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The Bedbug and Selected Poetry
Poetry, dual language on facing pages; no Russian original for the drama.
317 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1929
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About the author
Vladimir Mayakovsky
505 books631 followersVladimir 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews
September 23, 2017
Have you seen
a dog lick the hand that thrashed it?!
The five stars are for the poetry. the play is a satire which endures because of its all too human kernel. The verse is loud, a clamoring. Metallic. I appreciate a verb like shock in this instance. Current is also a valuable word when considering these riveting lines of Mayakovsky. Seeking council the other day I went to my Director--who sighed from over steaming bowl of noodles and said, No wisdom. She could use some Mayakovsky about now. My crazy sister noted the other night on social media that Hollywood should leave politics alone. These poems couldn't help her.
a dog lick the hand that thrashed it?!
The five stars are for the poetry. the play is a satire which endures because of its all too human kernel. The verse is loud, a clamoring. Metallic. I appreciate a verb like shock in this instance. Current is also a valuable word when considering these riveting lines of Mayakovsky. Seeking council the other day I went to my Director--who sighed from over steaming bowl of noodles and said, No wisdom. She could use some Mayakovsky about now. My crazy sister noted the other night on social media that Hollywood should leave politics alone. These poems couldn't help her.
March 1, 2021
"Poetry is what's lost in translation," yadda yadda, but Mayakovsky's English effigy is compelling nonetheless. A high-school teacher assigned "A Cloud in Trousers" - out of Koch's Words on the Wind anthology - and I was obsessed. This book was a dogearred angsty missal. I still love his wacky, unexpected, collage-like imagery, his strangely tender semaphore speech (that's my attempt to get around "intimate yell," James Schulyer's unbeatable description). Mayakovsky's gruff, Rodchenko-posed image even adorned my locker door, just below Camus (that one in profile, cigarette daggling from his lips, overcoat collar Bogartishly turned-up) and Baudelaire (haunted and haggard, in one of Carjat's portraits). This book, with Les Fleurs du Mal, The Rebel, Poem of the Deep Song and Absalom, Absalom! made my teenage reading world.
January 22, 2020
Mayakovsy's poems are filled with depressing lines, like, "I love to see children die..." When I first read this line in Russian, I thought I had the second verb wrong. Nope. I sure hope I'm missing his irony, but I'm happy to miss it. His verse is self-absorbed, depressing and narrow: so he'd make a great American poet, the male equivalent of Sylvia Plath, except he didn't plan to kill his kids. But the poem I cite suggests he would have, had he the chance.
He visited America in 1925, and wrote Бруклинский мост, standing on Brooklyn Bridge. He starts with an address to my fellow Amherst College grad, President Coolidge, "Give, кулидж, / A shout of joy!/ I, too, celebrate good things."(72)
For some, life here had no worries, but others howled, hungry. "Отсюда / безработный /
в Гудзон / вниз головой" men out of work leapt into the Hudson from here. Well, not exactly the Hudson. "I see: / Here stood / Маяковский." I seize on it, this good thing, as a tick on an ear. Brooklyn Bridge! Quite a thing." He concludes.
He was a satirist of society, so elevated by Stalin to litarary sainthood. His play Bedbug, here, has quite a bit of slapstick--about marriage between a heiress and a working stiff, then futuristic robots. The one passage I enjoyed was M's use of committee-meeting language at the nuptials: "This marriage is now convened."
Occasionally there are revealing period-reflections, for instance, communist newspapers from all over the globe--Chicago, Indonesia--report the nuptials.
Specimens of insects are frozen, preserved by cryobionics, for 50 years, until 1979, by which time the Central Committee has eliminated personal feelings, song and dancing except marching at state occasions. Professor Присыпкин is unfrozen, the specimen of the unreformed individual, guitarist singer, drinker, and smoker--"'Disgusting!' the viewers react. Viewers at the zoo, where he and the Bedbug on his collar are retained in a glass cage. Specimens. "'Bedbugus normalis' and er...'bourgeoisius vulgaris'. They are different in size, but identical in essence. Both of them have their habitat in the musty mattresses of time.
"'Bedbugius normalis', having gorged on a single human, falls under the bed.
'Bourgeoisius vulgaris', having gorged on the body of all mankind, falls onto the bed. That's the only difference"(300). This second, powerfully imitative, like birds twittering, or in theater loges.
The Bedbug ages very well, esp in the Max Hayward trans. Though it's from 1930, it seems more like the fifties. Wonderful final scenes of non-proletarian man on exhibit in a zoo, with a bedbug--both exotica in the future.
He visited America in 1925, and wrote Бруклинский мост, standing on Brooklyn Bridge. He starts with an address to my fellow Amherst College grad, President Coolidge, "Give, кулидж, / A shout of joy!/ I, too, celebrate good things."(72)
For some, life here had no worries, but others howled, hungry. "Отсюда / безработный /
в Гудзон / вниз головой" men out of work leapt into the Hudson from here. Well, not exactly the Hudson. "I see: / Here stood / Маяковский." I seize on it, this good thing, as a tick on an ear. Brooklyn Bridge! Quite a thing." He concludes.
He was a satirist of society, so elevated by Stalin to litarary sainthood. His play Bedbug, here, has quite a bit of slapstick--about marriage between a heiress and a working stiff, then futuristic robots. The one passage I enjoyed was M's use of committee-meeting language at the nuptials: "This marriage is now convened."
