What attracted me to Mayakovsky’s personality? Mayakovsky's work in brief: main themes and works

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky is a truly outstanding personality. A talented poet, playwright, screenwriter and actor. One of the most striking and odious figures of his time.

Born on July 19, 1893 in the Georgian village of Bagdati. There were five children in the family: two daughters and three sons, but of all the boys, only Vladimir survived. The boy studied at a local gymnasium, and then at a school in Moscow, where he moved with his mother and sister. By that time, my father was no longer alive: he died of blood poisoning.

During the revolution, difficult times came for the family, there was not enough money, and there was nothing to pay for Volodya’s education. He did not finish his studies, and later joined the Social Democratic Party. Mayakovsky was arrested more than once for his political beliefs and participation in mass riots. It was in prison that the first lines of the great poet were born.

In 1911, the young man decided to continue his studies at the art school, however, his teachers did not appreciate his work: they were too original. During his studies, Mayakovsky became close to the futurists, whose work was close to him, and in 1912 he published his first poem, “Night.”

In 1915, one of the most famous poems, “A Cloud in Pants,” was written, which he first read at a reception at Lily Brik’s house. This woman became his main love and his curse. All his life he loved and hated her, they broke up and renewed their relationship countless times. The poem dedicated to her, “Lilichka,” is one of the most powerful and touching declarations of love in modern literature. In addition to Lily, there were many other women in the poet’s life, but not one of them was able to touch those strings of the soul that Lilichka so skillfully played with.

In general, Mayakovsky’s love lyrics were not attractive; his main attention was occupied by politics and satire on topical topics. The poem “The Sitting Ones” is perhaps one of the most striking demonstrations of Mayakovsky’s satirical talent. What is important is that the plot of the poem is relevant to this day. In addition, he writes many scripts for films and stars in them himself. The most famous film that has survived to this day is “The Young Lady and the Hooligan.”

The theme of revolution occupies a huge place in the poet’s creative heritage. The poet was enthusiastic about what was happening, although at that time he was having a very difficult time financially. At this time he wrote “Mystery-bouffe”. Almost until his death, Mayakovsky glorified Soviet power, and on its 10th anniversary he wrote the poem “Good.”

(Painting by Vladimir Mayakovsky "Roulette")

With his works glorifying the revolution and Comrade Lenin, Mayakovsky tours quite a bit throughout Europe and America. He draws satirical and propaganda posters, works for several publishing houses, including ROSTA Satire Windows. In 1923, he and several associates created the creative studio LEF. Two famous plays by the author, “The Bedbug” and “Bathhouse,” were published one after another in 1928 and 1929.

Mayakovsky's calling card was the unusual style he invented and the poetic meter in the form of a ladder, as well as many neologisms. He is also credited with the fame of the first advertiser in the USSR, because he was at the origins of this trend, creating masterpiece posters calling for the purchase of this or that product. Each drawing was accompanied by simple but sonorous verses.

(G. Egoshin "V. Mayakovsky")

Children's poems occupy a large place in the poet's lyrics. Big Uncle Mayakovsky, as he called himself, writes surprisingly touching lines for the younger generation and personally speaks with them to young listeners. The poem “Who to Be” or “What is Good and What is Bad” was known by heart to every Soviet and then Russian schoolchild. Many critics noted the author’s amazing artistic style and his ability to simply and clearly express far from childish thoughts in a language accessible to children.

However, like many poets of the 20th century, Mayakovsky did not hide the fact that he was disappointed in his chosen direction. Towards the end of his life he moved away from the circle of futurists. The new government led by Stalin did not inspire his creativity, and he was subjected to increasingly harsh censorship and criticism over and over again. His exhibition “20 Years of Work” was ignored by politicians and even friends and colleagues. This noticeably crippled Mayakovsky, and the subsequent failure of his plays only worsened the situation. Failures on the love front, in creative activity, refusal to travel abroad - all this affected the emotional state of the writer.

On April 14, 1930, the poet shot himself in his room, contrary to the lines he once wrote: “And I won’t go out into the air, and I won’t drink poison, and I won’t be able to pull the trigger above my temple...”

Composition

Mayakovsky's work remains to this day an outstanding artistic achievement of early Russian poetry. XX century His works are not devoid of ideological distortions and propaganda rhetoric, but they cannot erase the objective significance and scale of Mayakovsky’s artistic talent, the reformist essence of his poetic experiments, which for his contemporaries, and even for the poet’s descendants, were associated with a revolution in art.

