The population of the entire empire is
people, birds, centipedes,
bristling with bristles, feathers outstretched,
hanging on the window with desperate curiosity.

And the sun is interested, and it’s still April,
even interested the black chimney sweep
amazing, extraordinary sight -
figure of a famous scientist.

They look: and not a single human quality.
Not a man, but a two-legged impotence,
with the head bitten clean off
treatise “On Warts in Brazil.”

The eating eyes bit into the letter, -
oh, what a pity for the letter!
This is what an endangered ichthyosaur must have chewed
a violet accidentally caught in the jaws.

The spine was bent, like a shaft hit,
but should a scientist think about a trifling flaw?
He knows very well what Darwin wrote,
that we are only descendants of monkeys.

The sun will seep into a tiny crack,
like a small festering wound,
and hides on a dusty shelf,
where the bank is piled on top of the bank.

A girl's heart, boiled in iodine.
A fossilized fragment of the summer before last.
And on the pin there is something like
the dried tail of a small comet.

He sits all night. The sun from behind the house
grinned again at human outrages,
and down on the sidewalks there are preparations again
actively go to the gymnasium.

The red-eared ones pass by, but he’s not bored,
that a person grows up stupid and submissive;
after all, he can every second
extract Square root.

Analysis of the poem “Hymn to the Scientist” by Mayakovsky

For the first time, “Hymn to the Scientist” by Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was presented to the reading public in the “New Satyricon”.

The poem was written in 1915. Its author is young, promotes futurism and shocks the public. The genre is satire, the meter is accented verse with cross rhyme. There is no usual ladder yet; the anthem consists of 9 stanzas. The lyrical hero is a storyteller who dissects the phenomena of the world. The intonation is mocking. The poem contains many signs of the Russia that the poet would like to see destroyed. “Population of the entire empire”: this line is a parody of the language official documents. So, this whole motley company (buzzing, chattering, croaking) hangs “on the window,” captivated by the “extraordinary spectacle.” In front of them is a “famous scientist.” He is contrasted with the crowd, looking at him with curiosity, respect and fear. Of course, a scientist does not waste his life on trifles; every day he passes with benefit for all humanity. He is a magician who has been given carte blanche to evaluate the existence of all these staring creatures with feathers and centipedes, and to shape the worldview of his bipedal relatives. However, V. Mayakovsky takes the trouble to evaluate the scientist himself: not a person, but a two-legged impotence, whose mind is enslaved by trifles no less than that of everyone else. His mind was consumed by the treatise “On Warts in Brazil”, apparently the work of his whole life. In stanza 4, the author writes about a painful issue: oh, how sorry it is for the letter! After all, letters are the tool and bread of every poet. He compares the scientist to a dinosaur, chewing flowers along with grass. Even appearance The scientist is disapproved by V. Mayakovsky, known for his strong figure and loud voice: “the spine is bent.” Next is a mysterious line: we are only the descendants of a monkey. Although the poet agrees with this statement, he believes that this is not a reason to neglect himself. The sun itself enters the scientist’s domain with caution. He's also Sunbeam, perhaps, he will be able to catch it and put it in a jar. “Sits all night”: moving science. In the light of day, “human outrages” are again visible. The children of these people go to school (a preparatory student is not yet a student, but a candidate for the 1st grade of a gymnasium). And the dry scientist doesn’t care that these guys are being raised to be law-abiding, adherents of traditions, and not fighters against the tsarist regime. The finale is condemning: but it can extract the square root. And he could serve with his abilities the coming revolution. The personification touched both the sun and April. A scattering of inversions. Comparisons: like a wound, like an ichthyosaur. Epithets: desperate, red-eared (from water and morning chill). Metaphor: with the head bitten off. Diminutive suffixes: little houses, crack. Charles Darwin, the theorist of evolution, is mentioned.

“Hymn to the Scientist” by V. Mayakovsky is part of the poet’s satirical cycle, passing judgment on his contemporary era.

