Concept poem "Cloud in Pants" ( original title“The Thirteenth Apostle”) originated from Mayakovsky in 1914. The poet fell in love with Maria Alexandrovna Denisova. However, love turned out to be unhappy. Mayakovsky embodied the bitterness of his experiences in poetry. The entire poem was completed in the summer of 1915.
Genre - poem.
Composition
The poem “Cloud in Pants” consists of an introduction and four parts. Each of them implements a specific, so to speak, private idea. The essence of these ideas was defined by Mayakovsky himself in the preface to the second edition of the poem: “Down with your love,” “down with your art,” “down with your system,” “down with your religion”—“four cries of four parts.”
Topics and problems
“A Cloud in Pants” is a multi-themed and multi-problematic work. Already in the introduction the theme of the poet and the crowd is stated. Main character the poet is opposed to the crowd: perfect image the lyrical hero (“handsome, twenty-two years old”) contrasts sharply with the world of base things and images (“men, laid back like a hospital, / and women, worn out, like a proverb”). But if the crowd is constant, then lyrical hero changes before our eyes. He is sometimes rude and harsh, “mad for meat,” “impudent and caustic,” sometimes “impeccably gentle,” relaxed, vulnerable: “not a man, but a cloud in his pants.” This clarifies the meaning of the unusual title of the poem.
The first part, according to the poet’s plan, contains the first cry of discontent: “Down with your love.” The theme of love can be called central; the entire first and part of the fourth section is devoted to it.
The poem opens with tense anticipation: the lyrical hero is waiting to meet Mary. The waiting is so painful and tense that the hero feels as if the candelabra are “laughing and neighing” in the back, “caressing” the doors, midnight is “cutting” with a knife, the raindrops are grimacing, “as if the chimeras of the cathedral are howling.” Notre Dame of Paris", etc. The painful wait lasts forever. The depth of the lyrical hero’s suffering is conveyed by an extended metaphor about the passing of the twelfth hour:
Midnight, rushing with a knife,
caught up
stabbed -
there he is!
The twelfth hour has fallen,
like the head of an executed man falling off the block.
Time, likened to a head falling from the block, is not just a fresh trope. It is filled with great internal content: the intensity of passions in the hero’s soul is so high that the usual but hopeless passage of time is perceived as his physical death. The hero “moans, writhes,” “soon he will tear his mouth out with a scream.” And finally, Maria comes and announces that she is getting married. The poet compares the harshness and deafeningness of the news with his own poem “Na-te”. The theft of a loved one - with the theft of Leonardo da Vinci's "La Gioconda" from the Louvre. And himself - with the dead Pompeii. But at the same time, one is struck by the almost inhuman composure and calmness with which the hero greets Maria’s message:
Well, come out.
Nothing.
I'll strengthen myself.
See how calm he is!
Like the pulse
dead man!
“Pulse of a Dead Man” is final, irrevocable dead hope for mutual feeling.
In the second part of the poem, the theme of love receives a new solution: we're talking about about the love lyrics that prevail in Mayakovsky’s contemporary poetry. This poetry is concerned with glorifying “the young lady, and love, and the flower under the dew.” These themes are petty and vulgar, and the poets “boil, squealing in rhymes, some kind of brew from love and nightingales.” They are not concerned about people's suffering. Moreover, poets deliberately run away from the street, they are afraid of the street crowd, its “pranks.” Meanwhile, the people of the city, according to the hero, are “purer than the Venetian blue sky, washed at once by the seas and the sun!”:
I know -
the sun would darken if it saw
our souls are gold placers.
The poet contrasts the unviable art with the authentic, the screeching “poets” with himself: “I am where the pain is, everywhere.”
In one of his articles, Mayakovsky stated: “Today’s poetry is the poetry of struggle.” And this journalistic formula found its poetic embodiment in the poem:
Take your hands out of your trousers, you walkers -
take a stone, a knife or a bomb,
and if he has no hands -
come and fight with your forehead!
develops in the third part. Mayakovsky considered Severyanin’s work to be poetry that did not meet the requirements of the time, therefore the poem displays an impartial portrait of the poet:
And from cigar smoke
liqueur glass
Severyanin’s drunken face stretched out.
How dare you call yourself a poet
and, little gray one, chirp like a quail!
The poet, according to the lyrical hero, should be concerned not with the elegance of his poems, but with the power of their impact on readers:
Today
necessary
brass knuckles
cut into the world's skull!
In the third part of the poem, Mayakovsky rises to the denial of the entire ruling system, inhuman and cruel. The whole life of “fat” people is unacceptable for the lyrical hero. Here the theme of love takes on a new facet. Mayakovsky reproduces a parody of love, lust, debauchery, perversion. The whole earth appears as a woman who is depicted as “fat, like the mistress whom Rothschild fell in love with.” The lust of the “masters of life” is contrasted with true love.