Occasionally there are revealing period-reflections, for instance, communist newspapers from all over the globe--Chicago, Indonesia--report the nuptials.
Specimens of insects are frozen, preserved by cryobionics, for 50 years, until 1979, by which time the Central Committee has eliminated personal feelings, song and dancing except marching at state occasions. Professor Присыпкин is unfrozen, the specimen of the unreformed individual, guitarist singer, drinker, and smoker--"'Disgusting!' the viewers react. Viewers at the zoo, where he and the Bedbug on his collar are retained in a glass cage. Specimens. "'Bedbugus normalis' and er...'bourgeoisius vulgaris'. They are different in size, but identical in essence. Both of them have their habitat in the musty mattresses of time.
"'Bedbugius normalis', having gorged on a single human, falls under the bed.
'Bourgeoisius vulgaris', having gorged on the body of all mankind, falls onto the bed. That's the only difference"(300). This second, powerfully imitative, like birds twittering, or in theater loges.
The Bedbug ages very well, esp in the Max Hayward trans. Though it's from 1930, it seems more like the fifties. Wonderful final scenes of non-proletarian man on exhibit in a zoo, with a bedbug--both exotica in the future.
September 17, 2025
#Binge Reviewing my previous Reads # Challenge 2025
Vladimir Mayakovsky’s The Bedbug and Selected Poetry is one of those reads that straddles the chaotic edge between theatrical absurdity and the biting, jagged rhythms of post-revolutionary critique. Picking it up now, decades after my initial flirtations with Russian futurism, is like stepping into a hall of mirrors where each reflection is both familiar and grotesquely distorted. The Bedbug, with its explosive satirical energy, shares an uncanny kinship with Mayakovsky’s poetry: both revel in disruption, both mock the rigidities of bourgeois comfort, and both demand the reader’s active engagement in the collapse of conventional meaning.
On one level, The Bedbug reads like a carnival of postmodern irony avant la lettre. The plot—an absurdist comedy about a man frozen in 1919 and revived in the 1920s Soviet utopia—can seem like a frivolous farce, yet beneath the surface bubbles a furious critique of social inertia and outdated hierarchies. Mayakovsky’s bedbug, the titular creature, becomes more than a simple pest; it is a grotesque emblem of historical persistence, a stubborn reminder that the past is never truly gone. Here, the play’s theatricality mirrors the experimental structures of his poetry, where syntax, rhythm, and visual form all collide to challenge the reader’s expectations. The bedbug scuttles across stage and page alike, a constant disruptor of order, echoing Mayakovsky’s own restless energy in meter and cadence.
Comparing the play with selected poems like “A Cloud in Trousers” or “Listen!” highlights a fascinating continuity. Both forms pivot between the personal and the collective, the lyrical and the propagandistic, often blending them in ways that feel startlingly contemporary. The poetry’s jagged, almost jarring rhythms—sometimes explosive, sometimes tenderly intimate—find an analog in the play’s rapid-fire dialogues and absurdist tableaux. Mayakovsky is acutely aware of language as an instrument of power and subversion; whether through a line of verse or a comic exchange, he dismantles bourgeois complacency while simultaneously constructing an alternative, often utopian vision. The poems, like the play, oscillate between an uncontainable desire for social transformation and an almost morbid fascination with human folly.
What strikes me in retrospect is the uncanny postmodern sensibility embedded within both works, decades before postmodernism was formally recognized. Mayakovsky’s layering of temporal dislocation in The Bedbug—characters from the past clashing with an imagined future—mirrors the way his poetry often collapses subjective experience, historical narrative, and political exhortation into a single, restless text. There’s a metafictional awareness here: Mayakovsky constantly signals the constructedness of his own worlds, teasing the audience and reader into recognizing their role in producing meaning. In this sense, reading him now is an exercise in self-consciousness; one becomes hyper-aware of the absurdity, the satire, the performativity, and the ideological stakes all at once.
Stylistically, the connective tissue between the play and the poetry is unmistakable. Both revel in visuality and performativity: stage directions in the play read almost like calligraphy, while typographical flourishes in the poetry insist on being seen, heard, and felt. Humor—sometimes grotesque, sometimes tender—runs like a current through both, serving not merely as comic relief but as an epistemological tool, a way of making the reader or spectator question the seeming normalcy of social, political, and emotional structures. In this, Mayakovsky is both provocateur and guide, leading us through the rubble of outdated ideals into the possibility of radical reinvention.
Ultimately, revisiting The Bedbug and Selected Poetry in tandem illuminates the persistent vibrancy of Mayakovsky’s voice: uncompromising, performative, and eternally subversive. The works resist neat categorization, blending satire, lyricism, political polemic, and experimental form into a single continuum. The bedbug scuttles across the stage and the page, a small, relentless agent of chaos, while the poetry’s lines punch, plead, and sometimes whisper. Together, they form a postmodern dialogue across genres, an ongoing meditation on history, desire, and the unquenchable human need to reshape the world—and our perception of it.
Reading Mayakovsky now, one cannot help but feel both exhilarated and unsettled, aware of how his innovations ripple forward through literary history, even as they pierce the complacency of the present. In the restless collision of play and poetry, absurdity and critique, past and imagined future, he remains defiantly alive, a radical voice refusing to be frozen, even by time itself.
