Vladimir Mayakovsky

**Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky** (;  – 14 April 1930) was a Soviet Russian poet, playwright, artist, and actor. Before the Russian Revolution until 1917, Mayakovsky became an important part of the Russian Futurist movement. He signed the Futurist manifesto, _A Slap in the Face of Public Taste_ (1913). He wrote poems. His famous poems are "A Cloud in Trousers" (1915) and "Backbone Flute" (1916). Mayakovsky made many works in his career. He wrote many poems, wrote and directed plays, was in many movies, edited the art journal _LEF_, and made agitprop posters for the Communist Party during the Russian Civil War.

Mayakovsky's work showed that he supported the Bolsheviks and supported Vladimir Lenin. However, he often had issues with the Soviet state. Mayakovsky did not like their cultural censorship and Socialist realism. He made some works that satirized or attacked the Soviet Union. These included the poem "Talking With the Taxman About Poetry" (1926), and the plays _The Bedbug_ (1929) and _The Bathhouse_ (1929). The Soviet state did not like this.

In 1930, Mayakovsky killed himself. After his death, Joseph Stalin said that Mayakovsky was one of the most important poets in the Soviet Union.

### Poems

- _A Cloud in Trousers_ (, 1915)
- _Backbone Flute_ (, 1915)
- _The War and the World_ (, 1917)
- _The Man_ (, 1918)
- _150 000 000_ (1921)
- _About That_ (, _Pro eto_, 1923)
- _Vladimir Ilyich Lenin_ (, 1924)
- _A Flying Proletarian_ (, 1925)
- _All Right!_ (, 1927)

#### Poem cycles and collections

- _The Early Ones_ (, 1912–1924, 22 poems)
- _I_ (, 1914, 4 poems)
- _Satires. 1913–1927_ (23 poems, including "Take That!", 1914)
- _The War_ (, 1914–1916, 8 poems)
- _Lyrics_ (, 1916, , 1916, 3 poems)
- _Revolution_ (, 1917–1928, 22 poems, including "Ode to Revolution", 1918; "The Left March", 1919)
- _Everyday Life_ (, 1921–1924, 11 poems, including "On Rubbish", 1921, "Re Conferences", 1922)
- _The Art of the Commune_ (, 1918–1923,  11 poems, including "An Order to the Army of Arts", 1918)
- _Agitpoems_ (, 1923, 6 poems, including "The Mayakovsky Gallery")
- _The West_ (, 1922–1925, 10 poems, including "How Does the Democratic Republic Work?", and the 8-poem _Paris_ cycle)
- _The American Poems_ (, 1925–1926, 21 poems, including "The Brooklyn Bridge")
- _On Poetry_ (, 1926, 7 poems, including "Talking with the Taxman About Poetry", "For Sergey Yesenin")
- _The Satires. 1926_ (, 1926. 14 poems)
- _Lyrics. 1918–1924_ (. 12 poems, including "I Love", 1922)
- _Publicism_ (, 1926, 12 poems, including "To Comrade Nette, a Steamboat and a Man", 1926)
- _The Children's Room_ (, 1925–1929. 9 poems for children, including "What Is Good and What Is Bad")
- _Poems. 1927–1928_ (56 poems, including "Lenin With Us!")
- _Satires. 1928_ (. 1928, 9 poems)
- _Cultural Revolution_ (, 1927–1928, 20 poems, including "Beer and Socialism")
- _Agit…_(, 1928, 44 poems, including "'Yid'")
- _Roads_ (, 1928, 11 poems)
- _The First of Five_ (, 1925, 26 poems)
- _Back and Forth_ (, 1928–1930, 19 poems, including "The Poem of the Soviet Passport")
- _Formidable Laughter_ (, 1922–1930; more than 100 poems, published posthumously, 1932–1936)
- _Poems, 1924–1930_ (. 1924–1930, including "A Letter to Comrade Kostrov on the Essence of Love", 1929)
- _Whom Shall I Become?_ (, _Kem byt'?_, published posthumously 1931, poem for children, illustrated by N. A. Shifrin)

### Plays

- _Vladimir Mayakovsky_ (. Subtitled: Tragedy, 1914)
- _Mystery-Bouffe_  (, 1918)
- _The Bedbug_ (, 1929)
- _The Bathhouse_ (. 1930)
- _Moscow Burns. 1905_ (. 1905, 1930)

### Essays and sketches

- _My Discovery of America_ (, 1926), in four parts
- _How to Make Verses_ (, 1926)

### Movies

- Not Born for Money (Не для денег родившийся, 1918)
- Fettered by Film (Закованная фильмой, 1918)
- Lady and the Hooligan (Барышня и хулиган, 1918)