Mayakovsky was born in Georgia, where he spent his childhood. After the death of his father in 1906, the family moved to Moscow, where Mayakovsky entered the 4th grade of the Fifth Moscow Gymnasium. In 1908, he was expelled from there, and a month later Mayakovsky was arrested by the police in the underground printing house of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP. Over the next year he was arrested twice more. In 1910-1911, Mayakovsky studied in the studio of the artist P. Kelin, and then studied at the School of Painting, met the artist and poet D. Burliuk, under whose influence Mayakovsky’s avant-garde aesthetic tastes were formed.

Mayakovsky wrote his first poems in 1909 in prison, to which he came through connections with underground revolutionary organizations. The debut poet's poems were written in a rather traditional manner, which imitated the poetry of Russian symbolists, and M. himself immediately abandoned them. A real poetic baptism for M. was his acquaintance in 1911 with the futurist poets. In 1912, M., together with other futurists, issued the almanac “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste” (“A Slap in the Face of Public Taste”), signed by D. Burliuk, O. Kruchenykh and V. Mayakovsky. With Mayakovsky's poems "Noch" ("Night") and "Utro" ("Morning"), in which in a shockingly daring manner he proclaimed a break with the traditions of Russian classics, he called for the creation of a new language and literature, one that would meet the spirit of modern " machines" of civilization and the tasks of revolutionary transformation of the world. The practical embodiment of the futuristic theses declared by Mayakovsky in the almanac was the constant production at the St. Petersburg Luna Park Theater in 1913 of his poetic tragedy “Vladimir M.” (“Vladimir M.”). The author personally acted as director and performer of the main role - a poet who suffers in a modern city that he hates, which cripples the souls of people who, although they elect the poet as their prince, are not able to appreciate the sacrifice he made. In 1913, Mayakovsky, together with other futurists, carried out a large tour of the cities of the USSR: Simferopol, Sevastopol, Kerch, Odessa, Chisinau, Nikolaev, Kiev, Minsk, Kazan, Penza, Rostov, Saratov, Tiflis, Baku. The futurists did not limit themselves to the artistic interpretation of the program of new art and tried to introduce their slogans into life practically, in particular even through clothing and behavior. Their poetic performances, visits to coffee shops, or even an ordinary walk around the city were often accompanied by scandals, brawls, and police intervention.

Under the sign of passion for the futuristic slogans of the restructuring of the world and art is the entire work of M. of the pre-revolutionary period; it is characterized by the pathos of objections to bourgeois reality, which, according to the poet, morally cripples a person, awareness of the tragedy of human existence in the world of profit, calls for a revolutionary renewal of the world: poems “ The Hell of the City" ("Hell of the City", 1913), "Here!" (“Nate!”, 1913), collection “I” (1913), poems “Cloud in Pants” (“Cloud in Pants”, 1915), “Flute-Spine” (“Flute-Spine”, 1915), “War and peace" ("War and Peace", 1916), "Man" ("Man", 1916), etc. The poet sharply objected to the First World War, which he characterized as a senseless bloodbath: the article "Civil Shrapnel" (State Shrapnel, 1914), the verse “War has been declared” (“War has been declared”, 1914), (“Mom and the evening killed by the Germans”, 1914), etc. With sarcastic irony, the poet refers to the hypocritical world of bureaucrats, careerists who discredit honest work, a clear conscience and high art: (“Hymn to the Judge”, 1915), “Hymn to the Scientist” (“Hymn to the Scientist”, 1915), “Hymn to the Habar” (“Hymn to the Bribe”, 1915), etc.

