To help a schoolchild. The special significance of V.V.’s poetry

crashes with a running start.

Comes

the most terrible of depreciation -

depreciation

hearts and souls.

Eternal themes, not related to the topic of the day, not dictated by agitprop and social orders, did not arise in Mayakovsky’s poems “by mandate of duty.” They sounded dissonant in the Soviet era of official life affirmation. Then something completely different was required. This is how Nikolai Tikhonov formulated these demands in his speech at the First Congress of Writers: “The new humanity rejected the theme of world sorrow as unnecessary. We strive to become masters not of world sorrow, but of world joy.”

Mayakovsky was by nature a tragic poet. He wrote about death and suicide starting from his youth. “The motive of suicide, completely alien to the futuristic and Lefovian themes, constantly returns in Mayakovsky’s work,” noted R. Yakobson in the article “On a generation that wasted its poets.” “He tries on all the options for suicide... The unprecedented pain of the present time is nurtured in the poet’s soul.” The motive of death and suicide sounds in Mayakovsky as eternal, universal. Here he is a free poet, he has no propaganda, didactic, pragmatic goals, he is not bound by group obligations or polemics. His poems are deeply lyrical, truly uninhibited, in them he really talks “about time and about himself.”

Inner freedom and true inspiration animate Mayakovsky's poems about love (they, of course, belong to the pinnacle achievements of love lyrics of the 20th century), about revolution, about poetry. In these poems he is a great poet, a “magnificent beacon,” as E. Zamyatin said about him; in his work one can hear the “formidable and deafening” roar of a mighty historical stream. Mayakovsky’s voice is so powerful that, without straining it, he addresses the universe, the universe:

Look how quiet the world is

The night covered the sky with a tribute of stars.

At hours like these you get up and talk

centuries, history and the universe...

The most heartfelt lines of Mayakovsky, the tragic nerve of his poetry are in the great, intoxicating dream of a future happy humanity that will atone for all today's sins and crimes, of a future where there will be no troubles and suffering. In the poem “About This,” he addresses a scientist who, in the distant future, will be able to resurrect people and give them a new life filled with happiness:

thirtieth century

will overtake the flocks

hearts torn apart by little things.

Nowadays unloved

let's catch up

starry countless nights.

Resurrect

at least for that

I was waiting for you, throwing away everyday nonsense!

Resurrect me

at least for this!

Resurrect -

I want to live out my life!

The energy and strength of Mayakovsky’s elastic, powerful line is fueled by this faith. The last lines he wrote are about the power of free speech, which will reach posterity through the heads of governments:

I know the power of words, I know the alarm of words,

They are not the ones that the lodges applaud

From words such as these, graves are torn off

walk with four oak legs.

Sometimes they throw it away without printing or publishing it.

But the word rushes, tightening its girths,

centuries are ringing and trains are crawling

lick poetry's calloused hands.

Truly this is “a verse flying on strong wings to a providential interlocutor” (O. Mandelstam).

No matter how controversial and contradictory Mayakovsky’s work may seem today, he was and remains one of the greatest Russian poets. Mandelstam included Mayakovsky among those Russian poets who are given to us “not for yesterday, not for tomorrow, but forever” (“Lunge”, 1924). Tsvetaeva also believed that Mayakovsky was a poet not only of his century, she wrote: “With his fast feet, Mayakovsky walked far beyond our modern times and somewhere around some corner will be waiting for us for a long time” (1)

(1) M. Tsvetaeva Epic and lyrics of modern Russia - M., 1932.

(2) O. Mandelstam. Lunge - M., 1924.

Pasternak, quoting the lines of twenty-year-old Mayakovsky:

Even though you, lame god,

paint my face

to the goddess of the freak of the century!

I'm as lonely as the last eye

from a man going to the blind! -

remarked: “Time listened and did what he asked. His face is inscribed “in the goddess of the century.” The half-century that has passed since Pasternak said this has confirmed the truth of his words: Mayakovsky entered the history of the century and took a prominent place on the Russian poetic Olympus. (1)

V. Kornilov, in his article “Not the world, but a myth,” written for the centenary of Mayakovsky, while recognizing that the poet is “great and unique,” ​​still believes that “there is no need for an anniversary, and there is no point in studying it in high school either.” which, at least for the next half century.” In the article, G. Mironova argues with him: “This is hardly true. Yes, it is still difficult to study Mayakovsky, but it is already clear that it is impossible to study the history of Russian poetry bypassing or omitting Mayakovsky. Now there is no longer any doubt that Mayakovsky will “stand”, despite all the accusations and revelations.” (2)

(1) B. Pasternak People and Positions. - M., 1956.

(2)N. Mironova Is Mayakovsky alive today? - M., 2003.- p.7.

But it must be studied without glossing over its glaring contradictions, without turning a blind eye to failures in moral guidelines, to “emptiness,” separating genuine poetry from poems that were no longer viable at their birth.”

It is possible to understand Mayakovsky’s work, many of his motives and images, his strengths and weaknesses only if we consider it in the context of history, in the broad mainstream of contemporary literature.

Conclusion. Conclusions from the study.

Mayakovsky's poetry is in many ways similar to the painting of the early 20th century, although the tools of the artist of words and the master of the brush are different. It is known that Vladimir Mayakovsky himself was a talented artist and painter.

Malevich, Kandinsky, Picasso in their search for a new form on canvas are close to the creative search for the verbal form of Mayakovsky. However, for Mayakovsky, the search for form was not an end in itself.

The roots of Mayakovsky's innovation can also be found in related fields of art, for example, in cinema. He loved to make his poems using the montage method, working with the word as with a film. Also, the innovative search for a new form was largely determined by the revolution. Mayakovsky was convinced that poetry should also correspond to this new reality. Naturally, new intonations appeared in his poems, aggressive notes that evoked poses.

Summing up the results of the study, we can highlight the following features of innovation in the poetry of V.V. Mayakovsky:

1. New types of rhyming line, divided into the following:

1. Flip compound rhyme - the end of a line rhymes with the end of another and with the beginning of a third.

2. Spaced rhyme - the beginning and end of one line rhymes with the end of another.

3. Hidden rhyme - the beginning or middle word of one line rhymes with the end of another.

2. expansion of the vocabulary of the poetic language, the introduction of political and revolutionary vocabulary into it, the widespread use of neologisms: sickle, hammer-handed, scream-lipped, etc.

3. Use of metaphor, sometimes literalized.

4. Change in the rhythmic pattern of the verse associated with reading poetry out loud.

5. Special syntax of poetry, where the main role is given to the noun.

Of course, the poet had his own failures, mistakes and delusions, but he himself understood that not everything he wrote would remain in history. For example, he wrote the following tragic lines:

agitprop stuck in my teeth,

scribble

romances for you, -

it's more profitable

and prettier.

becoming

own song.

Marina Tsvetaeva wrote about this: “No sovereign censor dealt with Pushkin as much as Vladimir Mayakovsky dealt with himself... Mayakovsky... ended more powerfully than with a lyric poem - with a shot. For twelve years in a row the man Mayakovsky killed the Mayakovsky poet within himself, on the thirteenth the poet stood up and killed the man...” (1)

It seems to us that we should join these words and, while paying tribute to the talent of Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky, we should not consider his work outside the context of that complex and tragic era of which the poet was a product...

(1) M. Tsvetaeva Epic and lyrics of modern Russia - M., 1932. - p.23.

References.

1. V. Kornilov - Not the world, but a myth - M. 1986.

2. O. Mandelstam. Lunge - M., 1924.

3. N. Mironova - Is Mayakovsky alive today? - M., 2003.

4. B. Pasternak. - People and situations - M., 1956.

5. M. Tsvetaeva Epic and lyrics of modern Russia - M., 1932.

6. G.S. Cheremin Mayakovsky's Path to October. - M., 1975.

7. B.M. Eikhenbaum. About Mayakovsky's poetry. - M., 1987.

Mayakovsky's work combines the best traditions of Russian classical literature and the innovation of poetry of the socialist era.

