). In his work, Gippius avoids "pretty" and rhetoric. Substance is more important to her than style, and she works on form only because it is important for the flexible and adequate expression of her ideas. Gippius was reputed to be a Slavophile, in poetry she continued the tradition of Baratynsky, Tyutchev and Dostoevsky, and not the French. Her husband was the famous writer D. S. Merezhkovsky. In Russian literary circles, she was considered a more original and significant writer than her largely overrated husband. Her activity was almost as many-sided as his; she wrote short stories and long novels, plays, critical and political articles - and poetry.
Zinaida Gippius
The most outstanding features of Gippius' creativity are the strength of mind and wit, rare in a woman. In general, with the exception of some over-refinement and waywardness of a brilliant and spoiled coquette, there is little feminine in her, and coquetry only adds a special piquancy to her intensely serious work. As for Dostoevsky, ideas for her are something living, really existing, and her entire literary life is a life “among ideas”. Gippius wrote a lot of artistic prose, but it is below her poetry. Her prose consists of several volumes of short stories, two novels and one or two plays. All these writings have a "purpose" - to express some idea or subtle psychological observation. Ideas are the real heroes of her stories, but she doesn't have Dostoyevsky's talent for making them voluminous, living people. Gippius characters are abstractions. Two novels by Gippius Damn doll(1911) and Roman Tsarevich(1914) - mystical research in political psychology - weak shoots from a mighty trunk demons Dostoevsky. Play green ring(1914) is a typical example of the Gippius style.
Zinaida Gippius in the early 1910s
The poetry of Gippius is much more significant. Some of her poetry is also abstract and purely speculative. But she managed to make her verse a refined, perfectly tuned instrument for expressing her thoughts. Like the heroes of Dostoevsky, Gippius oscillates between two poles: spirituality and earthiness, between ardent faith and sluggish skepticism (moreover, moments of denial, nihilistic moods are expressed in her poems better than moments of faith). She has a very acute sense of "stickiness", slime and mud of everyday life.
Her typical thoughts are clearly expressed in the poem. Psyche. Svidrigailov in Crime and punishment wonders if eternity is just a smoky bathhouse with spiders in all corners. Gippius picked up Svidrigailov's idea, and her best poems are variations on this theme. She created something like a bizarre mythology, with little, dirty, clingy, and painfully attracted imps. Here is an example of this: a poem And then?.., written in a languid, drawn-out poetic meter:
AND THEN?..
Angels don't speak to me.
They love shining villages,
They love meekness and the seal of humility.
I am not humble and not holy:
Angels don't speak to me.
Dark comes the spirit of the earth.
Delicious and big-eyed, modest.
What is it that the little one is dark?
We didn't get very far...
The spirit of the earth crawls timidly.
I ask about the hour of death.
My baby, though modest, is prophetic.
He knows a lot about these things.
What, tell me, have you heard about us?
What is this - the hour of death?
The dark one diligently eats a lollipop.
Whispers cheerfully: “And everyone lived.
The hour of death came - and crushed.
Taken, crushed - and the end.
Give me the fourth lollipop.
You were born a road worm.
They will not leave you on the path for a long time,
Crawl, crawl, and then crush.
Everyone at the hour of death under the boot
Burst on the track like a worm.
There are different boots.
They press, however, they all seem to.
And with you, dear, it will be the same,
You taste somebody's legs...
Different boots in the world.
A stone, a knife or a bullet, everything is a boot.
Is the fragile heart filled with blood,
Will the breath shrink in pain,
Does the vertebra crush with a noose -
Or does it matter what boot?
Quietly I understood about the hour of death.
And I caress the guest like a native,
I treat and try again:
I see you know a lot about us!
Understood, I understood about the hour of death.
But when crushed - then what?
What, say? Take another lollipop
Eat, eat, dead baby!
He didn't take it. And looked sideways:
"I'd rather not say what - later."
In 1905, Zinaida Gippius, like her husband, became a fiery revolutionary. Since then, she has written many caustic political poems - for example, a sarcastic poem Petrograd, a satire on the renaming of St. Petersburg. In 1917, like Merezhkovsky, Gippius became a fierce anti-Bolshevik.
In late prose, Gippius looks unattractive. For example, in her Petersburg diary, which describes life in 1918-1919, more malicious hatred than noble indignation. And yet one cannot judge her prose only by such examples. She is a good literary critic, a master of a remarkably flexible, expressive and unusual style (she signed her criticism - "Anton Extreme"). Her judgment is quick and precise, and she has often killed inflated reputations with her sarcasm. Criticism of Gippius is frankly subjective, even capricious, in it the style is more important than the essence. She also published interesting excerpts from literary memoirs.
Aliases:
Roman Arensky
Nikita Evening
V. Vitovt
Alexey Kirillov
Anton Kirsha
Anton Krainy
L. Zinaida Nikolaevna
Lev Pushchin
N. Ropshin
Comrade German
Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius- Russian poetess, prose writer, critic.
She was born on November 8 (20), 1869 in the city of Belev, Tula province, in a family that originates from the German Adolfus von Gingst (settled in Moscow in the 16th century).
In the 70s. 19th century her father served as a comrade of the chief prosecutor of the senate, but soon moved with his family to Nizhyn, where he received the position of chairman of the court. After his death, in 1881, the family moved to Moscow, and then to Yalta and Tiflis. There was no women's gymnasium in Nizhyn, and Gippius was taught the basics of science by home teachers. In the 80s, while living in Yalta and Tiflis, Gippius was fond of Russian classics, especially F. M. Dostoevsky.
Having married D. S. Merezhkovsky, in the summer of 1889, Gippius moved with her husband to St. Petersburg, where he began literary activity in a symbolist circle, which in the 90s. develops around the journal "Northern Messenger" (D. Merezhkovsky, N. Minsky, A. Volynsky, F. Sologub) and popularizes the ideas of Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Maeterlinck. In line with the moods and themes inherent in the work of the members of this circle, and under the influence of new Western poetry, the poetic themes and style of Gippius's poetry begin to be determined.
Gippius' poems appeared in print for the first time in 1888 in Severny Vestnik. Later, for the publication of literary critical articles, she takes the pseudonym Anton Krainy.
The main motives of Gippius's early poetry are the curses of boring reality and the glorification of the world of fantasy, the search for a new unearthly beauty (“I need something that is not in the world ...”), a dreary feeling of disunity with people and at the same time a thirst for loneliness. These poems reflected the main motifs of early symbolic poetry, its ethical and aesthetic maximalism. Genuine poetry, Gippius believed, comes down only to "the triple abyss of the world", three themes - "about man, love and death." The poetess dreamed of reconciling love and eternity, but she saw the only way to this in death, which alone can save love from everything transient. These reflections on "eternal themes" determined the tone of many of Gippius' poems.
