24.07 Transmissions from a Lone Star: The Slow Creative Death of Vladimir Mayakovsky
Last Friday, the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky would have turned 120 years old. Given that he was born in the Caucasus where longevity is not unusual, its almost feasible he could still have been among us, ancient, wizened, extolling the virtues of Borjomi mineral water and regular exercise.
But it was not to be. Mayakovsky shot himself in 1930 aged 36, and was immediately co-opted by the Stalinist regime. A big bronze monument was erected on Triumfalnaya Ploshchad in Moscow, a central metro station was named in honor of him and his desecrated mummy became one of the central pillars of official Soviet culture. Already dead, the poet was subjected to a second death, his verses conscripted to serve the most gigantic lying mouth of all time.
