RUSSIAN FUTURISM: MAIAKOVSKY OR A CLOUD IN TROUSERS

Abstract

This brief essay about the Russian poet and writer Vladimir Mayakovsky is a humble attempt to contribute to a (re)discovery or a simple revisiting of Russian literary production from the so-called Soviet period, that, quite often, for political reasons rather than aesthetic*, has sunk into oblivion, being only partly translated, as it has happened, in Portugal, as far as the literary work of Mayakovsky is concerned, or it simply has been “ostracized”, as it has been labelled, a priori or ab initio, as works written according to the rigid rules of “socialist realism”, suffering from a permanent lack of creativity and serving, openly or shadowy, the immutable ideological positions and policy of an inflexible totalitarianism. And yet not all Soviet literature is socialist realist. Not even non-dissident literature is socialist realist and it is worth to be read and analysed.