Aleksandr Ivanovich Vvedensky

Aleksandr Ivanovich Vvedensky Poems

Aleksandr Ivanovich Vvedensky Biography

Alexander Ivanovich Vvedensky ( 1904–1941) was a Russian poet with formidable influence on "unofficial" and avant-garde art during and after the times of the Soviet Union. Vvedensky is widely considered (among contemporary Russian writers and literary scholars) as one of the most original and important authors to write in Russian in the early Soviet period. He is placed on par with writers such as Andrei Platonov for innovation in the language.Vvedensky considered his own poetry "a critique of reason more powerful than Kant's." He is also a legendary figure of Leningrad culture, especially due to a legend that he had sex with a woman (or women, plural) in the glass dome of the famous Singer Building (Dom Knigi) overlooking Nevsky Prospect in the middle of the city Vvedensky was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and took an interest in poetry at an early age. An admirer of Velemir Khlebnikov, Vvedensky sought apprenticeships with writers connected to Russian Futurism. In the early 1920s he studied with well-known avant-garde artists from Futurist circles such as Matiushin and Tufanov and Terentiev, at the newly formed GInHuK state arts school (headed up by Kazimir Malevich). In Tufanov's sound-poetry circle he met Daniil Kharms, with whom he went on to found the OBERIU group (in 1928). Together Kharms and Vvedensky, along with several other young writers, actors, and artists, staged various readings, plays, and cabaret-style events in Leningrad in the late 1920s. Vvedensky, as written in the OBERIU manifesto, was considered the most radical poet of the group. Vvedensky, like Kharms, worked in children's publishing to get by, and was also quite accomplished in the field. He wrote vignettes for children's magazines, translated books of children's literature, and wrote several children's books of his own. He was arrested for a short while in 1931–1932 on charges of belonging to a faction of anti-soviet children's writers. During interrogations he was also accused of encoding anti-soviet messages in "zaum" or sound poetry. After the arrest and a short exile in Kursk, he returned to Leningrad. In the mid-1930s he moved to Kharkov. There, in 1941, at the start of World War II, he was unable to board a crowded evacuation train. He stayed on in Kharkov hoping to catch up later with his family, but was arrested for "counterrevolutionary agitation" in September 1941. With other prisoners evacuated from Kharkov he was shipped to Kazan but died of pleuritis on the way. His place of burial is unknown. Most of his poetry was not widely known during his lifetime and not published in Russia until much later. He was known in small circles of writers in Leningrad — Anna Akhmatova praised one of his later poems, "Elegy," very highly. A two-volume collected works came out first in America, and then in Moscow in 1991. His idiosyncratic, morbidly humorous, and linguistically innovative work has slowly begun to be translated into English and anthologized with other OBERIU writers.)

The Best Poem Of Aleksandr Ivanovich Vvedensky

The Meaning Of The Sea

to make everything clear
live backwards
take walks in the woods
tearing hair
when you recognize fire
in a lamp a stove
say wherefore you yearn
fire ruler of the candle
what do you mean or not
where's the cabinet the pot
demons spiral like flies
over a piece of cake
these spirits displayed
legs arms and horns
juicy beasts war
lamps contort in sleep
babes in silence blow the trumpet
women cry on a pine-tree
the universal God stands
in the cemetery of the skies
the ideal horse walks
finally the forest comes
we look on in fear
we think it's fog
the forest growls and waves its arms
it feels discomfort boredom
it weakly whispers I'm a phantom
maybe later I'll be
fields stand near a hillock
holding fear on a platter
people montenegrins beasts
joyfully feast
impetuous the music plays
finns have fun
shepherds shepherdesses bark
barks are rowed across tables
here and there in the barks
mark the minutes' haloes
we are in the presence of fun
I said this right away
either the birth of a canyon
or the nuptials of cliffs
we will witness this feast
from this bench this trumpet
as the tambourines clatter
and flutter, spinning like the earth
skies will come and a battle
or we will come to be ourselves
goblets moved among mustaches
in the goblets flowers rose
and our thoughts were soaring
among curled plants
our thoughts our boats
our gods our aunts
our souls our breath
our goblets in them death
but we said, and yet
there's no meaning in this rain
we beg, pass the sign
the sign plays on water
the wise hills throw
into the stream all those who feasted
glasses flourish in the water
water homeland of the skies
after thinking we like corpses
showed to heaven our arses
sea time sleep are one
we will mutter sinking down
we packed our instruments
souls powders feet
stationed our monuments
lighted our pots
on the floor of the deep
we the host of drowned men
in debate with the number fifteen
will shadow-box and burn up
and yet years passed
fog passed and nonsense
some of us sank on the floor
like the board of a ship
another languishes
gnashes his wisdom teeth
another on dull seaweed
hung the laundry of his muscle
and blinks like the moon
when the wave swings
another said my foot
is the same as the floor
in sum all are discontented
left the water in a huff
the waves hummed in back
starting to work
ships hopped around
horses galloped in the fields
shots were evident and tears
sleep and death in the clouds
all the drowned men came out
scratched themselves before the sunset
and rode off on a carriage beam
some were rich some not
I said I see right away
the end will come anyway
a big vase is brought this way
with a flower and a cymbal
here's a vase that's clever
here's a candle snow
salt and mousetrap
for fun and pleasure
hello universal god
here I stand a bit sullied
glory be to heavens washed away
my oar memory and will

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