In the first two books of stories - "New People" (1896) and "Mirrors" (1898) - Gippius was dominated by the same mood. Their main idea is the affirmation of the truth of only the intuitive beginning of life, beauty "in all its manifestations" and contradictions and lies in the name of some high truth. In the stories of these books, there is a clear influence of Dostoevsky's ideas, perceived in the spirit of a decadent worldview.
In the ideological and creative development of Gippius, the first Russian revolution played an important role, which turned her to public issues. They now begin to occupy a large place in her poems, stories, and novels.
After the revolution, collections of short stories "Black on White" (1908), "Moon Ants" (1912), the novels "Devil's Doll" (1911), "Roman Tsarevich" (1913) were published. But, speaking of the revolution, creating images of revolutionaries, Gippius argues that a true revolution in Russia is possible only in connection with a religious revolution (more precisely, as a result of it). Outside of the "revolution in spirit" social transformation is a myth, fiction, a game of the imagination, which can only be played by neurasthenic individualists. Gippius convinced readers of this by depicting post-revolutionary Russian reality in The Devil's Doll.
Having met the October Revolution with hostility, Gippius, together with Merezhkovsky, emigrated in 1920. Emigrant creativity Gippius consists of poems, memoirs, journalism. She came out with sharp attacks on Soviet Russia, prophesied her imminent fall.
Of the émigré publications, the greatest interest is the book of poems "Shine" (Paris, 1938), memoirs "Living Faces" (Prague, 1925), very subjective and very personal, reflecting its then public and Political Views, and an unfinished book of memoirs about Merezhkovsky (Z. Gippius-Merezhkovskaya "Dmitry Merezhkovsky", Paris, 1951). About this book, even the émigré critic G. Struve said that it requires major corrections "for the partiality and even bitterness of the memoirist."
Died September 9, 1945 in Paris; buried in the Russian cemetery in Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois near Paris.
Bio note:
Fantastic in creativity:
Zinaida Gippius was a prominent representative of the symbolism literary movement, distinguished by the creation and use of a system of symbols, in which a special mystical meaning was invested. This feature of symbolism can be traced in many poems by Z. Gippius, especially early ones. For example, the mini-cycle, consisting of the poems "To Hell" (1907), "The Hour of Victory" (1922), "Indifference" (1928), tells about three meetings of a person with a representative of the Dark Forces.
In prose, several works should be noted:
"Time" (fairy tale, 1896) - about the sad princess White Lilac, who was afraid and hated the evil old man named Time, sitting on a rock above the sea.
"Fiction (Evening Story)" (short story, 1906) - the memoirs of a man named Politov about a strange countess who paints strange pictures, next to which the breath of death was felt.
"Ivan Ivanovich and the Devil" (story, 1906) - about a man who met the devil many times and knew him by sight.
“And the Beasts” (fairy tale-parable, 1909) - about the animals who learned about the Resurrection of Christ. As soon as it became clear that after the Resurrection of Christ, all people would also be resurrected - the animals became extremely upset and offended. People will be resurrected, but nothing is known about animals. And the animals began to gather, interpret among themselves, argue and complain.
"Interstrange" (short story, 1916) - about the war of neighboring kingdoms, which built two walls on the border between themselves with a wasteland in the middle, and one day they suddenly noticed long blue lights in the wasteland.
"The Unborn Girl at the Christmas Tree" (A Christmas Tale, 1938) is about an unborn Girl who learns about how fun it is at the Christmas tree. And she wanted to see this holiday. Then Christ took her by the hand, and they set off together.
The prose works of Z. Gippius were included in fabulous and mystical anthologies.
... Contemporaries called her "sylph", "witch" and "Sataness", sang her literary talent and "Botticelli's" beauty, feared her and worshiped her, insulted and sang. All her life she tried to stay in the shadow of a great husband - but she was considered the only real woman writer in Russia, the smartest woman in the empire. Her opinion in the literary world meant extremely much; A last years She lived her life in almost complete isolation. She is Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius.
The Gippius family originates from a certain Adolphus von Gingst, who moved from Mecklenburg to Moscow in the 16th century, where he changed his surname to von Gippius and opened the first bookstore in Russia. The family remained predominantly German, although there were marriages with Russians - three-quarters of Russian blood was in the veins of Zinaida Nikolaevna.
Nikolai Romanovich Gippius met his future wife, the beautiful Siberian Anastasia Stepanova, in the city of Belev, Tula province, where he served after graduating from the Faculty of Law. Here, on November 8, 1869, their daughter, named Zinaida, was born. A month and a half after her birth, Nikolai Romanovich was transferred to Tula - this is how constant moving began. After Tula, there was Saratov, then Kharkov, then Petersburg, where Nikolai Romanovich was appointed comrade (deputy) chief prosecutor of the Senate. But he was soon forced to leave this rather high post: the doctors discovered tuberculosis in Nikolai Romanovich and advised him to move to the south. He transferred to the position of chairman of the court in the town of Nizhyn, Chernihiv province. Nizhyn was known only for the fact that Nikolai Gogol was brought up in it.
Zina was sent to the Kiev Institute for Noble Maidens, but six months later they were taken back: the girl was so homesick that she spent almost all six months in the institute's infirmary. And since there was no women's gymnasium in Nizhyn, Zina studied at home, with teachers from the local Gogol Lyceum.
After working in Nizhyn for three years, Nikolai Romanovich caught a bad cold and died in March 1881. The following year, the family - in addition to Zina, there were three more little sisters, a grandmother and an unmarried mother's sister - moved to Moscow.
Here Zina was sent to the Fischer gymnasium. Zina really liked it there, but six months later the doctors discovered tuberculosis in her too - to the horror of her mother, who was afraid of heredity. It was winter. She was forbidden to leave the house. I had to leave the gymnasium. And in the spring, the mother decided that the family needed to live in the Crimea for a year. Thus, homeschooling has become for Zina the only possible path to self-realization. She was never particularly fond of the sciences, but by nature she was endowed with an energetic mind and a desire for spiritual activity. Even in her early youth, Zina began to keep diaries and write poetry - at first comic, parody, on family members. Moreover, she infected the others with this - her aunt, governesses, even her mother. A trip to the Crimea not only satisfied the love of travel that had developed since childhood, but also provided new opportunities for doing what Zina was most interested in: horse riding and literature.
After the Crimea, the family moved to the Caucasus - the mother's brother, Alexander Stepanov, lived there. His material well-being allowed everyone to spend the summer in Borjomi, a resort town not far from Tiflis. The next summer we went to Manglis, where Alexander Stepanovich suddenly died of inflammation of the brain. The Gippiuses were forced to stay in the Caucasus.
