Left: Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1924, by Alexander Rodchenko. Right: The Collected Poems of Vladimir Mayakovsky, translated by Dorian Rottenberg, USSR, 1972.Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) was the leading poet of Russian Revolution of 1917 and of the early Soviet period. He was,
…an individualist and a rebel against established taste and standards, one of the founders of Russian Futurism movement. Originally Mayakovsky planned to become an artist. His early poems have strong painterly visions and sequences in many of his works recall film techniques. Mayakovsky was deeply concerned with the problem of death throughout his life, and in 1930, troubled by critics and disappointment in love, he shot himself with a pocket pistol. (Authors’ Calendar)
Mayakovsky is often associated with the Soviet regime, and has been in and out of favor because of that, though he did become disillusioned with the Soviet cause by the end of his life. He is not by any means my favorite Russian poet of the era, but I wanted an excuse to post the image of that cool book cover above.
Here’s an early Mayakovsky poem from 1913 that I quite like:
What About You?
by Vladimir Mayakovsky
I splashed some colours from a tubler
and smeared the drab world with emotion.
I charted on a dish of jelly
the jutting cheekbones of the ocean.
Upon the scales of a tin salmon
I read the calls of lips yet mute.
And you,
could you have played a nocturne
with just a drainpipe for a flute?
More Mayakovsky
Ubuweb has a free download of The Collected Poems of Vladimir Mayakovsky, my source for the book cover image and the poem, above.
Read Mayakovsky’s poem, A Talk with a Tax Collector, over at the Poetry Foundation.
I completely agree — follow your instincts! And yes you can judge a book by its cover, and though your judgment might not be “right,” it could still lead you to something interesting and new. My favorite Russian absurdists / Futurists of that era are Daniil Kharms, Alexander Vvedensky and Alexei Kruchenykh. Cheers.
Thanks for those names – I shall keep an eye open for them.
“He is not by any means my favorite Russian poet of the era” – who else would you suggest reading. I did, as I often do, bought this book with the exact same cover, knowing nothing of the author or of Soviet poetry – it was the most “potentially interesting ” book I found in the second hand book shop – it was something of a random buy but I’ve found from experience there’s nothing quite so interesting as following your instincts.