An anagram of the "unknown poet" in K.K. Vaginov's novel "The Goat Song"

Shukurov Dmitrii Leonidovich ORCID: 0000-0002-3463-7611 Doctor of Philology Head of the Department of History and Cultural Research at Ivanovo State University of Chemistry and Technology 153000, Russia, Ivanovo region, Ivanovo, Sheremetyevo Avenue, 7 shoudmitry@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

In the structure of K. K. Vaginov's novel "The Goat Song" (1928), the names of the characters mostly appear as index signs of prototypes. The fact is that the novel itself was created as a work, largely intended for a certain circle of readers (sometimes in this regard, the expression "M.M. Bakhtin's circle" is used, of which the writer was a participant ^[1]). Contemporaries of the writer recall that very often K. K. Vaginov read individual chapters of his still unfinished works at peculiar salon meetings, at which, as a rule, his closest friends and acquaintances gathered ^[2]. O. V. Shindina rightly noted that an important feature of Vaginov's work is that it "... mimicked the marginal, circle literature, which developed the theme of writer's life in a plot and was not intended for the general reader" ^{[3, p. 153]}.

The range of index features identifying the personality of one or another prototype (and almost every hero in the structure of Vagin's works has his real "double") is quite large. Many heroes of the novel "Goat Song" are followed by a trail of obvious cultural and semantic stereotypes ^[4], fixed in the memory of society for one or another cultural representative (cf., for example, the obvious allusion in the pair "Zaevfratsky - N. Gumilev") ^[5].

On the other hand, a whole system of individual hermetically sealed artifacts adjusts the reader's perception to the process of decryption ^[6]. N. K. Chukovsky in his memoirs about K. K. Vaginov noted that "... not only his poems, but also his novels are like cryptograms, like encrypted documents, and the key to the cipher he did not give to anyone" ^{[7, p. 179]}.

The index association of the lengthy name of the autobiographical hero K. K. Vaginov, the "unknown poet" Agafonov, is an important phenomenological discovery for us and represents a key ideogram encoding a different-hypostatic set in the structure of Vagin's works. The concept of creativity of the "unknown poet" in the novel "Goat Song" is the creative program of the writer himself.

The subject of our research attention was the linguistic and cultural complex of associations as part of an incomplete anagram of the writer's surname (Vaginov) in the family "mask" of the autobiographical hero (Agafonov).

Special attention is paid to the analysis of the phenomenological structure of this image, based on elementary semantic connections with the formally absent linguistic and cultural complex of the reconstructed context. The anagramming technique is presented from the perspective of the artistic teleology of Vagin's work and is considered by us within the framework of methodological guidelines of historical poetics (O.M. Freudenberg ^{[8, 9, 10]}, M.M. Bakhtin ^[11]) and selectively applied methods of deconstructivist analysis ^[12].

So, let's pay attention to the phenomenological structure of the image.  At the beginning, middle and end of the novel, the nominal signifiers of the image in question are constructed as paralogical idioms: "future unknown poet", "unknown poet", "former unknown poet". In the structure of the work, these oxymoronic combinations resemble Lacanian floating signifiers: "Absence itself generates a name at the moment of its origin" ^{[13, p. 55]}. The emptiness, absence and obscurity of the object are so obvious that they cause its paradoxical idiomatic expression — the signifier, having slipped out from under the power of the signified, returns it as its own attribution: "The poet now felt only Agafonov" ^{[14, p. 124]}, the novel says. There are many such floating signifiers — signs of missing objects — in the texts of K. K. Vaginov's works. It can be said that all his works are built on "missing structures", the signifiers of which — index codes of prototypical characters, transemiotic quotations, literary reminiscences and allusions — constitute a kind of intertext space, based on the poetics of "someone else's word" ^{[15, 16]}.

At one time, the problem of anagrams aroused intense scientific interest. For example, O. M. Freudenberg studied the sound and syllabic repetitions of a keyword within the framework of the Greek and Latin traditions ^[8]. It is known that F. de Saussure ^[17] considered the anagramming technique to be a property of the entire Indo-European poetic tradition, which is confirmed by modern research ^[18]. However, O. M. Freudenberg considered anagrams along with the main features of archaic thinking, which significantly expands the perspective of scientific analysis.

