Vladimir Mayakovsky. Last public performance

On April 9, 1930, a few days before his death, Vladimir Mayakovsky spent his last literary evening at the Plekhanov Institute.

Students received Mayakovsky unfriendly, asked him provocative questions, made offensive remarks. From this performance, the last in his life, the poet came completely upset.

Here is how the poet, playwright, theorist of Imagism Anatoly Mariengof recalls this event in his work “My age, my youth, my friends and girlfriends” (Leningrad, “Fiction”, 1988):
“Mayakovsky went out onto the stage with a temperature of about 38. And it was painful to swallow, and his inflamed eyes watered, and he blew his nose every five minutes into a checkered handkerchief the size of a good old napkin. In the hall sat students of the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy, which was located on Stremyannoye. They did not greet Mayakovsky with clapping, as they always did with tenors and singers from the Bolshoi Theatre.
Looking sideways from under his eyebrows at the students with his heavy, inflamed eyes, Mayakovsky said:
“I have the flu, my throat hurts, my head cracks. I really wanted to lie at home. But then I thought: “What does not happen in the world with a person. Sometimes he even dies. And suddenly I will go, as I wrote, “to another world.”

Emptiness…
Fly, crashing into the stars.
No advance for you
No beer…
This gloomy joke was not accepted by the students.
Mayakovsky tossed his head.
“But, comrades, you will groan all your life: “The brilliant poet Mayakovsky lived with us, and we poor people never heard him read his wonderful poems.” And I, comrades, felt very sorry for you …
Someone shouted:
– In vain! We’re not going to groan.
The hall roared with laughter.
How shameless you are, comrades! – hysterically squeaked a dark-haired girl who was standing against the wall on the left.
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Today I will only read poetry.
And announced:
– “In a loud voice”.
– Go ahead!
– Quiet-oh! Mayakovsky ordered.
And he began to read hoarsely:

Dear fellow descendants!
Rummaging in today’s petrified shit,
Our days studying the darkness,
You may be asking about me…
– Right! In this case, we will definitely ask!” another voice threw a retort, frail, shrill, but also masculine.
Mayakovsky was famous for his sharpness and resourcefulness in polemics. But here, it seemed, he did not want to be resourceful and sharp.
Furrowing his brows even more, he continued:

Professor, take off your bicycle glasses!
I will tell about time and about myself.
Me, the sewer and the water carrier…
– Right! Vacuum cleaner!
Mayakovsky puffed out his chest, militantly, out of old habit, thrust his hands into his pockets, but he began to read drier, more monotonous, faster.
They were talking in the ranks.
Someone was snoring, pretending to be asleep.
And when Mayakovsky said: “Die, my verse …” – a thick-cheeked student with a beard brazenly barked:
– Already dead! Dead!
Thus passed Mayakovsky’s last literary evening at the Plekhanov Institute. My sister was on it. She returned home confused and upset.

The conversation with the audience essentially turned into a dispute about the incomprehensibility of Mayakovsky’s poems. According to contemporaries, the poet was bombarded with such remarks: “Does this have anything to do with the revolution? Everything is written about yourself. All this is incomprehensible”, “Workers do not understand Mayakovsky because of Mayakovsky’s manner of breaking lines”, “Let Mayakovsky prove that in 20 years they will read him”, and so on.

On the same days, on the occasion of the anniversary of Mayakovsky’s creative and social work, the journal Print and Revolution decided to publish a greeting in which Vladimir Mayakovsky was spoken of as a “great revolutionary poet,” but the greeting was removed from the already finished copies of the magazine by decision of the leadership of the State Publishing House.

Here are excerpts from the description of Mayakovsky’s last literary performance, which is given by a photojournalist, one of the active members of the Mayakovsky Brigade, the organizer of Mayakovsky’s exhibition in the Komsomol House of Krasnaya Presnya, Viktor Slavinsky, in his memoirs “The last speech of Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky”:

“Mayakovsky speaks caustically, sarcastically, and at the same time declares:

– I take you seriously. (Laughter) When I die, you will read my poems with tears of tenderness. (Some laugh.) And now, while I am alive, they say a lot of all sorts of nonsense about me, they scold me a lot. A lot of gossip spread about poets. But of all the talk and writing about living poets, the most absurd is spread about me. I received an accusation that I – Mayakovsky – traveled around Moscow naked with the slogan: “Down with shame!” But even more spreads literary stupidity. (…) Student Makarov is speaking. He declares that the verses placed in the collection “Literature of the 20th century” are incomprehensible.

