Dmitry Merezhkovsky
Encyclopedia
Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky, , 1865, St Petersburg – December 9, 1941, Paris
) 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 poet wife Zinaida Gippius
– was twice forced into political exile. During his second exile (1918-1941) he continued publishing successful novels and gained recognition as a critic of Soviet Russia
. 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 was a nine times nominee for the Nobel Prize in literature
, which he came closest to winning in 1933.
, 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 (including that of I. D. Talyzin in Orenburg
) before entering Alexander II
's court office as a Privy Councillor. His mother Varvara Vassilievna Merezhkovskaya (née Cherkasova) was a daughter of a senior St. Petersburg security official. Fond of arts and literature, she was what Dmitry Merezhkovsky later remembered as the guiding light of his rather lonely childhood (despite the continual presence of five brothers and three sisters). In fact, 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 a biographer, was the first and the most important of them.
, by the road leading to the Uchan-Su waterfall. "Fabulous Oreanda palace, now in ruins, is with me forever. White marble pylons against the blue sea... for me it's a timeless symbol of Ancient Greece
", he wrote years later. Merezhkovsky Sr., although a man of means, led a somewhat ascetic life, keeping his household 'lean and thrifty'. This was also his way of 'moral prophylactics' for his children's upbringing, since he regarded luxury-seeking and reckless spending as the deadliest sins. Since the parents traveled a lot, an old German housekeeper named Amalia Khristianovna spent much time with the children, amusing them with Russian fairytales and Biblical stories. Her recounting of saints' lives was later thought to be the prime source of the fervent religious feelings Dmitry developed in his early teens.
In 1886 Dmitry Merezhkovsky joined an elite grammar school, the St. Petersburg Third Classic Gymnasium. Years spent there he described later by one word, 'murderous', remembering just one teacher as a decent person – "Kessler the Latinist; well-meaning he surely never was, but at least he looked at us kindly".
At age thirteen, Dmitry began 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 on its agenda, but still made the secret police interested. All 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.
, Crimea, Sergey Ivanovich introduced Dmitry to the legendary Princess E. K. Vorontzova, Pushkin's sweetheart. Tellingly, the grand dame much admired the boy's verses: she (according to a biographer) "spotted in them a must-have poetic quality: the metaphysical sensitivity of a young soul" and encouraged him to battle on. Somewhat different was young Merezhkovsky's encounter with another luminary, Dostoyevsky, staged for his son by the well-connected father again. 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 not – neither suffer, nor write well!", the appalled father exclaimed. The boy left Dostoyevsky's house greatly frustrated by the great man's verdict.
Merezhkovsky's debut publication followed the same year: St. Petersburg magazine Zhivopisnoye Obozrenye printed two of his poems: Tuchka (Little Cloud, 1883, #40) and Osennya Melodia (The Autumn Melody, #42). A year later another poem Narcissus was included in a charity compilation benefiting destitute students, edited by Pyotr F. Yakubovich.
In Autumn 1882 Merezhkovsky attended one of the first of S. 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 Vassilievna two years later; affected greatly, Merezhkovsky suffered deep depression caused by the feeling that he had lost everything he'd ever had in this world.
Meanwhile Otechestvennye Zapiski
(January issue, 1883) published two more of Merezhkovsky's poems. "Sakja Moony", 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 B&E Encyclopedia
. Years later, having gained fame as a novelist, he felt rather embarrassed by his poetry and, while compiling his first Compete Works Of... series in the late 1900s, cut the poetry section down to just a few pieces. Nevertheless, Merezhkovsky's poems remained hugely popular, and some major Russian composers (Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky among them) set dozens of them to music.
and Philology
at the University of St. Petersburg, becoming fluent in several languages. Merezhkovsky's PhD was on Montaigne, his major interests there being French literature
, the philosophy of positivism
, theories of J. S. Mill
and Charles Darwin
. Those, though, Merezkovsky never enjoyed. "University gave me no more than a Gymnasium did. I didn't have proper – neither family, nor school", he wrote in his 1913 autobiography. The only lecturer he remembered fondly was O. Miller
, a well known Russian literary historian and Dostoyevsky biographer, who held a domestic literature circle.
More promising was his literary company, notably St. Petersburg's Literary Society that he (along with Nadson) joined in 1884, on A. Plescheev's recommendation. The latter introduced the young poet to the family of K. Davydov, a Musical Conservatory director. His wife Anna Arka′dyevna became Merezhkovsky's publisher in the 1890s, their daughter Julia, his first (strong, but fleeting) romantic interest. In Davydov's circle Merezhkovsky mixed with well-established literary figures of the time – I. Goncharov
, Ap. Maykov
, Y. Polonsky
, but also N. Mikhailovsky and G. Uspensky
, two great narodnik
s whom he regarded later as his first genuine teachers.
It was under the guidance of the latter that Merezhkovsky, while still a s University student, made an extensive journey through the Russian provinces where he met lots of people, notably religious cults leaders. He stayed for some time in Chudovo
village where Uspensky lived, both many nights discussing things like 'life's religious meaning', 'folk cosmic vision' and 'power of the land'. A young student was seriously considering the possibility of leaving the capital forever and settling down in some far-out country place, as a teacher.
Another big influence, N. Mikhaylovsky, gave young Merezhkovsky some more of the helping hand, bringing him to Severny Vestnik
, a new literary magazine he's founded with A. Davydova. This move was crucial: here Merezhkovsky met highly influential writers Korolenko
and Garshin
and later – Minsky
, Balmont
and F. Sologub
: the future Russian symbolism's major figures. Merezhkovsky's first article for the magazine, though, "Peasant in French literature", upset his mentor: Mikhaylovsky found in his young protégé 'longing for mysticism' – the one thing he deeply detested.
In the early 1888 Merezhkovsky, having graduated from the University, embarked on a tour all through the South of Russia, starting in Odessa
. It was in Borjomi
that he met 19-year-old poet Zinaida Gippius. The two instantly fell for each other and on January 18, 1889, married in Tiflis, making arguably the most prolific and influential, even if rather bizarre, couple in the history of Russian literature. Soon husband and wife moved into their new St. Petersburg house, Merezkovsky's mother's wedding present.
Having by this time lost most of his interest in poetry, Dmitry Merezhkovsky developed strong affinity to Greek drama; his translations of Aeschylus
, Sophocles
and Euripides
appeared in Vestnik Evropy. These and some of his later translations from Ancient Greek (like prosaic version of Daphnis and Chloe, 1896), almost unnoticed by the contemporary critics, are now regarded (according to Y. Zobnin) "as the pride of the Russian school of classic translation".
In the late 1880s Merezhkovsky made his debut as a literary critic with an essay on Anton Chekhov
entitled The Newly-born Talent Versus the Same Old Question (for Severny Vestnik
). Having discovered in the subject's prose 'the seeds of irrational, alternative truth' Merezhkovsky made sure his friendship with Mikhaylovsky would come to an end; rather amused by the discovery was Chekhov himself who, in his letter to Plescheev, pointed to "the disturbing lack of simplicity" as the article's fault. Nothing daunted, Merezhkovsky continued in the same vein – in fact, invented (in retrospect) the whole new genre of philosophical essay as a form of critical thesis, something totally unheard of in Russian literature before. Merezhkovsky's biographical pieces on Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Goncharov, Maykov, Korolenko, Pliny
, Calderon
scandalized the contemporary literary establishment. Some twenty years later (compiled in a volume called The Eternal Companions) these essays were pronounced modern classics, their author regarded as "the subtlest and deepest of late XIX – early XX Russian literary critics" (according to literary historian Anton Dolynin). The Eternal Companions became so revered a piece of literary art in the early 1910s that the volume was being officially chosen as a kind of honorary gift for the excelling grammar school graduates.
Back in May 1890 Liubov Gurevich
, having found herself at the helm of the revamped Severny Vestnik, turned a former narodnik's safe haven into the exciting club for the newly born stars of the rising experimental literature scene (labelled 'decadent' by its opponents). Instantly Merezhkovsky's new drama Sylvio was published there, translation of E.A. Poe
's The Raven following soon. Other journals became interested in the young author too: Russkaya Mysl printed his poem Vera, later included in his The Symbols compilation. Vera became an instant hit as one of the Russian symbolism's first masterpieces, its colourful mysticism seen by many as a healthy antidote to the narodnik's 'social reflections', rather lacklustre at the best of times. Bryusov 'absolutely fell in love with it', and Pertzov years later (with a degree of self-deprecative irony) admitted: "For my young mind Merezhkovsky's Vera sounded so much superior to this dull and outdated Pushkin".
Russkaya Mysl released Semeynaya Idillia (The Family Idyll, 1890), a year later another symbolic poem Smert (Death) appeared in Severny Vestnik. In 1891 Merezhkovsky and Gippius made their first journey to Europe – mainly Italy
and France
; the poem Konetz Veka (End of the Century) inspired by continental impressions was published two years later. On their return home the couple stayed for a while in Guppius' dacha at Vyshny Volochyok
; it was here that Merezhkovsky started working on his first novel, Julian the Apostate. A year later it was finished, but this time Severny Vestnik proved an unreliable ally: outraged by Akim Volynsky's boorish editorial manner, Merezhkovsky severed all ties with the magazine, at least for a while. In the late 1891 he published the translation of Sophocles' Antigona
in Vestnik Evropy, part of Goethe's Faustus (in Russkoye Obozrenye) and Euripides' Hyppolite (in Vestnik Evropy again). The latter came out in 1893, after the couple's second trip to Europe where their first, nothing out of the ordinary, encounter with Dmitry Filosofov
(future friend/lover) occurred. Much more significant to Merezhkovsky at the time was what he saw and felt in Greece, grandiose images and the resultant lavish spurt of new ideas laying the foundation for his second novel.
influences but also tinged heavily with the author's newly found religious ideas, became a younger readership's favourite. Of the older generation writers only Yakov Polonsky
supported it wholeheartedly — much to the delight of a young author himself. In October 1892 Merezhkovsky's lecture On the Causes of the Decline and on the New Trends in Contemporary Russian Literature was — first read in public, then came out in print. Brushing aside the 'decadent' tag, the author argued that all three "streaks of Modern art" — "Mystic essence, Symbolic language and Impressionism" — could be easily traced down to the works of Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, Russian Modernism, therefore, being nothing more or less than a continuation of the Russian literature's classic tradition. Coupled with Symbols, the Lecture was widely accepted as a Russian symbolism's early manifest.
The lecture became a sensation but the reaction to it was mostly negative. The author found himself between two chairs: liberals condemned his ideas as 'the new obscurantism', posh literary saloonists treated his revelations with scorn. Small group of people greeted The Causes unanimously, and that was the Severny Vestnik clique. Much to his surprise Merezhkovsky discovered that he was wanted there again.
In 1893–1894 Merezhkovsky published numerous books (the play The Storm is Over and the translation of Sophocles
' Oedipus the King among them), but the money all this hard work brought were scant. Now deep into his second novel project, he had to accept whatever work was offered to him. In the late 1893 Merezhkovskys settled in St. Petersburg again. Here they frequented the Shakespearean Circle, the Polonskys' Fridays and the Literary Fund gatherings, then started their own home saloon, Filosofov and Volynsky becoming habitués. All of a sudden Merezhkovsky found that his debut novel was to be published in Severny Vestnik after all. What he didn't know, though, was that this 'success' was the result of a Gippius' tumultuous secret love affair with Akym Volynsky, one of the magazine's chiefs.
In Severny Vestnik, though, clouds were gathering over his head, the reason for it being, unbelievably, Akym Volynsky's jealousy. In 1896 all three of them (husband still totally unaware of the behind his back goings-on) made a trip to Europe to visit Leonardo da Vinci places. After several ugly rows disgusted Gippius finally sent her scandalous-minded lover literally home, where all the hell broke loose. Not only did Volynsky expelled his ex-lover's husband from the Severny Vestnik ranks and made sure all the major literary journals would shut the door on him. What Volynsky did next was publish under his own name some of the papers on Leonardo, written and compiled by his hated adversary.
The scandal concerning plagiarism lasted for almost two years; totally sick of it and having not a single decent place to turn to, Merezhkovsky in 1897 was seriously considering leaving his country for good, only the lack of finances keeping him at home. For almost three years the 2nd novel, Resurrection of Gods. Leonardo da Vinci (The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci – in English and French) remained unpublished. Finally it appeared in Autumn 1900 in a religious magazine Myr Bozhy (God's World), under the title "Renaissance". In retrospect (according to the Encyclopedia of World Biography entry) these books' "...persuasive power came from Merezhkovsky's success in catching currents then around him: strong contrasts between social life and spiritual values, fresh interest in the drama of pagan ancient Athens, and identification with general western European culture".
By the time of his second novel's release, Merezhkovsky was in a completely different cultural camp – that of Dyagilev and his close friends – Alexandre Benois
, Léon Bakst
, Nikolay Minsky and Valentin Serov
. Their own brand new Mir Iskusstva
(World of Art) magazine, with D. Filosofov as a literary editor, accepted Merezhkovsky wholeheartedly. It was here that the most famous of the latter's essays, 'Tolstoy and Dostoevsky
was published in 1900–01, becoming Russian cultural life's hot news, coinciding as it was with Tolstoy's escalating conflict with the Russian Orthodox church
.
Shocking many (not for the first time), Merezhkovsky upheld the Tolstoy Excommunication
act, seeing it as a symptom of the Russian Orthodox church's revival; the latter's "beginning to see itself as a united mystical organism, intolerant to any compromises of dogmatic character", as he put it. The writer's stance made him a hate figure for many, even threats of physical violence ensuing. Tolstoy himself wasn't much flustered; in fact, he invited the couple to his Yasnaya Polyana
estate in 1904 and, to both parties' delight, the visit was more than friendly. Behind the facade, there was little love lost, though, between them; the old man frankly wrote that try as he might, he couldn't "force himself to love those two", and Merezhkovsky's critique of Tolstoy's 'nihilism
' continued.
and V. von Pleve
, Merezhkovskys opened their own Novy Put (New Path) magazine, designed as an outlet for The Meetings.
After the 22nd session, in April 1903, the meetings of the group (by this time widely known as Bogoiskateli, or God-seekers) were finally cancelled by the procurator of the Holy Synod
of the Russian Orthodox Church K. Pobedonostzev
's decree, the main reason being Merezhkovskys frequent visits to places of mass sectarian settlements where they and their radical ideas of Church 'renovation' were becoming quite popular. And in Novy Puth things changed too: with the arrival of strong personalities like N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov and S. Frank the magazine was beginning to solidify its position, all the while drifting away from its originally declared mission. In the late 1904 Merezhkovsky and Gippius quit Novy Put, remaining on friendly terms with its new leaders and their now highly influential 'philosophy section'. In 1907 the Meetings revived under the new moniker of The Religious-Philosophical Society, Merezhkovsky once again being at the helm with his 'Holy Ghost Kingdom Come' ideas, but this was more of a literary circle, than anything it is ever purported to be.
It was at this time that the couple formed its own domestic 'church'; they tried to bring all the miriskusniks to participate, but only Filosofov took the idea seriously. He became the third member of the community called Troyebratstvo (The Brotherhood of Three) built loosely upon the Holy Trinity format and having a lot to do with the obscure XII century idea of the Third Testament
which by this time became Merezhkovsky's idée fixe
. Revitalized by the latter indeed it was to be – in the modern form of a new age Church of Holy Ghost, destined to succeed the older churches of – first Father (Old Testament
), then Son (New Testament
), at least as Merezhkovky saw it. Practical religious rituals of Troyebratstvo (including all the traditional Russian Orthodox elements, organized into highly unusual, rather risqué kind of family spectacle) by many was seen as most blatant blasphemy and divided the St. Petersburg intellectual elite: Vasily Rozanov
was fascinated by the thinly veiled eroticism of the happening, while among those outraged was Nikolai Berdyaev
. Greatly scandalized was the (gay, mostly) Mir Iskusstva community: Sergei Diaghilev
accused Filosofov of committing 'adultery' and the latter's somewhat embarrassing quit-and-return shenanigan was going on for quite a while, until 1905 when he finally made up his mind and settled down in Merezhkovskys' St. Petersburg house, becoming a kind of family member.
