The lyrical hero of Mayakovsky's love lyrics. The theme of love in the work of B

Mayakovsky was and remains one of the most significant figures in the history of Russian poetry of the 20th century. Behind the external rudeness of Mayakovsky’s lyrical hero hides a vulnerable and tender heart. This is evidenced by Mayakovsky's poems about the deeply personal. They amaze with the passionate power of the feeling expressed in them:

"Except for your love

I have no sun"

(“Lilechka”),

entwined with fire

on an unburnt fire

unthinkable love"

("Human")

The lyrical hero of early Mayakovsky is romantic in his attitude and very lonely. No one hears him, no one understands him, they laugh at him, they condemn him (“The Violin and a Little Nervously,” “I”). In the poem “Sale,” the poet says that he is ready to give everything in the world for “a single word, affectionate, human.” What caused such a tragic attitude? Unrequited love. In the poem “Lily (instead of a letter)” and the poem “Cloud in Pants,” the motive of unrequited love is the leading one (“Tomorrow you will forget that I crowned you,” “Let me line your departing step with the last tenderness”). In these works, the lyrical hero appears as a gentle and very vulnerable person, not a man, but a “cloud in his pants”:

They wouldn't recognize me now

sinewy hulk

writhing...

But the beloved rejects the hero for the sake of bourgeois well-being:

You know -

I'm getting married.

She doesn’t need love of such enormous power! She is cold and ironic. And it turns into an awakened volcano:

Your son is beautifully sick!

His heart is on fire.

Tell your sisters, Lyuda and Olya, -

He has nowhere to go.

The poem “Cloud in Pants” shows the transformation of a community of love into a community of hatred for everyone and everything. Disappointed in love, the hero emits four cries of “down with”:

Down with your love!

Down with your art!

Down with your state

Down with your religion!

Suffering from unrequited love turns into hatred of that world and that system where everything is bought and sold.

In a letter to L.Yu. Brik Mayakovsky wrote: “Does love exhaust everything for me? Everything, but only differently. Love is life, this is the main thing. Poems, deeds, and everything else unfold from it. Love is the heart of everything. If she stops working, everything else dies away, becomes superfluous, unnecessary. But if the heart works, it cannot but manifest itself in everything.” It is precisely this kind of “solid heart,” loving and therefore responsive to everything in the world, that is revealed in Mayakovsky’s poetry. For a poet, talking about love means talking about life, about the most significant thing in one’s own destiny. For, he is convinced, this feeling must be on par with the era. The ease of resolving this issue did not suit Mayakovsky. In this case, too, he was guided by the demands placed on himself and those around him. After all, he knew that “love should not become any “should”, any “impossible” - only free competition with the whole world.”

What can allow you to emerge victorious in this competition? For Mayakovsky, the feeling that connects two does not isolate them from the world. The feeling that forces a person to isolate himself in a narrow world (“in a small apartment world”) is inalienable for him from the old things he hates. A loving heart contains the whole world. The ideal of high love affirmed by the poet can only be realized in a bright future. And the task of poetry in this case is to speed up the path to the future, overcoming the “everyday nonsense.”

It is interesting to compare two poems inspired by a strong and deep feeling for Tatyana Yakovleva: “Letter to Comrade Kostrov from Paris about the essence of love” and “Letter to Tatyana Yakovleva.” The first of them was addressed to an official, the editor of Komsomolskaya Pravda, in which the poet who found himself in Paris collaborated, while the second - not intended for publication - was passed from hand to hand to the woman he loved.

In the first of these “letters,” Mayakovsky reflects not just on love, but on its essence. The feeling of burning power evokes an urgent need to understand oneself, to take a fresh look at the world. In a new way: for Mayakovsky, love is a feeling that rebuilds a person, creating him anew. The poet avoids abstraction in his conversation. The addressee of the “Letter...” is named after the person who caused this storm in the heart and to whom this poetic monologue is addressed is introduced into the text. And in the poem itself there are many details scattered, details that do not allow the poem to be carried away into the foggy heights. His love is “human, simple,” and poetic inspiration manifests itself in the most everyday situations:

Raises the area noise,

the crews are moving,

I write poems

in a notebook.

A simple earthly feeling is contrasted with that “passing pair of feelings” that is called “rubbish”. The poet speaks about what elevates a person - about the elements,

come up in murmur

possessing healing powers. And again, the poetic metaphors he uses contribute to the literal materialization of concepts. The name of the brilliant Copernicus pronounced here gives an idea of ​​the scale of the feeling in question.

The usual contrast in poetry, when it comes to love, between the earthly and the heavenly, the everyday and the sublime, is not for Mayakovsky. He began (in the poem “A Cloud in Pants”) with a decisive protest against the sweet-voiced chants that arose in such cases, with defiantly frank words:

the sonnet poet sings to Tiana,

all made of meat, all man -

I just ask your body

as Christians ask -

"Our daily bread -

give it to us today.”

The need for a sharply expressed opposition of one's ideas about love, which is equivalent to life itself, disappears. There is no need to contrast the ordinary, earthly with the beautiful, sublime. Love makes it possible to feel their unity, poetry - to discover it, express it and consolidate it in words.