Mayakovsky’s poem “Hymn to the Scientist” is part of a series of grotesque and satirical “hymns” created by the poet before the 1917 revolution. In them, the artist depicts the shortcomings of contemporary life in a variety of areas and expresses his attitude towards them.
Thus, in “Hymn to the Scientist” (1915), Mayakovsky describes a “man of science,” who, according to the poet’s ideas, is a typical “bookworm.” The scientist is completely detached from life, although he is “loaded” with a large amount of knowledge. This makes the “great scientist” completely unviable, miserable and pathetic.
The poem begins with an introduction that describes the unprecedented excitement caused by the appearance of the scientist. Everyone, from the sun to the centipede, “hangs on the window with desperate curiosity,” wanting to see “the figure of the famous scientist.” However, the public is in for a huge disappointment:
They look: and not a single human quality.
Not a man, but a two-legged impotence,
with the head bitten clean off
treatise “On Warts in Brazil.”
All the intellectual efforts of this person were spent on studying a tiny problem, divorced from life, of no great value (something like “About warts in Brazil”). And now this person is “running around” with his topic, “sucking” the last out of it, but it looks pathetic and pathetic. To the author, such a scientist resembles an endangered ichthyosaur.
And indeed, externally and, what’s worse, internally, the famous scientist looks like a fossil - a bent spine, a dull gaze, a dead soul:
The sun will seep into a tiny crack,
like a small festering wound,
and hides on a dusty shelf,
where the bank is piled on top of the bank.
Nothing around makes him happy, nothing can make him live fully.
Mayakovsky finds accurate and figurative comparisons for his hero. It looks like “a girl’s heart, evaporated in iodine,” “a fossilized fragment of the summer before last.”
A person who studies life and the world around him hates all this. Locked in his dark room, he sits all day long, and everything that happens outside only makes him angry and irritated. Perhaps such a person could be pitied, because he is truly unhappy. It would be possible if he were not a scientist who is obliged to study the phenomena of life and, thereby, improve this life, make it easier, more joyful and happy.
However, we see that the “famous scientist” is completely incapable of this. Moreover, to real life, with its real concerns and problems, he has nothing to do with it, because he is hopelessly behind the times, he is completely indifferent to everything except “warts in Brazil”:
The red-eared ones pass by, but he’s not bored,
that a person grows up stupid and submissive;
after all, he can every second
take the square root.
A satirical portrait of a pseudoscientist helps the poet create original artistic media. These are, first of all, vivid metaphors (“not a person, but a two-legged impotence”; “with a head bitten off clean by the treatise “On Warts in Brazil”; A girl’s heart evaporated in iodine”; “A petrified fragment of the summer before last”, etc.). ) and comparison (“This is how the endangered ichthyosaur must have chewed a violet that accidentally fell into its jaws”; “The spine was bent, like a shaft hit”; “like a small festering wound”, etc.)
In his poem, Mayakovsky “expands” the definition of “letter eater” into a satirical metaphor: “Eating eyes have bitten into the letter, oh, how sorry it is for the letter!” A striking technique of Mayakovsky is the so-called tautology, which in this poem enhances the meaning of the words and makes the picture depicted brighter and clearer: “people, birds, centipedes, their bristles bristling, their feathers sticking out, are hanging on the window with desperate curiosity.”
In “Hymn to the Scientist,” inversion “dominates,” which brings the poem closer to spoken language– the language of the street. In addition, inversion allows you to intonationally highlight words that are significant in the work and draw additional reader attention to them:
And the sun is interested, and it’s still April,
even interested the black chimney sweep
amazing, extraordinary sight -
figure of a famous scientist.
Alliteration plays a big role in this poem - the combination of consonant sounds helps Mayakovsky create a more visible and vivid figurative picture: “The sun will seep into a tiny crack, like a small festering wound, and hide on a dusty shelf, where it is piled up on a jar.”
Thus, “Hymn to the Scientist” is Mayakovsky’s satire, aimed at the world of “bookish people”, cut off from life, fearing and hating everything except their “bookish” work.