The dominant system gives rise to wars, murders, executions, and “massacres.” Such a structure of the world is accompanied by robberies, betrayals, devastation, and “human mess.” It creates leper colonies-prisons and wards of insane asylums where prisoners languish. This society is corrupt and dirty. Therefore, “down with your system!” But the poet not only throws out this slogan-cry, but also calls the people of the city to open struggle, “to cut the world into the skull with brass knuckles,” raising “the bloody carcasses of meadowsweet farmers.” The hero confronts the powers that be, the “masters of life,” becoming the “thirteenth apostle.”
In the fourth part, the theme of God becomes the leading one. This topic has already been prepared by the previous parts, which indicate a hostile relationship with God, who indifferently observes human suffering. The poet enters into open war with God, he denies his omnipotence and omnipotence, his omniscience. The hero even resorts to insult (“tiny little god”) and grabs a shoe knife to cut open the “smelling of incense.”
The main accusation leveled at God is that he did not take care of happy love, “so that it would be painless to kiss, kiss, kiss.” And again, as at the beginning of the poem, the lyrical hero turns to his Mary. There are prayers, reproaches, groans, powerful demands, tenderness, and oaths. But the poet hopes in vain for reciprocity. He is left with only a bleeding heart, which he carries, “like a dog... carries a paw that has been run over by a train.”
The finale of the poem is a picture of endless spaces, cosmic heights and scales. Ominous stars are shining, a hostile sky is rising. The poet is waiting for heaven to take off its hat to him in response to his challenge! But the universe is sleeping, with its huge ear resting on its paw with the pincers of the stars.
Mayakovsky, in the poem “A Cloud in Pants,” which we are analyzing, devoted a special place to the theme of betrayal, which begins with Maria and extends to other areas: he sees life as completely different, she smiles with her rotten grin, and he doesn’t want to stay there at all , where everyone is only interested in the surroundings.
It is striking that Mayakovsky’s poems are full of variety and he generously uses expressions and words that become new to the reader, although they are derived from ordinary sayings that everyone knows. The color is created thanks to bright images And double meaning, which come to life under the thoughts of readers. If you look at the triptych used in the poem, you can find the word “mockery,” which expresses aggression towards the one who is reading, and this is none other than a representative of the bourgeoisie.
"Down with your art"
Let's continue the analysis of the poem "Cloud in Pants", namely the second part. First, the author wants to overthrow those who became idols in art and who were extolled at the time when Mayakovsky wrote the poem. To overthrow these empty idols, the poet explains that only pain can give birth to real art, and that everyone can start creating and see themselves as the main creator.
Mayakovsky here uses interesting complex adjectives; you can find “screaming-lipped” and “golden-mouthed”. Or take “newborn” for example: here the author composed it from two others, bringing it closer in meaning to renewal and calling for action.
"Down with your system"
It is no secret that Mayakovsky spoke negatively about the political system, which just took shape during the author’s heyday as a poet. It is very appropriate that with words such as “curse”, “love”, “thing” the poet emphasizes one or another side of the weakness and stupidity of the regime. For example, you can think about belonging to things or about the verb “to break through,” with which Mayakovsky emphasizes decisive action, perseverance and speed.
"Down with your religion"
The fourth part is practically free from such complex newly formed words, because the poet here simply conveys the specifics: no matter how he calls to love Mary, she rejects him, and then the poet is angry with God. He believes that one cannot rely on religion, given its corruption, laziness, deceit and other vices.
Although Mayakovsky, and this is clearly visible in the analysis of the poem “Cloud in Pants,” brings forward a revolutionary idea, it is clear that thoughts about pain, passion and experiences are specific and dynamic. They also received a lot of attention. Of course, the poem we analyzed has become the property of Russian literature; She perfectly and intelligibly expressed the revolutionary sentiments of the Mayakovsky era.
Concept The poem “Cloud in Pants” (original title “The Thirteenth Apostle”) originated from Mayakovsky in 1914. The poet fell in love with Maria Alexandrovna Denisova. However, love turned out to be unhappy. Mayakovsky embodied the bitterness of his experiences in poetry. The poem was completely completed in the summer of 1915.
Genre - poem.
Composition
The poem “Cloud in Pants” consists of an introduction and four parts. Each of them implements a specific, so to speak, private idea. The essence of these ideas was defined by Mayakovsky himself in the preface to the second edition of the poem: “Down with your love,” “down with your art,” “down with your system,” “down with your religion” - “four cries of four parts.”
Topics and problems
“Cloud in Pants” is a multi-themed and multi-problem work. Already in the introduction the theme of the poet and the crowd is stated. The main character, the poet, is contrasted with the crowd: the ideal image of the lyrical hero (“handsome, twenty-two years old”) contrasts sharply with the world of base things and images (“men, stored up like a hospital, / and women, worn out, like a proverb”). But if the crowd remains unchanged, then the lyrical hero changes before our eyes. He is either rude and harsh, “mad for meat,” “impudent and caustic,” or “impeccably gentle,” relaxed, vulnerable: “not a man, but a cloud in his pants.” This clarifies the meaning of the unusual title of the poem.
The first part, according to the poet’s plan, contains the first cry of discontent: “Down with your love.” The theme of love can be called central; the entire first and part of the fourth section is devoted to it.
