The tobacco smoke has eaten away from the air.
Room -
chapter in Kruchenykhov's hell.
Remember -
outside this window
first
In a frenzy, he stroked your hands.
Today you are sitting here,
heart in iron.
It's still a day -
you'll kick me out
maybe by scolding.
Won't fit in the muddy hallway for a long time
hand broken by trembling into sleeve.
I'll run out
I'll throw the body into the street.
Wild,
I'll go crazy
cut off by despair.
Don't need this
Expensive,
good,
let's say goodbye now.
Doesn't matter
My love -
it's a heavy weight -
hangs on you
wherever I would run.
Let me cry out in my last cry
the bitterness of offended complaints.
If a bull is killed by labor -
he will leave
will lie down in the cold waters.
Except your love,
to me
there is no sea,
and you can’t beg your love for rest even with tears.
A tired elephant wants peace -
the royal one will lie down in the fried sand.
Except your love,
to me
there is no sun
and I don’t even know where you are or with whom.
If only I had tormented the poet like that,
He
I would trade my beloved for money and fame,
and for me
not a single joyful ringing,
except the ringing of your favorite name.
And I won’t throw myself into the air,
and I won’t drink poison,
and I won’t be able to pull the trigger above my temple.
Above me
except your glance,
the blade of no knife has power.
Tomorrow you'll forget
that he crowned you,
that he burned out a blossoming soul with love,
and the hectic days of the swept up carnival
will ruffle the pages of my books...
Are my words dry leaves?
will make you stop
panting greedily?
Give me at least
cover with the last tenderness
your leaving step.
Analysis of the poem “Lilychka!” Mayakovsky
V. Mayakovsky is a separate figure, completely unlike anyone else among Russian poets. All his work was vulgarly original and extremely sincere. Fascinated by the fashionable futurist movement, the poet fully accepted its laws and rules for the creation and construction of poems. Moreover, he boldly broke not only standard stereotypes, but also the framework of futurism itself. Nevertheless, Mayakovsky differed sharply from most of the mediocre representatives of the avant-garde. His poems shocked his contemporaries, but with deep analysis they revealed to readers the real inner world of the poet, his vulnerability and sensitivity.
There were many women in Mayakovsky's life, but he truly loved only one. Lilya Brik became his constant muse; he dedicated his lyric poems to her. The woman was a supporter of free love. Mayakovsky also adhered to “advanced” views. But in this case, human nature did not stand the test of passion. The poet fell hopelessly in love, which cannot be said about Lila. Mayakovsky suffered unbearably from jealousy and created loud scenes. In 1916 he wrote the poem “Lilychka!” It is noteworthy that the woman was in the same room with him at that time.
The work represents a passionate appeal of the lyrical hero to his beloved. Its distinctive feature is the description of a strong love feeling using rough language. This immediately introduces a huge contrast into the content. At all times, poets and writers have depicted love through bright, joyful images. Even jealousy and melancholy were significantly softened with the help of special expressive means. Mayakovsky cuts from the shoulder: “heart in iron”, “my love is a heavy weight”, “howl out bitterness”. A few positive epithets and phrases (“blooming soul”, “last tenderness”) seem to be the exception to the rule.
All the canons of futurism are present: the construction of verse with a “ladder”, torn and imprecise rhyme, an infinite number of neologisms (“kruchenykhovsky”, “fired”) and deliberately distorted words (“going mad”, “dissected”). Mayakovsky uses the most incredible word constructions: “a hand broken by trembling,” “I’ll throw my body into the street.” The lyrical hero compares himself to both a bull and an elephant. To enhance the effect, the author introduces a detailed description of methods of suicide, after which he admits that this is not a solution, since death will forever deprive him of the opportunity to at least see his beloved. In general, the work has the highest possible emotional intensity. It is interesting that with such frenzy, Mayakovsky never uses an exclamation mark (except for the title itself).
The poem “Lilychka!” - an example of love lyrics not only by Mayakovsky, but also by all Russian futurism.
“Lilichka!” Vladimir Mayakovsky
Instead of a letter
The tobacco smoke has eaten away from the air.
Room -
chapter in Kruchenykhov's hell.
Remember -
outside this window
first
In a frenzy, he stroked your hands.
Today you are sitting here,
heart in iron.
It's still a day -
you'll kick me out
maybe by scolding.
Won't fit in the muddy hallway for a long time
hand broken by trembling into sleeve.
I'll run out
I'll throw the body into the street.
