Blackwell Reference Online

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Vladimir Mayakovsky was born in Georgia in 1893. He attended school in Kutaisi, where he began participating in socialist protests and marches at age 14. Upon his father's death in 1906 the family moved to Moscow, where Mayakovsky became infatuated with Marxist literature and attended numerous Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) events. Mayakovsky soon became a member of the Bolshevik Party and frequently served as a lookout and messenger. In March 1908 he was arrested for the possession and dissemination of revolutionary proclamations. He was arrested again in 1909 and was placed in solitary confinement in Butyrki Prison, where he composed his first poem. Upon his release, he decided to pursue a career in art and became a protégé of the avant-garde artist Burliuk, who declared him a poetic genius ( Erlich 1962 ). With this encouragement, Mayakovsky and several colleagues published a Futurist Manifesto titled A Slap in the Face of Public Taste in late 1912. They demanded respect for the rights of poets to abandon the linguistic traditions of Pushkin and Tolstoy, invent arbitrary words, despise preexisting language, shun tawdry fame, and find solidarity together despite the outrage of the public. In 1915 Mayakovsky's first major work, “A Cloud in Trousers,” appeared and was noted for its innovative and daring hybrid use of invented language and street vernacular. It was ... log in or subscribe to read full text