The pinnacle of Mayakovsky’s pre-revolutionary creativity is the poem “A Cloud in Pants,” which became a kind of programmatic work of the poet, in which he most clearly and expressively outlined his ideological and aesthetic principles. In the poem, which the poet himself called “the catechism of modern art,” four slogans are proclaimed and concretized in figurative form: “Away with your love,” “away with your order,” “away with your art,” “away with your religion” - “four cries of four parts." The cross-cutting leitmotif running through the entire poem is the image of a man who suffers from the incompleteness and hypocrisy of the existence that surrounds him, who protests and strives for real human happiness. The initial title of the poem - “The Thirteenth Apostle” - was crossed out by censorship, but it is precisely this that more deeply and accurately conveys the main pathos of this work and all of Mayakovsky’s early work. The Apostle is the teachings of Christ, called upon to implement his teachings in life, but in M. this image quickly approaches the one that will later appear in O. Blok’s famous poem “The Twelve.” Twelve is the traditional number of Christ’s closest disciples, and the appearance in this series of the thirteenth, “superfluous” apostle to the biblical canons, is perceived as a challenge to the traditional universe, as an alternative model of a new worldview. Mayakovsky's thirteenth apostle is both a symbol of the revolutionary renewal of life that the poet strived for, and at the same time a metaphor capable of conveying the true scale of the poetic phenomenon of the speaker of the new world - Mayakovsky.

Mayakovsky's poetry of that time gives rise not just to individual problems and shortcomings of modern society, it gives rise to the very possibility of its existence, the fundamental, fundamental principles of its existence, acquires the scale of a cosmic rebellion in which the poet feels himself equal to God. Therefore, in their desires, the anti-traditionality of Mayakovsky’s lyrical hero was emphasized. It reached the maximum level of shocking, so much so that they seemed to give a “slap in the face to public taste”, demanded that the hairdresser “comb his ear” (“I didn’t understand anything...”), squat down and bark like a dog (“That’s how I am.” became a dog... ") and defiantly declares: “I love watching children die...” (“I”), throws at the audience during the performance: “I will laugh and joyfully spit, I will spit in your face.. .” (“Here!”). Together with Mayakovsky’s tall stature and loud voice, all this created a unique image of a poet-fighter, an apostle-harbinger of a new world. “The poetics of early Mayakovsky,” writes O. Myasnikov, “is the poetics of the grandiose.

In his poetry of those years, everything is extremely tense. His lyrical hero feels capable and obligated to solve not only the problems of rebuilding his own soul, but also of all humanity, the task is not only earthly, but also cosmic. Hyperbolization and complex metaphorization are characteristic features of the style of early Mayakovsky. The lyrical hero of early Mayakovsky feels extremely uncomfortable in the bourgeois-philistine environment. He hates and disdains everyone who prevents the Capital Letter Man from living like a human being. The problem of humanism is one of the central problems of early Mayakovsky.

VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH MAYAKOVSKY (1893 – 1930)

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was born on July 7, 1893 in the village of Baghdad, Kutaisi province of Georgia. His father, Vladimir Konstantinovich, served as a forester in the Caucasus. Mother - Alexandra Alekseevna. Sisters - Lyuda and Olya.

Mayakovsky had an excellent memory since childhood. He recalls: “My father boasted about my memory. For every name day, he forces me to memorize poetry.”

From the age of seven, his father began to take him on horseback riding tours of the forestry. There Mayakovsky learns more about nature and its habits.

Learning was difficult for him, especially arithmetic, but he learned to read with pleasure. Soon the whole family moved from Baghdad to Kutaisi.

Mayakovsky takes the gymnasium exam, but passes it with difficulty. During the exam, the priest who took the exam asked young Mayakovsky what an “eye” was. He replied: “Three pounds” (in Georgian). They explained to him that “oko” is “eye” in Church Slavonic. Because of this, he almost failed the exam. Therefore, I immediately hated everything ancient, everything ecclesiastical and everything Slavic. It is possible that this is where his futurism, atheism and internationalism came from.

While studying in the second preparatory class, he gets straight A's. The ability of an artist began to be discovered in him. The number of newspapers and magazines at home has increased. Mayakovsky reads everything.

In 1905, demonstrations and rallies began in Georgia, in which Mayakovsky took part. A vivid picture of what he saw remained in my memory: “Anarchists in black, Socialist-Revolutionaries in red, Social Democrats in blue, federalists in other colors.” He has no time for teaching. Let's go deuces. I moved to fourth grade only by pure chance.

In 1906, Mayakovsky's father dies. I pricked my finger with a needle while stitching papers, blood poisoning. Since then he cannot tolerate pins and hairpins. After the father's funeral, the family leaves for Moscow, where there were no acquaintances and without any means of subsistence (except for three rubles in their pocket).

In Moscow we rented an apartment on Bronnaya. The food was bad. Pension – 10 rubles per month. Mom had to rent out rooms. Mayakovsky begins to earn money by burning and painting. He paints Easter eggs, after which he hates Russian style and handicrafts.

