Goat Song

by Konstantin Vaginov, Ainsley Morse (Translator), Polina Barskova (Introduction)

Two novels by one of the Soviet Union's most inventive writers, written in the tradition of Gogol and Dostoyevsky but with a twentieth-century, modernist edge.

Konstantin Vaginov was an early and exemplary figure of Soviet modernist writing in all its agonized and glorious contradictions. Born into an educated middle-class family at the turn of the century, Vaginov came of age with the Bolshevik revolution. His novels of the late 1920s and early 1930s are daringly experimental and tragically nostalgic, mourning the irrevocable loss of prerevolutionary intellectual culture with mercilessly ironic prose. Hopelessly adrift in the brave new Soviet world, Vaginov’s protagonists attempt to conjure the recent and distant past by stockpiling old books and songs, vulgar baubles and bad jokes, newspaper clippings, coins, and graffiti.

This volume contains two novels. The first, Goat Song, is an ironically literal translation of the Greek word “tragedy” (tragodia—goat song). It features thinly veiled portraits of Vaginov’s contemporaries, the luminaries and leftovers of the once-flourishing Petersburg, Petrograd, and Leningrad arts community, as they flounder and self-destruct in their new bracingly materialist circumstances. Echoing Gogol, Dostoyevsky, and Bely, Goat Song is both a classic Petersburg city text and its swan song: “Now there is no Petersburg. There is Leningrad; but Leningrad has nothing to do with us—the author is a coffin-maker by trade, not a cradle expert.”

The second novel, Works and Days of Wistlin, follows the nonchalant novelist Wistlin as he unscrupulously mines the lives of his friends and fellow citizens for literary material. Like the flea-market trinkets hunted by Goat Song’s marginal figures, Wistlin’s eccentric and frivolous victims are yesterday’s relics and nobody’s concern. His exploitation of human material is a wry commentary on the concurrent efforts to industrialize and collectivize the Soviet economy, at a horrific human cost.

Genres: Fiction, Russia, Literature

376 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goat Song is a literal translation of the Greek word τραγῳδία – tragedy.
Konstantin Vaginov was one of the harbingers of postmodernism and the future literary styles so stylistically this novel can be compared with At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien, which was written later, and some overtones of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne may be detected as well.
The story is written in the mockingly refined baroque language.
There are two main characters:
Teptyolkin – a man of letters full of high ideals and an advocate of Hellenic purity…

The window would open and, in the shimmer of a silvery evening, Teptyolkin would think: a high, high tower. The city sleeps and he, Teptyolkin, keeps vigil. “The tower – that’s culture,” he reflected. “On the summit of culture – that’s where I stand.”

And the Unknown Poet – a symbol of the perishing past and of the culture that was left behind…

“I propose to write a poem,” the unknown poet was saying. “The city is being ravaged by a metaphysical plague. The signori assume Greek names and go off to a castle. There they pass the time in study of sciences, music, in works of poetry, painting and sculpture. But they know they are doomed, that the last assault on the castle is being prepared. The signori know that it is not for them to triumph. They go down underground. There they store radiant images for future generations and come out to veritable destruction, to ridicule, to death without glory, for there exists for them now nothing but death.”

With the advance of new barbarians, all the traditional cultural values are ruined and substituted with off-colour platitude, flagrant tastelessness and lowest kitsch.
Goat Song is a burlesque lamentation over the lost ideals…

“A girl is a fledgling sparrow,” he continued his manipulations. “She smells like white bread. A woman – that’s a flower, that’s a fragrance. A family – that’s petty bourgeoisie, that’s darning socks, that’s a kitchen.” His hand made an attempt, but was stopped. “We poets,” said Asphodelyev, rolling to the other side, “are a spiritual aristocracy. A woman poet needs experiences. How could you mean to write poetry without knowing a man?”

The fittest will survive and the fittest are those who are a part of the herd. And those who don’t belong to the herd must disappear.

[Atreju · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Il canto del capro" è la storia di un gruppo di intellettuali che, ancor nel fiore dell'età al momento del passaggio di Pietroburgo/Pietrogrado a Leningrado, e quindi negli anni '20, sono già "out", nel senso che si trovano ancora immersi nel mondo culturale della tradizione (anche classica, oltre che più strettamente russa). Dal punto di vista del nuovo "ordine" sovietico non sono né carne né pesce e - di fatto - non possono trovare alcun terreno fertile. Il protagonista ne è ben conscio quando ammette che il suo modo di scrivere appare come sterile "civetteria". L'aura di decadenza della cultura è sempre più palpabile a mano a mano che il tasso di disillusione cresce.
La narrazione procede per scene di quotidianità che deviano tuttavia dal canone del realismo per convergere verso una rappresentazione "artistica", a tratti satirica e vagamente paradossale.
Sa va sans dire: l'autore venne subito messo al bando, nel 1928. Continuò a scrivere e morì prematuramente nel '34. Fortunatamente le sue opere di prosa sono state tutte tradotte e non sembrano difficili da reperire nel mercato dell'usato o in biblioteca. E così la mia investigazione potrà proseguire.

