Vladimir Majakovski Biography and List of Works

The leading poet of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and of the early Soviet period, one of the founders of the Russian Futurism movement. Originally, Mayakovski planned a career as an artist and his early poems have strong artistic visions translated into poetry. Sequences in many of his poems recall film techniques.

"The love boat has crashed against the everyday. You and I, we are quits, and there is no point in listing mutual pains, sorrows, and hurts."
(from Mayakovski's unfinished poem, and in suicide letter)

Mayakovsky was born in Bagdadi, Kutais region (subsequently Mayakovski), Georgia. His father, who was a forest ranger, died in 1906. Mayakovsky attended the gymnasium at Kutais (1902-06) and a school in Moscow (1906-08), where the family had moved. The family lived in poverty. In 1908 Mayakovsky joined the Moscow committee of the Russian Social Democratic Party (Boshevik faction). Mayakovsky studied in 1908-09 at Stroganov School of Industrial Arts. In 1909 he was jailed for six moths for subversive activity - further imprisonments also followed later. During his solitary confinement, Mayakovsky started to write poetry. After release he joined the Russian Futurist group and soon became its spokesman. The group sought to free the arts from academic traditions.

From 1911 to 1914 Mayakovsky studied at the Moscow Institute of Painting and Sculpture and Architecture and edited Vzial and Novyi satirikon. Mayakovski's arrival on the poetic scene was marked by his participation in the scandalous Futurist manifesto 'A Slap in the Face of Public Taste' (1912). Mayakovsky's association with the group led to his expulsion from the Institute. His first great long poem, Cloud in the Trousers appeared in 1915. In the same year he met Lili Brik (1891-1978), wife of the critic Osip Brik, and dedicated several of his lyrics to her. The crucial theme in the poem is love. The first part is dominated by images of volcanic explosion, burning and death when Mariia tells the hero that she is getting married. In the following parts the hero tries to find his role in the world, and he turns to revolution.

People sniff -
there's a smell of burnt flesh!
Here come some men.
All shining!
In helmets!
No heavy boots please!
Tell the firemen
to go gently when the heart's on fire.
(from Cloud in Trousers)

In 1917 Mayakovski served in the army. He was editor of Gazeta Futuristov in 1918 and involved in the magazine Iskusstvo kommuna and Iskusstvo. Between the years 1919 and 1921 he designed posters and wrote short propaganda plays and texts for ROSTA, the Russian Telegraph Agency. He wrote political verses, poem-marches, children's poetry, and commercial jingles for state enterprises. Mayakovsky used in his texts slogans, mixed rhythm patterns, different typesetting styles, and neologism. In Mystery-Bouffe (1918), a morality play, the poet described a struggle between two groups, the 'Unclean' working class and the 'Clean' upper class. The 'Unclean' defeat the 'Clean' and create a workers' paradise on Earth.

The Russian Revolution inspired Mayakovsky to write popular poems, which supported the Bolsheviks. He was co-founder of Osip Brik LEF (1923-25) and Novyi LEF (1927-28). In 1924 Mayakovsky composed an elegy on the death of Vladimir Lenin and travelled in Europe, the United States, Mexico, and Cuba recording his impressions in My Discovery of America.

Disappointed in love, alienated from Soviet reality, and denied a visa to travel abroad, Mayakovsky committed suicide in Moscow on April 14, 1930. He had condemned a few years earlier the suicide of the poet Sergei Yesenin in a poem. Later Mayakovsky was eulogized by Stalin, who proclaimed indifference to his works a crime. Mayakovsky's plays, The Bedbug (1928) and The Bathouse (1930) were banned temporarily because they dealt critically with the Soviet officials. In The Bathouse a time machine is invented; it is suggested that it is used for speeding up boring political speeches. The Phosphorescent Woman, a delegate from the year 2030, arrives. She is disappointed. The opportunity to travel through time is turned to Pobedonosikov, a Soviet party official, who believes that Michelangelo was Armenian. However, this Philistine is rejected by the future and he asks: "Do you mean by any chance that communism does not need the likes of me?"

For further reading: Maiakovskii - dramaturg by A.B. Fevral'skii (1940); Maiakovskii et le théâtre russe d'avant-garde by Mario Rossi (1965); Russian Futurism by Vladimir Markov (1969); The Life of Mayakovsky by Wiktor Woroszylski (1970); Mayakovsky: A Poet in the Revolution by Edward J. Brown (1973); Mayakovsky: A Poet in the Revolution by Edward J. Brown (1973); Mayakovsky and His Circle by Viktor Shklovsky (1974); I Love: The Story of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lili Brik by Ann and Samuel Charters (1979); Vladimir Mayakovsky by Victor Terras (1983); Verse Form and Meaning in the Poetry of Vladimir Maiakovskii by Robin Aizlewood (1989); Imia etoi temy liubov': sovremennitsy o Maiakovskom, ed. by V.V. Katanian (1993); Vo ves' logos: religiia Maiakovskogo by Mikhail Vaiskopf (1997) - SEE ALSO: Arkady Strugatski, Jack London (Mayakovsky wrote the script and played the main role in the film Ne dlja deneg rodivshijsja (1918), which was based on Jack London's novel Martin Eden); Yevgeni Yevtushenko - FUTURISM: See Giovanni Papini, Apollinaire, Aaro Hellaakoski (Finnish poet)

POSHCHOCHINA OBSHCHESTVENNOMU VKUSU, (1912)