Transferred to the fourth grade of the Fifth Gymnasium. He studies very poorly, but his love for reading does not decrease. He was interested in the philosophy of Marxism. Mayakovsky published the first half of the poem in the illegal magazine “Rush”, published by the Third Gymnasium. The result was an incredibly revolutionary and equally ugly work.

In 1908 he joined the Bolshevik Party of the RSDLP. He was a propagandist in the commercial and industrial subdistrict. At the city conference he was elected to the Local Committee. Pseudonym: “Comrade Konstantin.” On March 29, 1908, he ran into an ambush and was arrested. He didn’t stay in jail for long - he was released on bail. A year later he was arrested again. And again a short-term detention - they took me with a revolver. He was saved by his father's friend Mahmudbekov.

The third time they were arrested for the release of female convicts. He didn’t like being in prison, he made scandals, and therefore he was often transferred from unit to unit - Basmannaya, Meshchanskaya, Myasnitskaya, etc. – and finally – Butyrki. Here he spent 11 months in solitary confinement No. 103.

In prison, Mayakovsky began writing poetry again, but was dissatisfied with what he wrote. In his memoirs, he writes: “It turned out stilted and tearful. Something like:

The forests dressed in gold and purple,

The sun played on the heads of the churches.

I waited: but the days were lost in the months,

Hundreds of tedious days.

I filled a whole notebook with this. Thanks to the guards - they took me away when I left. Otherwise I would have printed it again!”

In order to write better than his contemporaries, Mayakovsky needed to learn the skill. And he decides to leave the ranks of the party in order to be in an illegal position.

Soon Mayakovsky reads his poem to Burliuk. He liked this verse and said: “Yes, you wrote this yourself! You’re a brilliant poet!” After this, Mayakovsky went completely into poetry.

The first professional poem, “Crimson and White,” is published, followed by others.

Burliuk became Mayakovsky's best friend. He awakened the poet in him, got books for him, didn’t let him go a step further, and gave him 50 kopecks every day so he could write without starving.

Various newspapers and magazines are filled with futurism thanks to the furious speeches of Mayakovsky and Burliuk. The tone was not very polite. The director of the school proposed to stop criticism and agitation, but Mayakovsky and Burliuk refused. After which the council of “artists” expelled them from the school. Publishers did not buy a single line from Mayakovsky.

In 1914, Mayakovsky was thinking about “A Cloud in Pants.” War. The verse “War has been declared” comes out. In August, Mayakovsky goes to sign up as a volunteer. But he was not allowed - he was not politically reliable. Winter. I lost interest in art.

In May he wins 65 rubles and leaves for Finland, the city of Kuokkala. There he writes "Cloud". In Finland, he goes to M. Gorky in the city of Mustamäki. And reads parts from "The Cloud". Gorky praises him.

Those 65 rubles “passed” for him easily and without pain. He begins to write in the humorous magazine “New Satyricon”.

In July 1915 he met L.Yu. and O.M. Bricks. Mayakovsky is called to the front. Now he doesn’t want to go to the front. Pretended to be a draftsman. Soldiers are not allowed to print. Brick saves him, buys all his poems for 50 kopecks and publishes them. Printed "Spine Flute" and "Cloud".

In January 1917 he moved to St. Petersburg, and on February 26 he wrote the Poetochronicle of the “Revolution”. In August 1917, he decided to write “Mystery Bouffe”, and on October 25, 1918 he finished it.

Since 1919, Mayakovsky has worked for ROSTA (Russian Telegraph Agency).

In 1920 he finished writing “150 Million”.

In 1922, Mayakovsky organized the publishing house MAF (Moscow Association of Futurists), which published several of his books. In 1923, under the editorship of Mayakovsky, the magazine “LEF” (“Left Front of the Arts”) was published. He wrote “About This” and began to think about writing the poem “Lenin,” which he completed in 1924.

1925 He wrote the propaganda poem “The Flying Proletarian” and the collection of poems “Walk the Sky Yourself.” Goes on a journey around the earth. The trip resulted in works written in prose, journalism and poetry. They wrote: “My Discovery of America” and poems – “Spain”, “Atlantic Ocean”, “Havana”, “Mexico” and “America”.

1926 He works hard - travels around cities, reads poetry, writes for the newspapers Izvestia, Trud, Rabochaya Moskva, Zarya Vostoka, etc.

