the properties of various dramatic genres: tragedy, mystery, epic heroic drama, comedy, raik, cinema, extravaganza, etc., subordinate to the main one of Mayakovsky — the tragic character of his main character and the tragic structure of his entire work.
It should be noted that not only his plays, but also his poems are dramatic in their own way and most often tragic.
In the tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky", the poet sees his life's duty and the purpose of his art in contributing to the achievement of human happiness.
Art for him from the very beginning was not just a reflection of life, but a means of remaking it, an instrument of life building.
Mayakovsky seeks to put his lyrically tragic hero, who expresses the aspirations of all mankind, in the place of God — decrepit, helpless, unable to do anything for the sake of people.
This hero, because of his unrequited love for a woman and for people in general, becomes a God fighter with the heart of Christ.
However, in order to become a Human god, the hero and all other people must be free, reveal their best abilities, throw off all slavery.
Hence Mayakovsky's revolutionary nihilism, which found its expression in the definition of the programmatic meaning of the poem "The Cloud in the pants": "Down with your love", "Down with your art"," down with your system"," down with your religion" — four cries of four parts".
Mayakovsky contrasts his love, his art, his idea of the social structure of the future, his faith in the ideal of a new, in all respects beautiful person with love, art, the social system and religion of the old world.
The attempt to implement this program after the revolution turned out to be tragic for the poet.
In the" Cloud "Mayakovsky goes out to the people of the" language free " street in the role of the poet of the prophet, the "thirteenth apostle", "today's cry lipped Zarathustra" to deliver a new sermon on the Mount before them.
Calling himself "today's cry lipped Zarathustra", Mayakovsky wanted to say that he, like Zarathustra, is a prophet of the future — but not of superman, but of humanity freed from slavery.
In the tragic poems "Cloud in Pants", "Flute spine", "War and Peace", "Man" and "About it", the hero of Mayakovsky, acting as a God fighter, "the thirteenth apostle", a Demon and a warrior, tragic doubles similar to Christ appear.
In depicting this tragic duality, Mayakovsky develops the traditions of Gogol, Lermontov, Dostoevsky and Blok, becomes a God fighter with the heart of Christ.
His God fighting begins with the torments of unrequited love for a woman and only then acquires a social and existential meaning.
In the poem "Flute Spine" he showed the upcoming holiday of mutual, shared love, and in the poem "War and Peace" - the holiday of fraternal unity of all countries, peoples and continents.
Mayakovsky wanted shared love not only for himself, but "so that love goes to the whole universe."
His ideals were tragically shattered by the real reality.
The poem " Man " shows the collapse of all the efforts and aspirations of the hero aimed at achieving personal and social ideals.
This collapse is caused by the inertia of human nature, the tragic lack of love, the slavish submission of people to the Master of Everything — this all powerful vicar of God on earth, a symbol of the power of money, the power of the bourgeoisie, able to buy love and art, to subdue the will and mind of people.
In the play "Mystery Buff" and the poem "150,000,000", the poet puts the revolutionary masses of the people in the place of God and Christ.
At the same time, unlike Blok's "Twelve", Mayakovsky one sidedly idealizes the social consciousness and creative possibilities of the revolutionary masses, who until recently were depicted by the poet as faceless crowds of people, submissive to the Master of Everything, and now, at the prompting of the author, confidently declaring: "We are our own Christ and Savior!"
In the brilliant poem of the tragedy "About this", Mayakovsky showed the struggle of the lyrical hero for an ideal, divided love, without which there is no life.
During this tragic duel with the hero, fantastic metamorphoses occur, his natural nature under the influence of the "bulk of love" is disembodied, turns into creative and spiritual energy, the symbols of which are verse, poetry and the suffering Christ.
The hyperbolic process of metamorphoses is expressed by the poet in a complex system of tragic doubles of the poet: a bear, a suicide Komsomol member who looks like Jesus, Mayakovsky himself, and others at the same time.
In general, this tragic metamorphic process takes the form of a mystery poem about love, suffering, death and the coming resurrection of the All Man, a natural Man who seeks to take the place of God.
In the poem " Good!"
and in the satirical dilogy "Bedbug" and "Bathhouse" Mayakovsky depicts how Soviet Russia is born in the revolutionary struggle, praises the " fatherland... which is,/but three times which will be", closely follows the sprouts of a new life, striving as a poet of a romantic futuristic disposition to help their rapid development.
At the same time, he discovers in the embryo cancerous tumors of Soviet society, threatening him with deadly diseases.
After the poem "Good!"
Mayakovsky wanted to write the poem "Bad", but instead wrote satirical plays the Bedbug and the Bathhouse, which showed the most dangerous trends in the young Soviet society: the rebirth of workers and party members in townspeople — lovers beautiful "aristocratic" life at the expense of others (the festival in Cannes) and growing power of the ignorant and incompetent party and Soviet bureaucrats like Pobedonosikova.
The satirical dilogy of the poet showed that the majority of people were not ready to take the place of God and begin to realize the high ideals and potential of man.
In the poem "At the top of his voice", Mayakovsky calls the present "petrified shit", and transfers the realization of his ideal of a Person to an indeterminately distant "communist far away".
The poet's satire, especially "Banya", caused harassment from Rapp critics.
In February 1930, the poet joined the RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers).
This act of Mayakovsky was condemned by his friends.
Alienation and public harassment were aggravated by personal drama ("the love boat crashed on everyday life").
Mayakovsky was stubbornly refused to go abroad, where he was supposed to have a meeting with a woman (the poem "Letter to Tatyana Yakovleva", 1928), with whom he intended to link his life.
All this led Mayakovsky to suicide, predicted even in the tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky".
