Mayakovsky
Subtitle: a biography
By: Bengt Jangfeldt ; translated by Harry D. Watson
Contributors: Watson, Harry D., translator
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 610
ISBN-13: 9780226056975
Subjects: Russian Poets; Futurism (Literary movement); Biography
Work titles: Med livet som insats
Description: Few poets have led lives as tempestuous as that of Vladimir Mayakovsky. Born in 1893 and dead by his own hand in 1930, Mayakovsky packed his thirty-six years with drama, politics, passion, and--most important--poetry. An enthusiastic supporter of the Russian Revolution and the emerging Soviet State, Mayakovsky was championed by Stalin after his death and enshrined as a quasi-official Soviet poet, a position that led to undeserved neglect among Western literary scholars even as his influence on other poets has remained powerful. With Mayakovsky, Bengt Jangfeldt offers the first comprehensive biography of Mayakovsky, revealing a troubled man who was more dreamer than revolutionary, more political romantic than hardened Communist. Jangfeldt sets Mayakovsky's life and works against the dramatic turbulence of his times, from the aesthetic innovations of the pre-revolutionary avant-garde to the rigidity of Socialist Realism and the destruction of World War I to the violence--and hope--of the Russian Revolution, through the tightening grip of Stalinist terror and the growing disillusion with Russian communism that eventually led the poet to take his life.
Notes: "Originally published as Med livet som insats : berättelsen om Vladimir Majakovskij och hans krets by Wahlström and Widstrand, Stockholm, Sweden. © Bengt Jangfeldt, 2007"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

In English, translated from Swedish.
Table of contents: title: Volodya, 1893-1915; title: Lili, 1891-1915; title: A cloud in trousers, 1915-1916; title: The first revolution and the third, 1917-1918; title: Communist Futurism, 1918-1920; title: Nep and the beginnings of terror, 1921; title: Drang nach Westen, 1922; title: About this, 1923; title: Free from love and posters, 1923-1924; title: America, 1925; title: New rules, 1926-1927; title: Tatyana, 1928-1929; title: The year of the great change, 1929; title: At the top of my voice, 1929-1930; title: The first Bolshevik spring, 1930; title: A game with life as the stake; title: Mayakovsky's second death.