In 1928 he wrote the poem “Bad”, but it was not written. He begins to write his personal biography “I Myself.” And within a year, the poems “The Maid”, “Gossip”, “Slicker”, “Pompadour” and others were written. From October 8 to December 8 - a trip abroad, along the route Berlin - Paris. Volumes I and II of the collected works are published in November. December 30 reading of the play “The Bedbug”.

1926 In January, the poem “Letter to Comrade Kostrov from Paris about the essence of love” was published and “Letter to Tatyana Yakovleva” was written. On February 13, the premiere of the play “The Bedbug” took place. From February 14 to May 12 – trip abroad (Prague, Berlin, Paris, Nice, Monte Carlo). In mid-September, “Bath” was completed - “a drama in six acts with a circus and fireworks.” Throughout this year, poems were written: “Parisian Woman”, “Monte Carlo”, “Beauties”, “Americans Are Surprised”, “Poems about the Soviet Passport”.

1930 The last major thing Mayakovsky worked on was a poem about the Five Year Plan. In January he wrote the first speech to the poem, which he published separately under the title “At the top of his voice.” On February 1, the “20 Years of Work” exhibition opened at the Writers’ Club, dedicated to the anniversary of his creative activity. February 6 – speech at the conference of the Moscow branch of RAPP with an application to join this organization, read “At the top of my voice.” March 16 – premiere of “Bath” at the Meyerhold Theater.

On April 14, at 10:15 a.m., in his workroom on Lubyansky Proezd, Mayakovsky committed suicide with a revolver shot, leaving a letter addressed to “Everyone.” On April 15, 16, 17, 150 thousand people passed through the hall of the Writers' Club, where the coffin with the poet's body was displayed. April 17 – mourning meeting and funeral.

Vladimir Mayakovsky was an unusual person. Since childhood, he has seen a lot and hated a lot. He suffered the death of his father when he was 13 years old. Perhaps that is why he became more emotional and decisive. He devoted most of his life to the party and the revolution. It was because of his commitment to the cause of the revolution that he often had to sit in prison.

Mayakovsky sincerely believed that the revolutionary path was the only one leading to a bright future. But he understood that a revolution is not a quiet and imperceptible replacement of one government by another, but a struggle that is sometimes cruel and bloody.

Having taken upon himself this thankless duty, alien to the poet, Mayakovsky for several years constantly wrote poems on the topic of the day for Komsomolskaya Pravda and Izvestia, playing the role of a propagandist and agitator. Cleaning out dirt in the name of a bright future with the “rough language of a poster,” Mayakovsky ridicules the image of a “pure” poet singing “roses and dreams.” Polemically sharpening his thought, he writes in the poem “Home”:

so that I, like a flower from the meadows,

after the hardships of work.

so that the State Planning Committee sweats in the debates,

giving me

assignments for the year.

so that the commissar is above the thought of times

loomed with orders...

so that at the end of work the manager

locked my lips with a lock.

In the context of the poem, especially in the context of the poet’s entire work, there is nothing prescient in this image; it does not cast a shadow on Mayakovsky. But over the years, with the movement of history, this image acquired a terrible meaning. The image of a poet with a lock on his lips turned out to be not only symbolic, but also prophetic, highlighting the tragic fate of Soviet poets in subsequent decades, in the era of camp violence, censorship bans, and closed mouths. Ten years after this poem was written, many found themselves behind barbed wire in the Gulag for poetry, for free speech. Such are the tragic fates of O. Mandelstam, B. Kornilov, N. Klyuev, P. Vasiliev, Y. Smelyakov. And in later times, such a fate awaited N. Korzhavin, I. Brodsky and many other poets.

Mayakovsky was by nature a tragic poet; he wrote about death and suicide starting from his youth. The motive of suicide, completely alien to the futuristic and Lef themes, constantly returns in Mayakovsky’s work. He tries on suicide options... The unprecedented pain of the present time is nurtured in the poet’s soul. His poems are deeply lyrical, uninhibited, in them he truly talks “about time and about himself.”

Mayakovsky's fate was tragic, like Yesenin and Tsvetaeva, he committed suicide. The fate of his poems was also tragic. They were not understood. After 17, when a turning point came in his work, Mayakovsky was not allowed to publish. This was, in fact, his second death.

