January 28, 1888
Born in Moscow Osip Brik — writer, critic and screenwriter. Mayakovsky's publisher and first husband Lily Kagan (Brick).
God exists, but I don't believe in him.
He came from a Jewish family; his father was a merchant.
While studying, at the height of the First Russian Revolution of 1905, he was expelled from school "for revolutionary propaganda." He later graduated from the law department of Moscow University and found work as an assistant to a barrister.
At 17, he met 14-year-old Lilia Kagan at the political economy club he led. She, too, was from a Jewish family and had received an excellent education—she attended the Higher Courses for Women, the Architectural Institute, and the Studio in Munich—and spoke several languages.
They married when Lilya was 24. For some time after their wedding, Osip worked for his father's coral sales company. During their travels through Siberia and Central Asia, the young couple became fascinated with Eastern culture.
In 1914, he joined the Petrograd automobile company, and Lilia founded a salon for the creative intelligentsia in their new apartment.
Lilya was the "soul of the salon," Osip Maksimovich was "its intellectual spring."
(literary scholar Bengt Jangfeldt)
Among others, a young poet visited the Briks Vladimir Mayakovsky, which both spouses became interested in.
Osip fell in love with Mayakovsky's poetry. Mayakovsky fell in love with Lilya.
(Lily's sister Elsa)
From 1918, the couple and the poet lived together as a family. A sign on the apartment door read, "The Briks. Mayakovsky."
Osip self-published Mayakovsky's poems, "A Cloud in Trousers" and "The Spine-Flute." He also financed the printing of the Futurist collection "VZYAL," which praised Mayakovsky's work. He compared Mayakovsky's poems to bread, which man desperately needs, and contrasted them with the pastries of the Symbolists.
We ate cakes because they didn't give us bread. We sucked, chewed, choked, and swallowed this sugary delicacy, smearing our lips and souls with molasses. Then we rolled around on anything soft: there was no escape from the nausea. Rejoice, shout louder: we have bread again!
(from a review by Osip Brik)
He was one of the organizers of OPOYAZ (Society for the Study of Poetic Language) and the ideologist of LEF (Left Front of the Arts).
The difference between good and bad poetry: in good poetry, the good lines are memorable, and in bad poetry, the bad lines are memorable.
During the October Revolution of 1917, he supported the Bolsheviks. He saw change as a guarantee for the development of a new art. He worked for a time as a legal adviser to the Cheka, but was dismissed "for negligent work."
I treat people well because I don't expect anything good from them.
He wrote in the genre of industrial art. He was the only critic to give a negative review to the young proletarian writer's novel. Alexandra Fadeeva "The Rout."
Literature must be tasked with producing not people, but deeds. Gorky's formula, "Man—it sounds proud," is completely unsuitable for us. Man—that can sound vile, disgusting, depending on what deed they do.
Together with Mayakovsky, he served on the editorial board of the newspaper "Art of the Commune." He co-authored the play "Radio October" and several literary manifestos with him.
In 1925 he divorced Lilia and married Evgenia Sokolova-Zhemchuzhnaya (a librarian and the wife of a film director), but maintained a warm relationship with his first wife.
A fool is not the one who speaks nonsense, but the one who does not notice that he speaks it.
In the late 1920s, he entered the film industry. He headed the scriptwriting department at the Mezhrabpom-Rus film studio. In 1927, he had a cameo role in the film Don Diego and Pelageya, playing a reporter criticizing bureaucracy.
In the 1930s, after Mayakovsky’s suicide, he went “into the shadows”: he wrote articles about him and literary reviews (his works were not republished until the mid-1990s).
During the Great Patriotic War, he worked in the editorial office of military-patriotic posters "TASS Windows".
He died on February 22, 1945, of a heart attack at the door of the apartment he shared with his second wife, and Lilia shared with her third husband. Lilia took his death very hard and admitted that she would have given up everything in her life to bring Osip back—"even Mayakovsky."
I died along with Osya.
