What Mayakovsky engraved on his beloved’s ring. Mayakovsky and Brik

Well, our rulers have come very close to the famous historical phrase “If they don’t have bread, let them eat cake!”

Last week, during a meeting with Sberbank President German Gref, Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin recommended that Russians take out a mortgage at the current Sberbank rate, which is 12% per annum, without waiting for it to drop to 11%.

Indeed, why overpay 8 times (this is how much interest accrues at a rate of 11% over 20 years), if at the current rate (12%) you can overpay 10 times?

“It’s better not to wait for 11, because inflation processes are still developing, and so on.”

However, this explanation raises new questions.

The Central Bank promises us to lower inflation to 4% - this is set as a target that our monetary authorities have been striving for throughout the year and assures us that until this figure is reached, they will not stop strangling the economy. In the sense that the key rate will not be lowered.

And the Ministry of Finance echoes the Central Bank, promising to reduce inflation to the target 4% at all costs.

And Rosstat has already reported that deflation was recorded two weeks ago, for the first time in several years.

In general, our government firmly suppresses inflation. Whether this is good or bad is a separate discussion, but the goal has been set and the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance are striving to achieve it. And Rosstat testifies that things are gradually moving towards this.

However, for some reason the president talks about the development of inflationary processes and motivates this recommendation to take out a mortgage at 12%, without waiting until it is 11%.

Suddenly, right?

Please note that this is coming from the same president who called the actions of the Central Bank (which set the inflation target at 4%) correct, and the work of the government (together with the Ministry of Finance, which confirmed this goal) satisfactory.

The total is the following:

Citizens who listened to the president and followed his advice are taking out a mortgage at 12% interest rate. Not everyone, of course, no one will give a mortgage to many because of low income or poor credit history. But some will.

And in next year The Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance will achieve their plans and drive inflation to 4%. Or at least bring it closer to this indicator. 4% or 5% in in this case not so important.

It will turn out beautiful:

Citizens took out mortgage loans at 12% per annum, and the government and the Central Bank lowered inflation to 4%.

And if you don’t consider the options of revolutions, coups and defaults, but believe the president’s supporters who claim that Putin will rule the country for one more term, and then appoint a successor after himself (in any case, Putin himself clearly plans to do just that) and all this time Medvedev's government will keep inflation at bay with a firm hand achieved level at 4-5%, then...

Then, for many years, citizens who took out mortgage loans on the advice of the president will pay 12% on loans with inflation of about 4%.

Profit!

Moreover, the profit will be in literally words. Just not for citizens, but for Sberbank.

To issue a million loans of a million rubles for many years in advance and receive 12% per year from them, while inflation will be 4% and the key rate will also logically drop to this level - this is a real profit. And very serious.

The key rate is the cost of money for Sberbank, because it is at this rate that Sberbank (and other banks) take money from the Central Bank.

If the key rate is, for example, 6%, then Sberbank will have a net 6% income from mortgage loans issued at 12%.

A million loans per million is a trillion.

6% of a loan portfolio of a trillion rubles is 60 billion rubles. Per year!

That is, Putin, having recommended that citizens quickly take out a mortgage at 12% per annum, essentially worked as an agent of Sberbank, attracted thousands of clients at once (after all, some of the president’s supporters will probably follow his advice) and made Sberbank revenue that in the future will amount to billions or even tens of billions rubles

And the pockets of citizens will accordingly be emptied by the same billions (or even tens of billions) of rubles that will be paid to Sberbank in the form of interest. More precisely, in the form of the difference between the mortgage percentage (12%) and the key rate, which will have to decrease after reaching the inflation target of 4% to the level of 4-6%.

And this once again and most directly proves that Putin is not the president of our people, but the president of corporations - Gazprom, Rosneft, Sberbank, Lukoil, Rostec and some others.

It is about them that President Putin cares.

President Putin cares about corporate profits, not the welfare of citizens.

And the ruble exchange rate was lowered in order to maintain the income of Gazprom, Rosneft and Lukoil at least in ruble terms after the fall in oil prices. To reduce the cost of oil and gas production, because a significant part of the costs is the wages of workers, which are paid in rubles, as well as the cost of internal contracts for transportation, supply of pipes, equipment and materials, which were also concluded in rubles.

The formula of 3,600 rubles per barrel, which the Central Bank and the government are trying to maintain (this was officially stated by Ulyukaev and was repeatedly voiced on the Vesti state channel) exists not only to make it easier to fulfill the budget, but also to maintain the income of Gazprom and Rosneft at a stable level and Lukoil in ruble equivalent.

By the way, the very fact of the meeting between the president of the country and the head of a private bank is also very remarkable and says something.

Have you seen Merkel personally receiving any of the German bankers or Obama personally receiving someone from the management of American banks?

Putin is a president who acts in the interests of his co-operator friends and large corporations. Accordingly, they support Putin in his post.

Under Yeltsin there were oligarchs, under Putin there were corporations.

