Mayakovsky created an innovative poetic system, which largely determined the development of both Soviet and world poetry; Nazim Hikmet, Louis Aragon, Pablo Neruda, I. Becher, E. Antokolsky, E. Yevtushenko, M. Shekhter and many, many others experienced its impact.
Mayakovsky significantly reformed Russian verse. New type lyrical hero with his revolutionary attitude to reality contributed to the formation of a new poetics of maximum expressiveness: the entire system of the poet’s artistic means is aimed at the extremely dramatized verbal expression of the thoughts and feelings of the lyrical hero. This is reflected in the system of graphic notations: increased expressiveness is conveyed through changes within traditional spelling and punctuation, and the introduction of new techniques for graphically fixing text - " column", and since 1923 - "ladders", reflecting pausing. The desire for maximum expressiveness of the verse passes through different lines: vocabulary and phraseology, rhythms, intonation, rhymes.
M. Tsvetaeva notes that “ rhythm Mayakovsky - physical heartbeat - heartbeats - of a stagnant horse or tied up man…»
B. Arvatov, analyzing syntactic structure his poetry, concluded that his speech is a rally, a call to action, that Mayakovsky himself always consciously strives to influence the listener, to stir him up, stir him up, agitate him. Yu. Tynyanov correlated this rally setting of Mayakovsky’s verse with the odic genre tradition of the 18th century, with Derzhavin’s odic verse above all. At the same time, B. Pasternak was the first to talk about the fact that when perceiving Mayakovsky’s poetry one cannot get rid of liturgical parallels, that the construction of his poems was prompted by archaic verbal art, ancient creativity, closely related to ritual. Here B. Pasternak very accurately grasped Mayakovsky’s orientation towards the reproduction of certain structures dating back to ancient verbal creativity. I think we can say that the odic tradition had a direct influence primarily on Mayakovsky’s late poetry.
Indigenous change contributed by Mayakovsky into the technique of Russian verse. He installed new rhyming methods, which are close to the oratorical word. In his article "How to make poetry?" Mayakovsky wrote that he puts the most characteristic word at the end of the line and selects a rhyme for it. Mayakovsky violates the so-called syllabic-tonic verse established by the reform of V. Trediakovsky at the beginning of the 18th century, and creates tonic versification in which the length of a verse is determined by the number of full-stress words. L. Timofeev wrote very well about this phenomenon: “What was new in Mayakovsky’s verse was not the destruction of the syllabic-tonic structure... what was new was the introduction of a pause line as an element of rhythm, firstly, and the transformation of the word into an independent unit, and secondly, this... allowed build a verse only on the alternation of stressed syllables supported by pauses.” Mayakovsky uses a ladder structure of verse, where each word - "step" - has a logical emphasis and contains a certain semantic load.
Mayakovsky's poetic work is an example of the most persistent struggle for sharpness and expressiveness of the language, the reader's conscious responsibility for the quality of his artistic work. He strives to return to the poetic language the freshness and concreteness of the language of life, colloquial speech. Initially, he focuses on the talk of the streets, the jargon of the outskirts. After the revolution, new requirements were added to these requirements - to be modern, politically acute.
Mayakovsky was an active opponent of the thoughtless use of foreign words in the language that were incomprehensible to the common people.
So as not to write to me, shouting in vain,
I also draw a moral:
what is suitable for a foreign dictionary,
newspaper is no good.
"About poets".
However, he is not afraid to introduce international political terminology, natural scientific concepts, and generally new or updated words that are the result of new concepts and ideas into the poetic dictionary. The poet also uses a dictionary of the centuries-old history of the Russian literary and speech language, widely uses Old Russian, Church Slavonic and even biblical words, talentedly updating them with contemporary revolutionary comparisons:
in the crown of thorns revolutions
the sixteenth year is coming.
And I am your forerunner.
"A cloud in pants"
Taking into account the peculiarity of Russian words to acquire different semantic shades from changes in suffixes and prefixes, he widely uses it to create new verbal formations: noise, hellish, huge, caressed, mocked, gilded, overheated, revealed. Sometimes, on the contrary, the poet updates the words by dropping the prefix, thereby highlighting the root: loose, faithful.
One of Mayakovsky’s characteristic word formations is the transformation of indeclinable nouns into indeclinable ones: Poincaré, as well as declensions of adverbs modeled on nouns: down with.
