Gippius flow. Love is one

The beginning of the literary activity of Zinaida Gippius (1889-1892) is considered to be the “romantic-imitative” stage: in her early poems and stories, critics of that time saw the influence of Nadson, Ruskin, Nietzsche.

After the appearance of the program work of D.S. Merezhkovsky “On the Cause of the Decline and New Trends in Modern Russian Literature” (1892), Gippius’s work acquired a distinctly “symbolist” character, moreover, later she was considered one of the ideologists of the new modernist movement in Russian literature. During these years central theme her work becomes the preaching of new ethical values. As she wrote in Autobiography, "It was not decadence that occupied me, but the problem of individualism and all the questions related to it." She polemically titled the collection of short stories of 1896 "New People", thus implying the image of the characteristic ideological aspirations of the emerging literary generation, rethinking the values ​​of Chernyshevsky's "new people".

Her characters seem unusual, lonely, painful, emphatically misunderstood. They declare new values: “I would not want to live at all”, “And illness is good ... You have to die from something”, the story “Miss May”, 1895.

The story “Among the Dead” shows the heroine’s extraordinary love for the deceased artist, whose grave she surrounded with care and on which, in the end, she freezes, thus uniting in her unearthly feeling with her lover.

However, finding among the heroes of the first prose collections of Gippius people of the “symbolist type”, who were engaged in the search for “new beauty” and ways of spiritual transformation of a person, critics also noticed distinct traces of Dostoevsky’s influence (not lost over the years: in particular, “Roman Tsarevich” of 1912 compared with "Demons"). In the story "Mirrors" (collection of the same name, 1898), the characters have their prototypes among the characters in Dostoevsky's works. The main character tells how she “everything wanted to do something great, but so ... unparalleled. And then I see that I can’t - and I think: let me do something bad, but very, very bad, bad to the bottom ...”, “Know that offending is not at all bad.”

But its heroes inherited the problems not only of Dostoevsky, but also of Merezhkovsky. (“We are for the new beauty, we break all the laws ...”). The short story "Goldflower" (1896) deals with the murder for "ideological" motives in the name of full release hero: "She must die ... Everything will die with her - and he, Zvyagin, will be free from love, and from hatred, and from all thoughts about her." Reflections on murder are interspersed with disputes about beauty, individual freedom, Oscar Wilde, etc.

Gippius did not blindly copy, but rethought the Russian classics, placing her characters in the atmosphere of Dostoevsky's works. This process was of great importance for the history of Russian symbolism as a whole. Critics of the early 20th century considered the main motives of Gippius's early poetry to be "the curse of boring reality", "the glorification of the world of fantasy", the search for "new unearthly beauty". The conflict between the painful feeling within human disunity and, at the same time, the desire for loneliness, characteristic of symbolist literature, was also present in Gippius's early work, marked by a characteristic ethical and aesthetic maximalism. Genuine poetry, Gippius believed, comes down to the "triple bottomlessness" of the world, three themes - "about man, love and death." The poetess dreamed of "reconciliation of love and eternity", but she assigned a unifying role to death, which alone can save love from everything transient. This kind of reflection on "eternal themes", which determined the tone of many of Gippius' poems of the 1900s, also dominated in the first two books of Gippius stories, the main themes of which were - "affirmation of the truth of only the intuitive beginning of life, beauty in all its manifestations and contradictions and lies in the name of some high truth.

The “Third Book of Stories” (1902) Gippius caused a significant resonance, criticism in connection with this collection spoke of the author’s “morbid strangeness”, “mystical fog”, “head mysticism”, the concept of the metaphysics of love “against the background of the spiritual twilight of people ... not yet capable of realize it." The formula of “love and suffering” according to Gippius (according to the “Encyclopedia of Cyril and Methodius”) correlates with the “Meaning of Love” by V.S. Solovyov and carries the main idea: to love not for oneself, not for happiness and “appropriation”, but for gaining infinity in the “I”. Imperatives: “to express and give all my soul”, to go to the end in any experience, including experimenting with oneself and people, were considered her main life attitudes.

A notable event in the literary life of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century was the publication of the first collection of poems by Z. Gippius in 1904. Criticism noted here "the motives of tragic isolation, detachment from the world, strong-willed self-affirmation of the individual." Like-minded people also noted a special manner of “poetic writing, reticence, allegory, allusion, silence”, the manner of playing “melodious chords of abstraction on a silent piano”, as I. Annensky called it. The latter believed that "no man would ever dare to dress abstractions with such charm", and that this book best embodied "the entire fifteen-year history of ... lyrical modernism" in Russia. An important place in the poetry of Gippius was occupied by the theme of “efforts to create and preserve the soul”, with all the “devilish” temptations and temptations inseparable from them, many noted the frankness with which the poetess spoke about her internal conflicts. She was considered an outstanding master of verse by V.Ya. Bryusov and I.F. Annensky, who admired the virtuosity of form, rhythmic richness and "melodious abstraction" of Gippius's lyrics of the late 1890s - 1900s.

