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More Vvedensky Translations

"Vvedensky in Love" by Thomas Epstein in New Arcadia

Alexander Vvedensky (1904-1941) studied art and poetry under the Russian Futurists in Leningrad during the early nineteen-twenties, a liberal period of Soviet power. He banded together with Daniil Kharms and others to form various avant-garde groups dedicated to theater, poetry and general troublemaking, all of which culminated in the formation of the OBERIU (Union of Real Art) in 1928.

The OBERIU found itself increasingly attacked in the press and in late 1931, its key members were arrested on charges of being involved in an “anti-soviet group of children’s writers.” Vvedensky and Kharms spent several months in prison and were then exiled until the end of 1932. There would be no more OBERIU performances, and no hope of publication, except for sporadic poems and translations in magazines and books for children.

In the mid-thirties, Vvedensky left Leningrad for a quieter life in Kharkov. He died—or was killed—during the evacuation of the Ukraine in 1941. His poetry was not published in Russia until the period of glasnost. Much of Vvedensky’s work comes down to us from Kharms’s archives (a suitcase that, after Kharms’s arrest in 1941, was in the safe-keeping of their mutual friend, Iakov Druskin.) And, of course, some of his writings have been lost.

The notebook presented here in its entirety has come to be called the “gray notebook” simply because of its color. Vvedensky wrote in this notebook in 1932-1933, soon after returning to Leningrad from his exile in Kursk. Two loose sheets with short prose pieces were found inside the notebook and are included here as inserts.

—from the Translator's Note (by Matvei Yankelevich)