Mayakovsky, Vladimir
Entry updated 23 March 2026. Tagged: Author, Theatre.
(1893-1930) Russian poet and playwright, a revolutionary from early years, but at the same time a Futurist whose verse radically shocked post-Revolution Russia. His dramas are of strong sf interest, beginning with his first fully fledged prose Satirical play, Klop (performed 1929; 1929; trans Guy Daniels as The Bedbug in The Complete Plays of Vladimir Mayakovsky, coll 1968), in which, fifty years after he falls into a state of Suspended Animation, a Soviet bureaucrat awakens into a "perfected" society; as his charismatic and transgressive nature is no longer needed on the journey to a fulfilled communism, he is put into a Zoo in the company of a similarly unfrozen bedbug. Banya (1930; trans Guy Daniels as The Bathhouse in the same 1968 volume), set in the contemporary USSR, employs a similar array of satirical tools: the Invention of a Time Machine, which Soviet bureaucrats expect to visit the glorious future they have created, causes the visit from 2030 of the "Phosphorescent Woman", who is instrumental in banning the bureaucrats from a future they have not earned. These two plays were sufficiently sharp in their criticism of the increasing sclerosis of the Soviet enterprise that a good deal of official criticism descended on Mayakovsky's head, though not fatally – his Suicide seems to have been caused more through personal disillusion with the Communist enterprise under Stalin than by any threats (Stalin himself canonized Mayakovsky after his death). [JC]
see also: Theatre.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky
born Baghdati [now Mayakovsky], Russian Empire [now Georgia]: 19 July 1893 [7 July 1893 Old Style]
died Moscow: 14 April 1930
works
- Klop: Feericheskaíà komediíà (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1929) [play: chap: first appeared 1929 Molodaya Gvardiya: first performed February 1929 Meyerhold Theatre, Moscow: music by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): binding unknown/]
- The Bedbug in The Bedbug and Selected Poetry (New York: Meridian, 1960) [coll: trans by May Hayward of the above: plus other material: pb/]
- Banya (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1930) [play: first appeared November 1929 Oktyabr: first performed 30 January 1930 People's House Drama Theatre, Leningrad: hb/]
- The Complete Plays of Vladimir Mayakovsky (New York: Washington Square Press, 1968) [coll: trans by Guy Daniels of the above as The Bathhouse: plus other plays: hb/]
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