The oligarchy transformed into a corporate system, which is quite natural, because corporations are a more perfect and convenient form of organization of business and government for the bourgeoisie, which depersonalizes and allows shareholders to appoint various kinds zits-chairmen, who in case of anything will sit for them, allows you to transfer shares by inheritance or sell them.

However, this is a topic for another discussion.

It sounds like a historical phrase that if the people don’t have bread, let them eat cakes.

Do you think I'm exaggerating?

Not at all.

The average salary in Russia is about 30,000 rubles - this includes top managers, bankers, employees of resource corporations and others like them. And this includes Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Most of Russia, living outside the Moscow Ring Road and outside St. Petersburg, receives about 10-20 thousand rubles. With such income, no mortgage is available, except perhaps for life with the transfer of interest by inheritance.

If the price of an apartment is one million rubles, you need to pay 8,500 per month to pay off it in ten years without taking into account interest. And with interest you need to pay 15,000 or more. With an income of less than 30,000 per month, this is completely unaffordable.

This means that most Residents of Russia cannot take out a mortgage in principle. Mortgages are available mainly to officials, military personnel, middle managers and highly paid specialists.

But most importantly, most of those who could afford a mortgage had already taken it out. And those who couldn’t afford a mortgage in past years can’t afford it even more so after the recent drop in income.

And incomes have fallen for the absolute majority. IN varying degrees, but for the majority.

Now about the bread.

Many people can literally afford bread.
However, bread in the broad sense is not everything.

If we understand bread as a certain basic set of products, then it costs 6-9 thousand rubles per person per month. To this you need to add utility bills (3-5 thousand per person), transport (1500 rubles for two trips a day at Novosibirsk prices), as well as 2-3 thousand rubles for various types of household expenses, telephone, Internet, television - all that , without which life becomes incomplete.

In total, it turns out that 12-18 thousand per month is spent on the most necessary things.
This is the cost of bread in a broad sense.

And now let me remind you that outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg, most citizens have salaries ranging from 10 to 20 thousand rubles. That is, the income is barely enough for this very bread. And not everyone does.

Pensions are approximately 12 thousand rubles.
That is, barely enough to earn enough bread for themselves, but there is nothing left to spoil their grandchildren with.

And we must not forget that in Russia about 20 million citizens live below the poverty line, this is official data. Their income does not even reach the cost of a food package, which is official statistics is something around 9,000 rubles.

In general, we get the following picture: there are fewer citizens who are able to take out a mortgage (we don’t count those who have already taken out) than those who do not have enough to buy bread.

Because the number of citizens who are able to take out a mortgage and have not yet taken it is obviously less than 20 million living below the poverty line.

This is how it turns out -

If they don't have bread, let them take out a mortgage.

The President of Russia, giving advice to take out a mortgage, takes care of the wealthy minority, although they can take care of themselves, and it’s not for nothing that they receive their 30,000 rubles or more. You should at least be able to count. Yes, and with such income you can pay a consultant. Or buy a financial magazine and read it. And make your own decision whether to take out a mortgage now or wait, without recommendations from the president.

What about those who don’t have enough to buy bread or still have enough, but with great difficulty?

What will the president advise them?

Should I buy bread now or wait?
Maybe postpone buying bread until next year?

Our rulers came close to the famous historical phrase:

"If they don't have bread, let them eat cake!"

This phrase, according to a popular (not documented) version, belongs to Marie Antoinette. The phrase became a symbol, I quote - “the extreme detachment of the supreme absolutist power from real problems ordinary people."

How did Marie Antoinette end - do I need to remind you?

"After the outbreak of the French Revolution, she was declared the inspirer of counter-revolutionary conspiracies and interventions. She was condemned by the Convention and executed by guillotine."

It seems that the French, who had no bread, did not like the cake.
Either there was indigestion, or there was an allergy to sweets.

And something tells me that a mortgage as a substitute for bread will not work for our people either. You don’t need to be a big nutritionist to conclude that bricks and reinforced concrete are inedible.

If you don't believe it, you can chew it right now.

However, our leadership, of course, is not threatened by the guillotine.

If only because we are not French...

“If they don’t have bread, let them eat cake!”- Russian translation of the legendary French phrase: “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”, lit. “Let them eat brioche,” which became a symbol of the extreme detachment of the supreme absolutist power from the real problems of the common people. Has a complicated origin. According to the most common version, it belongs to Marie Antoinette, although the chronological comparison of the queen’s biographical data does not correspond to either the date of appearance of the phrase or its content.

History of the phrase

This phrase was first mentioned by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Confessions (1766-1770). However, not quite in the form in which they are accustomed to quoting it. According to Rousseau, this phrase was uttered by a young French princess, whom popular rumor, as well as many historians, later identified with Marie Antoinette (1755-1793):

How to make bread?<…>I would never have decided to buy it myself. For an important gentleman, with a sword, to go to the baker to buy a piece of bread - how is this possible! Finally I remembered what a solution one princess came up with; when she was informed that the peasants had no bread, she replied: “Let them eat brioche,” and I began to buy brioche. But how many difficulties are there to arrange this! Leaving the house alone with this intention, I sometimes ran around the whole city, passing at least thirty pastry shops, before entering any of them.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau. "Confession".

