Notes on CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Gogol Conjures up Raskolnikov Before He Exists

                                             Raskolnikov Conjured Up in "Dead Souls"

Sometimes it’s amazing how much influence Nikolai Gogol had on Dostoevsky. There’s a passage in Gogol’s Dead Souls, describing Chichikov’s return to the provincial town where he is staying, feeling in high spirits after his recent purchase of dead souls from the landowner Plewshkin.

So typical of Gogol’s style in his masterpiece, the action suddenly veers off out of Chichikov’s carriage, and we find ourselves in St. Petersburg, making the acquaintance of a young romantic dreamer who sticks his nose into the novel only this one time, and then vanishes like the wind.

“The thunderous rattling of the carriage and its leaps into the air made the occupant [Chichikov] notice that it had reached a paved way. The street lamps were not yet lit; only here and there had lights begun appearing in windows of the houses, while in the lanes and the blind alleys scenes and conversations were taking place inseparable from this time of day in all towns where there are many soldiers, cabbies, workmen, and beings of a peculiar species who look like ladies, wearing red shawls and shoes without stockings and who dart like bats over the street crossings at nightfall.

“Chichikov did not notice them, nor did he notice even the exceedingly slim petty officials with slender canes who, probably after taking a stroll beyond the town, were now returning to their homes. At rare intervals there would come floating to Chichikov’s ears such exclamations, apparently feminine, as ‘You lie, you drunkard, I never let him take no such liberties as that with me!’ or: ‘Don’t you be fighting, you ignoramus, but come along to the station house and I’ll show you what’s what!’ In brief, [and here we are suddenly in the northern capital, URB] such words as will suddenly scald, like so much boiling water, some youth of twenty as, lost in reveries, he is on his way home from the theater, his head filled with visions of a Spanish street, night, a wondrous feminine image with a guitar and ringlets.

“What doesn’t he have in that head of his and what dreams don’t come to him? He is soaring in the clouds and he may have just dropped in on Schiller for a chat, when suddenly, like thunder, the fatal words peal out over his head, and he perceives that he has come back to earth once more, and not only to earth, but actually to the Haymarket, and right by a pothouse, at that; and once more life has taken to strutting its stuff before him in its workaday fashion” [Dead Souls, Part I, near end of Ch. 6; I use the Guerney translation here].

Note the image of Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), the German poet whom Russians of the nineteenth century considered the embodiment of romantic idealism. Schiller is mentioned several times in Crime and Punishment; at one point Svidrigailov calls Raskolnikov “a Schiller,” and in the hero’s mixed up personality there is certainly something of the romantic idealist.

Most fascinating about the Gogolian passage, however, is the way it seems to conjure up—some twenty years before Dostoevsky invented him—the dreamer Raskolnikov, wandering the Haymarket in a daze, amidst all the drunken squalor, trying to concentrate on the dreams and murderous schemes in his deranged head.

Raskolnikov Ascending 

Notes on CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Going to America "Я, брат, еду в Америку."

Going to America

At several different points in the action of C and P the characters mention going to America. At one point the perverse Svidrigailov tells Dunya, Raskolnikov’s sister, that he is willing to save her brother, even offering to take him to America. At another he offers to give Raskolnikov money: “If you are so sure that one can’t listen at doors, but any old woman you like can be knocked on the head, then you’d better be off at once to America somewhere. Run away, young man! . . . . You haven’t any money, is that it? I’ll give you enough for your journey” (Part 6, Ch. 5).

Svidrigailov later uses the metaphor of America as a way of alluding to his suicide: “’Sofya Semyonovna,’ he said, ‘I may, perhaps, be going to America, and as this is probably the last time we shall see each other, I have come to complete some arrangements’” (Part 6, Ch. 6). When he arrives at the actual act of suicide, Svidrigailov comes upon a Jewish man who is working as a watchman:

“’Well, what do you want here, already?” [asks the watchman]

‘Nothing, brother. Good morning to you!’ answered Svidrigailov.

‘So go somewhere else.’

‘I am going to foreign parts, brother.’

‘Foreign parts?’

‘To America.’

‘America?’

Svidrigailov took out the revolver and cocked it.

‘What now, this is not the place for jokes!’

‘Why shouldn’t it be the place?’

‘Because it isn’t.’

‘Well, brother, it doesn’t matter. It’s a good place . . . If you are asked, say I said I was off to America.’