Mayakovsky's opponents tried to present him as a nihilist and accused him of disdain for cultural heritage. Mayakovsky sharply objected to these fabrications. In response to the accusation of “destroying the classics,” he said in 1930: “I have never been involved in this stupid business...”

Mayakovsky's attitude towards the greatest Russian poets of the 19th century testifies to how highly he valued the great classical masters.

When our country celebrated the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of Pushkin’s birth, Mayakovsky wrote the famous poem “Anniversary” (1924) and in it expressed his deep love for the great poet. “I love you, but alive, not a mummy!” Mayakovsky passionately exclaims, protesting against the “textbook gloss” that pseudoscientific pedants brought to the poet.

Mayakovsky highly valued Lermontov. He defended the poet from vulgar critics, ridiculed their attempts to declare him an “individualist, because in his poetry there are “entire choirs of heavenly bodies and not a word about electrification.” In the poem “Tamara and the Demon,” Mayakovsky used images from Lermontov’s poetry.

Inheriting the best traditions of the classics, Mayakovsky at the same time acted as an innovative poet. For new content, he found new means of artistic expression. Artistic innovation was born of a new era in the development of mankind - the era of the proletarian revolution. In the struggle of the peoples of Russia for the victory of socialism, the personality of the poet was formed. The revolutionary era determined the content and character of his lyrics, the originality of his poetic style, which so organically fused realistic accuracy and concreteness of the image with the scale of the poetic vision of the world.

By bringing poetry closer to politics, Mayakovsky put art at the service of the revolution. A master of political posters and newspaper verse, he used unusually wide and original means and techniques of artistic convention in his work. His metaphor not only obeys a specific ideological concept, but also absorbs the most important social associations of the era. Thus, for example, images of a revolution-flood are born, as well as a detailed image of an “army of poems.” The hyperbolism characteristic of Mayakovsky's style becomes a political reflection of the intensity of social clashes characteristic of the revolutionary era and the gigantic scope of the country's socialist transformations. With an unprecedented breadth, Mayakovsky introduces living modern speech and the socio-political phraseology of the era into the poetic language. His poetry is based on spoken language. “Most of the tone of things is built on conversational intonation,” Mayakovsky wrote. It is no coincidence that he gave the title to many of his poems: “conversation”, “story”, “message”, etc. Most often in the works of Vladimir Mayakovsky one can hear the oratorical intonations of a poet-tribune, “agitator, leader.”

Mayakovsky constantly fought against the false idea that there is a special “poetic language” with which only poetry can be written. He sharply criticized poets who wrote in conventional poetic jargon.

With the same energy he fought against literary cliches, hackneyed, deadened, meaningless expressions. Mayakovsky made extensive use of all the riches of the Russian language. When it was necessary, the poet did not neglect the old words: archaisms and Slavicisms. Mayakovsky often used neologisms - words created by himself. Their peculiarity is that they were created on the basis of commonly used Russian words and were always clear in their meaning: “Hammer-faced, sickle-faced Soviet passport”, “I love the vastness of our plans”, etc. Both these and other neologisms of Mayakovsky have the goal of most expressively revealing the content of the poem, its meaning.

Rhyme is very important in Mayakovsky's works. But the poet was not satisfied with the old method of rhyming. He often rhymes words, taking into account not only their endings, but also the preceding sounds, not only the literal coincidence of syllables, but also the consonances of words. Mayakovsky's rhymes are extremely diverse and expressive.

It must be said that in the post-October years, Soviet poetry put forward many names that took their place on a par with the greatest poets of the past. And we can safely say that in the entire history of Russian literature there has never been a period when such an abundance and variety of poetic talents appeared in a relatively short historical period. Plekhanov and Selvinsky, Pasternak and Yesenin, Lugovskoy and Zabolotsky, Bagritsky and Prokofiev, Tvardovsky and Leonid Martynov, Svetlov and Aseev, Marshak and Antokolsky - this is not an exhaustive list of names of Mayakovsky’s contemporaries that we can be proud of. And this is undoubtedly a huge wealth! Each of the named writers is a bright, original poetic figure, each of them can deservedly be called a great poet.

And among these poets we single out Mayakovsky, calling him not only “great”, but also great. This man has won a special place even among the best of our best poets.

MAYAKOVSKY'S POETIC INNOVATION
(Early lyrics)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, during the period of the formation of imperialism in Russia, there was an unprecedented rise in Russian culture. The end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries is increasingly being called the “Silver Age” of Russian art. The artistic achievements of this period are undoubtedly significant and varied. However, for a long time, the true treasures of Russian literature from the beginning of the century were clearly underestimated. Hence the abundance of “blank spots” in the literary process of this era. And this applies not only to the poetry of N. Gumilev, M. Voloshin and O. Mandelstam. It seems to me that the early work of V.V. Mayakovsky is still underestimated and generally perceived one-sidedly. But such an attitude towards the great poet is completely unacceptable. It is impossible to understand a person as a whole if you do not analyze all his aspects. Such a “historical” consideration gives each individual manifestation of the phenomenon under study shades and nuances that impart to it adjacent manifestations.

Perhaps Mayakovsky himself gave some impetus to the underestimation of his early lyrics, speaking somewhat disparagingly of them later as something preparatory to his later work, as raw materials devoid of independent value. But here we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by relying on the “authority of the author.” In this regard, I would like to quote here an aphorism by F. Nietzsche: “I did it,” says my memory. “I couldn’t do it,” says my pride and remains adamant. Eventually, memory gives way.” The author cannot be trusted in such things, because he is too interested, too biased - this is understandable. It is necessary, regardless of anyone’s opinion, to seriously study the early lyrics of V.V. Mayakovsky.

The first thing that catches your eye in Mayakovsky’s early poems is their tragic hopelessness. The very first poems, dating from 1912-1915, are mainly industrial sketches of a “piling city.” The rains, the streets, the “snares of wires” crush the reader with a living weight... A gloomy, isolated melancholy fills the soul. And here, it seems to me, the general mood of early Mayakovsky’s work resembles the world in which Dostoevsky’s heroes live. For example, this is what Raskolnikov says: “I love how they sing to the accompaniment of a barrel organ, on a cold, dark and damp autumn evening, certainly on a damp one, when all passers-by have pale green and sick faces; or, even better, when wet snow falls, completely straight, without wind, you know? And through it the gas lamps shine…” How can one not remember “The Violin and a Little Nervously”! And the image of “gas lanterns” that is constantly repeated in early Mayakovsky! Yes, undoubtedly, here we have a clear point of intersection between the two artists. Another similarity: the constant motif of “humiliated and insulted” in Mayakovsky’s early lyrics:

Me alone through the burning buildings
Prostitutes will carry it in their arms like a shrine
And they will show it to God in their justification.

The tragedy of Mayakovsky’s early poetry is a rebellious tragedy bordering on “metaphysical rebellion” (again, like Dostoevsky!):

In a second
I'll meet you
The sky of the autocrat, -
I'll take it and kill the sun!

Here the poet rebels against the sun, and the latter means a generalized image of everything that is dominant, powerful, and shining. But Mayakovsky cannot come to terms with the possibility of joy while there is a “hell of a city” where “children are dying”, where “a downed old man fumbles for glasses.” He, like Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, wants to “get his ticket back” if the harmony of the world is built on a child’s tear:

You
To the screamer:
“I will destroy,
I’ll destroy it!”
who carved the night from bloody cornices,
I,
keeping a fearless soul,
I challenge you!

However, Mayakovsky, in comparison with Dostoevsky, partly due to the difference in general between poetry and prose, but mainly between two different (particularly in time) worldviews, is eccentric in his grotesque display of human loneliness in the dank chaos of the city. Mayakovsky achieves extraordinary expressiveness in his early works:

People are scared - out of my mouth
An unchewed scream moves its legs.