In “Letter... to Kostrov,” reflections on the essence of love unfold with remarkable logic, a system of arguments is built that is sufficient for the conversation about love to acquire a public character. A word bursting from the heart of a lover is capable of “raising, / and leading, / and attracting, / / ​​which have weakened with the eye.”

In “Letter to Tatyana Yakovleva” the same theme is presented from a different, dramatic side. It is difficult to understand why mutual love could not bring happiness to the lovers. Apparently, he was hampered by a feeling of jealousy, which the poet promises to pacify.

And here the theme of love cannot receive a happy resolution. It is transferred to an uncertain future, associated with the coming triumph of the revolution on a worldwide scale:

I don't care

someday I'll take it -

or together with Paris.

And in the present there is a loneliness that has not been overcome.

In this poem, Mayakovsky also uses his favorite genre - a monologue addressed to a specific person. This imparts trust to the verse and gives what is said a deeply personal character. At the same time, the scope of the world revealed in the message addressed to the woman he loves is extremely wide. This applies to both spatial (from Moscow to Paris) and temporal (the time of the revolution and the Civil War - today - the future associated with the arrival of the revolution in Paris) borders. The extreme frankness characteristic of the opening lines of the poem is further reinforced by the words about “dogs of brutal passion”, about jealousy that “moves mountains”, about “measles of passion” - the letter is filled with the power of intimate feeling. And it is constantly translated into social terms. Therefore, when the hero exclaims:

Come here,

go to the crossroads

my big ones

and clumsy hands.

Words about the future triumph of the revolution become the logical conclusion of the poem.

“Community love” is a phrase that is better than others capable of expressing the feeling underlying the poem.

To summarize what has been said, we note that Mayakovsky prefers to lyrical self-expression the desire to convince, to affirm his position, his ideas about the world, about man’s place in it, about happiness. Hence his focus on colloquial (often oratorical) speech. Coming from the present, the poet strives for a bright future. This determines the pathos of his poems.

Mayakovsky is often called the “tribune poet”. And although there is some truth in this, it would be wrong to reduce Mayakovsky’s poetry only to propaganda and oratorical poems, since it contains intimate love confessions, a tragic cry, a feeling of sadness, and philosophical thoughts about love. In other words, Mayakovsky’s poetry is diverse and multicolored.

Ministry of Education of the Republic of Tatarstan

Secondary school No. 15

Love lyrics by Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky

Completed:

student of class 11A

Mannapov Rais

Checked by: Ermolaeva L.A.

Introduction

“Down with your love” 1912 – 1917 5

“I love you unfailingly and truly!” 1917-1930

Bibliography

“Love is life, this is the main thing. Poems, deeds and everything else unfold from it. Love is the heart of everything. If it stops working, everything else dies off, becomes superfluous, unnecessary. But if the heart works, it cannot but manifest itself in everything.”

It hardly makes sense to talk about the relevance of this topic. The theme of love is eternal. Over time, views change, ideas about the place of love in human life become different, but in a person – to use Mayakovsky’s metaphor – the “fire of the heart” does not go out. The theme never gets old: generations change and people come into life for whom words of love are heard for the first time.

The task of my work is to reveal the meaning contained in the epigraph, because it is precisely this kind of “solid heart” that is loving and therefore responds to everything in the world that is revealed in Mayakovsky’s lyrics, to see the real Mayakovsky - “alive, not a mummy.” To do this, I have to answer intriguing questions: who and how did this person love and what did this feeling bring him, why the “mass of love” is inseparable for him from the “mass of hatred”, to figure out what is hidden behind his pathos and theatrical rudeness.

I chose this topic because for Mayakovsky, the feeling that connects two people does not separate them from the world. The feeling that forces a person to isolate himself in a narrow world (“in a small apartment world”) is inseparable for the poet from the old things he hates; a loving heart contains the whole world. The high ideal of love affirmed by the poet can only be realized in a bright future, where a person will be free from the shackles of the past that still fetter him today, the personification of which for Mayakovsky is philistinism with its base interests and hopeless vulgarity. And the task of poetry is to speed up the path to the future, to give the opportunity, having overcome “everyday nonsense” (“Do you replace love with tea? Do you replace love with darning socks?”), to run “line by line into an amazing life.”

The feeling that connects the two evokes in Mayakovsky’s poems a feeling of touching tenderness for all living things, a feeling of kinship with the whole world and even the universe.

Poems based on deeply “personal motives” and in this case become poems about universal happiness - the poet does not agree to anything less:

What's the point -

would it be possible?

so that the loveless land

so that everyone

human thickets.

Actually, love lyrics occupy little space in Mayakovsky’s poetry, but in poems where we are talking about something completely different, the word “love” appears again and again. Because the poet talks about life, which is empty and meaningless if there is no place for this feeling in it.