[Lubov Yakovleva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Призрачная руина города Петербурга, построенного не для жизни, а для мечты.
Города, которого никогда не было.
И все воспоминания о нём — смутны и расплывчаты, не точны.
Жили в нём не люди — персонажи. Им отказываешь в бытийности. Им сам автор в ней отказывает.
Горько и немного зло он смеётся над героями, а потом плачет от тоски — это он о себе плачет, о себе во многих лицах, о друзьях, в чьи лики он вглядывается как в зеркало.
Зеркало разбилось, лишь осколки на обочине.

Странное впечатление от книги — то она восхищает своим изящным слогом, своей эстетической позой "стою на краю умирающего мира", то удивляет своей неслаженностью — всё в ней оборванно и неустроенно.
Хорошая книга.
Гимн всему прошедшему, ушедшему, отошедшему, отмершему. Нет в мире больше красоты. Вся кончилась.
Как страшно тому, кто призван на её похороны.

[Olga Zilberbourg · Rating 5 out of 5]

With all my love and care for the translators -- and with gratitude to them for bringing to English and giving a new life to this gem of a book, I fear that this translation didn't get properly edited and English-speaking members of my NYRB-centered book group were extremely confused (Is "Balmcafkin even human?") and missed all the erotic humor in this novel (Rotikov - Eroticov), as well as the mention of a trans character (translators chose to use "it" in reference to the trans character, instead of "they/them," and my friends missed entirely that this was a reference to a human being vs. an object).  The endnotes were taken from a 1999 Russian edition, without adapting to English-language readers. So for example they explain that 25 October Prospect is Nevsky Prospect, but they don't explain what is Nevsky Prospect and why it matters.

I read the Russian alongside of them, and I really loved the book -- the playfulness of language and form, the humor and tragedy of the stories, the .

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this satire, or two satires since it also includes his second prose work—the novella The Works and Days of Whistlin—Vaginov documents the plight of those from a bourgeois aesthetic background within the newly-established Soviet Union.

The book portrays its romantically aristocratic cast of characters as lost in an absurd nostalgia:

Leaning against a tree, Balmcalfkin wept, and in this night it seemed to everyone that they were terribly young and terribly beautiful, that they were all terribly good people.

And they rose—the chers with the ma-chères, and they danced on the flower-covered meadow, and the violin appeared in the philosopher's hands and sang out purely and sweetly. And everyone saw Philostratus in the flesh: a slender youth with wondrous eyes, shadowed by wings of lashes, in flowing robes and a laurel wreath—he sang, and beyond him olive groves rustled. And, swaying like a ghost, Rome arose.

"I plan to write a long poem," said the unknown poet (when the vision had faded). "A metaphysical plague is ravaging the city; the seigneurs select Greek names and retire to their castle. There, they spend their time studying the sciences, making music, creating poetry, paintings, and sculpture. But they know that they have been condemned, that the last storming of the castle is being prepared. The seigneurs know that the victory will not be theirs; they descend into the vault, stack up their effulgent images there for future generations and go out to certain destruction, to ridicule, to an inglorious death, since for them no other death could now exist."

Vaginov also poses a very good question, what is it to become unmoored from the mileau in which you live?

Very Deep into autumn, after Balmcalfkin had left his tower and moved back to the city, the unknown poet entered his room.

Balmcalfkin, as always when he was working, sat wearing a Chinese dressing gown; a peaked embroidered skullcap perched upon his head.

"I am studying Sanskrit," he said. "It is crucial that I obtain an understanding of Oriental wisdom; I will tell you in strictest confidence that I am writing a book called The Hierarchy of Meanings."

"Yes." Resting his chin on his stick, the unknown poet laughed. "The thing is that the modern age will ridicule you."

"What rubbish," exclaimed Balmcalfkin, irritated. "Me, ridiculed! Everyone loves and respects me!"

The unknown poet frowned and drummed his fingers against the glass.

