Vanya Bagaev's Blog, page 3

Global Death Orgy draws near

Probably Gustave Doré, Wojaks at the Global Death Orgy

Any word, thought the ancient man, is like a spell—say it right and you'll bewitch, heal, curse, or worse yet, without any ulterior motive, with just one word you'll turn the world arse over tit like with a nuclear bomb. Boom! Bang! Ba-bam! Right then, you're fucked, cunts, thought the ancient man of those around him, and became a spell-caster.

He went up to the eldest in the tribe, whilst the man was picking through his discontinued teeth on ...

Quantum Crush

This is one of those short stories with long history based on the wondrous life of himself. It did really happen to him once (or twice now). Please enjoy.

As a young man, Felix Futzbucker dreamed of being entangled to a woman, quantumly. Felix didn't believe in "destiny" or "fate" or "soulmates" or some other concepts that had no proper scientific disposition to them, theoretical at least, but he did believe in linked particles, linked and inseparable, such as when one particle is measured, the ...

The Eternal Midwit

In the comments to previous translations, brought up Teffi multiple times and nudged me to finally translate some of her works. Even Teffi’s non-fiction featured dialogue and as playful as her short stories, so despite I’m starting with what seems to be non-fiction, you’d be able to very well grasp her voice and sense of humour.

To know each other a bit better, Teffi was the pseudonym of Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya (1872–1952), one of the most popular and influential satirical writers in ...

Nevédomosti №4: The strange afterlife of books

Nevédomosti is a regularly irregular and irregularly regular blog about the publication’s updates and other matters of interest and curiosity.

§1 My opus “Deleted Scenes from the Bestselling Utopian Novel” has been regaining some momentum lately. A few wonderful, surreal, magical things happened that made me to update my expectation of what the actual half-life and afterlife of a newly published book is and invigorated the fading attempts to spread the word about the book—there’s really not much ...

The strange afterlife of books (Nevédomosti №4)

Nevédomosti is a regularly irregular and irregularly regular blog about the publication’s updates and other matters of interest and curiosity.

§1 My opus “Deleted Scenes from the Bestselling Utopian Novel” has been regaining some momentum lately. A few wonderful, surreal, magical things happened that made me to update my expectation of what the actual half-life and afterlife of a newly published book is and invigorated the fading attempts to spread the word about the book—there’s really not much ...

Dostoevsking

Dostoevsking is an international sport of endurance—of mind, will, body, and particularly of the bladder. The fundamental principle of Dostoevsking is simple: one must hold out as long as possible before the door where Fyodor Mikhailovich himself is presumably located, and endure until he emerges, which is an undoubtedly ambitious goal, considering that for a century and a half he still hasn't come out.

The wall where the action took place stretched in both directions to both horizons, towered li...

Life And Poetry Of James Clifford

It has always appeared fascinating to the author, how some people can be forsaken in their homeland and known only to people of other countries wither they had never been, whose language they didn’t speak, whose admiration they would’ve never tasted. Such was James Clifford, an English poet who was only famous in the Soviet Union, which to the author appeared as a meritorious mystery. While in England only a handful of people including his friends read his poems, in the USSR—and now in many post...

Bewildering Wilderness

I wrote this a few years ago. It’s one of those “defining” texts for the path my style has been treading since then and where it is continuing to evolve over time. Unlike most of my recent works, this one was originally drafted and finished in English.

I employed various techniques I’ve been using a lot and experimenting with (in random order): “controlled chaos” stream-of-consciouness, lyrical I, poetic logic, proetic language, musicality, typographical play, heavy use of symbolism, metaphorical...

Rodin's Hands Through Rilke's Eyes

In 1902, a young poet Rainer Maria Rilke met the renowned sculptor Auguste Rodin after taking up an assignment to write about Rodin's work, an assignment that happened to evolve into artistic mentorship and transform Rilke's poetry. After their initial meeting in September 1902, Rilke spent four months observing Rodin's studio work, Three years later, in September 1905, Rilke became Rodin's secretary, living at his country estate and organising his correspondence. Though Rodin fired Rilke in Apr...

On the Evasive Effectiveness of the Literary Novel

"Nothing endures, except for disgrace."

— Venedikt Yerofeyev

The fundamental tension in contemporary literature lies not between subject matters or styles, but in how a novel functions in relation to reality. What makes a novel effective is not what it describes but what it performs. Those novels that merely comment on our zeitgeist remain ultimately inert and represent nothing but creative nonfiction masquerading as literature. They may skilfully and engagingly describe our social conditions, rel...