"Down with your love" 1912 – 1917

Mayakovsky's work can be divided into two periods: pre-revolutionary (1912-1917) and post-October (1917-1930). The love theme was one of the leading ones in pre-October creativity. Staged in “Cloud in Pants”, which became central in “Spine Flute”, the theme of love sounded in the poem “Man”, and in the poem “Lilichka”, and in many of the young poet’s early poems. Mayakovsky always gravitated towards social understanding of this intimate topic. The depiction of unrequited love, characteristic of the vast majority of pre-revolutionary poems and poems, allowed the poet to reveal the tragedy of man in the world of capitalism, where everything - including love - is subordinated to monetary purity.

The motifs of pain and suffering outlined in Mayakovsky’s works of 1912-1913 were also embodied in the poem “A Cloud in Pants.” Already in the first part of the poem, the reader appears before the image of a deeply suffering person, wounded by love.

The main idea of ​​this work, however, like other works of Mayakovsky’s pre-revolutionary creativity (“Spine Flute”, “Man”), is the suffering of the lyrical hero from unrequited love, which develops into a cry of protest against the world (four cries of four parts: “Down with your love”, “Down with your art”, “Down with your system”, “Down with your religion”), where money and wealth are above all. In other words, the poem raises the question of the fight against a society that dooms a person to suffering. At the same time, the four most important foundations of bourgeois society are criticized - its morality, art, system, ideology. The four parts of the poem are organically connected with each other, flowing from one another. The tragedy of unrequited love becomes the initial “cry” that generates protest against the bourgeois world as a whole.

The importance of the poem lies in the fact that an attempt is made here to reveal the social background of the tragedy: Maria (her prototype was Maria Denisova, Mayakovsky’s beloved) left for another, since in this society the terrible formula “money - love - passion” operates, according to which love depends on the power of capital. True, the social nature of the love conflict is not fully revealed. This will be done in Mayakovsky's subsequent works. In “Cloud...” there is only a hint of why Maria left the lyrical hero. But it is important to emphasize that a trend is already emerging here that determined the nature of the further development of the love theme in pre-October creativity.

Everything about the poem was stunning: from the title to the last line. It was originally called "The Thirteenth Apostle". According to the Gospel, Christ had twelve disciples - apostles, preachers of the faith. Mayakovsky declares himself the thirteenth apostle, proclaiming to the world a new truth that revises existing ideas about good and evil. When the censors read the poem, they said to the authors: “What, do you want to go to hard labor?” Mayakovsky had to change the title to “Cloud in Pants.”

Despite the fact that the prototype of the heroine was Maria Denisova, Mayakovsky dedicated “Cloud in Pants” to Lila Brik, whom he met in 1915 and immediately fell in love. From that moment on, Lilya Yurievna Brik became the only muse and addressee of the master’s love lyrics.

Mayakovsky’s poems of the 1910s (Spine Flute (1915), Man (1916–1917)), starting from the situation that was actually present in the author’s life, continue the work of creating the “Mayakovsky myth”. A new aspect is added to it - hopeless love for a woman endowed with the name and recognizable appearance of L. Brik.

In 1915, Mayakovsky again protests against the soulless world and his protest results in a dream of pure love in the poem “The Spine Flute.”

The lyrical hero of “The Spine Flute” does not have the inconsistency of the hero of “Clouds in Pants”; he, loving but rejected, is only the suffering side. Although he calls God the “Supreme Inquisitor,” he does not address him with threats, but only with a request to stop the unbearable suffering:

Only -

do you hear! –

take the damn one away

which he made my favorite!

The idea of ​​the crippling power of money in a capitalist society, voiced in “A Cloud in Pants,” becomes the leading one in the poem “Spine Flute”:

everyone pays for a woman.

if for now

you instead of the chic Parisian dresses

I'll dress in tobacco smoke.

The fact that even then the poet did not find happiness in love is evidenced by other works of Mayakovsky from 1916 - 1917.

In 1916, Mayakovsky dedicated the poem “Lilichka” to Lilya Brik, intended “instead of a letter” to convey “the bitterness of offended complaints.” The unrequited love of the lyrical hero hangs on his beloved with a “heavy weight.” And again the theme of jealousy, raised in “The Spine Flute,” arises:

Besides your love,

there is no sun

but I don’t know where you are and with whom.

“Lilichka!”

And instead I until the early morning

terrified that they took you away to love,

and he cut out the screams into lines,

already half crazy jeweler.

"Spine Flute"

In the poem “Man,” written in 1917, which sounds like a hymn to the human creator, love appears in images that express only suffering:

They're rattling on me

handcuffs,

love of the millennium...<…>

sharper -

surrounded by fire,

on an unburnt fire

unthinkable love.

The narrative in the poem “Man” is built on the model of the Gospel (Christmas, Life, Passion, Ascension, etc.), but in the place of Jesus a lyrical hero is put, who is Vladimir Mayakovsky himself.

