Vladimir Mayakovsky (tragedy)

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Vladimir Mayakovsky
Author Vladimir Mayakovsky
Original titleВладимир Маяковский
Country Russia
Language Russian
Genre avant-garde tragedy
Publication date
1914
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)

Vladimir Mayakovsky is a tragedy in verse by Vladimir Mayakovsky written in 1913, premiered on December 2 of that year and published in 1914 by the First Futurists' Journal, later to be included into the Simple as Mooing collection. An avant-garde verse drama, satirizing the urban life and, at the same time, hailing the up-and-coming revolution of the industrial power, it featured a set of bizarre, cartoonish characters and a poet protagonist. [1] [2]

Tragedy form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences

Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilisation. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.

Vladimir Mayakovsky Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was a Soviet poet, playwright, artist, and actor.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Contents

History

The play, which had two working titles, "The Railway" (Железная дорога) and "The Riot of Things" (Восстание вещей), was written in summer 1913 in Kuntsevo nearby Moscow, at the family friend Bogrovnikov’s dacha where they resided from May 18 till the end of August. Sister Lyudmila Mayakovskaya remembered: "Volodya felt very lonely. For days he was roaming the Kuntsevo, Krylatsky and Rublyovo parks, composing his tragedy… [In the house] he scribbled words, lines and rhymes upon scraps of paper and cigarettes' boxes, imploring mother not to throw anything away." [3] In October the work was completed.

Lyudmila Mayakovskaya

Lyudmila Vladimirovna Mayakovskaya was a Russian and Soviet textile designer and teacher. She was given the title of Merited Cultural Worker of the RSFSR. She was the elder sister of the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.

On 9 November 1913 the Mayakovsky presented the copy of the play to the Petersburg theatrical censorship committee, having cut some of the risqué bits. In the first printed version of it which appeared in March 1914 in the First Futurist's Journal, phrases with words "God", "demented God" and "crucified prophet" were also removed. [4]

Premiere

According to actor Konstantin Tomashevsky, people attending rehearsals (Alexander Blok among them) were quite impressed with what was happening on stage. "Those were the times of turmoil, anxiety, dark forebodings. All of us instantly recognized in Mayakovsky a revolutionary, even if his hectic sermons to the human souls, mutilated by the vile city, sounded a bit muddled. It was an attempt at tearing off masks, revealing the sores of the society, sick beneath the veneer of respectability." [5]

Alexander Blok Russian poet

Alexander Alexandrovich Blok was a Russian lyrical poet.

The play was premiered in December 1913 at the Saint Petersburg's Luna Park theatre, directed by Mayakovsky (also engaged in the leading role) and financed by the Union of Youth artistic collective, with stage decorations designed by Pavel Filonov and Iosif Shkolnik. Two days before the premiere all the original cast withdrew because rumours started to spread across the city that actors on stage would be thrown garbage at and beaten up by the public. Mayakovsky had to look for substitutes and settle for amateurs, mostly art students. The supporting actors, most of whom just stood on stage wearing white hoods, faces concealed behind cardboard symbols (painted by Pavel Filonov), and were looking out from time to time only to pronounce cues, were visibly frightened. The (mostly middle-class) public was hostile and behaved as aggressively as Mayakovsky who was pacing up and down the stage, throwing invectives at them.

Pavel Filonov Russian painter and poet

Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov was a Russian avant-garde painter, art theorist, and poet.

As his character, The Poet, having received his "three tears" (one looking more like a cannonball) started to pack them into his suit-case, some people in the audience started shouting: "Stop him immediately!.. Catch him!.. He is not to get away!.. Make him give us back our money!" One of the rotten eggs hurled hit Mayakovsky's shoulder. Later several papers accused the author and his cast of crookery and demanded them to be taken to justice. [6]

Critical reception

Both Luna Park shows, on December 2 and 4, were negatively reviewed by the press. "[The tragedy] was torn down to pieces," Mayakovsky conceded in his autobiography.