In the 30s, the poet was driven, depressed and confused. This affected his relationship with Veronica Polonskaya (the poet's last love). News comes that T. Yakovleva is getting married (Mayakovsky did not lose hope with Yakovleva, but this message had a negative effect on his health).

On April 13, Mayakovsky demanded that Veronica Polonskaya stay with him from that very moment, leave the theater and her husband...

On April 14, at 10:15 a.m., in his work room on Lubyansky Proezd, he committed suicide with a revolver shot, leaving a letter to “Everyone”:

“Don’t blame anyone for the fact that I’m dying and please don’t gossip. The deceased did not like this terribly.

Mom, sisters and comrades, this is not the way (I don’t recommend it to others), but I have no choice.

Lilya - love me.

Comrade government, my family is Lilya Brik, mother, sisters and Veronica Vitoldovna Polonskaya.

If you give them a tolerable life, thank you.

Give the poems you started to the Briks, they will figure it out.

As they say -

"the incident is ruined"

love boat

crashed into everyday life.

I'm even with life

and there's no need for a list

mutual pain,

Happy stay.

Works of Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky

MAYAKOVSKY Vladimir Vladimirovich (born July 7 (19), 1893, village of Baghdadi, Kutaisi province - died tragically on April 14, 1930, Moscow), Russian poet, one of the brightest representatives of avant-garde art of the 1910s - 1920s. In pre-revolutionary works, the confession of a poet, forced to the point of screaming, perceives reality as an apocalypse (tragedy “Vladimir Mayakovsky”, 1914; poems “Cloud in Pants”, 1915; “Spine Flute”, 1916; “Man” 1916-1917).

After 1917 - the creation of a socialist myth about the world order (the play “Mystery-bouffe”, 1918; the poem “150000000”, 1921; “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”, 1924, “Good!”, 1927) and the tragically growing sense of its depravity (from the poem “The Seated”, 1922, to the play “Bath”, 1929).

Family. Studies. Revolutionary activities

Born into a noble family. Mayakovsky's father served as a forester in the Caucasus. After his death (1906), the family lived in Moscow. Mayakovsky studied at the classical gymnasium in Kutaisi (1901-1906), then at the 5th Moscow gymnasium (1906-1908), from where he was expelled for non-payment. Further education - artistic: he studied in the preparatory class of the Stroganov School (1908), in the studios of artists S. Yu. Zhukovsky and P. I. Kelin, in the figure class of the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1911-1914, expelled for participating in scandalous speeches of futurists).

Back in 1905, in Kutaisi, Mayakovsky took part in gymnasium and student demonstrations; in 1908, having joined the RSDLP, he conducted propaganda among Moscow workers. He was arrested several times, and in 1909 he spent 11 months in Butyrka prison.

He called the time of imprisonment the beginning of his poetic activity; the poems he wrote were taken away from him before his release.

Mayakovsky and futurism

In 1911, Mayakovsky began a friendship with the artist and poet D. D. Burliuk, who in 1912 organized the literary and artistic group of futurists “Gilea” (see Futurism). Since 1912, Mayakovsky has constantly taken part in debates about new art, exhibitions and evenings held by the radical associations of avant-garde artists “Jack of Diamonds” and “Youth Union”.

Mayakovsky's poetry has always maintained a connection with fine art, primarily in the very form of writing poetry (in a column, later in a “ladder”), which implied an additional, purely visual, impression made by the poetic page.

Mayakovsky’s poems were first published in 1912 in the almanac of the Gileya group “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste,” which included a manifesto signed by Mayakovsky, V.V. Khlebnikov, A.E. Kruchenykh and Burliuk, which in a deliberately shocking form declared a break with traditions of Russian classics, the need to create a new literary language appropriate to the era.

The ideas of Mayakovsky and his like-minded futurists about the purpose and forms of new art were embodied in the staging of his poetic tragedy “Vladimir Mayakovsky” (published in 1914) at the St. Petersburg Luna Park Theater in 1913. The scenery for it was made by artists from the “Youth Union” P. N. Filonov and I. S. Shkolnik, and the author himself acted as director and performer of the main role - a poet suffering in a disgusting modern city that has disfigured and corrupted its inhabitants, who, although they choose the poet as his prince, but they do not know how to recognize and appreciate the sacrifice he makes.