In the poem “Man,” Mayakovsky moves on to glorifying an ordinary person, on whose birthday “no signs were lit,” and not the apostle as in “The Cloud...” The poet affirms the truly limitless potential of man. Yes, says Mayakovsky, a person is beautiful from birth, he is completely “unseen,” his every movement is a “huge, inexplicable miracle,” his marvelous hands are beautiful, his “most precious mind” is magnificent, the “majestic lump” is excellent - the heart, the whole person - "an extraordinary miracle of the twentieth century." But the cruel, inhuman laws of capitalism mercilessly cripple this “miracle”, turning him into a slave of capital. And there is no place for true love in this ugly world.

“I love you unfailingly and truly!” 1917-1930

Mayakovsky lyrical hero

The Great October Socialist Revolution, having emancipated man, created conditions for the triumph of love, love as happiness, as joy. It was this idea that found particularly vivid expression in the poem “I Love” (1922). At a time when the controversy is unfolding: whether a modern writer can and should turn to intimate experiences, to the theme of love, Mayakovsky dedicates this poem to Lilya Brik.

This is a work about human love in all its manifestations, about love in the broadest sense of the word, this is a song about how human love arose, blossomed and acquired its mature forms. This determines the composition of the poem. It is impossible not to pay attention to the order in which the chapters are arranged: “Boys”, “Young Men”, “My University”, “Adults”, etc. Before us is human character in development, or rather in the formation of a feeling of love.

Already in the first chapter, “As a Boy,” the ability to love arises in the lyrical hero of the poem. But love here acts as the ability to perceive and feel the world, nature - the sun, rivers, and “hundred-mile rocks.” So Mayakovsky, already at the beginning of the poem, extremely expands the theme: the sphere of love is as limitless as the region of human feelings.

This understanding of the nature of love is also characteristic of subsequent chapters, reflecting the peculiar “evolution of the hero’s heart”, the transformation of a boy’s “heart” into a “solid heart”, when

The heart lump has grown enormous:

bulk love,

huge hatred.

“Community of love” - this is how Mayakovsky defined his hero’s attitude to everything beautiful in life, to which his heart is open, what “enters him with passions.” But this same “heart lump” also includes “a huge amount of hatred” for everything disgusting in life. Asserting the right of a person to hate in the name of love, Mayakovsky, in the course of the evolution of his lyrical hero, shows how his feelings become socially meaningful. This is facilitated by the hero’s comprehension of the essence of social relations in the bourgeois world - both homeless life in a capitalist city, which taught him from childhood to “hate fat people”, and early acquaintance with the peephole of the 103rd cell of the Butyrka prison, and many other “universities” of life.

It is noteworthy that out of the eleven chapters of the poem “I Love,” seven are devoted to the feeling of human love in the broadest sense of the word (love as the ability to absorb, absorb the world around us), and only from the eighth chapter (“You”) the “traditional” one enters the poem. the theme of love for “her”.

In contrast to the “curly-haired lyricists,” in Mayakovsky’s poem love for a woman appears as one of the manifestations of the human heart’s ability to feel and actively perceive life in all its manifestations.

“I Love” ends with a kind of oath of fidelity and constancy in love:

Love won't wash away

no quarrel

not a mile.

Thought out

verified

verified.

Raising solemnly the line-fingered verse,

I swear -

unchangeable and true.

The lyrical hero loudly declares how much he loves. And his love was close and understandable to the new man, the builder of a socialist society, with his active perception of life, integrity, depth and constancy of feeling, inexhaustible optimism that permeated the entire poem - from the first to the last line.

The solution to the love theme in the poem “About This,” written the following year, 1923, is more complex and contradictory. The complexity of this work is largely due to the fact that it is a tragedy poem. The image of the lyrical hero is revealed here in an extremely dramatized situation, in a tragic conflict.

In the fall of 1922, the relationship between Mayakovsky and L.Yu. endured a crisis, as a result of which they decided to live apart for two months. Lilya and Mayakovsky had to reconsider their attitude to everyday life, to love and jealousy, to the inertia of everyday life, to the “tea party,” etc. Mayakovsky tried to do this; nevertheless, months of self-examination did not lead to big changes in their lives, and it didn’t matter to Mayakovsky - as long as they continued to be together. On February 28, at three o’clock in the afternoon, Mayakovsky’s “term of imprisonment” expired; they met Lilya at the station to go together to Petrograd for a few days. Entering the compartment, Mayakovsky read her the just completed poem “About This” and began to cry...

“For personal reasons about common life” - this is how he characterized his poem about love. This definition applies to all his love poems. Mayakovsky's characteristic and original lyricism was manifested in the fact that any poetic theme, if it fascinated him, was personal to him. The division into civil and intimate lyrics did not exist for him - these previously separate genres merged in his poems into an inseparable alloy. If the political theme becomes personal in Mayakovsky’s poems, then at the same time he talks about the most intimate human feeling as a poet-citizen. It is no coincidence that the idea of ​​the unity of the personal and the public is so clearly declared in the final lines of the poem, where the poet expresses his deepest desire:

To live

not sacrificing the house to holes.

at least in peace

earth at least - mother.