Vladimir Mayakovsky’s The Bedbug and Selected Poetry is one of those reads that straddles the chaotic edge between theatrical absurdity and the biting, jagged rhythms of post-revolutionary critique. Picking it up now, decades after my initial flirtations with Russian futurism, is like stepping into a hall of mirrors where each reflection is both familiar and grotesquely distorted. The Bedbug, with its explosive satirical energy, shares an uncanny kinship with Mayakovsky’s poetry: both revel in disruption, both mock the rigidities of bourgeois comfort, and both demand the reader’s active engagement in the collapse of conventional meaning.
On one level, The Bedbug reads like a carnival of postmodern irony avant la lettre. The plot—an absurdist comedy about a man frozen in 1919 and revived in the 1920s Soviet utopia—can seem like a frivolous farce, yet beneath the surface bubbles a furious critique of social inertia and outdated hierarchies. Mayakovsky’s bedbug, the titular creature, becomes more than a simple pest; it is a grotesque emblem of historical persistence, a stubborn reminder that the past is never truly gone. Here, the play’s theatricality mirrors the experimental structures of his poetry, where syntax, rhythm, and visual form all collide to challenge the reader’s expectations. The bedbug scuttles across stage and page alike, a constant disruptor of order, echoing Mayakovsky’s own restless energy in meter and cadence.
Comparing the play with selected poems like “A Cloud in Trousers” or “Listen!” highlights a fascinating continuity. Both forms pivot between the personal and the collective, the lyrical and the propagandistic, often blending them in ways that feel startlingly contemporary. The poetry’s jagged, almost jarring rhythms—sometimes explosive, sometimes tenderly intimate—find an analog in the play’s rapid-fire dialogues and absurdist tableaux. Mayakovsky is acutely aware of language as an instrument of power and subversion; whether through a line of verse or a comic exchange, he dismantles bourgeois complacency while simultaneously constructing an alternative, often utopian vision. The poems, like the play, oscillate between an uncontainable desire for social transformation and an almost morbid fascination with human folly.
What strikes me in retrospect is the uncanny postmodern sensibility embedded within both works, decades before postmodernism was formally recognized. Mayakovsky’s layering of temporal dislocation in The Bedbug—characters from the past clashing with an imagined future—mirrors the way his poetry often collapses subjective experience, historical narrative, and political exhortation into a single, restless text. There’s a metafictional awareness here: Mayakovsky constantly signals the constructedness of his own worlds, teasing the audience and reader into recognizing their role in producing meaning. In this sense, reading him now is an exercise in self-consciousness; one becomes hyper-aware of the absurdity, the satire, the performativity, and the ideological stakes all at once.
Stylistically, the connective tissue between the play and the poetry is unmistakable. Both revel in visuality and performativity: stage directions in the play read almost like calligraphy, while typographical flourishes in the poetry insist on being seen, heard, and felt. Humor—sometimes grotesque, sometimes tender—runs like a current through both, serving not merely as comic relief but as an epistemological tool, a way of making the reader or spectator question the seeming normalcy of social, political, and emotional structures. In this, Mayakovsky is both provocateur and guide, leading us through the rubble of outdated ideals into the possibility of radical reinvention.
Ultimately, revisiting The Bedbug and Selected Poetry in tandem illuminates the persistent vibrancy of Mayakovsky’s voice: uncompromising, performative, and eternally subversive. The works resist neat categorization, blending satire, lyricism, political polemic, and experimental form into a single continuum. The bedbug scuttles across the stage and the page, a small, relentless agent of chaos, while the poetry’s lines punch, plead, and sometimes whisper. Together, they form a postmodern dialogue across genres, an ongoing meditation on history, desire, and the unquenchable human need to reshape the world—and our perception of it.
Reading Mayakovsky now, one cannot help but feel both exhilarated and unsettled, aware of how his innovations ripple forward through literary history, even as they pierce the complacency of the present. In the restless collision of play and poetry, absurdity and critique, past and imagined future, he remains defiantly alive, a radical voice refusing to be frozen, even by time itself.
February 12, 2020
I only read The Bedbug out of this collection, and it was surprisingly not too bad. I rather enjoyed the satire of the second half, and there were some pretty great lines. The first half however, I'm still trying to figure what it was about. *shrugs*
I had zero hopes for this play, and it actually afforded me some mild enjoyment in the end. Let's see if I can actually remember any of it for my midterm exam later today though ;)
I had zero hopes for this play, and it actually afforded me some mild enjoyment in the end. Let's see if I can actually remember any of it for my midterm exam later today though ;)
July 3, 2020
For me this is the gold standard for Mayakovsky in english (second perhaps being Jack Hirschman's limited renderings in Electric Iron). This was the first book I dug out of the Hunter college library of the poet's after hearing a memorable line a friend of mine stumbled across, and I carried it with me in its tough little university binding in my coat pocket for what felt like months, reading it all over NYC, on the street seated on the curb, in the park, in the subway, on the bridge, over and over again. In this way, perhaps I am biased as to the quality of the translation as it was my gateway and watermark as to what Mayakovsky should sound like in english, which is perhaps unfair. But I've been rereading it again for the first time in a while along with all of the other translations of his work I have (growing into a sizable collection) and these are still the best renderings. George Reavey did an unbelievable job—unbelievable especially given that of his own poetry nothing has ever especially impressed me. I wish Reavey had done more comprehensive translation of his other long works, something sorely lacking still some 45 years down the line. The poems here accomplish that utmost rarity as translated works in that their rendering into english achieves what Borges speaks of when he says that what is perfect in poetry does not feel strange but rather feels inevitable.