V.I. Arnold, Soviet and Russian mathematician, author of works in the field of topology and theory differential equations, theory of singularities of smooth mappings and theoretical mechanics. One of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. OBSCURANTISM (obscurantism) (from Latin obscurans - darkening) - a hostile attitude towards enlightenment, science and progress. The source of the term “obscurantism” is the title of a satire of the early 16th century. “Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum” (“Letters from dark people”)

Epigraph from the article by V. I. Arnold “New obscurantism and Russian enlightenment”
“: Having become a professional mathematician, Kolmogorov remained, unlike most of them, primarily a natural scientist and thinker, and not at all a multiplier of multi-digit numbers (which is mainly what appears when analyzing the activities of mathematicians to people unfamiliar with mathematics)
Mayakovsky wrote: “After all, he can extract the square root every second” (about the professor who “doesn’t get bored that the students outside the window are actively going to the gymnasium”).

But he perfectly described what a mathematical discovery was, saying that “Whoever discovered that two and two equals four was a great mathematician, even if he discovered it by counting cigarette butts.” And anyone who today calculates much larger objects, such as locomotives, using the same formula, is not a mathematician at all!”
The end of the epigraph, now Mayakovsky himself.

HYMN TO THE SCIENTIST
The population of the entire empire is
people, birds, centipedes,
bristling with bristles, feathers outstretched,
hanging on the window with desperate curiosity.

And the sun is interested, and it’s still April,
even interested the black chimney sweep
amazing, extraordinary sight -
figure of a famous scientist.

They look: and not a single human quality.
Not a man, but a two-legged impotence,
with the head bitten clean off
treatise “On Warts in Brazil.”

The eating eyes bit into the letter, -
oh, what a pity for the letter!
This is what an endangered ichthyosaur must have chewed
a violet accidentally caught in the jaws.

The spine was bent, like a shaft hit,
but should a scientist think about a trifling flaw?
He knows very well what Darwin wrote,
that we are only descendants of apes.

The sun will seep into a tiny crack,
like a small festering wound,
and hides on a dusty shelf,
where the bank is piled on top of the bank.

A girl's heart, boiled in iodine.
A fossilized fragment of the summer before last.
And on the pin there is something like
the dried tail of a small comet.

He sits all night. The sun from behind the house
grinned again at human outrages,
and down on the sidewalks there are preparations again
actively go to the gymnasium.

The red-eared ones pass by, but he’s not bored,
that a person grows up stupid and submissive;
after all, he can every second
take the square root.

I don't understand what you all need. people are made up of whims and desires, which most often are not combined with their capabilities. a universe of drunken and powerless people. angry and unloved.
How unlucky am I? I was unlucky to be born with such a heavy heart and open soul. Every day I feel this breakdown in myself more and more clearly, more and more strongly. and I can’t find a detail that, like a dose of morphine, can hold it, prevent it from developing and destroying all the insides.
“In ourselves, we mean nothing. We are not important, but what we keep within ourselves.” Ray Bradbury obviously didn't mean what I thought when I read this phrase. What’s important to them is that you won’t betray or judge. no further characteristics are needed. You come, you can store in you what is difficult to carry on your own. hey, just don't break down, please, this is not part of my plans. and today I broke down, forgive me, forgive me. everyone who keeps something in me, forgive me. because I can’t do anything. I’m sorry. I'm alone. alone in her pain, in her confusion, in her powerlessness. I hide it, I hide it with shaking hands, God forbid someone notices and surrounds me with false empathy, false fate.
“If your words are a yoke for people, if they don’t want to dig deeper, then the road home is your only right path.” all I see in myself is anger. anger at myself, at my nature, which is assigned the role of “just being” all the time. Hearts are beating around me, and mine is gradually slowing down, looking at the fact that they only need a part of me. the part that I once liked.
and I continue to give myself away to everyone, from morning to night, from morning to night.
I reproach myself for believing people, for telling them what should remain somewhere at the bottom of my soul. and every morning I’m ashamed, I can’t look them in the eyes, this feeling eats away at me. Why do I reach out to those who have everything? and because of their innate courtesy they cannot refuse me. and endure this tormenting mechanism. inaccessibility. these people are unattainable. It’s like falling in love with the stars, and then realizing how much mathematics is needed to get closer to them. Why do you always have to chase people who have something in them? but you will certainly fall, rip your knees until they bleed, and they won’t even look back. and a silent hopeless cry bursts out of your chest, which no one can hear. Don’t give me hope, please. damn affection that makes you want to crush your skull. I don’t even have the strength to write about it, because these words cannot live, just like me. they realize their uselessness. edge. it's just an edge. Possibly made of glass. bulletproof. soundproofing. If they don't hear, we scream. They don’t hear again - we shoot. no one hears from both sides. But what if there is no glass at all? but is there something the same? So what is this? Perhaps it cannot be broken. but only one thing remains - the sides of the glass. a half. White and black. two opposites. They're in a draw game. and not a single one will checkmate. only check. step, perpendicular to the glass, from the opposite side. and at least dance, and at least run. only check. not swearing glass. throw a stone.
I pick up the fallen bar from the floor. Everything is fine.