Mayakovsky animates the outside world, first of all, pictures of the city, so that “the city is praying”, “the evening is screaming”, “Kovka is breaking the fingers of the streets”, “the stars are screaming”...
For him, everything around is “visual and expressive means” - signs, roofs, intersections, streets, wires. And together with Mayakovsky, sometimes you even begin to love this melancholy with some special, painful love:

And you
Nocturne play
We could
On the drainpipe flute?

In all of Mayakovsky's early poems and larger works there is a motif of melancholy, a motif of decrepit time, even in the earliest poems taken from the poet upon leaving prison:

I waited: but the days were lost in the months,
Hundreds of tedious days.

Sometimes a premonition of an impending fire breaks through the melancholy:

... now the old woman-time has given birth
huge
crooked rebellion!

Another feature of early Mayakovsky is deliberate egocentrism. The image of the poet is deeply tragic; it points to the impossibility for him to find a place for himself in a decaying world, where “the sour air blows like mold”:

And to such
Like me,
Poke where?
Where is the lair prepared for me?

Here the image of the poet is the image of an inwardly rich man perishing alive in a stuffy world. This reveals Mayakovsky’s humanism.

... And I opened so many box poems for you,
I am a spendthrift and spender of priceless words.

Creativity V.V. Mayakovsky had a significant influence on all world poetry. His innovation in the field of poetic form now lives an independent life, already familiar, as it should be.
Mayakovsky, like no one else, was alien to the understanding of artistic creativity as “art for art’s sake.” In his poetry, in his earliest poems, art speaks of the most real, concrete, everyday things, but it reveals in this “map of everyday life”, in this seemingly unpoetic city landscape, the enchanting expressiveness of paint. This is Mayakovsky’s humanism: his poetry does not have its head in the clouds, but always remains faithful to the earth, to the present, to people:

Didn't stay at home.
Annensky, Tyutchev, Fet.
Again,
Driven by longing for people,
I'm coming
To cinemas, to taverns, to cafes.

In later poems (post-October period), this humanism is expressed in the pathos of utilitarian poetry, which is understood as work - one among many others.

At the end of the 19th century, a new artistic method arose in Russian poetry. Based on romanticism, on its contradictions, the emerging movement was based, on the one hand, on the individualism of the lyrical hero, on the other, on convention and abstraction.

Within the framework of this method, symbolism arose, which stubbornly supplanted materiality. However, in the 1910s, a crisis of symbolism arose, and a new generation of lyricists had to once again resolve the issue of poetic values, the place and meaning of the word.

The pre-revolutionary period brought new names to the poetic arena, among them was Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky. The poet burst into Russian poetry as a rebellious personality. Already in his earliest poems he expressed a common consciousness, a collective worldview.

Mayakovsky's early work is increasingly filled with the problem of creating a different poetic world. In the article "How to make poetry?" the poet wrote: “The revolution threw the clumsy talk of millions onto the streets, the jargon of the outskirts poured through the central avenues... This is the new element of language Goncharov B.P. On the poetics of Mayakovsky. - M.: Knowledge, 1973, p. 5..

How to make it poetic? How to introduce poetry into the spoken language and how to bring poetry out of these conversations?" Realizing that the language of poetry should be poetic, Mayakovsky discovers a new aesthetic quality of language, aimed at revolution, at renewal.

Citizens! Today the thousand-year-old “Before” is crumbling. Today the foundation of the world is being revised. Today, down to the last button on our clothes, we will remake life again.

At the center of the artistic poetic world of Vladimir Mayakovsky is Man. The poet's lyrical personality is so grandiose that grandiosity becomes the dominant feature of the poet's style. Y. Tynyanov very precisely defined this direction: “Mayakovsky resumed a grandiose image, somewhere lost since the time of Derzhavin.”

Hyperboles, contrasts, extended metaphors are a natural expression of the enormous lyricism of the individual. It took extraordinary poetic power to keep this image at the height of the tragic.

They wouldn’t recognize me now: the sinewy giant is groaning and writhing. What could such a lump want? And a lump wants a lot!

Mayakovsky's lyrical hero exists in a tense contradiction between the personal and the general. He is sharply individual - right down to the system of verse. Contemporaries who knew, heard, and saw Mayakovsky perceived this system in its fusion with his appearance, voice, and manner of reading.

Mayakovsky is unmistakably recognizable from any fragment of his poems. Everything is individual: rhythm, rhyme, metaphor.

Mayakovsky's verse is declamatory and oratorical, which is based on the intonation-semantic principle. It is characterized by great intonation and semantic independence of the word. This independence of the word, when it acts as a rhythmic unit, determines the division of Mayakovsky’s poems into small parts arranged like a ladder.

We have repeatedly attacked the lyrics with hostility, we are looking for precise and naked speech.

In Mayakovsky's poems, one speaks for many - and he needs a universally valid language. Early Mayakovsky thought of it as “the language of the street.”

Wipe the old from your heart. The streets are our brushes. Squares are our palettes. The days of the thousandth revolution are not sung by the book of the time. To the streets, futurists, drummers and poets!

Moscow futurists in theory rejected not only symbolic, but also any traditions whatsoever. The fate of futurism in this regard is paradoxical - for Mayakovsky, who emerged from its ranks, the problem of tradition turned out to be one of the most important.

Mayakovsky, despite all the demands to throw Pushkin “off the ship of modernity,” realized early on that he did not need to abandon the former, but needed to melt it down.

From the very beginning, Mayakovsky’s poetic world was governed by very specific and very traditional for Russian social consciousness values ​​of revolution and humanism (sympathy for the oppressed and disadvantaged). And next to it are the eternal themes of all poets - creativity and great love.

The material for Mayakovsky’s allegories is often the everyday. The poet can take everything he needs from reality and raise it to the height of enormous tension. At the same time, he is characterized by biographical specificity.

Hello! Who's speaking? Mom? Mom! Your son is very sick! Mom! His heart is on fire. Tell your sisters, Lyuda and Olya, he has nowhere to go.

Probably, since the time of Pushkin, Russian lyric poetry has not known biography introduced in such a direct form - with an address not metaphorical, but real:

I live on Bolshaya Presnya, 36, 24.

In the poetic works of Vladimir Mayakovsky, rhymes, truncated lines, and multi-accent verses are especially important. The poet uses his own style of writing a poem, that is, V.V. Mayakovsky highlights significant semantic lines with pauses. This is how the oppressive atmosphere of hopelessness is created in the poem “A Good Treatment for Horses”:

Horse on croup (pause)

crashed (pause - the reader focuses his attention),

and immediately (pause)

behind the onlooker there is an onlooker (pause),

Kuznetsky came to flare the pants (pause),

huddled...

This unconventional breakdown of the poem into lines helps the poet draw the reader's attention to the most important things. The state of the horse is conveyed through lexical artistic means: verb - crashed, noun - on the croup. The feeling of hopelessness is also conveyed syntactically, through a special line breakdown.

V.V. Mayakovsky saw the power of words and tried to influence the reader through the creation of his own neologisms - words or phrases invented by the poet himself, they most fully reveal the essence of the poetic intent and convey the shades of the author's speech. In the poem “An Unusual Adventure that Vladimir Mayakovsky had in the Summer at the Dacha” there are many original author’s neologisms: “golden-faced”, “yasya”, “rings ringing”, “let’s sing”. The poet plays with words and rhymes, attracting the reader’s attention: “I am driving back the lights for the first time since creation. Did you call me? Drive the tea, drive it, poet, jam!” Poetic vocabulary of V.V. Mayakovsky the poet is always expressive, this is the main originality of his artistic work, for example, the sun, the golden forehead, the luminary.

In poetic works, such a phonetic device as sound writing is used. Thus, the reader not only imagines the picture depicted by the poet (most of Mayakovsky’s poems have a plot), but also hears what is happening. In the poem “Being Good to Horses,” the sound of a dying horse’s hooves is expressed as follows:

The hooves beat

It was as if they sang:

• - Mushroom.
• - Rob.
• - Coffin.
• - Rude.

What is important here is not the lexical meaning of words, but the combination of sounds. Sounds new in the poetry of V.V. Mayakovsky traditional themes. For example, in the poem “The Sat,” the theme of bureaucracy is revealed by the poet through mixing fantasy and reality, creating grotesque situations where people

...at two meetings at once.