The category of compound words is widely represented in the poet’s dictionary: lightning word, Komsomal boy, a lot of volume. Sometimes some compound words are formed by rearranging concepts, for example, narrow-minded from ordinary narrow-minded. Some compound words replace entire expressions: pressed down - pressed down like a toad, color sea - a sea of flowers. Many neologisms have been created based on ideas about future technology: Aerocycles, radio alarm clocks, electric lecturer. In his word innovations, paoet often violates the usual forms of the singular and plural: sky, oh, gold, love. Some take the form of a neologism due to the creation of an unusual degree of comparison: more foreign, more eagle-eyed, tealier, or due to unusual adjective suffixes: drinking stick, volumes of Shakespeare, poetic ballads.
The negative attitude towards linguistic norms of “pure aesthetes” and “servants of the muses” led to the presence in Mayakovsky’s vocabulary of a number of vulgarisms, swear words, and colloquial contemptuous phrases: rushing, wandering, mug...
Interesting , that many of Mayakovsky’s contemporaries noted an important feature of his poetry - it is all translatable into prose, “tellable,” as Tsvetaeva put it, in her own words: “And there is no need to change the dictionary, because Mayakovsky’s vocabulary is entirely everyday, colloquial, prosaic.”
The determining factor in Mayakovsky’s work on language was the desire not to describe dispassionately, but to find words that would captivate the reader and influence him. It is not cold academic narrative, but polemic and appeal that define Mayakovsky's language and syntax.
In this regard, he widely uses all kinds of visual and expressive means language. For example, epithets, which play a large semantic role for the poet. Being a poetic definition, they at the same time clearly specify the poet’s attitude to the subject being described and have a sharply defined ideological and semantic character: in stupid police elephantiasis, azure blue body, sleepy sheet and others. Comparisons by analogy are also very diverse: put the boats of the pens in your pocket. Sometimes in this artistic device only extreme concepts are recorded, connected by a dash: whiskers-brooms.
Comparisons differ in content weight. The poet strives to include as much content as possible into the line by expanding associations. Therefore, there are many complicated comparisons based on large semantic situations: the spine bent like a shaft struck.
Using, at first glance, ordinary lexical units, sometimes with new forms of formation, Mayakovsky managed to create stunning metaphors: “the chest was on foot,” that is, they walked back and forth, along and across. Often a stunning metaphor unfolds throughout the entire stanza:
Here I am, all pain and bruise.
I bequeath to you an orchard
my great soul.
Attentive attention to metaphor indicates the poet's deep understanding of the complexity of poetic work. Defining metaphor as “transfer of definition,” Mayakovsky in practice far surpassed this line, using any part of speech as metaphors, putting them in a figurative meaning:
Along the pavement
my soul is worn out
crazy steps
weave harsh phrases on our heels…
Y. Olesha called Mayakovsky “the king of metaphors”: “among the thousands of metaphors he created, he created one that shocks me. Speaking about the power of words, he said that to the power of words, which “the lodges applaud,” he prefers the power from which “the coffins burst to walk with their four oak legs.”
Hyperbolization in Mayakovsky’s poems was evoked by a special sensually uplifting way of his worldview, which is based on the visual principles of oral and poetic folk art. Mayakovsky uses hyperbole mainly in satirical poems - hymns, “About Rubbish”, “Sitting Around”, plays.
Alliteration and assonance give an emotionally memorable sound poetic text: “And a creepy joke-pecking laugh”; "tears fall from..."; "hand of the river"; "in your mustache." Excited intonation is fixed in complex inversions: “dangling lips in the sky”; “the heart is the noblest album of postcards with long-haired people” (I would even like to explain the last one: the heart is an album of postcards with long-haired people). And the metaphors and metonymies are straight from the legend: “in the holes the mystics told him to mouse,” “the blankets crumpled up the lanterns,” “a warring bouquet of boulevard prostitutes,” “the tram shot up the pupils with a running start.” And all this is “packed” into the motley, confused conversation of the street or the monologue of its shocked observer. Hence the interruptions in rhythm, the division into lines of words related in meaning, sometimes even syllables, the abundance of imprecise, assonant and compound rhymes (close to spoken language).
All of Mayakovsky's linguistic inventions are artistically motivated, subordinated to certain ideas and goals: they are inextricably linked with poetry, with which the poet strives to most economically, vividly and spontaneously express his political tendency, to reflect a new political existence.
I definitely want to say about the instrumental sound of poetry Mayakovsky. Someone noticed that Mayakovsky’s poetry is generally more sound than written, that it should be listened to rather than read. In the grand orchestra of his poetic arsenal musical instruments become almost the most important actors. Here is the howl of the port pipe: “...as if love and lust were pouring with copper pipes” (“Port”), the evening plays on rusty oboes (“A few words about my mother”), hips sing with an amber violin (“A few words about my wife”) . it seems that this is not God, but Mayakovsky himself puts human notes on the piano and, with the help of auditory images, turns himself so “so that there are only solid lips!” Isn’t this what the poem “The Violin and a Little Nervous” is about, a painful confession of the poet’s heart, on whose butterfly dirty people in galoshes and without galoshes are perched?