The principles of satire in the “hymns” of V. V. Mayakovsky

Satire is a form fiction in prose or poetry, whose task is to criticize, expose and ridicule the negative phenomena of reality. V.V. Mayakovsky created satirical works both in the pre-revolutionary era and in the Soviet period. But if in the early period of his creativity the object of his satire was the negative phenomena of Tsarist Russia, which he subjected to caustic criticism with the help of irony and sarcasm, then in Soviet era the poet ridiculed the enemies of the revolution, the townspeople and bureaucrats, all those who interfere with building a bright communist future.

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In the early period of his work, V.V. Mayakovsky collaborated with the magazines “Satyricon” and “New Satyricon”. The name of the magazines is apparently inspired by the prose novel Satyricon by the Roman writer Petronius. From the name it is clear that in these magazines preference was given to satirical works.

V. Mayakovsky's early lyrics are directed against bourgeois society. The lyrical hero is opposed to the crowd, his rebellion is directed against well-fed complacency, vulgarity, philistinism, mundane interests, insignificance, lack of spiritual needs, misunderstanding of art, hostility to creativity. The lyrical hero is opposed to the crowd because he has a rich imagination, the ability to transform the world in his creativity and make it brighter and more colorful. We see in Mayakovsky’s early lyrics a traditional conflict for romantic poetry between a bright, extraordinary personality and a gray, faceless society. The rebel hero feels his loneliness, and a desire arises in him to irritate and shock the “rich and well-fed.”

Let us note that shocking behavior was typical of futurism, the modernist movement to which Mayakovsky belonged. In addition to the shocking pathos that permeates the work of the futurists, representatives of this movement aimed to challenge tradition in their work; in their attitude to modern reality, they were obsessed with the idea of ​​​​destroying the old world. The futurists’ attitude to words was also unusual. They showed interest in the “self-proclaimed word”, verbal deformations, and the creation of neologisms, therefore the poetic form of the Futurists is characterized by an abundance of neologisms, colloquial intonation and shocking pathos.

It was during this period, in 1915, that Mayakovsky created a series of grotesque and satirical “hymns”, in which he depicted the shortcomings of contemporary reality in a variety of areas, expressing his attitude towards them.

The word "hymn" translated from Greek means "praise, praise." In the ancient world it was a song of praise to the gods, in European poetry it was an odic poem on a sublime theme. Each state has its own national anthem.

But in the history of poetry, there are cases when satirical works, in style reminiscent of the phenomena of astheism, were called hymns. Asteism translated from Greek means “joke, wit.” This stylistic figure It also has another name - antiphrasis - the use of a word in the opposite meaning. Instead of singing and praising, solemn songs, the hymns use the opposite principle - satire and criticism, ridicule and derision of the negative phenomena of life. Such is “Hymn to Gold” by P. Ronsard or “Hymn to the Beard” by M. Lomonosov. In the same row are the “hymns” of V. Mayakovsky.

Let's consider what the principles of satire are in the “hymns” of V. Mayakovsky.

In “Hymn to the Judge,” the setting is the exotic Latin American country of Peru, so the poem is filled with vivid exotic images. Here are baobabs - large tropical trees with a very thick trunk, exotic fruits: bananas, pineapples; here are the crowns of orange flowers - evergreen tree; There are also rare exotic birds here: hummingbirds, small long-winged birds with colorful feathers, and the peacock, a bird from the pheasant family with elegant plumage.

