HEARING EYE Publications
Acumen May 2003
Mayakovsky, Russian Poet. A Memoir by Else Triolet (best known as a novelist) is now published for the first time in English (translated by Susan de Muth). Triolet (1896-1970) wrote her memoir of Vladimir Mayakovsky (who had committed suicide, aged 36, in 1930) in 1939. Mayakovsky was her first love — the poet later became the lover of her older sister Lili Brik. The first French edition (1939) was largely destroyed by the Gestapo.
Scarcely an objective account, Triolet's view of Mayakovsky is largely a piece of hero-worship, full of vitality, rich in anecdote, short on serious analysis (especially of the complex problems of political and poetic morality raised by Mayakovsky's career). Triolet never ceased to be an admirer of Stalin, and that governing admiration conditions what she can (and cannot) see and say about her other hero — Mayakovsky: Russian Poet. The quality of much of the writing (and translating) here is clear from Triolet's opening paragraph, in her Preface: "Mayakovsky was born on the 7th July 1893 in the Georgian village of Bagdadi. His father was a forester. He was the son of tall trees and the beauty of the Caucasus. He grew to be taller, stronger, more remote than other men. He died in 1930, felled at his height".
This memoir is vividly written, biased, partial, incomplete. self-serving — and all the better for all of these things. Hearing Eye deserve our grati tude for making available this first English translation.
Glyn Pursglove
Chartist, July-August 2002
When poets filled football grounds
Mayakovsky - Russian Poet
A Memoir by Elsa Triolet
Translated by Susan de Muth
Hearing Eye, £8.95
THERE'S A FRANTIC brilliance about this memoir that makes it difficult to put down. In fact, at times, Elsa Triolet's memoir seems more like a breathless telephone conversation with her mother than an acclaimed book written by a member of the French literary establishment.
Given how good the book is, it's strange that it's taken 63 years for it to be published in English. One reason could be that Mayakovsky had the dubious honour of being described by Stalin as the 'poet of the revolution'.
The honour was made all the more dubious by the fact that it took until 1935 for Uncle Joe to reach this conclusion and the poet had died, in suspicious circumstances, in 1930. So it seemed that belatedly getting into Stalin's good books ultimately served only to damage the poets reputation in the outside world.
Triolet gives us snapshots rather than a straight linear narrative. The Mayakovsky of the memoir appears in Moscow in 1914 wearing a bright yellow blouse. This article of clothing was, so we're told, considered extremely shocking, although we never quite find out why. What is clear is that polite society wasn't ready for Mayakovsky and the feeling was probably mutual.
Triolet starts off as Mayakovsky's lover, but then becomes a close friend as he proceeds to move in with her sister and her sister's husband. It's a complicated personal life which throws up plenty of strange stories, some of which involve climbing through bedroom windows and losing huge amounts of money in French café's and which Triolet can relate from first hand experience.
The poet's literary career however is even more unusual as his Futurist artist comrades, stick their necks out and start acclaiming Mayakovsky as a great poet while he's about to drop out of art school and hasn't actually written any poems at all. Luckily for his fellow Futurists, when Mayakovsky does start writing poems, he's very good at it and soon develops a large following.
After the 1918 revolutions, Mayakovsky's literary rivals tried to marginalise him by claiming his work was too obscure to be understood by the workers. However this claim was belied by the huge audiences at his readings across the country.
With her translation of the memoir, Susan de Muth provides several new translations of extracts of Mayakovsky's poetry. The poems, like the life story, suggest a tendency towards independent thought which wouldn't have gone down well with Stalin's increasingly repressive regime.
In that context, it's not a complete shock that the circumstances surrounding the poet's suicide in 1930 are highly dubious and the translator's notes point to the suggestion that Mayakovsky may have been assassinated by the secret police.
Triolet, an unwavering Stalinist until her death in 1970, wouldn't have countenanced that idea and though the poets suicide (viewed by many as suspicious) is included, little explanation is offered by her. As the translator points out in her foreword, the author also fails to mention Mayakovsky's growing unease about the Stalin regime at the time of his death.
But these flaws, once noted, do not detract from the narrative. This is not meant to be an objective appraisal and it is the author's blatant partiality towards the poet and the close proximity at which she observed and interacted with him that makes this book valuable.
It takes us back to a time when poets had a fair-sized place in the national consciousness and could fill football grounds.
David Floyd
See also the review of Mayakovsky: Russian Poet in London Magazine