4

Mayakovsky was a militant atheist, and his militancy is always evident, but atheism itself is doubtful. His atheism is not a conclusion, not a conclusion; there is no way in it.

It lacks validity, conviction, and hence, calmness and dignity. Mayakovsky not so much denies the existence of God as he tries to offend, spit, humiliate and thereby destroy him.

He is cruelly offended: he was not given women, money and fame.

And so he runs, rushes about under the huge sky, and screams, and spits, and shakes his fists, and threatens with a knife, then with brass knuckles. But no one is afraid of his threats, no one takes them seriously. And he, for all his considerable growth, looks small and fussy. One hundred and seventy or one hundred and ninety centimeters - from the height of heaven, it's the same thing.

Hey you! Sky? Take off your hat! I'm coming! Deaf.

In all this, there is uncertainty, fear breaks through. In his blasphemy, we can feel the threshold that he does not dare to cross, and slows himself down in time.

Let me go! Don't stop me. I'm lying, right, but I can't be calmer.

Here, "let go" sounds like "hold on tight." His rebellion against Heaven is not a rebellion, but a petty debauchery and certainly not a denial of God.

Of course, I do not want to say that Mayakovsky was a believer. But he was not a true atheist. Yes, he was too rational and built to feel the supernatural mystery of being. In addition, faith would not be combined in any way with the system of masks chosen by him, with a mask at first cynical, then respectable. But at the same time, he was still too superficial to rise to genuine atheism.

And there is no faith, and there is no unbelief, and then only one thing remains: superstition. It is known how morbidly superstitious he was. In addition to many traditional signs, he also invented his own, adored all sorts of coincidences and was afraid of all sorts of coincidences.

But the main superstition of Mayakovsky was not his personal invention, but was the property of society: faith in science.

There is a love for science - and faith in science, these are completely different things. There is a love for search and experiment, for the beauty of constructions, for the mystery of creativity. Finally, there is admiration for the clarity of thought, admiration for the power of spirit and reason. But there is a naive, provincial, or rather, savage superstition: belief in the omnipotence of scientists, in the endless possibilities of the scientific method.

"Can God create a rock that he cannot lift?" - this ancient paradox does not baffle science worshipers. First of all, science can, and then we will figure out what kind of further "not" it is.

Mayakovsky abandoned faith in God, humiliated it to the best of his ability - and was left without any consolation, alone with his overgrown fear. He could not seriously console himself with the coming brotherhood of peoples - it was material for poems and posters, a theme and means of communication with the audience, but something else was required for his beloved. And he rushes into science worship. The Enlightenment thesis that religion always arises from superstition, born of fear and ignorance, is the best fit for Mayakovsky.

What should I do if I with might and main, with all my heart, in this life, this world believed, I believe.

What does it mean to believe in this world and this life? He explains this in detail in the next chapter, which is so directly called - "Faith". Mayakovsky's faith, Mayakovsky's god, is not just the world or life, it is such a special research institute, an institute of resurrections, with a quiet chemist. (Why not an engineer, not a mathematician? And yet - an annoying parallel: "Bright, it rises for centuries ..." What is it? But: "In the parting fog - brighter than the sky ..." Well, of course. !)

The almighty divine science has two things, two missions, two hypostases: first, through technology, to create comfort and convenience; secondly, through the devil knows what, through chemistry or something, to resurrect from the dead.

It is noteworthy that he wrote the poem "About this" under the impression not only of a break with Lily, but also of rumors about the Theory of Relativity. It's funny and ridiculous, but it's natural to think about it. He only heard what he wanted to hear. In his view, every discovery benefits in one of two ways. The theory of relativity did not create direct conveniences - therefore, it worked for immortality.

Roman Yakobson, who had arrived from Europe for a short time, told him about her, he was also a witness to his enthusiasm. “I am absolutely convinced,” Mayakovsky exclaimed, “that there will be no death! They will resurrect the dead! I will find a physicist who will explain Einstein’s book to me point by point. he, with his head above everyone ... ") I will pay this physicist an academic ration ... "

Of course, after all the questions he remained with his opinion.

What should have been his first action in connection with the opened prospect? Well, of course, inventing a sign, a slogan, at the same time confirming the rank and rank. He decides to urgently give a radiogram to Einstein: "The science of the future - from the art of the future."

He never gave a radiogram, but he rushed about with the idea of ​​a letter to Einstein for a long time and, perhaps, fortunately for himself, did not send it. He would have learned that it is good that the problem of longevity is of little concern to Einstein, that he does not doubt his own death and does not hope for resurrection, and even, perhaps, although he loves science, he rather believes in Something Else...

You will say: like Pushkin. I will answer: not so, otherwise! "From will take nothing but harm, no." The decisive difference lies in the fact that Pushkin did not write satirical poems with such titles.

Mayakovsky against the Church: rattling ram Andrey ZAYTSEV "Neskuchny Garden"

Neskuchny Garden - Journal of Orthodox Life

Mayakovsky against the Church: rattling ram No. 0 "0000 Culture 11/30/12 12:32 pm
One hundred years ago, on November 30, 1912, the first performance of Vladimir Mayakovsky took place in the Stray Dog club. “A battering ram rattling into a forbidden future, a will thrown beyond the last limits to the embodiment of the future,” wrote the literary critic Roman Yakobson about him.

Of course, Mayakovsky could not pass by anti-religious topics - and not only because the heyday of his literary activity fell on the years of the most severe opposition to the Church of the new atheistic ideology.