Here is a shorter one of my favorites.
TO HIS BELOVED SELF, THE AUTHOR DEDICATES THESE LINES
Four words,
heavy as a blow:
". . . unto Caesar . . . unto God . . ."
But where can a man
like me
bury his head?
Where is there shelter for me?
If I were
as small
as the Great Ocean
I'd tiptoe on the waves
and woo the moon like the tide.
Where shall I find a beloved,
a beloved like me?
She would be too big for the tiny sky!
Oh, to be poor!
Like a multimillionaire!
What's money to the soul?
In it dwells an insatiable thief.
The gold of all the Californias
will never satisfy the rapacious hordes of my lusts.
Oh, to be tongue-tied
like Dante
or Petrarch!
I'd kindle my soul for one love alone!
In verse I'd command her to burn to ash!
And if my words
and my love
were a triumphal arch,
then grandly
all the heroines of love through the ages
would pass through it, leaving no trace.
Oh, were I
as quiet
as thunder
then I would whine
and fold earth's aged hermitage in my shuddering embrace.
If,
to its full power,
I used my vast voice,
the comets would wring their burning hands
and plunge headlong in anguish.
With my eyes' rays I'd gnaw the night—
if I were, oh,
as dull
as the sun!
Why should I want
to feed with my radiance
the earth's lean lap!
I shall go by,
dragging my burdens of love.
In what delirious
and ailing night,
was I sired by Goliaths—
I, so large,
so unwanted?
(1916)
Here is a shorter one of my favorites.
TO HIS BELOVED SELF, THE AUTHOR DEDICATES THESE LINES
Four words,
heavy as a blow:
". . . unto Caesar . . . unto God . . ."
But where can a man
like me
bury his head?
Where is there shelter for me?
If I were
as small
as the Great Ocean
I'd tiptoe on the waves
and woo the moon like the tide.
Where shall I find a beloved,
a beloved like me?
She would be too big for the tiny sky!
Oh, to be poor!
Like a multimillionaire!
What's money to the soul?
In it dwells an insatiable thief.
The gold of all the Californias
will never satisfy the rapacious hordes of my lusts.
Oh, to be tongue-tied
like Dante
or Petrarch!
I'd kindle my soul for one love alone!
In verse I'd command her to burn to ash!
And if my words
and my love
were a triumphal arch,
then grandly
all the heroines of love through the ages
would pass through it, leaving no trace.
Oh, were I
as quiet
as thunder
then I would whine
and fold earth's aged hermitage in my shuddering embrace.
If,
to its full power,
I used my vast voice,
the comets would wring their burning hands
and plunge headlong in anguish.
With my eyes' rays I'd gnaw the night—
if I were, oh,
as dull
as the sun!
Why should I want
to feed with my radiance
the earth's lean lap!
I shall go by,
dragging my burdens of love.
In what delirious
and ailing night,
was I sired by Goliaths—
I, so large,
so unwanted?
(1916)
January 26, 2024
Mayakovsky has a rather compelling history. The first I heard of him was his suicide - another in the long list of people who wrote and didn’t know where to go with themselves - and years later I decided to jump in. See what the fuss was about.
Turned out Mayakovsky was much more (and less at the same time) interesting than I thought before. His love poetry borders on whiny - another one in the long list of unrequited lovers - his political critique swayed from supportive to outright pejorative throughout his life - another one in the long list of authors grown disillusioned with their situations.
The highlight of the contradictory nature of Mayakovsky has to be his poem to Sergei Yesenin (that man is a whole tale in and of itself), condemning his suicide.
Only to commit one some time later. He simply had no other way, he wrote. So who was he to say Yesenin had another?
I don’t exactly know how or what to make of this. It is good poetry (and the play, albeit oddly chopped and short) - and the original Russian side-by-side is a very lovely touch, the only issue being the mistranslation of some words and lines for what I can only assume to be aesthetic reasons, but I cannot give the book a lower rating because I still would want people to read it. I still want people to be interested in characters like Mayakovsky. A TikTok of Jack Edwards talking about Dostoyevsky’s White Nights made it go #1 on Amazon and made it go out of stock.
And while I’m not comparing a review that four people will see to a TikTok millions saw, the idea should be consistent on any level.
Read Mayakovsky. Read these odd characters and their poems. You may not like them, but you shouldn’t let them die.
Turned out Mayakovsky was much more (and less at the same time) interesting than I thought before. His love poetry borders on whiny - another one in the long list of unrequited lovers - his political critique swayed from supportive to outright pejorative throughout his life - another one in the long list of authors grown disillusioned with their situations.
The highlight of the contradictory nature of Mayakovsky has to be his poem to Sergei Yesenin (that man is a whole tale in and of itself), condemning his suicide.
Only to commit one some time later. He simply had no other way, he wrote. So who was he to say Yesenin had another?
I don’t exactly know how or what to make of this. It is good poetry (and the play, albeit oddly chopped and short) - and the original Russian side-by-side is a very lovely touch, the only issue being the mistranslation of some words and lines for what I can only assume to be aesthetic reasons, but I cannot give the book a lower rating because I still would want people to read it. I still want people to be interested in characters like Mayakovsky. A TikTok of Jack Edwards talking about Dostoyevsky’s White Nights made it go #1 on Amazon and made it go out of stock.