In 1904 The Antichrist. Pyotr Y Alexey, the third and final novel of Christ and Antichrist trilogy was published (in Novy Puth, ##1–5, 9–12), having as it's focus the figure of Peter the Great as an 'embodied Antichrist' – an idea the author shared with Russian raskol
niki. This third novel invited scathing criticism from the underground magazine Osvobozhdenie:
The novel's release was now eagerly anticipated in Europe where Merezhkovsky by this time has become a best-selling author, Julian the Apostate having undergone ten editions (in four years time) in France. But when Daily Telegraph described the novelist as “the true heir to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky's legacy”, back in Russia critics denounced this praise so unanimously that Merezhkovsky was forced to publicly deny having had any pretensions of this kind whatsoever.
Merezhkovsky's views changed drastically, the defeat of the Imperial Russian Navy
by the Imperial Japanese Navy
helping him see, as he put it, "the anti-Christian nature of the Russian monarchy". 1905 Revolution for Merezhkovsky was some kind of prelude for the religious revolution of which he thought himself to be a prophet
. The writer became an ardent supporter of the civil unrest, writing much revolutionary verse, organising protest parties for students (like that in Alexandrinsky theater). In October 1905 he greeted the government's 'freedoms-granting' decree but since then was only strengthening ties with leftist radicals, notably, esers
.
Merezhkovsky explained his rather complicated political stance in the 1905 book Gryadushchu Ham (The Forthcoming Ham). Seeing, as usual, all things now being refracted into Trinities (and using the pun: "Ham" in Russian, along with a Biblical character's name, meaning 'lout', 'boor') the author depicted three "faces of Ham'stvo" (son of Noah's new incarnation as kind of nasty, God-jeering scoundrel Russian): the past (Russian Orthodox Church's hypocrisy), the present (state bureaucracy and monarchy) and the future — massive "boorish upstart rising up from society's bottom". Several years on the book was regarded as prophetic by many.
In Spring 1906, Merezhkovsky and Filosofov went into what they regarded as a self-imposed exile, seeing "promoting the New religious consciousness" as their mission. They founded Anarchy and Theocracy magazine and released a compilation of essays called Le Tsar at la Revolution. In one of the articles he contributed, Revolution and Religion Merezhkovsky wrote: "Now it's almost impossible to foresee what a deadly force this revolutionary tornado starting upwards from the society's bottom will turn out to be. The church will be crashed down and the monarchy too, but with them — what if Russia itself is to perish — if not the timeless soul of it, then its body, the state?". Again, what at the time was looked upon as rather dull political grotesque a decade became grim reality.
Years 1908—1909 were extraordinary in the extent of published work Merezhkovsky produced. First the play about 'the revolutionary routines Makov Tzvet (Poppy's Blossom) came out, all three credited as co-authors, then Posledny Svyatoy (The Last Saint) followed, a piece on Seraphim Sarovsky, this time Merezhkovsky's solo effort. More significant were two of his socio-political/philosophical essays, Not Peace but Sword and In Sill Waters. In them, working on another of his theories, that of "evolutionary mysticism", Merezhkovsky argued that revolution in Russia and the world (he saw the two as closely linked: the first steaming forward, the latter rattling behind) was inevitable, but succeed would be only if preceded by "the revolution of human spirit", with Russian intelligentsia willingly embracing his cherished idea of the Third Testament. Otherwise, Merezhkovsky prophesized, political revolution will bring nothing but tyranny and the 'Kingdom of Ham' will come.
Among those whom Merezhkovskys held talk with in Paris were well-
established cultural figures like Anatole France
, Rudolf Steiner
, Bergson, leaders of the French socialists. Disappointed by the general polite indifference to their ideas, husband and wife returned home in the late 1908, but not before Merezhkovsky's historical drama Pavel Pervy was published. The play, promptly confiscated and then banned by the Russian authorities, became the first in the Kingdom of the Beast trilogy. Dealing with the nature and history of the Russian monarchy, the trilogy had little in common with the author's earlier symbolism-influenced prose and, cast very much in the "humanist tradition of the XIX century Russian literature", was regarded later as the height of Merezhkovsky's literary career. The 2nd and the 3rd parts of the trilogy, the Decembrists novels Аleksandr Pervy (Alexander the First) and Chetyrnadzatoye Dekabrya (December the 14th) were published in 1913
and 1918
respectively.
, the volume of political and philosophical essays written and compiled by the group of influential writers, mostly his former friends and allies, who promoted their work as some kind of historic manifesto, the last effort to enforce the rather inert Russian intelligentsia into the long overdue 'spiritual revival'. Arguing against vekhovtsys (hardly original) idea of bringing Orthodoxy and the Russian intellectual elite together (again), Merezhkovsky, in an open letter to N. Berdyaev, wrote:
Some said Merezhkovsky's stance was inconsistent with his own ideas of some five years ago. After all, what Vekhi authors did was try and revitalize his own failed project of bringing the intellectual and the religious elites into some kind of collaboration. But the times have changed for Merezhkovsky and — following this (some argued, unacceptably scornful) anti-Vekhi tirade, his social status, too. Shied by his former allies, he was feared by those in he right and center and hated by the Church: Saratov
bishop Dolganov even demanded his excommunication after the book Bolnaya Rossia (The Sick Russia) was published n 1910. For social-democrats, conversely, Merezhkovsky, not a 'decadent pariah' any-more, suddenly became a 'well-established Russian novelist' , the 'pride of the European literature', etc. Time has come for former friend Rozanov to write words that proved in the long run to be prophetic: "The thing is, Dmitry Sergeevich, those whom you are with now, will never be with you. Never will you find it in yourself to wholly embrace this dumb, dull and horrible snout of the Russian revolution".
In the early 1910s though, Merezhkovsky moved straight into the left side of the Russian culural spectre, finding among his closest associated the esers Ilya Fondaminsky
and, notably, Boris Savinkov
. The latter was trying to get from Merezhkovsky some religious and philosophical justification to his own terrorist ideology, but also had another, more down to Earth axe to grind, that of getting his first novel published. This he did, with Merezhkovsky's assistance — to strike the most unusual debut of the 1910 Russian literary season. In 1911 Merezhkovsky had the legal accusation of having 'links with terrorists' brought against him. Pending trial (which included the case of Pavel Pervy play) the writer stayed in Europe, then crossed the border in 1912 only to have several chapters of Alexander the First novel confiscated. Never arrested, though, in September, along with Pirozhkov, the publisher, he was acquitted.
1913 saw Merezhkovsky being involved in another public scandal, when Vassily Rozanov openly accused him of having ties with the 'terrorist underground' and, as he put it, "trying to sell Motherland to Jews". Merezhkovsky suggested that the Religious-Philosophical Society should hold its own inner 'trial' and expel Rozanov from its ranks. The move turned to be miscalculated, the writer failing to take into account, apparently, the extent of his own unpopularity within the Society. The majority of the latter declined the Merezhkovsky-Filosofov proposal. Rozanov, high-horsed, quit the Society on his own accord to respond stingingly by publishing Merezhkovsky's private letters which demonstrated, allegedly, the latter's hypocrisy on the matter.
and joining Maxim Gorky
-led 'left patriots' movement calling for Russia's withdrawal from the War in the painless possible way.
A couple of new Merezhkovsky's plays, Radost Budet (The Joy Will Come) and The Romantics were staged in war-time Petrograd theaters, the latter becoming a hit, but for the mainstream critics Merezhkovsky remained a 'controversial author'. "All in all, the Russian literature is as hostile to me as it had always been. I could as well be celebrating the 25th anniversary of this hostility", the author wrote in his short autobiography for S. Vengerov's encyclopedia.
little branch (that was when seeds of a rumour concerning the couple's alleged membership in the Russian freemason community were, apparently, sawn). Then with the spring came triumph: Merezhkovsky greeted the February anti-monarchy revolution and described the Kerensky's Provisional government as 'quite friendly'. By the end of spring, though, he lost all sympathy to both the government and its ineffective leader; in summer he began to speak of things everybody else were laughingly brushing aside at the time — namely, of the government's inevitable fall and the soon-to-be Lenin's Bolshevik's tyranny coming. Late October saw all of his worst expectations coming to life.
For Merezhkovsky the October Socialist revolution
was a catastrophe. He saw it as the Coming of Ham
he wrote about a decade later, the tragic victory for, as he choose to put it, Narod-Zver (The Beast-nation), the political and social incarnation of the universal Evil, putting the whole of human civilization in danger. Practically, what Merezhkovsky and Gippius were only able to do in those days was trying to use whatever influence they've still had among the Bolshevist cultural elite to help setting their friends, the arrested Provisional government ministers free. Some influence, apparently, they did have; ironically, one of the first thing the Soviet government did was lift the ban from the blatantly anti-monarchist Pavel Pervy play to let it be staged in many of the Red Russia's theaters.
For quite a while Merezhkovskys's flat served as a SR party's fraction headquarters but this came to an end on January 1918 when the Uchredilovka
was dissolved by Lenin. In his 1918 diary Merezhkovsky wrote:
Years 1919—1920 for Merezhkovskys were full of dramatic events. Having sold everything including dishes and extra clothes to avoid dying of hunger (like, say, Rozanov did), they began grudgingly collaborating with Maxim Gorky's new World Literature publishing house, receiving salary and food portions. Rozanov's disturbingly emotional farewell deathbed letter shook the couple, as well as the picture of many of those who only months ago denounced them for being left radicals, now serving the new regime's 'cultural revolution'. Of the revolutionary leaders Merezhkovsky wrote in his diary:
After news started to filter through of Yudenich, Kolchak and Denikin's consequent defeats, Merezhkovskys saw their only chance of survival in fleeing Russia. This they did on December 14, 1919 along with Filosofov and Zlobin (Gippius' young secretary), having obtained rather exotic-sounding Anatoly Lunacharsky-signed permission "to leave Petrograd for the purpose of reading some lectures on Ancient Egypt to the Red Army fighters".
, then Vilno, staying in both cities to give newaspaper interviews and public lectures. Speaking to a Vilno newspaper, Merezhkovsky said:
In Warsaw
the four stayed for several months, Merezhkovsky doing practical work for the Russian immigrant organizations, Gippius editing the literary section in Svoboda newspaper. Both were regarding Poland as a 'messianic', 'potentially unifying' place and a crucial barrier in the face of the spreading Bolshevism plague. In summer 1920 Boris Savinkov planning to head an army of 20,000–30,000 Russians (largely POWs) for a march on Moscow arrived to have talks with Józef Piłsudski. It was Savinkov who engaged Merezhkovsky and Filosofov in the work of the so-called Russian Evacuational committee (more of a White Army mobilization center) and introduced the writer to the Polish President. On behalf of the Committee Merezhlovsky issued a memorandum calling the peoples of Russia to stop fighting the Polish army and join its ranks. The whole thing ended with the Poland-Russia armistice agreement. Another 'mission' failed, Merezhkovskys and Zlobin left for France, Filosofov staying in Warsaw to head the Savinkov-led Russian National committees anti-Bolshevik propaganda department.
In Paris Merezhkovsky went on with his anti-Communist crusade. He founded the Religious Union (later Soyuz Neprimirimykh, the Union of the Unpacified), was holding lectures, contributed to Pavel Milyukov
's Poslednye Novosty and Pyotr Struve's Osvobozhdenye newspapers, exposing what he saw as the Bolshevist lies and denouncing the 'Kingdom of Antichrist' by all means available. It was becoming more and more obvious, though, that Merezhkovsky (backed only by the circle of the ever faithful friends) was alone again, misunderstood by some, abhorred by others. His calling for the international intervention in Russia angered the left, rejecting monarchy restoration antagonized the right. His one and only ally at the time was Ivan Bunin; never sharing much personal affinity, the two men formed a powerful front in their relentless anti-Soviet campaign. Besides, having maintained strong contacts with influential French politics lobbying the interests of the Russian immigrants, both ensured that the Russian writers would get some financial support from the French government. A couple of years later another sponsor was found in Tomas Masarik who granted personal pensions to some prominent figures in the immigrant Russian writers' community.
Merezhkovsky was demanding severing all
PEN
contacts with Communist Russia and cancelling French help for the victims of mass hunger in Russian Povolzhje
(arguing, not unreasonably, that those in need won't ever see any of the money or food sent); he criticised the exiled Russian Constituent Assembly's communique, in his opinion, too conciliatory in tone. Articles and essays of the four authors (Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Filosofov contacts with whom were restored and Zlobin) were published under the title of The Kingdon of Antichrist (1922), the general idea of the book being that the 'Russian fires', globalist in their nature and intent, promise "either brotherhood in slavery or the end in a common grave" for the peoples of Europe.
In winter 1925 a small literary and philosophy circle was formed by Merezhkovsky and Gippius; two years later it was officially launched as the Green Lamp group. With the Novy Korabl (The New Ship) magazine of its own, the group attracted the whole of the Russian intellectual elite in exile and was remaining the important cultural center for the next ten years or more. "We are the Criticism of Russia as such, the latter's disembodied Thought and Conscience, free to judge its Present and foresee its Future", wrote Merezhkovsky of the Green Lamp mission as he saw it.
In 1928 at the First Congress of exiled Russian writers held in Belgrade
, King Alexandr I Karageorgievich
bestowed Merezhkovsky with the Order of Savva of the 1st degree meriting his services for world culture. A series of lectures organised for Merezhkovsky and Gippius by the Serbian Academy signalled the launch of the Yugoslav-based "Russian Library" series, where the best of Bunin, Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Alexander Kuprin, Aleksey Remizov
, Konstantin Balmont
, Ivan Shmelyov
and Igor Severyanin
came out over the next several years. Things started to deteriorare, though, in the early 1930s; Czech and French grants withdrawn and much feared Socialists rising high on the French political scene, Merezhkovskys looked southwards — and found there a sympathizer in Benito Mussolini
who took great interest in the work and views of a Russian writer, now a multiple Nobel Prize for literature nominee.
Of the three fundamental books Merezhkovsky created in the late 1920s early 1930s another trilogy took shape, its vague concept being human kind's possible ways of salvation. The opener, The Mystery of the Three: Egypt and Babylon, was published in Prague
in 1925. Then came out the impressively esoteric Mystery of the West: Atlantis-Europe (Berlin
, 1930), where the cherished Third Testament idea took an apocalyptic, slightly Nietzschean turn. The third, Unfamiliar Jesus (1932, Belgrade), in retrospect seen as the strongest of the three.
All of a sudden Merezhkovsky, not a marginal apo-/political prophet anymore, but a prolific and successful writer again, drifted into the focus of the Nobel Prize committee attention. From 1930 onwards Sigurd Agrell
, professor of Slavic languages in Lund University
, started to methodically nominate Merezhkovsky for the Prize, although, invariably (and rather frustratingly for both), in tandem with Ivan Bunin. In November 1932 Gippius in a letter to V. N. Bunina wrote that in her opinion Merezhkovsky had not the slightest chance of winning "because of his anti-Communist stance", but the truth was, Bunin (no lesser a Communism-loather than his rival) wrote books that were so much more accessible and, generally, popular. Rather annoyed by this always having to walk in pairs with his adversary/ally, Merezkovsky even suggested they should rather make a pact and divide the moneys should one of them ever grab them, but Bunin took deadly seriously what was meant apparently as a joke and responded with an outright refusal. He promptly won the Prize in 1933.