At the beginning of the 20th century there were many brilliant poets, but only one of them began to consistently develop the theme of his poetic choice of God, the creation of his own universe. Back in 1914-15, Mayakovsky wrote in his tetraptych Cloud in Trousers:

I thought you were an almighty god

And you are a half-educated, tiny god.

See I'm bending over

I am you, smelling of incense,

Open from here to Alaska!

Throughout his life, the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky solved two creative problems.

He created a poetic language understandable to most people and built a relationship with God, with whom he had a personal rivalry.

It was a real game, which Mayakovsky gave himself with all his passion.

One of Mayakovsky's largest anti-religious works in terms of volume was his "Piece about priests who do not understand what a holiday is."

Written after the revolution, in 1920, it reflects the desire of the authorities to replace religious holidays with Bolshevik ones.

The main struggle with New Year trees will still be ahead, but already in this text the poet shows Father Svinuil and Mother Fekla as people who want the new Soviet holidays to be held with the participation of priests.

In the play, Svinuil is a desperate opportunist and intriguer, who wants to cling to the new government: - Tsit, comrade Thekla! Long live Soviet power! Nothing can be done - in vain they sprinkled Denikin with holy water, sir. That the Entente, - Comrade Martov recognized the Bolsheviks.

Further, Father Svinuil tries to preach among the workers going to the subbotnik, but instead he receives a shovel in his hands and performs labor duties, receiving half a pound of bread for this. The play ends with a phrase from the Apostle Paul: “He who does not work does not eat” and a great panegyric of the Soviet regime, among which “Comrade Mayakovsky” is noted.

In the same year, the poet composes the play “How one spends time celebrating the holidays,” in which parents at Christmas overwhelm their children to death with gifts and Christmas tree decorations. A character named "husband" pronounces the main self-revealing phrase: They arranged a healthy Christmas tree - won't I cheer the kids up? Even better than last year, Dirty and stink.

Note that in the same year, when Vladimir Mayakovsky mocked the Christmas tree, another writer Korney Chukovsky wrote in his diary:

“The children did an amazing thing, it turns out that for a month they saved up pieces of bread that they gave them in the gymnasium, dried them - and now, having made white pounds with glued pictures, they stuffed these pounds with breadcrumbs and laid them out under the tree - like gifts to their parents! Children preparing a Christmas surprise for their father and mother. It's still not enough for them to convince us that this is all the work of Santa Claus! Next year I will put a stocking by the bed!

The fight against Christmas trees and the celebration of the New Year, which began in the 1920s, was part of the eradication of the "cursed past", which, of course, included the Church.

Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote the largest number of anti-religious poems in 1923.

It was a terrible time for believers. On March 16, 1922, Lenin wrote a secret letter to the members of the Politburo about the events in Shuya, in which he called with "merciless energy" to persecute the "Black Hundred clergy" and take away property from the Church.

The Bolsheviks needed the money not at all to help the starving, but the poet in a whole series of poems called Patriarch Tikhon the culprit in the death of millions of people.

It should be noted that in the spring of 1923, the workers wrote letters with a request to punish the "cannibal" Tikhon, in April the patriarch was arrested and he was threatened with a death sentence.

March 20, 1923 Mayakovsky's poem: "When hunger gnawed last summer, what did the power of the Soviets do?" and “When we defeated the hungry famously, what did Patriarch Tikhon do?” are published in the Bulletin of the Press Bureau of the Agitprop of the Central Committee of the RCP, and after a few days they are actively reprinted in newspapers:

Patriarch Tikhon, covering his belly with a cassock,

Ringed the bells in the well-fed cities,

Shaking like a usurer over gold:

“Let them die, they say, but I won’t give back the gold!”

At about the same time, in response to the anti-religious poems of Demyan Bedny, the “Message to the “Evangelist” Demyan” was written.

"You just grunted at Christ,

Efim Lakeevich Pridvorov"

And it turns out that this is something very Orthodox, confessional.

This is not true. Christ for the author of the poem is “the son of a carpenter” and “the son of man”, and not the Son of God, a preacher in the row of Buddha and Socrates, and even just a symbol and a myth, and the poet Courtyard (Demyan Poor) is the one who rudely destroys this image. And his sin is a sin, including against poets, against "traveling in beauty."

But there is this stanza in this poem:

Would you have had greatness until the end

In the last hour, following their example, too,

Bless the whole world under the crown of thorns,

Teaching immortality on the deathbed?

Here is how an eyewitness recalls the exit of Patriarch Tikhon from the OGPU prison:

“Thousands of people crowded the entire square near the prison for a long time. The crew was in the distance. A large detachment of Chekists on both sides of the crowd formed a corridor from the prison gate to the crew. After a long wait, the gates opened and the Patriarch appeared. Long tousled gray hair, a tangled beard, deep sunken eyes on a haggard face, a shabby soldier's greatcoat, dressed over a naked body. The Patriarch was barefoot... The shocked crowd of many thousands, like one man, knelt down and fell on their faces... The Patriarch walked slowly towards the carriage, blessing the crowd with both hands, and tears rolled down his exhausted face.

This is to the question of the "belly covered with a cassock" and "gold" and "bless the whole world under the crown of thorns."

Just a year after that performance in Stray Dog, Mayakovsky wrote "Christ fled from the icon, kissed the windy edge of the tunic, crying, slush."

