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Abstract:

For the Russian émigrés Mayakovsky was an iconic figure as a poet who put his art at the service of the Soviet regime. This position caused the refusal to recognize his outstanding contribution to literature. The tragic death aroused a new interest in the poet’s heritage and a desire to evaluate it impartially. For example, in Berlin the book “The Death of Vladimir Mayakovsky” was published, which included one of the versions of the poem “150,000,000” and articles by R. Jakobson and D. Svyatopolk-Mirsky. The response to this publication was an article “The Dispute about Mayakovsky” by A. Bem, who noted that the assessment of Mayakovsky after his death should have been approached more objectively, but politics somehow interfered with any assessment of him. According to Bem, Jakobson’s article is one of the best works dedicated to the poet, while Svyatopolk- Mirsky’s article does not deserve high praise. Jakobson considers Mayakovsky’s death a manifestation of misunderstanding by society in which he perceives the similarity between the fates of Mayakovsky and Pushkin. For the marxist Svyatopolk-Mirsky the deaths of both poets were a direct consequence of their inability to capture the spirit of the times. For Bem, who led the Prague association “Skete”, the defense of Mayakovsky’s work from a narrow political assessment was also of particular importance because he saw the mood of “decadence” in Parisian émigré poetry, reproaching its representatives for ignoring Russian Futurism. On the other hand, the Prague poets chose a different path having passed in their creative development through the experience of Mayakovsky, Yesenin, Pasternak.