And while I’m not comparing a review that four people will see to a TikTok millions saw, the idea should be consistent on any level.
Read Mayakovsky. Read these odd characters and their poems. You may not like them, but you shouldn’t let them die.
Want to read
December 21, 2009Read "Conversation with a Tax Collector About Poetry"
Read
June 25, 2014I laughed ("Conversations with a Tax Collector about Poetry"). I cried (the "You" segment of "I Love"). I wanted to go back to New York ("Brooklyn Bridge").
September 19, 2018
لدى البالغين مهامٌ كثيرة
جيوبهم محشوة
بالروبلات.
الحب؟
بالتأكيد!
بما قيمته حوالي مئة روبل.
أما أنا،
الذي لا بيت لي،
فأقحم
يديّ
في جيوبي الممزقة
وأمشي مترهلًا
وعيناي جاحظتان.
إنه الليل.
ترتدين أجمل ثيابكِ
وتسترخين برفقة الزوجات والأرامل.
موسكو،
بحلقة طرقاتها المستديرة
اللامتناهية،
تخنقني في عناقاتها.
قلوب العشيقات
تدق ” تيك تاك”،
وعلى سرير الحب يشعر الشريكان
بالنشوة.
متمددًا مثل ” ساحة الشغف”،
أقبض على دقات القلب المجنونة
للمدن الكبرى
مشرّعاً
– وقلبي يكاد يطفو على السطح –
أفتح نفسي للشمس والوحل.
اخترقوني بولعكم!
تسلقوني بحبكم!
فالآن فقدت السيطرة على قلبي.
أعرف أين تكمن قلوب
الآخرين:
في الصدر – كما يعلم الجميع!
أما معي
فقد جن جنون علم التشريح:
كأني لا شيء فيّ سوى القلب
هادرًا في كل مكان.
آن، كم من أوقات
الربيع
تراكمت في جسدي المحموم طوال هذه
السنين!
حملها غير المهرق لا يطاق.
لا يطاق أقول،
لا بالمعنى المجازي،
لا شعرًا،
بل حرفيًا.
جيوبهم محشوة
بالروبلات.
الحب؟
بالتأكيد!
بما قيمته حوالي مئة روبل.
أما أنا،
الذي لا بيت لي،
فأقحم
يديّ
في جيوبي الممزقة
وأمشي مترهلًا
وعيناي جاحظتان.
إنه الليل.
ترتدين أجمل ثيابكِ
وتسترخين برفقة الزوجات والأرامل.
موسكو،
بحلقة طرقاتها المستديرة
اللامتناهية،
تخنقني في عناقاتها.
قلوب العشيقات
تدق ” تيك تاك”،
وعلى سرير الحب يشعر الشريكان
بالنشوة.
متمددًا مثل ” ساحة الشغف”،
أقبض على دقات القلب المجنونة
للمدن الكبرى
مشرّعاً
– وقلبي يكاد يطفو على السطح –
أفتح نفسي للشمس والوحل.
اخترقوني بولعكم!
تسلقوني بحبكم!
فالآن فقدت السيطرة على قلبي.
أعرف أين تكمن قلوب
الآخرين:
في الصدر – كما يعلم الجميع!
أما معي
فقد جن جنون علم التشريح:
كأني لا شيء فيّ سوى القلب
هادرًا في كل مكان.
آن، كم من أوقات
الربيع
تراكمت في جسدي المحموم طوال هذه
السنين!
حملها غير المهرق لا يطاق.
لا يطاق أقول،
لا بالمعنى المجازي،
لا شعرًا،
بل حرفيًا.
April 8, 2021
I haven't read all of the poetry here, but I read the Bedbug and some of the poetry. Mayakovsky is a talented poet, and this collection is a fascinating demonstration of his movement from official pro-Soviet poet writing explicitly for the regime in the early 1920s to his satirization and potential opposition to the Soviet state in the Bedbug, which he wrote later. The Bedbug is very funny, and the poetry is strange and beautiful, in both English and Russian. Would recommend!
August 16, 2024
The guy was a genius. Took me a bit to understand that.
At first, I wasn't sure whether I like his writing, I wasn't sure what to make out of it but as I read on, it dawned on me. He's one talented but a tormented fellow. And his writing, indeed isn't for everyone.
Back in the day, they would've stirred one or two cauldrons and pots.
I started the book with droopy eyes and finished it with eyes wide open.
I was Impressed..
Book #43 of 2024..
At first, I wasn't sure whether I like his writing, I wasn't sure what to make out of it but as I read on, it dawned on me. He's one talented but a tormented fellow. And his writing, indeed isn't for everyone.
Back in the day, they would've stirred one or two cauldrons and pots.
I started the book with droopy eyes and finished it with eyes wide open.
I was Impressed..
Book #43 of 2024..
March 5, 2025
rereading some mayakovsky before class this morning
What Happened
“the lump of the heart has grown huge in bulk: that bulk is love, that bulk is hate.”
“an appendage of the heart, i dragged myself about, hunching the vast width of my shoulders.”
The Cloud in Trousers
“I feel
my I
is much too small for me.
