Konstantin Konstantinovich Vaginov (russian: Константи́н Константи́нович Ва́гинов, born ''Wagenheim'', – April 26, 1934) was a Russian poet and novelist.
Biography
Vaginov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. His mother was the daughter of a wealthy
Siberian
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive region, geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a ...
businessman and landowner. His father, a high-ranking police official, was descended from
Germans
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, pop1 = 72,650,269
, region2 =
, pop2 = 534,000
, region3 =
, pop3 = 157,000
3,322,405
, region4 =
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who came to Russia in the 17th century. During the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, the family name was changed from Wagenheim (russian: Вагенгейм) and given a Russian ending.
Following his father's wishes, Vaginov studied law. During the
Civil War
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
, Vaginov served in the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
, both at the Polish front and east of the
Urals
The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...
. He returned to
Petrograd
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
and, after being demobilized, continued studies in the arts and humanities. In 1926 he married Alexandra Ivanovna Fedorova. She and Vaginov were both part of a group of writers who gathered about the poet, world traveler and decorated war hero
Nikolai Gumilyov
Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilyov ( rus, Никола́й Степа́нович Гумилёв, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj sʲtʲɪˈpanəvʲɪtɕ ɡʊmʲɪˈlʲɵf, a=Nikolay Styepanovich Gumilyov.ru.vorb.oga; April 15 NS 1886 – August 26, 1921) was a poe ...
, who was shot in 1921, after being wrongly accused of plotting against the government.
Konstantin Vaginov died of tuberculosis in 1934.
Work
![Griboedov Canal Embankment 105](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Griboedov_Canal_Embankment_105.jpg)
Vaginov wrote his earliest poetry when he was a teenager, and his first collection, ''Journey to Chaos'', was published in 1921. Other collections were published in 1926 and 1931. His first prose works, "The Monastery of Our Lord Apollo" and "The Star of Bethlehem," were published in 1922. Vaginov's first novel, ''Kozlinaya Pesn (literally "Goat Song," but also translated into English as "
he Tower and "Satyr Chorus," was written between 1925 and 1927. The novel is based on the intellectual circle grouped around the philosopher and literary theorist
Mikhail Bakhtin
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin ( ; rus, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Бахти́н, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ bɐxˈtʲin; – 7 March 1975) was a Russian philosopher, literary critic and scholar who worked on literary theor ...
. Vaginov completed two other novels, ''Works and Days of Svistonov'' (1929) and ''Bambocciada'' (1931). As Vaginov's health declined, he worked on a fourth novel, ''Harpagoniana'', which was left incomplete. Shortly before his death, he started work on a novel about the 1905 revolution. The materials for that work were confiscated by the authorities.
Through the mid-1920s, Vaginov mainly wrote poetry that might be described as post-
Symbolist and
Acmeist Acmeism, or the Guild of Poets, was a transient poetic school, which emerged in 1912 in Russia under the leadership of Nikolay Gumilev and Sergei Gorodetsky. Their ideals were compactness of form and clarity of expression. The term was coined after ...
. With its overlapping allusions to contemporary upheavals, along with historical and mythological references, the poetry is at times almost hermetic. His turn to the novel marks a turning point. And ''Kozlinaya Pesn'' might be thought of as a transitional work, with its fragments of poetry and scattered commentary on the generation of poetry and its degeneration. The book also marks the author's most transparent examination of the role of literature and criticism in society.
During the 1920s, Vaginov had some contact with most of the major literary circles in Petrograd/Leningrad. In 1927, he became affiliated with a left avant-garde collective of writers known as
OBERIU, sometimes described as "
Absurdist" and chiefly known through the work of
Daniil Kharms
Daniil Ivanovich Kharms (russian: Дании́л Ива́нович Хармс; – 2 February 1942) was an early Soviet-era Russian avant-gardist and absurdist poet, writer and dramatist.
Early years
Kharms was born as Daniil Yuvach ...
. Around this time, Vaginov's turn to prose was marked by a drift toward a preoccupation with
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...
—the throwaway mythology of everyday life. A man who devoured literature in multiple languages from various centuries, Vaginov was an avid collector of books, many of them salvaged from ransacked libraries and peddled secondhand on the street. But he was also a collector of anything from old coins to candy wrappers and cigarette packs. While some of his characters collected things having at least an association with high culture, Vaginov explored the intersection between the mutability of matter and minds haunted by monuments, even those in ruins.
Solomon Volkov
Solomon Moiseyevich Volkov (russian: Соломон Моисеевич Волков; born 17 April 1944) is a Russian journalist and musicologist. He is best known for ''Testimony'', which was published in 1979 following his emigration from the So ...
writes:
He likened the victory of the Russian Revolution, which ruined his family, to the triumph of the barbaric tribes over the Roman Empire. For Vaginov, Petersburg had been a magical stage for that cultural tragedy, and he sang the praises of the spectral city in dadaist poems (which also showed the influence of Mandelstam), in which "pale blue sails of dead ships" appeared tellingly. Mandelstam, in turn, rated Vaginov highly, including him as a poet "not for today but forever" in a list with Akhmatova, Pasternak, Gumilyov, and Khodasevich.[Solomon Volkov, ''St. Petersburg: A Cultural History'' (Simon & Schuster, 1995, repr. 1997), p. 405.]
Notes
Further reading
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Vaginov, Konstantin
Russian male poets
Russian male novelists
1899 births
1934 deaths
Writers from Saint Petersburg
20th-century novelists
20th-century Russian poets
20th-century Russian male writers
Modernist writers
Russian satirists
Absurdist fiction
Soviet novelists
Soviet poets
20th-century deaths from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis deaths in Russia
Tuberculosis deaths in the Soviet Union