Returning to the consideration of our floating signifier — the image of the "unknown poet", we note that it is not difficult at all to find an incomplete anagram of the author's surname in the hero's surname: Agafonov — Vaginov. (As indicated in their notes to the novel "The Goat Song" by T. L. Nikolskaya and V. I. Erl, referring, however, to the opinion of S. I. Nikolaev ^{[19, p. 557]}).

The anagram technique is associated with certain religious beliefs of the ancients, according to which ritual appeals to God should include the sounds and syllables of his name ^[20]. This was due, according to F. according to de Saussure, there was a taboo of the name of the deity — a religious prohibition on pronouncing the sacred name.

The title of the novel "Goat Song", as noted by all researchers of Vagin's creativity ^{[21, 22]}, refers to the archaic model of the world, to the Dionysian mysteries of antiquity associated with ritual sacrifices of people and their correlates-substitutes — animals. As you know, these mysteries, which were originally purely ritual in nature, later became the structural basis for the creation of ancient Greek tragedy (translated from ancient Greek, the word literally means "song of goats"): "A direct reference to the ancient genre of tragedy," O. V. Shindina noted, "allows Vaginov to use those deep mechanisms of meaning formation that she developed and connect a powerful layer of mythopoetic representations to the novel" ^{[23, p. 162]}.

The artistic space of Vagin's novels implicitly contains a literarily processed ancient archaic with its magic of the name and sacred characters ^[24-27]. The traditions of medieval macabre mysteries, as well as the rituals of carnival crowning-the debunking of the buffoon king, farcical and buffoonish actions of the Renaissance, fulfilling the function of cultural codes, saturate the Vagin text with the broken logic of inverted hierarchies and structures turned inside out ^{[28, 29]}.

The menippean tradition with its genre features plays an important role in the novel "The Goat Song". The playing of the genre structures of the symposium in the perspective from Plato's "Feast", Lucian's "Feast" and Petronius's "Satyricon" to Pushkin's "Feast during the Plague" carries a significant semantic load in the structure of the work ^{[23, p. 163]} and is primarily associated with the image of the "unknown poet".

The initial iconic "emptiness" of the idiomatic expression "unknown poet" is identified as an object at the beginning of the novel (chapter "Childhood and youth of an unknown poet"). Then — as the autobiographical hero of K. K. Vaginov. Gradually surrounded by cultural codes and overgrown with semantic overtones, this initial "emptiness" of the image (its absence, obscurity and uncertainty) is formed as a semantically convex floating signifier — anagrammatic Agafonov: "The death of Dionysus in a ritual," O. V. Shindina pointed out, "as is known, is symbolized by the sacrificial slaughter of a goat, which, in fact, turns around an imaginary death, which serves as a source for the idea of travesty. In essence, the novel of the author's image turns out to be a kind of incantation appeal to fate, designed to replace the image of the author with another sacrificial figure, and the process of substitution becomes multi-layered: the real author partially replaces himself with the character of the author's image, who, in turn, manages to avoid death by “sacrificing” an unknown poet, bearing features like both the image of the author and the writer himself" ^{[23, p. 162]}.

It should be noted that for most of K. K. Vaginov's artistic images and related cultural and semantic complexes, allusions and reminiscences, hidden quotations, stylistic polymetaphoricity and polysemantic attribution are characteristic.

The polysemantics of the image of the anagram Agafonov is obvious — the idiomatic expression "unknown poet" (future, former) corresponds in the structure of the sign with the multiple diffuse signified:

— with an autobiographical basis of the image (a whole complex of index features);

— with its "Dionysian" component (the motif of the "unknown god" in the Pradionysian cults);

— with the cultural and semantic stereotype of modernity (in particular, the features of the symbolist poet-theurgist are obvious ^[30]);

— with the image of the Nietzschean artist "intoxication and sleep" ("The birth of tragedy from the spirit of music" by F. Nietzsche);

— finally, with the ancient Greek etymology (love, Christian meals of love).

