Fyodor Sologub
Encyclopedia
Fyodor Sologub was a Russia
n 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
.
, the illegitimate son of a local landowner. His father died of tuberculosis in 1867, and his illiterate mother was forced to become a servant in the home of the aristocratic Agapov family, where Sologub and his younger sister Olga grew up. Seeing how difficult his mother's life was, Sologub was determined to rescue her from it, and after graduating from the St. Petersburg Teachers' Institute in 1882 he took his mother and sister with him to his first teaching post in Kresttsy
, where he began his literary career with the 1884 publication in a children's magazine of his poem "The Fox and the Hedgehog" under the name Te-rnikov.
Sologub continued writing as he relocated to new jobs in Velikiye Luki
(1885) and Vytegra
(1889), but felt that he was completely isolated from the literary world and longed to be able to live in the capital again; nevertheless, his decade-long experience with the "frightful world" of backwoods provincial life served him well when he came to write The Petty Demon. (He said later that in writing the novel he had softened the facts: "things happened that no one would believe if I were to describe them.") He felt sympathetic with the writers associated with the journal Severnyi vestnik (Northern Herald), including Nikolai Minsky
, Zinaida Gippius
, and Dmitry Merezhkovsky
, who were beginning to create what would be known as the Symbolist
movement, and in 1891 he visited Petersburg hoping to see Minsky and Merezhkovsky, but met only the first.
, which published much of his writing during the next five years. There, in 1893, Minsky, who thought Teternikov was an unpoetic name, suggested that he use a pseudonym, and the aristocratic name Sollogub was decided on, but one of the ls was omitted as an attempt (unavailing, as it turned out) to avoid confusion with Count Vladimir Sollogub. In 1894 his first short story, "Ninochkina oshibka" (Ninochka's Mistake), was published in Illustrirovanny Mir, and in the autumn of that year his mother died. In 1896 he published his first three books: a book of poems, a collection of short stories, and his first novel, Tyazhelye sny (Bad Dreams), which he had begun in 1883 and which is considered one of the first decadent Russian novels.
In April 1897 he ended his association with Severny Vestnik and, along with Merezhkovsky and Gippius, began writing for the journal Sever (North). The next year his first series of fairy tales was published. In 1899 he was appointed principal of the Andreevskoe municipal school and relocated to their premises on Vasilievsky Island
; he also became a member of the St. Petersburg District School Council. He continued to publish books of poetry, and in 1902 he finished The Petty Demon, which was published partially in serial form in 1905 (in Voprosy zhizni, which was terminated before the final installments). At this time his "Sundays," a literary group that met at his home, attracted poets, artists, and actors, including Alexander Blok
, Mikhail Kuzmin
, Alexei Remizov, Sergei Gorodetsky
, Vyacheslav Ivanov
, Leon Bakst
, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky
, and Sergei Auslender. Teffi wrote of him at this period:
His increasing literary success was tempered for him by his sister's tuberculosis; in 1906 he traveled with her to Ufa Guberniya for treatment, and in June 1907 he took her to Finland
, where she died on June 28. The next month he returned to St. Petersburg and retired after 25 years of teaching. In the autumn of 1908 he married the translator Anastasia Chebotarevskaya (born in 1876), whom he had met at Vyacheslav Ivanov
's apartment three years before. Teffi wrote that she "reshaped his daily life in a new and unnecessary way. A big new apartment was rented, small gilt chairs were bought. The walls of the large cold office for some reason were decorated with paintings of Leda
by various painters... The quiet talks were replaced by noisy gatherings with dances and masks. Sologub shaved his mustache and beard, and everyone started to say that he resembled a Roman of the period of decline." He continued publishing poems, plays, and translations; the next year he traveled abroad for the first time, visiting France with his wife, and in September the dramatized version of The Petty Demon was published.
Between 1909 and 1911 The Complete Works of Fyodor Sologub were published in 12 volumes, and in 1911 a collection of critical works appeared, containing over 30 critical essays, notes, and reviews by famous writers. In 1913 he presented a lecture, "The Art Of These Days," that was so successful in St. Petersburg he took it on tour all over Russia. In 1914 he started a magazine, Dnevniki pisatelei (Writers' Journals), and went abroad with his wife, but the outbreak of World War I
put an end to the magazine. In 1915 two collections of his stories and tales were published in English, and in 1916 The Petty Demon, all translated by John Cournos
.