Some researchers believed that Gippius' work is distinguished by “characteristic non-femininity”, in her poems “everything is large, strong, without particulars and trifles. A lively, sharp thought, intertwined with complex emotions, breaks out of poetry in search of spiritual integrity and finding a harmonious ideal. Others warned against unambiguous assessments: “When you think about where Gippius has the innermost, where is the necessary core around which creativity grows, where is the “face”, then you feel: this poet, perhaps, like no one else, does not have a single face, but there is a multitude…”, wrote R. Gul.

I.A. Bunin, implying the style of Gippius, which does not recognize open emotionality and is often built on the use of oxymorons, called her poetry "electric verses", V.F. Khodasevich, reviewing The Shining, wrote about "a kind of internal struggle of the poetic soul with the non-poetic mind."

Gippius' short story collection The Scarlet Sword (1906) highlighted "the author's metaphysics already in the light of neo-Christian themes", while the divine-human in the completed human personality was affirmed here as a given, the sin of self- and apostasy was considered one. The collection "Black on White" (1908), which absorbed the prose works of 1903-1906, was sustained in a "tangential, foggy-impressionistic manner" and explored the themes of dignity of the individual ("On the Ropes"), love and gender ("Lovers" , "Eternal" femininity "", "Two-one"), in the story "Ivan Ivanovich and the devil" Dostoevsky's influences were again noted. In the 1900s, Gippius also made herself known as a playwright: the play Holy Blood (1900) was included in the third book of short stories. Created in collaboration with D. Merezhkovsky and D. Filosofov, the play "Poppy Flower" was released in 1908 and was a response to the revolutionary events of 1905-1907. The most successful dramatic work of Gippius is The Green Ring (1916), a play dedicated to the people of "tomorrow" was staged by V.E. Meyerhold at the Alexandrinsky Theatre.

An important place in the work of Z. Gippius was occupied by critical articles published first in the New Way, then in Scales and Russian Thought (mainly under the pseudonym Anton Krainy). However, her judgments were distinguished (according to the New Encyclopedic Dictionary) both by "great thoughtfulness" and "extreme sharpness and sometimes a lack of impartiality." Parting ways with the authors of the magazine "World of Art" S.P. Diaghilev and A.N. Benois on religious grounds, Gippius wrote: "... to live among their beauty is scary. In it "there is no place for ... God", faith, death, this is art "for" here ", positivist art."

A.P. Chekhov, in the critic's assessment, is a writer of "cooling the heart to all living things", and those whom Chekhov can captivate will "go to choke, shoot themselves and drown themselves." In her opinion ("Mercure de France"), Maxim Gorky is "a mediocre socialist and obsolete artist." The critic condemned Konstantin Balmont, who published his poems in the democratic Journal for All, as follows: 1903, No. 2), which did not prevent her from publishing her poems in this magazine as well.

In a review of A. Blok's collection "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" with the epigraph "Without a Deity, without inspiration", Gippius liked only some of the imitations of Vladimir Solovyov. In general, the collection was assessed as vague and unfaithful "mystical-aesthetic romanticism." According to the critic, where "without the Lady", Blok's poems are "non-artistic, unsuccessful", they show through the "mermaid cold", etc.

In 1910, the second collection of poems by Gippius, Collected Poems. Book. 2. 1903-1909 ”, in many respects consonant with the first, its main theme was “the spiritual discord of a person who is looking for a higher meaning in everything, a divine justification for a low earthly existence ...”. Two novels of the unfinished trilogy, The Devil's Doll (Russian Thought, 1911, No. 1-3) and Roman Tsarevich (Russian Thought, 1912, No. 9-12), were intended to "reveal the eternal, deep roots reactions in public life", to collect "features of spiritual death in one person", but met with rejection by critics, who noted tendentiousness and "weak artistic embodiment." In particular, cartoonized portraits of A. Blok and Vyach were given in the first novel. Ivanov, and the main character was opposed by the "enlightened faces" of the members of the triumvirate of Merezhkovsky and Filosofov. Another novel was entirely devoted to questions of God-seeking and was, according to R.V. Ivanov-Razumnik, "a tedious and viscous continuation of the useless "Devil's Doll"". After their publication, the New Encyclopedic Dictionary wrote: Gippius is more original as an author of poetry than as an author of stories and novels. Always carefully considered, often putting interesting questions, not devoid of accurate observation, the stories and novels of Gippius are at the same time somewhat far-fetched, alien to the freshness of inspiration, do not show real knowledge of life.

