[Marxism] Tatlin's tower

[Paddy Apling]

A most interesting review.

I remember being intrigued by Tatlin's tower (as I was with Mayakovsky's 
poetry) and have a (dream?) memory of seeing a model of it at an exhibition 
on the London South Bank not many years after the end of WWII.

As to Mayakovsky's poetry, it is worth repeating one of them, "My Soviet 
Passport", written in 1929, translated by Herbert Marshall and printed in 
Challenge, the newspaper of the British Young Communist League in 1944:  A 
poem that surely needs to be remembered and celebrated - it has been 
remembered,  celebrated, and on occasion quoted,  throughout my life.  (It 
really is DEMANDING to be recited with feeling, with echoes of the heartfelt 
zeal of Percy Bysshe Shelley and so many more),

My Soviet Passport

I'd tear
like a wolf
ay bureaucracy.
For mandates
my respect's but the slightest.
To the devil himself
I'd chuck without mercy
every red-taped paper
But this. . .

Down the long front
of coupés and cabins
File the officials
politely.

They gather up passports
and I give in
My own vermilion booklet.

For one kind of passport
smiling lips part
For others -
an attitude scornful.

They take
with respect, for instance
the passport
from a sleeping-car
English Lionel.

The good fellow's eyes
almost slips like pips
when,
Bowing as low as men can,
they take.
as if they were taking a tip.
the passport
from an American.

At the Polish,
they dolefully blink and wheeze
in dumb
police elephantism -
where are they from,
and what are these
geographical novelties?

And without a turn
of their cabbage heads,
their feelings
hidden in lower regions
they take, without blinking
the passports from Swedes
and various
old Norwegians.

Then sudden
as if their mouths were
a quake
these gentleman almost
whine.
These very official gentlemen
take
that red-skinned passport
of mine.

Take -
like a bomb
take - like a hedgehog.
like a razor
double-edged stropped.
take
like a rattlesnake
huge and long
with at least
Twenty fangs
poison-tipped.

The porter's eyes
give a significant flick
I'll carry your baggage
for nix,
mon ami. . . .

The gendarmes enquiringly
look at the tec,
and the tec -
at the gendarmerie.

With what delight
that gendarme caste
would have me
strung-up and whipped raw
because I hold
in my hands
hammered-fast
sickle-clasped
my red Soviet passport.

I'd tear
like a wolf
at bureaucracy
For mandates
my respect's but the slightest.
To the devil himself
I'd chuck
without mercy
every red-taped paper
But this . . .

I pull out
of my wide trouser pockets
duplicate
of a priceless cargo.

You now:
read this
and envy
I'm a citizen
of the Soviet Socialist Union !

-------  Enjoy it, comrades, and think:  how did we let it pass into history 
?

Paddy
http://apling.freeservers.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Louis Proyect" <lnp3 at panix.com>
To: <e.c.apling at btinternet.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 09, 2009 2:43 PM
Subject: [Marxism] Tatlin's tower


http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/merridale_07_09.html
Catherine Merridale
ALL WOOD AND DREAMS