Mayakovsky wrote a strange confessional poem. It would seem that it is really “about this,” but if you read it, it’s still more about something else. No wonder its topic is not directly named. "About what, about this?" - the author asks and for some reason replaces the word “love”, suggested by the rhyme, with an ellipsis. The source of the poem is the threat of breaking up with his beloved, an almost murderous threat: “Now I feel that I have been completely torn away from life, that nothing else will ever happen,” the author exclaimed in a letter from the time of the creation of “About This.” All hyperboles, antitheses, gradations are subordinated here to one thing - the expression of an extraordinary intensity of feelings. But if we discard all science fiction, all the pictures of allegorical transformations, which, as always, skillfully and verbosely implement every turn of speech, then there will remain several bright and strong moments, where the same basic motives are expressed as in pre-October verses and poems: resentment, jealousy and hatred.

The everyday surroundings of his beloved: crows-guests, friends-rivals - this is the main obstacle in the path of his love. This is what all the bad words that were used at that time were called. Love for “her” in the conditions of “everyday mud” was unacceptable for the poet. And the worst thing, the root of the tragedy, is that the beloved herself is an integral part of all this, and if he does not blame her for anything, it is only because he loves her. Mayakovsky's love is tragic, hopeless, the obstacle in its path is irremovable, at least in this, today's life. But Mayakovsky’s poem in 1923 needs an optimistic way out, without it it cannot take place. And Mayakovsky finds such a way out, killing himself and resurrecting in the future, in the distant and wonderful thirtieth century, the century of communism, which is depicted as the time of the triumph of true love, when the poet’s dream will come true - “so that love flows throughout the universe.” And turning to the people of the future, the poet exclaims:

thirtieth century

will overtake the flocks

the heart was torn apart by little things.

Nowadays unloved

let's catch up

the star quality of countless nights.

Mayakovsky’s understanding of the nature of love in the last period of his creative career finds its most vivid expression in two poetic “letters” - “Letter to Comrade Kostrov from Paris about the essence of love” and “Letter to Tatyana Yakovleva.” The poems were created in the fall of 1928 during Mayakovsky’s stay in Paris; they were inspired by a strong and deep feeling for Tatyana Yakovleva. Mayakovsky met her in Paris, where she arrived in 1925 from Soviet Russia at the call of her uncle, an artist. But (and this is so characteristic of Mayakovsky) his “Letter to Comrade Kostrov...” is not just about love, it is about the essence of love.

The feeling of burning power evokes an urgent need to understand oneself, to take a fresh look at the world. In a new way: for Mayakovsky, love is a feeling that rebuilds a person, literally creates him, multiplies his strength.

As is most often the case with the poet, the most serious things are spoken of with a dose of irony:

I speak my teeth -

agree to listen.

But the poem unfolds - and the pathos of the poem, striving to get to the essence of human life, to explain what allows the “frozen engine of the heart” to start working again becomes more and more noticeable. What is manifested here is not a passion that blinds a person, but an earthly, joyful feeling that fills with creative power. And as this thought unfolds, the walls of the hall in which the conversation began disappear: the noise of the street rushes in, the starry sky spreads over the heads of the lovers.

Speaking about the essence of love, the poet avoids abstraction in his conversation. The addressee of the “Letter...” is named by name; the one who caused this storm in the heart, to whom the poetic monologue is addressed, is introduced into the text. And in the poem itself there are many details scattered, details that do not allow the verse to be carried away into the foggy heights: the love that brought these lines to life is “human, simple,” and poetic “ecstasy” manifests itself in the most everyday setting:

Raises the area noise,

the crews are moving,

I write poems

in a notebook.

on the street,

but not knocked to the ground.

Understand

Human -

in ecstasy.

A simple, earthly feeling is contrasted with that “passing pair of feelings” that is called “rubbish”: the poet speaks of what elevates a person, of the elements (“Hurricane, fire, water approach in a murmur”), which has life-giving power. And again, as is typical, they contribute to the literal materialization of concepts that are abstract by their very nature. The name of the great Copernicus pronounced here gives an idea of ​​the scale alone worthy of the feeling in question. And at the same time, the idea of ​​the power that it bestows on a person is realized in a joyfully sublime image:

Be in love -

this means:

deep into the yard

and until the night of the rooks,

shining with an axe,

chopping wood,

The poet nowhere reduces the pathos of the poems about what allows the human heart to work, but skillfully muffles it. First of all, with the help of irony:

Dreams of visions

to the lid.

and among bears

wings would grow.

Poems about the essence of love reveal the essence of poetic creativity, as Mayakovsky understood it. And this is natural, since what makes a person a poet is a feeling free from any kind of self-interest, which brings to life reverently tender words. But they, giving the opportunity to “two lovers to look at the stars from their lilac gazebo,” have the power to “raise, and lead, and attract, which have weakened with the eye.”

It is noteworthy that the “Letter to Comrade Kostrov from Paris about the essence of love” was addressed to an official - the editor of Komsomolskaya Pravda A.S. Martynovsky. A conversation with your beloved about love seems to take on a public character. And it cannot be different, especially if we remember that to address the beauty, “decorated in furs and beads,” the word “comrade” appears and the words addressed to her: “You have broken the thread to Moscow.” Their meaning is revealed in the “Letter to Tatyana Yakovleva.” But even in the first of the two letters there is a note of bitterness that the beloved is on the other side.

