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Abstract:

The article considers the phenomenon of love and relations between the sexes in the work of V. Mayakovsky through the prism of the complex of Wilde’s motives in the poem About That. Life and works of O. Wilde, perceived in the light of the ideas of suffering and total aestheticism, were in this period close to Mayakovsky’s life-creating myth. The poet imposes the Wilde’s “filter” on his own life situation, using it to translate the facts of reality into literature. The motives of the letter-diary of Mayakovsky written in the period of creating the poem About That and a letter by O. Wilde to A. Douglas De Profundis, written during the poet’s imprisonment in Reading Gaol, are compared. The article contains the analysis of Wilde’s ideology of aestheticism and Mayakovsky’s provocative manner of behavior in the period of early futurism. It is shown that the search for the foundations for building more perfect relationship between the sexes is related in both writers to the reflection of the masculine and the feminine in a person. Sensitivity expressed through “non-canonical” for men emotions of softness, tenderness (“a cloud in trousers”), indecision, is recognized as associated with the manifestation of the feminine in a male. The “feminine” part of the soul helps men in the interactions with the Creator, but also puts them in conflict with society (see motives of prison, court, death). For both Mayakovsky and Wilde, suffering as the other side of love and its aesthetics introduce the motive of cruelty of the beloved (manifestation of masculine nature). The connection of Suffering and Beauty justifies cruelty (About That, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, the letter-diary). Beauty as the highest manifestation of the idea of Love allows Mayakovsky to place the beloved in Paradise, and Wilde to write a ballad accepting the deadly power of love.