The heroes of Gippius say interesting words, get into complex conflicts, but do not live in front of the reader, most of them are only the personification of abstract ideas, and some are nothing more than skillfully crafted puppets set in motion by the author’s hand, and not by the power of their internal psychological experiences.

Hatred for the October Revolution forced Gippius to break with those of his former friends who accepted it, with Blok, Bryusov, Bely. The history of this gap and the reconstruction of the ideological collisions that led to the October events, which made the confrontation of the former allies in literature inevitable, formed the essence of Gippius' memoir cycle Living Faces (1925). The revolution (contrary to Blok, who saw in it an explosion of the elements and a cleansing hurricane) was described by her as a "strong suffocation" of monotonous days, "amazing boredom" and at the same time, "monstrosity" that caused one desire: "to go blind and deaf." At the root of what was happening, Gippius saw some kind of "Great Madness" and considered it extremely important to maintain the position of "sound mind and firm memory."

Collection “Last Poems. 1914-1918 ”(1918) drew a line under the active poetic work of Gippius, although two more of her poetry collections were published abroad:“ Poems. Diary 1911-1921" (Berlin, 1922) and "Shine" (Paris, 1939). In the works of the 1920s, an eschatological note prevailed (“Russia perished irrevocably, the kingdom of the Antichrist is advancing, brutality rages on the ruins of a collapsed culture” - according to the encyclopedia “Krugosvet”).

As the author's chronicle of the "bodily and spiritual dying of the old world," Gippius left diaries, which she perceived as a unique literary genre that allows her to capture "the very course of life," to fix "little things that disappeared from memory," by which descendants could restore a reliable picture of the tragic event. Artistic creativity Gippius during the years of emigration (according to the encyclopedia "Krugosvet") "begins to fade, she is more and more imbued with the conviction that the poet is not able to work away from Russia": "heavy cold" reigns in her soul, she is dead, like a "killed hawk". This metaphor becomes a key one in the last collection of Gippius's "Shine" (1938), where the motifs of loneliness prevail and everything is seen by the gaze of "passing by" (the title of poems important for the late Gippius, published in 1924).

Attempts to reconcile with the world in the face of a close farewell to it are replaced by declarations of non-reconciliation with violence and evil.

According to the "Literary Encyclopedia" (1929-1939), Gippius's foreign work "is devoid of any artistic and social value, except for the fact that it vividly characterizes the `animal face" of emigrants. " V. S. Fedorov gives a different assessment of the work of the poetess: Creativity Gippius, with all its inner drama of polarity, with intense and passionate striving for the unattainable, has always been not only “change without betrayal”, but also carried the liberating light of hope, fiery, indestructible faith-love in the transcendent truth of the ultimate harmony of human life and being .

Already living in exile, the poetess wrote about her “beyond the starry country” of hope with aphoristic brilliance: Alas, they are divided ... (V.S. Fedorov). Z.N. Gippius. Russian literature of the XX century: writers, poets, playwrights.

Gippius Zinaida Nikolaevna, pseudonym - Anton Krainy - poet, prose writer, critic. In the 70s, her father served as a comrade of the chief prosecutor of the Senate, but soon (after an exacerbation of tuberculosis) he moved with his family to Nizhyn, where he received the post of chairman of the court. After his death, the family moved to Moscow, and then to Yalta and Tiflis. There was no women's gymnasium in Nizhyn, and Gippius was taught the basics of science by home teachers. In the 80s, while living in Yalta and Tiflis, Gippius was fond of Russian classics, especially F.M. Dostoevsky.

In the summer of 1889, Gippius marries D.S. Merezhkovsky and together with him moved to St. Petersburg, where he began his literary activity in the circle of symbolists, which in the 90s formed around the journal Severny Vestnik (D. Merezhkovsky, N. Minsky, A. Volynsky, F. Sologub) and popularized ideas of Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Maeterlinck. In line with the moods and themes inherent in the work of the members of this circle, and under the influence of new Western poetry, the poetic themes and style of Gippius's poetry begin to be determined.

