16 April 1917. Ivan Bunin with Pavel Milyukov

Non-fiction

Project 1917 is a series of events that took place a hundred years ago as described by those involved. It is composed only of diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers and other documents

Ivan Bunin with Pavel Milyukov

"Donon" restaurant, Moyka street, 24, Petrograd, Russian Empire

I was at a banquet in honor of the Finns. And, my God, the Homeric chaos that poured out of this banquet made everything that I had seen in Petersburg seem meaningful and harmonious! Everyone there were "the cream of the Russian intelligentsia," that is, famous artists, actors, writers, public figures, ministers, deputies and one high foreign dignitary, namely the Ambassador of France. But Mayakovsky outshined them all. I was eating dinner with Gorky and the Finnish artist Gallen.

And Mayakovsky suddenly began coming up to us, pushed a chair between us and began to eat from our plates and drink from our glasses. Gallen’s eyes popped out of their sockets as if he were looking at a horse that had been led into the banquet room. Gorky laughed. I moved aside.

"Do you hate me that much?" Mayakovsky cheerfully asked me.

I said no that "would have been too much of an honor for you!" He opened his trough-like mouth to say something else, but then he rose for the official toast Miliukov, our current foreign minister, was about to give. Mayakovsky rushed over to him right to the middle of the table. And then he jumped up on a chair and yelled something so obscene that Miliukov was taken aback. A second later, after recovering, he again proclaimed: "Gentlemen!" But Mayakovsky yelled louder than ever. And Miliukov threw up his hands and sat down. But then the French ambassador stood up. Obviously, he was quite sure that the Russian hooligan would back down to him. How wrong he was! Mayakovsky immediately drowned him out with an even more savage roar. Moreover, a wild and senseless frenzy immediately erupted in the hall: Mayakovsky's associates also shouted and began to stamp the floor with their boots and pound their fists on the table, and began to laugh, howl, shriek, and grunt. And suddenly a Finnish artist, who looked like a shaved walrus, drowned out everyone else with a truly tragic cry. Already drunk and deathly pale, he, apparently shaken to the depths of his soul by this excess of piggishness, with all his strength and literally with tears in his eyes, began to shout one of the few Russian words he knew:

“It’s too much! Too-o much! Too-o-o much!”

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