He shocked the townsfolk with the fact that he himself, a futurist born not for money, would come to the place of Christ, and the sky would take off his hat.

No, it turned out differently - Comrade Lenin came to the smoky factories, "your, comrade, in heart and name" ...

And this is the tragedy of Mayakovsky. Because although he portrays himself as a cynic, he is a talent, he is not Yefim Lakeich. He will not grovel and live in peace.

But still - he will do what is expected of him, although he will deceive himself that it is "his". Only occasionally, as is usually the case with all self-deception, will he reveal his nature. And then the void...

Mayakovsky devoted a separate poem to the trial of the Patriarch - “On Patriarch Tikhon. Why the trial of their mercy? ”, In which he presented the entire Church as a counter-revolutionary organization that served the tsar. The poet calls the priests the preachers of humility and the main oppressors of the proletarians. From his point of view, the clergy still want to overthrow the Bolsheviks and restore the power of the tsar: Patriarch Tikhon calls on the power of the Soviets to rise up the people. Abroad, Tikhon stretches out his pen and calls back the White Guard handful. His Holiness needs rubles and rewards to come from the tsar. So that the priestly pack feeds near the landowner-thief. Naughty, father of the patriarch, - we will not give up our freedom to anyone! The primate is accused of contacts with monarchists abroad (which was a lie actively spread by the Renovationists with the help of a fake created by "Bishop" Nikolai Soloviev and "Metropolitan" Alexander Vvedensky at the end of April 1923). Phrases that the Church was a henchman of the tsar and the landlords can be found among all the Bolsheviks from Lenin and Trotsky to Yevgeny Tuchkov, who oversaw relations with the "Tikhonovites" and the renovationists through the GPU-NKVD. In this sense, Mayakovsky's anti-patriarchal poems are rather a document of the era, journalism, and not poetry. Among the anti-religious poems of the poet, texts addressed to peasants play a special role. They were written in different years, and they are very intelligible stories about how one man's cow fell ill, and he did not go to the veterinarian, but began to pray. A few days later the cattle died. The positive hero, on the contrary, turned to a specialist, and his nurse was soon healthy and even gave more milk. According to a similar model, the poem “Prayers addressed to God - no help in a drought” is built, which tells that a prayer for rain does not bring the desired result, unlike the advice of an agronomist and science. The final lines of the agitation are classic fable morality, which should become a guide to action. From this it is clear: a prayer service in a drought is of little healing. Than waiting for rain for a year in a drought, learn to arrange the weather yourself. Mayakovsky himself repeatedly called on other poets from the LEF to create texts on the topic of the day, which would help the workers to smelt steel, and the peasants to harvest. Unfortunately, Mayakovsky's publicistic poems were not appreciated by the authorities. In the last years of his life, the poet was often reproached for being insufficiently revolutionary, almost none of the Bolsheviks came to his anniversary exhibition, and his anniversary portraits were blotted out from magazines. He expressed his state in a passage that was not included in the final edition of the poem “Home!” in 1925: I want to be understood by my country, But I won’t be understood - so what?! In my native country I will pass by, as the slanting rain passes. Mayakovsky had both a “happy” and a terrible posthumous fate: he was introduced “like a potato under Catherine”, workers quoted him in the film “The Rumyantsev Case” and other films, but all these were just fragments of texts. The Soviet government did not really promote the poet's anti-religious poems, which can be found in full only in the collected works in 13 volumes. A fiery fighter with a “cursed past” during his lifetime became archaic for many “proletarian writers”, which resulted in the “poet’s lyrical shot”, about which Marina Tsvetaeva wrote shortly after Mayakovsky’s death: “Vladimir Mayakovsky, twelve years in a row, faithfully, served with soul and body ... - finished stronger than with a lyrical poem - with a lyrical shot. For 12 years in a row, the man Mayakovsky killed the poet Mayakovsky in himself, on the thirteenth the poet got up and killed the man. If there is suicide in this life, it is not where it is seen, and it did not last a trigger, but twelve years of life.

(Andrey Zaitsev)

GOTHless.
I will add a few words from myself (Irina Kalitina Kakhovskaya) *: did Mayakovsky know about those persecutions of believers that began from the first days of the revolution? Undoubtedly. The Bolsheviks boasted of spilled blood and recorded it in the press. Did Vladimir Vladimirovich understand that after his godless poems, articles and speeches, a new wave of brutal murders and inhuman persecution would break out? Of course, he knew and even called for this, demonstrating how he himself would deal with Patriarch Tikhon:

"See, I'm bending over

From behind the top I take out a shoe knife.

Winged scoundrels! Hustle in paradise!

Ruffle your feathers in a frightened shake!

I am you, smelling of incense,

I'll open it from here to Alaska!"

Is there anything else that needs to be explained for those hard-nosed ones whose hearts will not tremble as a result of what they read? He who has ears, let him hear. When I hear that Mayakovsky was a victim, he was very sensitive and reverent, that one can share his work and love his lyrics, I remember them, these innocent martyrs who suffered for their faith, largely thanks to the efforts that V. Mayakovsky put into into their godless verses and calls for reprisals...

Already in the very first week after the October Revolution, the first holy martyr of the new era known today, Archpriest John Kochurov (October 31/11/13/1917), was killed.

