Volodya: Selected Works

by Vladimir Mayakovsky, Rosy Carrick (Editor)

This groundbreaking collection draws together for the first time Vladimir Mayakovsky’s key translators from the 1930s to the present day, bringing some remarkable works back into print in the process and introducing poems which have never before been translated. The radical scope of its representation makes for the most comprehensive account of Mayakovsky’s work to date – an account which charts not only the extraordinary range of his creative output,, but also the fascinating and turbulent history of Mayakovsky’s cultural and political representation in the western world.

Genres: Poetry, Russian Literature

312 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2016

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Sleepless Dreamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Step 1: Apply for a job you don't feel qualified for.

Step 2: Get ignored.

Step 3: Accept that you didn't get the job.

Step 4: Do your best to convince yourself you don't want this job and that it's all for the best.

Step 5: Realize that juggling 2 degrees, 2 jobs, an internship and 2 dialogue programs is literally insane so this really is for the best.

Step 6: Finally receive an answer.

Step 7: Be told your CV is impressive and get invited to an interview.

Step 8: Remember that you're unable to say no to opportunities even when you really really should.

Step 9: Ahhh, what now?? Which poor decision will I make next???

Step 10: I already regret whichever decision I'll make.

Review to come!

[Eadweard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mayakovsky. Mayakovsky. Mayakovsky.


Most of the selection I've already read but who cares? It's Volodya. It includes an essay by him and a sort of "meet and greet" during one of his exhibitions.





-----



On the pavement
of my trampled soul
the steps of madmen
weave the prints of rude crude words.
Where cities
hang
and in the noose of cloud
the towers’
crooked spires
congeal –
I go
alone to weep
that crossroads
crucify
policemen
-



I love to watch children dying.
Do you note, behind protruding nostalgia,
the shadowy billow of laughter’s surf?
But I –
in the reading room of the streets –
have leafed so often through the volume of the coffin. Midnight
with sodden hands has fingered
me
and the battered paling,
and the crazy cathedral galloped
in drops of downpour upon the cupola’s bald pate.
I have seen Christ escape from an icon,
and the slush tearfully kiss
the wind-swept fringe of his tunic
-




I contemplate –
so often –
ending my days
with the full stop of a bullet.
-



We
With a face like a slept-on sheet,
With lips hanging like chandeliers,
We
Prisoners of the city leper-house,
Where gold and filth bred leprous sores, –
We are purer than Venetian blue,
Washed by sea and sun together!
Who gives a damn that
Homer or Ovid
Have no characters like us,
Spotted with soot.
I know –
The Sun would grow dim, if it saw
The gold-mines in our souls!
-




A capital city
I founded on my despair
-




When in mounds of books,
where verse lies buried,
you discover by chance the iron filings of lines,
touch them
with respect,
as you would
some antique
yet awesome weapon

[A.L. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the kind of poetry that grabs me, but they were interesting to read.

[Matt Morris]

Read my review of this & other books at https://miscmss.blogspot.com/2021/07/...

[Betzabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

First time reading Mayakovsky in English, still beautiful.

[Omar Abu Samra · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I grudge you… nothing darling…Eat!… I’ll throw my liver to you”

[Yuki Sakamoto · Rating 4 out of 5]

V. Mayakovsky is a one of the prominent figure of the Russian Avant Garde, which was active from pre revolution Russia to the early Soviet period. He was deeply committed in the Bolshevik movements and his works are filled with the revolutionary passion - to invent the new language to verbalize revolutionary ideal.
I was so impressed to see his energetic, revolutionary, masculine language, especially this phrase is awesome: "My voice crashes through the universe / I walk - the handsome / Twenty-two year old/