He lifted the revolver to his right temple” (Part 6, Ch. 7).

Why the allusions to America? Because the idea of the country on the shining hill had a special mythological force in Russia for several centuries, roughly the eighteen through the twentieth. Russians saw America as a place of refuge, a place where you could begin life all over and live very well, a magical realm of milk and honey. Despite the Cold War, any American in the Soviet Union had a special status. In the unwritten ranking of countries in the Russian/Soviet mind, the U.S. was always at the very top.

Caught in the Soviet trap, unable to travel abroad, Russians dreamed some day of visiting the magic country. Then, when the Soviet Union fell apart, they finally had their chance. And by the early years of the twenty-first century the old myth was dead. When Russians arrived, finally, at the paradisal land, they found it much lacking in many ways. As it turned out, the country has attracted large numbers of Russian immigrants. Some three hundred thousand Russians still live in the U.S. today. But they no longer live the magic dream.

They are here because this country still provides economic opportunities unavailable in the homeland. Ask them, however, about the fairyland kingdom shining bright on the hill, the land envisioned by Russians for three centuries. They’ll give you their honest opinion about the country they have chosen to live in. Don’t expect to hear a lot of encomiums. You won’t. For Russians the end of communism and the chance to travel killed the myth of the American Dream, which, even in the minds of native Americans, appears to shine much more dimly these days than it once did.

D. Shmarinov

Svidrigailov

DOSTOEVSKY AND SOCIALISM

Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground is often considered the prologue to his five long novels. The first of these is Crime and Punishment. Intellectually Notes is primarily a polemic with Western ideas fashionable among Russian intellectuals of the nineteenth century, ideas that, logically developed, led eventually to Vladimir Lenin, the Socialist Revolution of 1917, and the victory of communism.

Dostoevsky himself was so much influenced as a young man by utopian socialist ideas that he joined the most radical wing of the Petrashevsky Circle, which was a kind of club of intellectuals who met to discuss social and economic issues in St. Petersburg. In April of 1849 the Petrasheskyites were all arrested, imprisoned and interrogated. In December of that year they were subjected to a mock execution, after which they were sent to Siberian labor camps.

During his years in Siberia Dostoevsky changed his views on socialism; in addition, he re-embraced the Russian Orthodox religion, in which he had been raised but which had taken a back seat to atheistic socialism in his mind. When he was released and eventually allowed to return to European Russia he was a different person. For the rest of his life, both in his journalistic writings and in his fiction, he battled against what he saw as the oversimplified and naïve left-wing ideas so fashionable with Russian intellectuals.

Dostoevsky’s literary work as a whole amounts to a thorough dismantling of the Socialist edifice before it was even built. Despite that monumental effort the building was built all the same. Forty years after Dostoevsky’s death, upon the cornerstone of leftist utopian ideas, the U.S.S.R. was constructed. Here is a letter that Dostoevsky wrote to M.N. Katkov (Apr. 25, 1866):

“All nihilists are socialists. Socialism (particularly in its Russian form) demands especially the severing of all connections. They are completely certain that on the tabula rasa they will immediately build a paradise. Fourier was convinced that all it will take is to build one phalanstery and the whole world will immediately be awash in phalansteries; those are his own words [ideas of the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier (1772-1837) were much in vogue with Russian intellectuals; a phalanstery is a dormitory intended for communal living]. 

"And our Chernyshevsky said that he need only talk to the people for a quarter hour and immediately he would convince them to convert to socialism [Dostoevsky’s narrator in Notes from the Underground thoroughly demolishes the naïve ideas of Nikolai Chernyshevsky, expressed most widely in his novel of 1863, What Is To Be Done? Notwithstanding that demolishment, Chernyshevsky became a hero of the Russian Revolution in the twentieth century, and an exemplar of glorious Socialism for anyone who lived in the Soviet Union].