Zina conquered the Tiflis youth. A tall, stately beauty with a magnificent golden-red braid below the knee and emerald eyes irresistibly attracted the gazes, thoughts, feelings of everyone who came across her. She was nicknamed the "poetess" - thereby recognizing her literary talent. In the circle that she gathered around her, almost everyone wrote poetry, imitating the most popular at that time Semyon Nadson, who had recently died of consumption, but her poems were the best. In Tiflis, Zina fell into the hands of the St. Petersburg magazine Picturesque Review with an article about Nadson. There, among other things, the name of another young poet, Nadson's friend, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, was mentioned, and one of his poems was cited. Zina did not like it, but for some reason the name was remembered ...
In the spring of 1888, the Gippiuses and Stepanovs again went to Borjomi. Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky, who travels around the Caucasus after graduating from St. Petersburg University, also comes there. By that time, he had already published his first book of poems and was a fairly well-known poet. As both believed, their meeting was mystical in nature and was predetermined from above. A year later, on January 8, 1889, Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky got married in the Tiflis Church of Michael the Archangel. She was 19 years old, he was 23.
According to the mutual desire of the newlyweds, the wedding was very modest. The bride was in a dark steel suit and a small hat with a pink lining, and the groom was in a frock coat and uniform "Nikolaev" overcoat. There were no guests, no flowers, no prayer service, no wedding feast. In the evening after the wedding, Merezhkovsky went to his hotel, and Zina stayed with her parents. In the morning, her mother woke her up with a cry: “Get up! You are still sleeping, and your husband has already come!” Only then Zina remembered that she got married yesterday ... So a family union was born, which was destined to play a crucial role in the history of Russian culture. They lived together for more than fifty years, not parting for a day.
Dmitry Merezhkovsky came from a wealthy family - his father, Sergei Ivanovich, served at the court of Alexander II and retired with the rank of general. The family had three daughters and six sons, Dmitry - the youngest, mother's favorite. It was thanks to his mother that Dmitry Sergeevich was able to obtain from his father, a rather stingy person, consent to the wedding and material assistance. She also rented and furnished an apartment for the young in St. Petersburg - immediately after the wedding, Zinaida and Dmitry moved here. They lived like this: each had a separate bedroom, his own study - and a common living room, where the spouses met, read each other what was written, exchanged opinions, received guests.
Dmitry Sergeevich's mother died two and a half months after his wedding, on March 20. Sergei Ivanovich, who passionately loved his wife and was indifferent to children, went abroad, where he became interested in spiritualism, and practically stopped communicating with his family. An exception was made only for Dmitry - as a favorite of his late wife. Sergei Ivanovich died in 1908 - 19 years later, to the day, after the death of his wife.
Contemporaries argued that the family union of Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky was primarily a spiritual union, and was never truly marital. Both denied the physical side of marriage. At the same time, both had hobbies, loves (including same-sex ones), but they only strengthened the family. Zinaida Nikolaevna had many hobbies - she liked to charm men and liked to be charmed. But it never went beyond kissing. Gippius believed that only in a kiss are lovers equal, and in what should follow next, someone will definitely stand above the other. And this Zinaida in no case could not allow. For her, the most important thing has always been the equality and union of souls - but not bodies.
All this allowed ill-wishers to call the marriage of Gippius and Merezhkovsky "the union of a lesbian and a homosexual." Letters were thrown into Merezhkovsky's apartment: "Aphrodite took her revenge on you by sending her wife - a hermaphrodite."
More often, Gippius had affairs with men. Although they could only be called novels with some stretch. Basically, these are common affairs, letters, conversations that dragged on all night in the Merezhkovskys' house, a few kisses - that's all. In the early 1890s, Zinaida Nikolaevna closely converged with two at once - the symbolist poet Nikolai Minsky and the playwright and prose writer Fyodor Chervinsky, Merezhkovsky's university acquaintance. Minsky loved her passionately - and Gippius only, in her own words, was in love "with herself through him." In 1895, Zinaida Nikolaevna began an affair with Akim Flexer (Volynsky), a well-known critic and ideologist of the Severny Vestnik magazine. The acquaintance was a long time ago. It was Flexer who first published the poems of Gippius, which no magazine wanted to take. A long cooperation gradually grew into friendship, then into love. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Gippius's feeling for Volynsky was the strongest feeling in the life of Zinaida Nikolaevna. But even with him, she remained herself: most of all, in Akim Lvovich, she was captivated by the fact that he, like her, was going to preserve his "corporal purity" ... As Gippius later wrote, they broke up because of the "impossible Russian language", which Flexer wrote his critical articles.
In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Gippius was on close terms with the English Baroness Elisabeth von Overbeck. Coming from a family of Russified Germans, she collaborated as a composer with Merezhkovsky - she wrote music for the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles translated by him, which were staged at the Alexandrinsky Theater. Gippius dedicated several poems to Elisabeth von Overbeck. These contemporaries called relations both purely business and frankly love...
Nevertheless, the marriage of Gippius and Merezhkovsky was a truly unique creative union. There are different points of view on who nevertheless was in the lead in it, but they agree on one thing: it was Zinaida who owned those ideas that Merezhkovsky later developed in his works. Without him, all her ideas would have remained only words, and he would have been silent without her. It happened that articles written by Zinaida Nikolaevna were published under the name of Merezhkovsky. There was also such a case: somehow she “gave” Dmitry Sergeevich two poems, which he really liked. Accompanying one of them with a long epigraph from the Apocalypse, Merezhkovsky included them in his collection of poems. But Gippius, "forgetting" about the gift, published these poems in her collection. And although it was immediately clear that the poems were not written by Merezhkovsky - as the poet Gippius was much stronger - she got away with the joke. Nobody noticed.
Zinaida quickly took a prominent place in the literary life of the capital. Already in 1888, she began to publish - her first publication was poetry in the journal Severny Vestnik, then a story in Vestnik Evropy. The family lived almost exclusively on royalties - mainly for critical articles, which both wrote in in large numbers. The poems of Zinaida Gippius, like the prose of Dmitry Merezhkovsky, at first did not find publishers - so little did they fit into the then accepted framework of “good literature”, inherited from the liberal criticism of the 1860s. However, decadence gradually comes from the West and takes root on Russian soil, primarily such a literary phenomenon as symbolism. Originating in France, symbolism penetrated Russia in the early 1890s, and within a few years became the leading style in Russian literature. Gippius and Merezhkovsky are at the origins of symbolism emerging in Russia - together with Nikolai Minsky, Innokenty Annensky, Valery Bryusov, Fyodor Sologub, Konstantin Balmont, they were called "senior symbolists". It was they who took upon themselves the brunt of criticism, which continued to stand on the obsolete positions of populism. After all, the “sixties” believed that the first task of literature was to reveal the ulcers of society, to teach and serve as an example, and any literary work was evaluated not by its artistic merits, but by the idea (ideally, civic accusatory) that was found there. The Symbolists fought for the restoration of the aesthetic principle in literature. And they won. The “younger symbolists” of the generation of Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely came to the positions already won for them by their older brothers in writing, and only deepened and expanded the sphere of what they had won.
