Dmitry Merezhkovsky
Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky was a Russian novelist, poet, religious thinker, and literary critic. A seminal figure of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry, regarded as a co-founder of the Symbolist movement, Merezhkovsky – with his wife, the poet Zinaida Gippius – was twice forced into political exile. During his second exile he continued publishing successful novels and gained recognition as a critic of the Soviet Union. Known both as a self-styled religious prophet with his own slant on apocalyptic Christianity, and as the author of philosophical historical novels which combined fervent idealism with literary innovation, Merezhkovsky became a nine-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he came closest to winning in 1933. However, due to contested claims that he expressed regard for Fascism as a lesser evil than Communism during the outbreak of war between Germany and the USSR shortly prior to his death, his work largely fell into neglect after World War II
Biography
Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky was born on, in Saint Petersburg, the sixth son in his family. His father, Sergey Ivanovich Merezhkovsky, served as a senior official in several Russian local governors' cabinets before entering Emperor Alexander II's court office as a Privy Councillor. His mother Varvara Vasilyevna Merezhkovskaya was a daughter of a senior Saint Petersburg security official. Fond of arts and literature, she was what Dmitry Merezhkovsky later remembered as the guiding light of his rather lonely childhood. There were only three people Merezhkovsky had any affinity with in his whole lifetime, and his mother, a woman "of rare beauty and angelic nature" according to biographer Yuri Zobnin, was the first and the most important of those.Early years
Dmitry Merezhkovsky spent his early years on the Yelagin Island in Saint Petersburg, in a palace-like cottage which served as a summer dacha for the family. In the city the family occupied an old house facing the Summer Gardens, near. The Merezhkovskys also owned a large estate in Crimea, near a road leading to the Uchan-Su waterfall. "Fabulous Oreanda palace, now in ruins, will stay with me forever. White marble pylons against the blue sea... for me it's a timeless symbol of Ancient Greece," Merezhkovsky wrote years later. Sergey Merezhkovsky, although a man of means, led an ascetic life, keeping his household 'lean and thrifty'. He saw this also as 'moral prophylactics' for his children, regarding luxury-seeking and reckless spending as the two deadliest sins. The parents traveled a lot, and an old German housekeeper, Amalia Khristianovna, spent much time with the children, amusing them with Russian fairytales and Biblical stories. It was her recounting of saints' lives that helped Dmitry to develop fervent religious feelings in his early teens.In 1876 Dmitry Merezhkovsky joined an élite grammar school, the. His years spent there he described later in one word, "murderous", remembering just one teacher as a decent person – "Kessler the Latinist; well-meaning he surely never was, but at least had a kindly look." At thirteen Dmitry started writing poetry, rather in the vein of Pushkin's "Bakhchisarai Fountain", as he later remembered. He became fascinated with the works of Molière to such an extent as to form a Molière Circle in the Gymnasium. The group had nothing political in its agenda, but still aroused the interest of the secret police. Each of its members were summoned one by one to the Third Department's headquarters by the Politzeisky Bridge to be questioned. It is believed that only Sergey Merezhkovsky's efforts prevented his son from being expelled from the school.
Debut
Much as Dmitry disliked his stiff upper-lipped, stone-faced father, later he had to give him credit for being the first one to have noticed and, in his emotionless way, appreciate his first poetic exercises. In July 1879, in Alupka, Crimea, Sergey Ivanovich introduced Dmitry to the legendary Princess Yekaterina Vorontzova, once Pushkin's sweetheart. The grand dame admired the boy's verses: she "spotted in them a must-have poetic quality: the metaphysical sensitivity of a young soul" and encouraged him to soldier on. Somewhat different was young Merezhkovsky's encounter with another luminary, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, again staged by his well-connected father. As the boy started reciting his work, nervous to the point of stuttering, the famous novelist listened rather impatiently, then said: "Poor, very poor. To write well, one has to suffer. Suffer!" – "Oh no, I'd rather he won't – either suffer, or write well!", the appalled father exclaimed. The boy left Dostoyevsky's house much frustrated by the great man's verdict. Merezhkovsky's debut publication followed the same year: the Saint Petersburg magazine Zhivopisnoe obozrenie published two of his poems, "Little Cloud" and "The Autumn Melody". A year later another poem, "Narcissus", was included in a charity compilation benefiting destitute students, edited by Pyotr Yakubovich.In autumn 1882 Merezhkovsky attended one of the first of Semyon Nadson's public readings and, deeply impressed, wrote him a letter. Soon Nadson became Merezhkovsky's closest friend – in fact, the only one, apart from his mother. Later researchers suggested there was some mystery shared by the two young men, something to do with "fatal illness, fear of death and longing for faith as an antidote to such fear". Nadson died in 1887, Varvara Vasilyevna two years later; feeling that he had lost everything he'd ever had in this world, Merezhkovsky submerged into deep depression.
In January 1883 Otechestvennye Zapiski published two more of Merezhkovsky's poems. "Sakya Muni", the best known of his earlier works, entered popular poetry-recital compilations of the time and made the author almost famous. By 1896 Merezhkovsky was rated as "a well-known poet" by the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary. Years later, having gained fame as a novelist, he felt embarrassed by his poetry and, when compiling his first Complete series in the late 1900s, cut the poetry section down by several pieces. Nevertheless, Merezhkovsky's poems remained popular, and some major Russian composers, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky among them, have set dozens of them to music.
