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Mayakovsky and the Russian soul
Mayakovsky reloaded:
The dark (and manic) night of the Russian soul
ANDREW MANGRAVITE
He glares at you from the dust jacket of his newest English-language incarnation, crop-haired, cigar jutting aggressively, looking for all the world like a model for a Georg Grosz caricature. Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) was never in serious danger of becoming “a classic,” if only because he was so poorly served by Soviet-era translations that turned him into a versified party hack. Michael Almereyda’s new translation mixes prose (much of it taken from Mayakovsky’s 1922 autobiography, I, Myself) poetry, artwork and posturing photographs to bring this Russian son of Walt Whitman back into the ranks of world poets where he belongs.
I’ve always felt that if you really want to understand a people, you’ve got to know their writers and composers. In the music they create, in the myths they create and re-create, their story is told. Also, the broader your knowledge, the deeper your understanding will become. If you want to know Americans, you must know your John Greenleaf Whittier and your Ernest Hemingway, your Ezra Pound and your Jim Thompson. In music, Charles Ives is as American as Duke Ellington.
Pugnacious, but enthusiastic
What does all this have to do with Mayakovsky? Well, at a time when Russia is beating up on the Republic of Georgia, it helps to know that Mayakovsky is as Russian as Pushkin and as much a reflection of a certain element in the Russian character. Someone who is very, very well bred might regard Mayakovsky as a boor. If you said that to his face, he would probably have punched you out. Yes, Mayakovsky is pugnacious, but also enthusiastic. Only a true enthusiast would have looked at the lean and hungry faces of V.I. Lenin and his colleagues and seen something more than a bunch of politicians too long out of work, but now about to strike it rich.
The movement called Futurism fitted Mayakovsky like a glove. After the well-bred longueurs of Symbolism, and its “official” rival Acmeism, Futurism was like a drunk at a funeral: loud and happy, but likely to turn ugly if challenged or crossed. As Mayakovsky put it in I, Myself:
Entrance exam to the gymnasium. I passed. Was asked about the anchor (on my sleeve)—easy enough. But the priest asked—what is an “oko”? I answered: three pounds (that’s in Georgian). The kindly examiners explained that “oko” means eye in ancient Church Slavonic. I almost failed because of that. That’s why I immediately began hating everything ancient, everything ecclesiastical and everything Slavic. It’s possible that my Futurism, my Atheism, and my Internationalism originated from this.
What Americans take for granted
But there is another side to Mayakovsky: the enthusiast who even in the capitalist stronghold of New York City can suddenly become enthused by a sight that most people simply took for granted:
As a madman
enters a church
or retreats
to a monastery,
pure and austere,
so I,
in the haze
of evening
humbly approach
the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Revolution treated Mayakovsky badly. Creative people, unlike politicians, tend to be optimists. They believed the end of the Tsar would usher in a new age of freedom and expression. It’s really sad how badly Futurism, which so enthusiastically greeted the new order, was treated by it.
Jack London found a niche
An old time Symbolist like Valery Bryusov—a bold young man back in the 1890s!—could switch sides and earn himself a comfortable cynosure under the Soviets, while Naturalists like Maxim Gorky— suspect figures in the days of the Tsar— became like gods. There was room for Jack London under the Soviet system, but not for poets like Nikolai Klyuev or Sergei Yesenin. Yesenin, the one-time lover of Isadora Duncan and the self-proclaimed poet of “wooden Russia,” preceded Mayakovsky in committing suicide, and Mayakovsky gave him a suitable brusque send-off:
You have gone,
(as they say)
to a Better World.
Bullshit.
Built yourself
a stairway to the stars, didn’t you?
No more publishers’
Advances, no more bars.
Sobered up at last.
It’s a measure of Mayakovsky’s strength as a poet that he managed to survive and inspire other poets even in a diluted format of overly polite translations or Progress Press anthologies that invariably included such items as odes to V.I. Lenin and versified denunciations of the capitalist system. Seeing him reborn in this bold new anthology should serve to introduce him to a new generation as a man, not as a reputation.