In the early 1890s, Merezhkovsky began work on the Christ and Antichrist trilogy, first on Julian the Apostate and then on Leonardo da Vinci, his most famous novel. Gathering material for the trilogy, Zinaida Nikolaevna and Dmitry Sergeevich make two trips around Europe. Zinaida first comes to Paris - a city that immediately fascinated her, and where the Merezhkovskys would later spend many years. Upon their return, they settled at the corner of Liteiny Prospekt and Panteleymonovskaya Street, in the "Muruzi house" - in a house that, thanks to them, became the center of the literary, artistic, religious and philosophical life of St. Petersburg. Here Zinaida Nikolaevna arranged the most famous literary salon, where many prominent cultural figures of that time gathered.
The cultural environment of the 19th century was largely formed from the activities of various circles - home, friendly, university, formed around the publishing houses of almanacs, magazines, many of which also, at one time, arose from circles. Meetings at the editorial office of the New Way magazine, evenings of the Mir Iskusstva magazine, Sundays by the writer and philosopher Vasily Rozanov, Wednesdays in the Tower by Vyacheslav Ivanov, Fridays by Nikolai Minsky, Resurrections by Fyodor Sologub - the Merezhkovsky couple was an indispensable participant all of these – and many more – gatherings. Their house was also open to guests - poets, writers, artists, religious and political figures. “Culture was truly created here. Everyone here once studied,” wrote Andrei Bely, one of the regular guests of the salon. Gippius was not just a salon owner, gathering interesting people in her house, but an inspirer, instigator and ardent participant in all the discussions that happened, a center of refraction of diverse opinions, judgments, positions. The influence of Gippius on the literary process was recognized by almost all contemporaries. She was called the "decadent Madonna", rumors, gossip, legends swarmed around her, which Gippius not only collected with pleasure, but also actively multiplied. She was very fond of hoaxes. For example, she wrote letters to her husband in different handwriting, as if from fans, in which, depending on the situation, she scolded or praised him. The opponent could write a letter written in his own handwriting, in which she continued the discussion that had begun earlier.
She actively participated in the literary and personal lives of her contemporaries. Gradually, acquaintance with Gippius, visiting her salon becomes mandatory for novice writers of the Symbolist - and not only - sense. With her active assistance, the literary debut of Alexander Blok took place. She brought the novice Osip Mandelstam to the people. She owns the first review of the poems of the then unknown Sergei Yesenin.
She was a famous critic. She usually wrote under male pseudonyms, the most famous of which is Anton Krainy, but everyone knew who was hiding behind these male masks. Insightful, daring, in an ironically aphoristic tone, Gippius wrote about everything that deserved even the slightest attention. They were afraid of her sharp tongue, many hated her, but everyone listened to the opinion of Anton Krainy.
The poems, which she always signed with her name, were written mainly from a male perspective. This was both a share of outrageousness, and the manifestation of her really in some way masculine nature (it was not for nothing that they said that in their family Gippius is the husband, and Merezhkovsky is the wife; she impregnates him, and he bears her ideas), and the game. Zinaida Nikolaevna was unshakably confident in her own exclusivity and significance, and tried her best to emphasize this.
She allowed herself everything that was forbidden to the rest. She wore men's outfits - they effectively emphasized her undeniable femininity.
It was this that depicted her in the famous portrait of Lev Bakst. She loved to play with people, to put peculiar experiments on them. First, it attracts them with an expression of deep interest, charms with its undoubted beauty and charm, and then repels them with arrogance, mockery, cold contempt. With her extraordinary mind, it was not difficult. Her favorite pastimes were to tease people, embarrass them, embarrass them, and watch their reactions. Gippius could receive an unfamiliar person in the bedroom, undressed, or even taking a bath at all. The famous lorgnette, which the short-sighted Zinaida Nikolaevna used with defiant impudence, and a necklace made from the wedding rings of her admirers also entered the story.
Gippius deliberately provoked others to negative feelings towards her. She liked being called a "witch" - this confirmed that the "demonic" image that she intensively cultivated was working successfully. She sewed dresses for herself, at which passers-by looked in bewilderment and horror both in St. Petersburg and in Paris, she obviously used cosmetics indecently - she applied a thick layer of brick-colored powder on her delicate white skin.
She tried to hide her true face, thus trying to learn not to suffer. Possessing a vulnerable, hypersensitive nature, Gippius deliberately broke, remade herself in order to gain psychological protection, to acquire a shell that protects her soul from damage. And since, as you know, the best way to defend is an attack, Zinaida Nikolaevna chose such a defiant style of behavior ...
A huge place in the value system of Zinaida Gippius was occupied by the problems of spirit and religion. It was Gippius who owned the idea of the famous Religious-Philosophical Meetings (1901-1903), which played significant role in the Russian religious revival at the beginning of the 20th century. At these meetings, the creative intelligentsia, together with representatives of the official church, discussed issues of faith. Gippius was one of the founding members and an indispensable participant in all meetings.
At the first meeting, she appeared in a deaf black see-through dress with a pink lining. With every movement, the impression of a naked body was created. The church hierarchs present at the meeting were embarrassed and shyly averted their eyes ...
During the preparation of the Religious and Philosophical Meetings, Merezhkovsky and Gippius become close to Dmitry Vasilyevich Filosofov. A cousin and closest friend (and according to some reports, also a lover) of the famous patron of the arts Sergei Diaghilev, he belonged to the World of Art group, with which Zinaida Nikolaevna and Dmitry Sergeevich had long-standing friendly ties. Members of this group were considered followers of the philosopher Vasily Rozanov, but Merezhkovsky's ideas turned out to be closer to Filosofov. The rapprochement was so strong that Gippius, Merezhkovsky and Philosophers even entered into a special “triple” union, reminiscent of marriage, for which a special, jointly developed rite was performed. The union was seen as the germ of a future kind of religious order. The principles of his work were as follows: external separation from the state church, and internal union with Orthodoxy, the goal is the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth. It was the activity in this direction that all three perceived as their duty to Russia, contemporaries and subsequent generations. Zinaida Nikolaevna always called this task - the main thing.
However, the discord with the "World of Art" that soon emerged leads to the destruction of this union: a year later, Philosophers returned to Diaghilev, who spent a lot of effort on quarreling his cousin with the Merezhkovskys. Philosophers is said to be sick, Diaghilev hides him in his apartment and stops all attempts by Merezhkovsky to sort things out. Because of this, relations with Diaghilev also cease. Soon he and Philosophers go abroad.