### Translations

- Mayakovsky, Vladimir. _The Bedbug and selected poetry._ Ed. with introd. by Patricia Blake. Trans. by Max Hayward and George Reavey. New York: Meridian Books, 1960. Reprint: Indiana University Press, 1975.
- Mayakovsky, Vladimir. _Mayakovsky: Plays_. Trans. Guy Daniels. (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Il, 1995). .
- Mayakovsky, Vladimir. _For the voice _ (The British Library, London, 2000).
- Mayakovsky, Vladimir (ed. Bengt Jangfeldt, trans. Julian Graffy). _Love is the heart of everything : correspondence between Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lili Brik 1915–1930_ (Polygon Books, Edinburgh, 1986).
- Mayakovsky, Vladimir (comp. and trans. Herbert Marshall). _Mayakovsky and his poetry_ (Current Book House, Bombay, 1955).
- Mayakovsky, Vladimir. _Selected works in three volumes_ (Raduga, Moscow, 1985).
- Mayakovsky, Vladimir. _Selected poetry._ (Foreign Languages, Moscow, 1975).
- Mayakovsky, Vladimir (ed. Bengt Jangfeldt and Nils Ake Nilsson). _Vladimir Majakovsky: Memoirs and essays_ (Almqvist & Wiksell Int., Stockholm 1975).

### Books

- Aizlewood, Robin. _Verse form and meaning in the poetry of Vladimir Maiakovsky: Tragediia, Oblako v shtanakh, Fleita-pozvonochnik, Chelovek, Liubliu, Pro eto_ (Modern Humanities Research Association, London, 1989).
- Brown, E. J. _Mayakovsky: a poet in the revolution_ (Princeton Univ. Press, 1973).
- Charters, Ann & Samuel. _I love : the story of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lili Brik_ (Farrar Straus Giroux, NY, 1979).
- Humesky, Assya. _Majakovskiy and his neologisms_ (Rausen Publishers, NY, 1964).
- Jangfeldt, Bengt. _Majakovsky and futurism 1917–1921_ (Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1976).
- Lavrin, Janko. _From Pushkin to Mayakovsky, a study in the evolution of a literature._ (Sylvan Press, London, 1948).
- Novatorskoe iskusstvo Vladimira Maiakovskogo (trans. Alex Miller). _Vladimir Mayakovsky: Innovator_ (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976).
- Noyes, George Rapall (ed.). _Masterpieces of the Russian drama_. Vol. 2 (Dover Pub., NY, 1961 [1933]).
- Nyka-Niliūnas, Alfonsas. _Keturi vėjai ir keturvėjinikai_ (The Four Winds literary movement and its members), _Aidai_, 1949, No. 24.
- Rougle, Charles. _Three Russians consider America : America in the works of Maksim Gorkij, Aleksandr Blok, and Vladimir Majakovsky_ (Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1976).
- Shklovskii, Viktor Borisovich. (ed. and trans. Lily Feiler). _Mayakovsky and his circle_ (Dodd, Mead, NY, 1972).
- Stapanian, Juliette. _Mayakovsky's cubo-futurist vision_ (Rice University Press, 1986).
- Terras, Victor. _Vladimir Mayakovsky_ (Twayne, Boston, 1983).
- Vallejo, César (trans. Richard Schaaf) _The Mayakovsky case_ (Curbstone Press, Willimantic, CT, 1982).
- Volk, Craig, "Mayakovsky Takes The Stage" (full-length stage drama), 2006 and "At The Top Of My Voice" (feature-length screenplay), 2002.
- Wachtel, Michael. _The development of Russian verse : meter and its meanings_ (Cambridge University Press, 1998).

## Other websites

- Vladimir Mayakovsky Archive at marxists.org
- English translations of three early poems
- English translation of two poems, "So This is How I Turned Into a Dog” and “Hey!”
- English translation of “To His Beloved Self….”
- Rhymed English translation of "Backbone Flute"
- Includes English translations of two poems, 127–128_issue_1_F2012.pdf)
- A recording of Mayakovsky reading "An Extraordinary Adventure..." in Russian, English translation provided
- "A Show-Trial," an excerpt from _Mayakovsky: A Biography_ by Bengt Jangfeldt, 2014.
- Isaac Deutscher, _The Poet and the Revolution_, 1943.
- Chapter on Russian Futurists incl Mayakovsky in Trotsky's _Literature and Revolution_
- The 'raging bull' of Russian poetry article by Dalia Karpel at Haaretz.com, 5 July 2007
- The State Museum of V.V. Mayakovsky at Google Cultural Institute
- The Motherland will Notice her Terrible Mistake: Paradox of Futurism in Jasienski, Mayakovsky and Shklovsky

## Infobox (writer)

- **birth name**: Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky
- **name**: Vladimir Mayakovsky
- **image**: Majakovszkij (cropped).jpg
- **caption**: Mayakovsky in 1920
- **birth place**: Baghdati, Kutais Governorate, Kutais, Russian Empire
- **death place**: Moscow, Soviet Union
- **alma mater**: Stroganov Moscow State University of Arts and Industry, Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture
- **years active**: 1912–1930
- **genre**: Poetry
- **subject**: New Soviet man
- **movement**: Russian Futurism
Cubo-Futurism
- **signature**: Vladimir_Mayakovsky_signature.svg