Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Mayakovsky: A Biography
    Unavailable
    Mayakovsky: A Biography
    Unavailable
    Mayakovsky: A Biography
    Ebook869 pages11 hours

    Mayakovsky: A Biography

    By Bengt Jangfeldt

    5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Few poets have led lives as tempestuous as that of Vladimir Mayakovsky. Born in 1893 and dead by his own hand in 1930, Mayakovsky packed his thirty-six years with drama, politics, passion, and—most important—poetry. An enthusiastic supporter of the Russian Revolution and the emerging Soviet State, Mayakovsky was championed by Stalin after his death and enshrined as a quasi-official Soviet poet, a position that led to undeserved neglect among Western literary scholars even as his influence on other poets has remained powerful.
     
    With Mayakovsky, Bengt Jangfeldt offers the first comprehensive biography of Mayakovsky, revealing a troubled man who was more dreamer than revolutionary, more political romantic than hardened Communist. Jangfeldt sets Mayakovsky’s life and works against the dramatic turbulence of his times, from the aesthetic innovations of the pre-revolutionary avant-garde to the rigidity of Socialist Realism and the destruction of World War I to the violence—and hope—of the Russian Revolution, through the tightening grip of Stalinist terror and the growing disillusion with Russian communism that eventually led the poet to take his life.
     
    Through it all is threaded Mayakovsky’s celebrated love affair with Lili Brik and the moving relationship with Lili’s husband, Osip, along with a brilliant depiction of the larger circle of writers and artists around Mayakovsky, including Maxim Gorky, Viktor Shklovsky, Alexander Rodchenko, and Roman Jakobson. The result is a literary life viewed in the round, enabling us to understand the personal and historical furies that drove Mayakovsky and generated his still-startling poetry.
     
    Illustrated throughout with rare images of key characters and locations, Mayakovsky is a major step in the revitalization of a crucial figure of the twentieth-century avant-garde.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateDec 23, 2014
    ISBN9780226188683
    Unavailable
    Mayakovsky: A Biography

    Related to Mayakovsky

    Related ebooks

    Asian History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Man Ray

      Nov 3, 2016

      Man Ray
      2 min read

    • Article

      Frida Escobedo

      Mar 10, 2020

      Frida Escobedo
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Poet Who Painted

      Sep 1, 2020

      The Poet Who Painted
      6 min read

    • Article

      Muse

      Mar 1, 2020

      Muse
      1 min read

    • Article

      Image Is Not Everything

      Sep 3, 2019

      Image Is Not Everything
      4 min read

    • Article

      Beyond The Tears

      Jan 22, 2020

      Beyond The Tears
      3 min read

    • Article

      Backstory

      Jun 11, 2019

      In 1934, with plum assignments under her belt and a professional photography studio to her name, Dora Maar was a star on the rise. A profile of Maar in L’art vivant magazine that year described the photographer as “a brunette huntress of images,” an

      2 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems by Max Jacob

      Sep 15, 2018

      In the summer of 1935, the young Elizabeth Bishop, only recently graduated from Vassar College, set out on one of her many voyages. This was a trip to France. After a homesick crossing by ship, she spent a month in the small port of Douarnenez, on th

      6 min read

    • Article

      Stalin Erased One Generation Of Ukraine’s Artists. Now Putin Is Killing Another – Including My Friend | Charlotte Higgins

      Jul 14, 2023

      On 12 October last year, I met up in Kyiv with the novelist and war crimes investigator Victoria Amelina, who died on 1 July from injuries sustained in an attack on a Kramatorsk pizza restaurant. We had first encountered each other some days earlier

      4 min read

    • Article

      Lenin In London

      May 21, 2020

      Lenin In London
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Sonia Jaffe Robbins

      Dec 14, 2022

      Sonia Jaffe Robbins reflects on 2022 through the books she read. The post A Year in Reading: Sonia Jaffe Robbins appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Literature’s Year Zero

      Jan 27, 2022

      Literature’s Year Zero
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Russian Empire Must Die

      Nov 14, 2022

      The Russian Empire Must Die
      10 min read

    • Article

      Love, Grieving, Intimacy And Enduring War: What Is The Role Now For Books And Writers In Ukraine? | Charlotte Higgins

      Oct 21, 2023

      Last year’s Lviv BookForum, a literary festival in the elegant western Ukrainian city, was mostly an online affair, held in a basement lecture theatre that might double up, if needed, as a bomb shelter. By contrast, this year’s edition had about 150

      4 min read

    • Article

      Calamity Again

      Feb 23, 2022

      Calamity Again
      6 min read

    Reviews for Mayakovsky

    5/5

    2 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      A superb biography of a good poet but pathetic human being who was (as those who knew him best said) doomed to suicide; the people around him were by and large as unpleasant a collection of human beings as I have had the displeasure to read about, and I was relieved when I finished it. If you want to know about Mayakovsky, though, this is the book to read.
    • 5/5
      My favourite biography of all time is probably Boy George's "Take It Like A Man". The second might be "Mohammad Ali", by Thomas Hauser. But, this is a contender to beat them both. Never before have I read a biography that is both extremely well-researched and subtly written, where I think it usually is a matter of either/or.

      The intellectual cultural climate in 1920s Russia was a very explosive time, when several small groups of young, agitated Russians questioned, destroyed and leaped from the old climate in a political atmosphere where even God was refused and denied. The Russian futurists craved something else than the everyday porridge that stated that Rembrandt's paintings, Mozart's music and The Bible in writing were the epitome of art, and in the process wanted to reinvent themselves completely by questioning these standards and themselves. Among all of the Russian poets, Mayakovsky's texts seemingly stand solitary and often absolutely brilliant, not only floating far beyond his country-people, but all previous poets across the globe.

      Jangfeldt goes far by being fluent in Russian. As such, he has himself translated (with aid) Mayakovsky 's poetry into Swedish, and has since decades personally interviewed people who knew Mayakovsky and has written several works on him. He's accessed previously censored state files on Mayakovsky and drawn his own conclusions on many events throughout Mayakovsky's life, painstakingly delivering a very subtle, simply put, yet desirably complex picture of a man plagued and blessed through extreme throes in all aspects of his life.

      Mayakovsky's abilities to reinvent language and stake his own claim through all types of media - poetry, plays, copy, slogans, and letters - are featured here. The same is said for his somewhat nonsensical political statements, but you can't have it all, can you?

      From his life as a young boy in the middle of Russian nowhere, to an aspiring career as an artist to developing an interest in poetry, his humble beginnings gently explode as he reaches adolescence and then grows into a manboy, forever trapped as a seventeen-year-old, according to Viktor Sjklovsky. Thing is, I think Mayakovsky never allowed himself to grow stale, which is a mantra he often repeated in different forms, not least in his eccentric relationship with Lili and Osip Brik.

      Mayakovsky loved a few things in life, and went beyond every barrier to live those things in every aspect, at times threatening to destroy the people around him in the process. Still, he prevailed in a way, even though his ending is the saddest part of his tale.

      This book is worth purchasing in any available language, and will be re-read repeatedly by myself throughout life. It's not heavy, it's not light, but is very well-written, long and so fantastically delivered that it feels short, despite its near-600-pages. Nothing stopped it, and there is no filler; most of what's in this book - which did happen, I sometimes had to remind myself during my reading - is so jagged and at the same time polished, it felt like having a really brilliant, laid-back yet intellectual conversation with somebody who's had a long journey, teaching me a few things in the process.

      To quote Mayakovsky: "I love!"