11 logical problem is a trans-sense solution?

The political poems, the satire, all this was not

just in response to a 'social command', no matter how well-defined or urgent. It was very much part of an intense personal vision which craved the destruction of the laws of time and progress. Jakobson writes;

Mayakovsky's conception of the poet's role is clearly bound up with his belief in the possibility of conquering time and breaking its steady, slow step. He did not regard poetry 11. ibid. p.14. For the actual introduction of math-

^atical formulae into verse, see Tret'yakov's "I-oe maya", LEF No.2. p*9.

as a mechanical superstructure added to the ready bases of existence (and it is no accident that he was so close to the formalist literary critics)... Mayakovsky's recurrent image of the

poet is of one who overtakes and passes time, and we may say that this is the real image of Mayak- ovsky himself.

The image of the poet simply as a wordsmith in the

political cause is, therefore, misleading. Mayakovskii's real self-image, Jakobson suggests, was much more complex, though rarely encountered in his post-revolutionary verse. There is a brief glimpse of it in "V Intematsional"

where the poet steps out of the present, and is able to taste the future and so escape the spiritual rigor

mortis of 'byt'. H 8T0 "H " BOT, d a jia r y p a , n p u r a s no cjioBaM jierKO, c nponwiux

MHOrOBeKOBHX BHCOT,

osHpaeT BHGOTH rpnflymHX bs k o b. (IV, 122)

There existed, therefore, a strong tension between the realities of the iere-and-now and

Mayakovskii's personal expectations and psychological needs, and likewise between the publicly adopted concept

12. ibid., pp. 21-22.

...

1

of the poet's function and his private self-image. 4

-f

This tension coupled with a breakdown in his

relationship with Lilya Brik provoked a deep inner crisis, which achieved catharsis in the important long poem "Pro eto".

In his Life of Mayakovsky. Woroszylski has described the period 1921-1922 as one of "leave- takings". He wrote;"In the period of stabilization critics speak about the end of Futurism. Mayakovskii

15

becomes even more isolated". The critics, to be specific, Valery Bryusov, did indeed describe

futurism as dead. In another respect, Woroszylski's claim is surely exaggerated. 1922 marked a period of re-assessment and regrouping. Utilitarianism

forced an ever-widenihg split amongst 'left' artists, with Kandinskii, Gabo and P^sner leaving the RSFSR,

and amongst the poets too. The remnants of the cubo- 1 futurist movement gathered in Moscow, but cubo-

futurism as such had lost its vitality. The creative initiative had passed into the hands of Mayakovskii and the adherents of utilitarianism, resulting at times in estrangement from former friends.

Pasternak, whom Mayakovskii singled out for praise, along with Aseev, as the leading light of contemporary poetry, (XII, 456, 457), felt himself increasingly

13. ¥. Woroszylski, The Life of Mayakovsky. London, 1972, p.284.

185

isolated from Mayakovskii, whose pre-revolutionary lyric poetry he had so much admired. Writing much later, Pasternak attributed his alienation from

Mayakovskii directly to the letter's agitational verse: With the exception of that immortal document

'Vo ves* golos', written shortly before his death, the later Mayakovskii, beginning with

•Misteriya-buff', is foreign to me. Those awkwardly rhymed maxims, that refined emptiness, those platitudes and hackneyed

truths put forward so artificially, confusedly 14

and fully, fail to touch me.

Yet, despite this coolness on Pasternak's part,

Mayakovskii remained a keen admirer of Pasternak's verse, particularly his lyrics, and had plans to

14. B.L. Pasternak, "Avtobiograficheskii ocherk", Proza 1915-1958. Ann Arbor, 196I p. 43.

Rita Rait, who knew both Pasternak and Mayakovskii well during this period; accused Pasternak of

distorting the truth in this memoir. "How could he (Pasternak-P.W.) so forget everything -

both Mayakovskii • s eyes and general youthful appearance when he listened to Pasternak's verse, and how B.L. himself listened to 'Pro eto' with all his bein^?-R. Wright-Kovaleva, "Mayakovsky and Pasternak: Fragments of

Reminiscence", Oxford Slavonic Papers. Vol. XIII, 1967, p. 132.

publish it. Mayakovskii also insisted on including Pasternak in the lists of LEF *Sotrudniki*, much

15

to the letter's annoyance.

I n t h e l a t t e r p a r t o f 1 9 2 1 , K a m e n s k ii, K h le b n ik o v

and Kruchenykh all returned to Moscow, after being trapped by war in the Caucasus, relieving Mayakovskii of the burden of bearing alone the banner of cubo-

16

futurism,

15. Pasternak claimed that Mayakovskii preferred his

early lyrics, contained in the collections Poverkh bar'erov and Sestra mo va/zhizn'. a projected IMO publication, to the poems "1905 god" and "Leitenant Shmidt", which dealt with the theme of revolution, andihat Mayakovskii even considered the compostion of the latter to be a mistake. B.L. Pasternak, "Avtobiograficheskii ocherk", op.cit., p. 37.

In her memoirs Rita Rait recalled remarks made

by Mayakovskii after a reading of Pasternak's verse, which, if accurately remebered, throw light on

Mayakovskii ' s attitude both towards Pastemali and also towards the suppression of his own lyric gift, "Lucky Pasternak. Look what lyrics he writes. And probably I will never again ...". R. Wright-Kovaleva, op.cit., p. 129.

16. Kamenskii and Khlebnikov had stayed only briefly in the Caucasus, whereas Kruchenykh was resident in the area for some five years, travelling there in 1916 to avoid call-up into the Tsarist army.

Like the Far East, the Caucasus was the scene of

great political and military confusion after the

Revolution, The three republics of Armenia,Azerbaijan and Georgia existed as independent states* Georgia, the only area of the Russian Empire to fall under menshevik corfcrol, finally capitulated to the Red Army in February 1921,

i--:, ■ ' t ' " "

In Tiflis Kruchenykh led a flourishing group

of futurists, known as 41° - I. Zdanevich, I. Terent'ev and others - a group which produced a large body

of zaum' verse and even plays. Markov writes in his comprehensive survey of the futurist movement that Kruchenykh's stay in the region marked "one of the most fascinating, though little-known,

17