Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky is one of the important Russian Soviet Futurist poets of the 20th century. Apart from that, he showed himself in fields such as editing for LEF (Ru. ЛЕФ) and Noviy LEF (Ru. Новый ЛЕФ), dramaturgy, film directing, acting and writing. He took his own life in 1930 as a result of illness towards the end of his life and pressure in the society.
Vladimir Mayakovsky was born in 1893 as the child of an impoverished aristocratic family in the village of Bagdadi in the Kutais Governorate of the Russian Empire. His father, Vladimir Konstantinovich Mayakovsky, from the Zaporozhian Cossacks, was a 3rd degree forest officer of their region. His mother, Aleksandra Alekseyevna Pavlenko, was a descendant of Kuban Cossacks. Mayakovsky also had two sisters (Lyudmila and Olga) and two brothers (Konstantin and Alexander).
In 1902, Mayakovsky started the Kutais Gymnasium. During these years, he became interested in politics and read propaganda brochures. In February 1906, his father died from an infection from a pricked needle. After that, the poet is disturbed and disgusted by the things with needles. In July of the same year, he moved to Moscow with his family and continued his education there. However, in 1908, he was expelled from school because he did not pay his tuition fees. After meeting pro-revolutionary people here, Mayakovsky met Marxist ideas and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in the same year. He was arrested for these reasons between 1908–1909. He writes poetry in prison; Although he was not satisfied with these poems, he started his career as a poet from here. He was released in 1910 and left the same year because he could not find a place in the party.
In 1911, thanks to his painter friend Yevgeniya Lang, his interest in this field began and he trained in the studios of Stanislav Zhukovskiy and Petr Kelin. In the same year he entered the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture, where he met the Kubo-Futurists. Until 1914, two collections of poetry and a tragedy were published. This year, he and his friend were expelled from school for doing politics.
1915 has been a turning point for the poet, this year he met Liliya and Osip Brik. Until the end of life, Liliya Brik acts as a muse for him. He wrote poems against the war and the state until the October Revolution. After the revolution, he became a supporter of the newly formed state.
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He created LEF magazine in 1923 and was its editor-in-chief until its closure in 1926. In this magazine, works that supported leftist thoughts, Marxist ideologies and state ideas were shared. Between 1922 and 1924, Mayakovsky traveled abroad, but the longest was in the United States in 1925. He wrote nearly nine movie scripts between 1926–1927.
He re-established LEF as Noviy LEF in 1927, but left after a year when he could not get what he wanted. Until the 1930s, he was in and out of many magazines and societies.
Mayakovsky, who lived with Osip and Liliya Brik from 1918 until his death, felt a distance from society in his last years. His plays did not achieve the success he wanted. He committed suicide with a gun in his home on April 14, 1930. In his suicide note, he states that no one is guilty and that he left his poetry and books to the Briks. He brings the Briks into his family and asks the state to take good care of them. His funeral was held on April 17 and he was later cremated in Moscow’s first crematorium.
References:
Anna Lawton, Russian Futurism Through Its Manifestoes, 1912–1928, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. 1988, pp. 51–52.
B. P. Gonçarov, “Mayakovskiy Vladimir Vladimirovich”, Bolşaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya v 30 t. V. 15, 3rd edition, M. Sovetskaya entsiklopediya, 1974, s. 542–543
S. İ. Kormilov, İstoriya russkoy literaturı XX veka (20–90-ye godı), M: Filologiçeskiy fakultet MGU İM. M. V. Lomonosova, 1998
Author: Evgheni Batu
Translator: Evgheni Batu