"The Creator in the Burning Hymn." Poetry of the 1910s

In 1913, Mayakovsky’s book of four poems entitled “I” was published, his poems appeared on the pages of futurist almanacs (1913-1915 “Mares’ Milk”, “Dead Moon”, “Roaring Parnassus”, they began to be published in periodicals, poems were published “Cloud in Pants” (1915), “Spine Flute” (1916), “War and Peace” (1917), collection “Simple as a Moo” (1916).

Mayakovsky's poetry is filled with rebellion against the entire world order - the social contrasts of modern urban civilization, traditional views of beauty and poetry, ideas about the universe, heaven and God. Mayakovsky uses militantly broken, rough, stylistically reduced language, contrasting traditional poetic images - “put love on violins”, “nocturne... on the flute of drainpipes”. The lyrical hero, shocking the average person with harshness, brittle language and blasphemy (“They caught a god with a lasso in the sky”), remains a romantic, lonely, gentle, suffering, feeling the value of “the smallest speck of living dust.”

Mayakovsky's poems of the 1910s were oriented towards reproduction orally - from the stage, at evenings, at debates (the collection “For the Voice”, 1923; in magazines, newspapers and book publications, poems often appeared in a form distorted by censorship). Their short chopped lines, “ragged” syntax, “colloquiality” and deliberately familiar (“familiar”) intonation were the best suited for listening comprehension: “... Do you, who love women and dishes, give your life to please?”

In combination with his tall stature (“hefty, with a long stride”) and Mayakovsky’s sonorous voice, all this created a unique individual image of a poet-fighter, a public rally speaker, a defender of the “languageless street” in the “hell of the city,” whose words cannot be beautiful, they are “convulsions stuck together in a lump.”

"Love is the heart of everything"

Already in the early rebellious poems of Mayakovsky, a significant place is occupied by the love lyrical theme: “My love, like an apostle in time, I will destroy roads along a thousand thousand.” Love “tortures the soul” of the suffering, lonely poet.

In 1915 Mayakovsky met Lilya Brik, who took a central place in his life. From their relationship, the futurist poet and his beloved sought to build a model of a new family, free from jealousy, prejudice, and traditional principles of relations between women and men in “bourgeois” society. Many of the poet’s works are associated with the name Brik; intimate intonation colors Mayakovsky’s letters addressed to her. Declaring in the 1920s that “now is not the time for love affairs,” the poet nevertheless remains faithful to the theme of love (lyric poems, the poem “About This,” 1923), which reaches a tragically heartbreaking sound in the last lines of Mayakovsky - in the unfinished introduction to the poem “At the top of my voice” (1930).

"I want to be understood by my country"

The revolution was accepted by Mayakovsky as the implementation of retribution for all those offended in the former world, as a path to earthly paradise.

Mayakovsky asserts the position of the Futurists in art as a direct analogy to the theory and practice of the Bolsheviks and the proletariat in history and politics. Mayakovsky organizes the group “Comfut” (communist futurism) in 1918 and actively participates in the newspaper

“The Art of the Commune”, in 1923 he created the “Left Front of the Arts” (LEF), which included his like-minded writers and artists, and published the magazines “LEF” (1923-1925) and “New LEF” (1927-1928). In an effort to use all artistic means to support the new state and promote new values, Mayakovsky writes topical satire, poetry and ditties for propaganda posters (“Windows of ROSTA”, 1918-1921).

The roughness, clarity, straightforwardness of his poetic style, the ability to transform the design elements of a book and magazine page into effective expressive means of poetry - all this ensured the success of the “ringing force of the poet,” wholly devoted to the service of the interests of the “attacking class.” The embodiment of Mayakovsky’s position in these years were his poems “150,000,000” (1921), “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” (1924), “Good!” (1927).

"Windows ROSTA"

By the end of the 1920s, Mayakovsky had a growing feeling of inconsistency between political and social reality and the lofty ideals of the revolution that inspired him from his adolescence, in accordance with which he built his entire life - from clothes and gait to love and creativity. The comedies “The Bedbug” (1928) and “Bathhouse” (1929) are a satire (with dystopian elements) on an embourgeois society that has forgotten the revolutionary values ​​for which it was created.

The internal conflict with the surrounding reality of the approaching “bronze” Soviet age undoubtedly turned out to be among the most important incentives that pushed the poet to the last rebellion against the laws of the world order - suicide.

In preparing this work, materials from the site http://www.studentu.ru were used

Tutoring

Need help studying a topic?