In 1918, two days after the decree on the separation of the Church was issued, Metropolitan Vladimir, the oldest hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, was killed in Kyiv without trial or investigation... In February, religious processions were shot in Tula, Kharkov, Voronezh, Shatsk (Tambov province). A crowd of believers was shot during the requisition of the property of the Belogorsk metochion (Perm diocese). On June 29, Bishop Germogen of Tobolsk and Siberia was drowned in the river with a stone around his neck, and with him a delegation of believers who asked for his release. On December 24, Bishops Theophan of Solikamsk and Andronicus of Perm were tied up by their hair, a pole was passed under a knot, and they were dipped naked into an ice-hole until their bodies were covered with ice... In December, in Samara, Bishop Isidor was tortured to death by impalement.

In 1919, in Belgorod, Bishop Nikodim was beaten with an iron rod, the body was thrown into a cesspool and not allowed to be buried. Archbishop Tikhon of Voronezh was hanged on the royal doors. In Astrakhan, Archbishop Mitrofan was killed with mockery. In Yuriev, 17 priests and bishops were hacked to death with axes. Before the murder, the Bolsheviks mocked them: they put on women's clothes, tried to make them dance, cut off their noses and ears. The dead were dumped...

In Bogodukhov, the nuns were taken to the cemetery to a dug pit, their breasts were cut off, and the bleeding ones were thrown into the pit; from above they also threw a living old monk, who had just been castrated by them, and covered it with earth, shouting that "the monastic wedding is coping."

In the Kherson province, three priests were crucified. The confessor of the monastery of St. Mary Magdalene was seized during the service, he was forced to open his mouth and shout: "Here is Holy Communion for you!" - shot in the mouth.

One of the issues of the "Perm Diocesan Gazette" for 1919 gives the names of those killed by that time in this diocese - 2 bishops, 36 monks, 51 priests, 5 deacons, 4 psalmists. The type of martyrdom is indicated against each name: drowned, stabbed with bayonets, beaten with rifle butts, strangled with stole, frozen, chopped with sabers, and most often - shot ... Often a note: "he dug his own grave" ...

Since October 1918, a campaign began to open the holy relics with mockery of them (including the relics of St. Prince Alexander Nevsky, St. Sergius of Radonezh). Masquerade processions are organized, temples are turned into warehouses, clubs and even toilets.

As part of the anti-religious campaign, a monument was erected in Sviyazhsk to Judas, who handed over Christ for execution. The Danish writer Galling Keller, who was present at the opening of the monument, reported: “The local council of deputies discussed for a long time who to put the statue on. Lucifer was recognized as not fully sharing the ideas of communism, Cain as too legendary a person, and therefore they settled on Judas Iscariot as a completely historical person, presenting him in full growth with a raised fist to the sky.

Of course, such hatred of Orthodoxy by local performers was reinforced by directives from above. Thus, on May 1, 1919, Lenin wrote an "Instruction" to Dzerzhinsky:

“In accordance with the decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Soviet. Nar. Commissars need to do away with priests and religion as soon as possible. Priests must be arrested as counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs, shot mercilessly and everywhere. And as much as possible. Churches are to be closed. Seal the premises of the temples and turn them into warehouses.”

In total, in 1917-1921 (even before the intensification of repressions in connection with the seizure of church property in 1922), many thousands of clergy were killed. By the definition of the Local Council of April 5/18, 1918 (“On measures caused by the ongoing persecution of the Orthodox Church”), the day of commemoration of the New Martyrs of Russia is established - the Sunday closest to January 25 according to the old style (the day of the assassination of Metropolitan Vladimir).

*(Irina Kakhovskaya Kalitina)
photo: MAYAKOVSKY ON THE TRIBUNE. Speech at the II Congress of the Union of Militant Atheists on June 10, 1929. Newsreels. Library-Museum of V. V. Mayakovsky, Moscow

Love a book, it will make your life easier, it will help you sort out the colorful and stormy confusion of thoughts, feelings, events, it will teach you to respect a person and yourself, it inspires the mind and heart with a feeling of love for the world, for a person.

Maxim Gorky

The theme of religion and God in Mayakovsky

The theme of God and religion is one of the fundamental in the work of poets, writers, artists of different eras. In the works of different authors, the attitude towards the creator is also manifested in different ways.

Someone sees in God an endless source of their inspiration, and someone is convinced that there are no higher powers and relying on them only speaks of a person’s desire, even in adulthood, to believe in fairy tales.

Reflections on God are reflected in the pages of the works of the famous poet of the Silver Age - Vladimir Mayakovsky. Being a revolutionary and a rebel by nature, he created many vivid and unique images that often shocked the imagination of an ordinary reader.

Already the early work of the poet set as its task to shock the public: hence the unusualness of the artistic form and the sharpness of the content of the author's works. In Mayakovsky's poems, a God-fighting (revolutionary) motif is openly heard, aimed at overthrowing old ideas and traditions in exchange for establishing new orders. It is interesting that Mayakovsky does not deny the very existence of God, he only expresses doubt in those limitless forces in which it is customary to believe among the people. God, like Love, is seen by the poet as something outdated, having lost its sacredness and true authenticity.

That is why Mayakovsky's God is often endowed with the features of a simple person (remember the description of God with sinewy hands in the poet's famous poem "Listen"). There is a strong feeling that the author would be happy to believe in God, to bow his head before him, however, the surrounding reality persistently confirms the idea that there is no point in such actions, since religion is not salvation.

