Kirill Medvedev: just a little bit more about literature

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just a little bit more about literature:
I’ve always been really interested
in a particular type of poet
it’s a pretty well-known type:
fair-haired guys
who arrived in moscow
starting in the `30s
enrolled at the lit. Institute¹
raged through its dormitories
they were from the provinces
these were some very cool dudes
masters of nostalgia
and enigmatic fools;
I think the demand for them
was huge
because to the aging poets of the capital
they appeared as
a living conscience:
their living conscience;
it seems to me
they really wanted
to occupy a kind of niche
like a singer from the country
languishing in the city;
I think
they also really wanted
to try on the masko f the god Lel²;
a dozen of them
lost their minds
many turned
into bums
and have since
gone begging
on strastnoy boulevard
(once or twice I saw
ragged muzhiks
there pacing the lengths of the benches,
reciting poems,
claiming they were former students
of the lit. institute)
a few of these boys
hanged themselves,
the rest sank into obskurity;
nikolai rubtsov³
was the most famous of them
although, of course,
with rubtsov it wans’t so simple
at some point he lived in petersburg
where he spent time with the petersburg aesthetes
and trained himself in various formalist
tricks
he admired brodsky
and so on
I think
everybody knows
that upon arriving in moscow
he was roped in
by these beekepers
from the lit. Institute,
it seems to me
they stuffed him
into the Framework of their odious myth
effectively destroying him
and then put out for all to see
a straw-stuffed scarecrow in the pantheon
even now
at the lit. institute
you can fine
guys like this

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1. The Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. The only university in russia devoted esclusively to the education of working writers (novelist, poets, and translators); it was founded in 1933 (three years before the Iowa Writers’ Workshop) as a part of Stalin’s cultural program. Medvedev also studied there. “Lit. Institute” Is the common colloquial abbreviation.

2. Lel is a Slavic god of love, equivalent to on of the Gemini twins in Greek mythology.

3. Nikolai Rubtsov (1936 – 1971). Soviet lyric poet born in a village in the northern Arkhangelsk region, orphaned at a young age, served in the army, came to Leningrad after his demobilization, enrolled at the Gorky Literary Institute in 1962. Killed in a domestic dispute.

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Kirill Medvedev at the Prague Writers' Festival 2017: 
Saturday, 11 November - reading, concert
Monday, 13 November - conversation 
Tickets