However, the polysemanticism of the image is not only not structurally ordered, but also not fixed to the signifier. The polymorphic structure of the text frees the image from unambiguous (and even ambiguous) interpretation.

Let's consider one of the connotative meanings in the anagrammatic construction of the proper name of Agafonov. This will help to achieve the resulting effect in interpretation. Plato is considered one of the founders of the genre of feasting conversations — the symposium ( — ancient Greek feast, drinking). Indeed, the classic example of this genre structure is the famous Platonic dialogue "Feast". A few words about the composition of this dialogue. The story of the symposium, held in the house of the poet Agathon (sic!), is framed in several narrative shell structures. The narrative goes back to the third or even the fourth of its transmitters. O. M. Freudenberg pointed out that the folklore character of such a composition is quite obvious and is easily found when compared with the compositions of narratives from other ancient peoples, for example, in the stories of Scheherazade or in Indian parabolas: "Often such a composition of stories "wrapped" inside has the character of an atemporal "frame" filled with narratives lying one inside the other... Such “disclosure” The logos was similar to opening the curtain over the stage of a booth (or a temple shrine), or a box with gods, or that statuesque silenus, inside which there was a radiant beauty (“Feast"): the show replaced the story" ^{[9, p. 223]}.

In Plato's "Feast", a philosophical work in content (but quite "carnival" in form), except for the central subject of discussion — the meaning of the sublime ("heavenly") and the base ("hybrid") Erosov — the question of the correlation of tragic and comic arts is also raised. The events of the dialogue have been pushed back into the distant past and attributed to real historical figures. An essential genre feature of "Feast" is that (as in comedy) here we are talking about deceased heroes (cf. in K.K. Vaginov: "... literature can be compared with the afterlife. Literature really is the afterlife" ^{[14, p. 184]}), which are subjected to invective ridicule. O. M. Freudenberg's research on ancient Greek folklore proves that this was the cult, resurrecting meaning of invective.

The situations at the beginning and end of the feast hint at saturnalia. The owner of the house where the action takes place, Agathon (the Athenian tragic poet - ca. 448/45 — ca. 400/399) offers slaves to independently lead the celebration, without instructions and orders — as if the slaves themselves would be the masters: "Feasting slaves usurping the function of the masters," O. M. Freudenberg noted, "could be the actors A Saturnian mime. <...> Here the main action is occupied by a feast of slaves taking place directly on the stage; slaves drink and debauch, and their masters are reunited with their wives somewhere behind the scenes. A remarkable example of such an ancient Saturnian mime is provided by Plato's "Feast" ^{[9, p. 245]}. The likening of Socrates to satyrs and silenus also continues the folklore problematic, hinting at the semantics of the bifurcated character: "Here is a figure in which the connections of mystery, philosophy and mime merge! Socrates, this incarnation of “truth” and “deception”, is at the same time a folklore philosopher, a real philosopher, a character in a philosophical mime, a mask of a farcical buffoon, the embodiment of mystical ideas, and the hero of an ancient comedy. No matter how “popular” and motley his farcical characterization is, Plato's most complete and authentic portrait of him is given in The Feast. From the point of view of semantic construction, this whole "Feast" is built on the idea of bifurcation — that bifurcation, which varies in different ways both by philosophy and by farce" ^{[9, p. 240]}.

On the other hand, the theme of folklore and mystery saturnalia is complemented by the arrival of drunken comasts making noise and disorder at the end of the feast. In the "Feast", Agafon (cf. the identification between the image of the author and the image of the "unknown poet" Agafonov) and Aristophanes act as peculiar representatives of the genres of tragedy and comedy, respectively (cf. the identification taking place in the "Goat Song" between the image of the author and the image of the "unknown poet" Agafonov). At the beginning of the dialogue there is a discussion of Agathon's victory, listing his merits as a tragic poet. In the end, there is a drunken komos, which is considered the main element of comedy: "Outwardly dressed in the "comic", the whole "Feast" is essentially mystical," O. M. Freudenberg emphasizes...In its entirety, it goes back, as a symposium, to Dionysianism, to the mysteries of Bacchus-Eros: we know that it is in the mysteries that the crowned mystics lead similar symposia (joint wine drinking) and in the fields of Elysium, where the dead make a meal at the table with wine drinking, the same symposia occur" ^{[9, p. 242]}.