Agrell made it a point to go on with the Merezhkovsky-nominating routine up until his own death in 1937 (making 8 such nominations, in all), but each year the latter's chances were getting slimmer. In his last five years the writer did produce some high quality stuff (like compilation of religious biographies Faces of Saints: Jesus to Nowadays and The Reformers trilogy, published posthumously) but it wasn't in any way ground-breaking. Hard times and deepening troubles notwithstanding, Merezhkovsky continued to work hard till his dying day, trying desperately to finish his Spanish Mysteries trilogy until the curtain falls; the last of the three, the unfinished Little Theresa, was with him at his deathbed; he died literally with a pen in his hand.
who, having sponsored his book on Dante
, found time to have several lengthy talks with the Russian writer on politics, literature and art. Impressed, Merezhkovsky started to see his new friend as an incarnation of Dante, almost. In a letter addressed to Mussolini, he wrote:
All the while Merezhkovsky was trying to convince Mussolini that it was the latter's mission to actually start "Holy War against Russia", reiteraing these ideas in his "Meeting Mussolini" article (Illustrated Russia, February 1937). Seeing his name frequently mentioned by the Italian press in connection with rather wild Merezhkovsky's suggestions made duce
rather uneasy. Foreseeing no holy wars to become a leader of in the foreseeable future, Mussolini took a step back. Visiting Rome in summer 1937, Merezhkovsky had some talks with the Italian Foreign minister, but found duce nowhere in sight. He fell out with Mussolini as quickly as he'd fallen in, speaking of being deeply disappointed in the Italian leader's 'petty materialism' in October of the same year. All the while he was trying to get in contact with General Francisco Franco
, now seeing Spain
ase the last anti-Communist citadel of Europe. This coming to naught, Merezhkovsky's choice of heroes narrowed down to just one: Adolf Hitler
.
Fascism wasn't Merezhkovsky's idea of the best alternative to Communism. As early as 1930 he wrote of doomed Europe stuck between two "explosives' stores: fascist and Communist", expressing hope that some day these two evils will somehow destroy one another. But the danger of Führer's possible taking over Europe was somehow a lesser evil for him that the Communist expansion. This 'Hitler dilemma' was the only thing husband and wife disagreed on, ever. Gippius hated and despised Führer, referring to him as 'an idiot'. Merezhkovsky was more tolerant: for the first time in the two decades he saw a leader who'd be able to take the whole of Antichrist Kingdom upon himself, this single fact outweighing for him other trivia — like that of his own Joan of Arc (1939) being banned in Germany on the day of its release.
Exactly how and why did Merezhkovsky found himself on the German radio in June 1941 nobody was quite sure of. Gippius (according to Yury Terapiano who was quoting Nina Berberova
) later put the blame on her own secretary, Vladimir Zlobin who, using his German links, allegedly persuaded the elderly man to come to the studio in the early days of the Nazi invasion into the USSR. In his speech (if is printed version entitled Bolshevism and Humanity is to be believed) Merezhkovsky, comparing Hitler to Joan of Arc
, called for the anti-Bolshevik crusade, repeating. among other things, what he was saying all through the 1920s and 1930s:
"It's the end for us", allegedly said Gippius, disgusted and frightened. In the days to come, though, husband and wife (as those who knew them attested) were often expressing horror at the news of Nazis' atrocities on the Eastern front; according to Gippius' friend, poet Victor Mamchenko, Merezhkovsky far from supporting Hitler, was actually condemning him in those days.
There is still so much confusion as to this infamous radio speech's exact circumstances, that some researchers doubt the fact as such, pointing out that not a single memoirist who has ever mentioned it, had ever actually heard Merezhkovsky speaking on air. All of those 'witnesses' were invariably referring to the printed version of the "speech" published in 1944 by Parizhsky Vestnik. This document, according to Yury Zobnin (the author of the first ever comprehensive Merezhkovsky biography published in Russia) was most certainly a montage fake, concocted by the Nazi propaganda out of the 1939 unpublished essay The Mystery of the Russian Revolution (on Dostoyevsky's Besy novel), bits and pieces thrown in. That the speech could have been broadcasted in the late June the researcher finds rather implausible: those were the couple's Biarriz days, and for an elderly person to everybody a slip and off to Paris was hardly probable.
Adding to the confusion is the well-documented fact that Merezhkovsky did really pronounce a speech mentioning Hitler and Joan of Arc in one breath. It happened in August 1940 at his 75th birthday celebration in Biarriz and in the context was radically. In fact, his speech caused much trouble because it was deemed too pro-Russian and anti-German. According to Teffi, one of the people present, —
Irina Odoyevtseva
independently corroborated this. "He was going on about the Atlantis and its demise. For those who understood Russian it was obvious that what he meant was Germany's defeat and Russia's imminent victory, but the Germans never understood this and applauded", she remembered. All this, according to Zobnin, makes the infamous German Radio speech looking very much like a Nazi propaganda myth, picked up first by Y. Terapiano, then authenticised by latter reiterations.
(in collaboration with the French Association des Auteurs de Films) bought Merezhkovsky's scenario Life of Dante. Production was cancelled on September 1, as the War broke out in Europe. On September 9, fleeing the air raids, the Merezhkovskys along with tens of thousands of Parisians moved to the Biarritz
in the South of the country where they spent the next three months, socialising mainly with the French and English military officers, but also with Irina Odoyevtseva and her husband Georgy Ivanov
.
In June 1940 they embarked on another evacuational trip from Paris southwards, but this proved unnecessary: on June 27 Biarritz was occupied too. Still, it was here in the hotel that on August 14 the writer's 75th anniversary celebration was held, organized by a group of French writers, with the participation of some notable Russians like Pavel Milyukov, Ivan Bunin and Mark Aldanov
. It was there that Merezhkovsky made his risky speech that might have been later merged (in memoirs authors' minds) with things he might (or might not) have said on German radio. Even Y. Zobnin admits that the way the writer was bearing himself very much pandered to those regarding him as a Nazi sympathizer. In the Autumn of 1941 he was revelling in the attention of and being on the friendliest terms with German admirers — students, mostly, but army officers too. It was Germans who were helping the couple out financially, seeing them back to Paris from Biarritz where they had been penniless and on the verge of homelessness. "Merezhkovsky flew up to Nurnberg fired with the agitation of a newly born butterfly… By this time most of us stopped visiting them", wrote V. Yanovsky, a Green Lamp group member.
The last three months of his life Merezhkovsky was working continuously in the couple's Paris flat, hoping to finish Little Theresa. On December 6 husband and wife returned from one of their regular walks the writer was insisting on, his wife having to literally drag him on her shoulder, and spent the evening, in her words, "arguing, as usual, about Russia versus freedom dilemma". Skipping both supper and his habitual evening cigarette, Merezhkovsky went to his room early. Next morning the maid called Gippius to tell her the man was in some kind of trouble. Merezhkovsky was sitting unconscious next to a cold fire-place. The doctor arrived in 15 minutes time and diagnosed brain hemorrhage. In half an hour time Merezhkovsky was pronounced dead. "…Me, I'm a worm, not man, slandered by humans, despised by peoples (Ps. 21, 7). But wrap itself into a chrysalis a hapless worm does only to break out as a shiny white, sunlight-like, resurrected butterfly", these, found on a table, were the last words that he's ever written. The funeral service was held on December 10 in the Orthodox church of Saint Aleksandr Nevsky. Dmitry Merezhkovsky was buried in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery
, with just several people attending the ceremony.
, a trend Konstantin Merezhkovsky (a future well-known biologist
), who had great influence on his younger brother, was following too. Soon, disillusioned in formal positivism but never rejecting it wholly, Merezhkovsky turned to religion. Seeds of this hybrid (European positivism grafted to what's been described as 'subjective idealism' of Russian Orthodoxy) sawn on the field of literature study brought forth a brochure entitled "On the Causes of the Decline and on the New Trends in Contemporary Russian Literature". This manifesto gave a burgeoning movement both ideology and the name as such: Merezhkovsky was the first to speak of symbols and see them as definitive means of cognizance modern Art.
In the center of this new train of thought was the notion of "rejecting the rational in favour of the intuitive" by means of exploiting what the author termed as 'spirituality of a symbol', seeing the latter as a perfect means of describing Reality, otherwise unfathomable. Only a symbol, according to Merezhkovsky, could burrow circumvent through to reach an object's deeper meaning, whereas (quoting, as he did, Tyutchev) "thought, whilst being spoken, turns a lie":
Interestingly (according to D. Churakov), Merezhkovsky — pronouncing 'death of metaphysics' and putting forward the idea that only language of symbols could be an adequate instrument for discovering the modern world's pattern of meanings, was unwillingly following O. Komte
, the difference being that the latter was employing these ideas in scientific fields, while the former proposed to use them in literature and criticism.
, a XII century theologist, Merezhkovskys created and developed their own concept of man's full-circle religious evolution. In it the Bible was seen as a starting point with God having taken two steps towards Man — for the latter to respond with the third, logically conclusive one.
According to Merezhkovsky, the 1st (Divine Father's) and the 2nd (Divine Son's) Testaments could be seen only as being links to the 3rd one, that of the Holy Ghost. The first maintaining the Law of God and the second — the Grace of God, what the third Testament should do is bring Liberation to the human race; the 1st Testament revealing the God's power as gospel Truth, the 2nd transforming the gospel Truth into Love, the 3rd translating Love into Liberation. In this last Kingdom "pronounced and heard will be — the final, never before revealed name of the coming one: God the Liberator", according to the author.
Merezhkovsky saw the 3rd Testament, a new Holy Ghost religion, as a synthesis of the two original revelations: that 'about Earth' (pre-Christian beliefs) and that 'about Heaven' (Christianity). The Mystery of the Holy Trinity, as resolved, should link all three parts into a circle, the great "new Earth under the new Heavens", as promised in the Book of the Apocalypse. As Rozanov (an influence on Merezhkovsky who in turn was greatly influenced by his ideas) put it, "Merezhkovsky's greatest innovation was this attempt to merge together the two — Christian and Heathen — poles of poignancy. To discover a 'tempting vice' in the greatest of virtues and the greatest of virtues in the tempting vice". One of the most tempting aspects of this New Trinity concept was the idea of that all-inviting Holy Ghost being not a sexless spirit, but a female entity.
In his own words, "Being aware of my self in my body, I'm at the root of personality. Being aware of my self in the other one's body, I'm at the root of sex. Being aware of my self in all human bodies, is the root of unity". Noticing that one of the Aramaic languages translates Spirit as Rucha, as a female entity, Merezhkovsky interpreted the Holy Trinity as Father and Son's unity in the higher being: their common godly Mother. It is the latter's Kingdom Come that the 3rd Testament was supposed to lead to. Seeing both God and man as intrinsically unisexual, Merezhkovsky regarded a male/female schism to be a symptom of imperfection, the primal human being's fatal disintegration.
In the modern times, according to Merezhkovsky, monastic and ascetic Christianity should be forever gone. Art would not just turn religious, but become an integral part of religion, the latter taken in broader concept. Human evolution as he saw it, would lead to a total merging of whatever had been polarized: sex and spirit, religion and culture, male and female, et cetera — bringing about Kingdom Come, not 'out there', but 'here on Earth'.
one.
One of the inevitable things the 'revolution of Spirit' would lead to was to be severing all ties between state and religion, according to Merezhkovsky. "The Church — not the old, but the new, eternal, universal one — is as opposite to the idea of the state as an absolute truth is opposing an absolute lie", he wrote in an open letter to N. Berdyaev.
B. Rozental, analyzing Merezhkovsky's political and religious philosophy, thus summed up the writer's position: "The Law amounts to violence… The difference between legitimate power that holds violence 'in reserve' and violence itself is but a matter of degree: sinful are both. Autocracy and murder are nothing more than two extreme forms of exhibiting power".
Interpreting the Biblical version of human history as a course of revolutionary events, Merezhkovsky saw religion and revolution as inseparable. It is just that for any social revolution to succeed, spiritual revolution should always be one step ahead of it. In Russia the lack of the latter brought about the former's fiasco, letting Antichrist taking the reins of events, he argued.
In the 1920s Merezhkovsky veered off his earlier views on religious and revolutionary synthesis, then ditched religious anarchism doctrine altogether. His 3rd Testament idea has undergone some metamorphosis too: in his later years the writer became close to ecumenical ideals, prophesizing the Kingdom Come as a synthesis of "Peter, Paul and John's principles", that is, bringing Catholic
, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox traditions together.
, Merezhkovsky became Russia's first ever "new-type, universal kind of dissident who managed to upset just about everybody who thought themsleves to be responsible for guarding morality and order":
Merezhkovsky's works were always causing controversy. In the words of a modern biographer, "history placed him alongside Marquis de Sade
, Nietzsche and Henry Miller
, those classics who — in the process of being condemned and ostracized by the many could have been approached and appreciated by the few". "I was disliked and scolded in Russia, loved and praised abroad, but here and there — misunderstood", Merezhkovsky wrote in a letter to Nikolai Berdyaev.
There were things, though, Merezhkovsky was unanimously given credit for. Nobody denied that his were — exceptional erudition, all characteristics of a true scientist, literary gift and stylistic originality. Seen (in retrospect) as the first ever (and, arguably, the only one) Russian "cabinet writer of a European type", Merezhkovsky was "one of the best-educated people in St. Petersburg of the first quarter of the XX century" (N. Berdyaev). Korney Chukovsky
, pondering on the dire state of the early XX century Russia's cultural elite, admitted that "the most cultured of them all" was this "mysterious, unfathomable, almost mythical creature — Merezhkovsky". Anton Chekov, not much of a fan, (unsuccessfully) demanded that the Russian Academy of Science should appoint Merezhkovsky its honorary academic, as early as 1902.
In some ways Merezhkovsky was an indisputable innovator. He was the first in Russia to formulate basic principles of symbolism and modernism, as opposed to 'decadence', a tag he was battling with. Never aspiring to a leading role in the movement, he soon became, according to I. Koretzkaya, "a kind of handy encyclopedia for the ideology of symbolism", from which others "could borrow aesthetic, socio-historical and even moral ideas from". Having added a new ("thought-driven") dimension to a historical novel genre and turning it into a modern, intriguing art form, Merezhkovsky influenced some prominent masters of Russian and European experimental novel: Andrey Bely, Aleksey Remizov
, Thomas Mann
, James Joyce
. Less avant-garde and more traditional authors like Valery Bryusov
, Aleksey N. Tolstoy, Mikhail Bulgakov
and Mark Aldanov
owed much to his early experiments too. It was to Merezhkovsky's credit that the concepts and terms of 'modernist novel' and 'symbolic historical novel' were introduced to the rather stale and conservative Russian literature scene of the late 1890s.
Merezhkovsky was praised as an extraordinarily essayist. Many marveled at his unique (perhaps over-used, as some argued) talent for 'quotation-juggling'. Some critics loathed the repetitiveness in Merezhkovsky's prose, but no one could dispute the authenticity of his (in a broad sense) very musical manner of employing certain ideas almost as symphonic themes, which was new at the time and also much imitation-spawning.
No less influential, even if so much more controversial, were Merezhkovsky's philosophical, religious and political ideas. Alongside the obvious list of contemporary followers (Bely, Blok, etc.; almost all of them – later turned detractors) deeply interested in his theories were political figures (Fondaminsky, Kerensky, Savinkov), psychologists (Freud), philosophers (Berdyaev, Rickert
, Stepun), lawers (Kowalewsky
). Thomas Mann wrote of Merezhkovsky as of a "genius critic and specialist in world psychology, second only to Nietzche".
Some later researchers mentioned as one of the main factors in Merezhkovsky's significance his willingness to question dogmas and thwart tradition with total disregard to public opinion, never shying controversy and even scandal — certainly a rare quality in the cultural life of pre-Modernism Russia. Crucial in this context was (according to O. Dafier) his "quest for ways of overcoming deep crisis which came as a result of the Russian traditionalist Church losing its credibility". All the while, Merezhkovsky's ever changing views of the world that was changing as quickly, caused much misconception and a lot of criticism from all quarters.