Gippius' poems appeared in print for the first time in 1888 in Severny Vestnik, signed by Zinaida Gippius. The main motives of Gippius's early poetry are the curses of boring reality and the glorification of the world of fantasy, the search for a new unearthly beauty (“I need something that is not in the world ...”), a dreary feeling of disunity with people and at the same time a thirst for loneliness. These poems reflected the main motives of early symbolic poetry, its ethical and aesthetic maximalism. Genuine poetry, Gippius believed, comes down only to the "triple abyss of the world", three themes - "about man, love and death." The poetess dreamed of reconciling love and eternity, but she saw the only way to this in death, which alone can save love from everything transient. These reflections determined the "eternal themes" and determined the tone of many of Gippius' poems.

The same mood prevailed in the first two books of stories by Gippius. "New People" (1896) and "Mirrors" (1898). Their main idea is the affirmation of the truth of only the intuitive beginning of life, beauty "in all its manifestations" and contradictions and lies in the name of some high truth. In the stories of these books, there is a clear influence of Dostoevsky's ideas, perceived in the spirit of a decadent worldview.

In the ideological and creative development of Gippius, the first Russian revolution played an important role, which turned her to public issues. They're starting to take over now great place in her poems, short stories, novels.

After the revolution, collections of short stories "Black on White" (1908), "Moon Ants" (1912), the novels "Devil's Doll" (1911), "Roman Tsarevich" (1913) were published. But, speaking of the revolution, creating images of revolutionaries, Gippius argues that a true revolution in Russia is possible only in connection with a religious revolution (more precisely, as a result of it). Outside of the "revolution in the spirit," Gippius argued, depicting in the "Devil's Doll" Russian post-revolutionary reality, social transformation - a myth, fiction, a game of imagination that only neurasthenic individualists can play.

Gippius met the October Revolution with hostility. Together with Merezhkovsky, she emigrated in 1920. Emigrant creativity Gippius consists of poems, memoirs, publicist. She made a strong attack on Soviet Russia prophesied her imminent fall. Of the emigrant publications, the most interesting is the book of poems "Shine" (Paris, 1939), two volumes of memoirs "Living Faces" (Prague, 1925), very subjective and very personal, reflecting her then social and political views, and an unfinished book of memoirs about Merezhkovsky (Z. Gippius-Merezhkovskaya, Dmitry Merezhkovsky - Paris, 1951), about which even the critic of the emigrant G. Struve said that it requires large adjustments "for the partiality and even bitterness of the memoirist."

). In his work, Gippius avoids "pretty" and rhetoric. Substance is more important to her than style, and she works on form only because it is important for the flexible and adequate expression of her ideas. Gippius was reputed to be a Slavophile, in poetry she continued the tradition of Baratynsky, Tyutchev and Dostoevsky, and not the French. Her husband was the famous writer D. S. Merezhkovsky. In Russian literary circles, she was considered a more original and significant writer than her largely overrated husband. Her activity was almost as many-sided as his; she wrote short stories and long novels, plays, critical and political articles - and poetry.

Zinaida Gippius

The most outstanding features of Gippius' creativity are the strength of mind and wit, rare in a woman. In general, with the exception of some over-refinement and waywardness of a brilliant and spoiled coquette, there is little feminine in her, and coquetry only adds a special piquancy to her intensely serious work. As for Dostoevsky, ideas for her are something living, really existing, and her entire literary life is a life “among ideas”. Gippius wrote a lot of artistic prose, but it is below her poetry. Her prose consists of several volumes of short stories, two novels and one or two plays. All these writings have a "purpose" - to express some idea or subtle psychological observation. Ideas are the real heroes of her stories, but she doesn't have Dostoyevsky's talent for making them voluminous, living people. Gippius characters are abstractions. Two novels by Gippius Damn doll(1911) and Roman Tsarevich(1914) - mystical research in political psychology - weak shoots from a mighty trunk demons Dostoevsky. Play green ring(1914) is a typical example of the Gippius style.

Zinaida Gippius in the early 1910s

The poetry of Gippius is much more significant. Some of her poetry is also abstract and purely speculative. But she managed to make her verse a refined, perfectly tuned instrument for expressing her thoughts. Like the heroes of Dostoevsky, Gippius oscillates between two poles: spirituality and earthiness, between ardent faith and sluggish skepticism (moreover, moments of denial, nihilistic moods are expressed in her poems better than moments of faith). She has a very acute sense of "stickiness", slime and mud of everyday life.

Her typical thoughts are clearly expressed in the poem. Psyche. Svidrigailov in Crime and punishment wonders if eternity is just a smoky bathhouse with spiders in all corners. Gippius picked up Svidrigailov's idea, and her best poems are variations on this theme. She created something like a bizarre mythology, with little, dirty, clingy, and painfully attracted imps. Here is an example of this: a poem And then?.., written in a languid, drawn-out poetic meter:

AND THEN?..
Angels don't speak to me.
They love shining villages,
They love meekness and the seal of humility.
I am not humble and not holy:
Angels don't speak to me.

