A Difficult Soul

guide the Symbolist movement which dominated Russian literature for the first third of the twentieth century. A major poet, important playwright, and influential literary critic, she was also a sexual rebel who rejected traditional male/female roles as early as the 1890s.

 

Vladimir Zlobin, her secretary and factotum from the time of her emigration to Paris after the revolution until her death in 1945, exposes the consequential inner workings of the literary circle around Gippius. His account of her three most important personal involvements--with her husband, the novelist and critic Dmitry Merezhkovsky; with the unattainable love of her life, the critic Dmitry Filosofov; and with the Devil, with whom she believed herself in personal contact--facilitates the task of understanding this truly "difficult soul." Himself a poet, Zlobin also offeres a detailed commentary on her poetry, and persuasively connects it to her personal and mystical experiences.

 

In Karlinsky's perceptive introduction, Gippius emerges not only as one of the principals in the Modernist renascence of Russian poetry between 1890 and 1930, but as a figure of considerable historical interest, whose views, life, and work stand in significant relation to the major social, sexual, religious, and political currents of her time.

 

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.