“You know what, violin?
We are awfully similar:
me too
yell -
but I can’t prove anything!”
Mayakovsky’s other instruments also come to life: “ the tops of the harps blossom,” “the balalaika seemed to cut off the violins of the ball with a bark...”
But my special commitment is to the flute. Back in 1913, the poet defiantly addressed the bourgeois crowd, combining in a punning metaphor and different instruments, and base signs modern city:
And you
play nocturne
we could
on the drainpipe flute?
And having already thought about a farewell concert in his youth, he again remembered this instrument, giving another variant of personal names in the title of the poem “Flute-Spine” - “I”, “Vladimir Mayakovsky”, “Man”.
The poem “War and Peace” is also illuminated with sound flashes. For Russian people, cars become the personification of America. Italy - warm nights, Africa - the scorching sun, France - the first woman in the world, Greece - slender young men, Germany - centuries-old thought, India - golden gifts, And Russia - SONG. In a fiery hymn, the homeland reveals its heart. As researcher N. Khardzhiev noted, “in the monumental poem “War and Peace,” the whole world becomes a theater, with a stage “shaken by the fire of the orchestra.”
Important place March rhythms occupy Mayakovsky's poetry. It was in 1917 that the first of his many marches was born:
Days bull peg.
The arba is slow.
Our god is running.
Our heart is our drum.
In accordance with the accepted attitude, all other instruments are expelled with the exception of the drum. With its help, the poet strives to convey the music of the revolution: “On the chain”, “Drum song”, “Our New Year”, “Good!”, and in the poem “150000000” - a whole drum bacchanalia:
Past
Bars and baths.
Beat the drum!
Drum, drum!
There were slaves!
No slave!
Baarbey!
Baarban!
Drum!
………..
Let's hit!
Let's hit!
They beat me!
Beat the drum!
Beat the drum! Beat the drum!
Thus was born the sound tread of a new world.
Mayakovsky appears to us as such an innovator. He enriched Russian poetry with new forms of versification, found and applied his own ways of actively and spontaneously expressing himself. He was the first to introduce into Russian poetry the image of a new lyrical hero with new experiences and aspirations, a new worldview. In the field of poetic mastery, Mayakovsky further developed the unlimited possibilities of Russian verse, created his own new verse constructions, which make it possible to most fully and realistically depict the diversity and complexity of life. Mayakovsky's verse is exceptionally capacious. The poet destroyed the old form of poetry, but highly valued, developed, improved and widely used various forms of classical poetry and oral poetic folk art.
The strength and skill of the poet lies in a clear knowledge of the purpose of the work, in the ability to find current topics, in the invention and selection of such poetic means that actively convince people of the correctness of the transformations of social life.
Plan
Introduction
V.V. Mayakovsky is an original poet.
Main part
Artistic originality Mayakovsky's poetry:
- rhymes, truncated lines, multi-accent verses;
- highlighting with pauses, significant semantic lines;
- unconventional breakdown of the poem;
- author's neologisms;
- sound writing;
- mixing different language styles.
Conclusion
Mayakovsky created his own poetic style.
V.V. Mayakovsky is an original poet of the early 20th century, who created many original poetic works and an innovator in the field of versification. Its special art style, attention to the rhythm of the poem, original rhymes, the use of new words - all this distinguishes the poetry of V.V. Mayakovsky from traditional lyrics.
IN poetic works For Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky, rhymes, truncated lines, and multi-accent verses are especially important. The poet uses his own style of writing a poem, that is, V.V. Mayakovsky highlights significant semantic lines with pauses. This is how the oppressive atmosphere of hopelessness is created in the poem “A Good Treatment for Horses”:
Horse on croup (pause)
crashed (pause - the reader focuses his attention),
and immediately (pause)
behind the onlooker there is an onlooker (pause),
Kuznetsky came to flare the pants (pause),
huddled...
This unconventional breakdown of the poem into lines helps the poet draw the reader's attention to the most important things. The state of the horse is conveyed through lexical artistic media: verb - crashed, noun - on the croup. The feeling of hopelessness is also conveyed syntactically, through a special line breakdown.