One hundred years ago, on November 30, 1912, the first performance of Vladimir Mayakovsky took place in the Stray Dog club. “A battering ram rattling into a forbidden future, a will thrown beyond the last limits to the embodiment of the future,” wrote the literary critic Roman Yakobson about him.

Of course, Mayakovsky could not pass by anti-religious topics - and not only because the heyday of his literary activity fell on the years of the most severe opposition to the Church of the new atheistic ideology.

At the beginning of the 20th century there were many brilliant poets, but only one of them began to consistently develop the theme of his poetic choice of God, the creation of his own universe. Back in 1914-15, Mayakovsky wrote in his tetraptych Cloud in Trousers:

I thought you were an almighty god
and you are a half-educated, tiny god.
See I'm bending over
because of the ankle
I take out a shoe knife.
Winged scoundrels!
Hustle in paradise!
Ruffle your feathers in a frightened shake!
I will open you, smelling of incense
from here to Alaska!

Throughout his life, the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky solved two creative problems. He created a poetic language understandable to most people and built a relationship with God, with whom he had a personal rivalry. It was a real game, which Mayakovsky gave himself with all his passion.

One of Mayakovsky's largest anti-religious works in terms of volume was his "Piece about priests who do not understand what a holiday is." Written after the revolution, in 1920, it reflects the desire of the authorities to replace religious holidays with Bolshevik ones. The main struggle with New Year trees will still be ahead, but already in this text the poet shows Father Svinuil and Mother Fekla as people who want the new Soviet holidays to be held with the participation of priests. In the play, Svinuil is a desperate opportunist and intriguer who wants to cling to the new government:

Tsyts, comrade Fekla!
Long live Soviet power!
Nothing to write -
in vain
Denikin
sprinkled with holy water.
What is the Entente, -
Comrade Martov
and then
recognized the Bolsheviks.

Further, Father Svinuil tries to preach among the workers going to the subbotnik, but instead he receives a shovel in his hands and performs labor duties, receiving half a pound of bread for this. The play ends with a phrase from the Apostle Paul: “He who does not work does not eat” and a great panegyric of the Soviet regime, among which “Comrade Mayakovsky” is noted.

In the same year, the poet composes the play “How one spends time celebrating the holidays,” in which parents at Christmas overwhelm their children to death with gifts and Christmas tree decorations. A character named "husband" utters the main self-revealing phrase:
They arranged a healthy Christmas tree, -
am I not going to cheer up the kids?
Even better than last year
Dirty and stink.

Note that in the same year, when Vladimir Mayakovsky mocked the Christmas tree, another writer Korney Chukovsky wrote in his diary: “The children did an amazing thing, it turns out that for a month they saved up pieces of bread that they gave them in the gymnasium, dried them - and now, having made white pounds with glued pictures, they stuffed these pounds with breadcrumbs and laid them out under the tree - like gifts to their parents! Children preparing a Christmas surprise for their father and mother. It's still not enough for them to convince us that this is all the work of Santa Claus! Next year I will put a stocking by the bed!”. The fight against Christmas trees and the celebration of the New Year, which began in the 1920s, was part of the eradication of the "cursed past", which, of course, included the Church.

Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote the largest number of anti-religious poems in 1923. It was a terrible time for believers. On March 16, 1922, Lenin wrote a secret letter to the members of the Politburo about the events in Shuya, in which he called with "merciless energy" to persecute the "Black Hundred clergy" and take away property from the Church. The Bolsheviks needed the money not at all to help the starving, but the poet in a whole series of poems called Patriarch Tikhon the culprit in the death of millions of people. It should be noted that in the spring of 1923, the workers wrote letters with a request to punish the "cannibal" Tikhon, in April the patriarch was arrested and he was threatened with a death sentence. March 20, 1923 Mayakovsky's poem: "When hunger gnawed last summer, what did the power of the Soviets do?" and “When we defeated the hungry famously, what did Patriarch Tikhon do?” are published in the Bulletin of the Press Bureau of the Agitprop of the Central Committee of the RCP, and after a few days they are actively reprinted in newspapers:

Tikhon Patriarch,
covering the belly with a cassock,
rang the bells in well-fed cities,
shaking over gold money as a usurer:
"Let them die, they say,
and gold -
will not give it back!"

At about the same time, in response to the anti-religious poems of Demyan Bedny, the “Message to the “Evangelist” Demyan” was written. Sergei Yesenin is considered its author. Usually quotes are cited from it: “You just grunted at Christ, Efim Lakeevich Pridvorov,” and it turns out that this is something very Orthodox, confessional. This is not true. Christ for the author of the poem is “the son of a carpenter” and “the son of man”, and not the Son of God, a preacher in the ranks of Buddha and Socrates, and even just a symbol and myth, and the poet Courtyard (Demyan Poor) is the one who rudely destroys this image. And his sin is a sin, including against poets, against "traveling in beauty." But there is this stanza in this poem:

Would you have had greatness until the end
In the last hour, following their example, too,
Bless the whole world under the crown of thorns,
Teaching immortality on the deathbed?

Here is how an eyewitness recalls the exit of Patriarch Tikhon from the OGPU prison: “A crowd of thousands long flooded the entire square near the prison. The crew was in the distance. A large detachment of Chekists on both sides of the crowd formed a corridor from the prison gate to the crew. After a long wait, the gates opened and the Patriarch appeared. Long tousled gray hair, a tangled beard, deep sunken eyes on a haggard face, a shabby soldier's greatcoat, dressed over a naked body. The Patriarch was barefoot... The shocked crowd of many thousands, like one man, knelt down and fell on their faces... The Patriarch walked slowly towards the carriage, blessing the crowd with both hands, and tears rolled down his exhausted face.