Chronologically, the problem is that Marie Antoinette at that time (according to records - 1769) was still an unmarried princess and lived in her native Austria. She arrived in France only in 1770. As mentioned above, Rousseau did not indicate in his work specific name. Despite the phrase's current popularity, it was practically not used during the French Revolution.

The attribution of the phrase is also indicated by the fact that Marie Antoinette herself was involved in charity work and was sympathetic to the poor, and therefore this expression somewhat inconsistent with her character. At the same time, she loved a beautiful, extravagant life, which led to exhaustion royal treasury, for which the queen received the nickname "Madame Deficit".

Some sources attribute the authorship of the aphorism to another French queen- Maria Theresa, who pronounced it a hundred years before the wife of Louis XVI. In particular, the Count of Provence, who was not noticed in the ranks of zealous defenders of the honor of Marie Antoinette, speaks about this in his memoirs. Other memoirists of the 18th century name the daughters of Louis XV (Madame Sophia or Madame Victoria) as the authors.

Modern usage

This phrase is often used in modern media. Thus, American radio stations during the economic crisis of 2008-2009 played recordings in which they talked about tips for citizens on saving money, among which were a trip to Hawaii once a year for 7 days instead of twice for three or four days; a call to fill up with gasoline at night, when it is denser, and so on. In response, radio listeners began sending angry responses that many Americans had long been unable to afford a vacation at all, or had had their cars or even their homes taken away for debt, calling the radio station’s advice the modern equivalent of the phrase “cakes.”

In their notebooks writer L. Panteleev noted:

Marie Antoinette was accused of authoring the mocking phrase:
- If the people don’t have bread, let them eat cake.
But the author of this phrase is the people themselves. In the Novgorod village they say:
“There won’t be any bread, so we’ll eat gingerbread.”
And one more thing:
- What do we need bread for - if only we had pies.

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Characteristic passage If they don't have bread, let them eat cake!

“Eh bien, mon cher, votre petite princesse est tres bien, tres bien,” said the Viscount, getting into the carriage with Hippolyte. – Mais très bien. - He kissed the tips of his fingers. - Et tout a fait francaise. [Well, my dear, your little princess is very sweet! Very sweet and perfect Frenchwoman.]
Hippolytus snorted and laughed.
“Et savez vous que vous etes terrible avec votre petit air innocent,” continued the Viscount. – Je plains le pauvre Mariei, ce petit officier, qui se donne des airs de prince regnant.. [Do you know terrible person, despite your innocent appearance. I feel sorry for the poor husband, this officer, who pretends to be a sovereign person.]
Ippolit snorted again and said through his laughter:
– Et vous disiez, que les dames russes ne valaient pas les dames francaises. Il faut savoir s"y prendre. [And you said that Russian ladies are worse than French ones. You have to be able to take it on.]
Pierre, having arrived ahead, how home person, went into Prince Andrei’s office and immediately, out of habit, lay down on the sofa, took the first book he came across from the shelf (it was Caesar’s Notes) and began, leaning on his elbows, to read it from the middle.
-What did you do with m lle Scherer? “She’s going to be completely ill now,” said Prince Andrei, entering the office and rubbing his small, white hands.
Pierre turned his whole body so that the sofa creaked, turned his animated face to Prince Andrei, smiled and waved his hand.
- No, this abbot is very interesting, but he just doesn’t understand things that way... In my opinion, eternal peace possible, but I don’t know how to say it... But not by political balance...
Prince Andrei was apparently not interested in these abstract conversations.
- You can’t, mon cher, [my dear,] say everything you think everywhere. Well, have you finally decided to do something? Will you be a cavalry guard or a diplomat? – asked Prince Andrei after a moment of silence.
Pierre sat down on the sofa, tucking his legs under him.
– You can imagine, I still don’t know. I don't like either one.
- But you have to decide on something? Your father is waiting.
From the age of ten, Pierre was sent abroad with his tutor Abbot, where he stayed until he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow, his father released the abbot and said to the young man: “Now you go to St. Petersburg, look around and choose. I agree to everything. Here is a letter for you to Prince Vasily, and here is money for you. Write about everything, I will help you with everything.” Pierre had been choosing a career for three months and had done nothing. Prince Andrey told him about this choice. Pierre rubbed his forehead.
“But he must be a Mason,” he said, meaning the abbot whom he saw at the evening.
“All this is nonsense,” Prince Andrei stopped him again, “let’s talk about business.” Were you in the Horse Guards?...
- No, I wasn’t, but this is what came to my mind, and I wanted to tell you. Now the war is against Napoleon. If this were a war for freedom, I would understand, I would be the first to enter military service; but help England and Austria against greatest man in the world... this is not good...
Prince Andrei only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre's childish speeches. He pretended that such nonsense could not be answered; but really on this one naive question it was difficult to answer anything other than what Prince Andrei answered.
“If everyone fought only according to their convictions, there would be no war,” he said.
“That would be great,” said Pierre.
Prince Andrei grinned.
“It may very well be that it would be wonderful, but it will never happen...
- Well, why are you going to war? – asked Pierre.
- For what? I don't know. That's how it should be. Besides, I’m going... - He stopped. “I’m going because this life that I lead here, this life is not for me!”