V.V. Mayakovsky saw the power of words and tried to influence the reader through the creation of his own neologisms - words or phrases invented by the poet himself, they most fully reveal the essence of the poetic intent and convey the shades of the author's speech. In the poem “An Unusual Adventure that Vladimir Mayakovsky had in the Summer at the Dacha” there are many original author’s neologisms: “golden-faced”, “yasya”, “rings ringing”, “let’s sing”. The poet plays with words and rhymes to attract the reader's attention. For example, in this poem there are homonyms: “I am driving back the lights for the first time since creation. Did you call me? Drive the tea, drive it, poet, jam!”, synonyms: sun, golden forehead, luminary. Poetic vocabulary of V.V. Mayakovsky is always expressive, this is the main originality artistic creativity poet.
In poetic works, such a phonetic device as sound writing is used. Thus, the reader not only imagines the picture depicted by the poet (most of Mayakovsky’s poems have a plot), but also hears what is happening. In the poem “Being Good to Horses,” the sound of a dying horse’s hooves is expressed as follows:
The hooves beat, / They sang as if:
- Mushroom. / - Rob.
- Coffin. / - Coarse
What's important here is not lexical meaning words, but a combination of sounds. They sound in a new way in the poetry of V.V. Mayakovsky traditional themes. For example, in the poem “The Sat,” the theme of bureaucracy is revealed by the poet through mixing fantasy and reality, creating grotesque situations where people
“...at two meetings at once.
In a day
Twenty meetings
We need to keep up.
Inevitably you have to break up.
Up to the waist here
But other
There".
This poem also uses another special artistic technique V. Mayakovsky: a mixture of different linguistic styles. Within one work there are words and expressions that are closely related to realities modern poet world, and on the other hand, there are outdated forms and words. For example, within the boundaries of one work there are the following words and expressions: Teo, Gukon (abbreviations of the early twentieth century) and the ancient form of the verb to yell - orya; neologism of that time - audience and archaism - from the time it.
So, V.V. Mayakovsky created his own poetic style, which made works of art original, unique.
- Why are you wearing a yellow sweater?
- So as not to be like you.
V. Kamensky. The youth of Mayakovsky.
In 1912, V. Mayakovsky’s poems “Night” and “Morning” were published in the futurists’ almanac “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste.” This is how a young and original poet declared himself - a poet who was destined for a long and difficult creative fate, and not only lifelong, but also posthumous, for the author’s works were repeatedly evaluated and reevaluated by critics and readers.
The early period of the poet’s work is represented by many discoveries in the field of versification. Almost immediately abandoning attempts at literary imitation, Mayakovsky literally burst into Russian poetry of the early 20th century - poetry where such luminaries as Blok, A. Bely, Gumilev, Akhmatova, Bryusov rightfully shone. His poems were strikingly different from what was generally considered good poetry, but he quickly came into his own and asserted his creative individuality, the right to be Mayakovsky. Its dawn, according to A. Akhmatova, was stormy: denying “classical boredom,” the poet proposed new, revolutionary art, and in his own person - its representative. Undoubtedly, much of Mayakovsky’s early work is associated with such an artistic movement as futurism, but at the same time, the ideas and poetic means of their embodiment in the author’s works were much broader than traditional futurist attitudes. The originality of Mayakovsky's early lyrics is determined primarily by his personality, his brilliant talent, his views and beliefs.
Almost the main theme of this period is the theme tragic loneliness poet:
I'm as lonely as the last eye
of a man going to the blind.
The reason for this is that there are “no people” around. There is a crowd, a mass, well-fed, chewing, looking “as an oyster from the shell of things.” People have disappeared, and therefore the hero is ready to kiss the “smart face of the tram” - in order to forget those around him:
Unnecessary, like a runny nose,
and sober
like Narzan.
The hero is lonely, he may be alone in this world. This is probably where the egocentric pathos of many of his poems comes from. “The author dedicates these lines to himself, his beloved”, “I”, “A few words about myself”, “I and Napoleon”, “Vladimir Mayakovsky” - these are the titles of his poems of that time. “I” is the word that determines the dynamics of the poetic action: “I, praising machines And England.” The poet comes into this world to glorify himself:
In this emphasized egocentrism is the tendency toward social shocking characteristic of Mayakovsky’s poetry. “I never had suits. There were two blouses - the most disgusting look... I took a piece of yellow ribbon from my sister. Tied up. Furor” - such are the antics of Mayakovsky the hooligan. And also the infamous: I love watching children die.
What is behind this kind of action? Categorical rejection by the author bourgeois culture, youthful nihilism and, perhaps, the spiritual vulnerability of the poet himself. Behind his role as a hooligan, Mayakovsky hid a subtle soul, looking for love and loving, protecting her from those who “understand nothing.”