“Moreover, in our poor little defenseless Russian boys and girls, there is one more, eternally persisting, fundamental point upon which socialism will base itself for a long time to come: enthusiasm for the good, and the purity of their hearts. Frauds and foul people there are many among them. But all those high school students, schoolboys of whom I have seen so many, have converted to nihilism so purely, so selflessly in the name of honor, truth, and true welfare. They are defenseless against these absurdities and accept them as if they were perfection itself. Sound science, of course, will eradicate it all. But when will it happen? How many victims is socialism going to swallow until then?” [letter cited in Norton Critical Edition of C and P, p. 478-79]

As it turned out, the socialist myth persisted in the U.S.S.R. for roughly seventy years, wreaking havoc on innocent people, killing untold millions, as does any utopian idea put into practice. All of Dostoevsky’s mighty intellectual forces were powerless to prevent the logical development of what were, essentially, misguided notions. Of course, if you look at the “revolution” of the sixties in the U.S. you see an eerie repetition of what was happening in Russian exactly a hundred years before that. With the same  oversimplifications. We are well into a new century now, but the ideas of the sixties still reverberate in the U.S.—naïve ideas, stupid ideas, such as “political correctness,” that attempt to regulate free flow of words and ideas.

Now that socialism is dead or moribund worldwide, what do we have to replace it? Unfortunately, the triumph of capitalism has been far from successful in solving basic human problems. But, then again, Dostoevsky might have predicted this failure as well. He was already castigating incipient capitalism in Russia (see the despicable Luzhin in Crime and Punishment). He knew that the culprit was, as always, human nature, with its beastly proclivities. Whatever social and political system you impose, human nature remains the same. 

I wonder what Dostoevsky would think of D.J. Trump, the moron/clown who is our current president, whose misguided followers voted for him, at least in part, as a way of rejecting some of the more bizarre leftist ideas that came out of the sixties?

                               Part of the Cast of Characters in Crime and Punishment

Notes on Dostoevsky's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Преступление и наказание The Marmeladov Subplot

[Note: I rely in my blog posts here largely on the Jessie Coulson translation of C and P, in the Norton Critical Edition of the novel. At times I translate short passages myself from the Russian original.]

The Marmeladov Subplot

Note: marmelad (мармелад) in Russian is a sweet jellied candy, and has nothing to do with orange marmalade.


Dostoevsky published Crime and Punishment in 1866; the action takes place in St. Petersburg in the summer of the previous year. A characteristic feature of the great 19^th century Russian realists is their social obligation, the imperative to treat broad social and political issues. 

The original title of C and P was The Drunkards, and apparently the main focus was to be the Marmeladov family. Later on the Marmeladov subplot became one of many melodramatic plotlines that fuse together the main ideas and themes, and that revolve around the central dilemma of the novel’s main character, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, the twenty-two-year-old student—whose crime (the murders of an old woman and her sister) and punishment (his suffering, largely moral and spiritual for the crime) provide the title of the novel.

In the novel’s first important scene (Part I, Ch. 2), Raskolnikov meets Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov by chance in a squalid tavern. The word ‘squalid’ is of special importance here, inasmuch as the whole atmosphere of C and P teems with squalor. Everything about St. Petersburg stinks, the air is foul, the water is practically undrinkable, and the underclass people who provide a constant background chorus for the plot are filthy and vulgar. If you cannot tolerate vulgarity and filth, both physical and psychic, you probably should not try reading Dostoevsky.

The self-denigrating Marmeladov, in the final throes of alcoholism when he appears, is one of those abject characters so frequently met in Dostoevsky’s works—all of them originating in his first novel, Poor People. His life is bankrupt, his self-respect gone, and he has turned to drink in desperation. Here we have again the social theme of poverty, but Dostoevsky always links his social issues and themes to broader psychological and religious issues.

In terms of psychology Marmeladov is a masochist, a man who finds a perverse joy in his own debasement and humiliation. The great psychologist Dostoevsky often makes it clear that if pleasure is not to be found anywhere else, the human animal will find pleasure in pain. As so frequently in Dostoevsky’s works Marmeladov’s tragic condition is described partially in comic terms. In telling his sad story to Raskolnikov upon their first meeting, he says, in his mock-lofty way of speaking (much of this style is lost in translation): “осмелитесь ли вы, взирая в сей час на меня, сказать утвердительно, что я не свинья? (dare you, in beholding me at this very selfsame moment, assert with conviction that I’m not a pig?)” Meanwhile, a chorus of sneering laughers in the tavern provide the background music for Marmeladov’s tale.

He later takes pleasure when his raving wife Katerina Ivanovna physically abuses him, dragging him by the hair about their squalid hovel: “’This is sweet satisfaction to me! This gives me not pain, but plea-ea-sure, my dear sir!,’ he exclaimed, while he was shaken by the hair and once even had his forehead bumped on the floor.”

