Works of Soviet Literature summarized for those unable or too lazy to read them in the original. |
THE BEDBUG by Vladimir Mayakovsky (1929) |
Our love is liquidated. I'll call the militia if you interfere with my freedom of love as a citizen. |
I can raise the standards of the whole proletariat by looking after my own comforts. |
Comrades and citizens! Vodka is toxic! . . . . A primus stove or an open fire can turn your home into a funeral pyre! |
It's an acute attack of an ancient disease called "love". This was a state in which a person's sexual energy, instead of being rationally distributed over the whole of his life, was compressed into a single week and concentrated in one hectic process. This made him commit the most absurd and impossible acts. |
OLD MAN #1: I remember like it was now. OLD WOMAN #1: No, it's me who remembers like it was now! OLD WOMAN #2: You remember like it was now, but I remember like it was before. OLD MAN #2: But I remember like it was before like it was now. OLD WOMAN #1: I remember how it was even before that, a long, long time ago! OLD MAN #1: I remember now it was before and like it was now! |
Mayakovsky, Vladimir Vladimirovich.. Born 19 July (7 July, Old Style) 1893 in Bagdadi, Georgia (which was later named Mayakovsky in his honor). His father, Vladimir Konstantinovich, though of noble ancestry, was a forest ranger. The young Vladimir had two older sister--Olga and Lyudmila. He began school in Kutais in 1902, but took little interest in studies. By the time he was in third grade, Mayakovsky found himself thrilled by the excitement of mass meetings, demonstrations, and revolutionary songs. Lyudmila, now a student in Moscow, would bring home legal and illegal political pamphlets. (...Continued...) |
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