Monument

Evenly, the historical figures died twice. The first time when he was buried. The second times when he was built as a monument. A monument intended to perpetuate, but ultimately to freeze. The figures will be deemed to have been completed, stay adored.

In 1924 in Russia -- a country that upholds the monument in almost every city -- the event officially opened to celebrate the birthday of the poet Pushkin, creator of the famous poetic novel Eugene Onegin. Mayakovsky wrote a poem for the occasion. "Late one night, as the poet told, he pulled Pushkin's statue off from its pedestal in Tverskoy Boulevard, Moscow. He invited the poet of the 19th century for a walk, to share the thoughts.

For Mayakovsky, each monument -- also built for himself -- must be blown up with dynamite. "I really hate the every inanimate object / I'm so in love to every form of life!"

But he himself died twice. In mid-April 1930, the poet aged 37 shot himself after leaving a note, "Do not blame anyone for my death, and please do not gossip. The dead people really do not like it."

Gossip is unavoidable, also the questions why did Mayakovsky eventually commit suicide. Lunacharski, the cultural leader of the October Revolution -- a poetry reviewer with his clear views -- talking about dualism within Mayakovsky and his poetry. On one side is hard as metal and the other is soft. Maybe in the end he can not overcome his dualism.

There may be a failed love. Maybe Mayakovsky -- revolutionary poet when the Russian revolution was being consolidate its power -- began to see there was something being frozen in him - also in the revolution's stage.

We will not ever know it. Mayakovsky had become a communist youth detained by Tsarist police at the age of 15.. With enthusiasm he called Revolution in October 1917 as "my revolution". He saw the beginning of a completely new future.

Five years earlier, at the age of 19 years, with a number of other artists he issued a "Futurist Manifesto". The title was so challenging, "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste". The statement sound was the sound of "spirit of the age".  There was also called that the old poet were thrown away. "Throw Pushkin! Tolstoi! Dostoyevsky! Get out of Modernity Ship!"

Maybe it's the way of young people looking for attention: a giant challenge. Mayakosvky started his appearance into the art's world with painted face and a chartreuse long coat. But beyond that, he had a special talent. When he used so many exclamation points in his poetry, when he always patted his chest, he did not just yell for to be seen. "That's my soul. Fragments of the torn clouds. In the burning sky. On the rusty cross. In the carillon.

His long poem in 1915, "Cloud in Pants", immediately got a good response. He quickly got the leading position. He was the Soviet ambassador to the poetry world. Boris Pasternak, who later received the Nobel Prize for his novel, Dr.. Zhivago, had a keen insight over Mayakovsky he knew in those years.

"The Georgia's poet," Pasternak wrote, "A handsome young with the "voice of a singer of psalms and fist of a wrestler. His poetry is poetry that is well honed by an artist. His tone is arrogant, "diabolic", wild dark as Satan's voice, and at the same time his fate has been inscribed, lost forever, as if screaming for help."

Pasternak is true. The poem -- unnoticed by the poet -- had been lost in a political era that did not want to understand the wildness and complexity of the word. Stalin era.

December 1935, came the second death of Mayakovsky: when he -- by Stalin -- crowned as "The best and most talented poets in the Soviet period".

People doubted whether Stalin really liked his poetry, because between the coronation Stalin formulated the doctrine of "Socialist Realism". Since then -- with the Party's control -- the artistic expression was curbed.
The style of Mayakovsky's works -- which busy with "I", which arrogant, wild and dark -- would be considered "counterrevolutionary".

One of the "counterrevolution" voice was Mayakosvki friend: Meyerhold. He was an experimental theater director whose works revealed the unsettled period for the renewal. June 1939, he was arrested. He was accused of being Japan and the UK's spy, and he was shot dead.

Between the arrest and the death, Stalin's decree echoing in the Soviet Union: Mayakovsky should be remembered. No respect for him was "a crime". So people then flocked to read his poetry at school, at the meeting place, in all official occasions.

At that moment Pasternak, who refused to be any official flattery, wrote, "Mayakovsky grown by force "such as potatoes in the days of the Great Katerina".  And it's "his second death."

At his second death, a statue was set up in Triumfalnaya Ploshchad in Moscow. Mayakovsky has become a monument.

Fortunately, the story does not stop. No need to blow up a monument. It can be taken.

Since Stalin died, and the creative stagnation has melted, the poets and young children using the park around the statue to read the poems, as if they were chatting with Mayakovsky. He's their Mayakovsky, and not a Mayakovsky on a pedestal who is built as an idol.
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