Wild,
I'll go crazy
cut off by despair.
Don't need this
Expensive,
good,
let's say goodbye now.
Doesn't matter
My love -
it's a heavy weight -
hangs on you
wherever I would run.
Let me cry out in my last cry
the bitterness of offended complaints.
If a bull is killed by labor -
he will leave
will lie down in the cold waters.
Except your love,
to me
there is no sea,
and you can’t beg your love for rest even with tears.
A tired elephant wants peace -
the royal one will lie down in the fried sand.
Except your love,
to me
there is no sun
and I don’t even know where you are or with whom.
If only I had tormented the poet like that,
He
I would trade my beloved for money and fame,
and for me
not a single joyful ringing,
except the ringing of your favorite name.
And I won’t throw myself into the air,
and I won’t drink poison,
and I won’t be able to pull the trigger above my temple.
Above me
except your glance,
the blade of no knife has power.
Tomorrow you'll forget
that he crowned you,
that he burned out a blossoming soul with love,
and the hectic days of the swept up carnival
will ruffle the pages of my books...
Are my words dry leaves?
will make you stop
panting greedily?Give me at least
cover with the last tenderness
your leaving step.
Analysis of Mayakovsky's poem "Lilichka!"
The poet Vladimir Mayakovsky experienced many whirlwind romances during his life, changing women like gloves. However, his true muse for many years remained Lilya Brik, a representative of Moscow bohemia, who was fond of sculpture, painting, literature and foreign translations.
Mayakovsky's relationship with Lilya Brik was quite complex and uneven. The poet's chosen one preferred free love, believing that marriage kills feelings. However, literally from the first days of their acquaintance, she became an ideal woman for the poet, to whom he dedicated his poem on the very first evening. Subsequently, there were a great many such dedications, but the most striking of them is rightfully considered the poem-letter “Lilichka!”, created in 1916. It is noteworthy that it was written at a time when the poet’s muse was in the same room with him. However, Mayakovsky chose not to express his thoughts and feelings out loud, committing them to paper.
The poem begins with a description of a smoky room, which became a short-term refuge for Mayakovsky. Lilya Brik filmed it with her brother, and the poet often lived with them for a long time. Mayakovsky’s friends even jokingly called such relationships “threesome love.” Indeed, the author of the romantic and bitterness-filled poem “Lilichka!” was madly in love with his muse. And although at first she reciprocated his feelings, over time the poet’s ardent passion turned into a burden for her. Realizing this, Mayakovsky, who subtly sensed the change in his beloved’s mood, in his appeal-letter asks that she not kick him out just because she is in a bad mood - “a heart in iron.” Apparently, a similar scene was repeated more than once, so Mayakovsky knows exactly how events will develop. “I’ll run out, throw my body into the street, wild, go crazy, cut off by despair,” the poet experienced such feelings more than once. To avoid a humiliating scene, Mayakovsky turns to Lilya Brik with the words: “Let us say goodbye now.” He no longer wants to torment his beloved, and is unable to endure her ridicule, coldness and indifference. The poet’s only desire at this moment is “to roar out the bitterness of offended complaints in the last cry.”
With inherent imagery, playing with every word, Mayakovsky tries to prove his love to Lilya Brik, claiming that this feeling is complete and undivided. But there is even more jealousy in the author’s soul, which makes him suffer every minute and at the same time hate himself. “Besides your love, I have no sun, and I don’t even know where you are or with whom,” the poet asserts.
Reflecting on the current situation, Mayakovsky in the poem tries on various methods of suicide, but understands that his feelings are much higher and stronger than voluntary departure from life. After all, then he will forever lose his muse, for whose sake he “burned out a soul blooming with love.” But, at the same time, the poet is also clearly aware that next to his chosen one he can never be truly happy. And Lilya Brik is not ready to belong entirely to him alone; she is not created for a boring and routine family life. Of course, Mayakovsky still hopes in his heart that perhaps this touching and sensual poem-letter will help change everything. However, he understands with his mind that he has no chance of reciprocity, so his last request is “to line your departing step with the last tenderness.”
The poem “Lilychka!” was written about a year after Brik and Mayakovsky met. However, their strange and sometimes even absurd relationship lasted until the poet’s death. The author of this work fell in love and broke up with women, after which he returned again to Lilya Brik, unable to forget the one who became the main character of his lyrical works.
Vladimir Mayakovsky poetry
Anthology of Russian poetry
LILYCHKA!
"Instead of a letter"
The tobacco smoke has eaten away from the air.
