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Abstract:

The new academic collection of V.V. Mayakovsky’s works in 20 volumes, currently being prepared by scholars at the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, represents an innovative endeavor in terms of its expanded composition and thanks to the creation of textological principles for preparing texts and comments for new sections that were not published in previous lifetime and three posthumous collections of works. These include the poet’s “Notebooks” (Volume 19) and publishing contracts (Volume 20). Mayakovsky was not only a poet but also an artist, therefore, the collection in 20 volumes will feature 6 volumes of his artistic work, including graphics. The new format will present the “ROSTA Windows” (Volumes 13, 14, 15) not only with captions for the drawings, as before, but also with the images of the posters themselves, forming an indivisible whole with the poetic captions to them and serving as historical documents of the Civil War. In addition, a new textological principle was developed for presenting speeches in stenographic records (Volumes 10 and 11), which includes not only the poet’s speeches but also individual speeches of other people in this stenogram, necessary for understanding the context; the latter are typed in petit, while Mayakovsky’s text is in regular font.

For the new academic collection of works, a new textological preparation of texts was conducted, based on the analysis of all manuscript and printed sources, and the principle of the author’s last creative will, a new dating was performed, and a commentary was provided, three times exceeding the preceding one, without ideological stances, incorporating all newly discovered sources from Russian and foreign archives, and lifetime criticism.