Dark comes the spirit of the earth.
Delicious and big-eyed, modest.
What is it that the little one is dark?
We didn't get very far...
The spirit of the earth crawls timidly.

I ask about the hour of death.
My baby, though modest, is prophetic.
He knows a lot about these things.
What, tell me, have you heard about us?
What is this - the hour of death?

The dark one diligently eats a lollipop.
Whispers cheerfully: “And everyone lived.
The hour of death came - and crushed.
Taken, crushed - and the end.
Give me the fourth lollipop.

You were born a road worm.
They will not leave you on the path for a long time,
Crawl, crawl, and then crush.
Everyone at the hour of death under the boot
Burst on the track like a worm.

There are different boots.
They press, however, they all seem to.
And with you, dear, it will be the same,
You taste somebody's legs...
Different boots in the world.

A stone, a knife or a bullet, everything is a boot.
Is the fragile heart filled with blood,
Will the breath shrink in pain,
Does the vertebra crush with a noose -
Or does it matter what boot?

Quietly I understood about the hour of death.
And I caress the guest like a native,
I treat and try again:
I see you know a lot about us!
Understood, I understood about the hour of death.

But when crushed - then what?
What, say? Take another lollipop
Eat, eat, dead baby!
He didn't take it. And looked sideways:
"I'd rather not say what - later."

In 1905, Zinaida Gippius, like her husband, became a fiery revolutionary. Since then, she has written many caustic political poems - for example, a sarcastic poem Petrograd, a satire on the renaming of St. Petersburg. In 1917, like Merezhkovsky, Gippius became a fierce anti-Bolshevik.

In late prose, Gippius looks unattractive. For example, in her Petersburg diary, which describes life in 1918-1919, more malicious hatred than noble indignation. And yet one cannot judge her prose only by such examples. She is a good literary critic, a master of a remarkably flexible, expressive and unusual style (she signed her criticism - "Anton Extreme"). Her judgment is quick and precise, and she has often killed inflated reputations with her sarcasm. Criticism of Gippius is frankly subjective, even capricious, in it the style is more important than the essence. She also published interesting excerpts from literary memoirs.


Aliases:

Roman Arensky

Nikita Evening

V. Vitovt

Alexey Kirillov

Anton Kirsha

Anton Krainy

L. Zinaida Nikolaevna

Lev Pushchin

N. Ropshin

Comrade German



Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius- Russian poetess, prose writer, critic.

She was born on November 8 (20), 1869 in the city of Belev, Tula province, in a family that originates from the German Adolfus von Gingst (settled in Moscow in the 16th century).

In the 70s. 19th century her father served as a comrade of the chief prosecutor of the senate, but soon moved with his family to Nizhyn, where he received the position of chairman of the court. After his death, in 1881, the family moved to Moscow, and then to Yalta and Tiflis. There was no women's gymnasium in Nizhyn, and Gippius was taught the basics of science by home teachers. In the 80s, while living in Yalta and Tiflis, Gippius was fond of Russian classics, especially F. M. Dostoevsky.

Having married D. S. Merezhkovsky, in the summer of 1889, Gippius moved with her husband to St. Petersburg, where he began his literary activity in the Symbolist circle, which in the 90s. develops around the journal "Northern Messenger" (D. Merezhkovsky, N. Minsky, A. Volynsky, F. Sologub) and popularizes the ideas of Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Maeterlinck. In line with the moods and themes inherent in the work of the members of this circle, and under the influence of new Western poetry, the poetic themes and style of Gippius's poetry begin to be determined.

Gippius' poems appeared in print for the first time in 1888 in Severny Vestnik. Later, for the publication of literary critical articles, she takes the pseudonym Anton Krainy.

The main motives of Gippius's early poetry are the curses of boring reality and the glorification of the world of fantasy, the search for a new unearthly beauty (“I need something that is not in the world ...”), a dreary feeling of disunity with people and at the same time a thirst for loneliness. These poems reflected the main motifs of early symbolic poetry, its ethical and aesthetic maximalism. Genuine poetry, Gippius believed, comes down only to "the triple abyss of the world", three themes - "about man, love and death." The poetess dreamed of reconciling love and eternity, but she saw the only way to this in death, which alone can save love from everything transient. These reflections on "eternal themes" determined the tone of many of Gippius' poems.