IN next room a woman's dress rustled. As if waking up, Prince Andrei shook himself, and his face took on the same expression that it had in Anna Pavlovna’s living room. Pierre swung his legs off the sofa. The princess entered. She was already in a different, homely, but equally elegant and fresh dress. Prince Andrei stood up, politely moving a chair for her.
“Why, I often think,” she spoke, as always, in French, hastily and fussily sitting down in a chair, “why didn’t Annette get married?” How stupid you all are, messurs, for not marrying her. Excuse me, but you don’t understand anything about women. What a debater you are, Monsieur Pierre.
“I keep arguing with your husband too; I don’t understand why he wants to go to war,” said Pierre, without any embarrassment (so common in the relationship of a young man to a young woman) addressing the princess.

"No bread - let them eat cake", - Marie Antoinette exclaimed frivolously, demonstrating complete ignorance of the need in which the people live. And she paid for it with her life.

However the last queen France did not utter the famous aphorism, it was attributed to her. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who mentioned the episode in his “Confession,” can safely be considered a participant in the information war of that time.

« Marie Antoinette with her hand resting on the globe" (fragment), court artist Jean-Baptiste-André Gautier-Dagoty.

The French did not like the Austrian Marie Antoinette. Crude jokes were told about her and it was believed that the foreigner was indifferent to to the local population, does not know about the starving peasants and keeps the king under his thumb. In particular, they said that it was precisely this that was meant by the forerunner of the Great french revolution Jean-Jacques Rousseau, when he wrote in his “Confessions” (1776 - 1770) about a certain princess who, in response to the remark that the people had no bread, indifferently said: “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” ( Let them eat brioche).

Brioche- this is bread made from expensive flour. The replacement with cakes occurred later and not in France, but when the aphorism spread throughout the world.

Researchers of the phrase come to the conclusion that Marie Antoinette could hardly have been its author. If only because Rousseau made his entry a couple of years before 1770, when the Austrian princess came to Paris to get married and ascend the French throne.

In addition, Marie Antoinette herself was involved in charity work and was sympathetic to the poor. So the expression was somewhat inconsistent with her character.

But, as you know, the weapon of information wars is not the truth at all, but a plausible lie.

In February 1917, someone skillfully started a rumor about a catastrophic shortage of bread in Petrograd, which never happened - the interruptions were caused by disruption of the freight transportation schedule due to snow drifts. Bread riots that occurred in empty space, led to the abdication of the king from the throne.

Because of the rumor about Yanukovych’s golden toilet, a gullible and stupid crowd tore their own country to smithereens. But the toilet was never found.

Americans confidently told the world about weapons mass destruction in Iraq, and the world ceases to object to tearing a foreign country to smithereens. And again the search main reason the incursions prove futile.

There were also many rumors during the French Revolution. And one of them was supposed to turn the people against the queen, so that the beheading of a young beautiful woman would be perceived as fair retribution, not like too cruel punishment for sins, moreover, not committed. Not as a legalized murder, which, in fact, was what this execution was.

But in the case of the aphorism about expensive brioche instead of cheap bread, everything is even worse and more indecent. For if Marie Antoinette had even said so, it would have testified, rather, to her concern for the hungry, and not at all to the carelessness of a depraved queen who was far from the people. And here's why.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, unlike the mad crowd, could not help but know what the law of that time prescribed for French bakers sell brioche for the price of bread when it ended. And it was aimed specifically against food riots, since bakers preferred to bake expensive brioche in order to make more profit.

There is no frivolity in the phrase “Qu'ils mangent de la brioche” - it contains the bewilderment of a legally literate person who is well acquainted with the problem. Her real meaning can be phrased like this: “Why don’t people buy brioche when they run out of bread? No one should go hungry, because we passed a special law to force clever bakers to bake sufficient quantity bread."

Unfortunately, no one is interested in the truth during a blood-stirring rebellion, be it the Great French, the Great October revolution or Maidan. Information war XVIII centuries differ little from modern ones.

Of course, I haven't listed everything information wars who drove

“You know what, violin?
We are awfully similar:
me too
yell -
but I can’t prove anything!”
The musicians laugh:
“How stuck!
Came to the wooden bride!
Head!"
And I don’t care!
I am good.

