La nuvola con le braghe (Облако в штанах)

The time has come to reopen the conversation on Mayakovsky, recovering that early poetic season which gave us several masterpieces. Among these is undoubtedly A Cloud in Trousers, which—had the censors allowed it—would have been titled The Thirteenth Apostle. Just as when it first reached the unsuspecting ears of friends in 1915, a reading of this text still leaves us seized with admiration for the modernity of a language that time has not worn away. It is the future, along with the discourse of love, that interests the poet above all else. A Cloud in Trousers is the poem of absolute demand: and in this song, the poet excludes nothing.

Author: Vladimir Vladimirovič Majakovskij (Владимир Владимирович Маяковский)

Born in Georgia in 1893 and orphaned at only seven years old, he had a difficult and rebellious childhood. At the age of 13, he moved to Moscow with his mother and sisters. Having joined the Communist Party as a young man, he soon put his art at the service of the Bolshevik Revolution, advocating for the necessity of propaganda that—through poetry—would become an immediate expression of the revolution in progress.

All of his works should be viewed in this light. Of great importance is his entire lyrical body of work, which reflected the problems of daily life—a reality Mayakovsky experienced while working at ROSTA. Mayakovsky's final work is the prologue to an unfinished poem, At the Top of My Voice (1930), which could almost be described as his spiritual testament. In April of that same year, having become persona non grata to the Stalinist authorities, Mayakovsky committed suicide by shooting himself in the heart. Our publishing house released For the Voice in 2009.