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Vladimir Mayakovsky — Fifteen Poems (1915)
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Vladimir Mayakovsky — Fifteen Poems (1915)
In 1915 the young Mayakovsky turned his hymn — the most solemn form he knew — into a weapon of laughter, and sang it, with a perfectly straight face, to everything that sat in judgement on life: to the judge who ringed Peru round with paragraphs until the peacock's tail faded and the hummingbird stood shaved; to the scholar whose head a treatise on warts in Brazil had bitten clean off, and who consoled himself by extracting square roots; to Health itself, portly and loud, calling the people of flesh to dance; to the critic, milked and mothered by the newspaper sky; to Dinner, the stomach in a panama hat that no death can infect and that will tin the very stars when the last bull's neck is cut; and to the Bribe, hymned by the whole choir from the youngest yardman to the man woven through with gold. Around the hymns stand the year's other thunder: war thought over at the call-up, a poet on Bolshaya Presnya measuring himself against Napoleon, a furious address to the well-fed at the back, a destroyer family's naval romance, a man sprouting fang and tail in the street, a conductor beaten blue by his own orchestra, a trifle whispered by the reeds of the Oka, and a fortress carnival insisted, magnificently, into absurdity.
Thoughts at the Call-Up (Мысли в призыв), I and Napoleon (Я и Наполеон), To You! (Вам!), Hymn to the Judge (Гимн судье), Hymn to the Scholar (Гимн ученому), Naval Love (Военно-морская любовь), Hymn to Health (Гимн здоровью), Hymn to the Critic (Гимн критику), Hymn to Dinner (Гимн обеду), A Warm Word for Certain Vices (Теплое слово кое-каким порокам), That's How I Became a Dog (Вот так я сделался собакой), A Word About the Conductor (Кое-что по поводу дирижера), A Trifle at the Oka (Пустяк у Оки), Magnificent Absurdities (Великолепные нелепости), and Hymn to the Bribe (Гимн взятке) — fifteen poems of 1915 by Vladimir Mayakovsky, in new English verse translations made for this show, read aloud over a gentle instrumental bed.
Мысли в призыв · Я и Наполеон · Вам! · Гимн судье · Гимн ученому · Военно-морская любовь · Гимн здоровью · Гимн критику · Гимн обеду · Теплое слово кое-каким порокам · Вот так я сделался собакой · Кое-что по поводу дирижера · Пустяк у Оки · Великолепные нелепости · Гимн взятке
Mayakovsky.
Intermission: "The Longest Night by the River" — instrumental.
KacheliTV — Russian classics, read aloud.