La vie en jeu, une biographie de Vladimir Maļakovski
Bengt Jangfeldt
Want to hear about a thrilling life in order to start the year off on the right foot? Then take a look at that of Mayakovsky, the object of a rich and largely illustrated monograph. We can review what we know about the poet, a revolutionary of verse and a fool for speed, a cousin of the Futurists. But we also discover that the author of Cloud in pants was also very active in other fields, transforming when necessary into a typographer, a movie director or a drawer. During the Revolution, a deep creative pot, the borders between the various forms of art were erased and all the disciplines interpenetrated one another. While the biography describes his literary work and goes into the gossip as well (Mayakovsky accused by Gorki of transmitting syphilis to a young girl, the love triangles between Lily Brik, the poet and other conquests), it also shows the extraordinary appetite for meeting actors of the European culture, in particular in the visual arts: Rodchenko, Gontcharova, the Delaunay couple, Man Ray and Duchamp whom he met in the staircase of the Istria hotel in Paris. Even though Mayakovsky died young (after Essenine in 1925, he too committed suicide at the age of 37 in 1930), one has the impression he had the time to live various lives
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Review published in the newsletter #199 - from 13 January 2011 to 19 January 2011