Sologub continued touring and giving lectures, and in 1917 he welcomed the February Revolution
. During the summer he headed the Soyuz Deyatelei Iskusstva (Union of Artists) and wrote articles with a strong anti-Bolshevik
attitude. He was opposed to the October Revolution
but remained in Petrograd and contributed to independent newspapers until they were terminated. In 1918 he spoke on behalf of the Union Of Artists; published Slepaia babochka (The Blind Butterfly), a collection of new short stories; had a play produced in Yalta; and joined the Petersburg Union of Journalists. But by the end of the year, because of Bolshevik control of publishing and bookselling, he did not have any outlets for his writing. Lev Kleinbort wrote of that period: "Sologub did not give lectures, but lived by selling his things."
Even though he was in principle opposed to emigration, the desperate condition in which he and his wife found himself caused him to apply in December 1919 for permission to leave the country; he did not receive any response. Half a year later he wrote to Lenin personally, again without result. In mid-July 1921 he finally received a letter from Trotsky authorizing his departure, and he made plans to leave for Reval
on September 25. But on the evening of September 23 his wife, weakened by privation and driven to despair by the long torment of uncertainty, threw herself off the Tuchkov Bridge
and drowned.
His wife's death grieved Sologub for the rest of his life, and he referenced it often in his subsequent writing. (A poem dated November 28, 1921, begins "You took away my soul/ To the bottom of the river./ I will defy your wishes/ And follow you.") He gave up any thought of leaving Russia and relocated into an apartment on the banks of the Zhdanovka River, in which his wife had drowned.
In 1921 the New Economic Policy
was begun, and from the end of the year his books (which had been published abroad with increasing frequency, notably in Germany and Estonia
) began to appear in Soviet Russia. In December Fimiamy (Incense), a collection of poems, was published; the next two years more poetry collections and translations were published (Balzac's Contes drolatiques, Paul Verlaine
, Heinrich von Kleist
, Frédéric Mistral
), and in 1924 the fortieth anniversary of Sologub's literary activities was celebrated at the Alexandrinsky Theater
in Petersburg, with speeches by Yevgeny Zamyatin
, Mikhail Kuzmin
, Andrei Bely
, and Osip Mandelstam
, among others. In April of that year he was elected the honorary chairman of the Division of Translators in the Petersburg Union Of Writers, and two years later he became the chairman of the board of the Union. He had literary gatherings in his apartment, attended by such writers as Anna Akhmatova
and Korney Chukovsky
. His new poems, which had a classic simplicity, were appreciated by those to whom he read them, but they were not printed anymore.
.
While Sologub's novels have become his best-known works, he has always been respected by scholars and fellow authors for his poetry.
The Symbolist poet Valery Bryusov
admired the deceptive simplicity of Sologub's poetry and described it as possessing a Pushkinian perfection of form. Innokenty Annensky
, another poet and contemporary of Sologub, wrote that the most original aspect of Sologub's poetry was its author's unwillingness to separate himself from his literature.
.
Realistic elements of The Petty Demon include a vivid description of 19th-century rural everyday life, while a fantastic element is the presentation of Peredonov's hallucinations on equal terms with external events. While the book was received as an indictment of Russia
n society, it is a very metaphysical novel and one of the major prose works of the Russian Symbolist movement. James H. Billington
said of it:
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n Symbolist
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...
poet, novelist, playwright and essayist. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic
Pessimism
Pessimism, from the Latin word pessimus , is a state of mind in which one perceives life negatively. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass half empty or half full?"...
elements characteristic of European fin de siècle
Fin de siècle
Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
literature and philosophy into Russian prose
Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
.
Early life
Sologub was born in St. Petersburg into the family of a poor tailor, Kuzma Afanasyevich Teternikov, who had been a serf in Poltava guberniyaPoltava Governorate
The Poltava Governorate or Government of Poltava was a guberniya in the historical Left-bank Ukraine region of the Russian Empire, which was officially created in 1802 from the disbanded Malorossiya Governorate which was split between the Chernigov Governorate and Poltava Governorate with an...
