K. Vaginov
(1899-1934)
Konstantin
Vaginov, member of Oberiy had more renown as a prose writer (“Kozlinaya pesn’”, the Goatsong, "Bambochas", "Garpagonesque".). Vaginov is not really a pseudonym but a Russification of his father's real name, Wagenheim. His father, a high-ranking member of Tsarist federal police, the Gendarmerie, had to change his German-sounding name during World War I. Despite slender, even effeminate looks and aesthetic pretense not unlike Wilde's (and that in post-Revolutionary Petrograd!) he fought in the Red Army unlike many "revolutionary" poets who excelled only in the fields of venery and Bacchus. Obviously, he enjoyed the "vagina" association of his adopted name as much as Dmitry Prigov enjoyed the affinity of his (birth) name with English "prick", which many considered a smart pseudonym. In his later days, Vaginov abandoned avant-guard esthetics for classical
transparency mixed with nostalgic melancholy. Dying from TB, he wrote this
short poem, in which he already speaks of himself in the third voice.
The war and
hunger passed like dream,
They left but ugly smell in mouth,
They left but ugly smell in mouth,
We were Church bells on high, that ring,
But only
the temptation counts.
Not that
our closest friends enthralled
To see his
mouth moving slowly,
The
wrinkled gorges in his skull
With morbid
sight of deadly sorrows.
New people
are walking through the streets,
The beat of
other generation,
They laugh
at our pride, and spit
At our
heartfelt tribulations.
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