Twenty meetings

We need to keep up.

Inevitably you have to break up.

Up to the waist here

But other

This poem also uses another special artistic technique of V. Mayakovsky: mixing different linguistic styles. Within one work there are words and expressions that are closely related to the realities of the poet’s contemporary world, and on the other hand, there are outdated forms and words. For example, within the boundaries of one work there are the following words and expressions: Teo, Gukon (abbreviations of the early twentieth century) and the ancient form of the verb to yell - orya; neologism of that time - audience and archaism - from the time she Trenin V.V. In the workshop of Mayakovsky's verse. - M.: Soviet writer, 1978, p. 104-106..

In his articles of a programmatic and manifesto nature (“Two Chekhovs”, “How to Make Poems”, etc.), Mayakovsky defines the innovative features of his poetry and the poetry of the futurists:

• - change in meter (the appearance of tonic accented verse: the rhythm is organized by speech intonation, and formally by the approximate equality of the number of stressed syllables; the language and intonation of the verse are closer to colloquial speech);
• - “a change in the relationship of a word to an object - from a word as a number, as an exact designation of an object, to a word-symbol and a word-end in itself” (for example, Khlebnikov believed that in ancient times, when people named the world, there was a connection between the word and the signified with the help of new words, he wanted to recreate the proto-language, and for Mayakovsky’s neologisms “aspiration to the future” is more characteristic);
• - change in syntax (mutual “relationship of word to word”) - “faster pace of life” paved the way from the main period of the narrative sentence to “disheveled syntax”; The “tempo” of the poem changes radically, a “telegraphic” syntax appears (see Mayakovsky: “Fly with a ticker tape, stanza!”);
• - change in vocabulary (word creation); by the end of the 19th century. the concept of “poetic” vocabulary has already been overcome, words of various groups and layers are introduced into poetry (professional, slang, swear words, archaic, dialectal, neologisms and occasionalisms);
• - change in imagery: the word has moved “from the dead point of copying”, the image is based on complex associative metaphors, with the help of which the work of the subconscious is recreated and archaic layers of thinking are revealed (childhood memory, historical memory of mankind) Kalitin N.I. Poet-innovator. - M.: Knowledge, 1960, p. 31-34..

So, V.V. Mayakovsky created his own poetic style, which made the poet’s artistic works original and unique.

Innovation

V.V. Mayakovsky in literature

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………2

1. Definition of innovation in the literature. V.V. Mayakovsky is one of

the brightest poets-innovators ………………………………………………….6

2. The main features of Mayakovsky’s poetic innovation

2.1. Innovation of the “poetic” dictionary ……………………………..9

2.2. Enriching the rhythm of verse……………………………………..16

2.3. The originality of rhyming methods……………………………22.

2.4. Expressiveness of the figurative system……………………………25

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………..28

Brief bibliography………………………………………………………31

I don't believe poetry that flows.

They are torn - yes! M. Tsvetaeva

In 1928, V.V. Mayakovsky in his autobiography “ I myself” writes about his first poetic experiences: “ I re-read everything new... I was taken apart by the formal novelty. But it was alien. Themes and images are not my life. I tried to write just as well, but about something else. It turned out that the same cannot be said about anything else" It is from this youthful conviction of the author that one should proceed when speaking about the new things that the poet brought to literature in the substantive and formal aspects.

We must not forget that Mayakovsky’s works embodied the best traditions of literature of the past: passionate patriotism, ardent faith in Russia and its people, a truthful depiction of the life of the people in all its diversity, humanism, preaching the deep ideological nature of literature designed to serve the interests of the working masses.

With all this, Mayakovsky appears to us as an innovative poet, for he was a singer of the revolutionary era and “strove to merge not only the content, but also the form of his works with the revolutionary people” (M.I. Kalinin).

It seems to me that we should start talking about Mayakovsky’s innovation with the fact that its roots are not only in folklore and classical Russian poetry, but also a very significant part of the innovation of painters of the early twentieth century. It is known that the poet himself was a talented artist and painter. Such advanced artists as Malevich, Kandinsky, Picasso in their search for a new form on canvas are close to the creative search for the verbal form of V. Mayakovsky. But for V.V. Mayakovsky, the search for form was not an end in itself. The roots of the poet's innovation can be found in related fields of art, for example, in cinema. He loved to make his poems using the montage method, working with the word as with a film.

His innovative search for a new form was largely determined by the revolution. This was new in Russia. Mayakovsky was convinced that poetry should also correspond to this new reality. Naturally, new intonations appeared in his poems, aggressive notes that evoked poses.

His past entourage could not understand why Mayakovsky “sold out to the Bolsheviks.” They did not understand the main thing: the poet himself was essentially a Bolshevik. In the end, everyone agreed on the label “fellow traveler,” which Mayakovsky never parted with until the end of his days.

Having enriched Soviet poetry with deeply ideological, party-in-spirit works that met the interests of the people who won the revolution, Mayakovsky was an “outstanding innovator of poetic form.”

In my opinion, in connection with the theme of innovation in Mayakovsky’s work, the early period of creativity, which passed under the sign of futurism, deserves special attention. It was futurism that predetermined such features of the author’s aesthetics and poetics as a demonstrative rejection of the achievements of the previous culture, a kind of “shock therapy” through shocking and satirical ridicule, a passion for industrial-urban themes, revolutionary pathos, a passion for experimentation, the creation of new artistic forms, the use of new artistic means. Mayakovsky himself, assessing the role of futurism in his creative biography, writes: “For me, these years are the formal work of mastering the word.”

Once another great poet, B. Pasternak said:

I would bring the breath of roses into poetry,

breath of mint...

Mayakovsky’s creative credo sounds completely different. For him, the main thing is “the heart and the truth together,” a fusion of the personal, lyrical and social, historical. Everything that happens in the world happens in the heart of the poet. Politics for him becomes the same object of poetry as love. The author feels involved in history, and this involvement united the “personal” and “general” in his poems, directly incorporating the first into the second.

Experiments with words did not become an end in themselves for him, but were regarded as a means of increasing the expressiveness of poetry. Mayakovsky's creativity, even during the period of closeness to futurism, its main focus denied the principles proclaimed by this movement. Thus, the principle of the “autonomous” word, the word outside of “everyday life and the benefits of life,” was clearly contradicted by the poet’s thesis: “We need the word for life. We do not accept useless art." Despite some obscurity of poetic thought, already the tragedy “Vladimir Mayakovsky”, and especially the poems that followed it “Cloud in Pants”, “Spine Flute”, “War and Peace”, “Man” opened a completely new page in the history of Russian literature.

The poet enters socialist literature as a revolutionary romantic who decisively rejected the world of capitalism, which has flooded the planet with blood; enters, deeply confident that this crazy, inhuman world is already being replaced by the world of the true masters of the planet and the universe.

This sincere desire to directly participate in the revolutionary renewal of life and art in the name of the happiness of millions is the source of Mayakovsky’s innovation.

Considering the increased interest in the problem of Mayakovsky’s method, as well as the fact that in Russian literary criticism over the past 20-30 years not a single conceptual work has appeared that comprehensively examines the poet’s artistic creativity, I consider the chosen topic to be relevant. It is not easy to determine the nature of Mayakovsky’s verse, and not only because Mayakovsky’s verse is a multifaceted and complex phenomenon, but also because the question of the originality of Mayakovsky’s rhythm, rhyme, and imagery has not yet been indisputably and definitively resolved in literary criticism. The systematization of available materials is all the more relevant the deeper it allows one to penetrate into the essence of the poet’s unique style and discover previously unnoticed analogies and connections. Purpose work, thereby identifying innovative means and techniques in the work of V. Mayakovsky. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks, in accordance with which the logic of presentation of the material is built:

Define innovation in literature; identify the origins of innovation in the work of V.V. Mayakovsky.