In 1903, meetings were banned by a decree of the Holy Synod.
In the same year, the mother of Zinaida Nikolaevna died. Both she and her sisters were very worried about her death. At that time, Dmitry Sergeevich was next to her - and Philosophers, who had returned from abroad. They got close again. And since then they have not been separated for fifteen years.
Dmitry Vasilyevich was a very handsome, elegant, refined, highly cultured, widely educated, truly religious person. Zinaida Nikolaevna was for some time carried away by him as a man (it was to him that her only poem written from a woman's face was addressed), but Filosofov rejected her harassment, citing an aversion to any carnal intercourse, and offered a spiritual and friendly union in return. Some believed that he preferred Gippius-Merezhkovsky. Nevertheless, for many years he was the closest friend, colleague and companion of both - both Dmitry Sergeevich and Zinaida Nikolaevna.
In the following years they live together. A lot of time is spent abroad, especially in Paris. However, the events of 1905 found them in St. Petersburg. Having learned about the execution of a peaceful demonstration on January 9 - Bloody Sunday - Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Philosophers, Andrei Bely and several other acquaintances stage their own demonstration in protest: having arrived at the Alexandrinsky Theater (imperial!) in the evening, they disrupt the performance.
That evening, the famous actor Nikolai Varlamov, already elderly, was supposed to play. They say he cried backstage: his performances never failed!
From 1906, Merezhkovsky, Gippius and Philosophers lived mainly abroad, most often in Paris and the Riviera. They returned to their homeland just before the start of the World War, in the spring of 1914. For religious reasons, the Merezhkovskys had a purely negative attitude towards any war. Gippius said that war is a desecration of mankind. They saw their patriotism not in praising the power of Russian weapons everywhere, like many then, but in explaining to society where senseless bloodshed could lead. Gippius argued that every war bears in itself the germ of a new war, generated by the national bitterness of the vanquished.
However, over time, she came to the conclusion that only an "honest revolution" could end the war. Like other symbolists, Gippius saw in the revolution a great spiritual upheaval capable of purifying man and creating a new world of spiritual freedom. Therefore, the Merezhkovskys accepted the February Revolution with enthusiasm, the autocracy completely discredited itself, they hated it. They rejoiced that now in the government there are people like them, many of their acquaintances. But still they understood that the Provisional Government was too weak to retain power. When the October Revolution took place, Zinaida Nikolaevna was horrified: she foresaw that the Russia she loved, in which she lived, was no more. Her diaries of those years are full of fear, disgust, anger - and the smartest assessments of what is happening, the most interesting sketches, the most valuable observations. The Merezhkovskys from the very beginning emphasized their rejection of the new government. Zinaida Nikolaevna openly broke with everyone who began to cooperate with the new government, publicly scolded Blok for his poem "The Twelve", quarreled with Bely and Bryusov. The new power for both Gippius and Merezhkovsky was the embodiment of the "kingdom of the Devil." But the decision to leave is being postponed and postponed. They still hoped for the defeat of the Bolsheviks. When they finally decided, and Merezhkovsky asked permission to go abroad for treatment, they were categorically forbidden to leave. However, at the end of 1919 they manage to escape from the country. Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius, Dmitry Filosofov and Gippius' secretary Vladimir Zlobin illegally crossed the Polish border near Bobruisk.
First they settled in Minsk, and in early February 1920 they moved to Warsaw. Here they plunged into active political activity among Russian emigrants. The meaning of their life here was the struggle for the freedom of Russia from Bolshevism. Gippius was active in circles close to the Polish government against the possible conclusion of peace with Soviet Russia. She became the editor of the literary department of the Svoboda newspaper, where she published her political poems. Dmitry Filosofov was elected a member of the Russian Committee and became closely associated with Boris Savinkov, a former member of the terrorist "Combat Group" - he led the anti-Bolshevik movement in Poland. Gippius had known Savinkov for a long time - they became close in 1908-1914, in France, where Savinkov then organized meetings of his group. As a result of communication with Gippius, Savinkov wrote the novel Pale Horse, published in 1909 under the pseudonym V. Ropshin. Gippius edited the novel, came up with a title for it, brought the manuscript to Russia and published it in the Russian Thought magazine. In 1917-18, Gippius pinned special hopes on Savinkov, along with Kerensky, as the spokesmen for new ideas and the saviors of Russia.
Now Merezhkovsky and Gippius saw such a savior in Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, head of the Polish government. They hoped that by rallying all the anti-Bolshevik forces around Poland, he would rid the world of Bolshevism. However, on October 12, 1920, Poland and Russia signed an armistice. It was officially announced that Russian people in Poland, under fear of expulsion from the country, were forbidden to criticize the power of the Bolsheviks.
A week later, Gippius, Merezhkovsky and Zlobin left for Paris. Philosophers, who fell under the strongest influence of Savinkov, remained in Warsaw, where he headed the propaganda department in the Russian National Committee of Poland.
Having settled in Paris, where they had an apartment since pre-revolutionary times, the Merezhkovskys resumed their acquaintance with the color of the Russian emigration: Konstantin Balmont, Nikolai Minsky, Ivan Bunin, Ivan Shmelev, Alexander Kuprin, Nikolai Berdyaev and others. Zinaida Nikolaevna again found herself in her element. Again, life was seething around her, she was constantly printed - not only in Russian, but also in German, French, Slavic languages. Only more and more bitterness in her words, more and more melancholy, despair and poison in verses...
In 1926, the Merezhkovskys decided to organize the literary and philosophical society "Green Lamp" - a kind of continuation of the society of the same name at the beginning of the 19th century, in which A.S. Pushkin. Georgy Ivanov became the president of the society, and Zlobin became the secretary. The Merezhkovskys wanted to create something like an "incubator of ideas", an environment for discussing the most important issues. The society played a prominent role in the intellectual life of the first emigration and for a number of years gathered its best representatives.
The meetings were closed: guests were invited according to the list, each was charged a small fee that went to rent the premises. Ivan Bunin, Boris Zaitsev, Mikhail Aldanov, Alexei Remizov, Nadezhda Teffi, Nikolai Berdyaev and many others were regular participants in the meetings. The existence of the society ceased only with the outbreak of World War II in 1939.
Gippius changed little over the years. And suddenly it turned out that she remained practically alone among the émigré writers: the old generation, her former associates, gradually left the literary scene, many had already died, and she was not close to the new generation, who began their work already in exile. And she herself understood this: in The Shining, a book of poems published in 1938, there was a lot of bitterness, disappointment, loneliness, a sense of loss of the familiar world. And the new world eluded her...
