The Sympathetic Vladimir Mayakovksy

A review of the new Mayakovsky biography by Swedish biographer Bengt Jangfeldt (U. Chicago Press 2014) is up at The Telegraph. Jeremy Noel-Tod writes that it "does much sympathetic justice to a catastrophic personality," and remarks that "[t]he poet’s volatile personality pinballs tragicomically around the milieu where Jangfeldt deftly sets him down. The group included Lili Brik, a charismatic woman who became the 'sole heroine' of Mayakovsky’s poems and the love of his life." Such a milieu we have long been fond:

Orbiting her circle were two men – Roman Jakobson and Victor Shklovsky – who are remembered for their influential critical writings, which radically emphasised the formal, linguistic nature of literary texts. There is a dark comedy to the scene where Shklovsky, hiding from the Bolshevik authorities, is advised by Jakobson to “pretend you’re a piece of paper and rustle” if they search the house.

It was a dangerous time to be an experimental poet but, after initially failing to impress Lenin with his epic work “150,000,000” (the population of the country at the time), Mayakovsky eventually emerged as a celebrated “poetic journalist”, seemingly in tune with Communist Russia. “Do not go into production until you are conscious of a clear social demand,” he advised apprentice poets in the essay “How Are Verses Made?” No one should fiddle about making “poetic cigarette lighters”.

The standard English translations used here don’t convey the gusto of Mayakovsky’s socialist satire as well as Edwin Morgan’s Scots versions: “Stick in, douce folk. – Pineaipple, feesant’s breist:/ stuff till ye boke, for thon is your last feast,” runs a rhyming squib “To the Bourgeoisie”. He was not able, however, simply to hack out “boy-meets-tractor” literature (as Theodor Adorno called it), and later came to feel that he had set his heel “on the throat/ of my own song”.

Mayakovsky survived the purges and expulsions of the Twenties, and wrote his longest poem on the death of Lenin. But eventually his mercurial position overwhelmed him, and in 1930 he shot himself. Five years later, Stalin canonised the “iron poet” ...

Read the full piece at The Telegraph.

And here you may read Frank O'Hara's poem (referenced in the review), "Mayakovsky."