Determine the features of innovation in the poetry of V.V. Mayakovsky:

innovation of the “poetic” word;

explain the rhythmic richness of Mayakovsky’s works;

identify the uniqueness of rhyming methods;

show that “one of the great means of expression is the image.”

The work consists of an introduction, the main part (two chapters), a conclusion and a brief bibliography.

Chapter 1. Definition of innovation in literature.

Mayakovsky is one of the brightest innovative poets.

The name of Mayakovsky is firmly associated with the idea of ​​an innovative poet. No other poet of the 20th century has made such bold, radical changes in poetry. But this century is raving about innovation. Never has so much been said about him, never have there been so many contenders for the fame of a pioneer in art. But it turned out that innovation is subject to the general laws of development of literature and art.

Innovation (from the Latin Novator - renewer) - in fiction, that new thing, valuable for the people in the content and form of the work, that an advanced writer brings to fiction, capturing the new needs of the people, observing newly emerging phenomena in life, changing relationships between people, new features of a person and finding for them a vitally truthful image of appropriate artistic means.

Soviet literature is distinguished by such innovation, for the first time it created a gallery of images of people of a socialist society, sensitively and truthfully reflecting in its works everything new in the life of the Soviet country.

A deliberate desire for innovation in form, when it is not caused by the need to express new content, leads to harmful, meaningless and unidealized art, to formalism.

For almost a century, the “epic of discovery” has convinced us that the emergence of new artistic forms is a complex process in which the social atmosphere, the power and character of talent, literary interactions, traditions, etc. intersect in a whimsical manner. However, a comparison of the experience of Mayakovsky and his contemporaries leads to the idea that, first of all, those discoveries that meet the needs of the time and contribute to the establishment of its progressive tendencies take root and influence the further development of art.

This is why the work of Mayakovsky, Blok, Yesenin is dear to us, because these poets undertake a search for the healing of poetry and strive to merge their fate with the fate of the people. Mayakovsky took the most courageous and decisive step, turning poetry into an active participant in rallies, demonstrations, and debates. Poetry came out into the square and addressed the columns of demonstrators. “The streets are our brushes. Squares are our palettes.” These metaphors also apply to the poet’s words. Not a single apologist of formal experimentation dared to undertake such experiments of turning poetry into a weapon of the masses. But it is precisely this search for the means of reliable influence of the poetic word on the consciousness, feelings, and actions of the masses that constitutes an important feature of Mayakovsky’s “creative laboratory.” The poet recalled the traditions of troubadours and minstrels. But the character, purpose, and scale of what he accomplished are unprecedented. His word is truly the commander of human strength. His voice is the voice of the era.

What is this? Lyrics? Journalism? Mayakovsky has both, so to speak in “pure form”. But the historical merit of the poet is the creation of a new type of lyrics, in which journalism becomes lyrics, and lyrics sound journalistic. He, of course, did not carry out his daring experiment out of nowhere. The poet himself named several poets and prose writers close to him: Nekrasov, Pushkin, Lermontov, Derzhavin, Gogol, Shchedrin, Dostoevsky... Thus, Mayakovsky’s innovation and his creative relationship with the experience of Russian classics (perceived very differently by the poet at different stages of his development) is The phenomena are fundamentally interconnected. However, Mayakovsky's civic poetry is a phenomenon of the 20th century. This is the poetry of a person who rejected “alienation” and plunged into the big world of social, national and universal interests and connections, worries and joys.

Mayakovsky's lyrics include a lot - history, politics, love, and everyday life; and all this is included in his poetry not as a distant background, but is the main object of artistic depiction.

Mayakovsky's talent is characterized by ethical breadth, if we want, monumentality. That's why his lyrics are epic in their own way.

The great poet Mayakovsky enters world literature not as the creator of a poetic school, but as the founder of poetry, which has become an integral part of the new, socialist civilization. The canons of any poetic school are quickly exhausted and become dead, but the influence of a living example of serving the poetic words of a great goal recruits many followers. To the well-known names - Nazim Hikmet, Geo Milev, Pablo Neruda, Paul Eluard, Nicolas Guillen and others - more and more new heirs of Mayakovsky are being added. Likening Mayakovsky’s poetry to the dynamism of grandiose interplanetary rockets, Pablo Neruda noted that under its influence, all world poetry “was transformed, as if it had survived a real storm.”

Some are inclined to see the greatness of the poet in his sophisticated depiction. Indeed, Mayakovsky was an outstanding master of artistic expression and a reformer of verse. He enriched the poetic vocabulary, introduced new principles of rhyming into poetry, modified poetic meters, enhanced the expressiveness and semantic capacity of each phrase, and began to print poems in stepped lines. But these innovations are only an integral part of Mayakovsky’s innovation. The main thing is different. The perception of the ideas of the socialist revolution, comprehension of the meaning of transformations became the main shaping factor of his work. The true significance of Mayakovsky thus lies in the fact that he was one of the first in world literature to combine poetry with the ideas of the socialist revolution.

Chapter 2. The main features of Mayakovsky’s poetic innovation.

Innovation of the “poetic” dictionary.

Having enriched Soviet poetry with deeply ideological, party-in-spirit works that met the interests of the people who won the revolution, Mayakovsky was also an outstanding innovator of poetic form.

His innovation in form follows from his innovation in ideas. This idea was repeatedly emphasized by the poet himself. Thus, in a speech at the debate “The Artist in the Theater,” he said: “The whole volcano and explosion that the October Revolution brought with it requires new forms in art.” These words were said about the theater, but, according to Mayakovsky, they were also true in relation to literature.

The difficult and courageous search for a new language of poetry, inseparable from the language of revolution, is one of the most important, integral features of Mayakovsky’s innovative activity.

Mayakovsky's innovation in poetry was manifested in the expansion of the so-called “poetic” vocabulary, and in the enrichment of the rhythm of verse, and in the originality of rhyming methods, and in the expressiveness of his figurative system.

This innovation in form was determined by the poet’s desire to convey, through verse, the complex, diverse world of Soviet man, his revolutionary enthusiasm, and hatred of the exploitative world of violence and robbery. Continuing tradition of Pushkin and Nekrasov, expressed in democracytization of language, Mayakovsky sought to expand the boundariespoetic vocabulary, to introduce into it the talk of the crowd, the masses, undercommitted to active revolutionary activity. That's whyin Mayakovsky's poems we hear the voice of the class that wonin the revolution of the people.

Mayakovsky repeatedly expressed thoughts about the need to expand his poetic vocabulary even before the revolution. “We need the word for life,” he wrote in the article “Without White Flags.” “We do not recognize useless art. Each period of life has its own verbal formula. Our struggle for new words for Russia is caused by life. The nervous life of cities has developed in Russia, requiring quick, economical, abrupt words, and in the arsenal of Russian literature there is only one kind of lordly Turgenev village” (vol. 1 p. 370).

There is no doubt that Mayakovsky spoke here not against the language of Turgenev’s prose, but against the artificial limitation of the poetic vocabulary by supporters of “pure art.” For example, he noted with irony that the poet Fet used the word “horse” 46 times in his poems and never noticed that horses were running around him.

“A horse is elegant, a horse is everyday. The number of “poetic” words is negligible. “Nightingale” is possible, “nozzle” is impossible” (vol. II, p. 468).

Mayakovsky, learning from the “linguist-creator people,” boldly introduced “street conversation” into poetry, making “everyday” words, considered “ungraceful” by decadents, the property of poetry.

“The relaxed intellectual tongue” (vol. X, p. 214) could not convey the full scale of revolutionary events, and the poet argued that “we must speak about the new in new words” (vol. II, p. 518).

That is why in Mayakovsky's works we find "non-poetic" words: political, scientific, everyday, colloquial and even vulgarisms. In each specific case, the use of certain words is determined by the ideological orientation of the work.

His post-October works included many words born of the revolution, characteristic of mass political speech: revolution, commune, communism, socialism, proletariat, slogan, decree, strike, party etc.

Without these words it was impossible to write about the new Soviet reality.

