Literati litter
I’ve been reading through "I Love",an account of the Russian poet Mayakovsky’s relationship with Lili Brik by Ann & Sam Charters
Despite having the amazing opportunity of actually interviewing Lili Brik in her old age,the book is a major disappointment for admirers of Mayakovsky’s work.
It is a trivializing account of the avant garde Futurist poet who was one of the few Russian artists to wholeheartedly support the uprising of the “Dark People’ in the Russian Revolution of 1917 But,according to the Charters,Mayakovsky the idealist tragically wasted his talents and his time supporting the attempts by te Russian people to create a more just society .In their eyes this bad career move would eventually lead him to suicide in despair over lost illusions.
They don’t understand that Mayakovsky felt he had no choice but to kill himself in protest against the very regime that later cynically claimed him as a mythical figure in the Soviet Pantheon of the Arts.
They don’t understand because they assume that Leninism and Stalinism are one and the same thing,when in fact there is a river of blood between the two traditions.
Hundreds of thousands of Bolsheviks like Mayakovsky were already being imprisoned and murdered by Stalin when Mayakovsky died in 1930.
Lili Brik could have been a major source of information on this slaughter had the Charters known what questions to ask,but their distorted perspective on Stalinism blocked that possibility.
I try to imagine what I could have written had I the opportunity to interview Lili Brik in the 70’s as a living revolutionary artist from the same political tradition as Mayakovsky.But living revolutionaries do not get to do books on famous dead revolutionaries
It’s the literati like the Charters that get to do biographies like ‘I Love’ because they got the prestige as accredited academics and scholars along with the resources to finance their research.
Like amateur archeologists wrecking a digging site in their crude search for the inconsequential,they only make it more difficult for others to uncover what really happened.
Despite having the amazing opportunity of actually interviewing Lili Brik in her old age,the book is a major disappointment for admirers of Mayakovsky’s work.
It is a trivializing account of the avant garde Futurist poet who was one of the few Russian artists to wholeheartedly support the uprising of the “Dark People’ in the Russian Revolution of 1917 But,according to the Charters,Mayakovsky the idealist tragically wasted his talents and his time supporting the attempts by te Russian people to create a more just society .In their eyes this bad career move would eventually lead him to suicide in despair over lost illusions.
They don’t understand that Mayakovsky felt he had no choice but to kill himself in protest against the very regime that later cynically claimed him as a mythical figure in the Soviet Pantheon of the Arts.
They don’t understand because they assume that Leninism and Stalinism are one and the same thing,when in fact there is a river of blood between the two traditions.
Hundreds of thousands of Bolsheviks like Mayakovsky were already being imprisoned and murdered by Stalin when Mayakovsky died in 1930.
Lili Brik could have been a major source of information on this slaughter had the Charters known what questions to ask,but their distorted perspective on Stalinism blocked that possibility.
I try to imagine what I could have written had I the opportunity to interview Lili Brik in the 70’s as a living revolutionary artist from the same political tradition as Mayakovsky.But living revolutionaries do not get to do books on famous dead revolutionaries
It’s the literati like the Charters that get to do biographies like ‘I Love’ because they got the prestige as accredited academics and scholars along with the resources to finance their research.
Like amateur archeologists wrecking a digging site in their crude search for the inconsequential,they only make it more difficult for others to uncover what really happened.
posted by davef at 7:48 AM
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