Innovation, The Early Poetry (1912-1920), Vladimir Mayakovsky

Mayakovsky lived in the transitional period from the 19^th century to 20^th century in Russia. Under those changeable social conditions, people sharply changed their views on the nature of the human being, the natural world and the cosmos because of the advances in science and technology and constantly living in the shadow of war. The world needed to be reexamined for the traditional conception was not suitable for the social development. Being against tradition, futurism and formalism were born in Russian literary world under the above mentioned situation. Futurism advocated breaking from the past, meeting the future, despising tradition and upholding creation. Formalism challenged the traditional literary research model with new theoretical stance in search of new art forms replacing the old ones. The poetic concepts and creation thought of those literary trends severely affected Mayakovsky's early poem writing. Based on the previous research, the author intends to analyze Mayakovsky's creative method and writing techniques within the framework of futurism and formalism.Mayakovsky vigorously advocated breaking with convention and creating a new style in his early writing period. In terms of contents, some of his early works were rich in challenging and criticizing against old society, while some of them were hard to understand, without concrete contents. In these works, the form deconstructed the contents. In terms of language, Mayakovsky endeavored to renovate language, using coin words, to enrich the effect of "Alienation". He put colloquial and slang into his poetries, making them appear random and vulgar. Perverse metaphor and extreme exaggeration were also used to impress readers and inspire their imagination.Mayakovsky attached great importance to hearing effect of his poetries. His poetries bore novel rhyme and unique rhythm. To achieve aesthetic and forceful sound effect, Mayakovsky courageously created flexible rhythm ignoring the traditional restriction of rhyme and rhythm. In his poetries, there existed not only traditional rhythm between lines, but also alliteration, tail and head rhyme. For the sake of rhyming, Mayakovsky sometimes broke one line into several lines to enrich the sound effect of the poetry.Mayakovsky's poetries had not only forceful sound effect but also great visual impact. In his early works, you may come across blender of words and pictures, even musical notations, which enhance the incitement of the poetry. Even when only using words, he had quite a lot reforms. He changed the font of the words, changed the length of a sentence, and broke one line into several lines and put them into stair shape. The development of "stair shape" poetry was based on him creation.Mayakovsky was a gifted poet. He was clinging art form experimenter. In his art practice, he had boldly and effectively renovated on the ideological contents and art form. His poetries were a brand new cultural phenomenon. Mayakovsky had changed the quality of Russian poetry with his words, his image and his poetries, which greatly affected Russian literary history.Of course, there also existed flaws in Mayakovsky's works. As a representative of futurism, Mayakovsky made great effort to break all the bonds of traditional control, to negate everything, sometimes in bewildering or crazy mood. After October Revolution, he intended to be a revolutionist poet. His works was not very successful in the period of transferring his writing style.However, flaws can't obscure virtues in Mayakovsky's works. In the history of Russian literature, even world literature, Mayakovsky establish himself a monument with his unprecedented creative works.