She stood in the service of the revolution, in the service of socialist society. The heroes of the poet's satire are not specific characters, but personalized flaws depicted in a grotesque, caricatured form.
Mayakovsky's satire is one of the important constituent elements of his poetry. Its peculiarity is the lyrical passion of the patriotic poet in exposing what is incompatible with the idea of a high rank of a citizen, what hinders the building of a new State.
In the center of the poem "On Rubbish" is a tradesman who has infiltrated himself into a Soviet institution and cares only about his well-being. starts with these lines:
Glory, glory, glory to the heroes!!!
However, they were given enough tribute.
Now let's talk about rubbish.
Already this beginning speaks about the content of the poem. It does not intend to sing the praises of the revolution. Despite the fact that he accepted the revolution immediately and recklessly, like a fresh element that swept the world, he cannot help but notice the shortcomings around him. The remnants of the past world and malignant neoplasms of the present haunt Mayakovsky. He is ready to stigmatize them and reveal the negative features of society, like a surgeon's scalpel. This is what is said in the first lines of the poem. It was not created to glorify the heroes of the revolutionary years. It is intended to stigmatize the abominations of philistinism. “The rubbish has thinned a little so far,” the poet says in this poem. He denounces the philistines who became bourgeois in the post-revolutionary years, says that even the storm of the revolution could not cope with them. Although Mayakovsky hoped for the invigorating and refreshing effect of the revolutionary movement:
The revolutionary storms have calmed down.
The Soviet hodgepodge turned into mud.
And the mug of a tradesman came out from behind the back of the RSFSR.
No matter how much Mayakovsky hoped for a revolution, Soviet reality was not perfect. And the reason for this is simple: old people came to the new one, not wanting to change the principles, the way of life, accustomed to eke out an existence. In spite of them, there were revolutionaries - representatives of the new trend, but they also calmed down, completing what they had begun. “The storms of revolutionary bosoms have calmed down…”, the poet says in his work.
Mayakovsky ruthlessly castigates the stupid, self-satisfied man in the street, indifferent to many manifestations of life, to art and beauty, absolutely soulless.
Mayakovsky in his poem creates images of philistines, whose horizons are limited, and their first joy in life is an increase in salary. Mayakovsky insists that philistinism is not a social estate, but a false estate. The images of the philistines are grotesquely exaggerated. A characteristic feature of this poem is self-disclosure in the world of the philistines. The portrait of Karl Marx became the decoration of the dwelling.
The characterization of the "scum", directly opposed to the real heroes of the revolution, ends with a fantastic picture: as if Marx himself raised an indignant voice against the philistine life from the portrait:
Marx looked from the wall, looked...
And suddenly he opened his mouth, and how he yelled:
“Threads have entangled the revolution with philistine threads. Wrangel is more terrible than philistine life. Hurry up the heads of the canaries, so that communism is not beaten by the canaries!”
And these lines again confirm the inner protest of the poet and his lyric. Unwillingness to see old troubles in a new and close to perfect world.
I would like to draw attention to the last lines of the poem:
... turn the heads of canaries - so that communism is not beaten by canaries! ...
The word "canary" means all the limitations, the whole life of the townspeople. It is intended to generalize the “portrait of a tradesman”, beyond its borders - all that lack of spirituality and that desire for material values that the poet so despised. The canary as a symbol of philistinism (a bird in a cage singing for the amusement of people covered with fat) must be destroyed. Otherwise, all these "scum" - the philistines will bring "to nothing" the cause of the revolution.
Thus, the poem "On rubbish" is permeated with the pathos of the struggle against what hinders the formation of an ideal socialist society. Mayakovsky in it showed those shortcomings that forced him time after time to act with his poetic methods. The satirical denunciation of Mayakovsky is a strong, but perhaps the only means by which the poet tried to rebuild the world.
Need a cheat sheet? Then save - "Mayakovsky's satire. "Oh rubbish." Poem in the Context of Modernity. Literary writings!Turning to the future is a way to forget about the present. This is the way fiction is written. And when the future becomes a part of your life, as happened with writers and poets of the early twentieth century, then all that remains is to believe in this very future. Vladimir Mayakovsky firmly believed that he would come “to the communist far”, that his “verse would break through the vastness of years and appear weighty, rude, visible.” Therefore, he perceived poetry as a participant in the construction of life. At the same time, in an effort to spur time, to overtake it, the poet felt that he was lagging behind him, as if moving into the category of obsolete:
With the tail of years I become likeness
Fossil-tailed monsters.