The question arises: why is there so much exoticism in this poem? What is its role in the artistic fabric of the work? It should be noted that the brightness, colorfulness, festivity, exoticism of the world - the “paradise of Peru” - are contrasted by the dull judges, who subject life to strict regulation, with their articles and sets of laws.

Let's consider how the lyrical plot of the poem develops, what images successively replace each other. First, an image is created of convicts sailing the Red Sea on galleys - ancient rowing, multi-oared ships, on which hard labor was usually used, so that galleys are a symbol of unfreedom, slavery. The movement of the galleys is accompanied by the “roar” of the convicts. This roar drowns out the “shackled neighing”. The convicts “yell” about the homeland of Peru, chanting their homeland - paradise with its baobabs, oranges, bananas, pineapples, “wine in a sealed container.”

So, after the image of the Peruvian convicts, the image of their homeland, the paradise of Peru, is created, endowed with brightness, colorfulness and exoticism. Then the image of the judges who “pushed Peru” appears. Mayakovsky uses a striking technique here, using identical sounding words nearby. The rude, colloquial word “naporli” emphasizes the aggressive nature of judges, who have a detrimental effect on the world around them. The living, bright, festive world was “surrounded by articles” by dull and lifeless judges. Polysemous word“surrounded” has two meanings. Firstly, to impose means to oblige payment. Secondly, “surround” - surround on all sides like an animal on the hunt.

The portrait of a judge is created using one single detail:

The judge's eyes are a pair of tin cans

Flickers in a garbage pit.

If the eyes are the mirror of the soul, then the judge with his tinny eyes (the comparison is used here) has no soul, or it is so disgusting and disgusting that it evokes associations with a cesspool. The colloquial word “tin” - a piece of tin - thin sheet iron - is associatively associated with the word “hard” - harsh, rough, harsh and with the word “cruel” - ruthless, merciless.

As a result of the judge's actions, the bright world fades:

Hit peacock orange - blue

under his eye is stern, like fasting, -

and the peacock instantly faded

gorgeous tail!

The comparison “like fasting” - abstaining from fasting food as prescribed by the church - sheds light on the main idea of ​​the poem. Judges deprive life of its fun and joy, making it dull, boring and monotonous, regimented and mechanical, devoid of a living soul.

As a result of the judge’s actions, the “poor hummingbird” also suffered, and the judge “shaved both its down and its feathers.” The mountains and burning volcanoes disappeared into the valleys because the judge wrote: “The valley is for non-smokers.” “In poor Peru” there are only prohibitions. The lyrical hero’s poems are also prohibited, as if “ alcoholic drink", they cannot be read "under pain of torture."

At the end of the poem, the conclusion is drawn that because of the evil, sad judges in Peru there is “birdlessness (the author’s neologism), desolation,” the ringing of shackles as a symbol of unfreedom, and it is the judges who interfere with real, living life:

The judges interfere with both the bird and the dance,

for me, for you, and for Peru.

Why at the beginning of the poem are the convicts sailing on the Red Sea, which is not in South America, and in North Africa, between Egypt and Saudi Arabia? Geographical inaccuracy? But everything falls into place when at the end of the poem we read about “desolation”: Peruvians are leaving their homeland.

Undoubtedly, in Mayakovsky’s poem there is a subtext and, under the guise of the exotic state of Peru, pre-revolutionary Russia is depicted, the poet’s contemporary Russian reality, ruled by “sad judges” hostile to all living things, is caustically ridiculed. The lyrical hero calls for the release of the people - the “convicts”, and for this it is necessary to eliminate the judges.

The main principle of satire in “Hymn to the Judge” is an antithesis: the contrast of faceless, dull and angry judges with the brightness, colorfulness and exoticism of the world, in which there are “heaps of joys.” The image of the judge is created using the grotesque: tin-shaped eyes, a peacock tail faded under the judge’s stern eye; the hummingbirds that the judge shaved, the inscription on each valley: “Non-Smoking Valley.”

Mayakovsky’s metaphors amaze with their novelty, freshness, unusualness and originality, for example, “shackled neighing.” The ringing of the shackles is compared to the loud cry of a horse, but the word “rusty” appears associatively in the mind, and we visually imagine shackles rusty from a long time.