Stubbornly a body pushes out of me.”
i love mayakovsky
What Happened
“the lump of the heart has grown huge in bulk: that bulk is love, that bulk is hate.”
“an appendage of the heart, i dragged myself about, hunching the vast width of my shoulders.”
The Cloud in Trousers
“I feel
my I
is much too small for me.
Stubbornly a body pushes out of me.”
i love mayakovsky
April 13, 2021
This is an excellent introduction to Mayakovsky's work. I cannot speak to the translations per say, but it is clear that even if the subtle internal rhymes of the lyrical poems, their play with language and innovative use of Russian neologisms, are all but entirely lost, the translators allowed Mayakovsky's striking and creatively original imagery to shine through with clarity. Indeed, these futurist poems are remarkable for their sharp break with tradition and their power in expressing Mayakovsky's outsized (yet almost adolescent) torment and heartbreak. Much of Mayakovsky's innovation comes from his willingness to have the hallmarks of modernity (speed, urban life, machinery, world war one, and later: Bolshevism) seep jaggedly into his love poems. His writing, violent and expressive as it is, evokes not only the poet's personal anguish but also the turmoil and upheaval of 20th century Russia. Rupture is ever present.
It is true, the early autobiographical cycle and the two long poemas, "A Cloud in Trousers" and "The Backbone Flute,"are by far the strongest pieces of poetry in here. That being said, the other poems help to give a deeper understanding of Mayakovsky as a person and a poet.
And then of course there is "The Bedbug," which somehow manages to be a frightening piece of Utopian propaganda and cutting satire all at once. It displays Mayakovsky's inventiveness and innovation, this time for the stage. As with the poetry, there is exciting play and repartee with language and puns throughout. "The Bedbug" is an essential piece in the repertoire, to be sure.
Lastly, Patricia Blake's introduction is an entertaining and insightful read. It helps contribute to this indispensable collection, a worthy homage to an integral early 20th century writer and contributor to Russian arts and letters.
It is true, the early autobiographical cycle and the two long poemas, "A Cloud in Trousers" and "The Backbone Flute,"are by far the strongest pieces of poetry in here. That being said, the other poems help to give a deeper understanding of Mayakovsky as a person and a poet.
And then of course there is "The Bedbug," which somehow manages to be a frightening piece of Utopian propaganda and cutting satire all at once. It displays Mayakovsky's inventiveness and innovation, this time for the stage. As with the poetry, there is exciting play and repartee with language and puns throughout. "The Bedbug" is an essential piece in the repertoire, to be sure.
Lastly, Patricia Blake's introduction is an entertaining and insightful read. It helps contribute to this indispensable collection, a worthy homage to an integral early 20th century writer and contributor to Russian arts and letters.
March 17, 2013
Mayakovsky opened my eyes, ears, nose, ears - myself. Having discovered his poetry, in particular, equals to having discovered another planet with living organisms. I felt smashed in the face on nearly every page, some of the lines burnt my eyes (or tongue if I read them aloud) and I felt alive with the lines elevating my pulse, my blood pressure, and reviving a weary body and encouraging a vivid mind to continue a losing game - exactly because books and writers like Mayakovsky existed. Let his words pull out the roots of yourself. As for The Bedbug, it is a play with a most curious twist, rather extraordinary and ahead of its time. It can be read on many levels, which is the beauty of this unique play. Do not hesitate a second: read it now!
September 5, 2007
I honestly had a better translation of the bedbug copied from an alternate source. Mayakovsky is the "loneliest eye on the way to the blind!" If there were the monarch butterfly in the socialist cannon, he is surely a cloud in trousers. As Evgeny Zamyatov says with paraphrased: Mayakovsky was the Futurists and he was one of the great poets. If there was no Mayakovsky, the futurists are nothing and the world has lost one of the greatest.
April 11, 2008
Mayakovsky is notoriously difficult to translate, so I have little to say of the translation. Many older compilations suffer from an excessive focus on his Soviet themed odes to Lenin and the revolution. This book has an entirely appropriate focus on his lyric poetry and his love poems. For those interested in avant garde literature or in Russian poetry in the 20th century, this is a great read.
April 6, 2008
The great Russian futurist many people never really have ever read or heard of. Surreal, sarcastic, biting, self deprecating, and tender at times. A lot of his later work reads like Bolshevik propaganda, but when he hits his stride, like in "A Cloud In Trousers," he's simply amazing.
February 2, 2008
He had that fire I look for and rarely find. I like my poetry hot, so hot the flames leap from the page. God. Yes.
September 5, 2010
My favorite poem in this collection is "The Cloud in Trousers."
January 17, 2022
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.
At bricks I bawl,
thrusting the dagger of desperate words
into the swollen pulp of the sky:
"Sun!
Father mine!
If at least thou wouldst have mercy and stop tormening me!
For my blood thou spilled gushes down this nether road.
That is my soul yonder
in tatters of torn cloud
against a burnt-out sky
upon the rusted cross of the belfry!
Time!
You lame icon-painter,
will you at least daub my countenance
and frame it as a freak of this age!
I am as lonely as the only eye
of a man on his way to the blind!"
* * *
Four words,
heavy as a blow:
". . . unto Caesar . . . unto god . . ."
But where can a man
like me
bury his head?
Where is there shelter for me?
If I were
as small
as the Great Ocean,
I'd tiptoe on the waves
and woo the moon like the tide.