To read a response, click here.
The dark (and manic) night of the Russian soul
ANDREW MANGRAVITE
He glares at you from the dust jacket of his newest English-language incarnation, crop-haired, cigar jutting aggressively, looking for all the world like a model for a Georg Grosz caricature. Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) was never in serious danger of becoming “a classic,” if only because he was so poorly served by Soviet-era translations that turned him into a versified party hack. Michael Almereyda’s new translation mixes prose (much of it taken from Mayakovsky’s 1922 autobiography, I, Myself) poetry, artwork and posturing photographs to bring this Russian son of Walt Whitman back into the ranks of world poets where he belongs.
I’ve always felt that if you really want to understand a people, you’ve got to know their writers and composers. In the music they create, in the myths they create and re-create, their story is told. Also, the broader your knowledge, the deeper your understanding will become. If you want to know Americans, you must know your John Greenleaf Whittier and your Ernest Hemingway, your Ezra Pound and your Jim Thompson. In music, Charles Ives is as American as Duke Ellington.
Pugnacious, but enthusiastic
What does all this have to do with Mayakovsky? Well, at a time when Russia is beating up on the Republic of Georgia, it helps to know that Mayakovsky is as Russian as Pushkin and as much a reflection of a certain element in the Russian character. Someone who is very, very well bred might regard Mayakovsky as a boor. If you said that to his face, he would probably have punched you out. Yes, Mayakovsky is pugnacious, but also enthusiastic. Only a true enthusiast would have looked at the lean and hungry faces of V.I. Lenin and his colleagues and seen something more than a bunch of politicians too long out of work, but now about to strike it rich.
The movement called Futurism fitted Mayakovsky like a glove. After the well-bred longueurs of Symbolism, and its “official” rival Acmeism, Futurism was like a drunk at a funeral: loud and happy, but likely to turn ugly if challenged or crossed. As Mayakovsky put it in I, Myself:
Entrance exam to the gymnasium. I passed. Was asked about the anchor (on my sleeve)—easy enough. But the priest asked—what is an “oko”? I answered: three pounds (that’s in Georgian). The kindly examiners explained that “oko” means eye in ancient Church Slavonic. I almost failed because of that. That’s why I immediately began hating everything ancient, everything ecclesiastical and everything Slavic. It’s possible that my Futurism, my Atheism, and my Internationalism originated from this.
What Americans take for granted
But there is another side to Mayakovsky: the enthusiast who even in the capitalist stronghold of New York City can suddenly become enthused by a sight that most people simply took for granted:
As a madman
enters a church
or retreats
to a monastery,
pure and austere,
so I,
in the haze
of evening
humbly approach
the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Revolution treated Mayakovsky badly. Creative people, unlike politicians, tend to be optimists. They believed the end of the Tsar would usher in a new age of freedom and expression. It’s really sad how badly Futurism, which so enthusiastically greeted the new order, was treated by it.
Jack London found a niche
An old time Symbolist like Valery Bryusov—a bold young man back in the 1890s!—could switch sides and earn himself a comfortable cynosure under the Soviets, while Naturalists like Maxim Gorky— suspect figures in the days of the Tsar— became like gods. There was room for Jack London under the Soviet system, but not for poets like Nikolai Klyuev or Sergei Yesenin. Yesenin, the one-time lover of Isadora Duncan and the self-proclaimed poet of “wooden Russia,” preceded Mayakovsky in committing suicide, and Mayakovsky gave him a suitable brusque send-off:
You have gone,
(as they say)
to a Better World.
Bullshit.
Built yourself
a stairway to the stars, didn’t you?
No more publishers’
Advances, no more bars.
Sobered up at last.
It’s a measure of Mayakovsky’s strength as a poet that he managed to survive and inspire other poets even in a diluted format of overly polite translations or Progress Press anthologies that invariably included such items as odes to V.I. Lenin and versified denunciations of the capitalist system. Seeing him reborn in this bold new anthology should serve to introduce him to a new generation as a man, not as a reputation.
To read a response, click here.
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