|
Showing 1 - 11 of
11 matches in All Departments
'This exhibition is not a jubilee, it's an account of my work. I
demand help - not the glorification of non-existent virtues. That's
what we are talking about, comrades, and not about glorifying
private persons.' Mayakovsky was a poet, playwright, artist,
director, actor, diarist, producer of agitprop posters and
advertisement slogans, and writer of articles, essays and speeches.
The inherent conflict of his status as an avant-garde communist
writer working within the steadily narrowing cultural conditions of
early Soviet Russia runs vividly throughout his work, and was a
significant contributing factor to his suicide at the age of
thirty-six. This groundbreaking collection draws together for the
first time Mayakovsky's key translators from the 1930s to the
present day, bringing some remarkable works back into print in the
process and introducing poems which have never before been
translated.The radical scope of its representation makes for the
most comprehensive account of Mayakovsky's work to date - an
account which charts not only the extraordinary range of his
creative output, his rigorous and passionate innovation of language
and form, and the intense power of his electrifying live
performances, but also the fascinating and turbulent history of
Mayakovsky's cultural and political representation in the western
world. Edited by Rosy Patience Carrick
Vladimir Mayakovsky was one of the towering literary figures of
pre- and post-revolutionary Russia, speaking as much to the working
man (he often employed the rough talk of the streets and
revolutionary rhetoric in his poetry) as to other poets (his
creative fascination with sound and form, linguistic metamorphosis
and variation made him a sort of 'poet's poet', the doyen, if not
the envy, of his contemporaries, Pasternak among them). His poetry,
influenced by Whitman and Verhaeren and strangely akin to modern
rock poetry in its erotic thrust, bluesy complaints and cries of
pain, not to mention its sardonic humour, is at once aggressive,
mocking and tender, and often fantastic or grotesque. Pro Eto -
That's What is a long love poem detailing the pain and suffering
inflicted on the poet by his lover and her final rejection of him.
But as well as being an agonising parable of separation and
betrayal, it is also a political work, highly critical of Lenin's
reforms of Soviet Socialism. The publication of That's What is
something of a landmark for not only is this the first time that
this seminal work has appeared in its entirety in translation, but
it is illustrated with the 11 inspired photomontages that Alexander
Rodchenko designed to interleave and illuminate the text,
illustrations which inaugurate a world of new possibilities in
combining verbal and visual forms of expression and which are
reproduced in colour (as originally conceived) for the first time.
"Never have I wanted to be understood so much as in this poem. It
is probably the most serious piece of work I have ever
done."Written in 1924, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin crowned a long period
of preparatory work on this theme. The poet was fortunate to see
and hear Lenin on a number of occasions. During the October days of
1917 he saw Lenin in Smolny, the headquarters of the uprising.
Later he heard several speeches by the founder of the Soviet
state.Mayakovsky not only strove with the utmost fidelity to depict
Lenin as an historic figure in his own words, he "wrote the poem
remaining a poet." In Lenin's life and activity he sought solutions
to issues that engaged him all his life: man, his destination, his
place in the world, his happiness, his struggle and triumph over
the tragic in life.He was human - as human as anyone...Mayakovsky
gave numerous recitals of his poem both at home and abroad. "The
workers' response was heartening, reassuring me in the belief that
this poem was needed.""The splendid powerful poem on Lenin's death
made an enormous impression on listeners." - Daily Worker, London,
1925
This selection of Mayakovsky's work covers his entire career --
from theearliest pre-revolutionary lyrics to a poem found in a
notebook after his suicide.Splendid translations of the poems, with
the Russian on a facing page, and a fresh, colloquial version of
Mayakovsky's dramatic masterpiece, The Bedbug.
|
Selected Poems (Paperback, New)
Vladimir Mayakovsky; Translated by James H. McGavran III
|
R697
R650
Discovery Miles 6 500
Save R47 (7%)
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
James McGavran’s new translation of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s
poetry is the first to fully capture the Futurist and Soviet
agitprop artist’s voice. Because of his work as a propagandist
for the Soviet regime, and because of his posthumous enshrinement
by Stalin as “the best and most talented poet of our Soviet
epoch,” Mayakovsky has most often been interpreted—and
translated—within a political context. McGavran’s translations
reveal a more nuanced poet who possessed a passion for word
creation and linguistic manipulation. Mayakovsky’s bombastic
metaphors and formal élan shine through in these translations, and
McGavran’s commentary provides vital information on Mayakovsky,
illuminating the poet’s many references to the Russian literary
canon, his contemporaries in art and culture, and Soviet figures
and policies.
|
You may like...
Midnights
Taylor Swift
CD
R418
Discovery Miles 4 180
Merry Christmas
Mariah Carey, Walter Afanasieff, …
CD
R122
R112
Discovery Miles 1 120
|