In the poem, addressed to Tatyana Yakovleva and not intended for publication, the same as in “Letter to Comrade Kostrov...”, the theme appears from a different, dramatic side. It is difficult—and is it even necessary now—to understand why mutual love, judging by the testimony of contemporaries, could not bring happiness.

Again and again, in every poem, we are convinced that Mayakovsky’s love lyrics turn out to be truly civil:

Whether in the kiss of hands or lips,

in the trembling bodies of those close to me

red is the color of my republics

should also burn.

And in the “Letter,” addressed only to the woman he loves, “I” is inseparable from “We,” the fate and happiness of those who love are from the destinies of “a hundred million.”

Both “Letters...” and the second, lyrical, introduction to the poem about the five-year plan, which was then begun but never completed, amaze with the restraint of tone, the tension that does not splash out, but goes deep into the verse - all this testifies to the depth and integrity of feeling. And therefore, the integrity of the character in which this feeling is embodied.

Conclusion

The rudeness of the form of the poems and the rudeness of Mayakovsky’s behavior were not only a means of shocking, a desire to attract attention to oneself, but also self-defense, like the famous “yellow jacket”, “with which the soul is wrapped up from inspections.” Under the mask of a street hooligan hid the gentle, loving soul of the poet. It is impossible not to feel the tragic beauty of the poems that hit the heart: “Lilichka!”, “Letter to Comrade Kostrov about the Essence of Love”, poems: “Spine Flute”, “Man”, etc. They reflected the attitude of the poet, thirsting for love, sympathy, understanding , but doomed to loneliness in this “loveless” world. Mayakovsky is inclined to exaggerate his feelings; his poetry is under a current of high tension of feelings. The poet’s love is immeasurable, boundless, it is a “fire of the heart,” a beautiful disease:

Your son is beautifully sick!

His heart is on fire...

Mayakovsky's love lyrics are inextricably linked with personal experiences. But it cannot be denied that all his poetry is truly civil, which cannot but affect his love lyrics: “In the kiss of hands, lips, in the trembling of the body of those close to me, the red color of my republics also glows.” If the political theme becomes personal in Mayakovsky’s poems, then at the same time he talks about the most intimate human feeling - about love - as a poet-citizen. “For personal reasons about common everyday life” - this is how he described his love poem “About This”. This definition applies to all his love poems.

In Mayakovsky's poems, all feelings are strained to the limit; poems of a calm, descriptive nature are not typical for him. Mayakovsky's verse can be more or less expressive, but never sluggish. Lyrical, according to Mayakovsky, means effective, active, designed not only for sympathy, but above all for the complicity of the reader. His passionate, ebullient temperament is reflected in his works: “hulk – love, huge – hatred.” “It’s not enough for him, the agitator, the loud-mouthed leader, to just tell about love; it’s important for him to convince the reader, to reach his heart. The power of lyrics lies in their charge with a big feeling, a big idea. Mayakovsky is right: “Description and reflection of reality have no independent place in poetry.” The poet does not tell, does not inform - he convinces, proves.

I believe that the theme of love is central to Mayakovsky’s work, despite the small number of works devoted to it.

Love won't wash away

No quarrel

Not a mile<…>

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The theme of love in the works of V. Mayakovsky. V. Mayakovsky is a genius poet. His legacy is multi-subject and multi-genre, and therefore it is a shame that someone perceives Mayakovsky only as a poet-agitator or poet-satirist. The creativity of this man was holistic, it was integral to his life.
The theme of love was never alien to Mayakovsky, since this feeling permeated through his stormy and restless life. But the poet, arguing that “love is the heart of everything,” was always against the vulgarization of this topic both in life and in art, he ridiculed those who “stick out, sawing in rhymes, some kind of brew of love and nightingales.” Mayakovsky never limited this deep human feeling to the narrow confines of the selfish Self; love in his work is expanded to the horizons of the entire earth and space, even if it is undivided and unhappy:
...the love boat crashed into everyday life.
We are even with you - and there is no need for a list of mutual pains, troubles and insults.
Look how quiet the world is
The night covered the sky with starry tribute;
At such hours you get up and speak to the centuries, history and the universe.
Everyday life and the philistine environment are the main enemies of all human feelings, including love. In an equal-
blooms and shrinks,” and “between services, income and other things, the soil of the heart is becoming hardened from day to day.” Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote very correctly about the poet: “Mayakovsky pulled love out of the alcoves... and carried it, like a tired, deceived child, in his huge hands, entwined with veins swollen from tension, towards the hated and dear street.”
Mayakovsky’s works dedicated to L. Brik reveal to us all the depth and power of the poet’s feelings, who “scorched a blossoming soul with love,” for whom “except your love... there is no sea,” “except your love... there is no sun,” and “no one is joyful.” ringing, except the ringing of your favorite name.” The poet’s feelings are huge and strong - these are both “hulk-love” and “hulk-hatred”. And at the same time - the endless trepidation of relationships:
Give me at least
to line your departing step with the last tenderness.
For the sake of love, Mayakovsky is ready to sacrifice his entire life, because he is sure that “everyone pays for a woman.” But this payment is made not with money, not with things, and not even always with time, but with the soul, the heart, and often with unbearable torment and suffering.
My love,
like the apostle at the time,
I will destroy roads across a thousand thousand.
A crown is destined for you throughout the ages,
and in the crown my words are a rainbow of convulsions.
Mayakovsky believed that rudeness, vulgarity, and hypocrisy of the world around us are capable of perverting a person’s feelings, destroying them even at the very moment of their inception. That is why he hated and actively fought against the philistine world, mercilessly scourging and ridiculing all its imperfections. And at the same time, this wonderful poet believed that true love is infinitely strong, omnipotent, it cannot be frightened by everyday life, or insults, misunderstandings, it is able to stand up for itself, because it is not a selfish feeling, but a gift, a sacrifice to another, to someone close and dear to you.
Maybe from these days,
terrible, like bayonet points,
when centuries will bleach the beard,
only you will remain
and I,
rushing after you from city to city.