V. Mayakovsky. “Violin and a little nervously”, 1914

The love story of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lily Brik is one of those stories that evoke a mixture of curiosity and bewilderment. There are many more questions here than answers. What epithets were not attached to the love that happened between Mayakovsky and Lilya Brik. Crazy, abnormal, sick, manic, depraved, and so on. But she was! And, perhaps, it was only thanks to her that Mayakovsky wrote his best poems, because almost all of them in the first years after meeting Lilya were dedicated to her. Their relationship was far from easy. These “sick” relationships helped the poet write and live so sincerely that more than one generation of people read his poems and wonder where these truly fantastic words came from, making hearts skip a beat with admiration. Lilya Brik was a kind of psychostimulant for V. Mayakovsky.

I often thought about whether another woman, not like Lilya Brik, could have become an inspiration for Mayakovsky. Complaisant, compliant, homely, someone next to whom he would simply feel good and comfortable, someone who would not impose conditions on him, would agree with him in everything. Definitely not. Mayakovsky needed passions. He spoke about this himself. In his understanding, love is the torment of jealousy, mistrust, constant worries and pain. This is how the poet understood love. Only Lilya could give him such a feeling. Every event that happens to us in life affects in one way or another how we become. Lilya was the most important “event” in Mayakovsky’s life. Thanks to her, he became a great poet.

When I read the correspondence between Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lilya Brik, I often caught myself thinking that I was indignant at the behavior of this woman. How could she treat Mayakovsky himself like that? She practically had him on a short leash. Many researchers of Mayakovsky’s work write that Lilya, having tied him to herself forever and basking in the rays of his glory, practically contributed to her immortality. Who would remember her if she were not Mayakovsky’s muse? She herself did nothing that could immortalize her in people's memory. But they write and talk about her almost more than about Mayakovsky himself. Could she have imagined this when she was in a relationship with him? Of course she could. However, we can only guess about Lily’s true motives. A person will not write about such things in any of his diaries. Lilya lived to be 74 years old, managed to write several books, leave behind numerous interviews, diaries and memoirs, but I am sure this woman took her most intimate things with her.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky.

1912

The relationship "Lilya - Osip - Vladimir" even for the glorious love experiments of the early twentieth century seemed unhealthy. Lily's mother, accustomed to her daughter's rebellion, still did not recognize this union.

Lilya and Vladimir Mayakovsky met when Lilya was already married. This did not stop them from starting an affair, and even living together in the same apartment.

There is no doubt that both Lilya Brik and Vladimir Mayakovsky were extraordinary personalities. Both aroused genuine interest in the opposite sex and had free views on issues of love. Mayakovsky's behavior was shocking, defiant, impudent. Perhaps this was precisely his winning trick in relationships with women. Lilya was quite liberated sexually. But for that time it was normal, because it was then that the sexual revolution took place. At the beginning of the twentieth century, attitudes toward sex were so free that, according to one writer, educated women could recall a love affair with the same disdain as a “casual acquaintance” or the menu at a restaurant where they dined.”

Once, when Lilya and Osip were in Turkmenistan, they went into a brothel in Samarkand. Here is what Lilya wrote about her impressions after this visit:

“This street is all lit up with colorful lanterns, women are sitting on the terraces, mostly Tatar women play instruments like mandolins and guitars. Quiet and no drunks. We went to the most famous and richest. She lives with her old mother. In the bedroom there are ropes under the low ceiling, and all her silk dresses hang on the ropes. Everything is oriental, except in the middle of the room there is a double nickel-plated bed.

She received us in the Sart style. The low table is filled with fruits and various sweets on countless plates, and the tea is green. The musicians came, squatted down and began to play, and our hostess danced. Her dress is gray to the toes, the sleeves are so long that you can’t even see her hands, and the collar is closed, but when she began to move, it turned out that one collar was buttoned, the dress was cut almost to the knees, and there was no fastener. There is nothing on under the dress, and at the slightest movement a naked body flashes.”

While Osip served in the automobile company, Lily was bored. She walked around the city all day long.

“Once, during a walk, she ran into two young people from the Moscow elite and went with them to an operetta. Then they continued the evening in a restaurant, where they drank a lot of wine, Lily got drunk and talked about her and Osip’s adventures in a Parisian brothel. Her companions offered to show her a similar establishment in Petrograd, and the next morning she woke up in a room with a huge bed, a mirror on the ceiling, carpets and drawn curtains - she spent the night in famous house dates in Aptekarsky Lane. Having hastily returned home, she told Osip about everything, who calmly said that she needed to take a bath and forget about everything.” 1
B. Youngfeldt “I am not enough for me”, 2012

If Osip, thanks to his character, was completely calm about the past of his wife Lily, about all her casual connections and novels, with Mayakovsky everything was not so simple. He was terribly jealous. All his poems of 1915–1916 are literally imbued with a painful feeling of jealousy.