The poet appears on the podium:

What verses are incomprehensible?

From the place they shout:

– “A cloud in pants”.

Mayakovsky reads a note handed to him directly from the audience: “Is it true that Khlebnikov is a brilliant poet, and you, Mayakovsky, are scum in front of him?” There is a lot of noise in the audience, some laugh, many are outraged.

Mayakovsky:

– I do not compete with poets, I do not measure poets by myself. It would be stupid. (…) We, unfortunately, have few poets. For a hundred and fifty million people there should be at least one hundred and fifty poets, and we have two or three. (…)

Mayakovsky comes down, sits down on the step of the podium, sits with his eyes closed, leaning against the wall, barely visible to some of the audience. I got scared. Vladimir Vladimirovich does not stay on his feet and does not ask to bring a chair. I wanted to bring a chair, but found it inconvenient to give up the duty of taking minutes. I thought, “Here it is, the calvary of the audience.” (…)

The poet offers to raise their hands to those who do not understand his poems. Pick up about twenty-five percent of listeners. (…) The word is received by the student Honest:

– Many deny Mayakovsky with the words “incomprehensible.” For me, Mayakovsky is not incomprehensible, but not perceived. (Laughter.) (…)

The word is received by the student Screamer (drunk speaker):

– (…) The orientation of the writer should be on the proletariat. Mayakovsky has the right orientation. But Mayakovsky makes excesses in his work, like party members in their political activities. Mayakovsky has a poem in which tick-tock, tick-tock is repeated on one and a half pages.

The poet impetuously rushes to the podium and protestingly, with furious anger, declares:

– Comrades! He’s lying! I have no such poem! No!!

(…) The poet is very loud, furious:

– I want to learn from you, but protect me from lies … So that they don’t hang all the dead dogs on me, all these “poems” that I don’t have. (…) I affirm that all my poetry is as understandable as the poem “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”!

Again Makarov asks for the floor. He gives examples of incomprehensible verses (…):

Does all this have anything to do with the revolution? Everything is written about yourself. All this is incomprehensible.

(…) The poet reads the poem “Could you?” and says that “this should be clear to every proletarian. If the proletarian does not understand this, he is simply illiterate. Need to learn. It’s important to me that you understand my things.”

(…) Mayakovsky, indignantly, pricks slanderers and ignoramuses with witticisms that I do not have time to write down. (…) With quotations from the speeches of students, he proves their illiteracy in poetry, he speaks with great resentment at reproaches:

– I am amazed at the ignorance of the audience. I did not expect such a low cultural level of the students of a highly respected institution.

From the first row (behind me) the bespectacled man shouts:

– Demagogy!

Mayakovsky, turning in the direction of the cry:

– Demagogy?! – Addressing the audience: – Comrades! Is this demagoguery?!

The bespectacled man does not let up, he stands up and shouts:

Yes, demagogy.

(…) Mayakovsky, throwing himself over the edge of the podium, looks with hatred at the screaming idiot and orders with all the terrible power of his voice:

– Sit down!

The idiot doesn’t sit down and yell.

Big noise in the audience. Everyone gets up.

– Sit down! I will make you shut up!!!

Everyone quieted down. They sit down. Vladimir Vladimirovich is very tired. He staggers down from the podium and sits on the steps. Complete silence.

He won”.

A few months later, Mayakovsky promised the students to meet again: “We shouted a little, quarreled. But the rudeness was in vain. You must not have any malice against me.”

Viktor Slavinsky also notes that Mayakovsky arrived for the evening completely ill.

To his question: “How is your health, comrade Mayakovsky?” He answered bitterly: “Bad. I’m sick. Flu”. The dim light in the audience annoyed the poet. The students gathered slowly. To distract Mayakovsky, Slavinsky began to tell him that he had seen his portrait, printed for the journal “Print and Revolution” and placed under the portrait a text of greetings to Mayakovsky in connection with the 20th anniversary of his creative and social activities. Slavinsky promised to bring a portrait of Mayakovsky to his next proposed speech – at the university on April 11th. The fact that the portrait with a greeting was withdrawn from the printed edition of the magazine, Slavinsky, apparently, did not know …

April 14, 1930 Mayakovsky died. During the funeral, an iron wreath was placed on his coffin with the inscription: “To the Iron Poet.” And he was not at all iron or bronze – “After all, it doesn’t matter for yourself that it’s bronze, and that the heart is iron.” He was the most ordinary person, with a subtle, sensitive and easily hurt soul…

Sergei Ishkov.

Photo from the site https://www.mos.ru/