The room is a chapter in Kruchenykhov’s hell.
Remember - behind this window for the first time
In a frenzy, he stroked your hands.
Today you sit here, your heart is in iron.
One more day - you will be kicked out, maybe scolded.
Won't fit in the muddy hallway for a long time
A hand broken into a sleeve by trembling.
I’ll run out and throw the body into the street.
Wild, I’ll go crazy, cut off by despair.
Don't do this, my dear, good one,
Let's say goodbye now.
All the same, my love is a heavy weight,
Hangs on you wherever you run.
Let me cry out in my last cry
The bitterness of offended complaints.
If a bull is killed by labor -
He will leave and lie down in the cold waters.
There is no sea for me except your love,
And you can’t beg your love for rest even by crying.
A tired elephant wants peace -
The royal one will lie down in the fried sand.
Apart from your love, I have no sun,
And I don’t even know where you are or with whom.
If only I had tormented the poet like that,
He would exchange his beloved for money and fame,
And not a single ringing makes me happy,
except the ringing of your favorite name.
And I won’t throw myself into the air, and I won’t drink poison,
And I won’t be able to pull the trigger above my temple.
Above me, except for your gaze,
The blade of no knife has power.
Tomorrow you will forget that I crowned you,
That I burned out a blossoming soul with love,
and the hectic days of the swept up carnival
Will ruffle the pages of my books...
Are my words dry leaves?
Will they force you to stop, breathing greedily?
Let me at least cover you with the last tenderness
Your leaving step.
Read by Alexander Lazarev
The famous Russian actor Lazarev Alexander Sergeevich (senior) was born on January 3, 1938 in Leningrad. After graduating from high school, he entered the Moscow Art Theater School. Since 1959 - actor at the Moscow Academic Theater named after Vl. Mayakovsky, where he served until the end of his days. During his creative life, the actor played more than 70 film roles.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (July 7 (19), 1893, Baghdadi, Kutaisi province - April 14, 1930, Moscow) - Russian Soviet poet.
In addition to poetry, he clearly distinguished himself as a playwright, screenwriter, film director, film actor, artist, editor of the magazines “LEF” (“Left Front”), “New LEF”.
In his works, Mayakovsky was uncompromising, and therefore inconvenient. In the works he wrote in the late 1920s, tragic motifs began to appear. Critics called him only a “fellow traveler” and not the “proletarian writer” that he wanted to see himself. It is important that two days before his suicide, on April 12, he had a meeting with readers at the Polytechnic Museum, which was attended mainly by Komsomol members; there were a lot of boorish shouts from the seats. At some point, he even lost his composure and sat down on the steps leading from the stage, putting his head in his hands.
In his suicide letter dated April 12, Mayakovsky asks Lilya to love him, names her (as well as Veronica Polonskaya) among his family members and asks all the poems and archives to be handed over to the Briks.
An uncompromising fighter for communist ideals, a tribune of the revolution - this is how Vladimir Mayakovsky is seen in the minds of many modern readers. And there are good reasons for this - in the poet’s creative heritage, a significant share is occupied by patriotic works, combining harsh criticism of enemies and undisguised pathos. Against such a background, the lyrical masterpiece “Lilichka!” shines especially brightly. Instead of a letter." Like no other work by Mayakovsky, it reveals his true, vulnerable, loving soul.
Echo of wild love
The creation of the poem was preceded by a meeting between Vladimir Mayakovsky and a woman who became his lyrical muse and the main love of his life. In the hot summer of 1915, Mayakovsky's fiancée Elsa brought him to visit her sister Lily, who was married to Osip Brik. Lily was not distinguished by her beauty - some contemporaries even saw her as a monster. However, she had a hypnotic, almost mystical effect on men. Today, psychologists explain this feature of Brick as her hypersexuality.
Photographs serve as indirect confirmation - without hesitation, she posed naked in front of the lens. The fate of the victim of a femme fatale did not spare Mayakovsky. He falls in love with Lily at first sight and can no longer leave her. In the fall, he moves to a new place of residence - closer to Brik’s apartment and introduces the couple to his literary friends.
A kind of salon arises, where the creative “cream of society” gathers, and Mayakovsky gets the much-desired opportunity to regularly see Lily. The presence of a spouse does not interfere with the development of a whirlwind romance. To imagine what kind of torment Mayakovsky endured while in this still classic love triangle, you can jump ahead and draw parallels with the subsequent period of “life together.”
