Mayakovsky Vladimir

Mayakovsky Vladimir (1893–1930), Russian poet, reformer of Russian classical poetry. His innovative poetic system greatly influenced the development of Russian and foreign literature.

V. Mayakovsky was born in the village of Bagdadi, in Georgia. Starting from 1902 he studied at the public school of Kutaisi. After the death of his father in 1906, his family moved to Moscow and settled there.

Being born and raised in Georgia, Mayakovsky was fluent in Georgian. Later on, he visited Georgia several times (1914, 1924, 1926, 1927). He had pleasant memories of his green years in Bagdadi, his childhood in Kutaisi and his adolescence friends. Those memories prompted him to say: ‘I am Georgian!’ It was his way of declaring love for Georgia, for the country, which proved to be important for his formative years. Mayakovsky compared Georgia to the Garden of Eden, ‘which was worthy of the praise of poets’. Besides his affection towards the country of his birth, he seemed to inherit the infatuation with Georgia from Pushkin and Lermontov. Tbilisi was Mayakovsy’s favorite city. ‘It is the right city for me. The people here love poets and they are the best at playing hosts’, he is reported as saying to the movie director Nikoloz Shengelaia. Apart from Moscow, Tbilisi was the city where he had most friends. Therefore, his every arrival in Tbilisi came to a feast. There he communicated with poets and men of art: Titsian Tabidze, Lado Gudiashvili Kote Marjanishvili and others. Furthermore, Kote Marjanishvili intended to stage his Mysteria Boof at Mount Mtatsminda. The theme of Georgia resonated in his verses and poems: Vladikavkaz – Tbilisi, Tamar and Demon, etc. Nevertheless, he used to say that he was ‘still indebted to the skies of Bagdadi’.

V. Mayakovsky committed suicide in Moscow.