Vladimir Mayakovsky - Legacy

Legacy

In 1930, his birthplace of Bagdadi in Georgia was renamed Mayakovsky in his honour. After his death, Mayakovsky was attacked in the Soviet press as a "formalist" and a "fellow traveller" (попутчик) (as opposed to officially recognised "proletarian poets", such as Demyan Bedny). When, in 1935, Lilya Brik wrote to Stalin to complain about the attacks, Stalin wrote a comment on Brik's letter:

"Comrade Yezhov, please take charge of Brik's letter. Mayakovsky is still the best and the most talented poet of our Soviet epoch. Indifference to his cultural heritage is a crime. Brik's complaints are, in my opinion, justified..."

These words became a cliché and officially canonized Mayakovsky but, as Boris Pasternak noted, they "dealt him the second death" in some circles.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko once said, "As a poet, I wanted to mix something from Mayakovsky and Yesenin." Mayakovsky was the most influential futurist in Lithuania and his poetry helped to form the Four Winds movement there. He was also an influence on the writer Valentin Kataev. Andrey Voznesensky called Mayakovsky a teacher and favorite poet and dedicated a poem to him entitled Маяковский в Париже (Mayakovsky in Paris). In 1967 the Taganka Theater staged the poetical performance Послушайте!, based on Mayakovsky's works. The role of the poet was played by Vladimir Vysotsky, who also was inspired by Mayakovsky's poetry.

In 1938 the Mayakovskaya Metro Station was opened to the public. In 1974 the Russian State Museum of Mayakovsky was opened in the center of Moscow in the building where Mayakovsky resided from 1919 to 1930.

Frank O'Hara wrote a poem named after him, "Mayakovsky" in which the speaker is standing in a bathtub, a probable reference to his play "The Bathhouse".

In 1986 English singer and songwriter Billy Bragg recorded the album Talking with the Taxman about Poetry, named after a namesake Mayakovsky's poem.

In 2007 Craig Volk's stage bio-drama "Mayakovsky Takes The Stage" (based on his screenplay "At The Top Of My Voice") won the PEN-USA Literary Award for Best Stage Drama.