Unsettling Things: Vladimir Mayakovsky and Marina Tsvetaeva’s Attachment to Everyday Objects

Year 2022, Volume: 7 Issue: 1, 68 - 93, 29.04.2022

Melih Levi

https://doi.org/10.29110/soylemdergi.1076207

Abstract

This article studies representations of everyday life and objects in poetic works by the Russian poets Vladimir Mayakovsky and Marina Tsvetaeva. Byt, a concept that refers to quotidian practices and the hardened routines of everyday life, has been used to understand the manner of Russian writers’ negotiations with everyday reality. After surveying some prominent scholarly views on byt, this article assesses the legacy of impressionism with particular attention to how it informs aesthetic representations of the everyday. Since impressionism provided stylistic foundations for many modernist and avant-garde movements, a critical assessment of its legacy proves useful for understanding the affective and aesthetic orientations developed toward everyday objects in works by Mayakovsky and Tsvetaeva. An investigation of how both poets transfigure everyday objects and invest them with spiritual significance reveals the nature of their attachment to objects. The article pays particular attention to how the poets resist Marxian notions of fetishism by translating their objectual negotiations into a constructivist process for the poetic self. As part of this process of self-fashioning, the poets develop novel ways of reorganizing the everyday through a subversion of the metonymic and metaphorical axes of description. The article then offers detailed analyses of Mayakovsky’s play, Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy, and Tsvetaeva’s poem, “Desk.” In both, everyday objects become thresholds of intersubjectivity. They are at once autonomous entities and metonymic projections of the poets’ bodies. Compared to Mayakovsky's restless prophetic voice, which orchestrates ritualistic performances for objectual presentations of his body and psyche, Tsvetaeva’s poem seeks more absorbed and intimate immersion in her object, the writing table, which records traces of an embodied poetic self and its struggle to restructure cultural constructions of the everyday.

Keywords

Vladimir Mayakovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva, poetry, modernism, futurism, imagery

Thanks

I am grateful to Catherine Ciepiela and Laure A. Katsaros for introducing me to these poets and their continued support of my academic work. I wish thank Ilya Kiselev and Timothy Yuan for their help with Russian pronunciation and etymology.

Vladimir Mayakovsky ve Marina Tsvetaeva'nın Gündelik Hayatın Nesneleriyle İlişkilerinin Karşılaştırmalı İncelemesi

Abstract

Bu makalede Rus şairler Vladimir Mayakovsky ve Marina Tsvetaeva'nın eserlerinde gündelik yaşamın ve nesnelerin temsili incelenmektedir. Gündelik pratikleri ve hayatın katılaşmış rutinlerini ifaden eden byt, Rus yazarların gündelik gerçeklikle kurduğu ilişkileri anlamak için kullanılmış bir kavramdır. Byt hakkında çeşitli akademik görüşler incelendikten sonra, izlenimciliğin mirasının gündelik hayatın estetik temsilini nasıl şekillendirdiği ele alınmaktadır. İzlenimcilik, birçok modernist ve avangard hareket için biçimsel temeller oluşturduğumdan, mirasının eleştirel bir değerlendirmesi, Mayakovski ve Tsvetaeva'nın eserlerinde gündelik nesnelere karşı geliştirilen duygusal ve estetik yönelimlerin açıklanmasında faydalı olacaktır. Her iki şairin gündelik nesneleri nasıl dönüştürdükleri ve onlara nasıl manevi anlamlar yüklediklerini incelerken, makale, şairlerin nesnel dünya ile kurduğu ilişkilerin benlik inşasındaki etkilerinin izini sürmektedir. Bu süreçte, şairler, dilin metonimik ve metaforik eksenlerini yeniden şekillendirerek gündelik hayatı yeniden düzenlemenin yollarını ararlar. Makalenin ikinci bölümünde, Mayakovski'nin tiyatro oyunu Vladimir Mayakovsky: Bir Trajedi’nin ve Tsvetaeva'nın “Masa” adlı şiirinin ayrıntılı analizleri sunulmaktadır. Her iki eserde gündelik nesneler adeta bir eşik konumundadır. Hem özerkliklerini ilan ederler hem de şairlerin vücutsal ve tinsel yansımalarıdır. Mayakovski’nin huzursuz ve kehanetler sunan kahramanı, benliğinin nesnel izdüşümleri için sembolik ritüeller düzenlerken, Tsvetaeva'nın nesnelerle kurguladığı ilişkilerde daha tekil ve samimi bir dinamik söz konusudur. Onun nesnesi, hem düşünsel hem de fiziksel mücadelesine şahitlik eden yazı masasıdır. Tsvetaeva bu masayla kurduğu çetrefilli ilişki üzerinden gündelik hayat olgusunu oluşturan kültürel temelleri ve toplumsal koşulları görünür kılmaktadır.

Keywords

Vladimir Mayakovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva, şiir, modernizm, fütürizm, imge

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