Konstantin Vaginov

Konstantin Konstantinovich Vaginov (Russian: Константи́н Константи́нович Ва́гинов, born Wagenheim, April 16 [O.S. April 4] 1899 – April 26, 1934) was a Russian poet and novelist.

Vaginov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. His mother was the daughter of a wealthy Siberian businessman and landowner. His father, a high-ranking police official, was descended from Germans who came to Russia in the 17th century. During the First World War, 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, Vaginov served in the Red Army, both at the Polish front and east of the Urals. He returned to Petrograd 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, who was shot in 1921, after being wrongly accused of plotting against the government.

Konstantin Vaginov died of tuberculosis in 1934.

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 "[The 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. 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.

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