Willing Suspension of Disbelief

Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poem about the Brooklyn Bridge is especially amusing to read when one knows of Mayakovsky’s political ideology. As a Bolshevik from Russia, he believed in the principles of Communism, including the idea that religion should not be practiced. Bolsheviks and the subsequent Communists vehemently denied the existence of God and prohibited any church participation. It is thus extremely ironic when Mayakovsky equates himself to a “crazed believer (that) enters a church” when he sees the Brooklyn Bridge (479). His out of this world experience, standing atop the bridge, can only be compared to something as miraculous as finding God. Though there is no reference to Shakespeare in this poem (that I could find), it is almost as if Mayakovsky undergoes the Shakespearian principle of ‘willing suspension of disbelief’. In that moment, he is willing to believe in anything.

Though he gives himself much merit at the beginning of the poem, it is plain to see that Mayakovsky becomes more modest in the presence of something as magnificent as the Brooklyn Bridge. Not only does he push aside his Communist values, but he also admits that the construction of such architecture is the greatest human feat of the modern era. He writes, “If the end of the world befall… what remains will be this bridge” (481). He implies that it is the only indestructible thing that humans have created and later goes on to say that it would be the only fossil needed to rebuild the world as he saw it. Does he imply, in larger terms, that nothing else, not even his political institution, is strong enough to last the test of time? Is he predicting the fall of Communism?

After reading this poem, I was able to detect pride and astonishment in Mayakovsky’s description. In the moment that he is standing on the bridge, he feels as much a part of it as anybody else. In a way, his identity slips away and he becomes one with the American people. I wonder why these feelings of unity and pride for the achievements of the human race were so easily forgotten some twenty years later during the outbreak of the Cold War.