Backbone Flute
1919 edition book cover
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| Author | Vladimir Mayakovsky |
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| Original title | Флейта-позвоночник |
| Country | Russia |
| Language | Russian |
| Genre | Poem |
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Publication date
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1915 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Preceded by | A Cloud in Trousers |
| Followed by | The War and the World |
Backbone Flute (Флейта-позвоночник, Fleita-pozvonochnik) is a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky written in the autumn of 1915 and first published in December of that year in Vzyal (Взял, Took) almanac, heavily censored. Its first unabridged version appeared in March 1919, in Vladimir Mayakovsky's Collected Works 1909-1919.
The poem deals with the themes of passionate love hurled down to the feet of a woman who still prefers safe haven of domesticity and social status provided by her successful husband, vengeful God's cruelty, death and suicide.
In July 1915 Mayakovsky for the first time met husband and wife Osip and Lilya Briks at their dacha in Malakhovka nearby Moscow. Soon the latter's sister Elsa invited him to the Briks' Petrograd flat. There Mayakovsky recited the yet unpublished poem A Cloud in Trousers and announced it as dedicated to the hostess. "That was the happiest day in my life," he wrote in his autobiography I, Myself years later.
Described variously as "one of the most exciting women of her times," or a cynical manipulator who "could be mournful, seductive, capricious, haughty, vacant, fickle, passionate, intelligent – whichever you wanted her," according to Viktor Shklovsky, Lilya found herself the unwilling object of the poet's all-consuming passion. "For two and a half years I didn't have a moment's peace. I understood right away that Volodya was a genius, but I didn't like him. I didn't like clamorous people ... I didn't like the fact that he was so tall and people in the street would stare at him; I was annoyed that he enjoyed listening to his own voice, I couldn't even stand the name Mayakovsky... sounding so much like a cheap pen name," she claimed in her memoirs. Nevertheless, not only did Lilya respond to this "assault" benevolently, her husband too has got infatuated with Mayakovskty's artistic persona so as to leave his career of a successful lawyer and businessman behind and submerge himself totally both into the poet's publishing affairs and the Futurists movement.
Still, as a mere part of a love triangle, Mayakovsky at the early stage of these complicated relationships felt humiliated and vexed by Lilya's unwillingness to give herself to him unreservedly, preferring instead to cling to her well-placed, financially reliable husband. These emotionally overcharged frustrations have translated into an epic diatribe against cruel God and the modern world where true love gets destroyed by moral conventions and economic interests.
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Wikipedia