All the actors have already left the stage by the time they talk about the tragic and the comic — either they are resting or they have gone home. Of the three participants in the conversation, Aristophanes leaves the action first (he falls asleep); the second at dawn (the motif of the rising dawn — "divine Eos" — one of the key ones in poetry and prose — especially the early prose of K. K. Vaginov) is the host of the feast, Agathon; and only Socrates, uniting, according to Plato, the opposites of the comic and the tragic one leaves last: "The essence of the conversation...," as Aristodemus, who was watching what was happening through a dream, reports, "was that Socrates forced them to admit that the same person should be able to compose both comedy and tragedy, and that a skilled tragic poet is also a comic poet" ^{[31, p. 134]}.

The main idea of the conversation that took place between Socrates, Agathon and Aristophanes, A. F. Losev noted in a commentary on the dialogue, is that a genuine artistic worldview always opposes the well-known conventions of genre settings: "When saying that a skilled tragic poet should be able to compose comedy, Socrates means not only training and skill ... which enable a person to develop versatile abilities and skills. Rather, we are talking about an inner deep understanding of life, which the creator (and not just the learned master) sees in various aspects that he can embody equally expressively" ^{[31, p. 455]}.

Despite the strict classical canon inherent in ancient genres, we must not forget about the reverse side, the "underside" of the canon (cf.: tragedy — goat song); we must not forget about the mystical basis of ancient genres.

The Athenian tragic poet Agathon was famous for his extraordinary grace and beauty. In Aristophanes' comedy "Women at the Fesmophorium Festival" (411 BC), Agathon appears in female attire; he simultaneously recites on behalf of the coryphaeus and sings, imitating the choir. The semantics of such transformations are studied in detail in the works of M. Eliade (on ritual disguise and sexual masquerade as a symbolic achievement of androgynous integrity, see his work: ^[32]). O. M. Freudenberg explains them, first of all, by the peculiarities of totemic thinking, by the ideas of a collective, multiple subject performing an action in mystical acts, which became the structural basis of numerous genres of antiquity: "Totemic thinking is autobiographical thinking: for him, the world is a totem, and the totem is this is every person taken collectively and separately. There is only one universal collective “I”, on whose face is thrown a mask of impersonal choral collectivism: it is grammatically the third person plural, which, however, is the first person singular. Everything that happens happens in the totem; the world is his autobiography. He moves and sings, but this is a story about himself, always addressed to himself. There is nothing in nature that would not be addressed to someone at all... The totem, mourning the deceased, mourns himself in him; laughing at the act of fertility, he rejoices in himself, the victory song he sings speaks of his victory" ^{[10, pp. 127-128]}.

Agathon's imitation of the singing of the choir and his performance as the coryphaeus of this choir correlate in the structure of the "Goat Song" to the process of disintegration of the author's image into individual characters-masks — emanations of the author's personality, images-signifying the demiurge (cf. fragment from the early edition of the "Goat Song": "I am kind," I reflect, "I am Teptyolkinski-like. I have the finest taste of Rotikov's bones, the concept of an unknown poet, the simplicity of Troitsyn. I am made of the dough of my heroes..." ^{[14, p. 505]}).

In the analysis of the phenomenological structure of the image of the "unknown poet", using a wide range of interpretative possibilities of the Vagin text, we sought to demonstrate the hidden semantic structures associated with the anagram of the surname of the main character of the novel – the "unknown poet" Agafonov. The anagramming technique is presented by K. K. Vaginov in the perspective of the artistic teleology of the novel narrative, which is based on the principle of multifunctional interaction between the author and the character.

The main result of the conducted research is the conclusion that the anagramming technique is presented by K. K. Vaginov in the perspective of the artistic teleology of the novel narrative, which is based on the principle of multifunctional interaction between the author and the character. A special research contribution to the development of the presented topic is an indication of specific structural and semantic complexes linking the surname of the hero of the Vaginovsky novel with a wide linguistic and cultural tradition – from antiquity (Plato's "Feast" dialogue) to the modern era ("The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music" by F. Nietzsche).