V.V. Katanyan in his book about Lilya Brik writes:

“One day he asked me to tell him about her wedding night. She refused for a long time, but he insisted so furiously that she gave in. She knew she shouldn't tell him about this, but she didn't have the strength to fight his insistence. She didn't imagine that he could be jealous of something that happened in the past, before they met. But he rushed out of the room and ran out into the street, sobbing. And, as always, what shocked him was reflected in poetry":

No.
This is not true.
No!
and you?
Darling,
for what,
for what?!
Fine -
I walked
I gave flowers
I didn’t steal the silver spoons from the box!
White,
staggered from the fifth floor.
The wind burned my cheeks.
The street swirled, squealing and neighing.
Lustfully he climbed horn on horn.
Raised above the bustle of the capital's stupor
strict -
ancient icons -
brow
On your body - like on your deathbed -
heart
days
cum.
You didn’t get your hands dirty in brutal murder.
You
only dropped:
"In a soft bed
He,
fruits,
wine on the palm of the night table.”
Love!
Only in mine
inflamed
the brain was you!
Stop the stupid comedy!
Look -
tearing off toys-armor
I,
the greatest Don Quixote!

Both Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lilya Brik were very impressive. People liked them and literally attracted them to them with their charm.

There is not a single gray hair in my soul, and there is no senile tenderness in it! Having enlarged the world with the power of my voice, I walk – a handsome, twenty-two-year-old.

"Cloud in Pants"

This is how Sonya Shamardina describes Mayakovsky, whom she met in 1913, when Vladimir was 20 years old:

“Tall, strong, confident, handsome. Still youthful, slightly angular shoulders, and slanting fathoms in the shoulders. The characteristic movement of the shoulders is skewed - one shoulder suddenly rises higher and then the truth is an oblique fathom.

A large, manly mouth with an almost constant cigarette, moving first to one corner of the mouth, then to the other. Rarely - his short laugh.

I was not disturbed in his appearance rotten teeth. On the contrary, it seemed that this especially emphasized his inner image, his “own beauty.”

Especially when he - impudent, with calm contempt for the street bourgeois audience waiting for scandals - read his poems: “But still”, “Could you?”, He was handsome. Sometimes he asked: “I’m beautiful, aren’t I?”

His yellow one warm color sweater. And the other is black and yellow stripes. Shiny back trousers with fringes. Hands in pockets...

He loved his voice, and often, when he read for himself, he felt that he was listening to himself and was pleased: “Isn’t that a good voice?.. I’ll make myself black trousers from the velvet of my voice.” voice".

This is what Maria Nikiforovna Burliuk wrote 2
Maria Nikiforovna Burliuk – (1894–1967) pianist, publisher and collector. D. Burliuk's wife

About Mayakovsky, with whom she had a chance to communicate in September 1911:

“Mayakovsky of those distant years was very picturesque. He was wearing a black velvet jacket with a fold-down collar. The neck was tied with a black foulard tie; the crumpled bow became shaggy; Volodya Mayakovsky's pockets were always bulging with boxes of cigarettes and matches.

Mayakovsky was tall, with a slightly sunken chest, with long arms, ending in large tassels, red from the cold; the young man's head was crowned with thick black hair, which he began to cut much later; with yellow cheeks, his face is burdened with a large mouth, greedy for kisses, jam and tobacco, covered with large lips; the lower one was crooked during the conversation left side. This gave his speech, outwardly, the character of mockery and impudence. In the young man’s mouth even then there was no “beauty of youth”, no white teeth, and when talking and smiling, only the brown, corroded remains of crooked nail-shaped roots were visible. V. Mayakovsky's lips were always tightly compressed.

Determination, perseverance, unwillingness to compromise, agreement. White bubbles of saliva often swelled in the corners of the mouth. In those years of extreme poverty, the poet had holes in the corners of his mouth.

He was a young man of eighteen years old, with a forehead line that was stubborn and defied the skills of centuries. The extraordinary in him struck immediately; extraordinary cheerfulness and together, side by side - in Mayakovsky there was great contempt for philistinism; scorching wit; being with him, it seemed as if you had stepped onto the deck of a ship and were sailing to the shores of the unknown.

Because of his hat pulled down to his demonic eyebrows, his eyes inquisitively pierced into those he met, and their displeasure in return interested the young man. - What are the impudent, tabloid-night eyes of the young apache looking at!.. And Mayakovsky looked back at the figures disappearing into the night.

It is difficult to say whether people (little people never) loved Vladimir Mayakovsky... In general, only those who knew, understood, unraveled, and embraced his enormous, overflowing personality loved him. And very few were capable of this: Mayakovsky “easily” did not give in.

Mayakovsky the young man loved people more than they loved him.”

And here's how Lili describes her sister Elsa 3
Elsa Triolet - (1896–1967) younger sister of L. Brik, French writer, translator. Laureate of the Prix Goncourt, wife of L. Aragon.

“She had a big mouth with perfect teeth and shiny skin that seemed to glow from within. She had graceful breasts, rounded hips, long legs and very small hands and feet. She had nothing to hide, she could walk around naked, every part of her body was worthy of admiration. However, she loved to walk completely naked; she was devoid of embarrassment. Later, when she was getting ready for the ball, my mother and I loved to watch her get dressed, putting on her underwear, silk stockings, silver shoes and a purple dress with a square neckline. I was speechless with delight looking at her.”