Merezhkovsky, in his hatred of communism, consistently staked on all dictators in Europe. In the late 30s, he became interested in the ideas of fascism, personally met with Mussolini. Merezhkovsky saw in him a possible savior of Europe from the "communist infection". Zinaida Nikolaevna did not share this idea - any tyrant was disgusting to her.
In 1940 the Merezhkovskys moved to Biarritz. Soon Paris was occupied by the Germans, all Russian magazines and newspapers were closed. The emigrants had to leave literature and try not to get involved with the occupiers.
Gippius's attitude towards Nazi Germany was ambivalent. On the one hand, she, hating Bolshevism, hoped that Hitler would help crush the Bolsheviks. On the other hand, any kind of despotism was unacceptable to her, she denied war and violence. And although Zinaida Nikolaevna passionately wanted to see Russia free from Bolshevism, they never collaborated with the Nazis. She always remained on the side of Russia.
In the summer of 1941, shortly after the German attack on the USSR, Vladimir Zlobin, together with his German acquaintance, without the knowledge of Gippius, brought Merezhkovsky to the German radio. Thus, they wanted to alleviate the difficult financial situation of Dmitry Sergeevich and Zinaida Nikolaevna. Merezhkovsky made a speech where he began to compare Hitler with Joan of Arc, who was called to save the world from the power of the devil, spoke about the victory of spiritual values that German warrior knights carry on their bayonets ... Gippius, having learned about this speech, was seething with anger and indignation . However, she could not leave her husband, especially now. After all, after this speech, almost everyone turned away from them. December 7, 1941 Dmitry Sergeevich died. Only a few people came to see him on his last journey ...
Shortly before his death, he became completely disillusioned with Hitler.
After the death of her husband, Zinaida Nikolaevna was a little out of her mind. At first, she hardly accepted his death, even wanted to commit suicide by jumping out of the window. Then she suddenly calmed down, saying that Dmitry Sergeevich was alive, she even talked to him.
She outlived him by several years. Zinaida Gippius died on September 9, 1945, she was 76. Her death caused a whole explosion of emotions. Those who hated Gippius did not believe in her death, they came to see for themselves that she was dead, they pounded on the coffin with sticks. Those few who respected and appreciated her saw in her death the end of an entire era ... Ivan Bunin, who never came to the funeral - he was terribly afraid of death and everything connected with it - practically did not leave the coffin. She was buried in the Russian cemetery of Saint-Genevieve de Bois, next to her husband Dmitry Merezhkovsky.
The legend is gone. And the descendants were left with several collections of poems, dramas, novels, volumes of critical articles, several books of memoirs - and memory. The memory of a great woman who tried to stay in the shadow of a great husband and lit up Russian literature with the light of her soul...
Perhaps Zinaida Gippius is the most mysterious, ambiguous and extraordinary woman of the Silver Age. But amazing poetry she can "forgive" everything.
The beginning of the literary activity of Zinaida Gippius (1889-1892) is considered to be the “romantic-imitative” stage: in her early poems and stories, critics of that time saw the influence of Nadson, Ruskin, Nietzsche.
After the appearance of the program work of D.S. Merezhkovsky “On the Cause of the Decline and New Trends in Modern Russian Literature” (1892), Gippius’s work acquired a distinctly “symbolist” character, moreover, later she was considered one of the ideologists of the new modernist movement in Russian literature. During these years, the preaching of new ethical values became the central theme of her work. As she wrote in Autobiography, "It was not decadence that occupied me, but the problem of individualism and all the questions related to it." She polemically titled the 1896 collection of short stories "New People", implying the image of the characteristic ideological aspirations of the emerging literary generation, rethinking the values of Chernyshevsky's "new people".
Her characters seem unusual, lonely, painful, emphatically misunderstood. They declare new values: “I would not want to live at all”, “And illness is good ... You have to die from something”, the story “Miss May”, 1895.
The story “Among the Dead” shows the heroine’s extraordinary love for the deceased artist, whose grave she surrounded with care and on which, in the end, she freezes, thus uniting in her unearthly feeling with her lover.
However, finding among the heroes of the first prose collections of Gippius people of the "symbolist type", who were engaged in the search for "new beauty" and ways of spiritual transformation of a person, critics also noticed distinct traces of Dostoevsky's influence (not lost over the years: in particular, "Roman Tsarevich" of 1912 compared with "Demons"). In the story "Mirrors" (collection of the same name, 1898), the characters have their prototypes among the characters in Dostoevsky's works. The main character tells how she “everything wanted to do something great, but so ... unparalleled. And then I see that I can’t - and I think: let me do something bad, but very, very bad, bad to the bottom ...”, “Know that offending is not at all bad.”
But its heroes inherited the problems not only of Dostoevsky, but also of Merezhkovsky. (“We are for the new beauty, we break all the laws ...”). The short story Golden Flower (1896) discusses the murder for “ideological” motives in the name of the complete liberation of the hero: “She must die ... Everything will die with her - and he, Zvyagin, will be free from love, and from hatred, and from all thoughts of her". Reflections on murder are interspersed with disputes about beauty, individual freedom, Oscar Wilde, etc.
Gippius did not blindly copy, but rethought the Russian classics, placing her characters in the atmosphere of Dostoevsky's works. This process was of great importance for the history of Russian symbolism as a whole. Critics of the early 20th century considered the main motives of Gippius's early poetry to be "the curse of boring reality", "the glorification of the world of fantasy", the search for "new unearthly beauty". The conflict between the painful feeling within human disunity and, at the same time, the desire for loneliness, characteristic of Symbolist literature, was also present in Gippius's early work, marked by a characteristic ethical and aesthetic maximalism. Genuine poetry, Gippius believed, comes down to the "triple bottomlessness" of the world, three themes - "about man, love and death." The poetess dreamed of "reconciliation of love and eternity", but she assigned a unifying role to death, which alone can save love from everything transient. This kind of reflection on “eternal themes”, which determined the tone of many of Gippius’ poems of the 1900s, also dominated in the first two books of Gippius stories, the main topics of which were “affirmation of the truth of only the intuitive beginning of life, beauty in all its manifestations and contradictions and lies in the name of some high truth.
The “Third Book of Stories” (1902) Gippius caused a significant resonance, criticism in connection with this collection spoke of the author’s “morbid strangeness”, “mystical fog”, “head mysticism”, the concept of the metaphysics of love “against the background of the spiritual twilight of people ... not yet capable of realize it." The formula of “love and suffering” according to Gippius (according to the “Encyclopedia of Cyril and Methodius”) correlates with the “Meaning of Love” by V.S. Solovyov and carries the main idea: to love not for oneself, not for happiness and “appropriation”, but for gaining infinity in the “I”. Imperatives: “to express and give all my soul”, to go to the end in any experience, including experimenting with oneself and people, were considered her main life attitudes.
