Vladimir Mayakovsky as exemplary character: Two interpretations by Dario Fo and Carmelo Bene

Abstract

This article contributes to the mapping of the role played by the Russian poet, playwright, artist and performer Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) in the Italian context of the 60s and 70s, concentrating on Dario Fo’s L’operaio conosce 300 parole, il padrone 1000, per questo lui è il padrone (1969), and Carmelo Bene’s TV production of Bene! Quattro modi di morire in versi (1974, broadcast in 1978). Mayakovsky appears here as a character, constructed as an exemplary figure for the role of the artist. After framing exemplarity theoretically as a strategy that effaces the intrinsic discrepancy between example and rule, the article will map the presence of this rhetorical move in the two texts. It..