Poetry
A Cloud in Trousers
Облако в штанах
Vladimir Mayakovsky · 1915
Opening lines
Вашу мысль,
мечтающую на размягченном мозгу,
как выжиревший лакей на засаленной кушетке,
буду дразнить об окровавленный сердца лоскут;
Your thought,
dreaming on a softened brain,
like a bloated lackey on a greasy couch,
I shall tease against the bloody shred of my heart;
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from ru.wikisource.org
Synopsis
The poet waits in a hotel room for the woman he loves, Maria. She finally arrives and tells him she is going to marry someone else. From this refusal comes a cry in four parts, which the author summed up this way: down with your love, down with your art, down with your system, down with your religion. The heartbreak widens into revolt against established poetry, against the social order and against God.
Context
Written in 1914 and 1915, the poem was to be called “The Thirteenth Apostle”; the censors refused this title and cut part of the text in the 1915 edition. The first complete edition appeared in Moscow at the beginning of 1918; in his preface, the author recalled that the first name had been blacked out. The figure of Maria owes much to Maria Denisova, whom he met in Odessa and who had rejected the poet's advances.
Who it is for
A long poem with ample lines, rich in assonance and sound echoes; several French translations since 1949.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as a cornerstone of Russian Futurist poetry, it marks a turning point in the author's work.