Table of contents:
Video: "Lilichka!": The Story of the Most Passionate Poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
An uncompromising fighter for communist ideals, a tribune of the revolution - this is how Vladimir Mayakovsky is seen in the minds of many modern readers. And there are good reasons for this - in the poet's creative legacy, a significant share is occupied by patriotic works that combine harsh criticism of enemies and overt pretentiousness. Against this background, the lyrical masterpiece “Lilichka! Instead of writing. Like no other work by Mayakovsky, it exposes his genuine, vulnerable, loving soul.
Echoes of Furious Love
The creation of the poem was preceded by a meeting of Vladimir Mayakovsky with a woman who became his lyrical muse and the main love of his life. In the hot summer of 1915, Mayakovsky's bride Elsa brought him to visit her sister Lily, who was married to Osip Brik. Lily did not differ in beauty - some contemporaries saw her as a monster at all. However, she had a hypnotic, almost mystical effect on men. Today psychologists explain this feature of Brick by her hypersexuality.
The photographs serve as an indirect confirmation - without hesitation, she posed naked in front of the lens. The fate of the fatal woman's victim did not bypass Mayakovsky. He falls in love with Lily at first sight and can no longer leave her. In the fall, he moves to a new place of residence - closer to Brick's apartment and introduces the married couple to his literary friends.
A semblance of a salon, where the creative "cream of society" is gathered, appears, and Mayakovsky gets the much-desired opportunity to regularly see Lily. The presence of a spouse does not interfere with the development of a whirlwind romance. To imagine what torments Mayakovsky endured while in this still classical love triangle, one can jump ahead and draw parallels with the subsequent period of "life as a three."
In 1918, Mayakovsky could not stand the heat of feelings and turned to Lily and Osip with a request to accept him into his family. Contemptuous of all moral norms, the couple agreed. Subsequently, Lily convinced those around her that she lived with her legal spouse under one roof only out of pity for him, and that she was devoted to Mayakovsky in body and soul. However, this was not the case.
From Lily's memoirs, it follows that she made love with her lawful spouse, and Volodya was locked in the kitchen for this time. Screaming, crying and scraping the door, he tried to break through to them …
Lily, on the other hand, saw nothing wrong with Mayakovsky's love suffering and believed that it was after such shocks that genius works were born. Probably, something similar happened in May 1916, when in the poem "Lilichka!" Mayakovsky threw out the whole storm of his emotions. And at the time of the creation of the masterpiece, the lovers were in the same room.
Beyond the rules
Having exhausted his oral convictions in the sincerity of his feelings, Mayakovsky turns to his beloved in a poetic form. If adherents of romanticism even depict unhappy love with the help of light images, then the avant-garde artist Mayakovsky uses completely different techniques. Despite the tender name, in the poem itself the poet expresses his feelings in rough, contrasting epithets.
His words rumble like rocks and clang like iron. He compares his feelings to a heavy weight, feels that his heart is chained in iron. Love for him is a bitterness that can only be "vomited". Some refined epithets that speak of a blossoming soul and tenderness only emphasize the rudeness of other phrases.
Like most of Mayakovsky's works, Lilichka! written according to the canons of futurism, the main of which is the rejection of all the usual canons. And it seems symbolic.
Neglecting the traditions of marital relations, choosing free love, Mayakovsky uses equally free and unconventional tools to reflect his feelings. Their dissimilarity, originality, uniqueness is emphasized by a multitude of distorted words and neologisms: fired, twisted, excised, distraught …
Already during the creation of the poem, Mayakovsky sees a way out of the tangled love triangle in his suicide. But he immediately refuses death, which will not allow him even to just see his beloved woman. By its emotional intensity "Lilichka!" knows no equal. At the same time, the genius manages to express the utmost passion, using the exclamation mark only once - in the title.
The path to the reader
The first publication of the poem took place in 1934 - only 4 years after the death of the author. Lily Brick's non-trivial behavior was the reason for the subsequent censorship bans, which were in effect until the end of the Soviet era. Only in 1984, in Chelyabinsk, was another collection published, including the poem "Lilichka!"
The lyrical masterpiece also inspired composers - the music for it was written by Vladimir Mulyavin and Alexander Vasiliev. Combining immense longing and outright despair, touching tenderness and sentimentality, Mayakovsky's frank confessions allow today, almost tactilely, on a physical level, to feel how strong and tragic his love was.
BONUS
Few people know about Mayakovsky's Parisian muse Tatyana Yakovleva and about how a Russian emigrant conquered Paris and the poet's heart.
Recommended:
"Grandpa, wait " ": the last and most touching poem by Leonid Filatov
There are poems that sink into the soul after having heard them only once. Such a poem is the lines written by Leonid Filatov shortly before his death and became a dedication to his granddaughter Olya. Lines about what a person should live for
Aristotle Onassis and Maria Callas: a story of passionate love and humiliation
Billionaire Aristotle Onassis, a Greek ship owner and cult personality, communicated exclusively with representatives of the elite of various countries and was a welcome guest at receptions and social events of any level. He was surrounded by the most beautiful women, whom he often used to achieve his business goals. But true love came to him only once - in 1959 he met Maria Callas, a young opera diva, whom the whole world applauded
"Without a dream nothing can be done in life": how the most magical cycle of paintings by Vasnetsov appeared "The Poem of Seven Tales"
Probably not one of the Russian artists of the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. did not evoke such contradictory reviews about his work as Viktor Vasnetsov: he was either admired and called a true folk artist, or accused of "retrograde and obscurantism." In 1905, he renounced the title of professor at the Academy of Arts in protest against the students' enthusiasm for politics rather than painting. During the revolutionary years Vasnetsov created his most magical series of paintings, The Poem of Seven Tales. In it he is old
Larisa Shepitko and Elem Klimov: The most beautiful and most tragic love story of Soviet cinema
The most beautiful and most tragic love story in Soviet cinema ended on July 2, 1979. "Volga", in which a film crew headed by Larisa Shepitko was driving along the Leningradskoye Highway, crashed into an oncoming truck. Larisa's husband Elem Klimov did not accept the loss until the end of his life
Poem by Joseph Brodsky "Love": the story of betrayal and forgiveness
Nobel laureate Iosif Brodsky has bypassed all fellow writers in the number of dedications to one single woman - the mysterious "MB" All his poems were dedicated to the artist Marina Basmanova, whom the poet even considered his bride. However, fate decreed that the couple broke up - Marina went to Brodsky's friend on New Year's Eve. Nevertheless, this girl left such a deep mark in the poet's soul that even 7 years later, in 1971, he dedicated the poem "Love" to her