, the illegitimate son of a local landowner. His father died of tuberculosis in 1867, and his illiterate mother was forced to become a servant in the home of the aristocratic Agapov family, where Sologub and his younger sister Olga grew up. Seeing how difficult his mother's life was, Sologub was determined to rescue her from it, and after graduating from the St. Petersburg Teachers' Institute in 1882 he took his mother and sister with him to his first teaching post in Kresttsy
Kresttsy
Kresttsy is an urban locality and the administrative center of Krestetsky District of Novgorod Oblast, Russia, situated on the M10 highway connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg, east of Veliky Novgorod. Population:...
, where he began his literary career with the 1884 publication in a children's magazine of his poem "The Fox and the Hedgehog" under the name Te-rnikov.
Sologub continued writing as he relocated to new jobs in Velikiye Luki
Velikiye Luki
Velikiye Luki is a town on the meandering Lovat River in the southern part of Pskov Oblast, Russia. It is the second largest town in Pskov Oblast; population: The town is served by the Velikiye Luki Airport....
(1885) and Vytegra
Vytegra
Vytegra may refer to:*Vytegra, a town in Vologda Oblast, Russia*Vytegra River, a river in Vologda Oblast, Russia...
(1889), but felt that he was completely isolated from the literary world and longed to be able to live in the capital again; nevertheless, his decade-long experience with the "frightful world" of backwoods provincial life served him well when he came to write The Petty Demon. (He said later that in writing the novel he had softened the facts: "things happened that no one would believe if I were to describe them.") He felt sympathetic with the writers associated with the journal Severnyi vestnik (Northern Herald), including Nikolai 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....
, 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"....
, and Dmitry Merezhkovsky
Dmitry Merezhkovsky
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...
, who were beginning to create what would be known as the Symbolist
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...
movement, and in 1891 he visited Petersburg hoping to see Minsky and Merezhkovsky, but met only the first.
Early literary career
In 1892 he was finally able to relocate to the capital, where he got a job teaching mathematics, started writing what would become his most famous novel, The Petty Demon, and began frequenting the offices of Severny VestnikSeverny 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:...
, which published much of his writing during the next five years. There, in 1893, Minsky, who thought Teternikov was an unpoetic name, suggested that he use a pseudonym, and the aristocratic name Sollogub was decided on, but one of the ls was omitted as an attempt (unavailing, as it turned out) to avoid confusion with Count Vladimir Sollogub. In 1894 his first short story, "Ninochkina oshibka" (Ninochka's Mistake), was published in Illustrirovanny Mir, and in the autumn of that year his mother died. In 1896 he published his first three books: a book of poems, a collection of short stories, and his first novel, Tyazhelye sny (Bad Dreams), which he had begun in 1883 and which is considered one of the first decadent Russian novels.
In April 1897 he ended his association with Severny Vestnik and, along with Merezhkovsky and Gippius, began writing for the journal Sever (North). The next year his first series of fairy tales was published. In 1899 he was appointed principal of the Andreevskoe municipal school and relocated to their premises on Vasilievsky Island
Vasilievsky Island
Vasilyevsky Island is an island in Saint Petersburg, Russia, bordered by the rivers Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva in the south and northeast, and by the Gulf of Finland in the west. Vasilyevsky Island is separated from Dekabristov Island by the Smolenka River...
; he also became a member of the St. Petersburg District School Council. He continued to publish books of poetry, and in 1902 he finished The Petty Demon, which was published partially in serial form in 1905 (in Voprosy zhizni, which was terminated before the final installments). At this time his "Sundays," a literary group that met at his home, attracted poets, artists, and actors, including Alexander Blok
Alexander Blok
Alexander Alexandrovich Blok was a Russian lyrical poet.-Life and career:Blok was born in Saint Petersburg, into a sophisticated and intellectual family. Some of his relatives were literary men, his father being a law professor in Warsaw, and his maternal grandfather the rector of Saint Petersburg...
, Mikhail Kuzmin
Mikhail Kuzmin
Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin was a Russian poet, musician and novelist, a prominent contributor to the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.Born into a noble family in Yaroslavl, Kuzmin grew up in St. Petersburg and studied music at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov...