The use of colloquial expressions and vulgarisms found in his poems (“the snout of a mandrill, brainless and two legs for kicking” - “Hooligan”, “she was lying down, lapping up coffee, cocoa” - “Good!”, etc.) is explained by the poet’s desire to express intransigence towards enemies of the revolution and socialism, find “words-scourges” such that “they kill at once while aiming.”

In the poem “On Rubbish,” addressed to “philistines without distinction of classes and estates,” Mayakovsky, depicting the “purple of a tradesman,” does not mince words, deliberately using coarse language: “the butts, hard as washbasins, are calloused from sitting for five years,” “ getting tired from the samovar”, “to appear at a ball in the Revolutionary Military Council”, etc.

In order to make poetic speech more expressive, the poet sometimes resorted to creating and using new words - neologisms; in the pre-October period, more of them were created, in the post-October period – fewer.

Mayakovsky the poet is extremely active and decisive in relation to the word. If it seems insufficiently expressive, he boldly changes it and gives it a distinctly updated look. The best of the neologisms he created are intelligible, generally understandable, and do not require any special explanation. Anyone who knows the Russian language will immediately understand what “ hammered, sickled Soviet passport" "hulk" our plans, "the scope of the step fathoms", "communist far", which means "bronze many volumes"What is "capital - its obscenity" and who are " prosesettled." These words were created by the poet based on other words. But they are not constructed by mechanically connecting the root words of suffixes, as Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky’s immediate predecessor and teacher, often did in “word innovation.” Mayakovsky strives to ensure that the newborn word immediately enters the verse freely and naturally, so that it does not seem far-fetched, but is perceived as irreplaceable.

The word “reverence,” addressed to capital, is modeled after “reverence,” but its semantic content explodes the outwardly respectful form in which it is sarcastically contained, and the word is given a revealing, frankly mocking character. A neologism, like a pun, is metaphorical and is associated with the combination of different meanings in a word, sometimes close to each other, sometimes contrasting.

But, expanding his vocabulary and creating neologisms, the poet skillfully used all the achievements of the Russian literary language.

He understood well that empty word-creation and abstruse poetry were not needed, and therefore he said:

« I will be the last idiot if I say: “comrades, rewrite Alexei Kruchenykh. his “holes, bul, schyl.”

No, we say: “When you give a revolutionary fighting song, then remember that in this song it is not enough to give a random expression that comes to your hand, but select words that were developed by generations of previous literature before you. so as not to do the same work twice"(Vol. II, p. 526).

Fighting for bright and poetic speech, Mayakovsky sharply opposed the unnecessary use foreign words(the poem “On fiascoes,” “climaxes,” and other unknown things” and numerous statements in articles), as well as against hackneyed, expressionless phrases like “runs like a red thread,” “has reached its apogee,” “has reached its climax” , “failed as a fiasco.”

Mayakovsky likes to “shift” foreign words that are not declined in Russian, and decline them contrary to grammatical rules. The following words are perceived in a satirical and derogatory manner: “Poincaroi”, “cherzonite”, “mussolinize”, “tseretelit”, “clumps and turns away”.

Striving for figurative speech, the poet uses folk proverbs, sayings, stable phraseological combinations, in some cases slightly modifying them.

Proverb: “A claw gets stuck - the whole bird is lost” in the poem “Good!” sounds like Mayakov:

... If

In Russia

the claw gets stuck,

all

bourgeois bird -

abyss.

The popular expression “to grind into powder” also finds application in the poem:

Are they climbing?

Fine.

Let's grind it into powder.

Mayakovsky persistently selects from the “artesian human depths” words that contribute to the best expression of the poetic idea; he exhausts “a single word for the sake of a thousand tons of verbal ore.”

Decisively introducing new expressions, linking them with old, familiar expressions, proverbs, sayings, Mayakovsky himself precisely said about this: “It is especially difficult to translate my poems also because I introduce ordinary colloquialism into the verse (for example, “shine - and no nails.” "- try to translate this!), sometimes the whole verse sounds like this kind of conversation. Such poems are understandable and witty only if you feel the system of language as a whole...”

The article “How to Make Poems” gives one example of a poet’s work on the word. For example, he rejected 11 line options in order to finally choose the twelfth, which begins the final stanza of the poem “To Sergei Yesenin.” The result is a mobilizing stanza:

For fun

our planet

poorly equipped.

Necessary

snatch

joy

in the days to come.

In this life

It's not hard to die.

Make a life

much more difficult.

(T. VIII, page 21)

Careful work on the word allows the poet to achieve laconic and vivid speech characteristics of the characters. All you have to do is remember comrade from the military bureau and Putilov worker, the heroes of the poem “Good!” to make sure of this.

The syntax of Mayakovsky's poetry is also unique. Its features will be quite understandable if we take into account the poet’s focus on the oratorical, conversational intonations of the verse.

“Most of my works are built on conversational intonation,” the poet declared.

Mayakovsky created an “audible word”: it should be heard at a rally, in the audience, on the radio. This focus on “conversation” is emphasized even by the title of a number of the poet’s works: “Conversation with the financial inspector about poetry,” “Conversation on the Odessa roadstead of two landing ships...”, “Conversation with Comrade Lenin.” The poems “Left March”, “To Sergei Yesenin”, “Messages to Proletarian Poets” and a number of others are built on colloquial intonations, rally and friendly-heartfelt.

“Poems addressed to the people,” the poet declared, “must be read aloud. I can’t imagine a person capable of mentally or whisperingly pronouncing such, for example, Pushkin’s lines:

While we are burning with freedom,

While hearts are alive for honor,

My friend, let's dedicate it to the fatherland

Souls have wonderful impulses.”

(From the memoirs of A. Zharov).

Naturally, in works intended for conversation there are often exclamations and questions, appeals and imperative phrases, interjections and pauses; Words are often missed, but the meaning of the phrase in context is always clear.

“Left March,” for example, is entirely constructed as an appealing oratorical speech containing appeals, questions, appeals, and incentives to action.

Hey blueblouses!

Rate!

For the oceans!

Or

at the battleships in the roadstead

sharp keels stepped on?!

Mayakovsky's syntax conveys all the intonations of colloquial speech: a gentle whisper, a passionate appeal, a calm narrative, and a sharp order.

Enriching the rhythm of verse

Mayakovsky thought about “how to introduce spoken language into poetry and how to derive poetry from these conversations” (vol. X, p. 214). And he solved this dual problem successfully.

The craving for conversational intonations determined originality of rhythm Mayakovsky. Poetic speech, unlike prosaic speech, is rhythmic.

“...rhythm is the basis of every poetic thing...” the poet wrote. “Rhythm is the main force, the main energy of verse” (vol. X, p. 231).

Rhythmically, Mayakovsky’s poems are extremely diverse and cannot be entirely attributed to any one system of versification, as some researchers have done.

Researchers of Mayakovsky's work are unanimous in the statement that his rhythmic system represents a new stage in the development of Russian verse, but what this novelty is, different scientists interpret differently, but agree that his verse is very diverse.

In a number of works on Mayakovsky, there have been attempts to contrast the rhythmic structure of his verse with classical traditions.

The poet himself objected to this. “There is no need to argue with the poetry of the past - this is educational material for us,” he wrote in the article “How to make poetry” (vol. X, p. 211)

In this regard, he said: “Iambic, free verse, alliteration, assonance are not created every day. We can work on their continuation, implementation, dissemination” (vol. X, p. 216).

Mayakovsky has many works written in classical meters, that is, in syllabic-tonic verse. Thus, “An Extraordinary Adventure...” is written in iambic tetrameter alternating lines with trimeters, “Crimea” (“I walk, I look...”) is written in iambic trimeter, and “Leo Tolstoy and Vanya Dyldin” is written in trochee tetrameter.

This can be easily verified if in any of these poems we identify stressed and unstressed syllables:

The sunset glowed with a hundred and forty suns,

Summer was rolling into July

it was hot

the heat floated -

it was at the dacha.