This is to the question of the "belly covered with a cassock" and "gold" and "bless the whole world under the crown of thorns." Just a year after that performance in Stray Dog, Mayakovsky wrote "Christ fled from the icon, kissed the windy edge of the tunic, crying, slush." He shocked the townsfolk with the fact that he himself, a futurist born not for money, would come to the place of Christ, and the sky would take off his hat. No, it turned out differently - Comrade Lenin came to the smoky factories, "your, comrade, in your heart and name" ... And this is Mayakovsky's tragedy. Because although he portrays himself as a cynic, he is a talent, he is not Yefim Lakeich. He will not grovel and live in peace. But still - he will do what is expected of him, although he will deceive himself that it is "his". Only occasionally, as is usually the case with all self-deception, will he reveal his nature. And then the void...

Mayakovsky devoted a separate poem to the trial of the Patriarch - “On Patriarch Tikhon. Why the trial of their mercy? ”, In which he presented the entire Church as a counter-revolutionary organization that served the tsar. The poet calls the priests the preachers of humility and the main oppressors of the proletarians. From his point of view, the clergy still want to overthrow the Bolsheviks and restore the power of the tsar:

Calling Patriarch Tikhon
the people will rise up against the power of the Soviets.
Abroad Tikhon holds out a pen
calls back the White Guard bunch.
His Holiness needs
so that rubles and rewards come from the king.
So that near the landowner-thief
the priestly pack also fed.
Naughty, father of the patriarch, -
We will not give up our freedom to anyone!

The primate is accused of contacts with monarchists abroad (which was a lie actively spread by the Renovationists with the help of a fake created by "Bishop" Nikolai Soloviev and "Metropolitan" Alexander Vvedensky at the end of April 1923). Phrases that the Church was a henchman of the tsar and the landlords can be found among all the Bolsheviks from Lenin and Trotsky to Yevgeny Tuchkov, who oversaw relations with the "Tikhonovites" and the renovationists through the GPU-NKVD. In this sense, Mayakovsky's anti-patriarchal poems are rather a document of the era, journalism, and not poetry.

Among the anti-religious poems of the poet, texts addressed to peasants play a special role. They were written in different years, and they are very intelligible stories about how one man's cow fell ill, and he did not go to the veterinarian, but began to pray. A few days later the cattle died. The positive hero, on the contrary, turned to a specialist, and his nurse was soon healthy and even gave more milk. According to a similar model, the poem “Prayers addressed to God - no help in a drought” is built, which tells that a prayer for rain does not bring the desired result, unlike the advice of an agronomist and science. The final lines of the agitation are classic fable morality, which should become a guide to action.

From here it is clear:
prayer service
in a drought
little curative.
Than in a drought
wait for the rain
by year,
myself
learn
arrange the weather.

Mayakovsky himself repeatedly called on other poets from the LEF to create texts on the topic of the day, which would help the workers to smelt steel, and the peasants to harvest. Unfortunately, Mayakovsky's publicistic poems were not appreciated by the authorities. In the last years of his life, the poet was often reproached for being insufficiently revolutionary, almost none of the Bolsheviks came to his anniversary exhibition, and his anniversary portraits were blotted out from magazines. He expressed his condition in a passage that was not included in the final edition of the poem “Home!” in 1925:

I want to be understood by my country
And I won't understand
well?!
By home country
I will pass by
how is it going
oblique rain.

Mayakovsky had both a “happy” and a terrible posthumous fate: he was introduced “like a potato under Catherine”, workers quoted him in the film “The Rumyantsev Case” and other films, but all these were just fragments of texts.

The Soviet government did not really promote the poet's anti-religious poems, which can be found in full only in the collected works in 13 volumes. A fiery fighter with a “damned past” during his lifetime became archaism for many “proletarian writers”, which resulted in the “lyrical shot of the poet”, about which Marina Tsvetaeva wrote shortly after Mayakovsky’s death: “Vladimir Mayakovsky, who served twelve years in a row with faith and truth, body and soul ... - ended stronger than a lyrical poem - a lyrical shot. For 12 years in a row, the man Mayakovsky killed the poet Mayakovsky in himself, on the thirteenth the poet got up and killed the man. If there is suicide in this life, it is not where it is seen, and it did not last a trigger, but twelve years of life.

Religious atheism in the work of V. Mayakovsky.

Cho Kyu Yun ,

Post-graduate student of the Department of History of Russian Literature, Russian State University for the Humanities.

Scientific adviser: Doctor of Philology, Professor

Katsis Leonid Fridovich.

The formation of Mayakovsky's poetic consciousness began with futuristic claims to the world. The poet rebels against many things: love, art, culture, religious dogmas. The romantic attitude to everyday life, which prevails in Mayakovsky's early work, gives the poet a state of high spiritual uplift and nourishes him with creative energy. Of all the themes named, "religiosity" appears to be the most important. Its development in the work of Mayakovsky was ambiguous, since it is characterized by a conflicting attitude towards God and the world created by God. At the same time, Mayakovsky's work developed in parallel with the formation of religious self-consciousness.