In the first two books of stories - "New People" (1896) and "Mirrors" (1898) - Gippius was dominated by the same mood. Their main idea is the affirmation of the truth of only the intuitive beginning of life, beauty "in all its manifestations" and contradictions and lies in the name of some high truth. In the stories of these books, there is a clear influence of Dostoevsky's ideas, perceived in the spirit of a decadent worldview.

In the ideological and creative development of Gippius, the first Russian revolution played an important role, which turned her to public issues. They now begin to occupy a large place in her poems, stories, and novels.

After the revolution, collections of short stories "Black on White" (1908), "Moon Ants" (1912), the novels "Devil's Doll" (1911), "Roman Tsarevich" (1913) were published. But, speaking of the revolution, creating images of revolutionaries, Gippius argues that a true revolution in Russia is possible only in connection with a religious revolution (more precisely, as a result of it). Outside of the "revolution in spirit" social transformation is a myth, fiction, a game of the imagination, which can only be played by neurasthenic individualists. Gippius convinced readers of this by depicting post-revolutionary Russian reality in The Devil's Doll.

Having met the October Revolution with hostility, Gippius, together with Merezhkovsky, emigrated in 1920. Emigrant creativity Gippius consists of poems, memoirs, journalism. She came out with sharp attacks on Soviet Russia, prophesied her imminent fall.

Of the émigré publications, the most interesting are the book of poems The Shining (Paris, 1938), the memoirs Living Faces (Prague, 1925), very subjective and very personal, reflecting her then social and political views, and the unfinished book of memoirs about Merezhkovsky (Z Gippius-Merezhkovskaya "Dmitry Merezhkovsky", Paris, 1951). About this book, even the émigré critic G. Struve said that it requires major corrections "for the partiality and even bitterness of the memoirist."

Died September 9, 1945 in Paris; buried in the Russian cemetery in Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois near Paris.

Bio note:

Fantastic in creativity:

Zinaida Gippius was a prominent representative of the symbolism literary movement, distinguished by the creation and use of a system of symbols, in which a special mystical meaning was invested. This feature of symbolism can be traced in many poems by Z. Gippius, especially early ones. For example, the mini-cycle, consisting of the poems "To Hell" (1907), "The Hour of Victory" (1922), "Indifference" (1928), tells about three meetings of a person with a representative of the Dark Forces.

In prose, several works should be noted:

"Time" (fairy tale, 1896) - about the sad princess White Lilac, who was afraid and hated the evil old man named Time, sitting on a rock above the sea.

"Fiction (Evening Story)" (short story, 1906) - the memoirs of a man named Politov about a strange countess who paints strange pictures, next to which the breath of death was felt.

"Ivan Ivanovich and the Devil" (story, 1906) - about a man who met the devil many times and knew him by sight.

“And the Beasts” (fairy tale-parable, 1909) - about the animals who learned about the Resurrection of Christ. As soon as it became clear that after the Resurrection of Christ, all people would also be resurrected - the animals became extremely upset and offended. People will be resurrected, but nothing is known about animals. And the animals began to gather, interpret among themselves, argue and complain.

"Interstrange" (story, 1916) - about the war of neighboring kingdoms, which built two walls on the border between themselves with a wasteland in the middle, and one day they suddenly noticed long blue lights in the wasteland.

"The Unborn Girl at the Christmas Tree" (A Christmas Tale, 1938) is about an unborn Girl who learns about how fun it is at the Christmas tree. And she wanted to see this holiday. Then Christ took her by the hand, and they set off together.

The prose works of Z. Gippius were included in fabulous and mystical anthologies.

Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius is a famous Russian poetess, writer and literary critic. After reading this article, you will get acquainted with her life, as well as with creative heritage, which was left to the descendants of Zinaida Gippius.

The date of birth of the poetess is November 8, 1869. She was born in the city of Belev, Tula province. Her father is a nobleman, a Russified German, at one time he was a Russian poetess and writer Zinaida Gippius, the granddaughter of a police chief from Yekaterinburg. Gippius' education was not systematic, despite the fact that from a young age she read a lot.

Z. Gippius and D. Merezhkovsky

In 1889, Zinaida Nikolaevna married famous poet D.S. Merezhkovsky. She left Tiflis and moved with him to Petersburg. It was in this city that her debut as a poetess took place a year earlier. Zinaida Gippius lived with her husband for 52 years. Interesting biography this woman attracts connoisseurs not only of her own creativity, but also of her husband's creativity. It is not surprising, because Zinaida Gippius lived a long life with him, according to her, "not parting ... not for a single day."