Another frequent feature of Dostoevsky’s narratives is the issue of human pride debased. Dostoevsky’s poverty stricken characters are always touchy, always seeking for ways to repair their injured pride. Katerina Ivanovna has only her green shawl to remind her of one glorious moment in her life: the day when she performed a shawl dance for the governor upon her graduation from a fashionable school for young ladies. She clings to that shawl and the memory of that dance because it is all she has to remind her that she was once somebody. The shawl, in fact, makes it all the way through this novel of almost five hundred pages, ending up on Sonya’s shoulders in Siberia.

Katerina Ivanovna’s pride cannot stand the condition of being a nobody, of nonentity. Once again here, we have the ontological malaise that destroyed Dostoevsky’s hero Devushkin in his first novel, Poor People. A character is so debased that he/she begins doubting her/his own existence. Katerina Ivanovna ends up going insane later in the novel. In Part I her wounded pride drives her to behave cruelly toward those around her, especially toward her stepdaughter Sonya, whom she taunts unmercifully and drives to prostitution.

Of course, when Sonya returns with her first earnings, thirty pieces of [biblical] silver, Katerina Ivanovna prostrates herself before the angelic Sonya and kisses her feet. As so often in Dostoevsky’s works, pride, love, cruelty, and hatred are all mixed up in a character’s insides. The thirty silver roubles also suggest, of course, the religious overtones of the tavern scene, which find full expression in Marmeladov’s invocation of Christ: “He will pity us, He who pitied all men and understood all men and all things . . . . . . And He will say, ‘Come unto Me! I have already forgiven thee’ . . . . . . And He will forgive my Sonya, He will forgive her.”

Therefore, very early in the book Dostoevsky provides his ultimate religious message in the words of the abject alcoholic Marmeladov. This is the message that Raskolnikov will have to learn if he is to be forgiven, and forgive himself, for his crime. Later on, when Marmeladov has died, Sonya takes over the role as spokesperson for Christianity in the novel.

In sum, the subplot of the Marmeladov family, basically melodramatic in the way it is presented, suggests, at least obliquely, all the major themes of the novel: psychological themes, religious and philosophical themes, socio-political themes.

                                                       

D. Shmarinov                                                         
                                                         Marmeladov in the Tavern

More Suffering Horses in Russian Literature IVAN BUNIN, "Петлистые уши" "NOOSIFORM EARS"

Statue of Ivan Bunin in Yelets, Russia

More Suffering Horses in Russian Literature

Probably the two most well-known descriptions of oppressed horses in all of Russian literature are (1) The mare in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Frou-Frou who, owing to her rider Vronsky’s fatal mistake in the steeplechase, falls while leaping a barrier and has to be shot; and (2) the mare beaten to death by drunken peasants in Raskolnikov’s dream (Part I of Crime and Punishment).

Ivan Bunin’s short story “Петлистые уши (Noosiform Ears),” set in St. Petersburg and written as a travesty of Crime and Punishment, has two other incidences of suffering horses. Here is the first of them:

“The resplendence of illuminations on Nevsky Prospekt was smothered by the dense haze, which was so penetrating and cold that a policeman’s mustache had acquired a whitish tint, seemed to have gone gray as he stood at the corner of Vladimirskaya, directing the maelstrom of carriages, sleighs, and goggle-eyed automobiles whirling toward one another. Near Palkin a sloe black stallion who had fallen on his side, onto the shaft, desperately thrashed about, flailing his hooves against the slippery roadway, struggling to right himself and get back up; hastily and frantically bustling about, looking outlandish in his monstrous overskirt, a foppish cabman was attempting to help him, while a red-faced giant of a constable, who had trouble moving his cold, benumbed lips, was screaming, waving a hand in its cotton glove, driving away the crowds” [Ivan Bunin, Night of Denial, Northwestern University Press, 2006, p. 274-75].

              Statue of Tsar Aleksandr III, in Courtyard of the Marble Palace, St. Petersburg

The second incidence of the horse theme in “Noosiform Ears” is the mention, twice, in the story of the equestrian statue of Tsar Aleksandr III, on his “hideous, stout horse.” St. Petersburg is full of statues of tsars on horses, including The Bronze Horseman (Peter the Great mounted high), emblematic of the city itself and probably the most famous monument in all of Russia. But perhaps the most distinctive equestrian statue in the city is that of Aleksandr III.