For me, this is the question that gives these two works timeless significance. But also, of course I can't ignore Vaginov's discourse on poetry:

"Poetry is a particular kind of activity," answered the unknown poet. "It's a terrifying spectacle and also dangerous, when you take a few words, juxtapose them in an unusual way and sit down to observe them, first one night, then another, then a third, all the while thinking about these words you've juxtaposed. And you start to notice: a hand of sense reaches out from under one word and shakes the hand that has appeared out from under another word, and a third offers its hand in turn, and you are consumed entirely by the totally new world opening up beyond these words."

And the unknown poet kept on speaking for a long time. But the driver was already pulling up to the Academic Theater. The unknown poet leapt out of the carriage, and behind him the pork-barrel in pince-nez rose and paid the driver.

Likewise, I can't ignore The Works and Days of Whistlin, which is an even sharper exploration of novelistic craft:

"Whistlin wrote in the past tense, sometimes in the past perfect, as if what he was describing had ended long ago; as if instead of thrilling reality he was taking up an event long since completed. He wrote about his era as another writer might write about distant times with which his readers were not well acquainted. He generalized the events of everyday life rather than individualizing them. Without suspecting as much, he described contemporaneity using a historical approach, one extraordinarily offensive to his contemporaries.

And more pointedly:

For Whistlin people were not divided into good and evil, pleasant or unpleasant. They were divided into those who were necessary for his novel and those who weren't. He had a real need for this company, and among them he felt in his element. He didn't compare himself to Zola, who had even maintained real last names, nor to Balzac, who would write and write and only then go out to meet people; nor with his acquaintance N., who had once taken on a Smerdyakov-like repulsiveness in order to see what kind of impression it would make on acquaintances. Whistlin assumed that all these things were wholly permissible for an artist, and that he would have to pay for it all in the end. But he did not think about what this payment would look like. He lived for today and not for tomorrow-he was carried away by the very process of abducting people and transposing them into his novel.

As a last comment, the book's title is also both clever and ridiculous. The etymological root words of the word tragedy are tragos (goat) and oide (ode or song). At some point they were arranged into a kind-of ancient portmanteau and became tragodia. The rest is history.

Overall, this novel truly is a Goat Song. I'd even go as far to say it's a damned Goat Song masterpiece.

"How is your work going up there?" they ask him. He is silent, goes pale, and disappears. And sees himself standing in torn boots, unkempt and insane, before a misty high tribunal. The Last Judgment, he thinks.

"What did you do there on earth?" Dante says, rising. "Did you abuse widows and orphans?"

"I did not abuse anyone, but I created an author." he answered quietly. "I corrupted his soul and replaced it with laughter."

"Was it my laughter," said Gogol, rising, "laughter through tears ?

"Not your laughter," answered the unknown poet still more quietly, lowering his eyes.

[Jos Olsthoorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eigenlijk 4,5 ster. Een pittig boek, in het begin. Maar hoe verder je komt, hoe beter het wordt.
Overigens kun je in de podcast Kvas & Boeken uitgebreider horen wat Frank, Ashley en ik van dit boek vinden: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5j0v...

[Sara Mokken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Er verwarrend maar heel mooi geschreven. Heel lange zinnen en ik raakte ook de kluts een beetje kwijt met alle karakters en hun namen. Wel interessant om te lezen en dus erg mooi. Niet een duidelijke verhaallijn

[Bhaskar Thakuria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow, the novels collected in this new volume by NYRB Classics left me with an odd feeling. Probably it was the characters, and probably it was the baroque artistry of the prose that left my ken and reasoning seeking the smithereens of an opaque screen grounded to dust by the writing that skirts completely from the mainstream. Yes, this is avant-garde prose of the highest reckoning, never hackneyed, but at the same time laconic at times and brimming with black humor typical of the most alienated absurdists of language. Yes, there is poetry in the novels collected here, and Vaginov, being a poet himself, had set his sights on a form of narrative that was closest to his heart- that of a narrative full of musical exuberance. Yes, there is music here, but the way the rhetoric of the prose is set to music at times falls flat to my perception. To all those who know their Russian literary heroes, Vaginov was active in Nikolai Gumilev’s Acmeist movement and the Guild of Poets; he was a core member of the avant-garde group OBERIU and well acquainted with Mikhail Bakhtin and his intellectual circle, who partly inspired his fiction. In the fall of 1927, Vaginov joined a group of young avant-garde poets led by Daniil Kharms, Alexander Vvedensky, and Nikolai Zabolotsky, based at the House of the Press in the center of the city. The collective name they chose was OBERIU, an acronym that feels circus-like, Futurist, and parodic-Soviet at the same time. Vaginov took part in “Three Left Hours,” the OBERIU extravaganza held at the House of Press on January 24, 1928, that also featured absurdist theatrical stunts. He quit the group together with Zabolotsky in October 1928. The OBERIU manifesto employed the phrase “collision of word meanings” as an umbrella term for the group’s composition technique. It stands for alogical word combinations and is largely synonymous with Vaginov’s “juxtaposition of words.”14 Statements of poetics scattered throughout Goat Song often overlap with OBERIU positions.

