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

Abstract

The article analyzes the hidden semantic associations, allusions and reminiscences associated with the artistic technique of anagramming the surname of the main character of K.K. Vaginov's novel "The Goat Song" (1928) — the "unknown poet" Agafonov. 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 "Dionysian" component (the motif of the "unknown god" in the Pradionysian cults); the cultural and semantic stereotype of the Silver Age (in particular, the features of the symbolist "poet-theurgist" are obvious); the Nietzschean image "the artist of intoxication and sleep"; and finally, with the ancient Greek etymology of the word-concept ἀγάπη ( love, Christian meals of love) in the structure of the surname of the character in question – Agafonov.   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 the methodological guidelines of historical poetics (O.M. Freudenberg) and selectively applied methods of deconstructivist analysis. As part of the analysis of the phenomenological structure of the image of the "unknown poet", we sought, using a wide range of interpretative possibilities of the Vagin text, 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 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).