A no less grotesque image was created in “Hymn to the Scientist.” The composition of this poem is built according to next plan. The first part (1st and 2nd stanzas) shows the moment of waiting for the “figure of the famous scientist.” Everyone is in anticipation of an “amazing, extraordinary spectacle.” Using the hyperbole “population of the entire empire,” the poet concretizes the images of those waiting: “people, birds, centipedes,” who “hang on the window with desperate curiosity,”

And the sun is interested, and it’s still April,

even interested the black chimney sweep...

Using the tautology “bristles bristling”, “feathers sticking out”, the poet strengthens the motive of expectation of an unprecedented spectacle in order to emphasize. What a great disappointment awaits everyone.

The second part shows the disappointment of the audience when they finally saw the “great scientist.” The portrait of a scientist emphasizes the emasculation, the emptiness of his soul, impoverished, devoid of living content, there is “not a single human quality” in him; this is “not a person, but a two-legged impotence.” Worthlessness, uselessness, uselessness " scientific activity"of a man - a “literalist”, the theme of whose treatise is not worth a damn, who is completely divorced from life, is revealed with the help of a bright grotesque:

with the head bitten clean off

treatise “On Warts in Brazil.”

Here satirical images from “The History of a City” by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin come to mind. This is the mayor Dementy Varlamovich Brudasty, who had a special device in his head - an organ that could pronounce only two phrases: “I will not tolerate it!” and “I’ll ruin you!” This is Major Ivan Panteleevich Pyshch, whose head was stuffed with sausage, and the subordinate gourmet could not stand it and bit off this head.

An extended metaphor and an extended comparison grotesquely reinforce the motive of the emptiness and uselessness of the scientist’s “activity”:

The eating eyes bit into the letter, -

oh, what a pity for the letter!

This is what an endangered ichthyosaur must have chewed

a violet accidentally caught in the jaws.

The image of the scientist is created by two bright portrait details: eyes “eating a letter” (here an expanded metaphor of the word “letter eater” is used and, in addition, a realized metaphor - Mayakovsky “returns” this metaphor direct meaning, “realizes” it, using the “literal” meaning of the word), and a spine that is “curved,” “like a shaft.” But this physical defect, a “trifling flaw,” does not bother the scientist, because he sits for days, days and nights over his “works.” Convinced of the significance of his activities. Paraphrasing Darwin’s statement that man descended from a monkey, the poet emphasizes that for the scientist, people are “only the descendants of apes,” he does not see a high spiritual principle in them, since he himself is a dried-up bookworm, devoid of spiritual needs.

The interior of a scientist’s office is also an important means of characterizing him. Here the sun, which is usually a symbol of light, warmth, love, life, joy and creativity (remember “The Extraordinary Adventure that Vladimir Mayakovsky had in the Summer at the Dacha”, where the work of the poet and the sun are equated), barely “seeps... into a tiny crack.” And the comparison of the sun with a “small festering wound” indicates that Mayakovsky’s hero suffers from a moral illness, his soul has degraded and dried up.

What do we see in the scientist’s office? Dusty shelves with “tins piled high on them.” The “exhibits” are dead, devoid of life, which once again indicates the scientist’s isolation from the “tree of life.” As Mephistopheles said to a student who mistook him for the scientist Faust in Goethe’s tragedy “Faust”:

Theory, my friend, is dry,

But the tree of life turns green.

(translation by B. L. Pasternak).

What's in these jars?

A girl's heart, boiled in iodine.

A fossilized fragment of the summer before last.

And on the pin there is something like

the dried tail of a small comet.

... The sun from behind the house

grinned again at human outrages...

“Red-eared” “trainers” go to gymnasiums, and the scientist does not care that children grow up “stupid” and “obedient,” since he is proud of the fact that he can “every second // extract the square root.”

So, in this poem, Mayakovsky’s satire exposes scientists, “book people”, “literalists” who are cut off from life, fear it and hate it, engaging in unnecessary, useless “scientific” activities.

“Hymn to Health” begins with an antithesis. “Thin-legged, liquid with blood” are contrasted with “people made of meat,” to which the lyrical hero, who with difficulty turns his “bull’s neck,” counts himself. He “loudly” calls out “for a well-fed holiday for fat health.”