For all his scientifically strict, academic approach to the process of collecting and re-processing material, contemporary academia, with little exception, ridiculed Merezhkovsky, dismissing him as a gifted charlatan, bent on rewriting history in accordance with his own current ideological and philosophical whims. Due to his incorrigible, as many saw it, tendency towards inconsistency, Merezhkovsky's old allies were always in the process of deserting him, while new ones approached him warily. Vassily Rozanov wrote in 1909:
Another former friend, Minsky, questioned Merezhkovsky's credibility as a critic, finding in his biographies a tendency to see in his subjects only things that he wanted to see, artfully "re-molding questions into instant answers".
For all his religiosity, Merezhkovsky was never popular with either Russian Orthodox Church officials or the religious intellectual elite of the time, people like Sergey Bulgakov, Pavel Florensky
and Lev Shestov
fiercely denouncing his ideas and projects. Similarly, having been regarded for many years as a radical social democrat never gained Merezhkovsky any points in the leftist literary camp. He was variously described as "an anti-literature phenomenon" (Viktor Shklovsky), "the greatest corpse in the Russian literature" (Ivanov-Razumnik) and "a book-worm", totally foreign to all things human (Korney Chukovsky).
The writer's work published abroad, according to the Soviet Literary encyclopedia (1934) was "the telling example of the ideological degradation and cultural degeneration of the White émigrés". Maxim Gorky's verdict: "Dmitry Merezhkovsky, a well-known God-admirer of a Christian mode, is a small man whose literary activity is akin to that of a type-writer: each type is clear and well-read, but it's soul-less and boring", served as a leitmotif of the Soviet literary officialdom's view on Merezhkovsky for decades. In the Soviet times the writer was (in the words of Alexander Men
) "aggressively forgotten", all of his works remained unofficially banned up until the early 1990s, when the wave of his works' began to be re-issued, opening the way for serious critical analysis of Merezhkovsky's life and legacy.
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
) was a Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
novelist, poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, religious thinker, and literary critic. A seminal figure of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry
Silver Age of Russian Poetry
Silver Age is a term traditionally applied by Russian philologists to the first two decades of the 20th century. It was an exceptionally creative period in the history of Russian poetry, on par with the Golden Age a century earlier...
, regarded as a co-founder of the Symbolist movement
Russian Symbolism
Russian symbolism was an intellectual and artistic movement predominant at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It represented the Russian branch of the symbolist movement in European art, and was mostly known for its contributions to Russian poetry.-Russian symbolism in...
, Merezhkovsky – with his poet wife Zinaida Gippius
Zinaida Gippius
Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius, was a Russian poet, playwright, editor, short story writer and religious thinker, regarded as a co-founder of Russian symbolism and seen as "one of the most enigmatic and intelligent women of her time in Russia"....
– was twice forced into political exile. During his second exile (1918-1941) he continued publishing successful novels and gained recognition as a critic of Soviet Russia
Soviet Russia
Soviet Russia usually refers to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union. It may also denote:* Soviet Russia , magazine of the Friends of Soviet Russia in the United States...
. 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 was a nine times nominee for the Nobel Prize in literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
, which he came closest to winning in 1933.
Biography
Dmitry Merezhkovsky was born on August 2, 18651865 in literature
The year 1865 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:* June 9 - Charles Dickens is involved in the Staplehurst rail crash....
, 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 (including that of I. D. Talyzin in Orenburg
Orenburg
Orenburg is a city on the Ural River and the administrative center of Orenburg Oblast, Russia. It lies southeast of Moscow, very close to the border with Kazakhstan. Population: 546,987 ; 549,361 ; Highest point: 154.4 m...
) before entering Alexander II
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
's court office as a Privy Councillor. His mother Varvara Vassilievna Merezhkovskaya (née Cherkasova) was a daughter of a senior St. Petersburg security official. Fond of arts and literature, she was what Dmitry Merezhkovsky later remembered as the guiding light of his rather lonely childhood (despite the continual presence of five brothers and three sisters). In fact, 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 a biographer, was the first and the most important of them.
Early years
Dmitry Merezhkovsky was born on Yelagin Island in St. Petersburg, in a lavish palace-like cottage which served as a summer dacha for the family. In the city they occupied a rather decrepit house facing the Summer Gardens, near Prachechny Bridge. The family also owned a large estate in CrimeaCrimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
, by the road leading to the Uchan-Su waterfall. "Fabulous Oreanda palace, now in ruins, is with me forever. White marble pylons against the blue sea... for me it's a timeless symbol of Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
", he wrote years later. Merezhkovsky Sr., although a man of means, led a somewhat ascetic life, keeping his household 'lean and thrifty'. This was also his way of 'moral prophylactics' for his children's upbringing, since he regarded luxury-seeking and reckless spending as the deadliest sins. Since the parents traveled a lot, an old German housekeeper named Amalia Khristianovna spent much time with the children, amusing them with Russian fairytales and Biblical stories. Her recounting of saints' lives was later thought to be the prime source of the fervent religious feelings Dmitry developed in his early teens.
In 1886 Dmitry Merezhkovsky joined an elite grammar school, the St. Petersburg Third Classic Gymnasium. Years spent there he described later by one word, 'murderous', remembering just one teacher as a decent person – "Kessler the Latinist; well-meaning he surely never was, but at least he looked at us kindly".
At age thirteen, Dmitry began writing poetry, rather in the vein of Pushkin's Bakhchisarai Fountain as he later remembered. He became fascinated with the works of Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
to such an extent as to form a 'Molière Circle' in the Gymnasium. The group had nothing political on its agenda, but still made the secret police interested. All of its members were summoned one by one to the Third Department
Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery
The Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery was a secret department set up in Imperial Russia, inherited from Tayny Prikaz, Privy Chancellery and Specialty Chancellery, effectively serving as the Imperial regime's secret police for much of its existence. The organization was...
'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 tight upper-lipped, stone-faced dad, later he had to give him credit for being the first one to have noticed and, in his emotionless way, appreciate his son's first exercises in poetry. In July 1879, in AlupkaAlupka
Alupka is a resort city located in Crimea, Ukraine, situated to the west of Yalta. It is famous for the Vorontsov's Palace, designed by English architect Edward Blore in an extravagant mixture of Scottish baronial and Neo-Moorish styles and built in 1828–1846 for prince Mikhail Semyonovich...
, Crimea, Sergey Ivanovich introduced Dmitry to the legendary Princess E. K. Vorontzova, Pushkin's sweetheart. Tellingly, the grand dame much admired the boy's verses: she (according to a biographer) "spotted in them a must-have poetic quality: the metaphysical sensitivity of a young soul" and encouraged him to battle on. Somewhat different was young Merezhkovsky's encounter with another luminary, Dostoyevsky, staged for his son by the well-connected father again. 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 not – neither suffer, nor write well!", the appalled father exclaimed. The boy left Dostoyevsky's house greatly frustrated by the great man's verdict.
Merezhkovsky's debut publication followed the same year: St. Petersburg magazine Zhivopisnoye Obozrenye printed two of his poems: Tuchka (Little Cloud, 1883, #40) and Osennya Melodia (The Autumn Melody, #42). A year later another poem Narcissus was included in a charity compilation benefiting destitute students, edited by Pyotr F. Yakubovich.
In Autumn 1882 Merezhkovsky attended one of the first of S. 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 Vassilievna two years later; affected greatly, Merezhkovsky suffered deep depression caused by the feeling that he had lost everything he'd ever had in this world.
Meanwhile Otechestvennye Zapiski
Otechestvennye Zapiski
Otechestvennye Zapiski was a Russian literary magazine published in St Petersburg on a monthly basis between 1818 and 1884. The journal served liberal-minded readers, known as the intelligentsia...
(January issue, 1883) published two more of Merezhkovsky's poems. "Sakja Moony", 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 B&E Encyclopedia
Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary
The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary is, in its scope and style, the Russian counterpart to the Encyclopædia Britannica. It contains 121,240 articles, 7,800 images, and 235 maps...
. Years later, having gained fame as a novelist, he felt rather embarrassed by his poetry and, while compiling his first Compete Works Of... series in the late 1900s, cut the poetry section down to just a few pieces. Nevertheless, Merezhkovsky's poems remained hugely popular, and some major Russian composers (Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky among them) set dozens of them to music.
University years
From 1884 until 1889 Merezhkovsky studied HistoryHistory
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
and Philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
at the University of St. Petersburg, becoming fluent in several languages. Merezhkovsky's PhD was on Montaigne, his major interests there being French literature
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
, the philosophy of positivism
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
, theories of J. S. Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
and Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
. Those, though, Merezkovsky never enjoyed. "University gave me no more than a Gymnasium did. I didn't have proper – neither family, nor school", he wrote in his 1913 autobiography. The only lecturer he remembered fondly was O. Miller
Orest Miller
Orest Fyodorovich Miller was a Russian folklorist, professor in Russian literature, of German origin. He is author of the book ""...
, a well known Russian literary historian and Dostoyevsky biographer, who held a domestic literature circle.
More promising was his literary company, notably St. Petersburg's Literary Society that he (along with Nadson) joined in 1884, on A. Plescheev's recommendation. The latter introduced the young poet to the family of K. Davydov, a Musical Conservatory director. His wife Anna Arka′dyevna became Merezhkovsky's publisher in the 1890s, their daughter Julia, his first (strong, but fleeting) romantic interest. In Davydov's circle Merezhkovsky mixed with well-established literary figures of the time – I. Goncharov
Ivan Goncharov
Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov was a Russian novelist best known as the author of Oblomov .- Biography :Ivan Goncharov was born in Simbirsk ; his father was a wealthy grain merchant and respected official who was elected mayor of Simbirsk several times...
, Ap. Maykov
Apollon Maykov
Apollon Nikolayevich Maykov was a Russian poet.He was born into the artistic family of Nikolay Apollonovich Maykov, a painter and an academic. In 1834 the family moved to Petersburg. In 1837-1841 Maykov studied law at Saint Petersburg University. At first he was attracted to painting, but he soon...
, Y. Polonsky
Yakov Polonsky
Yakov Petrovich Polonsky was a leading Pushkinist poet who tried to uphold the waning traditions of Russian Romantic poetry during the heyday of realistic prose....
, but also N. Mikhailovsky and G. Uspensky
Gleb Uspensky
- Early life :Uspensky was born in the city of Tula, where his father was a government official. He attended the gymnasiums at Tula and Chernihiv, devoting much of his time to the reading of the Russian classics. He studied at the university of St. Petersburg for a short time in 1861, until it was...
, two great narodnik
Narodnik
Narodniks was the name for Russian socially conscious members of the middle class in the 1860s and 1870s. Their ideas and actions were known as Narodnichestvo which can be translated as "Peopleism", though is more commonly rendered "populism"...
s whom he regarded later as his first genuine teachers.
It was under the guidance of the latter that Merezhkovsky, while still a s University student, made an extensive journey through the Russian provinces where he met lots of people, notably religious cults leaders. He stayed for some time in Chudovo
Chudovo
Chudovo is a town and the administrative center of Chudovsky District of Novgorod Oblast, Russia, located on the Kerest River . It lies on the M10 federal highway connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg, north of Veliky Novgorod and south of St. Petersburg...
village where Uspensky lived, both many nights discussing things like 'life's religious meaning', 'folk cosmic vision' and 'power of the land'. A young student was seriously considering the possibility of leaving the capital forever and settling down in some far-out country place, as a teacher.
Another big influence, N. Mikhaylovsky, gave young Merezhkovsky some more of the helping hand, bringing him to Severny Vestnik
Severny Vestnik
Severny Vestnik was an influential Russian literary magazine founded in Saint Petersburg in 1885 by Anna Yevreinova, who stayed with it until 1889.-History:...
, a new literary magazine he's founded with A. Davydova. This move was crucial: here Merezhkovsky met highly influential writers Korolenko
Vladimir Korolenko
Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko was a Ukrainian-Russian short story writer, journalist, human rights activist and humanitarian. His short stories were known for their harsh description of nature based on his experience of exile in Siberia...
and Garshin
Vsevolod Garshin
Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin ; was a Russian author of short stories.- Life :When Garshin was seven years old, he witnessed his father commit suicide.During the Russo-Turkish War, Garshin,...
and later – Minsky
Nikolai Minsky
Nikolai Minsky and Nikolai Maksimovich Minsky are pseudonyms of Nikolai Maksimovich Vilenkin , a mystical writer and poet of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry....
, Balmont
Konstantin Balmont
Konstantin Dmitriyevich Balmont was a Russian symbolist poet, translator, one of the major figures of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.-Biography:Konstantin Balmont was born in v...
and F. Sologub
Fyodor Sologub
Fyodor Sologub was a Russian Symbolist poet, novelist, playwright and essayist. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of European fin de siècle literature and philosophy into Russian prose.-Early life:...
: the future Russian symbolism's major figures. Merezhkovsky's first article for the magazine, though, "Peasant in French literature", upset his mentor: Mikhaylovsky found in his young protégé 'longing for mysticism' – the one thing he deeply detested.
In the early 1888 Merezhkovsky, having graduated from the University, embarked on a tour all through the South of Russia, starting in Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
. It was in Borjomi
Borjomi
Borjomi is a resort town in south-central Georgia with a population estimated at 14,445. It is one of the districts of the Samtskhe-Javakheti region and is situated in the northwestern part of the region in the picturesque Borjomi Gorge on the eastern edge of the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park...
that he met 19-year-old poet Zinaida Gippius. The two instantly fell for each other and on January 18, 1889, married in Tiflis, making arguably the most prolific and influential, even if rather bizarre, couple in the history of Russian literature. Soon husband and wife moved into their new St. Petersburg house, Merezkovsky's mother's wedding present.
Late 1880s – early 1890s
Merezhkovsky's major literary debut came with the publication of Poems (1883–1888). 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 young family's financial problems. Helpfully, Gippius rather unexpectedly reinvented herself as a driving commercial force, starting to churn out novels and novelettes she couldn't later even remember the titles of. Merezhkovsky Sr.'s occasional hand-outs also helped keeping husband and wife's meagre budget afloat.Having by this time lost most of his interest in poetry, Dmitry Merezhkovsky developed strong affinity to Greek drama; his translations of Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
, Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
and Euripides
Euripides
Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...
appeared in Vestnik Evropy. These and some of his later translations from Ancient Greek (like prosaic version of Daphnis and Chloe, 1896), almost unnoticed by the contemporary critics, are now regarded (according to Y. Zobnin) "as the pride of the Russian school of classic translation".
In the late 1880s Merezhkovsky made his debut as a literary critic with an essay on Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
entitled The Newly-born Talent Versus the Same Old Question (for Severny Vestnik
Severny Vestnik
Severny Vestnik was an influential Russian literary magazine founded in Saint Petersburg in 1885 by Anna Yevreinova, who stayed with it until 1889.-History:...
). Having discovered in the subject's prose 'the seeds of irrational, alternative truth' Merezhkovsky made sure his friendship with Mikhaylovsky would come to an end; rather amused by the discovery was Chekhov himself who, in his letter to Plescheev, pointed to "the disturbing lack of simplicity" as the article's fault. Nothing daunted, Merezhkovsky continued in the same vein – in fact, invented (in retrospect) the whole new genre of philosophical essay as a form of critical thesis, something totally unheard of in Russian literature before. Merezhkovsky's biographical pieces on Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Goncharov, Maykov, Korolenko, Pliny
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
, Calderon
Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño usually referred as Pedro Calderón de la Barca , was a dramatist, poet and writer of the Spanish Golden Age. During certain periods of his life he was also a soldier and a Roman Catholic priest...
scandalized the contemporary literary establishment. Some twenty years later (compiled in a volume called The Eternal Companions) these essays were pronounced modern classics, their author regarded as "the subtlest and deepest of late XIX – early XX Russian literary critics" (according to literary historian Anton Dolynin). The Eternal Companions became so revered a piece of literary art in the early 1910s that the volume was being officially chosen as a kind of honorary gift for the excelling grammar school graduates.