"The uproar which followed was of such proportions that the expected hits of the season, performances in Petersburg by actor Max Linder and child prodigy conductor Willy Ferrero, came and went almost unnoticed. Throughout Russia, in Riga, Taganrog, Ryazan, Kertch, Yekaterinodar, Warsaw numerous reviews were published, quite extraordinary in their fervency. Never before a stage production has been destroyed with such fierceness by the press across the whole country," biographer A.Mikhaylov wrote.

"Who's more insane, the Futurists or the public?", Peterburgskaya Gazeta enquired rhetorically. "We won't recall another such case of a theatrical stage abuse," maintained Peterburgsky Listok, dismissing the text of the poem as "white fever delirium." "The society that responds by laughter to being spat upon, should be ashamed of itself," Teatralnaya Zhyzn's reviewer wrote. [6]

After 1917 the Soviet critics hailed the play as a "daring swipe at the bourgeois values," admiring the way the author has "dethroned the old, decrepit God who'd lost all ability to do anything for people, to place a Poet protagonist upon the pedestal." [2]

Characters

Plot

Prologue

Vladimir Mayakovsky, "the last of the poets," carrying his "soul on a plate for the Future's dinner," declares himself "the king of all lamps" and promises to reveal for the people their brand new, true souls.

Act 1

The Holiday of the Paupers goes on in the City. After an Old man (with cats) greets the advent of the new age of electricity and an Ordinary man protesting against the impending mutiny, gets brushed off, a giant woman gets unveiled and carried by the crowd to the Door to be just thrown down to the floor there. A riot of things commences, with human limbs running about, disconnected from their bodies.

Act II

At the City's main square Mayakovsky, dressed in toga is treated as a new god, people bringing him presents, three Tears among them. One man relates the story of how two kisses that's been given him turned into the babies and started to multiply. The Poet packs the three Tears he's received from the three women and promises to deliver them to the great Northern god.

Epilogue

The Poet says farewells to his followers he refers to as "my poor rats," declares Heavens "a cheat" and, after meditating upon what he'd rather be - "a rooster from Holland or a Pskovian king," - decides he likes "the sound of my name, Vladimir Mayakovsky, the best." [8]

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<i>Vladimir Ilyich Lenin</i> (poem)

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is an epic poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky written in 1923-1924. First fragments of it appeared in October 1924 in numerous Soviet newspapers, then, as a separate edition it came out in February 1925 via Leningrad's Gosizdat.

<i>The Bathhouse</i>

The Bathhouse is a play by Vladimir Mayakovsky written in 1929, for the Meyerhold Theatre. It was published for the first time in the November, No.11 issue of Oktyabr magazine and released as a book by Gosizdat in 1930. The play premiered at the People's House's Drama Theatre, in Leningrad on January 30, 1930. The "6-act drama with the circus and the fireworks", satirizing bureaucratic stupidity and opportunism under Joseph Stalin, evoked strong criticism in the Soviet press, particularly from the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers.

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References

  1. ↑ "Vladimir mayakovsky. Biography". The New Literary net. Retrieved 2014-01-13.
  2. 1 2 Iskrzhitskaya, I.Y. (1990). "Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky". Russian Writers. Biobibliographical dictionary. Vol.2. Prosveshchenye. Retrieved 2015-01-13.
  3. ↑ Makarov, V., Zakharov, A., Kosovan, I. Commentaries to Vladimir Mayakovsky (tragedy). The Works by Vladimir Mayakovsky in 6 volumes. Ogonyok Library. Pravda Publishers. Moscow, 1973. Vol.I, pp. 466-467
  4. 1 2 "Commentaries to Vladimir Mayakovsky (tragedy in verse)". The Complete V.V.Mayakovsky in 10 volumes. Retrieved 2015-01-13.
  5. ↑ Teatr magazine, Moscow, 1938, No.4, p.138
  6. 1 2 Mikhaylov, Al. (1988). "Mayakovsky". Lives of Distinguished People. Molodaya Gvardiya. Retrieved 2015-01-13.
  7. ↑ One Russian sazhen (сажень) equals 7 feet
  8. 1 2 The Works by Vladimir Mayakovsky in 6 volumes. Ogonyok Library. Pravda Publishers. Moscow, 1973. Vol.I, pp. 41
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