The goal of the lyrical hero is to make life bright, varied, interesting:

To dance the earth madly

boring, like a can of canned food,

let's catch spring butterflies

a network of unnecessary nerves!

The poet uses original metaphors: “to beat” (the earth with a mad dance); “network” (of nerves). It is unusual to compare the earth to a can of canned food, which indicates the prosaic, ordinary, everyday life. The lyrical hero calls for rejecting bourgeois conventions and freeing his body, therefore at the end of the poem there is a shocking theme of bodily emancipation. The theme of carnal pleasures is heard through comparisons: “a city withered like Onania,” “with a crowd of yellow-faced lanterns like eunuchs.” Masturbation - masturbation, handjob, unnatural satisfaction of sexual urge. Skoptsy are castrati. The lyrical hero calls for the satisfaction of sexual needs in a natural way. Undoubtedly, in the finale the poet shocks his readers with such overly frank images.

Let us turn to the poem “Hymn to a Bribe.”

The praise of the “dear bribe” is filled with caustic irony and caustic sarcasm. The narration is not in the first person singular, but in the plural:

Come and praise me humbly

you, dear bribe.

Obviously, the lyrical hero feels part of the large community of bribe-takers to which he belongs:

Everything is here, from the junior janitor

to the one who is woven in gold.

The Old Slavonic word “right hand” instead of the commonly used word “hand” reinforces the ironic attitude towards bribe-takers who behave self-confidently and impudently. They are convinced that they are right, like Gogol’s mayor in The Inspector General, confident that clever man cannot help but take what floats into their hands. Bribe takers do not accept reproach addressed to them, believing that they are simply envied. Defending their right to take bribes, without accepting “blasphemy”, they, putting on uniforms and medals, will show their “persuasive fist” to envious people. They look at Russia as their own garden, where “everything is pouring, blooming and lush.”

Have you seen it somewhere?

for the goat to stand

and the goat is too lazy to go into the garden?

So, in “Hymn to Bribery,” bribery is cruelly ridiculed as a serious human vice.

In “Hymn to Lunch,” another human vice is satirically denounced - gluttony, gluttony. The doxology of the “millions going to dine” and the thousands who “have had time to eat” is filled with sarcasm. The poet does not skimp on listing the names of “thousands of dishes of all kinds of food”: “porridge, steaks, broths.” Apart from food, gluttons care and are not interested in anything in life. They don’t want to know anything about the fact that there is a war going on, that as a result of shelling, the French martyr city of Reims was destroyed by sixty percent:

If the cannonball strikes

thousands of Reims could be broken -

the poolyard will still have legs,

and the roast beef will still breathe!

The author uses hyperbole and the metaphor of “breathing” (roast beef) here for greater persuasiveness. “Poolyard legs” - we are talking about fatty, well-fed chicken. Creating the image of a glutton and a glutton, the poet uses the synecdoche “stomach in a Panama hat,” naming a part of him instead of the whole person, because his whole essence lies in his stomach. And if the spiritual essence of a person is revealed through the eyes, then the glutton does not need them:

Let the pupils completely drown in fat -

your father made them in vain anyway;

At least put glasses on the cecum,

the gut wouldn't see anything anyway.

The glutton only needs one mouth to fit “a whole stuffed pumpkin.” Incentive sentences are full of caustic sarcasm:

Lie still, eyeless, earless,

With a piece of pie in hand...

…………………………….

Sleep without being disturbed by the sight of blood

and the fact that the world is surrounded by fire...

The life of a glutton is meaningless, he has done no good to anyone, and on his monument the epitaph will be the words “out of so many millions of cutlets // yours are four hundred thousand.”

So, “Hymn to Lunch” satirically depicts well-fed, “fat” people, whom Mayakovsky hated from childhood, because for him they symbolize bourgeoisness, vulgarity, philistinism, and lack of spiritual needs.

Conclusion

Summarize. V. Mayakovsky's early satire is aimed at sad people who do not know how to enjoy life, who seek to deprive the world freedom, brightness and versatility. The heroes of the “hymns” strive to regulate life, to subject it to a number of rules. The poet satirically depicts bribe-takers and gluttons, exposing human vices in them.