Mayakovsky, as he writes about himself, is “a solid heart.” Already in the early poems he appears doomed to burn on the “unburnable fire of unthinkable love.” Premonition of love, its expectation - “Will there be love or not? Which one is big or tiny?” - this is what fills the hero’s monologues. His soul is looking for love, and therefore he writes: “The author dedicates these lines to himself, his beloved.” His feeling remains unclaimed:
Where can I find my beloved?
like me?
The poet painfully experiences his loneliness; for him the burden of “unspent springs” is simply unbearable:
Unbearable not so much, for a psycho,
but literally.
The beloved woman, having appeared once, forever fills the hero’s existence with meaning. But his happiness is painful and short-lived: separations and betrayals are constant companions of love; however, despite this, the hero finds the strength to say:
Give me at least
cover with the last tenderness
your leaving step.
It is significant that in Mayakovsky’s early poetry there are practically no landscape descriptions. In his autobiography “I Myself,” the poet explains his “disdain” for the theme of nature: “After electricity, I completely gave up being interested in nature. An unimproved thing.” Her place in her work is firmly occupied by the urban landscape: houses, streets, cars. Often this kind of description is deliberately naturalistic, as if the poet sets out to depict the ugly “things of the century.” “Beauty” and poetry are qualities that the author rejects. This is illustrated, for example, by the following lines:
The street has sunk in like a syphilitic nose.
River - voluptuousness, spreading into drool.
Throwing away the laundry to the last leaf,
the gardens fell obscenely in June.
The world around us causes sharp rejection and protest on the part of the author. The poem “Cloud in Pants” can be considered its apotheosis. It consists of four parts, each of which exposes some aspect of reality. The hero proclaims: “Down with your love, down with your art, down with your religion, down with your system!” In terms of scale, in terms of the depth of artistic generalization, in terms of the range of poetic means, this poem is, in my opinion, one of best works Mayakovsky.
The poet's artistic means and linguistic techniques are distinguished by emphasized naturalism and prosaism. He writes: “spitting stars” - about those very stars that, according to Kant, fill the human soul with “reverence and admiration.” He states:
I know-
there's a nail in my boot
more nightmarish than Goethe's fantasy.
These lines contain the focus of the whole world on the personality of the poet, the juxtaposition of the base and the sublime, the poetic and the prosaic.
In his early lyrics, Mayakovsky pays tribute to experimentation, the search for new forms, and word creation. And you need to be able to see the deep meaning of the text behind the abundance of complex metaphors, hyperboles, neologisms, and unusual syntactic structures.
One of the author’s early poems is “Could You?”
I immediately blurred the map of everyday life,
splashing paint from a glass;
I pointed at jelly dish
slanted cheekbones of the ocean. On the scales of a tin fish
I read the calls of new lips. And you
we could play a nocturne
on the drainpipe flute?
What is hidden in these lines? Maybe they were written by a person who lacks the immensity of love and the ocean? Maybe they are about the artist’s right to transform everyday life, to see poetry where, it would seem, it has no place at all? About the fact that only a real artist can play on a drainpipe?
The poet offers us his vision of the world and his ways of realizing it. By rejecting traditional forms of poetry, Mayakovsky doomed himself to the difficult fate of an experimenter, a person who would not be understood by many. But his path is the path without which modern Art would be incomplete, defective in some way:
Listen!
After all, if the stars light up -
Does that mean anyone needs this?
Mayakovsky's talent still amazes us with its diversity. Poetry, prose, painting - all these are different sides of his genius. Even more than seventy years after his death, we never cease to ask ourselves the question: what is Mayakovsky’s talent? could this great person do more than he did?
Mayakovsky’s literary talent is characterized, first of all, by his mastery of the variety of styles and genres that he used. IN early period creativity it is adjacent to literary movement futurists:
I immediately blurred the map of everyday life,
splashing paint from a glass;
I showed the jelly on the dish
slanted cheekbones of the ocean.
Imagery, the use of colors as symbols, the development of metaphors, the brevity of poetic constructions -. These are the qualities Mayakovsky gleaned from modernist poetry. But already in the post-October period, Mayakovsky’s poetry is completely different. Here appears that same clear, hard, measured rhythm that is so familiar to us:
... Goudyu forward gallant!
Cover the sky with flags!
Who's walking right there?
Left!
Left!
Left!
In this passage, every word sounds like a hammer blow, like a death sentence. Here Mayakovsky's skill is fully demonstrated.
The poet's love lyrics remain a mystery to us to this day. On the one hand, he sings of love - it is like a torch, like a star, like the sun. He writes about her as an indomitable force, to which:
Hurricane,
fire,
water
they come up in a murmur.
Who will be able to cope?
Can you?