There are poets who seem to be open to love, and all their work is literally permeated with this wonderful feeling. These are Pushkin, Akhmatova, Blok, Tsvetaeva and many others. And there are those whom it is difficult to imagine falling in love. And first of all, Vladimir Mayakovsky comes to mind. Poems about love in his work, at first glance, seem completely inappropriate, since he is usually perceived as a singer of the revolution. Let's try to find out if this is so by taking a closer look at the poet.

Mayakovsky - the beginning of his creative journey

The poet's homeland is Georgia. The parents came from a noble family, although the father served as a simple forester. The sudden death of the breadwinner forces the family to move to Moscow. There Mayakovsky entered the gymnasium, but two years later he was expelled for non-payment of tuition, and took up revolutionary activities. He was arrested several times and spent almost a year in a cell. This happened in 1909. Then for the first time he began to try to write poetry, absolutely terrible, according to him. However, it was this year that Mayakovsky, whose famous poems were still ahead, considered the beginning of his poetic career.

Poet of the Revolution

It cannot be said that the work of Vladimir Mayakovsky was entirely devoted to the revolution. Everything is far from so clear. The poet unconditionally accepted her, was an active participant in those events, and many of his works were actually dedicated to him. He practically deified her, believed in the ideals that she carried, and defended her. Undoubtedly, he was the mouthpiece of the revolution, and his poems were a kind of propaganda.

Love in the life of Mayakovsky

Deep emotionality is inherent in all creative people. Vladimir Mayakovsky was no exception. The theme runs through all of his work. Outwardly rude, in fact the poet was a very vulnerable person, a hero of a rather lyrical nature. And love was not the last place in Mayakovsky’s life and work. He, broad-minded, knew how to instantly fall in love, and not for a short time, but for a long time. But the poet was unlucky in love. All relationships ended tragically, and the last love in his life led to suicide.

Addressees of Mayakovsky's love lyrics

In the poet's life there were four women whom he loved unconditionally and deeply. Mayakovsky's love lyrics are primarily connected with them. Who are they, the poet’s muses, to whom he dedicated his poems?

Maria Denisova is the first person with whom Mayakovsky's love lyrics are associated. He fell in love with her in Odessa in 1914, and dedicated the poem “Cloud in Pants” to the girl. This was also the poet’s first strong feeling. That’s why the poem turned out to be so painfully honest. This is the real cry of a lover who has been waiting for several painful hours for his beloved girl, and she comes only to announce that she is marrying a wealthier man.

Tatyana Alekseevna Yakovleva. The poet met her in October 1928 in Paris. The meeting ended with them instantly falling in love with each other. The young emigrant and the tall Mayakovsky, two meters tall, were a wonderful couple. He dedicated two of his poems to her - “Letter to Comrade Kostrov...” and “Letter to Tatyana Yakovleva.”

In December, the poet left for Moscow, but already in February 1929 he returned to France again. His feelings for Yakovleva were so strong and serious that he proposed to her, but received neither refusal nor consent.

The relationship with Tatyana ended tragically. Planning to come again in the fall, Mayakovsky was unable to do so due to problems with his visa. In addition, he suddenly finds out that his love is getting married in Paris. The poet was so shocked by this news that he said that if he never saw Tatyana again, he would shoot himself.

And then the search for that one true love began again. The poet began to seek solace from other women.

Mayakovsky's last love

Veronica Vitoldovna Polonskaya is a theater actress. Mayakovsky met her in 1929 through Osip Brik. This was not done by chance, in the hope that the charming girl would interest the poet and distract him from the tragic events associated with Yakovleva. The calculation turned out to be correct. Mayakovsky became seriously interested in Polonskaya, so much so that he began to demand that she break up with her husband. And she, loving the poet, could not start a conversation with her husband, realizing what a blow it would be for him. And Polonskaya’s husband believed in his wife’s fidelity to the end.