It is difficult to unambiguously determine Mayakovsky's attitude to religion only on the basis of his works, especially since the October Revolution significantly influenced both the themes and the formal aspects of his work. In addition, the opinions of researchers who have dealt with the role of the religious principle in the poet's work are diverse: Mayakovsky is seen as an atheist associated with the culture of the Middle Ages, Gnosticism, Manichaeism, materialism and the philosophy of Fedorov (M. Weisskopf), and a theomachist with the "heart of Christ" , which is especially evident in his early work (M. Pyanykh), and a superstitious poet, who is on the verge between faith and atheism (Yu. Karabchievsky), and a poet of Christian culture, who was influenced by the religious and philosophical thought of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (L. Katsis).

According to V. Shklovsky, Mayakovsky "took a religious image, destroying it." Mayakovsky's attitude to religion has a peculiar character. Under the guise of a struggle against Christianity, religious motives are preserved that permeate all the work of the poet, and he himself remains religious in his atheism. Despite the nihilistic, godless and atheistic attitude to the world, which is transformed at different stages of the poet's creative path, in general, in his works, the parallelism of religious and poetic consciousness is essential. This is the peculiarity of Mayakovsky's religiosity.

In the early works of Mayakovsky, the religious principle is embodied in manifestations of romantic nihilism. The poet often puts forward heroes - different "I" (Nietzschean superman, the demon-antichrist, or the militant "Thirteenth Apostle") - as "a ram, rattling into the forbidden future, the will thrown beyond the last limits to the embodiment of the future, to the absolute fullness of being." The hero can act on behalf of God and wish for all mankind the benefits that it itself is not able to create.

In the early works, the hero with exaggerated lyricism acts as a savior-victim, often acquiring messianic features, and uses normative rather than original abstruse speech. Mayakovsky improves his poetic language, giving it strength and simplicity, and strives for the clarity of his poems. Despite the despair that grips the poet, the word gives him strength, the opportunity to become closer to those who offended him: “But to me - ∕ people, ∕ and those who offended - ∕ you are dearest and closest to me” (1, p. 185). The Christian attitude allows the poet to express himself in the concepts and images of the folk culture of that time, in the depths of which Christian-pagan dual faith still existed.

The work of early Mayakovsky is closely connected with Gnosticism. This is evidenced by the maximum lyricism, theomachism and the motive of the "resurrection of things", which merge with the poet's desire to take on the role of a creator who creates the world. For the poet, God is no longer an “omnipotent god”, but “a half-educated, tiny god”, today's world is an object of creativity for a new way of life: “I put “nihil” over everything that has been done” (1, p. 181) . In this regard, urban motifs and the understanding that the futuristic "city" is a space that is opposed to living nature are characteristic. In nature and the world already created by God, the creation of myths by a poet turns out to be impossible, and a poet who exists in this space can only be a creation, but not a creator. In this sense, the city "street" becomes a means of the poet's myth-making: the poet gives words to the languageless street, and in return takes life's realities from it.

The motive of the "rebellion of things" is aimed at the main task - the proclamation of the fight against the routine that determines the mentality of Russian society. Mayakovsky's attempt to "transform everyday life" begins with a new look at the "thing". In parallel with the ideas of the Formalists, Mayakovsky argues that the new is nothing but “a change in the outlook on the relationship of all things that have long changed their appearance under the influence of a huge and really new life” (1, p. 284) . Thus, a new view of things, first manifested in Mayakovsky's negative perception of reality, then, under the conditions of the revolution, continues to develop in the context of the construction of a utopia (from the tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky" to "Mystery Buff"). In this situation, the “implementation of metaphor” is activated, as a result of which the ephemeral nature of the word receives a material embodiment and all the objects that the poet describes are not a shadow of reality, but, as it were, acquire living, real flesh.

The fact is that in the images (creative and empirical) of the poet there is an inner tragedy. They reveal not only the opposition of the “I” with extraordinary abilities to the simple “You”, but also the split personality that determines the complex poetic psychology of Mayakovsky. He was constantly aware of the opposition of the poet and the world around him, the disagreement between the meta-"I" and his own "I".

The main tragic motives of the poet's work are the premonition that the word as the only tool of the poet will be ineffective, and the romantic irony that arises from the awareness of the severity of martyrdom, resentment, hatred and revenge. The stronger the hypertrophy of the personal "I" and subjectivity, the more the poet's world is distorted, and the freedom of the individual, who has lost the objects associated with it, is limited. This leads to the loneliness of the poet in a hostile world.

After the revolution, Mayakovsky's world finally becomes ambivalent. The real world, giving the poet the opportunity to communicate with others, makes him reduce the lyricism of the "I" and give his role to the masses. At the same time, the new world, which does not differ from the old way of life, as before, becomes the object of destruction. At the same time, due to the superstitious, atheistic nature of creativity, the poet has new opportunities for choosing topics.

Finding himself in a creative impasse, the poet chooses "fantasy" based on the boundless development of "science". Despite the loss of hope to create a utopia in this world, he, as a futurist, inherently believes not in an afterlife, in contrast to the apocalypse of religious symbolism, but in the continuation of life in this world: “What should I do, ∕ if I ∕ with might and main, ∕ with all my heart measure, ∕ this life, ∕ this ∕ world ∕ believed, ∕ I believe” (4, p. 181). Faith in the future (fiction and science) goes beyond interest and is elevated by the poet to the level of religion. Along with "belief in science", the superstitious component of the poet's work is evidenced by religious materialism, belief in corporeality and immortality, hostility to everything abstract.

