SEER, 94, 1, JANUARY 2016 158 and eventually died doing transfusion experiments on himself (p. 186). Gorskii defends the Fedorovian idea of ‘chaste marriage’ and argues for the passage from a stage of sexual intercourse to one of mental intercourse. The young, he believed, are currently defined by what they can offer as potential sexual partners, and the old by the quality of their sexual production, i.e., their offspring. Immortality would free people from this state of enslavement to sex (p. 202). Finally, Muraviev thinks that the process of human reproduction should become the task of genetics and should be effected in laboratories. There is no good reason, he claims, why reproduction should require mating; it once occurred by ‘direct division’ and could be achieved again in the same way. The goal of genetics, Muraviev adds, is to ‘create a population of supermen’ (p. 213). Young’s study offers neither detailed philosophical analysis nor scholarly discussion, but rather gives a straightforward historical overview of the life and thought of the main figures of the Cosmist movement — a laudable enough goal in itself. However ‘kooky’ (p. ix) some of the Cosmist utopias might seem, others are now considered real possibilities among the scientific community, such as the exploration of the universe, or have become outright realities, such as ‘electric illumination for homes’ and ‘magnetic communication devices’ (p. 16). On a critical note, however, the Russian religious philosophers discussed in this book (Solov´ev, Bulgakov, Florenskii and Berdiaev) were not, so to speak, ‘followers’ of Fedorov, but rather thinkers who shared theoretical affinities with him. Even if they were in several cases influenced by some of his ideas, this does not necessarily warrant classifying them as Fedorovian Cosmists. In this respect, the book’s subtitle can be misleading. Nevertheless, as the author has successfully shown, Russian Cosmism had a significant impact on Russian religious philosophy and on Soviet scientific thought. For this reason alone, the movement can hardly be ignored in histories and studies of Russian thought. Institut Jean Nicod, Paris Frederic Tremblay Jangfeldt, Bengt. Mayakovsky: A Biography. Translated by Harry Watson. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL and London, 2014. xi + 610 pp. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. $35.00: £24.50. Vladimir Maiakovskii opens his laconic autobiography I Myself with the evasive remark, ‘I’m a poet. That’s why I’m interesting’ (PSS, vol. 1, Moscow, 1955, p. 9). Yet the poet’s colourful life — from the notorious yellow blouse to his unorthodox relationship with Lili and Osip Brik — has intrigued readers as much as his poetry. While Bengt Jangfeldt has written extensively on Maiakovskii’s literary output in the past, he turns his attention to the poet’s life in this carefully researched yet highly readable biography. Some textual exegesis is present, but it serves primarily to illuminate the historical REVIEWS 159 Maiakovskii. Jangfeldt’s primary focus is, rather, on dispelling the mist that still surrounds Maiakovskii’s complex web of personal relationships and his shifting political allegiances. As Jangfeldt points out, these aspects of Maiakovskii’s life have not been served well by previous biographers. During the Soviet era, political censorship and sexual prudishness obscured the poet’s life story. Even the best books from the Soviet period — such as Pertsov’s three-volume study and Katanian’s work — could not speak frankly about such matters. The rise of glasnost´ and the eventual collapse of the USSR lifted the lid on such censorship, but studies such as Karabchievksii’s tended to swap hagiography for vilification. Outside Russia, interest in Maiakovskii has waxed and waned in accordance with the aesthetic and political currents of the time, but it is telling that a book from the 1970s —Edward J. Brown’s Mayakovsky: A Poet in the Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 1973) — has remained the standard scholarly monograph in English for over forty years. Jangfeldt’s book thus provides a welcome intervention in the field. His book draws on myriad published and unpublished sources to provide readers with access to a thorough, balanced biography of the Soviet Union’s foremost poet for the first time. The thrust of Jangfeldt’s book is directed against the canonical view of Maiakovskii as thundering...
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Dec 1, 2023
Gregory Landini 
Open Access