Try...
Love is like a fire - this is Mayakovsky’s postulate. But on the other hand, he considers it unacceptable to “waste” his time on such a “useless” thing. Before us appear two hypostases of the creator - a man-duty and a man-poet, who are fighting for the right to possess great talent.
Mayakovsky is known not only as a lyricist, but also as a wonderful writer. He tries his hand at prose and drama. His "Mystery-buff" at that time time is running in one of the theaters in Petrograd. There is nothing inaccessible to him - he tries to cover the entire spectrum of literary creativity.
Mayakovsky even manifests himself as a creator of language. Sickle-hammer, leeva, orliy, ogol - words familiar to us from childhood. Neologisms, invented and used by him in poems and poems, live and are used to this day.
Work in "Windows of ROSTA" played a role big role V artistic development Mayakovsky. In his own words, he “... cleared the language of poetic husks on topics that do not allow verbosity.” Another talent of Vladimir Mayakovsky is emerging - the talent of a painter. Entire generations of people grew up looking at his propaganda posters and reading the captions under them:
Eat pineapples, chew hazel grouse,
Your last day is coming, bourgeois!
Causticity, topicality, brightness, precision - all this is in Mayakovsky’s poems.
The poet's talent for propaganda began to manifest itself in his public speeches. No one could speak at rallies like him. At a workers' meeting in New York, “thousands of sparkling eyes were fixed on the bandstand. We waited with bated breath for the “hero of modern Soviet poetry.” Mayakovsky led people behind him, even “stepping on the throat of his own song.”
In addition to all this, Mayakovsky also had amazing organizational skills. It was he who, together with David Burliuk, was the “founding father” of Russian futurism. On his shoulders was such a giant of the literary industry as LEF. And at the same time, he found time to organize creative evenings, travel around the country, abroad and write, write, write...
Mayakovsky is a very extraordinary figure and personality, a multifaceted talent. He managed to embody an entire era in his work - the time of selfless builders of their future, the time of the overthrow of the autocracy, the time of a turning point.
“Every poet has his own drama...” wrote Anna Akhmatova. V. Mayakovsky also had it. He believed in the revolution, fought with verse against its enemies, seeing them not only in Kolchak and Denikin, but also in the Soviet new petty bourgeoisie, the “rubbish people.” Early Mayakovsky, a subtle lyricist, an extraordinarily gifted stylist, a true innovator of versification, an experimenter in the field of form, put his talent at the service of a new life, which practically betrayed him, not living up to his hopes.
Some people think that V. Mayakovsky’s poems should be shouted, straining the vocal cords. Yes, he has poems for "squares". But in the early poems the intonations of trust and intimacy predominate. One feels that the poet only wants to seem formidable, daring, and self-confident. But in reality he is not like that. On the contrary, his soul longs for friendship, love, and understanding.
The integrity of the poet’s nature, human decency, inner conviction in the correctness of his moral and aesthetic ideals isolated Mayakovsky from other poets, from the usual flow of life. This gave rise to a protest against the philistine environment, where there were no high spiritual ideals.
In his best, truly lyrical poems, the poet seems to be arguing with an imaginary opponent, a narrow-minded and down-to-earth person, a layman, a tradesman, convincing him that one cannot put up with indifference, loneliness, grief: after all, people are born for happiness.
Mayakovsky's early lyrics (poems "Port", "Night", "Here!" and others) are considered a large-scale phenomenon in the art of the 20th century. Among him and the poem, critical articles, essays, drawings, satirical works. The greatness of Mayakovsky lies in his creative individuality, with the help of which he comprehended the secrets of poetic mastery and the laws of the stage. He skillfully wielded the pen of an essayist and the brush of a painter. However, Mayakovsky entered the consciousness of people as an original poet of the era. In his works, he captured the key problems and events of his time.
The spirit of rebellion in Mayakovsky's early lyrics
The author combined many means in his works. The voice of that era sounded powerfully in them. This was the period of preparation and accomplishment of the workers' and peasants' revolution. The epic scope of comparisons and metaphors is visible in the works. The weight and power of rhythm are combined with journalistic passion. The lyrical hero of Mayakovsky's early lyrics addresses a mass audience. The author is often called a "tribune". There are many reasons for such a comparison in his works.
Thus, in the poem “At the Top of His Voice,” which is considered to be largely the final poem, he calls himself a “bawler-leader,” an “agitator.” There is undoubtedly some truth to this. However, it would be wrong to reduce Mayakovsky’s early lyric poems only to propaganda and oratorical appeals to the public. Love confessions, a good-natured smile, and caustic irony are quite clearly visible in the works. There is also sadness, sadness, and philosophical reflections in them. Mayakovsky's early lyrics, in short, are universal. It is diverse in genre, multicolored in intonation.