And this is how the ballerina Alexandra Dorinskaya saw Lilya in 1914:

“Average height, thin, fragile, she was the personification of femininity. Her hair was combed smoothly, parted in the middle, with a braid curled low at the back of her head, shining with the natural gold of her glorified... “red hair.” Her eyes... were brown and kind; a rather large mouth, beautifully contoured and brightly painted, revealing smooth, pleasant teeth when he smiled. Pale, narrow, typically feminine hands, with only one wedding ring on the finger, and small graceful legs, dressed with delicate taste, like all of her, in a skillful combination of fashion requirements with an individual approach to it. A defect in Lily Yuryevna’s appearance could be considered a somewhat large head and a rather heavy lower part of her face, but perhaps this had its own special charm in her appearance, very far from classical beauty.”

The incredible charm of Lily Brik is evidenced by one interesting fact. In 1924, Mayakovsky had an affair with Natalya Ryabova in Kyiv. It is quite natural that the girl felt an absent hostility towards Lilya Brik. After the death of Mayakovsky, Natalya Ryabova did not want to communicate with Lilya, considering her guilty of the poet’s tragedy. While working on preparing the collected works of Mayakovsky, she set a condition - no communication with Lilya. However, the meeting still took place, and after the first conversation Natalya Fedorovna fell under the charm of her former rival. They remained friends until the end of their lives. N. Ryabova dedicated her memories of Mayakovsky to Lila.

Lilya Yurievna Brik. 1914

And here is what Galina Katanyan, a woman whose husband left her in 1938 because of Lily, said about Lila Brik:

“I was twenty-three years old when I saw her for the first time. She is thirty-nine.

That day she had such a tic that she kept a bone spoon in her mouth to stop her teeth from chattering. The first impression is that she is very eccentric and at the same time very “ladylike”, sleek, sophisticated and – my God! - Yes, she’s ugly! Too big a head, a stooped back and that terrible tic...

But after a second I didn’t remember about it. She smiled at me, and my whole face seemed to flash with this smile, lit up from the inside. I saw a lovely mouth with large almond-shaped teeth, shining, warm, hazel eyes. Gracefully shaped hands, small legs. Everything is somehow golden and white-pink.

She had “a charm that binds you from the first time,” as Leo Tolstoy wrote about someone in one of his letters.

If she wanted to captivate someone, she achieved it very easily. And she wanted to please everyone - young, old, women, children... It was in her blood.

And I liked it<…>

I once loved her very much.

Then she hated it as only a woman can hate a woman.”

In order to better understand Lily’s magical effect on men, I will give statements about her from her male contemporaries.

“She knew how to be sad, capricious, feminine, proud, empty, fickle, smart and whatever,” recalled one of her contemporaries.

And here are the notes from N. N. Punin’s diary:

Her pupils turn into eyelashes and darken with excitement; she has solemn eyes; there is something impudent and sweet in her face with painted lips and dark eyelids, she is silent and never finishes... Her husband left her with dry self-confidence, and Mayakovsky left her with downtroddenness...

...If you lose one beautiful woman, with such dark and large eyes, with such a beautiful trembling mouth, with such a light step, so sweet and languishing, so necessary and so unacceptable, just as the conditions of the world are unacceptable - it will become easy to give yourself to all the things and all the people that you no longer value "

The acquaintance of Mayakovsky and Lily Brik began due to the fact that Mayakovsky courted her sister Elsa for some time. He visited her house, knew her parents and horrified them with his futuristic antics. Lila was 13 years old at the time.

This is what Lilya Brik herself writes about her first acquaintance with Vladimir Mayakovsky in her memoirs:

“My sister Elsa introduced me to Mayakovsky in 1915, in the summer in Malakhovka. We sat with her and Leva Grinkrug in the evening on a bench near the dacha.

The light of a cigarette. Quiet gentle bass:

- Elik! I'm behind you. Shall we go for a walk?

We remained sitting on the bench.

A group of summer residents passed by. It started to rain. Country rain, quiet, rustling. Why isn’t Elya coming?! Our father is mortally ill. You can't go home without her. Where, and with whom, and again with this futurist, but it will end badly...

We sit like damned people, covered with coats. Half an hour, an hour... It’s good that the rain is not heavy, and the bad thing is that you can’t notice it in the forest, under the trees. You may not notice both the rain and the time.

Boring rain! No light! It’s a pity, it’s dark, I couldn’t see Mayakovsky. Huge, it seems. And the voice is beautiful."

The next meeting, with which the love story between Mayakovsky and Lily Brik began, took place in July 1915 at the Briks’ apartment in Petrograd. Lilya was already married. At that time, Lily (in fact, Mayakovsky’s beloved was called exactly that - Lily, the poet himself began to call her Lily) was 24 years old.

Mayakovsky himself wrote about the day he met Lilya in his autobiography: “A most joyful date. July 915. I’m meeting L.Yu. and O.M. Briks.”