Unveiled May 23, 1909, on Znamensky Square, next to what is now the Moscow Railway Station, the monument honored Tsar Aleksandr for his role in constructing the Trans-Siberian Railway. Almost immediately this odd statue—stout rider on exhausted stout horse—was received with derision. The sculptor, P.P. (Paolo) Trubetskoj is supposed to have said, privately, “I don’t know what all the fuss is about; I just depicted one animal sitting on another.” Publicly he defended his work of art as a serious depiction of Russian might embodied in the figure of the tsar, but it is hard not to see this statue as deliberately mocking. The fat tsar so seems to weigh down the poor horse that it appears about to fall.

For more on this monument see Ivan Bunin, Night of Denial, notes to the stories, p. 577-79.

Suffering Horses in Russian Literature MAYAKOVSKY, "Treating Horsies Nice"

Vladimir Mayakovsky
(1893-1930)

Хорошее отношение к лошадям 

Били копыта.
Пели будто:
- Гриб.
Грабь.
Гроб.
Груб.-

Ветром опита,
льдом обута,
улица скользила.
Лошадь на круп
грохнулась,
и сразу
за зевакой зевака,
штаны пришедшие Кузнецким клешить,
сгрудились,
смех зазвенел и зазвякал!
- Лошадь упала!
- Упала лошадь!-
Смеялся Кузнецкий.
Лишь один я
голос свой не вмешивал в вой ему.
Подошел
и вижу
глаза лошадиные...
Улица опрокинулась,
течет по-своему...

Подошел и вижу -
за каплищей каплища
по морде катится,
прячется в шерсти...

И какая-то общая
звериная тоска
плеща вылилась из меня
и расплылась в шелесте.
"Лошадь, не надо.
Лошадь, слушайте -
чего вы думаете, что вы их плоше?
Деточка,
все мы немножко лошади,
каждый из нас по-своему лошадь".
Может быть,
- старая -
и не нуждалась в няньке,
может быть, и мысль ей моя казалась пошла,
только
лошадь
рванулась,
встала нa ноги,
ржанула
и пошла.
Хвостом помахивала.
Рыжий ребенок.
Пришла веселая,
стала в стойло.
И все ей казалось -
она жеребенок,
и стоило жить,
и работать стоило.

1918 

Literal Translation (U.R.Bowie)

A Good Attitude Toward Horses (Treating Horses Well)

Horseshoes were pounding,

Seeming to sing:

Mushroom.

Plunder.

Coffin.

Coarse.

Drunk on the wind,

Shod in ice,

The street skidded.

Onto his croup

Came crashing

A horse,

And immediately,

One gaper after another,

Their trousers walking in to bell-bottom Kuznetsky [Kuznetsky Most, major street in Moscow],

They came in throngs,

Their laughter rang and clattered.

“A horse has fallen;

“A horse is down,”

Laughed Kuznetsky.

I alone

Did not blend my voice into that howl of his.

I walked up

And I saw

Equine eyes…

The street tipped over,

Flowed along on its own… [street as if reflected upside down in the horse’s eyes]

I walked up and saw:

One huge drop, then another huge drop

Down the snout dripping,

Hiding itself in the hair…

And some kind of universal

Animal anguish,

Splashing, flowed out of me

And went running and rustling.

“Horse, now don’t.

Horse, listen [using the polite ‘you’ in addressing the animal].

Why do you think that you’re worse than them? [substandard: How come you think you’re worsen…]

Kiddo,

We’re all at least a little bit horses;

Each of us is in his own way a horse.”

Maybe

She was old

And did not need a nanny;

Maybe my very thought she took as vulgar,

Only

The horse

Lurched,

Got up on her feet,

Whinnied,

And set off.

Swishing her tail,

A red-headed kid.

Merrily she arrived,

Stood in her stall.

And all the time it seemed to her

That she was a colt,

That life was worth living,

And work was worth working.

â

Translation by Andrey Kneller                                   Kindness to Horses The hooves stomped faster, singing as they trod: --Grip. Grab. Rob. Grub. - Wind-fostered, ice-shod, the street skidded. Onto its side, a horse toppled, and immediately, the loafers gathered, as crowds of trousers assembled up close on the Kuznetsky, and laughter snickered and spluttered. --“A horse tumbled!” --“It tumbled -- that horse!” The Kuznetsky cackled, and only I did not mix my voice with the hooting. I came up and looked into the horse’s eye... The street, up-turned, continued moving. I came up and saw tears, -- huge and passionate, rolling down the face, vanishing in its coat... and some kind of a universal, animal anguish spilled out of me and splashing, it flowed. “Horse, there’s no need for this! Horse, listen,-- look at them all, - who has it worse? Child, we are all, to some extent, horses,-- everyone here is a bit of a horse.” Perhaps she was old and didn’t want to be nursed, or maybe, she took in my speech with a scoff, but the horse, out of nowhere, suddenly burst, heaved to its feet, and neighing, walked off. Wiggling its tail, with its mane shining gold, It returned to the stall, full of joyful feelings. She imagined once more that she was a colt, and work was worth doing and life was worth living.