University years
From 1884 to 1889 Merezhkovsky studied history and philology at the University of Saint Petersburg where his PhD thesis was on Montaigne. He learned several foreign languages and developed strong interests in French literature, the philosophy of positivism, and the theories of John Stuart Mill and Charles Darwin. Still, his student years were joyless. "University gave me no more than a Gymnasium did. I've never had proper – either family, or education," he wrote in his 1913 autobiography. The only lecturer he remembered fondly was the historian of literature Orest Miller, who held a domestic literature circle.In 1884 Merezhkovsky joined the Saint Petersburg's Literary Society, on Aleksey Pleshcheyev's recommendation. The latter introduced the young poet to the family of Karl Davydov, head of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Davydov's wife became Merezhkovsky's publisher in the 1890s; their daughter Lidia became his first romantic interest. In Davydov's circle Merezhkovsky mixed with well-established literary figures of the time – Ivan Goncharov, Apollon Maykov, Yakov Polonsky, but also Nikolay Mikhaylovsky and Gleb Uspensky, two prominent narodniks whom he regarded later as his first real teachers.
It was under the guidance of the latter that Merezhkovsky, while still a university student, embarked upon an extensive journey through the Russian provinces where he met many people, notably religious cult leaders. He stayed for some time in the village of Chudovo where Uspensky lived, and both men spent many sleepless nights discussing things like "life's religious meaning," "a common man's cosmic vision" and "the power of the land". At the time Merezhkovsky was seriously considering leaving the capital to settle down in some far-out country place and to become a teacher.
Another big influence was Mikhaylovsky, who introduced the young man to the staff of Severny Vestnik, a literary magazine he founded with Davydova. Here Merezhkovsky met Vladimir Korolenko and Vsevolod Garshin, and later Nikolai Minsky, Konstantin Balmont and Fyodor Sologub: the future leaders of the Russian Symbolist movement. Merezhkovsky's first article for the magazine, "A Peasant in the French literature", upset his mentor: Mikhaylovsky spotted in his young protégé the "penchant for mysticism", something he himself was averse to.
In early 1888 Merezhkovsky graduated from the University and embarked upon a tour through southern Russia, starting in Odessa. In Borjomi he met 19-year-old poet Zinaida Gippius. The two fell in love and on January 18, 1889, married in Tiflis, making arguably the most prolific and influential couple in the history of Russian literature. Soon husband and wife moved into their new Saint Petersburg house, Merezkovsky's mother's wedding-present.
Late 1880s to early 1890s
Merezhkovsky's major literary debut came with the publication of Poems in 1888.It brought the author into the focus of the most favourable critical attention, but – even coupled with Protopop Avvacum, a poetry epic released the same year, could not solve the young family's financial problems. Helpfully, Gippius reinvented herself as a prolific fiction-writer, producing novels and novelettes with such ease that she later struggled to remember their names. Sergey Merezhkovsky's occasional hand-outs also helped the husband and wife to keep their meagre budget afloat.
Having by this time lost interest in poetry, Dmitry Merezhkovsky developed a strong affinity to Greek drama and published translations of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides in Vestnik Evropy.
These translations from Ancient Greek, including his later work on Daphnis and Chloe, though largely overlooked by contemporary critics, later came to be regarded as "the pride of the Russian school of classical translation", according to biographer Yuri Zobnin.
In the late 1880s Merezhkovsky debuted as a literary critic with an essay on Anton Chekhov entitled "A Newly-born Talent Facing the Same Old Question" and published by Severny Vestnik. Having spotted in his subject's prose "the seeds of irrational, alternative truth", Merezhkovsky inadvertently put an end to his friendship with Mikhaylovsky and amused Chekhov who, in his letter to Pleshcheev, mentioned the "disturbing lack of simplicity" as the article's major fault. Merezhkovsky continued in the same vein and thus invented the whole new genre of a philosophical essay as a form of critical thesis, something unheard of in Russian literature before. Merezhkovsky's biographical pieces on Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Goncharov, Maykov, Korolenko, Pliny, and Calderon scandalized the contemporary literary establishment. Later, compiled in a volume called The Eternal Companions, these essays were pronounced modern classics, their author praised as "the subtlest and the deepest of late XIX – early XX Russian literary critics" by literary historian Arkady Dolinin. The Eternal Companions became so revered a piece of literary art in the early 1910s that the volume was officially chosen as an honorary gift for excelling grammar-school graduates.
In May 1890 Liubov Gurevich, the new head of the revamped Severny Vestnik, turned a former narodnik's safe haven into the exciting club for members of the rising experimental-literature scene, labeled "decadent" by detractors. Merezhkovsky's new drama Sylvio was published there, the translation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" followed suit. Other journals became interested in the young author too: Russkaya Mysl published his poem Vera, hailed as one of Russian Symbolism's early masterpieces, its colourful mysticism providing a healthy antidote to narodniks' "reflections" of the social life. Bryusov "absolutely fell in love with it," and Pyotr Pertsov years later admitted: "For my young mind Merezhkovsky's Vera sounded so much superior to this dull and old-fashioned Pushkin".
Russkaya Mysl released The Family Idyll ; a year later another symbolic poem, Death, appeared in Severny Vestnik. In 1891 Merezhkovsky and Gippius first travelled to Western Europe together, staying mostly in Italy and France; the poem End of the Century inspired by the European trip, came out two years later. On their return home the couple stayed for a while in Gippius' dacha at Vyshny Volochyok; it was here that Merezhkovsky started working on his first novel, The Death of the Gods. Julian the Apostate. A year later it was finished, but by this time the situation with Severny Vestnik had changed: outraged by Akim Volynsky's intrusive editorial methods, Merezhkovsky severed ties with the magazine, at least for a while. In the late 1891 he published his translation of Sophocles' Antigone in Vestnik Evropy, part of Goethe's Faustus and Euripides' Hyppolite. The latter came out in 1893, after the couple's second trip to Europe where they first encountered Dmitry Filosofov. Merezhkovsky's vivid impressions of Greece and a subsequent spurt of new ideas provided the foundation for his second novel.