The poet and translator Eugene Ostashevsky in his foreword to the novels writes:
Vaginov referred to this violation of sematic cohesion as sopostavlenie slov, “juxtaposition of words.” He even titled his 1931 poetry collection Experiments in Juxtaposing Words by Means of Rhythm. He also distributes his poetics to various characters in Goat Song. The unknown poet regards poetic composition as putting words together that do not belong together, their slight correlation being found only afterward.....The words do the thinking for the poet; their obscure combinations acquire meaning only with time. The persona of the author uses the same terms and concepts to describe the creation of the novel: “No one suspects that this book emerged from the juxta-position of words.” The author believes that, by juxtaposing words, he created and subsequently came to know his own soul and the universe, saying that “a whole world emerged for me in language and rose up from language. And it turned out that this world risen from language coincided astonishingly with reality.”

Probably that may account for the fact that I enjoyed the poems as standalone exercises of rhetoric rather than considering them as a generic whole in the nature of the poetic narrative. But alas, I can only approach the poetics of Konstantin Vaginov with a mixture of trepidation and insouciance. His poems gathered here in these two narratives have a lot of similarities with Zabolotsky, a Russian poet whom I find difficult to categorise, and Kharms, one of my favourite Russian writers. Indeed, his association with Kharms and Zabolotsky was the primary attraction behind my seeking to read this text in translation.

At the same time, Vaginov's novels of the 1920s and 1930s (he wrote four in all before his death from tuberculosis) are daringly experimental and serve to redefine the limits and constraints of the structure of the novel as a whole. They owe allegiance to a lot from Laurence Sterne (to whom he is a worthy successor in Russian letters), and also Flann O'Brien, who came later on the stage of world literature. Vaginov's characters are probably ludicrous portraits of his contemporaries, the luminaries and leftovers of the once-flourishing Petersburg, Petrograd, and Leningrad arts community, as they flounder and self-destruct in their new bracingly materialist circumstances. As has been mentioned elsewhere: Hopelessly adrift in the brave new Soviet world, Vaginov’s protagonists attempt to conjure the recent and distant past by stockpiling old books and songs, vulgar baubles and bad jokes, newspaper clippings, coins, and graffiti.

The title of the book comes from the title of the first novel- an ironically literal translation of the Greek word “tragedy” (tragodia—goat song). Influenced by the black humor of Gogol and the psychological depth of Dostoyevsky, and borrowing heavily from the experimental and stream-of-consciousness techniques of Bely, Goat Song is both a classic Petersburg city text and its swan song: “Now there is no Petersburg. There is Leningrad; but Leningrad has nothing to do with us—the author is a coffin-maker by trade, not a cradle expert.”

[Abram · Rating 1 out of 5]

Whenever I start a piece of Russian literature, I always stop to ask myself "will this be the time I actually figure out which of these bewildering number of names are actually referring to the same characters" and the answer is always "obviously not". Are Mikhail Petrovich and Misha Kissenkin the same person? I genuinely have no idea, and I never will, but if they aren't the same person then I'd have TWO nickels related to the posthumous influence of Alexander Petrovich, noted humanist and more noted dog of a man.

This is, in my defense, how I actually prefer to read Russian literature. Everything is a bit of a blur for the first several hundred pages, but eventually the characters are fleshed out and you know who is speaking, even if you don't know there name. Sort of ran out of pages on this one, but hey, they can't all be War and Peace, and since the book is mostly quite bad, that's a relief.

It's hard to describe why the work is bad, but I think one indicative issue is that a fair number of plot points, especially the suicide, hinge on me being able to tell whether a Russian poem in translation is good or bad (definitely a problem I have only with poems and translation and definitely not the ones in any language I actually speak for sure). It's because it's in translation, you say? Well I don't know what to tell you, translators are the midwives of all the Russian literature I've ever read, the work does not exist for me if not in translation. It's because I have no love for poetry and no song in my heart you say? Perhaps, but then, you're the one reading this, aren't you.

In all seriousness, the book does represent a type of literature that should be given a name and be widely read. The inclination I think today would be to label this lightly as "reactionary", but, with no apologies to Marx whatsoever, rendering art down into "revolutionary" and "reactionary" labels is both really boring and too context specific to have any enduring meaning. Furthermore, if this work is reactionary-cum-bad-but-I-went-to-college-in-a-certain-way-so-I-have-to-pretend-my-ideas-are-perfectly-rational, then most every narrative regarding the loss of culture, rights, position, or authority to, say, the British in the 19th century should be classified as the same. "Conservative" might be a more accurate term, but that doesn't fit either because "what are you conserving" is a great way to start tying yourself in knots around that word.