Back in May 1890 Liubov Gurevich
Liubov Gurevich
Liubov Yakovlevna Gurevich was a Russian editor, translator, author, and critic. She has been described as "Russia's most important woman literary journalist." From 1894 to 1917 she was the publisher and chief editor of the monthly journal The Northern Herald , a leading Russian symbolist...
, having found herself at the helm of the revamped Severny Vestnik, turned a former narodnik's safe haven into the exciting club for the newly born stars of the rising experimental literature scene (labelled 'decadent' by its opponents). Instantly Merezhkovsky's new drama Sylvio was published there, translation of E.A. Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
's The Raven following soon. Other journals became interested in the young author too: Russkaya Mysl printed his poem Vera, later included in his The Symbols compilation. Vera became an instant hit as one of the Russian symbolism's first masterpieces, its colourful mysticism seen by many as a healthy antidote to the narodnik's 'social reflections', rather lacklustre at the best of times. Bryusov 'absolutely fell in love with it', and Pertzov years later (with a degree of self-deprecative irony) admitted: "For my young mind Merezhkovsky's Vera sounded so much superior to this dull and outdated Pushkin".
Russkaya Mysl released Semeynaya Idillia (The Family Idyll, 1890), a year later another symbolic poem Smert (Death) appeared in Severny Vestnik. In 1891 Merezhkovsky and Gippius made their first journey to Europe – mainly Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
; the poem Konetz Veka (End of the Century) inspired by continental impressions was published two years later. On their return home the couple stayed for a while in Guppius' dacha at Vyshny Volochyok
Vyshny Volochyok
Vyshny Volochyok , also known as Vyshny Volochok , is a town in Tver Oblast, Russia. Population: The town is located northwest of Tver, in the Valdai Hills, between the Tveritsa and Tsna Rivers, on the watershed between the basins of the Volga and the Baltic Sea. Hence the town's name is...
; it was here that Merezhkovsky started working on his first novel, Julian the Apostate. A year later it was finished, but this time Severny Vestnik proved an unreliable ally: outraged by Akim Volynsky's boorish editorial manner, Merezhkovsky severed all ties with the magazine, at least for a while. In the late 1891 he published the translation of Sophocles' Antigona
Antigona
Antigona is an opera in three acts in Italian by the composer Tommaso Traetta. The libretto, by Marco Coltellini, is based on the tragedy Antigone by Sophocles.-Performance history:...
in Vestnik Evropy, part of Goethe's Faustus (in Russkoye Obozrenye) and Euripides' Hyppolite (in Vestnik Evropy again). The latter came out in 1893, after the couple's second trip to Europe where their first, nothing out of the ordinary, encounter with Dmitry Filosofov
Dmitry Filosofov
Dmitry Vladimirovich Filosofov was a Russian author, essayist, literary critic, religious thinker, newspaper editor and political activist, best known for his role in the early 1900s influential Mir Iskusstva circle and part of quasi-religious Troyebratstvo , along with two of his...
(future friend/lover) occurred. Much more significant to Merezhkovsky at the time was what he saw and felt in Greece, grandiose images and the resultant lavish spurt of new ideas laying the foundation for his second novel.
Symbolism manifests
In 1892 Merezhkovsky's second volume of poetry entitled Symbols. Poems and Songs came out. The book, bearing E. A. Poe and Charles BaudelaireCharles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
influences but also tinged heavily with the author's newly found religious ideas, became a younger readership's favourite. Of the older generation writers only Yakov Polonsky
Yakov Polonsky
Yakov Petrovich Polonsky was a leading Pushkinist poet who tried to uphold the waning traditions of Russian Romantic poetry during the heyday of realistic prose....
supported it wholeheartedly — much to the delight of a young author himself. In October 1892 Merezhkovsky's lecture On the Causes of the Decline and on the New Trends in Contemporary Russian Literature was — first read in public, then came out in print. Brushing aside the 'decadent' tag, the author argued that all three "streaks of Modern art" — "Mystic essence, Symbolic language and Impressionism" — could be easily traced down to the works of Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, Russian Modernism, therefore, being nothing more or less than a continuation of the Russian literature's classic tradition. Coupled with Symbols, the Lecture was widely accepted as a Russian symbolism's early manifest.
The lecture became a sensation but the reaction to it was mostly negative. The author found himself between two chairs: liberals condemned his ideas as 'the new obscurantism', posh literary saloonists treated his revelations with scorn. Small group of people greeted The Causes unanimously, and that was the Severny Vestnik clique. Much to his surprise Merezhkovsky discovered that he was wanted there again.
In 1893–1894 Merezhkovsky published numerous books (the play The Storm is Over and the translation of Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
' Oedipus the King among them), but the money all this hard work brought were scant. Now deep into his second novel project, he had to accept whatever work was offered to him. In the late 1893 Merezhkovskys settled in St. Petersburg again. Here they frequented the Shakespearean Circle, the Polonskys' Fridays and the Literary Fund gatherings, then started their own home saloon, Filosofov and Volynsky becoming habitués. All of a sudden Merezhkovsky found that his debut novel was to be published in Severny Vestnik after all. What he didn't know, though, was that this 'success' was the result of a Gippius' tumultuous secret love affair with Akym Volynsky, one of the magazine's chiefs.
1895–1903
The Death of Gods. Julian the Apostate came out in 1895 (Severny Vestnik, ##1–6); it opened the Christ & Antichrist trilogy and in retrospect is regarded as the first Russian symbolist novel. This publication made all the difference: Dmitry Merezhkovsky was an eccentric loony no more. Critics there were aplenty (most of them denouncing the author's alleged Nietzscheanity), but not one of them dared to question this debut's major significance. As for allies, they were ecstatic. "A novel made for eternity", Bryusov marveled. Five years later Julian the Apostate was published in France (translated by Z. Vassilieva) and made Merezhkovsky a respected European author.In Severny Vestnik, though, clouds were gathering over his head, the reason for it being, unbelievably, Akym Volynsky's jealousy. In 1896 all three of them (husband still totally unaware of the behind his back goings-on) made a trip to Europe to visit Leonardo da Vinci places. After several ugly rows disgusted Gippius finally sent her scandalous-minded lover literally home, where all the hell broke loose. Not only did Volynsky expelled his ex-lover's husband from the Severny Vestnik ranks and made sure all the major literary journals would shut the door on him. What Volynsky did next was publish under his own name some of the papers on Leonardo, written and compiled by his hated adversary.
The scandal concerning plagiarism lasted for almost two years; totally sick of it and having not a single decent place to turn to, Merezhkovsky in 1897 was seriously considering leaving his country for good, only the lack of finances keeping him at home. For almost three years the 2nd novel, Resurrection of Gods. Leonardo da Vinci (The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci – in English and French) remained unpublished. Finally it appeared in Autumn 1900 in a religious magazine Myr Bozhy (God's World), under the title "Renaissance". In retrospect (according to the Encyclopedia of World Biography entry) these books' "...persuasive power came from Merezhkovsky's success in catching currents then around him: strong contrasts between social life and spiritual values, fresh interest in the drama of pagan ancient Athens, and identification with general western European culture".
By the time of his second novel's release, Merezhkovsky was in a completely different cultural camp – that of Dyagilev and his close friends – Alexandre Benois
Alexandre Benois
Alexandre Nikolayevich Benois , an influential artist, art critic, historian, preservationist, and founding member of Mir iskusstva , an art movement and magazine...
, Léon Bakst
Léon Bakst
Léon Samoilovitch Bakst was a Russian painter and scene- and costume designer. He was a member of the Sergei Diaghilev circle and the Ballets Russes, for which he designed exotic, richly coloured sets and costumes...
, Nikolay Minsky and Valentin Serov
Valentin Serov
Valentin Alexandrovich Serov was a Russian painter, and one of the premier portrait artists of his era.-Youth and education:...
. Their own brand new Mir Iskusstva
Mir iskusstva
Mir iskusstva was a Russian magazine and the artistic movement it inspired and embodied, which was a major influence on the Russians who helped revolutionize European art during the first decade of the 20th century. From 1909, many of the miriskusniki also contributed to the Ballets Russes...
(World of Art) magazine, with D. Filosofov as a literary editor, accepted Merezhkovsky wholeheartedly. It was here that the most famous of the latter's essays, 'Tolstoy and Dostoevsky
L. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky
L. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky was a critical essay written by Dmitry Merezhkovsky and published between 1900-1901 in Mir iskusstva magazine. The publication coincided with Leo Tolstoy's excommunication by Most Holy Synod and drew a wide public response. L...
was published in 1900–01, becoming Russian cultural life's hot news, coinciding as it was with Tolstoy's escalating conflict with the Russian Orthodox church
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
.
Shocking many (not for the first time), Merezhkovsky upheld the Tolstoy Excommunication
Excommunication
Excommunication is a religious censure used to deprive, suspend or limit membership in a religious community. The word means putting [someone] out of communion. In some religions, excommunication includes spiritual condemnation of the member or group...
act, seeing it as a symptom of the Russian Orthodox church's revival; the latter's "beginning to see itself as a united mystical organism, intolerant to any compromises of dogmatic character", as he put it. The writer's stance made him a hate figure for many, even threats of physical violence ensuing. Tolstoy himself wasn't much flustered; in fact, he invited the couple to his Yasnaya Polyana
Yasnaya Polyana
Yasnaya Polyana was the home of the writer Leo Tolstoy, where he was born, wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and is buried. Tolstoy called Yasnaya Polyana his "inaccessible literary stronghold". It is located southwest of Tula, Russia and from Moscow.In 1921, the estate formally became his...
estate in 1904 and, to both parties' delight, the visit was more than friendly. Behind the facade, there was little love lost, though, between them; the old man frankly wrote that try as he might, he couldn't "force himself to love those two", and Merezhkovsky's critique of Tolstoy's 'nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
' continued.
The God-seekers and Troyebratstvo
Meanwhile, Merezhkovskys' own religious experiments were far from being orthodox. It all began with the Religious-Philosophical Meetings (1901–1903) based on the New church concept, formulated by Gippius, meant as a modern alternative to the old Orthodox one, the latter, in her words, having proved, "...to be imperfect and prone to stagnation". This society, organized by Merezhkovskys along with Rozanov, Mirolyubov and Tchernayvtsev, claimed to be "a tribune for free discussion of questions concerning religious and cultural problems", serving to promote "neo-Christianity, social organization and whatever serves perfecting the human nature". Having lost by this time contacts with both Mir Iskusstva (for the reasons of jealousy, again) and Mir Bozhy (after its editor A. Davydova's death) Merezhkovskys felt it was time for them to create their own magazine, as a means of "bringing the thinking religious community together". In July 1902, in association with Pyotr Pertzov and with a little help of some senior officials including ministers D. SypiaginDmitry Sipyagin
Dmitry Sergeyevich Sipyagin , a Russian statesman.Born in Kiev, Sipyagin graduated from the Judicial Department of St Petersburg University in 1876. Served in the MVD as Vice-Governor of Kharkov , Governor of Courland and Governor of Moscow...
and V. von Pleve
Vyacheslav von Plehve
Vyacheslav Konstantinovich von Plehve , also Pléhve, or Pleve was the director of Imperial Russia's police and later Minister of the Interior.- Biography :...
, Merezhkovskys opened their own Novy Put (New Path) magazine, designed as an outlet for The Meetings.
After the 22nd session, in April 1903, the meetings of the group (by this time widely known as Bogoiskateli, or God-seekers) were finally cancelled by the procurator of the Holy Synod
Holy Synod
In several of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches and Eastern Catholic Churches, the patriarch or head bishop is elected by a group of bishops called the Holy Synod...
of the Russian Orthodox Church K. Pobedonostzev
Konstantin Pobedonostsev
Konstantin Petrovich Pobyedonostsyev was a Russian jurist, statesman, and adviser to three Tsars...
's decree, the main reason being Merezhkovskys frequent visits to places of mass sectarian settlements where they and their radical ideas of Church 'renovation' were becoming quite popular. And in Novy Puth things changed too: with the arrival of strong personalities like N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov and S. Frank the magazine was beginning to solidify its position, all the while drifting away from its originally declared mission. In the late 1904 Merezhkovsky and Gippius quit Novy Put, remaining on friendly terms with its new leaders and their now highly influential 'philosophy section'. In 1907 the Meetings revived under the new moniker of The Religious-Philosophical Society, Merezhkovsky once again being at the helm with his 'Holy Ghost Kingdom Come' ideas, but this was more of a literary circle, than anything it is ever purported to be.
It was at this time that the couple formed its own domestic 'church'; they tried to bring all the miriskusniks to participate, but only Filosofov took the idea seriously. He became the third member of the community called Troyebratstvo (The Brotherhood of Three) built loosely upon the Holy Trinity format and having a lot to do with the obscure XII century idea of the Third Testament
Joachim of Fiore
Joachim of Fiore, also known as Joachim of Flora and in Italian Gioacchino da Fiore , was the founder of the monastic order of San Giovanni in Fiore . He was a mystic, a theologian and an esoterist...
which by this time became Merezhkovsky's idée fixe
Idée fixe (psychology)
For other uses, see Idée fixeAn idée fixe is a preoccupation of mind held so firmly as to resist any attempt to modify it, a fixation. The name originates from the French [French : idée, idea + fixe, fixed]...
. Revitalized by the latter indeed it was to be – in the modern form of a new age Church of Holy Ghost, destined to succeed the older churches of – first Father (Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
), then Son (New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
), at least as Merezhkovky saw it. Practical religious rituals of Troyebratstvo (including all the traditional Russian Orthodox elements, organized into highly unusual, rather risqué kind of family spectacle) by many was seen as most blatant blasphemy and divided the St. Petersburg intellectual elite: Vasily Rozanov
Vasily Rozanov
Vasily Vasilievich Rozanov was one of the most controversial Russian writers and philosophers of the pre-revolutionary epoch. His views have been termed the "religion of procreation", as he tried to reconcile Christian teachings with ideas of healthy sex and family life and not, as his adversary...
was fascinated by the thinly veiled eroticism of the happening, while among those outraged was Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev was a Russian religious and political philosopher.-Early life and education:Berdyaev was born in Kiev into an aristocratic military family. He spent a solitary childhood at home, where his father's library allowed him to read widely...
. Greatly scandalized was the (gay, mostly) Mir Iskusstva community: Sergei Diaghilev
Sergei Diaghilev
Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev , usually referred to outside of Russia as Serge, was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.-Early life and career:...
accused Filosofov of committing 'adultery' and the latter's somewhat embarrassing quit-and-return shenanigan was going on for quite a while, until 1905 when he finally made up his mind and settled down in Merezhkovskys' St. Petersburg house, becoming a kind of family member.
In 1904 The Antichrist. Pyotr Y Alexey, the third and final novel of Christ and Antichrist trilogy was published (in Novy Puth, ##1–5, 9–12), having as it's focus the figure of Peter the Great as an 'embodied Antichrist' – an idea the author shared with Russian raskol
Raskol
Raskol |schism]]') was the event of splitting of the Russian Orthodox Church into an official church and the Old Believers movement in mid-17th century, triggered by the reforms of Patriarch Nikon in 1653, aiming to establish uniformity between the Greek and Russian church practices.-The Raskol:...
niki. This third novel invited scathing criticism from the underground magazine Osvobozhdenie:
- It would be convenient to ask the author: "well, then, and the police department, the regulations on intensified control, the Moskovskie vedomosti, the Grazhdanin, Cossack whips and gallows and other attributes of protection, are they also objects of "mystical order"? Do they also contain the 'inutterable secret of God'?" We would like to say to gentlemen like Merezhkovskij: mysticism obliges. If the idea of monarchy is a mystical one and you are not promoting it in vain, not as a ringing phrase, but with fear and respect, then this conviction obliges you to fight with fury against the Russian police-order (....) You say that autocracy is a religious idea, but the defence of this idea is a matter for God, not the Police-department.