Our specialists will advise or provide tutoring services on topics that interest you.
Submit your application indicating the topic right now to find out about the possibility of obtaining a consultation.

1893 , July 7 (19) - born in the village of Baghdadi, near Kutaisi (now the village of Mayakovski in Georgia), in the family of forester Vladimir Konstantinovich Mayakovski. He lived in Baghdadi until 1902.

1902 – enters the Kutaisi gymnasium.

1905 – gets acquainted with underground revolutionary literature, takes part in demonstrations, rallies, and school strikes.

1906 – death of father, family move to Moscow. In August he enters the fourth grade of the Fifth Moscow Gymnasium.

1907 - gets acquainted with Marxist literature, participates in the Social Democratic circle of the Third Gymnasium. First poems.

1908 - joins the RSDLP (Bolsheviks). Works as a propagandist. In March he leaves the gymnasium. Arrested during a search in the underground printing house of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks).

1909 - the second and third (in the case of organizing the escape of thirteen political convicts from the Moscow Novinskaya prison) arrests of Mayakovsky.

1910 , January - released from arrest as a minor and placed under police supervision.

1911 – accepted into the figure class of the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.

1912 – D. Burliuk introduces Mayakovsky to the futurists. In the fall, Mayakovsky’s first poem, “Crimson and White,” was published.
December. The release of the collection of futurists "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste" with Mayakovsky's first printed poems "Night" and "Morning".

1913 - release of the first collection of poems - "I!"
Spring - meeting N. Aseev. Production of the tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky" at the Luna Park Theater in St. Petersburg.

1914 – Mayakovsky’s trip to Russian cities with lectures and poetry readings (Simferopol, Sevastopol, Kerch, Odessa, Chisinau, Nikolaev, Kyiv). Expelled from the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture due to public speaking.
March–April – the tragedy “Vladimir Mayakovsky” was published.

1915 - moves to Petrograd, which became his permanent place of residence until the beginning of 1919. Reading the poem "To you!" (which caused outrage among the bourgeois public) in the artistic basement "Stray Dog".
February - the beginning of cooperation in the magazine "New Satyricon". On February 26, the poem “Hymn to the Judge” was published (under the title “The Judge”).
The second half of February - the almanac "Sagittarius" (No. 1) is published with excerpts from the prologue and the fourth part of the poem "Cloud in Pants".

1916 – the poem “War and Peace” is completed; The third part of the poem was accepted by Gorky's journal Letopis, but was prohibited from publication by military censorship.
February – the poem “The Flute-Spine” was published as a separate edition.

1917 - The poem "Man" is completed. The poem "War and Peace" was published as a separate edition.

1918 – the poems “Man” and “Cloud in Pants” (second, uncensored edition) were published as a separate edition. Premiere of the play "Mystery Bouffe".

1919 – “Left March” was published in the newspaper “Art of the Commune”. The collection "Everything composed by Vladimir Mayakovsky" has been published. The beginning of Mayakovsky's work as an artist and poet at the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA). Works without interruption until February 1922.

1920 – the poem “150,000,000” is completed. Speech at the First All-Russian Congress of ROSTA workers.
June–August – lives in a dacha near Moscow (Pushkino). The poem "An Extraordinary Adventure" was written ... ".

1922 - the poem “I Love” was written. Izvestia published the poem "The Satisfied Ones." The collection "Mayakovsky is mocking" has been published. Trip to Berlin and Paris.

1923 – the poem “About This” is finished. No. 1 of the Lef magazine, edited by Mayakovsky, was published; with his articles and poem "About This".

1925 – trip to Berlin and Paris. Trip to Cuba and America. He gives talks and reads poetry in New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chicago. The magazine "Spartak" (No. 1), dedicated to Mayakovsky, was published in New York.

1926 – the poem “To Comrade Nette – a steamship and a person” was written.

1927 - publication of the first issue of the magazine "New Lef" edited by Mayakovsky, with his editorial.

1929 - premiere of the play "The Bedbug".
February–April – trip abroad: Berlin, Prague, Paris, Nice.
Premiere of the play "The Bedbug" in Leningrad at the branch of the Bolshoi Drama Theater in the presence of Mayakovsky.

1930 , February 1 – opening of Mayakovsky’s exhibition “20 years of work” at the Moscow Writers Club. Reads the introduction to the poem "At the top of my voice."
April 14 – committed suicide in Moscow.