One hundred years after his birth, Konstantin Vaginov (1899-1934) is gradually being recognized as one of the significant voices in Russian literature of the 1920s and 1930s. In recent studies by David Shepherd, Craig Brandist and Graham Roberts, for example, Vaginov is seen as playing a central role in the development of the modernist novel in Russia. The long-overdue English translation of Vaginov’s first and best-known novel may stimulate even more interest in the works of one of the least appreciated members of the Russian avant-garde of the 1920s and 30s. The translation by Benjamin Sher, an energetic translator and publisher of Russian literary and historical texts, is available on the Internet, where it can be downloaded for free by clicking on the link below:
As Sher explains in the afterward, Vaginov’s original Russian title means, literally, The Goat (or Satyr) Song and is a direct translation of the Greek word for “tragedy.” Something Sher does not mention is that the satyr play is also the technical term for the comic play which formed the conclusion to a trilogy of tragic plays in classical Athenian dramatic festivals. The satyr play, which took its name from the fact that the chorus was composed of satyrs, presented a burlesque of a mythical subject related to the preceding tragic trilogy. Understanding the irreducible ambiguity of the title – is the novel a tragedy, or a satire? – is absolutely crucial to any interpretation of Vaginov’s complex representation of post-revolutionary Russian culture and society.
While having at least (at last!) one of Vaginov’s novels available for use by undergraduates will certainly be useful for those who teach the avant-garde, it is regrettable that Sher chose to translate the original 1928 Priboi edition. Most of the scholars who have studied the problem prefer the edition published by Tat’iana Nikol’skaia and Vladimir Erl’ in 1991 (Moscow: Sovremennik). Based on Vaginov’s own corrected and expanded copy of the original edition in anticipation of a second edition that never materialized, the Nikol’skaia and Erl’ text represents the author’s final vision of the novel and, in the absence of any compelling counter-arguments, should have been used by the translator. Sher’s English version is accurate and readable, although it captures neither the stylistic range, nor the constant literary allusions of Vaginov’s prose, qualities which make him one of the least translatable of modern Russian writers. In fact, almost every page of Vaginov’s text contains references to, and quotations from, European and Russian writers from the classical period to the 20th century. Because most of these references will go unrecognized by modern readers, Vaginov’s prose calls out for explanatory notes and commentary. Unfortunately, Sher provides no help here for the reader, choosing instead to present the text without any scholarly apparatus.
For readers of Dialogism, one of the main attractions of The Tower will certainly be the thinly veiled portraits of real members of the Leningrad artistic and cultural avant-garde of the late 1920s, including prominent members of the Bakhtin circle. Pumpianskii, Medvedev, Judina, Sollertinskii, Kanaev, and Bakhtin himself are all portrayed, more or less satirically, on the pages of Vaginov’s novel. But while readers who know Russian can find a key to the cast of characters in the excellent commentary provided by Nikol’skaia and Erl’ to the 1991 Sovremennik edition of Vaginov’s novels, the readers of Sher’s on-line translation are on their own. The decision not to include some of this information in notes is particularly regrettable given the flexibility of the electronic format.
In addition to providing a quirky and affectionate, but hardly uncritical, look at the eccentric personalities gathered around Bakhtin in Leningrad in the 1920s, Vaginov’s prose may have had a direct influence on Bakhtin’s developing model of the carnivalesque and the possibilities of Menippean satire in the modern novel. In any case, Vaginov’s novels represent a crucial part of the intellectual context in which the Bakhtin circle lived and worked, and they should be of great interest to readers of Dialogism.
Finally, I experienced no problems reading the translation on a Macintosh PowerBook G-3, while running both Internet Explorer 4.0 and Netscape Navigator 3.0. Although I found reading a short book like The Tower on a computer screen not particularly wearying, it does take some getting used to and is inconvenient in all the predictable ways (e.g., no reading on mass transportation). Although one wishes that the translator and publisher had taken fuller advantage of the possibilities of Web technology and included some relevant hyperlinks and explanatory apparatus, Ben Sher should be complimented for his translation and thanked for making this important text available to a wide range of readers. One of the great advantages of Web publishing is, of course, the possibility of making additions and changes even after “publication.” If Mr. Sher could be prevailed upon to make some of these additions, he could make a very good edition ever more useful.
Prof. Anthony Anemone
College of William and Mary.
Published in Dialogism III,
Journal of the Bakhtin Centre
Sheffield Academic Press