, Alexei Remizov, Sergei Gorodetsky
Sergei Gorodetsky
Sergey Mitrofanovich Gorodetsky was a Russian poet, one of the founders of Guild of Poets .Gorodetsky entered the literary scene as a Symbolist, developing friendships with Blok, Ivanov, and Briusov...
, Vyacheslav Ivanov
Vyacheslav Ivanov
Vyacheslav Ivanov may refer to:*Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov, Russian Symbolist poet and philosopher*Vyacheslav Nikolayevich Ivanov, Russian rower who became the first three-time Olympic gold medalist in the single scull event...
, Leon 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...
, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky
Mstislav Dobuzhinsky
Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky or Dobujinsky was a Russian-Lithuanian artist noted for his cityscapes conveying the explosive growth and decay of the early twentieth-century city....
, and Sergei Auslender. Teffi wrote of him at this period:
His face was pale, long, without eyebrows; by his nose was a large wart; a thin reddish beard seemed to pull away from his thin cheeks; dull, half-closed eyes. His face was always tired, always bored... Sometimes when he was a guest at someone's table he would close his eyes and remain like that for several minutes, as if he had forgotten to open them.
He never laughed... Sologub lived on Vasilievsky Island in the small official apartment of a municipal school where he was a teacher and inspector. He lived with his sister, a flat-chested, consumptive old maid. She was quiet and shy; she adored her brother and was a little afraid of him, and spoke of him only in a whisper. He said in a poem:
"We were holiday children, My sister and I"; they were very poor, those holiday children, dreaming that someone would give them "even motley-colored shells from a brook." Sadly and dully they dragged out the difficult days of their youth. The consumptive sister, not having received her share of motley shells, was already burning out. He himself was exhausted by his boring teaching job; he wrote in snatches by night, always tired from the boyish noise of his students...
So Sologub lived in his little official apartment with little icon lamps, serving his guests mint cakes, ruddy rolls, pastila [fruit candy], and honey cakes, for which his sister went across the river somewhere on a horsecar. She told us privately, "I'd love to ride on the outside of the horsecar sometime, but my brother won't let me. He says it's unseemly for a lady."... Those evenings in the little apartment, when his close literary friends gathered, were very interesting.
Fame and marriage
At the time of the 1905 Revolution his politically critical skazochki ("little tales") were very popular and were collected into a book, Politicheskie skazochki (1906). The Petty Demon was published in a standalone edition in 1907 and quickly became popular, having ten printings during the author's lifetime. Sologub's next major prose work, A Created Legend (1905–1913) (literally "the legend in the making," a trilogy consisting of Drops of Blood, Queen Ortruda, and Smoke and Ash), had many of the same characteristics but presented a considerably more positive and hopeful description of the world. "It begins with the famous declaration that although life is 'vulgar . . . stagnant in darkness, dull and ordinary,' the poet 'creates from it a sweet legend . . . my legend of the enchanting and beautiful.'"His increasing literary success was tempered for him by his sister's tuberculosis; in 1906 he traveled with her to Ufa Guberniya for treatment, and in June 1907 he took her to Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, where she died on June 28. The next month he returned to St. Petersburg and retired after 25 years of teaching. In the autumn of 1908 he married the translator Anastasia Chebotarevskaya (born in 1876), whom he had met at Vyacheslav Ivanov
Vyacheslav Ivanov
Vyacheslav Ivanov may refer to:*Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov, Russian Symbolist poet and philosopher*Vyacheslav Nikolayevich Ivanov, Russian rower who became the first three-time Olympic gold medalist in the single scull event...
's apartment three years before. Teffi wrote that she "reshaped his daily life in a new and unnecessary way. A big new apartment was rented, small gilt chairs were bought. The walls of the large cold office for some reason were decorated with paintings of Leda
Leda (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Leda was daughter of the Aetolian king Thestius, and wife of the king Tyndareus , of Sparta. Her myth gave rise to the popular motif in Renaissance and later art of Leda and the Swan...
by various painters... The quiet talks were replaced by noisy gatherings with dances and masks. Sologub shaved his mustache and beard, and everyone started to say that he resembled a Roman of the period of decline." He continued publishing poems, plays, and translations; the next year he traveled abroad for the first time, visiting France with his wife, and in September the dramatized version of The Petty Demon was published.
