The Soviet Writer Konstantin Vaginov: From Poetics to Subjectivity

Abstract

This article examines the prose of Konstantin Vaginov (1899–1934) through the prism of the theory of Soviet subjectivity. It analyzes four of Vaginov's novels (Goat Song, Works and Days of Svistonov, Bambocciada, and Harpagoniana) as examples of discursive praxis in the context of the creation of the “new Soviet person.” In each novel, Vaginov combines elements of both modernist and Soviet literature, but the authorial position invariably remains contradictory. This allows us to draw conclusions about the paradoxical evolution of the writer's own subjectivity, while bringing into sharp relief one of the more “successful” examples of the formation of the Soviet “I” in the late 1920s and early 1930s.