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Mayakovsky 1890 - 1930 (40)

Art is not a mirror which reflects the world, but a hammer with which we give it shape.


QUOTES

Cloud in trousers

Your thought
Mysing in those brains of oatmeal
Like a bloated functionary on an oily sofa
I’ll mock it to death with a dripping shred of my heart
And nourish my biting contempt.

No gray hair in my soul,
No doddering tenderness.
I rock the world with the tunder of my voice,
Strolling, looking good
Twenty-two.

Sensitive ones,
Your love ia a violin solo,
Cruder ones use a drum.
But you can’t be like me,
Inside out, all lips.



 Vladimir Vlantimirovits Mayakovsky was an important Russian poet and playwright of the 20th century and a leading representative of Russian Futurism. He was born on July 7, 1893 in the village Bagdati (today in Georgia), his father was of noble origin who worked as a forest guard. He had two sisters and spoke from birth two languages, Georgian at school and with friends and Russian at home. In 1906 his father died and the family moved to Moscow. In 1908 he was expelled from school because they didn’t have to pay tuition. He joined the Russian social Labour Party and later became a Bolshevik. The next two years he was imprisoned three times for political action and only because he was a minor was not sent to forced labor. In cell’s isolation, he began writing poems which were seized, when he went out he began to attend an art school and joined the Futurist movement which praised the technological revolution. The poetry of Vladimir appears defiant and aggressive, his first poems published in a collection of Futurists', was a slap in the face of public taste. "In 1914 he was expelled from art school because of his political beliefs. In 1915 he published his first major poem, the "Cloud in Trousers" and falls in love with Lilia Brik, wife of the publisher. This illicit relationship which would haunt him throughout his life, the first world war and the Russian revolution significantly affect his work. At that time he wrote poems like "The war and the world" for the horrors of war, "Man" for the misery of love. During the October Revolution he supported the new regime with militant poems, posters, slogans. He became a prominent member of the Left Front for art after the consolidation of the new regime and one of the few artists who were allowed to travel abroad. He made many trips to Europe and America giving lectures. In America he met Ellie John, they had a daughter, he didn’t learn about here but years later, in 1929, when they met again in France. That same year he had fallen in love with Tatiana Giakovleva to whom he dedicated the 'Letter to Tatiana Giakovleva". By then he has demystify the Soviet Union under Stalin and wrote satirical poems against the Soviet bureaucracy and dislike for art. He lost support from the regime and made many enemies, he was censored and banned from leaving the country. On April 14, 1930 he committed suicide with a gun while seated at his desk, where the following note was found:

I tear my hands, scatter the broken fingers...loves me not As we scatter the random riddling heads of daisies, tumbling through summer. Though I adopt the smooth chin and greying hair. The silver, tinkling out the change of years, I hope. I know that age will never bring, the final shame of prudent commonsense. It is after one and you must be asleep. The milky way is like a silver river. I am in no hurry. There is no need to wake you up or disturb you with telegrams or thunder. It's what they call the end of the affair. Love's boat has been shattered against the life of everyday. You and I are quits, and it's useless to draw up a list of mutual hurts, sorrows, and pains. See how much peace the world can give. The sky is wrapped in stars, the gift of night. At such a time you rise, and find you speak to all the years, the future, and the world.