A notable event in the literary life of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century was the publication of the first collection of poems by Z. Gippius in 1904. Criticism noted here "the motives of tragic isolation, detachment from the world, strong-willed self-affirmation of the individual." Like-minded people also noted the special manner of “poetic writing, reticence, allegory, allusion, silence”, the manner of playing “melodious chords of abstraction on a silent piano”, as I. Annensky called it. The latter believed that "no man would ever dare to dress abstractions with such charm", and that this book best embodied "the entire fifteen-year history of ... lyrical modernism" in Russia. An important place in the poetry of Gippius was occupied by the theme of “efforts to create and preserve the soul”, with all the “devilish” temptations and temptations inseparable from them, many noted the frankness with which the poetess spoke about her internal conflicts. She was considered an outstanding master of verse by V.Ya. Bryusov and I.F. Annensky, who admired the virtuosity of form, rhythmic richness and "melodious abstraction" of Gippius's lyrics of the late 1890s - 1900s.
Some researchers believed that Gippius' work is distinguished by “characteristic non-femininity”, in her poems “everything is large, strong, without particulars and trifles. A lively, sharp thought, intertwined with complex emotions, breaks out of poetry in search of spiritual integrity and finding a harmonious ideal. Others warned against unambiguous assessments: “When you think about where Gippius has the innermost, where is the necessary core around which creativity grows, where is the “face”, then you feel: this poet, perhaps, like no one else, does not have a single face, but there is a multitude…”, wrote R. Gul.
I.A. Bunin, implying the style of Gippius, which does not recognize open emotionality and is often built on the use of oxymorons, called her poetry "electric verses", V.F. Khodasevich, reviewing The Shining, wrote about "a kind of internal struggle of the poetic soul with the non-poetic mind."
The collection of short stories Gippius "The Scarlet Sword" (1906) highlighted "the metaphysics of the author already in the light of neo-Christian themes", while the divine-human in the completed human personality was affirmed here as a given, the sin of self- and apostasy was considered one. The collection "Black on White" (1908), which absorbed the prose works of 1903-1906, was sustained in a "tangential, foggy-impressionistic manner" and explored the themes of dignity of the individual ("On the Ropes"), love and gender ("Lovers" , "Eternal" femininity "", "Two-one"), in the story "Ivan Ivanovich and the devil" Dostoevsky's influences were again noted. In the 1900s, Gippius also made herself known as a playwright: the play Holy Blood (1900) was included in the third book of short stories. Created in collaboration with D. Merezhkovsky and D. Filosofov, the play "Poppy Flower" was released in 1908 and was a response to the revolutionary events of 1905-1907. The most successful dramatic work of Gippius is The Green Ring (1916), a play dedicated to the people of "tomorrow" was staged by V.E. Meyerhold at the Alexandrinsky Theatre.
An important place in the work of Z. Gippius was occupied by critical articles published first in the New Way, then in Scales and Russian Thought (mainly under the pseudonym Anton Krainy). However, her judgments were distinguished (according to the New Encyclopedic Dictionary) both by "great thoughtfulness" and "extreme sharpness and sometimes a lack of impartiality." Parting ways with the authors of the magazine "World of Art" S.P. Diaghilev and A.N. Benois on religious grounds, Gippius wrote: "... to live among their beauty is scary. In it "there is no place for ... God", faith, death, this is art "for" here ", positivist art."
A.P. Chekhov, in the critic's assessment, is a writer of "cooling the heart to all living things", and those whom Chekhov can captivate will "go to choke, shoot themselves and drown themselves." In her opinion ("Mercure de France"), Maxim Gorky is "a mediocre socialist and obsolete artist." The critic condemned Konstantin Balmont, who published his poems in the democratic Journal for All, as follows: 1903, No. 2), which did not prevent her from publishing her poems in this magazine as well.
In a review of A. Blok's collection "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" with the epigraph "Without a Deity, without inspiration", Gippius liked only some of the imitations of Vladimir Solovyov. In general, the collection was assessed as vague and unfaithful "mystical-aesthetic romanticism." According to the critic, where "without the Lady", Blok's poems are "non-artistic, unsuccessful", they show through the "mermaid cold", etc.
In 1910, the second collection of poems by Gippius, Collected Poems. Book. 2. 1903-1909 ”, in many respects consonant with the first, its main theme was “the spiritual discord of a person who is looking for a higher meaning in everything, a divine justification for a low earthly existence ...”. Two novels of the unfinished trilogy, The Devil's Doll (Russian Thought, 1911, No. 1-3) and Roman Tsarevich (Russian Thought, 1912, No. 9-12), were intended to "reveal the eternal, deep roots reactions in public life", to collect "features of spiritual death in one person", but met with the rejection of criticism, which noted tendentiousness and "weak artistic embodiment". In particular, cartoonized portraits of A. Blok and Vyach were given in the first novel. Ivanov, and the main character was opposed by the "enlightened faces" of the members of the triumvirate of Merezhkovsky and Filosofov. Another novel was entirely devoted to questions of God-seeking and was, according to R.V. Ivanov-Razumnik, "a tedious and viscous continuation of the useless "Devil's Doll"". After their publication "New encyclopedic Dictionary"Wrote: Gippius is more original as an author of poetry than as an author of stories and novels. Always carefully considered, often posing interesting questions, not devoid of apt observation, the stories and novels of Gippius are at the same time somewhat far-fetched, alien to the freshness of inspiration, do not show real knowledge of life.
The heroes of Gippius speak interesting words, get into complex collisions, but do not live in front of the reader, most of them are only the personification of abstract ideas, and some are nothing more than skillfully crafted puppets set in motion by the author’s hand, and not by the power of their internal psychological experiences.
Hatred of the October Revolution forced Gippius to break with those of his former friends who accepted it, with Blok, Bryusov, Bely. The history of this gap and the reconstruction of the ideological collisions that led to the October events, which made the confrontation of the former allies in literature inevitable, formed the essence of Gippius' memoirs Living Faces (1925). The revolution (contrary to Blok, who saw in it an explosion of the elements and a cleansing hurricane) was described by her as a "strong suffocation" of monotonous days, "amazing boredom" and at the same time, "monstrosity" that caused one desire: "to go blind and deaf." At the root of what was happening, Gippius saw some kind of "Great Madness" and considered it extremely important to maintain the position of "sound mind and solid memory."
Collection “Last Poems. 1914-1918 ”(1918) drew a line under the active poetic work of Gippius, although two more of her poetry collections were published abroad:“ Poems. Diary 1911-1921" (Berlin, 1922) and "Shine" (Paris, 1939). In the works of the 1920s, an eschatological note prevailed (“Russia perished irrevocably, the kingdom of the Antichrist is advancing, brutality rages on the ruins of a collapsed culture” - according to the encyclopedia “Krugosvet”).
