«Oh, Obscenities!»: Obscene travesties of Anna Akhmatova in a joint project by Vagrich Bakhchanyan and Konstantin K. Kuzminsky

Abstract

In 1984, «Podval» («Basement»), the home publishing house of the poet Konstantin K. Kuzminsky, published a book by Vagrich Bakhchanyan called Akh, matom! («Oh, Obscenities!»). This was a small compilation of parodic adaptations of some early verse by Anna Akhmatova, in the spirit of travesty alterations of popular songs or poetry from the school curriculum that can be found in teenage folklore. Without a broader context created by several of Konstantin Kuzminsky’s texts polemically aimed at Anna Akhmatova and her poetic circle, as well as without a wider context of the avant-garde tradition of discrediting literary opponents through vulgarizing mockery of their writings, often using obscene vocabulary, the book might not seem like a very successful joke of the two authors, known to be inclined towards shocking the public. Knowing this context, one would see all the hidden meanings of the book, which were consciously made offensive for adherents of traditional art, but were fairly acceptable in terms of epatage or avant-garde art, for which even the emphasized negligence and «ineptitude» of form is considered to be a technique: that is, the artistic sign of «spoiling» the primary source, and not a banal manifestation of envy of the two supposed «graphomaniacs» and «misogynists» towards their great predecessor. This was essentially a form of debate between two inheritors of the avant-garde line of Russian poetry and an author, whose work they perceived as a precedent for the alternative, neo-acmeist tradition.