Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930)

Владимир Маяковский (1893-1930) 

There were but a few poets in history achieving god-like status in the afterlife. Mayakovsky was one of them, not entirely for his poetry though. Pioneering as a futurist in 1910s he demonstrated a remarkable lyrical talent. Yet his stature during his lifetime was propped up by his qualities as a first-rate polemicist (compare this to T. Marinetti), huge frame, rude words and exceptionally loud voice. Despite his psychotic rages, Mayakovsky was widely respected among intellectuals, even by avowed anti-Communists, such as Marina Zvetaeva.

            Influence of Mayakovsky on the Soviet canon cannot be overrated. In his poems “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”(1924) and “Good!” (1927), he developed an officially accepted version of Soviet mythology, which was repeated, sometimes verbatim in Stalin’s “Brief Course of the History of the VKP(b)”—one of the defining documents of the Soviet civilization. Modern historians of the USSR frequently overlook the fact that in the late twenties, there were still several competing versions of the Communist orthodoxy. Mayakovsky’s version probably won Stalin’s favors by resolute dispensation with “proletariat” and “world revolution”, as the main subjects, and replacement of them with the “Party” and its “Leaders”.

Since his suicide in 1930, Mayakovsky’s image became a household article from Castro’s Cuba to Mao’s Beijing and his awful statue, erected in the middle of Moscow, somewhat of a shrine. These days his talent undergoes reassessment and, similarly to Leconte de Lisle, Theophile Gautier, Paul Fort and other geniuses of the day, his star becomes dimmer and dimmer, yet still discernible in the firmament of the Russian poetry and a must in national poetry anthologies. One of his early opuses, typical of the Futurist period, is provided below.

Я сразу смазал карту будня,

Плеснувшись влагой из стакана.

Я увидал на блюде студня

Косые скулы океана.

На чешуе жестяной рыбы

Прочел я зовы новых губ.

А вы ноктюрн сыграть смогли бы

На флейтах водосточных труб?

1913

I smothered map of my today

By heaving liquid from the glass.

And noticed on gefilte plate

The Ocean’s Asian cheekbones.

The scales of signpost fishes tins

Were carved by challenge of new pout.

Oh, could you play me some Chopin

On shining flutes of water-spouts?

For comparison, I provide here (much better) translation by Dorian Rottenberg (probably, a pseudonym). He was a master translator of Russian and Eastern European literature but I know nothing of his real identity and whereabouts. 
Even if alive, he must be a very old man now because Google lists books translated by him as early as 1957. 

What About You?

I splashed some colors from a tumbler
and smeared the drab world with emotion.
I charted on a dish of jelly
the jutting cheekbones of the ocean.
Upon the scales of tin salmon
I read the calls of lips yet mute.
And you, could you have played nocturne
with just a drainpipe for a flute?

This translation has been taken from "Three Centuries of Russian Poetry", Progress Publishers, Moscow, USSR, 1980.