The novel's release was now eagerly anticipated in Europe where Merezhkovsky by this time has become a best-selling author, Julian the Apostate having undergone ten editions (in four years time) in France. But when Daily Telegraph described the novelist as “the true heir to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky's legacy”, back in Russia critics denounced this praise so unanimously that Merezhkovsky was forced to publicly deny having had any pretensions of this kind whatsoever.
1905–1908
After the 9th of January Bloody SundayBloody Sunday (1905)
Bloody Sunday was a massacre on in St. Petersburg, Russia, where unarmed, peaceful demonstrators marching to present a petition to Tsar Nicholas II were gunned down by the Imperial Guard while approaching the city center and the Winter Palace from several gathering points. The shooting did not...
Merezhkovsky's views changed drastically, the defeat of the Imperial Russian Navy
Imperial Russian Navy
The Imperial Russian Navy refers to the Tsarist fleets prior to the February Revolution.-First Romanovs:Under Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich, construction of the first three-masted ship, actually built within Russia, was completed in 1636. It was built in Balakhna by Danish shipbuilders from Holstein...
by the Imperial Japanese Navy
Imperial Japanese Navy
The Imperial Japanese Navy was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1869 until 1947, when it was dissolved following Japan's constitutional renunciation of the use of force as a means of settling international disputes...
helping him see, as he put it, "the anti-Christian nature of the Russian monarchy". 1905 Revolution for Merezhkovsky was some kind of prelude for the religious revolution of which he thought himself to be a prophet
Prophet
In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...
. The writer became an ardent supporter of the civil unrest, writing much revolutionary verse, organising protest parties for students (like that in Alexandrinsky theater). In October 1905 he greeted the government's 'freedoms-granting' decree but since then was only strengthening ties with leftist radicals, notably, esers
Socialist-Revolutionary Party
thumb|right|200px|Socialist-Revolutionary election poster, 1917. The caption in red reads "партия соц-рев" , short for Party of the Socialist Revolutionaries...
.
In Spring 1906, Merezhkovsky and Filosofov went into what they regarded as a self-imposed exile, seeing "promoting the New religious consciousness" as their mission. They founded Anarchy and Theocracy magazine and released a compilation of essays called Le Tsar at la Revolution. In one of the articles he contributed, Revolution and Religion Merezhkovsky wrote: "Now it's almost impossible to foresee what a deadly force this revolutionary tornado starting upwards from the society's bottom will turn out to be. The church will be crashed down and the monarchy too, but with them — what if Russia itself is to perish — if not the timeless soul of it, then its body, the state?". Again, what at the time was looked upon as rather dull political grotesque a decade became grim reality.
Years 1908—1909 were extraordinary in the extent of published work Merezhkovsky produced. First the play about 'the revolutionary routines Makov Tzvet (Poppy's Blossom) came out, all three credited as co-authors, then Posledny Svyatoy (The Last Saint) followed, a piece on Seraphim Sarovsky, this time Merezhkovsky's solo effort. More significant were two of his socio-political/philosophical essays, Not Peace but Sword and In Sill Waters. In them, working on another of his theories, that of "evolutionary mysticism", Merezhkovsky argued that revolution in Russia and the world (he saw the two as closely linked: the first steaming forward, the latter rattling behind) was inevitable, but succeed would be only if preceded by "the revolution of human spirit", with Russian intelligentsia willingly embracing his cherished idea of the Third Testament. Otherwise, Merezhkovsky prophesized, political revolution will bring nothing but tyranny and the 'Kingdom of Ham' will come.
Among those whom Merezhkovskys held talk with in Paris were well-
established cultural figures like Anatole France
Anatole France
Anatole France , born François-Anatole Thibault, , was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters...
, Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist. He gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher...
, Bergson, leaders of the French socialists. Disappointed by the general polite indifference to their ideas, husband and wife returned home in the late 1908, but not before Merezhkovsky's historical drama Pavel Pervy was published. The play, promptly confiscated and then banned by the Russian authorities, became the first in the Kingdom of the Beast trilogy. Dealing with the nature and history of the Russian monarchy, the trilogy had little in common with the author's earlier symbolism-influenced prose and, cast very much in the "humanist tradition of the XIX century Russian literature", was regarded later as the height of Merezhkovsky's literary career. The 2nd and the 3rd parts of the trilogy, the Decembrists novels Аleksandr Pervy (Alexander the First) and Chetyrnadzatoye Dekabrya (December the 14th) were published in 1913
1913 in literature
The year 1913 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Husayn Haykal publishes the first modern Egyptian novel Zaynab.-New books:* Alain-Fournier — Le Grand Meaulnes* L...
and 1918
1918 in literature
The year 1918 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The 2nd annual Pulitzer Prizes are awarded.* Author Hall Caine made a KBE.*Robert Graves marries Nancy Nicholson...
respectively.
1909–1913
In 1909 Merezhkovsky found himself in the center of another controversy after coming out with harsh criticism of VekhiVekhi
Vekhi , is a collection of seven essays published in Russia in 1909. It was distributed in five editions and elicited over two hundred published rejoinders in two years...
, the volume of political and philosophical essays written and compiled by the group of influential writers, mostly his former friends and allies, who promoted their work as some kind of historic manifesto, the last effort to enforce the rather inert Russian intelligentsia into the long overdue 'spiritual revival'. Arguing against vekhovtsys (hardly original) idea of bringing Orthodoxy and the Russian intellectual elite together (again), Merezhkovsky, in an open letter to N. Berdyaev, wrote:
Orthodoxy is the very soul of the Russian monarchy, and monarchy is the Orthodoxy's carcass. Among things they both hold sacred are — the political repressions, theUnion of Russian people, death penalty and meddling with the world international affairs. How can one entrust oneself to the prayers of those whose actions one sees as God-less and demonic?
Some said Merezhkovsky's stance was inconsistent with his own ideas of some five years ago. After all, what Vekhi authors did was try and revitalize his own failed project of bringing the intellectual and the religious elites into some kind of collaboration. But the times have changed for Merezhkovsky and — following this (some argued, unacceptably scornful) anti-Vekhi tirade, his social status, too. Shied by his former allies, he was feared by those in he right and center and hated by the Church: Saratov
Saratov
-Modern Saratov:The Saratov region is highly industrialized, due in part to the rich in natural and industrial resources of the area. The region is also one of the more important and largest cultural and scientific centres in Russia...
bishop Dolganov even demanded his excommunication after the book Bolnaya Rossia (The Sick Russia) was published n 1910. For social-democrats, conversely, Merezhkovsky, not a 'decadent pariah' any-more, suddenly became a 'well-established Russian novelist' , the 'pride of the European literature', etc. Time has come for former friend Rozanov to write words that proved in the long run to be prophetic: "The thing is, Dmitry Sergeevich, those whom you are with now, will never be with you. Never will you find it in yourself to wholly embrace this dumb, dull and horrible snout of the Russian revolution".
In the early 1910s though, Merezhkovsky moved straight into the left side of the Russian culural spectre, finding among his closest associated the esers Ilya Fondaminsky
Ilya Fondaminsky
Ilya Isidorovich Fondaminsky was a Jewish Russian author and political activist, in 1910s one of the leaders of the ultra left SR party, in 1917 a senior member of the Alexander Kerensky’s Provisional government.In 1918 Fondaminsky took part...
and, notably, Boris Savinkov
Boris Savinkov
Boris Viktorovich Savinkov was a Russian writer and revolutionary terrorist...
. The latter was trying to get from Merezhkovsky some religious and philosophical justification to his own terrorist ideology, but also had another, more down to Earth axe to grind, that of getting his first novel published. This he did, with Merezhkovsky's assistance — to strike the most unusual debut of the 1910 Russian literary season. In 1911 Merezhkovsky had the legal accusation of having 'links with terrorists' brought against him. Pending trial (which included the case of Pavel Pervy play) the writer stayed in Europe, then crossed the border in 1912 only to have several chapters of Alexander the First novel confiscated. Never arrested, though, in September, along with Pirozhkov, the publisher, he was acquitted.
1913 saw Merezhkovsky being involved in another public scandal, when Vassily Rozanov openly accused him of having ties with the 'terrorist underground' and, as he put it, "trying to sell Motherland to Jews". Merezhkovsky suggested that the Religious-Philosophical Society should hold its own inner 'trial' and expel Rozanov from its ranks. The move turned to be miscalculated, the writer failing to take into account, apparently, the extent of his own unpopularity within the Society. The majority of the latter declined the Merezhkovsky-Filosofov proposal. Rozanov, high-horsed, quit the Society on his own accord to respond stingingly by publishing Merezhkovsky's private letters which demonstrated, allegedly, the latter's hypocrisy on the matter.
1914–1919
For a while 1914 looked like it was going to be the first ever relatively calm year for Merezhkovsky. Two Complete Works Of editions being released by the Wolfe's and Sytin's publishing houses, academic N. A. Kotlyarevsky nominated the author for the Nobel Prize for literature. Then the War broke out. Merezhkovskys expressed their deep skepticism as to — both the Russian involvement in it and all the patriotic hullabaloo stirred up among the intellectuals. The writer made a conscious effort to distance himself from the politics, and succeeded almost, but in 1915 was throat-deep in it again, becoming friends with Alexander KerenskyAlexander Kerensky
Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky was a major political leader before and during the Russian Revolutions of 1917.Kerensky served as the second Prime Minister of the Russian Provisional Government until Vladimir Lenin was elected by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets following the October Revolution...
and joining Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...
-led 'left patriots' movement calling for Russia's withdrawal from the War in the painless possible way.
A couple of new Merezhkovsky's plays, Radost Budet (The Joy Will Come) and The Romantics were staged in war-time Petrograd theaters, the latter becoming a hit, but for the mainstream critics Merezhkovsky remained a 'controversial author'. "All in all, the Russian literature is as hostile to me as it had always been. I could as well be celebrating the 25th anniversary of this hostility", the author wrote in his short autobiography for S. Vengerov's encyclopedia.
1917: February and October
And then the year of 1917 came, turning Merezhkovskys' life into chaos. It began with a bout of political activism: the couple's flat on Sergiyevskaya St. has become a deputies and senators' beehive, looking more like a Russian DumaDuma
A Duma is any of various representative assemblies in modern Russia and Russian history. The State Duma in the Russian Empire and Russian Federation corresponds to the lower house of the parliament. Simply it is a form of Russian governmental institution, that was formed during the reign of the...
little branch (that was when seeds of a rumour concerning the couple's alleged membership in the Russian freemason community were, apparently, sawn). Then with the spring came triumph: Merezhkovsky greeted the February anti-monarchy revolution and described the Kerensky's Provisional government as 'quite friendly'. By the end of spring, though, he lost all sympathy to both the government and its ineffective leader; in summer he began to speak of things everybody else were laughingly brushing aside at the time — namely, of the government's inevitable fall and the soon-to-be Lenin's Bolshevik's tyranny coming. Late October saw all of his worst expectations coming to life.
For Merezhkovsky the October Socialist revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
was a catastrophe. He saw it as the Coming of Ham
Ham
Ham is a cut of meat from the thigh of the hind leg of certain animals, especiallypigs. Nearly all hams sold today are fully cooked or cured.-Etymology:...
he wrote about a decade later, the tragic victory for, as he choose to put it, Narod-Zver (The Beast-nation), the political and social incarnation of the universal Evil, putting the whole of human civilization in danger. Practically, what Merezhkovsky and Gippius were only able to do in those days was trying to use whatever influence they've still had among the Bolshevist cultural elite to help setting their friends, the arrested Provisional government ministers free. Some influence, apparently, they did have; ironically, one of the first thing the Soviet government did was lift the ban from the blatantly anti-monarchist Pavel Pervy play to let it be staged in many of the Red Russia's theaters.
For quite a while Merezhkovskys's flat served as a SR party's fraction headquarters but this came to an end on January 1918 when the Uchredilovka
Russian Constituent Assembly
The All Russian Constituent Assembly was a constitutional body convened in Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. It is generally reckoned as the first democratically elected legislative body of any kind in Russian history. It met for 13 hours, from 4 p.m...
was dissolved by Lenin. In his 1918 diary Merezhkovsky wrote:
Years 1919—1920 for Merezhkovskys were full of dramatic events. Having sold everything including dishes and extra clothes to avoid dying of hunger (like, say, Rozanov did), they began grudgingly collaborating with Maxim Gorky's new World Literature publishing house, receiving salary and food portions. Rozanov's disturbingly emotional farewell deathbed letter shook the couple, as well as the picture of many of those who only months ago denounced them for being left radicals, now serving the new regime's 'cultural revolution'. Of the revolutionary leaders Merezhkovsky wrote in his diary:
After news started to filter through of Yudenich, Kolchak and Denikin's consequent defeats, Merezhkovskys saw their only chance of survival in fleeing Russia. This they did on December 14, 1919 along with Filosofov and Zlobin (Gippius' young secretary), having obtained rather exotic-sounding Anatoly Lunacharsky-signed permission "to leave Petrograd for the purpose of reading some lectures on Ancient Egypt to the Red Army fighters".
Merezhkovsky in exile
Merezkovskys, along with Filosofov and Zlobin, headed first for MinskMinsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
, then Vilno, staying in both cities to give newaspaper interviews and public lectures. Speaking to a Vilno newspaper, Merezhkovsky said:
The whole question of Russia's existence as such — and it's non-existent at the moment, as far as I am concerned, — depends on Europe's seeing at last the true nature of Bolshevism. Europe has to open its eyes to the fact that Bolshevism uses the Socialist banner only as camouflage, that what it does in effect is defile high Socialist ideals, that it is a global threat, not just local Russian desease. <…> There is not a trace in Russia at the moment of neither Socialism or even thedictatorship of proletariat; the only dictatorship that's there is that of the two people: Lenin and Trotsky.
In Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
the four stayed for several months, Merezhkovsky doing practical work for the Russian immigrant organizations, Gippius editing the literary section in Svoboda newspaper. Both were regarding Poland as a 'messianic', 'potentially unifying' place and a crucial barrier in the face of the spreading Bolshevism plague. In summer 1920 Boris Savinkov planning to head an army of 20,000–30,000 Russians (largely POWs) for a march on Moscow arrived to have talks with Józef Piłsudski. It was Savinkov who engaged Merezhkovsky and Filosofov in the work of the so-called Russian Evacuational committee (more of a White Army mobilization center) and introduced the writer to the Polish President. On behalf of the Committee Merezhlovsky issued a memorandum calling the peoples of Russia to stop fighting the Polish army and join its ranks. The whole thing ended with the Poland-Russia armistice agreement. Another 'mission' failed, Merezhkovskys and Zlobin left for France, Filosofov staying in Warsaw to head the Savinkov-led Russian National committees anti-Bolshevik propaganda department.
In Paris Merezhkovsky went on with his anti-Communist crusade. He founded the Religious Union (later Soyuz Neprimirimykh, the Union of the Unpacified), was holding lectures, contributed to Pavel Milyukov
Pavel Milyukov
Pavel Nikolayevich Milyukov , a Russian politician, was the founder, leader, and the most prominent member of the Constitutional Democratic party...
's Poslednye Novosty and Pyotr Struve's Osvobozhdenye newspapers, exposing what he saw as the Bolshevist lies and denouncing the 'Kingdom of Antichrist' by all means available. It was becoming more and more obvious, though, that Merezhkovsky (backed only by the circle of the ever faithful friends) was alone again, misunderstood by some, abhorred by others. His calling for the international intervention in Russia angered the left, rejecting monarchy restoration antagonized the right. His one and only ally at the time was Ivan Bunin; never sharing much personal affinity, the two men formed a powerful front in their relentless anti-Soviet campaign. Besides, having maintained strong contacts with influential French politics lobbying the interests of the Russian immigrants, both ensured that the Russian writers would get some financial support from the French government. A couple of years later another sponsor was found in Tomas Masarik who granted personal pensions to some prominent figures in the immigrant Russian writers' community.