Where shall I find a beloved,
a beloved like me?
She would be too big for the tiny sky!
Oh, to be poor!
Like a multimillionaire!
What's money to the soul
In it dwells an insatiable thief.
The gold of all the Californias
will never satisfy the rapacious horde of my lusts.
Oh, to be tongue-tied
like Dante
or Petrarch!
I'd kindle my soul for one love alone!
In verse I'd command her to burn to ash!
And if my words
and my love
were a triumphal arch,
then grandly
all the heroines of love through the ages
would pass through it, leaving no trace.
Oh, were I
as quiet
as thunder
then I would whine
and fold earth's aged hermitage in my shuddering embrace.
If,
to its full power,
I used my vast voice,
the comets would wring their burning hands
and plunge headlong in anguish.
With my eyes' rays I'd gnaw the night -
if I were, oh,
as dull
as the sun!
Why should I want
to feed with my radiance
the earth's lean lap!
I shall go by,
dragging my burden of love.
In what delirious
and ailing
night,
was I sired by Goliaths -
I, so large,
so unwanted?
* * *
Past one o'clock. You must have gone to bed..
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.
I'm in no hurry; with lightning telegrams
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.
And, as they say, the incident is closed.
Love's boat has smashed against the daily grind.
Now you and I are quits. Why bother then
to balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.
Behold what quiet settles on the world.
Night wraps the sky in tribute form the stars.
In hours like these, on rises to address
The ages, history, and all creation.
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.
At bricks I bawl,
thrusting the dagger of desperate words
into the swollen pulp of the sky:
"Sun!
Father mine!
If at least thou wouldst have mercy and stop tormening me!
For my blood thou spilled gushes down this nether road.
That is my soul yonder
in tatters of torn cloud
against a burnt-out sky
upon the rusted cross of the belfry!
Time!
You lame icon-painter,
will you at least daub my countenance
and frame it as a freak of this age!
I am as lonely as the only eye
of a man on his way to the blind!"
- A Few Words About Myself, pg. 56-59
* * *
Four words,
heavy as a blow:
". . . unto Caesar . . . unto god . . ."
But where can a man
like me
bury his head?
Where is there shelter for me?
If I were
as small
as the Great Ocean,
I'd tiptoe on the waves
and woo the moon like the tide.
Where shall I find a beloved,
a beloved like me?
She would be too big for the tiny sky!
Oh, to be poor!
Like a multimillionaire!
What's money to the soul
In it dwells an insatiable thief.
The gold of all the Californias
will never satisfy the rapacious horde of my lusts.
Oh, to be tongue-tied
like Dante
or Petrarch!
I'd kindle my soul for one love alone!
In verse I'd command her to burn to ash!
And if my words
and my love
were a triumphal arch,
then grandly
all the heroines of love through the ages
would pass through it, leaving no trace.
Oh, were I
as quiet
as thunder
then I would whine
and fold earth's aged hermitage in my shuddering embrace.
If,
to its full power,
I used my vast voice,
the comets would wring their burning hands
and plunge headlong in anguish.
With my eyes' rays I'd gnaw the night -
if I were, oh,
as dull
as the sun!
Why should I want
to feed with my radiance
the earth's lean lap!
I shall go by,
dragging my burden of love.
In what delirious
and ailing
night,
was I sired by Goliaths -
I, so large,
so unwanted?
- To His Beloved Self, The Author Dedicates These Lines, pg. 132-135
* * *
Past one o'clock. You must have gone to bed..
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.
I'm in no hurry; with lightning telegrams
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.
And, as they say, the incident is closed.
Love's boat has smashed against the daily grind.
Now you and I are quits. Why bother then
to balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.
Behold what quiet settles on the world.
Night wraps the sky in tribute form the stars.
In hours like these, on rises to address
The ages, history, and all creation.
- Past One O'Clock, pg. 236-237
August 22, 2021
I came for the play, The Bedbug, but it’s the poetry that blew me away. You’ll be saved me blathering on at length about it, because I don’t know enough about poetry to turn this into an endless review. I just know that the imagery and word power of the poems - in translation, mind you - grabbed hold of me and took off. I got angry, I got pained, I stopped many times on a certain line to jaw-drop at the sublime as it hit the brain cells. Sadly, this author left us too soon, and to me it seems the same sort of passion he blasted every page with in the tumultuous verse is the same passion that led to suicide. Brilliance out of the pain of living where and when he lived, plus personal demons, all left in the ink. So, yeah, the poems. The poems! Even when I didn’t totally get them…they got me good. Apparently, in translation, I lose (a) the rhymes, and (b) the puns. Ha! Regarding those ‘losses’, I’m reminded of Max von Sydow, in Minority Report: someone says “drink your herbal tea with lemon”, and he says “I hate herbal tea. Almost as much as I hate lemon.”. Me, I hate rhymes. Almost as much as I hate puns.
I’m kidding; I don’t hate rhymes. But I don’t miss them, in this case.
A word on the play, The Bedbug. As far as guys ending up in cages at the zoo because of the way they behave…I think I preferred Man in the Zoo, by David Garnett (maybe only because it’s even more interesting when a fellow puts himself in the cage). There’s nothing wrong with Mayakovsky’s version of the (rather tired) “Rip van Winkle wakes up in a future utopia/dystopia” scenario, but it goes by rather fast, and certainly didn’t rock me like the poetry. Certainly, though, an ambitious play - busy with its SF concepts in a bare minimum of pages; a bit like reading a Karel Capek play, but I prefer Capek.
