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Konstantin Vaginov and the Death of Nikolai Gumilev

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Anthony Anemone
Anthony Anemone*
Affiliation:
Colby College
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Extract

In his “Poetic Responses to the Death of Gumilev,” Ivan Martynov has chronicled the repercussions of Gumilev's execution by the Cheka in August 1921 in the poetry of his contemporaries. Martynov recalls those poets who remained faithful to Gumilev and marked his death with memorable poems as well as the opportunists who publicly and loudly praised his executioners. Among those who betrayed Gumilev for selfish reasons, Martynov cites such former close friends as Elizaveta Polonskaia, Mikhail Zenkevich, Larisa Reisner, and Sergei Gorodetskii. Their cynicism and cowardice were, however, more than offset by the loyalty and resourcefulness of, among others, Anna Akhmatova, Georgii Adamovich, Nikolai Otsup, Ida Nappel'baum and Irina Odoevtseva. Despite the very real danger, these poets refused to renounce Gumilev in public. Because the Soviet censor would allow no overt references to Gumilev, much less poems in commemoration of his death, his friends were able to refer to him only obliquely in the months following his execution.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , Winter 1989 , pp. 631 - 636
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1989

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References

1. Martynov, Ivan, “Poeticheskie otkliki na gibel’ Gumileva,” Gumilevskie chteniia, 1980–1981, ed. Martynov, Ivan (Leningrad: 1982), 107–131 Google Scholar.

2. Ibid., 108–121.

3. G. V. Adamovich, Chislilishche: Stikhi (Petrograd: Petropolis, 1922), 11–12; Otsup, N. A., Grad: Stikhi (Petrograd: Tsekh poetov, 1921), 13 Google Scholar, cited in Martynov, “Poeticheskie otkliki,” 126–127.

4. Berberova, Nina, Kursiv moi: Avtobiografiia (Munich: Fink, 1972, 135–136 Google Scholar.

5. Zvuchashchaia rakovina (Petrograd: 1922); Ushkuiniki (Petrograd: 1922); Gorod (Petrograd: 1923).

6. Chertkov, Leonid, “Poeziia Konstantina Vaginova,” K. Vaginov, Sobranie stichotvorenij, ed. Chertkov, L. (Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1982, 214–215 Google Scholar.

7. Berberova, Nina, “Iz peterburgskikh vospominanii,” Opyty (New York: n.p., 1953), 163–180 Google Scholar; Borisov, Leonid, Roditeli, naslavniki, poety. Kniga v moei zhizni, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Kniga, 1969 Google Scholar and Zakruglym slolom proshlego. Vospominaniia (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1971); Kaverin, Veniamin, Zdravstvui, brat. Pisat’ ochen’ Irudno (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1965)Google Scholar, Sobesednik (Vospominaniia i portrety) (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1973), and Vechernyi den'. Vslrechi. Portrety (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1982); Vera Lur'e, “Petrogradskoe,” Dni [Berlin], no. 232 (5 August 1923); Odoevtseva, Irina, Na beregakhNevy (Washington, D.C.: Kamkin, 1967)Google Scholar; Pavlovich, Nadezhda, “Pis'mo iz Peterburga (Peterburgskie poety),” Gostinitsa dlia puteshestvuiushchikh v prekrasnom [Moscow], no. 99 (November 1922): 30–31 Google Scholar; Rozhdestvenskii, Vsevolod, “Peterburgskaia shkola molodoi poezii,” Zapiskiperedvizhnogo obshchedostupnogoteatra Gaideburova i Skarskoi [Petrograd], no. 62 (7 October 1923)Google Scholar.

8. Nikolai Chukovskii, “Iz vospominanii.” typescript. No date, 6. In possession of author.

9. Adamovich, Georgii, “Pamiati Vaginova,” Poslednie novosti [Paris], no. 4830 (14 June 1934)Google Scholar.

10. Vaginov copied the poem into the album of Konstantin Konstantinovich Man'kovskii (1904–1938), a minor writer who, along with Vaginov, was a member of the Ego-Futurist group “Kol'tso poetov imeniK. M. Fofanova.” The poem bears a dedication to Man'kovskii. In the 1970s Man'kovskii's widow sold thisalbum to the Institute of Russian Literature at the Pushkin House (IRLI) in Leningrad.

11. Matthew 2: 1–10.

12. Gumilev, Nikolai, Sobranie sochinenii (Washington, D.C.: Kamkin, 1964) 2: 378–379 Google Scholar. The poemis dated July 1921 and was published for the first time in the second installment of Tsekh poelov (Petrograd, 1921) along with Gumilev's last poem “la sam nad soboi nadsmeialsia. “

13. Sir James Frazer makes the same association in The Golden Bough, part 4, vol. 1, Adonis. Attis.Osiris (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 258–259.

14. This positive attribution to the star runs counter to the well-known acmeist rejection of the symbolists'astral realm in favor of the here and now on earth, as well as to Gumilev's own “Zvezdnyi uzhas, “where stars are described as “nedostiipnye chuzhie zvezdy.” For an illuminating and far-ranging discussionof astral imagery in Russian poetry, see Ronen, Omry, An Approach to Mandelstam (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1983, 61–74 Google Scholar.

15. Tsekh poetov, kn. 3 (Petrograd, 1922), 22, quoted by Martynov, “Poeticheskie otkliki,” 125.16. Vaginov, Konstantin, “Zvezda Vifleema,” Abraksas (Petrograd, 1922), 10–16 Google Scholar.

17. For Spengler's influence at the time, see the collection of essays Osval'd Shpengler i “ZakalEvropy” (Moscow, 1922).

18. For a fuller discussion of the figure of Philostratus in Vaginov's works, see my “Konstantin Vaginovand the Leningrad Avant-Garde: 1921–1934” (Ph.D. diss. University of California, Berkeley, 1985), 126–134, 155–170. Compare with the following line from a poem of 1922, “Pomniu posledniuiu noch’ vdome pokoinogo detstva: ” “la v tolpe sermiazhnogo voiska.” Vaginov, Sobranie stichotvorenij, 68.