Perhaps that is why they are amplified in his work. satirical motives. And if in the pre-revolutionary years satire was directed against the crowd, insensitive to the words of the poet, then when the revolution took place, Vladimir Mayakovsky's satirical target was its enemies, primarily internal ones. For example, the burghers, who were not a relic of the past. Philistinism, seen by Mayakovsky, is a product of the present, which means that it is quite tenacious, even prosperous, especially in the conditions of building a new Soviet life.
One of the first blows to this phenomenon Mayakovsky inflicts in a poem "Oh rubbish", whose analysis will be presented below. The first lines of the verse "Glory, Glory, Glory to the heroes!!!" are replaced by caustic mockery of "scum" who managed to survive under the onslaught of revolutionary storms, adapt, twist himself "comfortable rooms and bedrooms".
At Mayakovsky, the burghers are not just disgusting, because they pissed "From a five-year sitting behinds, strong as washstands", they are dangerous already because they cleverly turn out to be "hastily changed plumage", in the state apparatus, giving rise to the disease of bureaucratization of institutions (brightly reproduced a year later in the poem "The Sitting Ones").
Probably much more than the poet is frightened by the atmosphere that the bourgeois create around themselves, anxious to "the storms of revolutionary bosoms calmed down" and "Soviet mishmash turned into mud". Such atmosphere carefully traced with the help of everyday details, indicated precisely and expressively. For example, an indispensable attribute of the Soviet era is a portrait of Marx (apparently, instead of an icon). Or the Izvestia newspaper, which has become a bedding for a kitten. Isn't that sacrilegious? And shining with complacency ( "From the samovar unfastened") the physiognomy of a Soviet official who does not forget even at home to call his wife in a party way: "Comrade Nadia!" A "party comrade" to match her husband: she not only "piano student" she still wants "with dress emblems", because "Without a sickle and a hammer you will not appear in the world!"
Life in the poem "On Rubbish" is not a subject of satirical denunciation, it is a way of expressing the political essence of a phenomenon called philistinism. People belonging to this class are born, oddly enough, of the revolutionary epoch, but are only able to vulgarize the notions connected with the revolution. Every detail of the situation that they create around them makes us evaluate the concepts that belong to the revolution in a different way. Even a word "Revolutionary Military Council", that is, the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, turns out to be associated with the word "ball" on which Nadia is going "figure" in a dress with emblems. What could be more absurd than the connection of such concepts?
Mayakovsky often talked about how satirical works are born. Work begins with a choice themes, "begging for mockery." It is this theme that underlies the poem "About rubbish." But the mockery will sound only if the word is "pointed" in the verse. Mayakovsky enumerates some methods of such sharpening: this is “making whips-rhymes”, eccentric conclusions, absurd hyperbolism.
In the poem "About rubbish" - a complete set. First, it's killer. sharp rhymes: "Murlo tradesman", "ass", "scum", the sharpness of which is also achieved by rude, swear words. Secondly, the eccentricity of the conclusions is really amazing:
More terrible than Wrangel is the philistine way of life.
And of course, grotesque finale, in which Marx looking from the wall "opened his mouth and screamed". A real theater of the absurd, in which all readers of this poem are involved.
- "Lilichka!", analysis of Mayakovsky's poem
- "Seated", analysis of Mayakovsky's poem
A few years after the revolution, Mayakovsky wrote in 1921. poem "About rubbish." The poet was disappointed in the consequences of the revolution, the changes that took place in the country did not satisfy him. The poet uses such means of satire as irony (many diminutive suffixes "ceiling", "bedroom"), hyperbole, (sharp, rude words "scum", "rubbish", "ass") caustic sarcasm and grotesque.
The theme of the poem is the ideals and desires of the Soviet philistines. People think primitively, mindlessly follow fashion, set the goal of life - material enrichment. The material component of life is paramount for the Soviet bourgeoisie, there is no place for spiritual development. Mayakovsky ridicules such people who consider themselves intelligentsia, but in their hearts have remained poorly educated citizens. The author criticizes not the petty bourgeois themselves as an estate, but their type of thinking. K. Marx criticized bourgeois politics and was a supporter of the revolution. In the poem, the hero criticizes society and its customs and habits; if people do not stop caring only about their well-being, then all the cruelty and violence associated with the revolution were in vain. In such a primitive society, such ideas as equality and democracy will never exist. The whole point of a tradesman's life is to brag about new things, to amuse his pride. Mayakovsky contrasts a large number of material goods and the empty soul of people.