In 1918, Mayakovsky could not stand the intensity of his feelings and turned to Lily and Osip with a request to accept him into their family. Disregarding all moral norms, the couple agreed. Subsequently, Lily convinced those around her that she lived with her legal husband under the same roof only out of pity for him, and was devoted to Mayakovsky in soul and body. However, this was not the case.
From Lily’s memoirs it follows that she made love with her legal husband, and Volodya was locked in the kitchen during this time. Screaming, crying and scratching the door, he tried to break through to them...
Lily did not see anything wrong with Mayakovsky’s love suffering and believed that it was after such shocks that brilliant works were born. Probably something similar happened in May 1916, when in the poem “Lilichka!” Mayakovsky splashed out all the storm of his emotions. Moreover, at the time of the creation of the masterpiece, the lovers were in the same room.
Outside the rules
Having exhausted verbal convincing of the sincerity of his feelings, Mayakovsky turns to his beloved in poetic form. If adherents of romanticism even depict unhappy love with the help of bright images, then the avant-garde artist Mayakovsky uses completely different techniques. Despite the gentle title, in the poem itself the poet expresses his feelings with rough, contrasting epithets.
His words rumble like rockfall and clang like iron. He compares his feelings with a heavy weight, feels that his heart is chained in iron. Love for him is bitterness that can only be “howled out.” Some refined epithets, speaking of a blossoming soul and tenderness, only emphasize the rudeness of other phrases.
Like most of Mayakovsky’s works, “Lilichka!” written according to the canons of futurism, the main one of which is the rejection of all the usual canons. And this seems symbolic.
Disregarding the traditions of marital relationships, choosing free love, Mayakovsky uses equally free and unconventional tools to reflect his feelings. Their dissimilarity, non-standardity, uniqueness is emphasized by a multitude of distorted words and neologisms: burnt, twisted, cut off, I’ll go crazy...
Already during the creation of the poem, Mayakovsky sees a way out of the confusing love triangle in his suicide. But he immediately refuses death, which will not allow him to even just see the woman he loves. In terms of its emotional intensity, “Lilichka!” has no equal. At the same time, the genius manages to express extreme passion by using an exclamation point only once - in the title.
Path to the reader
The first publication of the poem took place in 1934 - only 4 years after the death of the author. Lily Brik's non-trivial behavior was the reason for subsequent censorship bans, which were in effect until the end of the Soviet era. Only in 1984, in Chelyabinsk, another collection was published, including the poem “Lilychka!”
The lyrical masterpiece also inspired composers - the music for it was written by Vladimir Mulyavin and Alexander Vasiliev. Combining immense melancholy and undisguised despair, touching tenderness and sentimentality, Mayakovsky’s frank confessions allow us today, almost tactilely, on a physical level, to feel how strong and tragic his love was.
BONUS
Few people know about Mayakovsky’s Parisian muse Tatyana Yakovleva and that.
Lilichka!
Instead of a letter
The tobacco smoke has eaten away from the air.
Room -
chapter in Kruchenykhov's hell.
Remember -
outside this window
first
In a frenzy, he stroked your hands.
Today you are sitting here,
heart in iron.
It's still a day -
you'll kick me out
maybe by scolding.
Won't fit in the muddy hallway for a long time
hand broken by trembling into sleeve.
I'll run out
I'll throw the body into the street.
Wild,
I'll go crazy
cut off by despair.
Don't need this
Expensive,
good,
let's say goodbye now.
Doesn't matter
My love -
it's a heavy weight -
hangs on you
wherever I would run.
Let me cry out in my last cry
the bitterness of offended complaints.
If a bull is killed by labor -
he will leave
will lie down in the cold waters.
Except your love,
to me
there is no sea,
and you can’t beg your love for rest even with tears.
A tired elephant wants peace -
the royal one will lie down in the fried sand.
Except your love,
to me
there is no sun
and I don’t even know where you are or with whom.
If only I had tormented the poet like that,
He
I would trade my beloved for money and fame,
and for me
not a single joyful ringing,
except the ringing of your favorite name.
And I won’t throw myself into the air,
and I won’t drink poison,
and I won’t be able to pull the trigger above my temple.
Above me
except your glance,
the blade of no knife has power.
Tomorrow you'll forget
that he crowned you,
that he burned out a blossoming soul with love,
and the hectic days of the swept up carnival
will ruffle the pages of my books...
Are my words dry leaves?
will make you stop
panting greedily?
Give me at least
cover with the last tenderness
your leaving step.