Mayakovsky: the artistic world of the poet’s early lyrics
Lunacharsky spoke very accurately about the nature of the author’s talent in his time. Having heard the poem “About This,” he noted that he knew it before, and after listening, he was finally convinced that Mayakovsky is a subtle lyricist, despite the fact that he himself does not always understand this. The author combined this quality with his agitator and oratorical abilities. Lyrics are generally viewed as artistic expression inner world poet. It reflects his state at one time or another. Real reality, the world of objective things, are revealed in lyrical poems through the experiences of their author. Events and phenomena usually do not receive a direct, direct image in works. They are captured in the reaction, in the feeling they evoke in the author. This is exactly what Mayakovsky’s early lyrics are like.
Poems could be devoted to a variety of phenomena - love or battles between classes, disputes about the purpose of art or travel abroad. The narration of events is inextricably linked with the expression of the author’s feelings and thoughts, the disclosure of his own “I”. Reflections and experiences do not just give a specific emotional coloring to creativity. Art world Mayakovsky's early lyrics are manifested in his depiction of life phenomena and political events. The emotional component is also present in propaganda and production masterpieces. It can be noted without exaggeration that lyricism acts as a unifying and all-pervasive force in the poet’s work; it is visible even in those works that are not lyrical in structure.
Author's inconsistency
Despite the presence of lyricism in his poems, Mayakovsky often speaks against him in them. This, for example, can be seen in the work “Jubilee,” where he talks about the perception of this trend “with hostility.” A polemically hostile reaction, meanwhile, runs through the author’s entire work. He reacts in a particularly caustic form to love themes. The author's works reveal dissatisfaction with traditional opportunities for self-discovery. Constant search, the desire to expand the boundaries of creativity are the key ideas that Mayakovsky’s early lyrics proclaim. Composing any work required space for thought.
Emotional component
Everything that happened in life aroused the author's passionate interest. He had a special perception of events. Whatever happened in life, even at a considerable distance from him, he perceived as his own, intimate, deeply personal matter. The author's exceptional emotional reaction to the phenomena could not fit into traditional lyrical forms. She required space for expression. The themes of Mayakovsky's early lyrics are varied. He writes about everyday life, love, politics, history. All this does not appear in his works as a distant background. Each event in one or another area of life is the key object of the work.
Mayakovsky's early lyrics are a completely new direction for the twentieth century. It, unlike its predecessors, widely embraced social and political reality.
Beginning of work
Quite early on, Mayakovsky became interested in the underground revolutionary activity. Like many other underground fighters, he was caught and imprisoned for 11 months in solitary confinement. The fate of the future poet was decided by Stolypin. It was on his orders that the prisoner was released. While in prison, Mayakovsky read a lot. After his release, he was overcome by a passionate desire to work in art. He wanted to create a socialist direction. As a result, Mayakovsky entered the Moscow School of Architecture, Sculpture and Painting. From that moment on, he cooled somewhat towards the revolutionary struggle. During his studies, he met a group of young poets and artists. They called themselves creators of the art of the future - futurists. All this had a special influence on Mayakovsky’s early lyrics.
Specifics of the works
The peculiarities of Mayakovsky's early lyrics lie in the mass of genre formations, intense rhythm, unexpected comparisons, and spectacular images. For the author, the surrounding reality appears as a living organism that hates, loves, and suffers. The poet humanizes the real world:
“There were sheets of water under my belly.
They were torn into the waves by a white tooth.
There was a howl of a trumpet - as if it was raining
love and lust are copper pipes."
The work amazes with its combination of traditionally incompatible figurative rows. This makes a strong impression. You may or may not like Mayakovsky's early lyrics, but they do not leave anyone indifferent.
Entertainment
In his works, the author creates vivid, memorable images. This is especially clearly seen in poems such as “Port”, “Morning”, “Could You?”. The author boldly combines completely diverse concepts in one row. Thanks to the amazingly accurate reproduction, the use of touches of reality, seen by Mayakovsky from an unexpected perspective, the lines are remembered and etched into memory. The author shows the “hell of the city”, where there is no happiness and joy. The landscape is gloomy and heavy: “a scorched quarter,” “crooked horses,” “the kingdom of bazaars.” “Tired trams” walk along the roads; the sun at sunset seems to the author; the wind appears deplorable and gloomy. The city strangles and fetters the poet, causing him disgust.