Between 1909 and 1911 The Complete Works of Fyodor Sologub were published in 12 volumes, and in 1911 a collection of critical works appeared, containing over 30 critical essays, notes, and reviews by famous writers. In 1913 he presented a lecture, "The Art Of These Days," that was so successful in St. Petersburg he took it on tour all over Russia. In 1914 he started a magazine, Dnevniki pisatelei (Writers' Journals), and went abroad with his wife, but the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
put an end to the magazine. In 1915 two collections of his stories and tales were published in English, and in 1916 The Petty Demon, all translated by John Cournos
John Cournos
John Cournos , a writer of Russian-Jewish background, was born in the Ukraine, whence his family emigrated when he was aged 10. During the 1910s and 1920s, he lived in Britain, where his literary career started...
.
Sologub continued touring and giving lectures, and in 1917 he welcomed the February Revolution
February Revolution
The February Revolution of 1917 was the first of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. Centered around the then capital Petrograd in March . Its immediate result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, and the end of the Russian Empire...
. During the summer he headed the Soyuz Deyatelei Iskusstva (Union of Artists) and wrote articles with a strong anti-Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
attitude. He was opposed to the October 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...
but remained in Petrograd and contributed to independent newspapers until they were terminated. In 1918 he spoke on behalf of the Union Of Artists; published Slepaia babochka (The Blind Butterfly), a collection of new short stories; had a play produced in Yalta; and joined the Petersburg Union of Journalists. But by the end of the year, because of Bolshevik control of publishing and bookselling, he did not have any outlets for his writing. Lev Kleinbort wrote of that period: "Sologub did not give lectures, but lived by selling his things."
Even though he was in principle opposed to emigration, the desperate condition in which he and his wife found himself caused him to apply in December 1919 for permission to leave the country; he did not receive any response. Half a year later he wrote to Lenin personally, again without result. In mid-July 1921 he finally received a letter from Trotsky authorizing his departure, and he made plans to leave for Reval
Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...
on September 25. But on the evening of September 23 his wife, weakened by privation and driven to despair by the long torment of uncertainty, threw herself off the Tuchkov Bridge
Tuchkov Bridge
Tuchkov Bridge is the bridge across Malaya Neva in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Its length is 226 meters and its width is 36 meters. Tuchkov bridge connects Vasilievsky Island and Petrogradsky Island....
and drowned.
His wife's death grieved Sologub for the rest of his life, and he referenced it often in his subsequent writing. (A poem dated November 28, 1921, begins "You took away my soul/ To the bottom of the river./ I will defy your wishes/ And follow you.") He gave up any thought of leaving Russia and relocated into an apartment on the banks of the Zhdanovka River, in which his wife had drowned.
In 1921 the New Economic Policy
New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who called it state capitalism. Allowing some private ventures, the NEP allowed small animal businesses or smoke shops, for instance, to reopen for private profit while the state continued to control banks, foreign trade,...
was begun, and from the end of the year his books (which had been published abroad with increasing frequency, notably in Germany and Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
) began to appear in Soviet Russia. In December Fimiamy (Incense), a collection of poems, was published; the next two years more poetry collections and translations were published (Balzac's Contes drolatiques, Paul Verlaine
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
, Heinrich von Kleist
Heinrich von Kleist
Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist was a poet, dramatist, novelist and short story writer. The Kleist Prize, a prestigious prize for German literature, is named after him.- Life :...
, Frédéric Mistral
Frédéric Mistral
Frédéric Mistral was a French writer and lexicographer of the Occitan language. Mistral won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1904 and was a founding member of Félibrige and a member of l'Académie de Marseille...
), and in 1924 the fortieth anniversary of Sologub's literary activities was celebrated at the Alexandrinsky Theater
Alexandrinsky Theater
The Alexandrinsky Theatre or Russian State Pushkin Academy Drama Theater is a theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia....
in Petersburg, with speeches by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. Despite having been a prominent Old Bolshevik, Zamyatin was deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the CPSU following the October Revolution...
