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florencebrino 's review for:
Backbone Flute: Selected Poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky
by Andrey Kneller
Listen!
If the stars are lit,
then someone must need them, of course?
—Vladimir Mayakovsky, Listen!
This book includes the selected poems of Vladimir Mayakovsky, a Russian poet, playwright, artist and even actor—many occupations for a man who only lived 36 years. A quick look at his biography shows that his short-lived existence was intense; it burned out loudly—a final shot and years of controversy.
Mayakovsky was born in 1893 when Russia was still an empire. As a teenager, he developed an interest in socialism and participated in diverse activities. He then enrolled in the Moscow Art School, where he saw the first signs of the Russian Futurist movement—its love for speed and modernization would influence his poetry significantly.
Politics, love and religion are predominant themes in his poetry, just as in his turbulent life. This collection contains lesser-known poems and his most important works:
* A Cloud in Trousers, a poem written in 1914 and divided into four parts in which the poet discusses love, revolution, art and religion.
Prologue
…
Come and learn -
you, decorous bureaucrats of angelic leagues!
Step up of those cambric drawing-rooms
And the one who is calmly leafing her lips
like a cook leafs the pages of her recipe books.
If you wish--
I’ll rage on raw meat like a vandal
or change into hues that the sunrise arouses,
If you wish--
I can be irreproachably gentle,
not a man—but a cloud in trousers.
I refuse to believe in Nice blossoming!
I will glorify you regardless, -
men, crumpled like bed-sheets in hospitals,
and women, battered like overused proverbs.
4
…
Almighty, You created two hands,
and with care,
made a head, and went down the list, -
but why did you make it
so that it pained
when one had to kiss, kiss, kiss?!
* Backbone Flute, another poem written and published in 1915 where art imitates life. In it, Mayakovsky discusses passionate love and the rejection in favour of a comfortable life; religion, death and suicide—a word that became part of his tragic routine.
If you do exist,
...
Goodness,
my Savior,
if it’s You who have woven the carpet of stars,
if this pain,
that’s increasing daily,
is an ordeal that You’ve sent down to us,
wear the chain of a judge, I pray.
Believe me, I will shortly visit you.
I am punctual
and will not delay for a day.
* I Love, a poetry collection published in 1922 that contains some lovely and poignant lines, not as loud as machinery and the future, but piercing as the love that cannot be and the present.
Usually so
To every infant love is given, -
but between work,
profits
and other stuff,
from evening to evening,
the crust of the heart grows rough.
...
For Mayakovsky’s pen, there seemed to be no boundaries of language. According to the translator—whose works I’ve read previously, as listed below, and thoroughly enjoyed—his irregular line-breaks, his use of internal rhyme, his control of meter and his sense of rhythm combined together to form his unique style. However, nothing is perfect: this singularity makes these poems difficult to translate, leaving them in the shadows of the West.
Adulthood
…
My jacket’s wide open,
with my heart on my sleeve -
I’ve opened myself to the sun and the street.
Enter with passion,
climb into my soul!
My heart is now free! I’ve lost all control!
In others, I know where the heart had been placed.
Everyone knows - it beats in the chest.
But even anatomy
is absurd in my case -
one massive heart
and no room for the rest.
In the last twenty years,
how many springs there
in my sizzling body have gathered?
Their weight, still unused, is too much to bear
and not just
in verse,
but in reality, rather.
I enjoyed this collection, and I think it was enough. I leave Mayakovsky celebrating modernization and industries, singing to all shades of love, igniting revolutions, slaughtering the heavens, rejecting the past and academies, rushing the future. Memories of Álvaro de Campos come to mind—my least favourite heteronym.
July 8, 2021
* Later on my blog.
** Other works I've read translated by Andrey Kneller:
[b:Evening|18674286|Evening|Anna Akhmatova|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387649046l/18674286._SY75_.jpg|26508519]
[b:My Poems...: Selected Poetry|3400162|My Poems... Selected Poetry|Marina Tsvetaeva|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1400844721l/3400162._SY75_.jpg|3440180]
[b:White Flock|18673996|White Flock|Anna Akhmatova|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387648815l/18673996._SY75_.jpg|3387447]
[b:Wondrous Moment: Selected Poetry|5977679|Wondrous Moment Selected Poetry|Alexander Pushkin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1400852307l/5977679._SY75_.jpg|6150976]
[b:The Stranger: Selected Poetry|12972970|The Stranger Selected Poetry|Alexandr Blok|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1400858016l/12972970._SY75_.jpg|18131401]