Merezhkovsky was demanding severing all
PEN
International PEN
PEN International , the worldwide association of writers, was founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere....
contacts with Communist Russia and cancelling French help for the victims of mass hunger in Russian Povolzhje
Volga Region
Volga Region is a historical region of Russia that encompasses the territories adjacent to the flow of Volga River. According to the flow of the river, it is usually classified into the Middle Volga Region and Lower Volga Region...
(arguing, not unreasonably, that those in need won't ever see any of the money or food sent); he criticised the exiled Russian Constituent Assembly's communique, in his opinion, too conciliatory in tone. Articles and essays of the four authors (Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Filosofov contacts with whom were restored and Zlobin) were published under the title of The Kingdon of Antichrist (1922), the general idea of the book being that the 'Russian fires', globalist in their nature and intent, promise "either brotherhood in slavery or the end in a common grave" for the peoples of Europe.
In winter 1925 a small literary and philosophy circle was formed by Merezhkovsky and Gippius; two years later it was officially launched as the Green Lamp group. With the Novy Korabl (The New Ship) magazine of its own, the group attracted the whole of the Russian intellectual elite in exile and was remaining the important cultural center for the next ten years or more. "We are the Criticism of Russia as such, the latter's disembodied Thought and Conscience, free to judge its Present and foresee its Future", wrote Merezhkovsky of the Green Lamp mission as he saw it.
In 1928 at the First Congress of exiled Russian writers held in Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
, King Alexandr I Karageorgievich
Alexander I of Yugoslavia
Alexander I , also known as Alexander the Unifier was the first king of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as well as the last king of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes .-Childhood:...
bestowed Merezhkovsky with the Order of Savva of the 1st degree meriting his services for world culture. A series of lectures organised for Merezhkovsky and Gippius by the Serbian Academy signalled the launch of the Yugoslav-based "Russian Library" series, where the best of Bunin, Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Alexander Kuprin, Aleksey Remizov
Aleksey Remizov
Aleksei Mikhailovich Remizov was a Russian modernist writer whose creative imagination veered to the fantastic and bizarre. Apart from literary works, Remizov was an expert calligrapher who sought to revive this medieval art in Russia.-Biography:...
, Konstantin Balmont
Konstantin Balmont
Konstantin Dmitriyevich Balmont was a Russian symbolist poet, translator, one of the major figures of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.-Biography:Konstantin Balmont was born in v...
, Ivan Shmelyov
Ivan Shmelyov
Ivan Sergeyevich Shmelyov was a Russian émigré writer best known for his full-blooded idyllic recreations of the pre-revolutionary past spent in the merchant district of Moscow...
and Igor Severyanin
Igor Severyanin
Igor Severyanin was a Russian poet who presided over the circle of the so-called Ego-Futurists.Igor was born in St. Petersburg in the family of an army engineer. Through his mother, he was remotely related to Nikolai Karamzin and Afanasy Fet. In 1904 he left for Manchuria with his father but later...
came out over the next several years. Things started to deteriorare, though, in the early 1930s; Czech and French grants withdrawn and much feared Socialists rising high on the French political scene, Merezhkovskys looked southwards — and found there a sympathizer in Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
who took great interest in the work and views of a Russian writer, now a multiple Nobel Prize for literature nominee.
Merezhkovsky's literary activities: 1925–1941
In the mid-1920s, bitterly disappointed by the Western cultural elite's reaction to his political manifestos, Merezhkovsky turned back to writing prose which now differed radically from everything that he'd ever done before. Ditching fiction altogether, he returned to a form of religious and philosophical essay, but on the new level: that of a monumental free-form experimental-styled treatise. Some of his new books were biographies, some just extensive, amorphous but ever so engaging and highly original researches in ancient history, 'novels' in name only, never in essence or form. Speaking of the first two of them, — The Birth of Gods. Tutankhamen in Crete (1925) and Messiah (1928) — Merezhkovsky thus explained his credo: "Many people think I am a historical novelist, which is a misguided view. What I do in the Past is only search for the Future. The Present is a kind of exile to me. My true home is the Past/Future, which is where I belong".Of the three fundamental books Merezhkovsky created in the late 1920s early 1930s another trilogy took shape, its vague concept being human kind's possible ways of salvation. The opener, The Mystery of the Three: Egypt and Babylon, was published in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
in 1925. Then came out the impressively esoteric Mystery of the West: Atlantis-Europe (Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, 1930), where the cherished Third Testament idea took an apocalyptic, slightly Nietzschean turn. The third, Unfamiliar Jesus (1932, Belgrade), in retrospect seen as the strongest of the three.
All of a sudden Merezhkovsky, not a marginal apo-/political prophet anymore, but a prolific and successful writer again, drifted into the focus of the Nobel Prize committee attention. From 1930 onwards Sigurd Agrell
Sigurd Agrell
Sigurd Agrell was a Swedish poet, translator, runologist and professor of Slavic languages at Lund University.-Biography:...
, professor of Slavic languages in Lund University
Lund University
Lund University , located in the city of Lund in the province of Scania, Sweden, is one of northern Europe's most prestigious universities and one of Scandinavia's largest institutions for education and research, frequently ranked among the world's top 100 universities...
, started to methodically nominate Merezhkovsky for the Prize, although, invariably (and rather frustratingly for both), in tandem with Ivan Bunin. In November 1932 Gippius in a letter to V. N. Bunina wrote that in her opinion Merezhkovsky had not the slightest chance of winning "because of his anti-Communist stance", but the truth was, Bunin (no lesser a Communism-loather than his rival) wrote books that were so much more accessible and, generally, popular. Rather annoyed by this always having to walk in pairs with his adversary/ally, Merezkovsky even suggested they should rather make a pact and divide the moneys should one of them ever grab them, but Bunin took deadly seriously what was meant apparently as a joke and responded with an outright refusal. He promptly won the Prize in 1933.
Agrell made it a point to go on with the Merezhkovsky-nominating routine up until his own death in 1937 (making 8 such nominations, in all), but each year the latter's chances were getting slimmer. In his last five years the writer did produce some high quality stuff (like compilation of religious biographies Faces of Saints: Jesus to Nowadays and The Reformers trilogy, published posthumously) but it wasn't in any way ground-breaking. Hard times and deepening troubles notwithstanding, Merezhkovsky continued to work hard till his dying day, trying desperately to finish his Spanish Mysteries trilogy until the curtain falls; the last of the three, the unfinished Little Theresa, was with him at his deathbed; he died literally with a pen in his hand.
Merezhkovsky and European dictators
Although never a nationalist, Merezhkovsky was very much a Russo-centric author and thinker, cherishing the idea of his country's unique and in many ways decisive place in the world culture in history. Never tiring of reiterating the "Russian plight is the problem of the world, not Russia" postulate, he was ever on the look-out for some 'strong leader' who would be able to organize and successfully see through the anti-Communist crusade. For a while Merezhkovsky thought he's found his hero in Benito MussoliniBenito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
who, having sponsored his book on Dante
DANTE
Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
, found time to have several lengthy talks with the Russian writer on politics, literature and art. Impressed, Merezhkovsky started to see his new friend as an incarnation of Dante, almost. In a letter addressed to Mussolini, he wrote:
The best, the truest and the liveliest document on Dante is — your personality. To understand Dante one has to live through him, but only you being around makes that possible. Two souls, his and yours, are merged into one, Infinity itself bringing you two together. Visualize Mussolini in contemplation, and it's Dante. Imagine Dante in action, and it's Mussolini.
All the while Merezhkovsky was trying to convince Mussolini that it was the latter's mission to actually start "Holy War against Russia", reiteraing these ideas in his "Meeting Mussolini" article (Illustrated Russia, February 1937). Seeing his name frequently mentioned by the Italian press in connection with rather wild Merezhkovsky's suggestions made duce
Duce
Duce is an Italian title, derived from the Latin word dux, and cognate with duke. National Fascist Party leader Benito Mussolini was identified by Fascists as Il Duce of the movement and became a reference to the dictator position of Head of Government and Duce of Fascism of Italy was established...
rather uneasy. Foreseeing no holy wars to become a leader of in the foreseeable future, Mussolini took a step back. Visiting Rome in summer 1937, Merezhkovsky had some talks with the Italian Foreign minister, but found duce nowhere in sight. He fell out with Mussolini as quickly as he'd fallen in, speaking of being deeply disappointed in the Italian leader's 'petty materialism' in October of the same year. All the while he was trying to get in contact with General Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
, now seeing Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
ase the last anti-Communist citadel of Europe. This coming to naught, Merezhkovsky's choice of heroes narrowed down to just one: Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
.
Fascism wasn't Merezhkovsky's idea of the best alternative to Communism. As early as 1930 he wrote of doomed Europe stuck between two "explosives' stores: fascist and Communist", expressing hope that some day these two evils will somehow destroy one another. But the danger of Führer's possible taking over Europe was somehow a lesser evil for him that the Communist expansion. This 'Hitler dilemma' was the only thing husband and wife disagreed on, ever. Gippius hated and despised Führer, referring to him as 'an idiot'. Merezhkovsky was more tolerant: for the first time in the two decades he saw a leader who'd be able to take the whole of Antichrist Kingdom upon himself, this single fact outweighing for him other trivia — like that of his own Joan of Arc (1939) being banned in Germany on the day of its release.
The infamous radio speech
Exactly how and why did Merezhkovsky found himself on the German radio in June 1941 nobody was quite sure of. Gippius (according to Yury Terapiano who was quoting Nina Berberova
Nina Berberova
Nina Nikolayevna Berberova was a Russian writer who chronicled the lives of Russian exiles in Paris in her short stories and novels. She visited post-Soviet Russia and died in Philadelphia.-Biographical Sketch:...
) later put the blame on her own secretary, Vladimir Zlobin who, using his German links, allegedly persuaded the elderly man to come to the studio in the early days of the Nazi invasion into the USSR. In his speech (if is printed version entitled Bolshevism and Humanity is to be believed) Merezhkovsky, comparing Hitler to Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc
Saint Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" , is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the...
, called for the anti-Bolshevik crusade, repeating. among other things, what he was saying all through the 1920s and 1930s:
Bolshevism will never change its nature… because right from the start it's been not a national, but international phenomenon. From the very first day Russia has been — and remains to this very day — only a means to the end: that of its conquering the whole world.
"It's the end for us", allegedly said Gippius, disgusted and frightened. In the days to come, though, husband and wife (as those who knew them attested) were often expressing horror at the news of Nazis' atrocities on the Eastern front; according to Gippius' friend, poet Victor Mamchenko, Merezhkovsky far from supporting Hitler, was actually condemning him in those days.
There is still so much confusion as to this infamous radio speech's exact circumstances, that some researchers doubt the fact as such, pointing out that not a single memoirist who has ever mentioned it, had ever actually heard Merezhkovsky speaking on air. All of those 'witnesses' were invariably referring to the printed version of the "speech" published in 1944 by Parizhsky Vestnik. This document, according to Yury Zobnin (the author of the first ever comprehensive Merezhkovsky biography published in Russia) was most certainly a montage fake, concocted by the Nazi propaganda out of the 1939 unpublished essay The Mystery of the Russian Revolution (on Dostoyevsky's Besy novel), bits and pieces thrown in. That the speech could have been broadcasted in the late June the researcher finds rather implausible: those were the couple's Biarriz days, and for an elderly person to everybody a slip and off to Paris was hardly probable.
Adding to the confusion is the well-documented fact that Merezhkovsky did really pronounce a speech mentioning Hitler and Joan of Arc in one breath. It happened in August 1940 at his 75th birthday celebration in Biarriz and in the context was radically. In fact, his speech caused much trouble because it was deemed too pro-Russian and anti-German. According to Teffi, one of the people present, —
Irina Odoyevtseva
Irina Odoyevtseva
Irina Vladimirovna Odoyevtseva was a Russian poet, novelist and author of memoirs...
independently corroborated this. "He was going on about the Atlantis and its demise. For those who understood Russian it was obvious that what he meant was Germany's defeat and Russia's imminent victory, but the Germans never understood this and applauded", she remembered. All this, according to Zobnin, makes the infamous German Radio speech looking very much like a Nazi propaganda myth, picked up first by Y. Terapiano, then authenticised by latter reiterations.
Merezhkovsky's death
In summer 1939 ParamountParamount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
(in collaboration with the French Association des Auteurs de Films) bought Merezhkovsky's scenario Life of Dante. Production was cancelled on September 1, as the War broke out in Europe. On September 9, fleeing the air raids, the Merezhkovskys along with tens of thousands of Parisians moved to the Biarritz
Biarritz
Biarritz is a city which lies on the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast, in south-western France. It is a luxurious seaside town and is popular with tourists and surfers....
in the South of the country where they spent the next three months, socialising mainly with the French and English military officers, but also with Irina Odoyevtseva and her husband Georgy Ivanov
Georgy Ivanov
Georgii Vladimirovich Ivanov was a leading poet and essayist of the Russian emigration between the 1930s and 1950s.As a banker's son, Ivanov spent his young manhood in the elite circle of Russian golden youth. He started writing pretentious verses, imitative of Baudelaire and the French...
.
In June 1940 they embarked on another evacuational trip from Paris southwards, but this proved unnecessary: on June 27 Biarritz was occupied too. Still, it was here in the hotel that on August 14 the writer's 75th anniversary celebration was held, organized by a group of French writers, with the participation of some notable Russians like Pavel Milyukov, Ivan Bunin and Mark Aldanov
Mark Aldanov
Mark Aldanov was a Russian emigrant writer, known for his historical novels.Mark Landau was born in Kiev in the family of a rich Jewish industrialist. He graduated the physical-mathematical and law departments of Kiev University. He published serious research papers in chemistry. In 1919 he...
. It was there that Merezhkovsky made his risky speech that might have been later merged (in memoirs authors' minds) with things he might (or might not) have said on German radio. Even Y. Zobnin admits that the way the writer was bearing himself very much pandered to those regarding him as a Nazi sympathizer. In the Autumn of 1941 he was revelling in the attention of and being on the friendliest terms with German admirers — students, mostly, but army officers too. It was Germans who were helping the couple out financially, seeing them back to Paris from Biarritz where they had been penniless and on the verge of homelessness. "Merezhkovsky flew up to Nurnberg fired with the agitation of a newly born butterfly… By this time most of us stopped visiting them", wrote V. Yanovsky, a Green Lamp group member.
The last three months of his life Merezhkovsky was working continuously in the couple's Paris flat, hoping to finish Little Theresa. On December 6 husband and wife returned from one of their regular walks the writer was insisting on, his wife having to literally drag him on her shoulder, and spent the evening, in her words, "arguing, as usual, about Russia versus freedom dilemma". Skipping both supper and his habitual evening cigarette, Merezhkovsky went to his room early. Next morning the maid called Gippius to tell her the man was in some kind of trouble. Merezhkovsky was sitting unconscious next to a cold fire-place. The doctor arrived in 15 minutes time and diagnosed brain hemorrhage. In half an hour time Merezhkovsky was pronounced dead. "…Me, I'm a worm, not man, slandered by humans, despised by peoples (Ps. 21, 7). But wrap itself into a chrysalis a hapless worm does only to break out as a shiny white, sunlight-like, resurrected butterfly", these, found on a table, were the last words that he's ever written. The funeral service was held on December 10 in the Orthodox church of Saint Aleksandr Nevsky. Dmitry Merezhkovsky was buried in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery
Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery
Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Cemetery, specifically the one known as Cimetière de Liers, as there are two cemeteries in the city, is a Russian Orthodox cemetery, located on Rue Léo Lagrange in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, département Essonne, France....
, with just several people attending the ceremony.
Merezhkovsky's ideas
Merezhkovsky's first adopted philosophical trend was the then popular positivismPositivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
, a trend Konstantin Merezhkovsky (a future well-known biologist
Biologist
A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life. Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...
