{"id":480,"date":"2009-06-29T08:14:46","date_gmt":"2009-06-29T07:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mcrrview.web.its.manchester.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=480"},"modified":"2016-01-23T21:31:37","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T20:31:37","slug":"vladimir-mayakovsky-pro-eto-thats-what-trans-larisa-gureyeva-george-hyde-arc-publications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=480","title":{"rendered":"Vladimir Mayakovsky, <em>Pro Eto \u2013 That\u2019s What<\/em> trans. by Larisa Gureyeva &#038; George Hyde (Arc Publications)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The eyes of Mayakovsky\u2019s lover and muse, Lily Brik, bore out at you from the cover of this important new edition of Mayakovsky\u2019s long poem, <em>Pro Eto.<\/em> Lily Brik occurs elsewhere in the book; in the text, which she haunts, but also in the astonishing photomontages for the poem by Alexander Rodchenko, which are published here for the first time.  The photomontages are now a sepia ochre, but, somehow, that makes them even creepier.  Rodchenko captures the montage effect of the text with cut-ups of landscapes, polar bears, seated and standing figures in various melancholy poses, and above all, telephones!!<\/p>\n<p>For Mayakovsky in this text, the telephone seems to symbolise the tensions of physical intimacy. Lily was the wife of Mayakovsky\u2019s publisher, Osip Brik, and the telephone seems a metaphor for the difficulties of that relationship, with the presence of the lover\u2019s lips at the other end, but a yawning distance between the people;  \u2018It\u2019s me, mirrored\/ in the phone\u2019s iron.\/\/ Grab him,\/ send him some memos\/from the\/All-Union Executive Committee\u2019.  The useful notes at the end of the book tell us that the \u2018All-Union Executive Committee\u2019 was the organ that oversaw the elimination of \u2018enemies of the revolution\u2019!! In another section called \u2018Turning beary all over\u2019, Mayakovsky satirises the Russian bear\u2019s claims to strength and self-sufficiency, and also his own part in that myth making, \u2018he can whine, bear-like,\/to the last when\/then just lie down\/\/ in his beary lair\/scrabbling with his twenty claws.\/A leaf falls.\/Like an avalanche.\/It disturbs him.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Mayakovsky had a difficult relationship with the Russian revolution too.  When it came, he embraced it and became its Poet Laureate;  Stalin gave him liberties he squashed in others.  However, the contradictions that Mayakovsky found in the revolution, often lead him to leave Russia, either to seek solace in the arms of other women, or out of despair at the politics. In 1930, at the age of 37, he took his own life.<\/p>\n<p>Russian is a difficult language to translate as it is highly inflected and has few of the function words that English has, i.e. articles and prepositions.  This means that the original language is dense and rhythmically impacted, and in English it can seem vatic and gestural.   This is less of a problem here since the text is so charged and emotional, anyway. The text is spattered with exclamation marks! George Hyde\u2019s introduction also tells us that Mayakovsky had his own version of \u2018sprung rhythm\u2019 and advised his readers to listen for the \u2018dull roar\u2019 as sounds turn into words that turn into meaning.<\/p>\n<p>The text moves is organised into four sections:  an introduction \u2018What\u2019s This \u2013 That\u2019s What\u2019;  Part 1 \u2018The Ballad of Reading Goal\u2019 &#8211; evidently Mayakovsky also thought of himself as involved with a \u2018love that dare not speak its name ); Part 2 \u2018Christmas Eve\u2019 \u2013 Mayakovsky felt that Christmas was a time when pasts and presents fused in the \u2018self-abandonment called \u201cthe family\u201d; and a final part \u2018Application on behalf of \u2026(Please, comrade chemist, fill it in yourself)\u2019.  In them, he moves from despair, to surreal humour, fist-shaking anger, through sensual detail and satire.  Given the way British politics has once more bemired itself in sleaze, double-dealing and all-round cackhandedness, this is a wonderfully timely, necessary book.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nIan Pople<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The eyes of Mayakovsky\u2019s lover and muse, Lily Brik, bore out at you from the cover of this important new edition of Mayakovsky\u2019s long poem, Pro Eto. Lily Brik occurs elsewhere in the book; in the text, which she haunts, but also in the astonishing photomontages for the poem by Alexander Rodchenko, which are published [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Vladimir Mayakovsky, Pro Eto \u2013 That\u2019s What trans. by Larisa Gureyeva &amp; George Hyde (Arc Publications) - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=480\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vladimir Mayakovsky, Pro Eto \u2013 That\u2019s What trans. by Larisa Gureyeva &amp; George Hyde (Arc Publications) - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The eyes of Mayakovsky\u2019s lover and muse, Lily Brik, bore out at you from the cover of this important new edition of Mayakovsky\u2019s long poem, Pro Eto. 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