Alexander Vvedensky (poet)

Alexander Ivanovich Vvedensky (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ива́нович Введе́нский; 1904–1941) was a Russian poet with formidable influence on "unofficial" and avant-garde art during and after the times of the Soviet Union. Vvedensky is widely considered (among contemporary Russian writers and literary scholars) as one of the most original and important authors to write in Russian in the early Soviet period. He is placed on par with writers such as Andrei Platonov for innovation in the language. Vvedensky considered his own poetry "a critique of reason more powerful than Kant's."

He is also a legendary figure of Leningrad culture, especially due to a legend that he had sex with a woman (or women, plural) in the glass dome of the famous Singer Building (Dom Knigi) overlooking Nevsky Prospect in the middle of the city.

Vvedensky was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and took an interest in poetry at an early age. An admirer of Velemir Khlebnikov, Vvedensky sought apprenticeships with writers connected to Russian Futurism. In the early 1920s he studied with well-known avant-garde artists from Futurist circles such as Matiushin and Tufanov and Terentiev, at the newly formed GInHuK state arts school (headed up by Kazimir Malevich).

In Tufanov's sound-poetry circle he met Daniil Kharms, with whom he went on to found the OBERIU group (in 1928). Together Kharms and Vvedensky, along with several other young writers, actors, and artists, staged various readings, plays, and cabaret-style events in Leningrad in the late 1920s. Vvedensky, as written in the OBERIU manifesto, was considered the most radical poet of the group.

Vvedensky, like Kharms, worked in children's publishing to get by, and was also quite accomplished in the field. He wrote vignettes for children's magazines, translated books of children's literature, and wrote several children's books of his own.

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