In this situation, the problem of the attitude of the poet as an atheist to the destruction of being comes to the fore. We are talking about "death" and "immortality", which immanently contain a religious meaning. This problem is present mainly in the existential context and is relevant for the postmodern context.

For the poet himself, death was a constant object of reflection. L. Brik said this about his death: "Mayakovsky's constant talk about suicide! .. The thought of suicide was Mayakovsky's chronic illness, and, like every chronic illness, it worsened under adverse conditions." The motive of suicide, which grows out of the motive of self-sacrifice, persistently manifests itself in the work and life of Mayakovsky. He seemed to be "playing suicide", and the thought of suicide paradoxically gave him vitality and creativity.

Futurist materialism, belief in corporality and immortality form the core of Mayakovsky's religious and atheistic views. The poet, without protesting against his impending death, accepts it as a necessary and inevitable reality. For him, death from the very beginning is not so much something divorced from life as another side of life.

Unlike symbolism, which defines death as an escape from reality or as a transition to a better world, death in an existential context is an important element of life, bringing death into life is the main task of a person. Death is not divorced from life, but improves life, seeps into life. It is considered not some kind of event that happens only once at an unknown moment, but the main constituent element of life in the present.

In this sense, when considering the causes of Mayakovsky's death, his last work "Out loud" is very important. Of course, there were many poets who foresaw the posthumous glory prepared for them, but it rarely happened that the poet himself defines his poem as the last in his life. Therefore, the “First Entry into the Poem” can be defined as a testament and a kind of “death libretto”.

As mentioned earlier, throughout the entire creative path, Mayakovsky was characterized by a continuous conflict between the lyrical hero and his own "I". There were completely different selves within him. About an attempt to reconcile them, the poet says: “But I ∕ ∕ humbled myself, ∕ standing on the throat ∕ of my own song” (10, p. 280–281) . Mayakovsky considers his existence worthy of poetic existence only when it is “settled by the word”: “I am a poet. This is what is interesting. I am writing about this. About the rest - only if it was defended with a word ”(1, p. 9). It can be concluded that Mayakovsky's poetic work develops along this path: the man-"I" obeys the poet-"I", the biography - literature (poems, plays), and then the border between both sides of Mayakovsky's personality is erased. It is indicative that the author, who says "I humbled myself," enthusiastically poeticizes his life in the new society. For Mayakovsky, striving for the myth-making of his being, the result of poetic existence is death.

Yu. Karabchievsky, defining the atheistic basis of Mayakovsky's work, compares the attitude of an atheist to life with that of a believer: “... an atheist reconciles with life in a different way, through a conscious perception of its tragedy. He experiences life as a high tragedy and comes to the conclusion that it is only because of this that it is beautiful. Life belongs to a high genre, and you have to pay for this height.

How can a poet pay for a tragic life? Nothing else than a resurrection, different from the resurrection within the framework of Fedorov's philosophy, with which Mayakovsky's ideas are often correlated. Mayakovsky the poet, “nailed to paper with the nails of words,” begins “Out loud” thus: “Dear ∕ comrade descendants! ask about me too” (10, p. 279). He deliberately proclaims the death of verses, sacrifices verses for the sake of the immortality of the Logos, as if performing a religious ritual: , die like a private” (10, p. 283) . But the fact is that life is impossible for a poet without poetry. So that he does not remain petrified in the ground and his verse “broke through the vastness of years”, he cannot but poeticize his life, because for a poet who lives the life of his poems, the end of the verse flow means death, and death, paradoxically, remains the last guarantee of poeticization and mythmaking.

The life-creation of the poet-Demiurge, life-building as a collective ritual, atheistic faith in science and fantasy - all these are fundamentally important moments in the religious and poetic evolution of Mayakovsky's views. All this is dominated by the romantic irony of the poet, which D. Lukacs calls the most important artistic principle of the poet: “Irony, that is, the freedom of the writer in relation to God, is a transcendental condition for objectivity ... Irony as the self-elimination of subjectivity that has reached its limits is the highest freedom, possible in a world devoid of God." The separation of one's own "I" from the "I" of the poet-Demiurge, who at the same time strives for theurgy, is not only a guarantee of the dynamics of Mayakovsky's poetry, but also a source of tragedy.

Constant tragedy and extreme irony, in the end, lead Mayakovsky to poetize his life, that is, to voluntary death. At the same time, for Mayakovsky, neither religion nor science is anymore important. The most important thing for him is the apotheosis of the united being of the poet and poetry. And here it is possible to draw parallels with the postmodernist point of view on the psychology of creativity: the letter begins with the thought of the voluntary death of the author, who as a result acquires immortality: “Now we know: in order to ensure the future of writing, we need to overturn the myth about it - the birth of the reader has to be paid for by the death of the Author” . This position practically coincides with what M. Foucault writes about the death of the author as a way to immortalize writing: “Writing now is a voluntary erasure, which should not be presented in books, since it takes place in the very existence of the writer. Creation, whose task was to bring immortality, now received the right to kill - to be the killer of its author. But if postmodernists are talking about metaphysical death, then for Mayakovsky death is physical death. In postmodernism, the gap between writing and reality, or between everyday and literary existence, is a necessary condition in order to make the death of the author metaphysical. For Mayakovsky, this gap is an obstacle that must be destroyed for the resurrection and poeticization of life.