The poem "Seated" was written in 1922. The theme of bureaucracy is presented in this work. This poem is indignation at the system of the bureaucratic apparatus. The basis of the Soviet bureaucracy is made up of meaningless regular meetings and paperwork. Officials do not solve real problems, they do everything, but not help the people. Civil servants do not fulfill their functions, that is, they do not serve and do not help the people, it does not matter to them what to discuss, the main thing is to make the appearance of violent activity. The author uses various means of expression in the work: hyperbole in the titles of the meetings (“A-be-ve-ge-de-e-zhe-ze-com”) in order to emphasize their meaninglessness; the author ridicules the empty and unnecessary meetings on which officials spend their entire working day. The irony is that officials are present at meetings without a head, the author wanted to show the futility of their meetings. Mayakovsky condemns the bureaucratic apparatus for the fact that ordinary citizens suffer because of its carelessness.
Updated: 2017-11-24
Attention!
Thank you for your attention.
If you notice an error or typo, highlight the text and press Ctrl+Enter.
Thus, you will provide invaluable benefit to the project and other readers.
Mayakovsky's satire, like all his work, stood in the service of the revolution, in the service of socialist society. The heroes of the poet's satire are not specific characters, but personalized flaws depicted in a grotesque, caricatured form.
Mayakovsky's satire is one of the important constituent elements of his poetry. Its peculiarity is the lyrical passion of the patriotic poet in exposing what is incompatible with the idea of a high rank of a citizen, what hinders the building of a new State.
In the center of the poem "On rubbish" is the image of a tradesman who has infiltrated a Soviet institution and cares only about his well-being. The poem begins with these lines:
Glory, glory, glory to the heroes!!!
However, they were given enough tribute.
Now let's talk about rubbish.
Already this beginning speaks about the content of the poem. In it, Mayakovsky does not intend to sing the praises of the revolution. Despite the fact that the poet accepted the revolution immediately and recklessly, like a fresh element that swept the world, he cannot but notice the shortcomings around him. The remnants of the past world and malignant neoplasms of the present haunt Mayakovsky. He is ready to stigmatize them and reveal the negative features of society, like a surgeon's scalpel. This is what is said in the first lines of the poem. It was not created to glorify the heroes of the revolutionary years. It is intended to stigmatize the abominations of philistinism. “The rubbish has thinned a little so far,” the poet says in this poem. He denounces the philistines who became bourgeois in the post-revolutionary years, says that even the storm of the revolution could not cope with them. Although Mayakovsky hoped for the invigorating and refreshing effect of the revolutionary movement:
The revolutionary storms have calmed down.
The Soviet hodgepodge turned into mud.
And the mug of a tradesman came out from behind the back of the RSFSR.
No matter how much Mayakovsky hoped for a revolution, Soviet reality was not perfect. And the reason for this is simple: old people came to a new life, not wanting to change their principles, way of life, accustomed to eke out an existence. In spite of them, there were revolutionaries - representatives of the new trend, but they also calmed down, completing what they had begun. “The storms of the revolutionary bosoms have calmed down ...,” the poet says in his work.
Mayakovsky ruthlessly castigates the stupid, self-satisfied man in the street, indifferent to many manifestations of life, to art and beauty, absolutely soulless.
Mayakovsky in his poem creates images of philistines, whose horizons are limited, and their first joy in life is an increase in salary. Mayakovsky insists that philistinism is not a social estate, but a false estate. The images of the philistines are grotesquely exaggerated. A characteristic feature of this poem is self-disclosure in the world of the philistines. The portrait of Karl Marx became the decoration of the dwelling.
The characterization of the "scum", directly opposed to the real heroes of the revolution, ends with a fantastic picture: as if Marx himself raised an indignant voice against the philistine life from the portrait:
Marx looked from the wall, looked...
And suddenly he opened his mouth, and how he yelled:
“Threads have entangled the revolution with philistine threads. Wrangel is more terrible than philistine life. Hurry up and turn the heads of the canaries, so that communism is not beaten by the canaries!”
And these lines again confirm the inner protest of the poet and his lyrical hero. Unwillingness to see old troubles in a new and close to perfect world.
I would like to draw attention to the last lines of the poem:
... turn the heads of canaries - so that communism is not beaten by canaries! ...
The word "canary" denotes all the narrow-mindedness, all the vulgarity of the philistine way of life. It is intended to generalize the “portrait of a tradesman”, beyond its borders - all that lack of spirituality and that desire for material values that the poet so despised. The canary as a symbol of philistinism (a bird in a cage singing for the amusement of people covered with fat) must be destroyed. Otherwise, all these "scum" - the philistines will bring "to nothing" the cause of the revolution.
Thus, the poem "On rubbish" is permeated with the pathos of the struggle against what hinders the formation of an ideal socialist society. Mayakovsky in it showed those shortcomings that forced him time after time to act with his poetic methods. The satirical denunciation of Mayakovsky is a strong, but perhaps the only means by which the poet tried to rebuild the world.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky is one of the brightest representatives of the poetry of the 20th century. His poems and plays have long become classics and entered the school curriculum. Mayakovsky's analysis of "On Rubbish" is programmatic, since this poem clearly illustrates the style and the poet.