The poem opens with tense anticipation: the lyrical hero is waiting to meet Mary. The waiting is so painful and intense that it seems to the hero that the candelabra are “laughing and neighing” in the back, “caressing” the doors, midnight is “cutting” with a knife, the raindrops are grimacing, “as if the chimeras of Notre Dame Cathedral are howling,” etc. Painful the wait lasts forever. The depth of the lyrical hero’s suffering is conveyed by an extended metaphor about the passing of the twelfth hour:
Midnight, rushing with a knife,
caught up
stabbed -
there he is!
The twelfth hour has fallen,
like the head of an executed man falling off the block.
Time, likened to a head falling from the block, is not just a fresh trope. It is filled with great internal content: the intensity of passions in the hero’s soul is so high that the usual but hopeless passage of time is perceived as his physical death. The hero “moans, writhes,” “soon he will tear his mouth out with a scream.” And finally, Maria comes and announces that she is getting married. The poet compares the harshness and deafeningness of the news with his own poem “Nate”. The theft of a loved one - with the theft of Leonardo da Vinci's "La Gioconda" from the Louvre. And himself - with the dead Pompeii. But at the same time, one is struck by the almost inhuman composure and calm with which the hero greets Maria’s message:
Well, come out.
Nothing.
I'll strengthen myself.
See how calm he is!
Like the pulse
dead man!
“Pulse of a Dead Man” is the finally, irretrievably dead hope for mutual feeling.
In the second part of the poem, the theme of love receives a new solution: we are talking about love lyrics, which predominate in Mayakovsky’s contemporary poetry. This poetry is concerned with glorifying “the young lady, and love, and the flower under the dew.” These themes are petty and vulgar, and the poets “boil, squealing in rhymes, some kind of brew from love and nightingales.” They are not concerned about people's suffering. Moreover, poets consciously flee from the street, they are afraid of the street crowd, its “pranks.” Meanwhile, the people of the city, according to the hero, are “purer than the Venetian blue sky, washed at once by the seas and the sun!”:
I know -
the sun would darken if it saw
our souls are gold placers.
The poet contrasts the unviable art with the authentic, the screeching “poetics” with himself: “I am where the pain is, everywhere.”
In one of his articles, Mayakovsky stated: “Today’s poetry is the poetry of struggle.” And this journalistic formula found its poetic embodiment in the poem:
Take your hands out of your trousers, you walkers -
take a stone, a knife or a bomb,
and if he has no hands -
come and fight with your forehead!
develops in the third part. Mayakovsky considered Severyanin’s work to be poetry that did not meet the requirements of the time, therefore the poem displays an impartial portrait of the poet:
And from cigar smoke
liqueur glass
Severyanin’s drunken face stretched out.
How dare you call yourself a poet
and, little gray one, chirp like a quail!
The poet, according to the lyrical hero, should be concerned not with the elegance of his poems, but with the power of their impact on readers:
Today
necessary
brass knuckles
cut into the world's skull!
In the third part of the poem, Mayakovsky rises to the denial of the entire ruling system, inhuman and cruel. The whole life of “fat” people is unacceptable for the lyrical hero. Here the theme of love takes on a new facet. Mayakovsky reproduces a parody of love, lust, debauchery, perversion. The whole earth appears as a woman who is depicted as “fat, like the mistress whom Rothschild fell in love with.” The lust of the “masters of life” is contrasted with true love.
The dominant system gives rise to wars, murders, executions, and “massacres.” Such a structure of the world is accompanied by robberies, betrayals, devastation, and “human mess.” It creates leper colonies-prisons and wards of insane asylums where prisoners languish. This society is corrupt and dirty. Therefore, “down with your system!” But the poet not only throws out this slogan-cry, but also calls the people of the city to open struggle, “to cut the world into the skull with brass knuckles,” raising “the bloody carcasses of meadowsweet farmers.” The hero confronts the powers that be, the “masters of life,” becoming the “thirteenth apostle.”
In the fourth part, the theme of God becomes the leading one. This topic has already been prepared by the previous parts, which indicate a hostile relationship with God, who indifferently observes human suffering. The poet enters into open war with God, he denies his omnipotence and omnipotence, his omniscience. The hero even resorts to insult (“tiny little god”) and grabs a shoe knife to cut open the “smelling of incense.”
The main accusation thrown at God is that he did not take care of happy love, “so that it would be possible to kiss, kiss, kiss without pain.” And again, as at the beginning of the poem, the lyrical hero turns to his Mary. There are prayers, reproaches, groans, powerful demands, tenderness, and oaths. But the poet hopes in vain for reciprocity. He is left with only a bleeding heart, which he carries, “like a dog... carries a paw that has been run over by a train.”
The finale of the poem is a picture of endless spaces, cosmic heights and scales. Ominous stars are shining, a hostile sky is rising. The poet is waiting for heaven to take off its hat to him in response to his challenge! But the universe is sleeping, with its huge ear resting on its paw with the pincers of the stars.