Tragedy
Mayakovsky's early lyrics are filled with sadness, suffering, and emotions. This is clearly visible in the work "I". The theme of loneliness manifests itself with varying strength in his different poems: “I’m tired,” “Listen!”, “Sale,” etc. In the work “To My Beloved,” the author addresses those around him, his words are filled with pain and mental anguish:
"And to such
like me,
poke where?
Where is the lair prepared for me?"
Love
Even in it, Mayakovsky’s hero does not find salvation. He strives for a comprehensive, enormous feeling - he will not settle for anything less. Having found such love, the hero never ceases to be unhappy and lonely. His feelings become desecrated and belittled under the influence of possessive relationships. Thus, in the poem “A Cloud in Pants,” the beloved rejects the hero, preferring bourgeois well-being. A similar motif can be seen in the poem "Man". In this work, the beloved sold herself to the Lord of Everything, and the Poet got nothing. The author comes to the conclusion that true love no place in ugly reality.
Motive
The hero of Mayakovsky's lyrics strives to overcome loneliness. He goes to people, reaches out to them, hopes to find support and sympathy from them. For a human, kind word, he is ready to give all his spiritual wealth. But deep disappointment will await him: no one understands him, no one needs him. A faceless crowd surrounds him. The lyrical hero also has rude traits, in some cases he is even cynical. Thus, in the work “A Warm Word to Some Vices,” he “glorifies” the power of money, “mocks” the working people, and “welcomes” cheaters and extortionists. This is how his ostentatious cynicism is expressed, hiding true pain and tragic irony. The author puts on this mask because of the greatest despair, fatigue from restlessness, combat with philistinism, the “hulk” of evil.
Objectivity
Mayakovsky's early lyrics are rich social problems. His works laid the foundation for art designed for the masses. The author's speech is “coarsened” and simplified. The works include material and everyday images. This indicates the lack of connection between the poet and the futurists. The works of the young author implement the principle of thingness, objectivity. Abstract feelings and concepts turn into tangible, visible, real. Reification has a militant humanistic character in creativity. The works reveal something that was missing from the futurists - social content.
Cultural connection
Mayakovsky passionately preached a new art. He even proposed throwing Pushkin and other classics off the “steamboat of modernity.” However, by analyzing the essence of Mayakovsky’s works, one can easily trace the connection with Russian culture, namely with the satire of Nekrasov and Saltykov-Shchedrin. The author followed the classic literary traditions. In particular, the connection with the works of Nekrasov, in which key place occupied by an illustration of a capitalist city. The humanistic pathos of Mayakovsky's creativity makes it similar to Gorky's literature. Thus, the title of the poem “Man” is indicative in this regard. However, the main thing that brings the author closer to the classics is poetry, his lively response to modern phenomena.
Critical pathos
The poet's pre-revolutionary lyrics are closely connected with the poems and act as an introduction to them. The works contain a motive of protest. The theme “people and poet” occupies a central position in the lyrics. The First World War became the most important test for many literary and artistic movements. It revealed their true essence and showed their genuine attitude towards the interests of the nation and the needs of the people. Responding with his poem "War and Peace" to the beginning of the war, Mayakovsky politically acutely assesses its imperialist essence. Critical pathos began to intensify in the author’s work. His voice called for revolution, spoke out against the imperialist carnage. This can be seen in such works as “Me and Napoleon”, “To You!” and others.
The tragedy of human existence
This theme is very vividly described in Mayakovsky’s lyrics. He talks about the existence of man under capitalism and is an ardent opponent of it. The poet in his works exposes the process of dehumanization of feelings and people themselves, which acts as a key property of bourgeois society. The author exposes the falsehood of the Acmeists and illustrates the ostentatious, decorative nature of their optimism. Poems about the “well-fed Sytins”, “quail-chirping” poets, scientific servants, and about the “leper colony” - a capitalist city - were directed against the bourgeois world.
The author says that class society cripples a beautiful and naturally strong person. In his works, he openly expresses hatred of the exploiters and love for the lower classes, enslaved, disadvantaged people crushed by this system. He advocates raising human self-awareness. The capitalist system dooms the people to physical and spiritual extinction. clearly understands and forms the image of a rebellious hero. The conflict with the environment, which initially existed as disunity with the crowd, subsequently begins to acquire an increasingly social orientation.
As socio-political motives intensify in his work, the author moves further and further away from the formalism of the futurists. In this regard, the differences between the pamphlet “You!” and the work "Here!" The first was written a year and a half after the second. The poem "Here!" shows Mayakovsky's mocking attitude towards the crowd. It is characterized exclusively by external signs. Pamphlet "To you!" has a pronounced political overtones. Here the author denounces not the average person as such, but those who seek to profit from the war.