Brief biography of V. V. Mayakovsky
The future poet was born in Georgia in the small village of Baghdad. Already in the lower grades of the gymnasium, Vladimir Vladimirovich began to attend demonstrations and read revolutionary literature. In 1906, after the death of his father, the Mayakovsky family moved to Moscow. Here he begins propaganda work, for which he ends up in prison more than once. As a student at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, he met the Futurists. Now his creative path becomes inextricably linked with this direction. And Mayakovsky's first poems were published in the almanac of the futurists "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste."
The poet's work can be divided into two periods: pre-revolutionary, where the bourgeois and White Guards become the object of satire, and post-revolutionary, in which irony is directed at the shortcomings of contemporary society. Vladimir Mayakovsky is unusual in the presentation and rhythm of poetry, sarcastic and satirically accurate. "About rubbish" is a poem in which all these components of the writer's genius were manifested.
The subject of poems
All Mayakovsky's work has a pronounced satirical orientation. However, it is the poems of the late period (20s) that are distinguished by their unprecedented thematic richness. There is a feeling that all the shortcomings of his time fell under the satirist's hot hand and sharp tongue. The heroes of the works, and therefore, the objects of irony, are kulaks, new bourgeois, hooligans, pests, cowards, townsfolk, bigots, gossips, loafers, drunkards, bribe-takers, bunglers and many others.
Poem "About rubbish"
It was at this time, in the interval between 1920-1921, that Mayakovsky wrote one of his most wonderful poems - “On rubbish”. The theme of denunciation of philistinism, which "came out from behind the back of the RSFSR", became the main one for the work.
satirical motives
In the post-revolutionary years, Mayakovsky's satire intensifies, becomes sharper and more topical. At an early stage of his work, the poet opposed himself to the insensitive crowd, which did not understand the lofty ideals of the writer. After the revolution, all the sarcasm of Mayakovsky fell upon the enemies of communism. Especially the poet ridiculed philistinism in all its manifestations. Well-established and prosperous in the new Soviet life, the townspeople were seen by Mayakovsky as a defeat for the supporters of the revolution. But in order to better understand and imbue these ideas, Mayakovsky's creative analysis is needed. "About rubbish" is a poem that is best suited for this purpose.
The work begins with a sharp contrast. The first lines, sounding like: "Glory, Glory, Glory to the heroes!", Continue with absolute contrast: "Now let's talk about rubbish." But who is this "stuff"? It turns out to be the “philistine estate”, which not only survived during the revolution, but also perfectly adapted to the new life, having acquired “comfortable offices and bedrooms”. Any analysis of Mayakovsky is distinguished by expression and notes of indignation. "About rubbish" was no exception and absorbed all the indignation and protest of the poet.
Philistines, in Mayakovsky's understanding, are not just nasty and disgusting because of their way of life, from which one can only be annoyed "from a five-year sitting ass, strong as washstands." No, they are also dangerous opportunists and bureaucrats. Merciless and relentless in this poem
"About rubbish" - a description of life
The image of everyday life in the poem "On rubbish" was not a way of denunciation, but a reflection of the political ideals and values of the bourgeois class. Surprisingly, people of this type were born by the revolution itself, an era of change, but they can only trivialize, belittle and tarnish the lofty revolutionary ideals. It was with the help of the details of the situation surrounding the philistines that Mayakovsky showed that their concepts of the world and the future were perverted and far from truly communist. So, the Revolutionary Military Council, the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, appears in a semantic connection with the word ball, which seems completely absurd and inappropriate. Moreover, there the bourgeois wants to "figure" in a new thing.
Mayakovsky said a lot about the townspeople in his work “On rubbish”. The verse, the analysis of which gives a complete picture of the poet's ideas about the contemporary world, speaks of the values and shortcomings of society.
Mayakovsky said that a satirical work can only be born if there is a suitable topic that just asks "to be published." But it’s not enough to decide on the topic, you need to be able to present it correctly in order to show all the wormholes and shortcomings of a social phenomenon. And here, the techniques long worked out by the classics are used: the accuracy of phrases, the clarity of reproof, absurdism and hyperbolization. Mayakovsky determined this formula for creating works. “About rubbish” is a poem that has absorbed all these principles. But the grotesque showed itself especially brightly, which seemed to put a bullet in the finale of the work: “Marx looked and looked from the wall ... And suddenly he opened his mouth, and how he screamed ...”.
Conclusion
Thus, our analysis and analysis of Mayakovsky's "On Rubbish" indicates that this poem is a reflection of the writer's creative method. It reflects the main thematic and ideological content of the post-revolutionary stage of the poet's development.
