Is it true that Mayakovsky is the author of the epigram “ah, in Inber, ah, in Inber”?

On the network you can find a poem with obscene subtext, which mentions the poetess Vera Inber. As a rule, the authorship of this work is attributed to Mayakovsky. We checked whether this is reasonably.

The story about the epigram, which Vladimir Mayakovsky allegedly devoted to Vera Inber, can be found in social networks in numerous variations. More often, the story of the creation of the poem is described as follows: Inber brought Mayakovsky his poem Stepan Razin, in which there were lines: “You are not a bite with a bell of a tin flap, / I cut my head to the shoulder ...” Mayakovsky, paying attention to the unscrupulous combination of the “log of the dashing head”, which led to not the most decent thoughts, supposedly answered the next quadrued:

"Ah, Inber, ah, Inber!
What kind of eyes, what a forehead!
I would look, everything would have looked,
I admired her B!"

This story is retold by users Livejournal, Facebook And "VKontakte", Sites"Prose.ru" And "Anecdote.ru". Sometimes the authorship of the epigram also attribute Boris Pasternaku And Valentina Kataeva.

Vera Inber (1890–1972) I became famous As a poetess, playwright and translator. Her first poetic collection "Sad Wine" (1914) received good reviews of critics. After the revolution, Inber lived in exile, then returned to Soviet Russia. In the 1920s, it was in the literary center of constructivists, printed in newspapers and magazines. During the blockade of Leningrad, Inber remained in the city and wrote her most famous poem - “Pulkovo Meridian”.

First of all, it is worth making out the first part of this story - awkward verses, which allegedly was followed by Mayakovsky’s answer. IN Collected works Inber there is no poem about Stepan Razin, there are no references to her either in the memoirs of contemporaries, nor in literary criticism. And the lines about the “dashing head” are found only in combination with the attached Mayakovsky obscene quadruple. So this part of the story is not true.

In Soviet times, the poem about Vera Inber was in oral stories - traces of this can be found, for example, in personal diaries 1980s. In 1988, literary critic Efim Etkind published Anthology of the epigramsthat he collected for many years. Among them there are quatrains, slightly different from what is now spreading in blogs:

“Ah, in Inber, ah, Inber
What kind of eyes, what a forehead ...
I would have watched everything, I would have watched everything
I would have looked at her. ”

In the Etkinda collection, many epigrams are attributed, among the authors there are Sergey Mikhalkov, and Konstantin Simonov, and Naum Korzhavin. But the frivolous poem dedicated to Inber is not signed. In this book there are many works of unknown authorship, which were firmly included in folklore, for example, a ditty of the 1960s about the murder of Kirov: “Eh, cucumbers and tomatoes, Stalin Kirov Killed in the corridor". Although Etkind accompanied the collection with detailed notes, which often describes, under what circumstances this or that epigram appeared, he did not comment on the lines about Inber. Apparently, they also relate to anonymous oral creativity.

In addition, there are no traces of this epigram in Collected works Mayakovsky, neither in the memoirs or diaries of contemporaries of the poet. The quatrain began to attribute to him only in the 2000s, before that, no one connected the Soviet poet with the frivolous epigram. The earliest entry that managed to find "verified" is fast In Livejournal, published in February 2003. Shortly before that, users of the blog platform brought The epigram in the comments, accompanying it with the signature: "The famous bike about the faith of Inber and Mayakovsky."

"Verified" already disassembled similar cases. Often obscene poems created by little -known or completely anonymous authors are attributed precisely Mayakovsky or Yesenin -Huligans poets.

Thus, the epigram with obscene consonant, dedicated to Vera Inber, is with a high degree of probability not the work of Mayakovsky, but the fruit of oral creativity. The story of a poetic answer to an awkward poem should not be considered reliable, since neither the poem itself nor the testimonies of contemporaries on this subject exist.

Photo on the cover: Wikimedia Commons

Incorrect attribution of quote

What do our verdicts mean?