), who had great influence on his younger brother, was following too. Soon, disillusioned in formal positivism but never rejecting it wholly, Merezhkovsky turned to religion. Seeds of this hybrid (European positivism grafted to what's been described as 'subjective idealism' of Russian Orthodoxy) sawn on the field of literature study brought forth a brochure entitled "On the Causes of the Decline and on the New Trends in Contemporary Russian Literature". This manifesto gave a burgeoning movement both ideology and the name as such: Merezhkovsky was the first to speak of symbols and see them as definitive means of cognizance modern Art.
In the center of this new train of thought was the notion of "rejecting the rational in favour of the intuitive" by means of exploiting what the author termed as 'spirituality of a symbol', seeing the latter as a perfect means of describing Reality, otherwise unfathomable. Only a symbol, according to Merezhkovsky, could burrow circumvent through to reach an object's deeper meaning, whereas (quoting, as he did, Tyutchev) "thought, whilst being spoken, turns a lie":
Interestingly (according to D. Churakov), Merezhkovsky — pronouncing 'death of metaphysics' and putting forward the idea that only language of symbols could be an adequate instrument for discovering the modern world's pattern of meanings, was unwillingly following O. Komte
Auguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...
, the difference being that the latter was employing these ideas in scientific fields, while the former proposed to use them in literature and criticism.
The 3rd Testament
Merezhkovsky's next and most fundamental step ahead as a fledgling self-styled modernist philosophy leader was taken in tandem with his young intellectual wife Zinaida Gippius who from the first days of their meeting started generating new ideas for her husband to catch up on, fully develop and bring into shape. It was in this feedback-driven cooperation that the 3rd Testament theory was born, or rather revived, transplanted from its Middle Ages Italian origins into the early XX century's Russian ambience. It was the 3rd Testament that formed the basis of the early XX century Russian New Religious Consciousness movement which in turn kick started the Religious-Philosophical Society into action, again Gippius producing basic ideas for her husband to formulate them and become the driving force behind. Borrowing the original idea from Joachim of FioreJoachim of Fiore
Joachim of Fiore, also known as Joachim of Flora and in Italian Gioacchino da Fiore , was the founder of the monastic order of San Giovanni in Fiore . He was a mystic, a theologian and an esoterist...
, a XII century theologist, Merezhkovskys created and developed their own concept of man's full-circle religious evolution. In it the Bible was seen as a starting point with God having taken two steps towards Man — for the latter to respond with the third, logically conclusive one.
According to Merezhkovsky, the 1st (Divine Father's) and the 2nd (Divine Son's) Testaments could be seen only as being links to the 3rd one, that of the Holy Ghost. The first maintaining the Law of God and the second — the Grace of God, what the third Testament should do is bring Liberation to the human race; the 1st Testament revealing the God's power as gospel Truth, the 2nd transforming the gospel Truth into Love, the 3rd translating Love into Liberation. In this last Kingdom "pronounced and heard will be — the final, never before revealed name of the coming one: God the Liberator", according to the author.
Merezhkovsky saw the 3rd Testament, a new Holy Ghost religion, as a synthesis of the two original revelations: that 'about Earth' (pre-Christian beliefs) and that 'about Heaven' (Christianity). The Mystery of the Holy Trinity, as resolved, should link all three parts into a circle, the great "new Earth under the new Heavens", as promised in the Book of the Apocalypse. As Rozanov (an influence on Merezhkovsky who in turn was greatly influenced by his ideas) put it, "Merezhkovsky's greatest innovation was this attempt to merge together the two — Christian and Heathen — poles of poignancy. To discover a 'tempting vice' in the greatest of virtues and the greatest of virtues in the tempting vice". One of the most tempting aspects of this New Trinity concept was the idea of that all-inviting Holy Ghost being not a sexless spirit, but a female entity.
Sex and spirituality
Human history, according to Merezhkovsky, was one ceaseless 'battle of two abysses': the abyss of Flesh (as discovered by pre-Christians) and the abyss of Spirit (opened by Christianity's sexless ascetism). Pre-Christians celebrated flesh-driven sensuality at the expense of all things spiritual. Ascetic Christians brought about the rise of Spirit, at the expense of sex. Merezhkovsky declared the dialectical inevitability of thesis and antithesis' coming together, of the spiritual and the sexual poles uniting on a higher, celestial level.In his own words, "Being aware of my self in my body, I'm at the root of personality. Being aware of my self in the other one's body, I'm at the root of sex. Being aware of my self in all human bodies, is the root of unity". Noticing that one of the Aramaic languages translates Spirit as Rucha, as a female entity, Merezhkovsky interpreted the Holy Trinity as Father and Son's unity in the higher being: their common godly Mother. It is the latter's Kingdom Come that the 3rd Testament was supposed to lead to. Seeing both God and man as intrinsically unisexual, Merezhkovsky regarded a male/female schism to be a symptom of imperfection, the primal human being's fatal disintegration.
In the modern times, according to Merezhkovsky, monastic and ascetic Christianity should be forever gone. Art would not just turn religious, but become an integral part of religion, the latter taken in broader concept. Human evolution as he saw it, would lead to a total merging of whatever had been polarized: sex and spirit, religion and culture, male and female, et cetera — bringing about Kingdom Come, not 'out there', but 'here on Earth'.
Merezhkovsky as a religious anarchist
Man's evolutional progress towards the Third Testament Kingdom Come would not be without some revolutionary upheavals, according to Merezhkovsky. 'Catastrophes' humanity path to salvation would be strewn with, most of them dealing with "revolutions of Spirit". The consequence of such revolution would bring about gradual change in the nature of religion itself, the latter taking under its spacious wing — not only man's sensual liberation but also the latter's 'freedom of rebellion'. "We are human only as long as we're rebels", Merezhkovsky insisted, this stance of his been seen later a proto-existentialistExistentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
one.
One of the inevitable things the 'revolution of Spirit' would lead to was to be severing all ties between state and religion, according to Merezhkovsky. "The Church — not the old, but the new, eternal, universal one — is as opposite to the idea of the state as an absolute truth is opposing an absolute lie", he wrote in an open letter to N. Berdyaev.
B. Rozental, analyzing Merezhkovsky's political and religious philosophy, thus summed up the writer's position: "The Law amounts to violence… The difference between legitimate power that holds violence 'in reserve' and violence itself is but a matter of degree: sinful are both. Autocracy and murder are nothing more than two extreme forms of exhibiting
Interpreting the Biblical version of human history as a course of revolutionary events, Merezhkovsky saw religion and revolution as inseparable. It is just that for any social revolution to succeed, spiritual revolution should always be one step ahead of it. In Russia the lack of the latter brought about the former's fiasco, letting Antichrist taking the reins of events, he argued.
In the 1920s Merezhkovsky veered off his earlier views on religious and revolutionary synthesis, then ditched religious anarchism doctrine altogether. His 3rd Testament idea has undergone some metamorphosis too: in his later years the writer became close to ecumenical ideals, prophesizing the Kingdom Come as a synthesis of "Peter, Paul and John's principles", that is, bringing Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox traditions together.
Legacy
Throughout his lifetime Dmitry Merezhkovsky polarized opinion in his native Russia, bringing upon himself both praise and scorn, occasionally from the same quarters. According to Yevgeny YevtushenkoYevgeny Yevtushenko
Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko is a Soviet and Russian poet. He is also a novelist, essayist, dramatist, screenwriter, actor, editor, and a director of several films.-Early life:...
, Merezhkovsky became Russia's first ever "new-type, universal kind of dissident who managed to upset just about everybody who thought themsleves to be responsible for guarding morality and order":
Merezhkovsky's works were always causing controversy. In the words of a modern biographer, "history placed him alongside Marquis de Sade
Marquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle...
, Nietzsche and Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
, those classics who — in the process of being condemned and ostracized by the many could have been approached and appreciated by the few". "I was disliked and scolded in Russia, loved and praised abroad, but here and there — misunderstood", Merezhkovsky wrote in a letter to Nikolai Berdyaev.
There were things, though, Merezhkovsky was unanimously given credit for. Nobody denied that his were — exceptional erudition, all characteristics of a true scientist, literary gift and stylistic originality. Seen (in retrospect) as the first ever (and, arguably, the only one) Russian "cabinet writer of a European type", Merezhkovsky was "one of the best-educated people in St. Petersburg of the first quarter of the XX century" (N. Berdyaev). Korney Chukovsky
Korney Chukovsky
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky was one of the most popular children's poets in the Russian language. His poems, Doctor Aybolit , The Giant Roach , The Crocodile , and Wash'em'clean have been favourites with many generations of Russophone children...
, pondering on the dire state of the early XX century Russia's cultural elite, admitted that "the most cultured of them all" was this "mysterious, unfathomable, almost mythical creature — Merezhkovsky". Anton Chekov, not much of a fan, (unsuccessfully) demanded that the Russian Academy of Science should appoint Merezhkovsky its honorary academic, as early as 1902.
In some ways Merezhkovsky was an indisputable innovator. He was the first in Russia to formulate basic principles of symbolism and modernism, as opposed to 'decadence', a tag he was battling with. Never aspiring to a leading role in the movement, he soon became, according to I. Koretzkaya, "a kind of handy encyclopedia for the ideology of symbolism", from which others "could borrow aesthetic, socio-historical and even moral ideas from". Having added a new ("thought-driven") dimension to a historical novel genre and turning it into a modern, intriguing art form, Merezhkovsky influenced some prominent masters of Russian and European experimental novel: Andrey Bely, Aleksey Remizov
Aleksey Remizov
Aleksei Mikhailovich Remizov was a Russian modernist writer whose creative imagination veered to the fantastic and bizarre. Apart from literary works, Remizov was an expert calligrapher who sought to revive this medieval art in Russia.-Biography:...
, Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
, James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
. Less avant-garde and more traditional authors like Valery Bryusov
Valery Bryusov
Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov was a Russian poet, prose writer, dramatist, translator, critic and historian. He was one of the principal members of the Russian Symbolist movement.-Biography:...
, Aleksey N. Tolstoy, Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhaíl Afanásyevich Bulgákov was a Soviet Russian writer and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, which The Times of London has called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.-Biography:Mikhail Bulgakov was born on...
and Mark Aldanov
Mark Aldanov
Mark Aldanov was a Russian emigrant writer, known for his historical novels.Mark Landau was born in Kiev in the family of a rich Jewish industrialist. He graduated the physical-mathematical and law departments of Kiev University. He published serious research papers in chemistry. In 1919 he...
owed much to his early experiments too. It was to Merezhkovsky's credit that the concepts and terms of 'modernist novel' and 'symbolic historical novel' were introduced to the rather stale and conservative Russian literature scene of the late 1890s.
Merezhkovsky was praised as an extraordinarily essayist. Many marveled at his unique (perhaps over-used, as some argued) talent for 'quotation-juggling'. Some critics loathed the repetitiveness in Merezhkovsky's prose, but no one could dispute the authenticity of his (in a broad sense) very musical manner of employing certain ideas almost as symphonic themes, which was new at the time and also much imitation-spawning.
No less influential, even if so much more controversial, were Merezhkovsky's philosophical, religious and political ideas. Alongside the obvious list of contemporary followers (Bely, Blok, etc.; almost all of them – later turned detractors) deeply interested in his theories were political figures (Fondaminsky, Kerensky, Savinkov), psychologists (Freud), philosophers (Berdyaev, Rickert
Heinrich Rickert
Heinrich John Rickert was a German philosopher, one of the leading Neo-Kantians.-Life:He was born in Danzig, Prussia and died in Heidelberg, Germany.-Thought:...
, Stepun), lawers (Kowalewsky
Maksim Kovalevsky
Maksim Maksimovich Kovalevsky was a sociologist and professor of Legal History at the University of St Petersburg.He studied at the University of Kharkov under Dmitri Kachanovsky....
). Thomas Mann wrote of Merezhkovsky as of a "genius critic and specialist in world psychology, second only to Nietzche".
Some later researchers mentioned as one of the main factors in Merezhkovsky's significance his willingness to question dogmas and thwart tradition with total disregard to public opinion, never shying controversy and even scandal — certainly a rare quality in the cultural life of pre-Modernism Russia. Crucial in this context was (according to O. Dafier) his "quest for ways of overcoming deep crisis which came as a result of the Russian traditionalist Church losing its credibility". All the while, Merezhkovsky's ever changing views of the world that was changing as quickly, caused much misconception and a lot of criticism from all quarters.
Criticism
In Russia the general response to Merezhkovsky's literary, cultural and social activities was on the whole, negative. His prose, even if on the face of it stylistically flawless and occasionally quite accessible, was, critics argued, very elitist; a thing unto itself, it was "hermetically closed for the uninitiated majority". "Having isolated himself from the real life, Merezhkovsky built up his own inner temple, for his own personal use. Me-and-culture, me-and-Eternity — those were his only themes", wrote in 1911 Leon Trotsky.For all his scientifically strict, academic approach to the process of collecting and re-processing material, contemporary academia, with little exception, ridiculed Merezhkovsky, dismissing him as a gifted charlatan, bent on rewriting history in accordance with his own current ideological and philosophical whims. Due to his incorrigible, as many saw it, tendency towards inconsistency, Merezhkovsky's old allies were always in the process of deserting him, while new ones approached him warily. Vassily Rozanov wrote in 1909:
Another former friend, Minsky, questioned Merezhkovsky's credibility as a critic, finding in his biographies a tendency to see in his subjects only things that he wanted to see, artfully "re-molding questions into instant answers".
For all his religiosity, Merezhkovsky was never popular with either Russian Orthodox Church officials or the religious intellectual elite of the time, people like Sergey Bulgakov, Pavel Florensky
Pavel Florensky
Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky was a Russian Orthodox theologian, philosopher, mathematician, electrical engineer, inventor and Neomartyr sometimes compared by his followers to Leonardo da Vinci.-Early life:Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky was born on January 21, 1882, into the family of a railroad...
and Lev Shestov
Lev Shestov
Lev Isaakovich Shestov , born Yehuda Leyb Schwarzmann , was a Ukrainian/Russian existentialist philosopher. Born in Kiev on , he emigrated to France in 1921, fleeing from the aftermath of the October Revolution. He lived in Paris until his death on November 19, 1938.- Life :Shestov was born Lev...
fiercely denouncing his ideas and projects. Similarly, having been regarded for many years as a radical social democrat never gained Merezhkovsky any points in the leftist literary camp. He was variously described as "an anti-literature phenomenon" (Viktor Shklovsky), "the greatest corpse in the Russian literature" (Ivanov-Razumnik) and "a book-worm", totally foreign to all things human (Korney Chukovsky).
The writer's work published abroad, according to the Soviet Literary encyclopedia (1934) was "the telling example of the ideological degradation and cultural degeneration of the White émigrés". Maxim Gorky's verdict: "Dmitry Merezhkovsky, a well-known God-admirer of a Christian mode, is a small man whose literary activity is akin to that of a type-writer: each type is clear and well-read, but it's soul-less and boring", served as a leitmotif of the Soviet literary officialdom's view on Merezhkovsky for decades. In the Soviet times the writer was (in the words of Alexander Men
Alexander Men
Father Alexander Vladimirovich Men was a Russian Orthodox theologian, Biblical scholar and writer.Father Alexander wrote dozen of books ; baptized hundreds if not thousands; founded an Orthodox Open University; opened one of the first Sunday Schools in...
) "aggressively forgotten", all of his works remained unofficially banned up until the early 1990s, when the wave of his works' began to be re-issued, opening the way for serious critical analysis of Merezhkovsky's life and legacy.
External links
- Works by Dmitry Merezhkovsky at Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
(scanned books original editions color illustrated) - Biography
- Leon Trotsky Merezhkovsky, 1911
- Alexander Men' Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius
- Joseph Pilsudski Interview by Dmitry Merezhkovsky, 1921.