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Vladimir Maïakovski (1893-1930) 1. Une aventure extraordinaire arrivée á Vladimir Maïkovski en été à la datcha -- niéobytchaïnoié priklioutchénié, byvcheié s Vladimirom Maïakovskim liétom na datché, 1920 (1.47) 2. écoutez ! - poslouchaïté, 1914 (0.54) 3. Ordinanza all'esercito dell'arte (1918) (1:54) 4. Rumori, rumorini e rumoracci (1913) (1:03) 5. Di strada in strada (1913) (1:04) 6. Valdimir Majakovskij - Listen (1920) 7. Valdimir Majakovskij - Hymn to Judge (1920) 8. Valdimir Majakovskij - Navy Love (1920) Tracks 3, 4, 5 performed by Valerij Voskobojnikov Recorded February 1977 in Milan from the LP Futura Poesia Sonora (Cramps Records, Milan) Tracks 6-8 From Russian Futurists from the GLM Collection (1920-1959) Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (b. Bagdalia 1893 - d. Moscow 1930) was a poet, dramatist and painter and the leader of the Russian cubo-futurist group - the equivalent of Marinetti in Italian futurism. At nineteen, he signed the first cubo-futurist manifesto A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (1912) which proclaimed the right of poets "to extend the volume of vocabulary with arbitrary and derived words (neologisms)" . After that, he figured in a whole series of public performances along with other cubo-futurists who painted their faces, wore top hats and velvet jackets, carried wooden spoons and radishes and recited verses with a "serious, solemn and unsmiling" demeanour. He designed his own futurist suit from the idea of a yellow tie, astutely making it enormous: "I change the tie into a blouse and the blouse into a tie". With the arrival of the October Revolution, he made it his own, proclaiming: "it is our revolution", founding the group The Futurist Communists (KomFut) and writing verses like: "The streets are the brushes we'll use, our palettes the city squares" . In his poetry recitals his physical presence was monumental, and he moved like a "pugilist". His voice was similarly powerful, as a newspaper of the time said, " f rom his quadrangular mouth there fly, not words but thundering stones from an Alpine torrent". In 1923, he published "For the Voice" which comprised a number of his poems laid out as visual poetry and made into in a book-object by the artist EI Lissitzky, in which the language floats somewhere between constructivism and suprematism. The poem Naval Romance was included in the book, although it had been written in 1915, in his earlier, futurist period. This poem can be translated literally from the Russian as Military-Naval Love [Voenno-morskaia liubov], an untraditional play on war and romance, love and sexual passion. Mayakovsky makes great use of puns, verbal pirouettes and absurd mixtures of sounds and this poem is also very rich in rhyme; at times he creates half-invented words in a "cubistic jigsaw puzzle" (Juliette Stapanian-Apkarian). At other times he plays with words for their sonorous- visual character as in, for example, the repetition of the letter "r" (in the Russian text of the poem "r-r-r-astakaia") - a letter in the Russian alphabet Mayakovsky advised was "good" to use, although it wasn't very common . The poem is recited by Mayakovsky and was recorded onto a wax-cylinder phonograph in 1920, along with four other works. The originals have been lost, but fortunately they were transferred to sound film some time in the 1930s, and have thus been preserved. Mayakovsky committed suicide in 1930, possibly a combination of a failed romance and his increasing difficulties with adapting to the rules imposed by official authorities. He left a letter: " ... as they say, the 'incident' has ended, 'the boat of love ran up against daily life. Vladimir Vladimirovic Majakovskij (1894-1930) was born in Georgia in the village of Bagdad the son of a forestry inspector. Afterl his father's death in 1906 he moved to Moscow. In 1908 he left school to dedicate himself to political activities. He joined the illegal Bolshevik party and was arrested three times. In 1911 he entered the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture where he met David Burlifik, who encouraged him to write poetry. An adherent of cubofuturism, with other futurists he toured southern Russia at the end of 1913 and the beginning of 1914. In October 1915 he was conscripted and posted to the motorization school at Petrograd as a draughtsman. He greeted the Revolution with enthusiasm. In November 1918 his drama "Misterija Buff' ("Funny Mystery") was performed . From 1919 to 1922 he worked at the Rosta (Russian Telegraphic Agency). He went abroad on a number of occasions, preferring Berlin and Paris; in 1925 he visited America. In 1926 he travelled extensively in the Soviet Union tirelessly reciting his poems. Early in 1930 he organized a exhibition of twenty years of his literary work at the Writers' Club in Moscow. He died, apparently by suicide, on the 14th of April of the same year. RELATED RESOURCES: RELATED RESOURCES: Russian Futurists from the GLM Collection (1920-1959) Sound Experiments in The Russian Avant-Garde (1908-1942) Vladimir Mayakovsky in UbuWeb Historical UbuWeb Sound | UbuWeb