It was painful love for both. Mayakovsky became more and more nervous every day, and she kept putting off the explanation with her husband. On April 14, 1930, they saw each other for the last time. Polonskaya claims that there was no conversation about the breakup; the poet once again asked her to leave her husband and leave the theater. A minute after she left, already on the stairs, Polonskaya heard a shot. Returning to the poet's apartment, she found him dying. This is how the last love and life of Vladimir Mayakovsky ended tragically.

Lilya Brik

This woman, without exaggeration, occupied the main place in the poet’s heart. She is his strongest and most “sick” love. Almost all of Mayakovsky's love lyrics after 1915 are dedicated to her.

The meeting with her took place a year after the break in relations with Denisova. Mayakovsky was initially attracted to his younger sister Lily, and at the first meeting he mistook her for his beloved’s governess. Later, Lily officially met the poet. They were amazed by his poems, and he instantly fell in love with this extraordinary woman.

Their relationship was strange and incomprehensible to others. Lily's husband had an affair and did not feel physical attraction to his wife, but in his own way he loved her very much. Lilya adored her husband, and when she was once asked who she would choose, Mayakovsky or Brik, she answered without hesitation that her husband. But the poet was also extremely dear to her. This strange relationship lasted 15 years, until Mayakovsky’s death.

Features of Mayakovsky's love lyrics

The features of the poet’s lyrics are most clearly visible in his poem “I Love,” dedicated to Lilya Brik.

Love for Mayakovsky is deep personal experiences, and not an established opinion about it. Every person has this feeling from birth, but ordinary people who value comfort and prosperity more in life quickly lose love. With them, according to the poet, it “shrinks.”

A feature of the poet's love lyrics is his conviction that if a person loves someone, he must completely follow the chosen one, always and in everything, even if the loved one is wrong. According to Mayakovsky, love is selfless, it is not afraid of disagreements and distance.

The poet is a maximalist in everything, so his love knows no halftones. She knows no peace, and the author writes about this in his last poem “Unfinished”: “...I hope, I believe, shameful prudence will not come to me forever.”

Poems about love

Mayakovsky's love lyrics are represented by a small number of poems. But each of them is a small piece of the poet’s life with its sorrows and joys, despair and pain. “Love”, “Cloud in Pants”, “Unfinished”, “About This”, “Letter to Tatyana Yakovleva”, “Letter to Comrade Kostrov...”, “Spine Flute”, “Lilichka!” - this is a short list of works by Vladimir Mayakovsky about love.

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V. Mayakovsky is a rebel poet, loudmouth and agitator. But at the same time, he is a person with a sensitive and vulnerable soul, capable of the brightest and most tender feelings, deep experiences, and sincere love. This ability of Mayakovsky found artistic embodiment in his poems about love. They amaze with the passionate power of the feelings expressed in them. Their lyrical hero cannot and does not want to free himself from the power of love. She becomes the center of the universe.

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“Besides your love, I have no sun,” says the poet in the poem “To Lilichka.” In a letter to L. Brik, Mayakovsky wrote that “love is life, this is the main thing. Poems, deeds, and everything else unfold from it. Love is the heart of everything.” Love is the most significant, important thing in the fate of every person. “Letter to Comrade Kostrov from Paris about the essence of love” is addressed to the editor of Komsomolskaya Pravda, in which the poet collaborated. The poem is a lyrical monologue in which irony coexists with seriousness, vernacular with elation. The poet reflects on the essence of love. He poses the problem and consistently proves his opinion, giving compelling arguments.

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A passionate feeling forces the lyrical hero to look into his inner world and sort out his feelings. He says about himself: “I’m forever wounded by love - I can barely drag myself.” Mayakovsky gives his own definition of this feeling: To love means to run into the depths of the yard and, until the rooks’ night, with an ax shining, chop wood, playfully with one’s strength.

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The lyrical hero calls his state ecstasy. And his love is “human, simple”; it is impossible to cope with it, because it is “a hurricane, fire, water.” Genuine feeling is contrasted in the poem with a “passing pair of feelings”, with philistinism.

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A different intonation is characteristic of the poem “Letter to Tatyana Yakovleva.” Initially it was not intended for printing, but was handed over personally to the addressee. The poet contrasts his sincere, deep, ardent feeling with “Parisian love,” vulgar and ordinary. The poem is characterized by extreme frankness; it amazes with the power of intimate feeling. “Come here, come to the crossroads of my big and clumsy hands,” it sounds. “You are the only one who is as tall as me,” the poet says to the heroine, urging her to reciprocate her feelings. The poet speaks of “dogs of brutal passion,” of jealousy that moves mountains, of “the passion of measles.” The lyrical hero is persistent and purposeful. “I’ll still take you someday - alone or together with Paris,” he promises. Mayakovsky's poems about love are characterized by amazing spiritual openness, nakedness of the most subtle experiences. The poet's love lyrics surprise with their unusually bright and bold imagery and frenzy of feeling. Striking, original metaphors and comparisons give Mayakovsky’s poems uniqueness.