As the author's chronicle of the "bodily and spiritual dying of the old world," Gippius left diaries, which she perceived as a unique literary genre that allows her to capture "the very course of life", to fix "little things that disappeared from memory", by which descendants could restore a reliable picture tragic event. The artistic work of Gippius during the years of emigration (according to the encyclopedia "Krugosvet") "begins to fade, she is more and more imbued with the conviction that the poet is not able to work away from Russia": "heavy cold" reigns in her soul, she is dead, like "a dead hawk ". This metaphor becomes key in the last collection of Gippius's "Shine" (1938), where the motifs of loneliness prevail and everything is seen by the gaze of "passing by" (the title of poems important for the late Gippius, published in 1924).
Attempts to reconcile with the world in the face of a close farewell to it are replaced by declarations of non-reconciliation with violence and evil.
According to the "Literary Encyclopedia" (1929-1939), Gippius's foreign work "is devoid of any artistic and social value, except for the fact that it vividly characterizes the `animal face" of emigrants. " V. S. Fedorov gives a different assessment of the work of the poetess: Creativity Gippius, with all his inner drama of polarity, with intense and passionate striving for the unattainable, has always been not only “change without betrayal”, but also carried the liberating light of hope, fiery, indestructible faith-love in the transcendent truth of the ultimate harmony of human life and being .
Already living in exile, the poetess wrote about her “beyond the starry country” of hope with aphoristic brilliance: Alas, they are divided ... (V.S. Fedorov). Z.N. Gippius. Russian literature of the XX century: writers, poets, playwrights.
The literary heritage left by Zinaida Gippius is huge and varied. However, she became mostly known as a writer of diaries and memoirs.
The poetess was born in 1869 in the town of Belev near Tula. However, their family lived in this city for only six months, and then moved to Tula due to the fact that Zina's father was appointed assistant prosecutor. Then the moving began again, and the girl practically did not receive a systematic education. The only consolation for her was the books that she read and even tried to write poetry. She destroyed her serious works, and read poems written in a joking manner to others. In addition, by the age of 16, she knew the works of Turgenev and Gogol very well. She especially liked Dostoevsky.
The first poetic debut took place in 1888 in Borjomi, where she met Merezhkovsky. There were disagreements between them about their writings. And still, in 1889, young people realized that they could not arrive without each other. They married on January 8, 1889. She lived with her husband for 52 years, not for a day, without parting with him. Gippius stood at the origins of Russian symbolism and was one of its unspoken leaders. In 1890, the short story "The Simple Life" was published in the journal "Bulletin of Europe". But fame came to her in 1899 after the appearance of her new works with a bias towards Polonsky. In 1902, the poetess created one of the periodicals "New Way", where she reflected her opinion on various issues of literary and religious significance.
From 1906 to 1908, Gippius with her husband and her close friend Filosofov left for Paris. After returning from abroad, she and her husband participate in meetings of a society of a religious and philosophical direction, which included Blok and Berdyaev. In her early writings, the cult of loneliness was preached. In the works of late creativity, Gippius turned to poetic journalism. Throughout her career, Zinaida Nikolaevna acted as a talented literary critic. At first, she published under the pseudonym Anton Krainy. In 1919, having emigrated with her husband, he became one of the famous writers of the Russian diaspora. The poetess died in 1945.
Biography and creativity
In 1869, on November 20, a daughter, Zinaida, was born in the family of a Russified German and nobleman Nikolai Gippius. The birthplace of the future madonna of decadence was the small town of Belev, located in the Tula province.
The legal service of the father was the reason for the constant change of residence of the family. For this reason, Zinaida received her education in fits and starts. Attendance at educational institutions was constantly interrupted by moving. Education and preparation for exams took place at home with governesses.
But this did not prevent the purposeful and spiritually gifted girl from revealing and developing her poetic talent. Little Zina began to write poetry at the age of seven. She was very fond of books, filled diaries with her impressions from what she read, and with pleasure corresponded with her father's friends.
In 1881, the father of the Silver Age poetess died. Anna Vasilievna Gippius moved her daughters to Moscow. The eldest, Zina, began to attend the Fischer gymnasium with pleasure, but became seriously ill with tuberculosis. It was heredity. Moscow had to be replaced by Yalta. The Crimean sun became a salvation for the weakened Zinaida. And in 1885, through the efforts of her uncle Alexander, the girl settled in a dacha in Borjomi.
It was there that Gippius, who was already 18, met the poet Dmitry Merezhkovsky. The young people got married in 1888. The marriage lasted more than 52 years and was an example of spiritual and creative unity.
There was no physical unity in the pair. Gippius, was not only smart and talented, but also amazingly beautiful. Her novels, including those with women, became public, but they did not destroy the alliance with Merezhkovsky.
The year 1888 became significant in the creative career of Gippius. She began to publish and soon became one of the significant figures in the literary Petersburg. I tried myself in translations, prose, but special attention was paid to poetry.
In poetry, Zinaida revealed her uniqueness and originality. At first incomprehensible to the reader, they became popular in an era of decadence.
Aspiring writers and poets became regulars at the literary salon, which the Merezhkovskys' St. Petersburg apartment had become. Salon Gippius became "a real oasis of Russian spiritual life at the beginning of the 20th century."
The bright, smart, talented and sharp-tongued hostess of the salon truly inspired young writers to create new works. Among her so-called godchildren are A. Blok, O. Mandelstam, S. Yesenin.
Gippius was called the genius of Russian symbolism. She, along with Merezhkovsky, Bryusov, Balmont and Sologub, stood at its origins.
Public activity was represented by the work of a literary critic in many magazines and newspapers. Critical articles were written under various male pseudonyms.
The period from 1901 to 1903 was marked by a long creative union with D. Filosofov and the creation of the New Way magazine.
After the events of 1905, the Merezhkovskys, disappointed in the autocracy, leave Russia and go to voluntary exile in Paris. There, Gippius becomes close to the essayists Savinkov and Fondaminsky, works on journalism, writes poetry.
Communication with Russian newspapers and magazines is not interrupted. At home, new articles and books by Gippius and Merezhkovsky are constantly published.
Three years later, in 1908, the couple returned. But the terrible impression of the outbreak of the First World War and the rejection of the October Revolution resulted in the Merezhkovskys' decision to leave Russia forever.
In 1919 they fled to France. Having never come to terms with the power of the Bolsheviks, Gippius and Merezhkovsky experienced a very difficult break with their homeland.
The literary society "Green Lamp" created by them united the Russian cultural emigration for a long 14 years.
After her husband's death in 1941, Gippius immersed herself in work on his biography, returning to writing poetry and keeping diaries. Zinaida Nikolaevna died on September 9, 1945 in Paris and was buried next to her husband on Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.
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