In classical verse, lines usually consist of the same number of feet. Mayakovsky often writes in multi-foot verse, when short lines with a small number of feet alternate with long lines consisting of a large number of feet. Mayakovsky often moves from one poetic meter to another within the same poem.

Here are a few lines from the poem “About Pedestrians and Openings”:

Along Petrovka

walk furiously

couples

squeezed like a sardine...

With might and main

buses

roar.

The howl is in vain,

labor is in vain.

If in the first two lines we find trochee, then in the next two we find iambic. Such a verse is called multi-accented.

However, attempts by some researchers to fit all of Mayakovsky’s poems under the syllabic-tonic system are unsuccessful: most of his works are written in tonic verse, which is based “on a more or less equal number of rhythmic stresses in poetic lines, regardless of the number of syllables in a line and the number of unstressed syllables between stresses.” (L. Timofeev and N. Vengrov. “A short dictionary of literary terms” Uchpedgiz, 1952 p. 7)

The tonic principle of verse forms the basis of Mayakovsky's poetic creativity. As a matter of fact, tonic verses are what they mean when they talk about Mayakovsky’s innovation in the field of poetic lyricism.

Let’s take a quatrain from “Poems about the Soviet Passport”:

Along the long front

compartments and cabins

official

courteous

moves.

Handing over passports

and I'm renting

mine

purple book.

Having placed the stresses, one can notice that in this work a four-stressed verse alternates with a three-stressed one, while the number of unstressed syllables in each line is different (7-6-5-6), and it is impossible to establish patterns in the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables.

The rhythmic richness of V.V. Mayakovsky’s works is explained by his desire to convey the whole variety of conversational intonations, for he was guided by the “audible word” and sought each time, “depending on the audience, to take an intonation - persuasive or pleading, ordering or questioning” (vol. X, p. 243).

The rhythmic structure of verse often changes in Mayakovsky, even in the same work. In the poem “150,000,000,” the transition from the story about Ivan to the description of America begins with the words:

Now

Let's turn the wheel of inspiration.

Measure the rhythm again.

This change in rhythm is always determined by the content of the verse, the nature of the images and pictures drawn by the poet.

A clear example confirming this idea is the poem “Good!”, where in each chapter there is a new “measure of rhythm”.

In Mayakovsky's verse, the rhythm-forming role is played by pauses. However, they not only “fill in” the missing syllable, but also highlight the word following the pause, to which the poet draws the reader’s special attention. Such a pause appears before the fourth line in the poem “To Sergei Yesenin” (first stanza); it is often found in the poem “Good!” Here is one of the most striking examples:

Petersburg windows,

Blue and dark.

City

sleep

and restrained by peace.

But...

doesn't sleep

Madame Kuskova.

The third stanza, rhyming with the first, four-beat, consists of only one word. In order not to “break” the rhythm, after the “but” there should be a long pause, which highlights the following words and emphasizes the author’s ironic attitude towards “Madame Kuskova”.

The desire to strengthen the semantic significance of the word explains the construction of Mayakovsky’s verse "ladder"; it also affects the rhythm of the verse.

The poet himself wrote about the semantic role of the “ladder”: “Our usual punctuation with periods, commas, question marks and exclamation marks is too poor and inexpressive compared to the shades of emotions that a sophisticated person now puts into a poetic work.

The meter and rhythm of a thing are more significant than punctuation, and they subordinate punctuation when it is taken according to the old pattern.

After all, everyone reads the poem by Alexei Tolstoy:

Shibanov was silent. From a pierced leg

The scarlet blood flowed like a current...

How -

Shibanov was silent from his pierced leg...

Enough, shame on me

To humiliate myself before a proud Pole...

reads like a provincial conversation:

I'm quite ashamed...

To read it the way Pushkin thought, you need to divide the line the way I divide it:

Enough,

I'm ashamed...

With such a division into half-lines there will be no semantic or rhythmic confusion. The division of lines is often dictated by the need to hammer in the rhythm unmistakably, since our condensed economic structure of verse often forces us to throw out intermediate words and syllables, and if after these syllables we do not make a stop, often longer than between the lines, then the rhythm will break off” (vol. X, p. 244).

It is not the number and arrangement of syllables that holds a line together, but intonation and semantic emphasis. That is why Mayakovsky resorts to the original graphic design of the verse: he breaks the line, prints it with a “ladder”. Each highlighted segment becomes, as it were, a step, prompting the reader to pause, change in intonation - the poet did not have enough usual punctuation marks, stop signs before an “obstacle”, an obstacle. This innovation - the ladder - remains unusual to this day, but for Mayakovsky it could not be more appropriate, since his poems (the agitator's poems) are intended to be read aloud.

From the poem “Minority Report”:

quagmire

junk

not suitable for us -

her

by car

let's squeeze it to the bottom.

Don't stick it

to work

wedges, -

and with us

and among the masses

and one thought

and one

general line.

The originality of rhyming methods

In Mayakovsky's tonic verse, rhyme plays an important rhythmic and semantic role. “...without rhyme (understanding rhyme broadly) the verse will fall apart,” the poet asserted. “Rhyme brings you back to the previous line, makes you remember it, makes all the lines that form one thought stick together.”

Mayakovsky always tried to put the most characteristic word at the end of the line, “getting” a rhyme to it at all costs.

In other words, Mayakovsky rhymed words that carried the main semantic ideological charge in the poem. In this regard, it is not without interest to look at the ending of the sixth chapter, “Okay!” At the beginning it talks about the events that took place under capitalism. But then the October Revolution took place, which opened a new era in the history of mankind - the era socialism. And Mayakovsky emphasized this fact by rhyming the most semantically important word:

Dul,

As always,

October

winds.

Rails

snaked across the bridge,

race

my

trams continued

already -

under socialism.

Mayakovsky's rhymes are always unexpected; his methods of rhyming are diverse.

Mayakovsky does not reject the old methods of rhyming, when stressed vowels and consonants following them coincide in rhyming words.

But the sounds preceding the final stressed vowel often coincide (most often the supporting consonants coincide).

It is characteristic that the poet takes into account the nature of the pronunciation of words and rhymes the lines not for the eye, but for the ear: the prince - to shave, the calendar - to take off.

Let us note that in this respect, Mayakovsky seems to be following Pushkin, who in one of his articles asked: “How can you forever rhyme for the eyes, and not for the ears?” Enriching the methods of rhyming, Mayakovsky uses compound rhymes: bombs - forehead, little grief for them - categories, to grow to a hundred - without old age, hammer and verse - youth.

He has rhymes - homonyms, striking in their unexpectedness and completeness of consonance: behind the waters - factories, baronie - ram, world howl - world, put on - in fact, etc.

And the poet was right in asserting that his rhyming is “almost always extraordinary” and, in any case, before him “... it was not used and it is not in the dictionary of rhymes” (vol. X, p. 236).

Mayakovsky connects the entire sound design of the verse with rhyme. Thus, he often resorts to alliteration, repetition of identical consonant consonants “for framing, for even greater emphasis on a word that is important to me” (vol. X, p. 242). From these words it is clear that rhyme and alliteration serve one purpose for Mayakovsky - to emphasize, highlight an important word in the verse (crown - conquered, yours - march, Mauser - slander). In general, when the words are written, it seems. that the rhyme is unsuccessful, and when you pronounce them, the endings coincide.

However, not only rhyme and alliteration, but even lack of rhyme. Let us recall the verses from the third part of the poem “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”:

Five pointed stars

burned on our backs

Pan's governors.

Alive,

up to your head in the ground,

gangs buried us

Mamontova.

In locomotive furnaces

The Japanese burned us

the mouth was filled with lead and tin.

Four lines - and not a single one rhymes, and yet all the preceding and subsequent lines rhyme. The absence of rhyme in this case is a kind of italicizing of lines. The reader involuntarily pays special attention to these lines, and this is what the poet needs, who wants to say: no torture could make people cry, show their weakness, but death makes them squeeze “a groan out of iron”, causes sobs.