, Mikhail Kuzmin
Mikhail Kuzmin
Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin was a Russian poet, musician and novelist, a prominent contributor to the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.Born into a noble family in Yaroslavl, Kuzmin grew up in St. Petersburg and studied music at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov...
, Andrei Bely
Andrei Bely
Andrei Bely was the pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev , a Russian novelist, poet, theorist, and literary critic. His novel Petersburg was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as one of the four greatest novels of the 20th century.-Biography:...
, and Osip Mandelstam
Osip Mandelstam
Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets...
, among others. In April of that year he was elected the honorary chairman of the Division of Translators in the Petersburg Union Of Writers, and two years later he became the chairman of the board of the Union. He had literary gatherings in his apartment, attended by such writers as Anna Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko , better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova , was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.Harrington p11...
and 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...
. His new poems, which had a classic simplicity, were appreciated by those to whom he read them, but they were not printed anymore.
Death and legacy
In May 1927 Sologub became seriously ill, and by summer he could leave his bed only rarely; his last poem was dated October 1. After a long struggle, he died on December 5. Two days later he was buried next to his wife in Smolensk CemeterySmolensk Cemetery
The Smolenskoye Cemetery is a Lutheran cemetery on Decembrists' Island in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is one of the largest and oldest non-orthodox cemeteries in the city. Until the early 20th century it was one of the main burial grounds for ethnic Germans.- History :The Lutheran cemetery on...
.
While Sologub's novels have become his best-known works, he has always been respected by scholars and fellow authors for his poetry.
The Symbolist poet 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:...
admired the deceptive simplicity of Sologub's poetry and described it as possessing a Pushkinian perfection of form. Innokenty Annensky
Innokenty Annensky
Innokentiy Fyodorovich Annensky was a poet, critic and translator, representative of the first wave of Russian Symbolism...
, another poet and contemporary of Sologub, wrote that the most original aspect of Sologub's poetry was its author's unwillingness to separate himself from his literature.
The Petty Demon
The Petty Demon attempted to create a description of poshlost', a Russian concept that has characteristics of both evil and banality. The antihero is a provincial schoolteacher, Peredonov, notable for his complete lack of redeeming human qualities. The novel recounts the story of the morally corrupt Peredonov going insane and paranoid in an unnamed Russian provincial town, parallel with his struggle to be promoted to governmental inspector of his province. The omniscient third-person narrative allowed Sologub to combine his Symbolist tendencies and the tradition of Russian Realism in which he engaged throughout his earlier novels, a style similar to Maupassant's fantastic realismFantastic Realism
Fantastic Realism can refer to:*Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, a 20th century group of artists in Vienna combining techniques of the Old Masters with religious and esoteric symbolism...
.
Realistic elements of The Petty Demon include a vivid description of 19th-century rural everyday life, while a fantastic element is the presentation of Peredonov's hallucinations on equal terms with external events. While the book was received as an indictment of Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n society, it is a very metaphysical novel and one of the major prose works of the Russian Symbolist movement. James H. Billington
James H. Billington
Lord LeBron James Hadley Billington is an American academic. He is the thirteenth Librarian of the United States Congress.-Early years:...
said of it:
The book puts on display a Freudian treasure chest of perversions with subtlety and credibility. The name of the novel's hero, Peredonov, became a symbol of calculating concupiscenceConcupiscenceConcupiscence is often defined as an ardent, usually sensual, longing or lust. The concept is most commonly encountered in Christian theology, as the selfish human desire for an object, person, or experience...
for an entire generation... He torments his students, derives erotic satisfaction from watching them kneel to pray, and systematically befouls his apartment before leaving it as part of his generalized spite against the universe.
Novels
- Bad Dreams
- The Petty Demon
- The Created Legend
- Drops of Blood
- Queen Ortruda
- Smoke and Ash
Short stories
- Light and Shadows
- Beauty
- In the Crowd
- The Glimmer of Hunger
- The White Dog
- Hide and Seek
- The Cave
- The Old House
- The Uniter of Souls
- The Invoker of the Beast
- The Smile
- The Hoop
- The Search
- The White Mother