Here's what I'm trying to express. If your college experience included a "canon", you probably got plenty of exposure to people who were promulgating change of one form or another. This makes some sense, since the arrival of a new idea in the halls of power has to happen before the idea is acted on. What you very rarely get, with perhaps an honorable mention for Edmund Burke, is someone who is saying "stay the course". I don't know why this is exactly, but when you get down to brass tacks it might provide a partial explanation for both the well-observed inconstancy of opinion of college graduates pre- and post-graduation (due to being confronted by arguments on the other side of change for the first time) and the documented ideological inflexibility of college faculty (who never have to be exposed to any idea that threatens them because tenure). Amid all the hubbub about whether colleges should teach a "western" canon, I'm not sure anyone has paused to consider the idea that we might have been teaching only half a canon the entire time.

All of the above is really just a long-winded argument that while it's obvious for many of us that college students ought to read Lenin and have a chance to become super annoying about that for a few years, they ought also to read something like Goat Song (but better) and have the chance to become annoying about the tragic humanist grandeur of pre-revolutionary tsarist Russia for a few years. This approach would not only solve many of the reasonable objections to a canon-based approach to literature (if for every abolitionist text you read you had to read one by someone advocating for slavery, handwaving the tradition of racism becomes very hard), but it would produce people better able to make decisions because they would not be blinkered by a sense of historical inevitability.

So is the book terrible? Yes. I gave it one star because at no point does a goat sing at all. Is it important? Probably not. But it is a type, a symbol of something that is important, a stand in for arguments on the losing side. After more than a century of turmoil, maybe it's time some of these were reexamined.

But if they are to be reexamined, please heed my words and do not use this book to do it.

[Josh Learn · Rating 3 out of 5]

At its worst, this book is like spending several hours listening to a conversation about people you don't know. I have a decent interest in Russian lit, but I'm certainly not familir with Mikhail Bakhtin and his crew. Without that, you get the sense you're missing a lot of the reference and jokes here. The names are also confusing in this, even for someone used to the usual Russian tradition of using a bunch of different names for all the characters, whether nicknames, last names, etc.

At it's best moments, it's a well-written story about the nostalgic sense of the loss of an artistic community after the Russian Revolution. Some of the symbolism of that is more obvious than others in this work. These moments are what kept me going in this.

[Dario · Rating 3 out of 5]

Impresionistički pristup apsurdu - tako bih nekako opisao ovo djelce. Besmisao koji se gomila na stranicama nerijetko otežava iščitavanje same radnje, ali ima odličnih dijaloga koji, baš suprotno općepoznatom ruskom realizmu, ne ocrtavaju karakter i svojevrsnu uzajamnu stvarnost, već ističu neku ustaljenu zbunjenost u umjetnika tog doba, umjetničku malaksalost i nezadovoljstvo sustavom u kojem se nalaze. Katkad se, doduše, treba zaustaviti na jednom glavnom liku i pružiti mu priliku razotkriti se čitatelju, jer poliperspektivnost uspijeva kada se niti mogu povezati, a upravo one u jednom trenutku u ovom romanu jednostavno - pucaju. Neloše djelo izgrađeno na temeljima dobrih ideja.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intensief maar magistraal. Een prachtige novelle over de persoonlijke en maatschappelijke omwentelingen die een reeks jonge personages doormaken in het Rusland van de roerige jaren '20. Tijdloos. Grenzeloos.

Wil je nu weten wat ik er echt van vind? Of misschien wat mijn kameraden ervan vinden? Beluister dan de podcast die we speciaal over dit boek maakten: 𝕂𝕧𝕒𝕤 & 𝔹𝕠𝕖𝕜𝕖𝕟, aflevering 2. Ook leuk als je gewoon even lekker achterover wil leunen, wil ontspannen en luisteren naar gesprekjes over eten, drinken, Rusland en de wijde wereld van boeken: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5j0v...

[Kristina]

I was more interested in Vaginov as a poet than a prose writer, but nevertheless, I picked up and read this instead. His sombre poetic nature shows through some of his observations on art and I wish he focused more on that, instead of presenting some easily forgettable characters (apart from the unknown poet and Teptjolkin), which further convinced me that novel writing is a weak spot in Vaginov's oeuvre. Still, he is certainly worth giving a try.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Потрясающий роман про увядание целой эпохи. Перечитаю еще раз обязательно.