Lily's father died. She came from Moscow to St. Petersburg from the funeral, and Vladimir Mayakovsky had just returned from Finland. When he came to the Briks' house, he was not at all the same as Lilya remembered him from her first meeting. There was no swagger left in him. This was a completely different person. And that evening he read “Cloud in Pants.” He read it so that everyone listened with bated breath. And he “complained, was indignant, mocked, demanded, fell into hysterics, paused between parts.” Lilya writes in her memoirs: “We were stunned. This was what we had been waiting for for so long. Lately couldn't read anything. All the poetry seemed worthless - they wrote the wrong way and the wrong thing, and then suddenly this and that...

O.M. asked where the poem would be published, and was violently indignant when he found out that no one wanted to publish it. How much does it cost to print it yourself? Mayakovsky ran to the nearest printing house and found out that a thousand copies would cost (as far as I remember) 150 rubles, and the money would not be paid immediately, but could be paid in installments. Osip Maksimovich handed Mayakovsky the first installment and said that he would get the rest. Mayakovsky took the manuscript to the printing house...

From that day on, Osya fell in love with Volodya, began to waddle, spoke in a deep voice and wrote poems that ended like this:

I'll die whenever I want
And to the list of voluntary victims
I will enter the last name, first name, patronymic
And the day on which I will be dead.
I'll pay debts to all the stores,
I'll buy the latest almanac
And I will wait for my ordered coffin,
Reading "A Cloud in Your Pants."

Being quite wealthy business person, Osip Maksimovich Brik saw in young man poetic talent and became interested in it. The poem "Cloud in Pants" was published with Axis money. The dedication to the poem is short: “To you, Lilya.” From then on, Mayakovsky dedicated all his works to Lilya Brik; Later, in 1928, with the publication of the first collected works, V. Mayakovsky dedicated all his works to her until 1915, the year they met. The dedication at the collected works will be even more laconic and very “Mayakovian”: “L.Y.B.”

The acquaintance that took place in July 1915 grew into friendship, and soon Vladimir Mayakovsky became a regular guest in the Brikov house. They were fascinated by his work, and he finally and irrevocably fell in love with Lilya.

From left to right: Lily's younger sister Elsa, Osip Brik, Lilya Brik

The story of Mayakovsky and Lily is a love story for three. I note that in the preface to the second edition of her memoirs, Lilya Brik wrote: “To avoid misunderstandings, I will say that I more than a year She was not the wife of O. Brik when she connected her life with Mayakovsky. There could be no talk of any “menage a trois”. When I told Brik that Vladimir Vladimirovich and I fell in love with each other, he replied: I understand you, but let’s never part with you. I am writing this so that everything that follows is clear.”

There are many examples of tripartite love unions in history, but this one is perhaps the most controversial. How could two men, two rivals, whose object of adoration was the same woman, live peacefully with each other? Moreover, they not only tolerated each other - they had a much warmer relationship than even simple friendship. In their letters Mayakovsky and Osip Brik call each other kind words, endlessly hug each other and kiss. What's the secret? It seems to me that the answer lies in these confession lines from Lily Brik: “I love him<Осю>since childhood. He is inseparable from me.<…>This love did not interfere with my love for Volodya. On the contrary, if it weren’t for Osya, I wouldn’t love Volodya so much. I couldn’t help but love Volodya if Osya loved him so much. He said that Volodya was not a person for him, but an event. Volodya largely restructured Osino’s thinking and took him with him into his life path and I don't know anymore true friend friend, more loving friends and comrades” (L. Brik. “Biased Stories”). V.V. Katanyan wrote about this: “This recognition of Lyu always caused shock among those around her, but did not embarrass her at all. There was a feeling that she even flaunted this absolutely sincere and unshakable confession.”

It seems to me that to understand the relationship between Lilya Brik and Vladimir Mayakovsky, you need to know the history of the relationship between Lily and Osip. Lily started dating Osip when she was thirteen and he was sixteen years old. Osip studied at the 3rd Moscow gymnasium and was the dream of all schoolgirls; his name was carved on school desks. Young Lily Kagan made a deep impression on Osip. “Osya started calling me on the phone,” Lily said. – I was at their Christmas tree. Osya accompanied me home and on the way, in a cab, suddenly asked: Don’t you think, Lilya, that there is something more between us than friendship? It seemed to me that I just hadn’t thought about it, but I really liked the wording, and out of surprise I answered: “Yes, it seems.” After meeting for some time, Osip realized that he was mistaken in the strength of his feelings, and they parted. Then the relationship resumed. “I wanted to be with him every minute,” Lilya wrote, and did “everything that a 17-year-old boy should have seemed vulgar and sentimental: when Osya sat on the window, I immediately found myself in a chair at his feet, on the sofa I sat next to him.” and took him by the hand. He jumped up, walked around the room, and only once in the entire time, for? year, Osya must have kissed me somehow funny, on the neck, topsy-turvy.”