Expressiveness of the figurative system

By making his verse more expressive, Mayakovsky strove to figurative expression of thoughts. He believed that “one of the great means of expression is the image”; Moreover, the image, in his opinion, should always be biased, that is, have a political orientation.

The poet’s selection of images is such that we always see how the poet relates to the person depicted, whether he is worth behind or against.

In the poem “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin,” the leader of the revolution appears to be a great navigator, guiding the Soviet hulk ship“smoothly into the world, construction and docks.” And in this comparison of Lenin with a navigator, we feel the deepest respect for a wise, courageous, decisive man, confidently leading the ship-country across the ocean of revolution to a new, joyful life.

Does Mayakovsky resort to comparisons, metaphors, metonymy, does he use epithets, he always strives to make the image “visible”, “weighty”.

When the poet in “Poems about the Soviet Passport” resorts to comparison, reporting that the official takes, “as if they were taking a tip, an American’s passport,” then we see his lackey servility and feel the contemptuous attitude towards him of the Soviet poet - a representative of the great Soviet power.

Hyperbolic comparisons when describing how an official takes a “red-skinned passport” emphasize the horror of a servant of the bourgeoisie when confronted with a representative of a country he hates.

Quite a few bright comparisons can be found in the poem “At the top of my voice”: “My poem will break through the vastness of years with labor and appear weightily, roughly, visibly, how the aqueduct built by the slaves of Rome came into use today"; the poet encourages readers of subsequent generations to feel the “pieces of string” “ like an old but formidable weapon", the formation of books is compared to a parade of troops: "I will rise as Bolshevik party card, all one hundred volumes of my party books.”

This work also contains expressive epithets (« aimed, gaping titles", "rough language of the poster”, “I am a sewer man and a water carrier, mobilized and called upon by the revolution") And metaphors(“Let the inconsolable widow follow the geniuses glory trudges along in the funeral march", "from leta remnants of words will float out such as “prostitution”, “tuberculosis”, “blockade”), and metonymy("I don't care about bronzes a lot of volume, I don't care about marble slime"," They told us to go under the red flag years of labor and days of malnutrition").

The specificity of imagery is also combination of credibility and fiction. This fusion creates a kind of surreal model of reality:

It's evening

into the horror of the night

left the windows

frowning,

December

They laugh and neigh at the decrepit back

candelabra.

(poem “Cloud in Pants”)

In the poem “The Seated Ones” the technique of fantastic grotesque is used: taking the common phrase of officials “there are so many things to do that you might burst,” the poet realizes this situation: “... I see:/ Half of the people are sitting./ Oh, devilry!/ Where is the other half?”

All these artistic means, all the images are subordinated to Mayakovsky’s main, fundamental task: to express his thoughts extremely clearly, clearly, so that the poetic word becomes a “commander of human strength”, calling the reader to fight for the triumph of the ideas of communism.

Mayakovsky’s desire for a clear, precise, figurative expression of thoughts affected the quality of the verse: many of the poet’s lines became aphoristic and entered colloquial speech.

“In terms of the wealth of sayings introduced into the language of his people, Mayakovsky can be placed next to Griboyedov: like the verses of an immortal comedy, Mayakovsky’s catchphrases spread from mouth to mouth. We hear them from the stands and on the street, we read in the headlines of articles and notes: “both song and verse are a bomb and a banner”, “The word is the commander of human power”, “More good and different poets”, “Life is beautiful and amazing ", "The garden is in bloom!" and many others that clearly and deeply express our feelings and thoughts.

All these artistic features of Mayakovsky’s poetry characterize him as an outstanding poet who assimilated and developed the best traditions of the literature of the past and at the same time became an innovator, the “Columbus” of Soviet poetry.

Conclusion

Mayakovsky sees the “inevitability of the collapse of old things” and, through art, anticipates the coming “world revolution” and the birth of a “new humanity.” “ Rush into tomorrow, forward!” - that's his motto. Poetry

- all! --

riding into the unfamiliar.

This unfamiliar, unknown becomes the subject of his poetry. He's wide uses the technique of contrasts: dead objects come to life in his poetry and become more animated than living ones. Mayakovsky's poetry, with its urban-industrial pathos, contrasts the image of a modern city of many thousands with its busy streets, squares, honking cars - with pictures of nature, which seems to him something inert and hopelessly dead. The poet is ready to kiss the “smart face of the tram,” he sings of the city lamp, which “takes off the blue stocking from the street,” while his moon is “flabby,” “useless to anyone,” and the girl’s heart is lifeless, as if “boiled in iodine.” " The poet is convinced that a new word can only be said in a new way. Mayakovsky is a pioneer who masters words and vocabulary, like a brave master working with his material according to his own laws. Him its own construction, its own image, its own rhythm and rhyme. The poet fearlessly breaks the usual poetic form, creates new words, enters into poetry, low and vulgar language. In relation to the greatest phenomena of history, he adopts a familiar tone, and speaks with disdain about the classics of art:

Take the classics

rolled into a tube

and passed through a meat grinder.

All his poems are deeply personal., it is present in each of them. And this specific presence becomes a starting point, a coordinate system in the unbridled flow of his imagination, where time and space are displaced, where the great seems insignificant, and the innermost, intimate grows to the size of the universe. He stands with one foot on Mont Blanc, the other on Elbrus, he is on first name terms with Napoleon, and his voice (“screaming”) drowns out the thunder.

He is the Lord God, who creates his poetic world regardless of whether anyone likes his creation. He doesn't care that his deliberate rudeness might shock anyone. He is convinced that the poet is allowed everything. The lines from the poem “Nate!” sound like a daring challenge and a “slap in the face of public taste”:

And if today I, a rude Hun,

I don’t want to grimace in front of you - so

I will laugh and spit joyfully,

I'll spit in your face

I am a spender and spendthrift of priceless words.

Mayakovsky has a completely new vision of the world; he seems to turn it inside out. The familiar appears strange and bizarre in his poetry, the abstract becomes tangible, the dead becomes alive, and vice versa: “ Tears of snow with reddened eyelids”; “The boats nestled in cradles entrances / to the nipples of iron mothers”.

Mayakovsky's poetry speaks not only in the language of images and metaphors, but also widely uses the sound and rhythmic possibilities of the word. A striking example is the poem “Our March,” where you can literally hear the beat of drums and the measured step of marching columns:

Days bull peg.

The arba is slow.

Our God is running.

Our heart is our drum.

Mayakovsky changed not only poetry, but also the previous idea of ​​it. He became the mouthpiece of the ideas and moods of the era. His poems are “weapons of the masses,” he brought poetry out of the salons into the square and made it march along with the demonstrators

The poet did not have enough time to rethink his work. He wanted to annex poetry to the state, so that the need for poetry would be equated with the need for a bayonet. Mayakovsky dreamed that poetry would shout from the stage. Only the latter came true: in the 60s, poetry fulfilled Mayakovsky’s wishes, but could not last long on the stage.

But that's how it should be. Poetry is a solitary and highly traditional affair. Innovation in poetry can be realized rather in the freshness of feeling rather than in form.

Much in Mayakovsky’s work is difficult and sometimes impossible to accept. But, evaluating his works, one should remember that poetry is a fact of biography, and it is created according to the same laws as the surrounding reality. The time when Mayakovsky lived was a time of many cataclysms in the fate of the country, a time of searching for new ways of its development, and it left its mark on the poet’s work. In an attempt to achieve the maximum level of expression that would correspond to the new content of life - be it love, politics, art - Mayakovsky creates his own, original creative method. The author set his goal to write “just as good, but about something else” - with an emphasis on “good”, in this case. What he left behind - new, undoubtedly talented - proves that the poet achieved his plans.

Brief bibliography

Vladimirov S.V. On Mayakovsky’s aesthetic views, “Soviet Writer”, 1976

Stanchek N.A. Studying the lyrics and poems of V.V. Mayakovsky at school, A manual for teachers. L., “Enlightenment”, 1972

Mayakovsky V.V. Works in two volumes, M.: Pravda, 1987

Mayakovsky V.V. Selected works, "Children's Literature", Moscow, 1956