Lyrics
Mayakovski, and his work, "A Cloud in Trousers," in particular, because of his "street" music -- the language and sounds of informal Russia, that is, the uneducated, the peasant, the gangster -- make native Russian speakers skeptical of efforts to translate his work. I did not use my own translation to understand the "events" of this poem, but one found on line, by Andrey Kneller. Here is his translation of the Prologue and Part One of Mayakovski's, "A Cloud in Trousers."
A Cloud in Trousers
by Vladimir Mayakovsky
translated from the Russian by Andrey Kneller
Prologue
Your thought,
Fantasizing on a sodden brain,
Like a bloated lackey on a greasy couch sprawling, --
With my heart’s bloody tatters, I’ll mock it again.
Until I’m contempt, I’ll be ruthless and galling.
There’s no grandfatherly fondness in me,
There are no gray hairs in my soul!
Shaking the world with my voice and grinning,
I pass you by, -- handsome,
Twentytwoyearold.
Gentle souls!
You play your love on the violin.
The crude ones play it on the drums violently.
But can you turn yourselves inside out, like me
And become just two lips entirely?
Come and learn--
You, decorous bureaucrats of angelic leagues!
Step out of those cambric drawing-rooms
And you, who can leaf your lips
Like a cook turns the pages of her recipe books.
If you wish--
I’ll rage on raw meat like a vandal
Or change into hues that the sunrise arouses,
If you wish--
I can be irreproachably gentle,
Not a man -- but a cloud in trousers.
I refuse to believe in Nice1 blossoming!
I will glorify you regardless, --
Men, crumpled like bed-sheets in hospitals,
And women, battered like overused proverbs.
A Cloud in Trousers [Part 1]
You think malaria makes me delirious?
It happened.
In Odessa it happened.
"I'll come at four," Maria promised.
Eight.
Nine.
Ten.
Then the evening
turned its back on the windows
and plunged into grim night,
scowling
Decemberish.
At my decrepit back
the candelabras guffawed and whinnied.
You would not recognise me now:
a bulging bulk of sinews,
groaning,
and writhing,
What can such a clod desire?
Though a clod, many things!
The self does not care
whether one is cast of bronze
or the heart has an iron lining.
At night the self only desires
to steep its clangour in softness,
in woman.
And thus,
enormous,
I stood hunched by the window,
and my brow melted the glass.
What will it be: love or no-love?
And what kind of love:
big or minute?
How could a body like this have a big love?
It should be teeny-weeny,
humble, little love;
a love that shies at the hooting of cars,
that adores the bells of horse-trams.
Again and again
nuzzling against the rain,
my face pressed against its pitted face,
I wait,
splashed by the city's thundering surf.
Then midnight, amok with a knife,
caught up,
cut him down –
out with him!
The stroke of twelve fell
like a head from a block.
On the windowpanes, grey raindrops
howled together,
piling on a grimace
as though the gargoyles
of Notre Dame were howling.
Damn you!
Isn't that enough?
Screams will soon claw my mouth apart.
Then I heard,
softly,
a nerve leap
like a sick man from his bed.
Then,
barely moving,
at first,
it soon scampered about,
agitated,
distinct.
Now, with a couple more,
it darted about in a desperate dance.
The plaster on the ground floor crashed.
Nerves,
big nerves,
tiny nerves,
many nerves! –
galloped madly
till soon
their legs gave way.
But night oozed and oozed through the room –
and the eye, weighed down, could not slither out of
the slime.
The doors suddenly banged ta-ra-bang,
as though the hotel's teeth
chattered.
You swept in abruptly
like "take it or leave it!"
Mauling your suede gloves,
you declared:
"D'you know,
I'm getting married."
All right, marry then.
So what,
I can take it.
As you see, I'm calm!
Like the p
