To the Artist's Page 
To our home page
To A Cloud in TrousersNotes from the translator on A Cloud in Trousers
1. Nice: a city on the French Riviera, a popular tourist destination. Famous for its flower market.
2. Maria: refers to a girl that Vladimir Mayakovsky had met while he was in Odessa. The “Maria” in Part IV is quite another person.
3. Decemberish: One of the trademarks of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poetry is that he often made up his own words that would gain their meaning in the context of the poem. This is a good example.
4. J. London: (1876-1916) one of the most successful American writers of the early 20th century.
5. La Gioconda: Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”, was stolen from the Louvre in 1911.
6. Pompeii: An ancient Italian city, located near Naples and at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius. The eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. buried the city under cinders and ashes.
7. Lusitania: liner under British registration, sunk off the Irish coast by a German submarine on May 7, 1915. The incident contributed largely to the rise of American sentiment for the entry of the United States into World War I.
8. Babel: in the Bible, place where Noah's descendants (who spoke one language) tried to build a tower reaching up to heaven to make a name for themselves. For this presumption the speech of the builders was confused, thus ending the project.
9. Krupps: the German munitions-makers.
10. J. W. von Goethe: (1749-1832) A German poet, dramatist, novelist, and scientist.
Faust: the hero of Goethe’s poetic drama of the same name.
Mephistopheles: The name of the devil in Faust legend.
11. Golden-mouthed: This expression was used to describe articulate and expressive preachers in the Russian Orthodox Church.
12. Zarathustra: c.628 BC-c.551 BC, religious teacher and prophet of ancient Persia, founder of Zoroastrianism.
13. “This led to my Golgotha in the auditoriums…” Here, Mayakovsky alludes to his travels around Russian at the end of the year 1913, when his presentations were harshly criticized and bashed by the press.
14. His precursor: Vladimir Mayakovsky is comparing himself to St. John the Baptist.
15. Dreadnought: a heavily armed battleship whose main guns are all of the same caliber.
16. D. Burlyuk: (1887-1967) A painter, a poet, one of the leaders of the futurist movement and a close friend of Vladimir Mayakovsky. Burlyuk was blind in one eye.
17. “Good”: the title of one of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poems.
18. Yellow sweater: Vladimir Mayakovsky’s famous futurist garb.
19. “Drink Cocoa -- Van Houten!” Here, Mayakovsky writes about a story that was covered by the media aat the time: before his execution, a man yelled out the commercial slogan, “Drink Cocoa- Van Gouten!” For this advertisement, the company Van Houten promised a large sum of money to support the man’s family.
20. I. Severyanin: (1887-1941) A contemporary poet of Mayakovsky, considered cheap and superfluous by his colleagues because he was given to lauding the wealth and luxury of the high life in his poetry.
21. O. von Bismarck: (1815–98) A German statesman, known as the Iron Chancellor.
22. G. de Galliffet: (1830-1909) A French General, whose cruel suppression of the Commune of Paris in 1871 won him a reputation as a strong man and the enduring enmity of the political left.
23. Rothschild: A famous banking family, known for their wealth.
24. La Marseillaise: the song of the French Revolution, the French National Anthem.
25. Mamai: Khan of the Golden Horde at the end of the fourteenth century, during the Tartar domination of Russia. In reality, it wasn’t Mamai, but the warlords of Jenghiz Khan era, who practiced the ritual of feasting while sitting on wooden boards placed on the bodies of the prisoners.
26. E. Azef: (1869-1918) The notorious agent provocateur who played a double game, engineering the assignations of imperial ministers and betraying revolutionaries to the czarist police.
27. Barabbas: A bandit held in jail at the time of Jesus' arrest. Pontius Pilate, who, according to the Gospels, annually released a prisoner at Passover, offered to release Jesus, but the people demanded his death and Barabbas' delivery.
28. Thirteenth Apostle: The original title of the poem, rejected by the czarist censors.
29. Maria: A Moscow painter and a writer with whom Mayakovsky was involved at the time.
30. Presnya: A street (and a district) in Moscow where Mayakovsky lived.
31. Tiana: A character in the poem by I. Severyanin. (see note 31 on page 33).
32. Salome: In the New Testament, she is the daughter of Herod Philip and Herodias, who danced to obtain the head of John the Baptist.
33. Ki-ka-pu: An exotic dance that was popular at the Russian night clubs at the time.
34. “All the torture of Sevres…” Vases from the well known factory in Sevre, France.