She and Vaginov were both part of a group of writers who gathered about the poet, world traveler and decorated war hero Nikolai Gumilyov, who was shot in 1921, after being wrongly accused of plotting against the government.

Vaginov's first novel, Kozlinaya Pesn' (literally "Goat Song," but also translated into English as "[The Tower]" and "Satyr Chorus,[1]" was written between 1925 and 1927.

A man who devoured literature in multiple languages from various centuries, Vaginov was an avid collector of books, many of them salvaged from ransacked libraries and peddled secondhand on the street.

While some of his characters collected things having at least an association with high culture, Vaginov explored the intersection between the mutability of matter and minds haunted by monuments, even those in ruins.

Solomon Volkov writes:He likened the victory of the Russian Revolution, which ruined his family, to the triumph of the barbaric tribes over the Roman Empire.

For Vaginov, Petersburg had been a magical stage for that cultural tragedy, and he sang the praises of the spectral city in dadaist poems (which also showed the influence of Mandelstam), in which "pale blue sails of dead ships" appeared tellingly.

Mandelstam, in turn, rated Vaginov highly, including him as a poet "not for today but forever" in a list with Akhmatova, Pasternak, Gumilyov, and Khodasevich.