"Decadent Madonna"

In the early poems of our heroine, the influence of S.Ya. Nadson. However, Zinaida Gippius quickly overcame him. Her biography is already early years marked by the creation of independent works. Participants in the literary life of the two capitals of Russia at the turn of the century considered the writer's work the personification of decadence, and she herself - "the decadent madonna." So it began to be called from 1895, when "Dedication" was published. "I love myself like God" - Zinaida Gippius liked to repeat this phrase from him. The biography of the poetess is very interesting in terms of changing masks and roles. Not only the image of the "decadent Madonna" was skillfully built by Gippius herself and introduced into the minds of connoisseurs of poetry. Zinaida Nikolaevna tried on several more roles. We invite you to get to know them.

Role reversal

Zinaida Gippius is a poetess who carefully thought out her literary and social behavior. She periodically changed roles. So, before the revolution of 1905, for about 15 years, the poetess promoted sexual liberation. At this time, Zinaida Gippius carried the "cross of sensuality". Creativity and biography of the poetess reflect her position. She wrote about her outlook on life, about the "cross of sensuality" in 1893 in her diary. After that, she became an opponent of the "teaching church". In her diary in 1901, she wrote that "there is only one sin - self-deprecation." In the period from 1901 to 1904, Gippius was the organizer of religious and philosophical meetings, which presented a program of "neo-Christianity", which corresponded to the views of her husband, Dmitry Merezhkovsky. Zinaida Gippius, whose biography testifies to the versatility of her personality, also considered herself a champion of the revolution of the spirit, which is carried out contrary to the opinion of the "herd public".

House of Muruzi, relationship with A.A. block

The Muruzi house, which was occupied by the Merezhkovskys, became an important center of the social and religious and philosophical life of St. Petersburg. His visit was obligatory for young writers and thinkers gravitating towards symbolism. The authority of Gippius in the association that had developed around Merezhkovsky was indisputable. Most of its participants believed that it was Zinaida Nikolaevna who plays the main role in any of his undertakings. However, almost everyone disliked Gippius, since the poetess was distinguished by intolerance, arrogance, and also often experimented on people. The relationship between her and A.A. Blok became a special page in the history of Russian symbolism. Blok's first publication (in the journal Novy Put) took place precisely with her assistance. But this did not prevent sharp conflicts between them in the future, which were caused by the fact that they had different attitudes to questions about the appointment of the poet and the essence of artistic creativity.

Two collections of poems

A book called "Collected Poems. 1889-1903" was published in 1904 by Zinaida Gippius. The biography of the poetess a few years later was marked by a new collection. In 1910, a second book appeared, which presented works created in the period from 1903 to 1909. The publication of 1904 was a great event in the life of Russian poetry. responding to it, he wrote that the entire 15-year history of Russian lyrical modernism is represented in the work of Zinaida Nikolaevna. The main theme of her works, according to Annensky, is "the painful swing of the pendulum in the heart." V.Ya. Bryusov, an admirer of Gippius' work, especially noted the "invincible truthfulness" with which the poetess fixes emotional states, shows the life of her "captive soul".

Abroad

In 1905, a revolution took place, which contributed to the strengthening of the mood that owned Zinaida Gippius. The Merezhkovskys decided to go abroad. Between 1906 and 1908 they were in Paris. Here the couple became close to the revolutionary emigrants, among whom was B.V. Savinkov, whom Zinaida Nikolaevna helped in his literary experiments. In 1908, the Merezhkovskys returned to their homeland. Here they participated in a certain religious and philosophical society, which included Blok, Berdyaev,

literary critic

Zinaida Gippius as a critic is known under the pseudonym Anton Krainy. In the early 1900s, she was the preacher of the program of symbolism, as well as the philosophical ideas on which this program was built. As a literary critic, Gippius often published in the journals Russian Wealth and Libra. The writer selected the best articles for the book Literary Diary, created in 1908. It should be said that Zinaida Gippius (whose brief biography and work confirm this) assessed the state of modern Russian artistic culture as a whole negatively. This situation, in her opinion, was associated with the collapse of social ideals and the crisis of the religious foundations that lived in the 19th century. Gippius believed that the vocation of the artist, which modern literature could not realize, was to directly and actively influence life, which should be "christianized", since there was no other way out of the spiritual and ideological impasse. These concepts of the poetess are aimed against the writers who belonged to the publishing house "Knowledge", led by M. Gorky, as well as against literature, which was based on the traditions of classical realism.

