A Swallow’s
Nest of Luminaries.
The Lion and
the Servant Maiden.
Posting #4.
“Although
the fawn would not be a catch
For
Lila in her former years,
Yet
the beauty decided
To
stretch a net of love.
She
crouched up and cast
A
languid glance at the fawn,
And
I heard her bringing
The
conversation to its expected outcome… ”
A. S. Pushkin. The Fawn and the Shepherdess.
Vladimir Mayakovsky writes:
“…One
look, and she discerned a mere boy.
She
took away his heart and simply
Went
to play with it, like a girl with a ball…”
As a matter of fact, the simile about a boy and a ball
is borrowed from an Alexander Blok poem.
After the short “chapter” You comes the eighth “chapter” Impossible.
Mayakovsky compares his relationship with Lila Brik with dealing with bankers. –
“Bankers
know:
We
are rich without limit,
When
pockets do not suffice,
We
stash in the fireproof [safe].
I
have stashed my love for you
As
a treasure in the iron [safe]…”
And how else, other than as mockery, can we interpret
the following lines:
“…I’ll
take a smile, half a smile, and smaller,
And
partying [sic!] with others,
I will
spend over a half-night
Some
fifteen rubles of lyrical small change.”
The poet’s implication here is that his relationship
with Lila Brik brings him money for the poems that he writes.
In the next ninth “chapter,” Same With Me, Mayakovsky compares himself to Pushkin’s Miserly Knight, who loves to go down
into the cellar of his castle, where he keeps his ill-gotten treasures.
“Pushkin’s
miserly knight descends
Into
his cellar to admire and rummage,
This
is how I return to you, my beloved…
It
is my heart, I admire what is mine…”
And here is the original Pushkin in The Miserly Knight:
“BARON:
Like
a young womanizer is waiting for a rendez-vous
With
some sly strumpet, or a foolish girl deceived by him,
So
have I waited for the minute when I would descend
Into
my secret cellar, to my faithful trunks…”
How cleverly indeed does Mayakovsky compare his
relationship with Lilya Brik to Pushkin’s “miserly knight’s” relationship with
his money! What a difference with Alexander Blok, who writes:
“My
heart, my gold…”
***
One must not turn a mutually beneficial relationship
into something it is not – “love.” Lila Brik needed V. Mayakovsky for fame, as
without her liaison with him, hardly anyone would have remembered her name. As
Lermontov said it, “with my name yours
will be said.”
Mayakovsky needed Lila Brik as he very well knew that
for her own selfish reason she would take care of his historical legacy. And he
was not mistaken. She outlived Mayakovsky and fulfilled her mission in life.
The first thing she did after the poet’s suicide was to write a letter to
Stalin (yes, she was in a position to write such a letter, and Mayakovsky, a
smart man, had known that she was), urging Stalin not to neglect the memory of
the greatest poet of the Revolution.
And Stalin concurred with her opinion of Mayakovsky,
whose name was postmortem trumpeted all over the USSR. Et voilà – there is a
huge monument to Mayakovsky in the center of Moscow, overlooking the square
named after him.
Being a very smart man, I repeat, Mayakovsky was
carefully thinking through not only his poetry but also every step of his
actual life. He was indeed quite concerned about his legacy. This preoccupation
obviously never hampered his great sense of humor, which shines through
everything he writes. The description of his Mexican travel alone plus of his
subsequent entry into the United States of America says a lot in that regard.
Besides, his American travel diary as such makes a fascinating read.
Likewise, in the poem And So It Is With Me, from the poetic cycle I Love. Mayakovsky compares Lilya Brik either with a “sly strumpet” or a “foolish girl deceived by him.”
Alexander and I just love Mayakovsky’s sense of humor!
I have always been struck by Mayakovsky’s habit in his
“love poems” to borrow from his earlier works. Thus, for instance, in the poem Lilichka, Instead of a Letter, he writes
already in the opening lines:
“Remember,
behind this window, for the first time,
I
was fervidly caressing your arms…”
Compare
this to Mayakovsky writing in his 1916 poem Hey!
–
“Hey,
man, invite the earth herself to a waltz!
Take
the sky and embroider it anew,
Invent
new stars and display them,
So
that fervidly scratching the roofs [with their nails]
Souls
of artists [poets] could be climbing up into heaven.”
Now read the following lines from Mayakovsky’s poem Regarding Everything, which starts with
making excuses:
“No, this
is not true!
All
right, I was going around, gifting flowers…”
From these lines it is quite clear that Lilya Brik was
spying on Mayakovsky, giving him no reprieve. As a poet, Mayakovsky makes use
of this situation in his own favor, comparing himself to Don Quixote:
“Love!
You were only in my inflamed brain!
Stop
the course of the silly comedy!
Look
– I am ripping off the toy armor,
I,
the greatest Don Quixote!”
Here is another explicit proof that Mayakovsky is all
about himself and whatever he does serves only his own self-aggrandizement.
And this comes after his forced confession that he was
not faithful to Lilya Brik!
To be continued…
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