But…those poems! (Without the puns, thank the stars! So very pleased they don’t translate! I already have a punster in my life, and that’s as much, or more, than any one person should have to deal with.)
I’m kidding; I don’t hate rhymes. But I don’t miss them, in this case.
A word on the play, The Bedbug. As far as guys ending up in cages at the zoo because of the way they behave…I think I preferred Man in the Zoo, by David Garnett (maybe only because it’s even more interesting when a fellow puts himself in the cage). There’s nothing wrong with Mayakovsky’s version of the (rather tired) “Rip van Winkle wakes up in a future utopia/dystopia” scenario, but it goes by rather fast, and certainly didn’t rock me like the poetry. Certainly, though, an ambitious play - busy with its SF concepts in a bare minimum of pages; a bit like reading a Karel Capek play, but I prefer Capek.
But…those poems! (Without the puns, thank the stars! So very pleased they don’t translate! I already have a punster in my life, and that’s as much, or more, than any one person should have to deal with.)
March 13, 2023
I don’t have any experience in poetry so this was a little out of my wheelhouse. A palate cleanser. There’s some strong imagery here. I enjoyed “A Cloud in Trousers” probably the most. I also really liked the poem where Mayakovsky drank tea with the sun.
The high-concept play fits my tastes, but I felt a little lost not understanding the characters in relation to their 1920s Soviet context. I couldn’t make sense of how the audience is suppose to feel about the main character. Is he suppose to represent the ideal Soviet card-carrying member or is he suppose to be a self-entitled, greedy asshole?
The high-concept play fits my tastes, but I felt a little lost not understanding the characters in relation to their 1920s Soviet context. I couldn’t make sense of how the audience is suppose to feel about the main character. Is he suppose to represent the ideal Soviet card-carrying member or is he suppose to be a self-entitled, greedy asshole?
May 2, 2025
The introduction veers into telling the reader how to think about Mayakovsky (from a liberal–American perspective) rather than providing biographical and/or historical information. Otherwise I would have given the book five stars as it was very enjoyable.
This description of Ivan Prisypkin (protagonist) and the bedbug actually made me laugh out loud: “There are two of them: the famous ‘bedbugus normalis’ and … er … ‘bourgeoisius valgaris’. They are different in size, but identical in essence. Both of them have their habitat in the musty mattresses of time.”
Happy May Day!
This description of Ivan Prisypkin (protagonist) and the bedbug actually made me laugh out loud: “There are two of them: the famous ‘bedbugus normalis’ and … er … ‘bourgeoisius valgaris’. They are different in size, but identical in essence. Both of them have their habitat in the musty mattresses of time.”
Happy May Day!
January 29, 2026
Most of Mayakovsky's stuff is as fresh today as it was a century ago. Clearly a man drunk on the everythingness of life. I will say that the poems that wax more political come off less inspired but such poems don't at all dampen this collection for me. There are full pages worth memorizing or quoting at length. Definitely a book to be revisited for inspiration from time to time. I'd absolutely love to see The Bedbug staged in a modern context as well.
September 6, 2020
I think the translations here might be a bit dogshit. Immensely underwhelming considering Mayakovskys reputation. Theres an almost juvenile sense of imagery and phrasing that runs through these poems that I frankly didn't vibe with. Playful and energetic: yes. Groundbreaking: nae. I guess coming down from the high of Lorca everything seems diminished. Alas and onwards comrades!
February 14, 2022
Meu primeiro contato com Mayakovsky. Foi legalzinho, leitura rápida.
Sátira que enfatiza algumas críticas ao rumo que estava sendo tomado pelo regime soviético da época, que se abria cada vez mais ao capital e flertava com os erros consequentes disso. As menções ao homem congelado como animal, o puritanismo e a falta de noção dos personagens são bem cômicas.
Sátira que enfatiza algumas críticas ao rumo que estava sendo tomado pelo regime soviético da época, que se abria cada vez mais ao capital e flertava com os erros consequentes disso. As menções ao homem congelado como animal, o puritanismo e a falta de noção dos personagens são bem cômicas.
March 6, 2023
This “collection” is an utter disgrace to the canon of work put out by Mayakovsky. It tries to posit his work as anticommunist and “the bedbug” as a critique of the Stalin era, which is a gross misconception. This was clearly put out by bourgeois academia in a saddening attempt to liberalize a communist poet, sad!
June 2, 2025
"But I, from poetry's skies, plunge into communism, because without it I feel no love."
The clunky translation adds to the plain, but visceral nature of Mayakovsky's writing. The repeated references to how large and loud he was in life bleeds through into his work and elevates it. Will certainly be looking for more of it in the future.
4/5
The clunky translation adds to the plain, but visceral nature of Mayakovsky's writing. The repeated references to how large and loud he was in life bleeds through into his work and elevates it. Will certainly be looking for more of it in the future.
4/5
August 10, 2020
Mayakovsky’s poetry reads like a precursor of the Beats, or a bridge between Whitman and the Beats. Had Ginsberg read him? I don’t know. The play (The Bedbug) is a short romp, a satiric look at both the Soviet Union of 1928 and am imagined future socialist world.
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