Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poem “Vladimir Mayakovsky Rented a Dacha One Summer; You Won’t Believe What Happened Next” focuses on the theme of human’s exerting power over nature and upsetting a natural order that had existed up until the industrialization of the early 1900s in Russia. At the beginning of the poem, the narrator expresses his dismay with the summertime conditions of the countryside, describing it as “a mazy heat” as if there were a “hundred and forty” suns (97). He also observes that “past the village was a hole where the sun sank surely, every evening without fail, slowly and securely,” creating a sense of natural regularity and inevitability that humans have no control over (97).  However, this power dynamic of the narrator consistently being subjected to the sun’s rays changes when he calls the sun a “parasite” and bids it to come into his house (98). Once the sun enters the house, the narrator thinks to himself “I’ve forced the fires of heaven back for the first time since creation,” implying that he has the unusual power to control nature that no one has ever possessed in the past (98). The fact that the narrator shouts at and makes demands of the sun highlights a shifting power dynamic from one where the sun has unrestrained power over all people to another where people are at least on the same level as the sun (or nature as a whole).

While the first half of this poem points towards the balance of power tilting towards the humans in their relationship to nature, it is interesting how the narrator and sun engage in conversation and become friends. At the end of their conversation, the sun claims they have become “like a couple of brothers,” which curiously suggests that the narrator’s gain of power in relation to nature allows him to see eye to eye with the sun and better understand it. By engaging directly with nature, even from a place of self-perceived authority, the narrator realizes how both he as a poet and the sun have the important job of lighting the “shadowy walls” of the world (99). The core message remains ambiguous as the narrator surprisingly makes demands of the sun (which may relate to industrialization becoming a formidable force against nature), all while they both achieve a higher level of clarity and understanding through their close interaction.