                                                               TRANSLATION BY U.R.BOWIE

Translator’s Note

My translations of poetry from the Russian are far from literal. I often go to the opposite extreme, and this Mayakovsky translation is one of the freest that I’ve done. It’s an original poem in English, based on the themes of Mayakovsky’s poem, on his rhythms, rhymes, his neologisms. Although I sometimes change lines, even add things on, I don’t think that I traduce Mayakovsky. If anything, my poem remains truer to the spirit of his than other, more literal, and—on the surface—more “faithful” translations.

 

Treating Horsies Nice

Hoofbeats were pounding out,

Seeming to sing:

Grip

Grab

Rude

Rip.

Shit-faced on wind,

Brogans in ice,

The street lost its grip

On the ground.

Down on his rump

Came crashing a horse.

Their trousers bell-bottomous

Sweeping the street,
Gapers and lollygags
Gathered around.

Guffawers, hehawers,

Jack-assèd grin-jawers:

“What a lark!

It’s a gas!

A horse done fell down

On his ass!”

I was the onliest beast in the pack

Who eschewed sneeriness,

Lewd smirks and leeriness.

Strolls up, does I,

Takes a look in the eye

Of Horsiemus fallimus…

The street in that eye

Upside-down rolled awry.

Walked up, does I

And I seen:

Horsie-tears, big and hot,

Down the snout dribbly-drop,

Damping the horsie-hair wet…

And some sort of generalized

Animal anguish

Came rustling and

Splashing

From out of my

Sanguinished

Soul:

“Listen now, horsie,

Kiddo, don’t cry.

You’ll have your neigh

At the sky by and by.

How could you think

Your life’s badder than theirs?
Horsiekins, all of us

Have in us dorkiness;

Humanness often is worsen

Than horsiness.”

Could be he was old,

And in need of no nanny,

Could be that my plea

Was insulting to he.

Anyways.

The horsie

Lurched up and

Stood tall

On his leggywegs,

Whinnied out sweet

And set off down the street.

Swishing his tail, well!

Don’t he look swell!

Happily made it home,

Stood in his stall,

Forgotten the fall,

Feeling a colt again,

Crunching his oats again:

“Ain’t life a ball

In spite of it all?”

June, 2018

Note on Mayakovsky

Written one hundred years ago, on the eve of the Soviet Era, this poem about the fallen horse in some odd way foreshadows Vladimir Mayakovsky’s suicide in 1930. A founder of the Futurist movement in Russian poetry, known before the Revolution for his wild antics and hooliganism, Mayakovsky accepted the new Soviet Union with alacrity, became its best spokesman. He is still known largely for his thunderous declamations of revolutionary poetry, with his macho-man stance, and his condemnation of the whole lyrical tradition in Russian literature.

But somewhere beneath all the bluster there was a truly lyrical poet, a “cloud in trousers” with a sensitive soul and a love for animals. He wrote poems in which he portrayed himself as a kind of freak, an animal tormented by the crudity of humankind. His letters to his mistress, Lilya Brik, are full of his childlike adoration of animals, and he signed off with drawings of small creatures, including himself as “puppy dog.”

Despite his position as champion of the U.S.S.R. and the new socialist life, he could not have failed to notice that the workers and peasants exalted in the age of the “New Man” were no less crass and cruel, no less ignorant than they had ever been. His famous play, “The Bedbug,” makes that point clearly. Critics have surmised that Mayakovsky actually witnessed the scene on Kuznetsky Most, described in the poem, and that he took the side of the horse, as does the poet/narrator.

See here for some recent commentary on Mayakovsky's poem:

https://dianasenechal.wordpress.com/tag/vladimir-mayakovsky/

Declamation of "Treating Horsies Nice" by six-year-old Elizaveta Bugulova, Moscow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA4nx_nfyfc