Reflection of the views of Gippius in literary work

The dramaturgy of the heroine of our article contains the same challenge to ideas that are based on an outdated understanding of humanism and faith in liberalism. Here it is necessary to note the "Green Ring" created in 1916. Also, this position is reflected in her stories, collected in 5 collections. In 1911, Zinaida Gippius wrote the novel The Devil's Doll, which describes the failure of beliefs in the improvement of society by peaceful means and in social progress.

Attitude to the October Revolution and its reflection in creativity

Zinaida Gippius reacted hostilely and implacably to what happened in 1917. short biography poetess of later years is closely connected with this event. The mood that dominated her was reflected in the book Gippius "The Last Poems. 1914-1918", published in 1918, as well as in the "Petersburg Diaries", which were partially published in the 1920s in emigre periodicals, and then published on English language(in 1975) and in Russian (in 1982).

Both in Gippius's diary entries of this time, and in poetry (the book "Poems. Diary 1911-1921" published in 1922), and in literary-critical articles published in the newspaper "Common Cause", the eschatological note prevails. Zinaida Nikolaevna believed that Russia was irretrievably lost. She spoke of the advent of the kingdom of Antichrist. The poetess claimed that brutality rages on the ruins of a culture that collapsed in 1917. The diaries became a chronicle of the spiritual and physical dying of the old world. Zinaida Gippius treated them as a literary genre, which has one unique feature - the ability to capture and convey "the very course of life." The letters record trifles that "disappeared from memory", according to which in the future the descendants will form a reliable picture of the events that became a tragedy in the history of the country.

Severing relations with those who accepted the revolution

Zinaida Gippius's hatred for the revolution was so strong that the poetess decided to break off relations with all those who accepted her - with Bryusov, Blok, A. Bely. In 1925, the memoir cycle "Living Faces" appeared, the basis of the internal plot of which is the history of this gap, as well as the reconstruction of the ideological clashes that led to the events of October 1917. The revolution led to the inevitable confrontation of the former allies in the literary field. This revolution itself is described by Zinaida Gippius (in defiance of Blok, who saw in it a cleansing hurricane and an explosion of the elements) as "amazing boredom" and a series of monotonous days, their "viscous suffocation." However, these weekdays were so monstrous that Zinaida Nikolaevna had a desire to "go blind and deaf." "Great madness" lies at the root of what is happening, as the poetess believed. It is all the more important, in her opinion, to maintain a "solid memory" and a "sound mind."

Creativity of the emigrant period

During the period of emigration, Gippius' creativity begins to fade. Zinaida Nikolaevna is becoming more and more convinced that the poet cannot work, being away from his homeland: "a heavy cold" reigns in his soul, she is dead, like a "killed hawk". The last metaphor is the key one in the final collection of poems "Shine", created in 1938. In it, the motives of loneliness are predominant, the poetess sees everything with the eyes of "passing by" (these words are included in the titles of important poems in the late works of Gippius, published in 1924). The poetess is trying to reconcile with the world before a close farewell to it, but these attempts are replaced by a position of intransigence with evil and violence. Bunin, speaking about the style of Zinaida Gippius, which does not recognize overt emotionality and is often based on oxymorons, called the work of the poetess "electric poetry". Reviewing The Shining, Khodasevich wrote that Gippius's "poetic soul" struggles with his "non-poetic mind" in them.

"Green Lamp"

You have already seen the organizational skills that Zinaida Gippius possessed. Biography, Interesting Facts and creativity is largely associated with her social activities, which lasted almost until the death of the poetess. On her initiative, a society called the Green Lamp was founded, which existed from 1925 to 1940. The purpose of its creation is to unite various literary circles that ended up in exile, provided that they shared the view on the vocation of national culture outside Russia, which Gippius formulated at the beginning of this circle. She believed that it was necessary to learn true freedom of speech and opinion, and this could not be done if one followed the "precepts" of the obsolete liberal-humanistic tradition. However, it should be noted that the "Green Lamp" was not free from ideological intolerance. As a result, numerous conflicts arose among its participants.

A book about Merezhkovsky written by Zinaida Gippius (biography)

We briefly reviewed the work of Zinaida Nikolaevna. It remains only to tell about her last book, which, unfortunately, remained unfinished, as well as about recent years the life of the poetess. died in 1941. Zinaida Nikolaevna experienced the death of her husband hard. After his death, she was ostracized, the reason for which is the ambiguous position she took regarding fascism.

Gippius spent the last years of her life working on her husband's biography. It was published in 1951. A significant part of the book dedicated to Dmitry Sergeevich is about his ideological evolution, as well as about the history of the activities of the Religious and Philosophical Assemblies. Zinaida Gippius died on September 9, 1945. Her poetry still lives in the hearts of many connoisseurs of her work.