Zinaida Gippius

Zinaida Gippius was born on , in Belyov, Tula Governorate, the eldest of four sisters. Her father, Nikolai Romanovich Gippius, a respected lawyer and a senior officer in the Russian Senate, was a Russian of German descent. His ancestors, who originally spelled their name Hippius, emigrated to Russia in the 16th century. Her mother, Anastasia Vasilyevna (), was the daughter of the Yekaterinburg chief of police. Nikolai Gippius's job entailed constant traveling, and because of this his daughters received little formal education. Taking lessons from governesses and visiting tutors, they attended schools sporadically in whatever city the family happened to stay for a significant period of time (Saratov, Tula and Kiev, among others). At the age of 48, Nikolai Gippius died of tuberculosis, and Anastasia Vasilyevna, knowing that all of her girls had inherited a predisposition to the illness that killed him, moved the family southwards, first to Yalta (where Zinaida had medical treatment) then in 1885 to Tiflis, closer to their uncle Alexander Stepanov's home. By this time, Zinaida had already studied for two years at a girls' school in Kiev (1877—1878) and for a year at the Moscow Fischer Gymnasium. Zinaida started writing poetry at the age of seven. By the time she met Dmitry Merezhkovsky in 1888, she was already a published poet. "By the year 1880 I was writing verses, being a great believer in 'inspiration', and making it a point never to take my pen away from paper. People around me saw these poems as a sign of my being 'spoiled', but I never tried to conceal them and, of course, I wasn't spoiled at all, what with my religious upbringing," she wrote in 1902 in a letter to Valery Bryusov. A good-looking girl, Zinaida attracted a lot of attention in Borzhomi, but Merezhkovsky, a well-educated introvert, impressed her first and foremost as a perfect kindred spirit. Once he proposed, she accepted him without hesitation, and never came to regret what might have seemed a hasty decision. In October 1903, the Collection of Poems. 1889–1903, Gippius's first book of poetry, came out; Innokenty Annensky later called the book the "quintessence of fifteen years of Russian modernism." Valery Bryusov was greatly impressed too, praising the "insurmountable frankness with which she document[ed] the emotional progress of her enslaved soul." Gippius was the driving force behind the Meetings, as well as the magazine Novy Put (1903–04), launched initially as a vehicle for the former. By the time Novy Put folded (due to a conflict caused by the newcomer Sergei Bulgakov's refusal to publish her essay on Alexander Blok), Gippius (as Anton Krainy) had become a prominent literary critic, contributing mostly to Vesy ('Scales'). 1905–1917 The 1905 Revolution had a profound impact on Gippius. During the next decade the Merezhkovskys were harsh critics of Tsarism, radical revolutionaries like Boris Savinkov now entering their narrow circle of close friends. In February 1906 the couple left for France to spend more than two years in what they saw as self-imposed exile, trying to introduce Western intellectuals to their 'new religious consciousness'. In 1906 Gippius published the collection of short stories Scarlet Sword (), and in 1908 the play Poppie Blossom () came out, with Merezhkovsky and Filosofov credited as co-authors. In Paris Gippius concentrated on making appointments, sorting out mail, negotiating contracts and receiving guests. The Merezhkovsky's talks, as Nina Berberova remembered, always revolved around two major themes: Russia and freedom. Backing Merezhkovsky in his anti-Bolshevik crusade, she was deeply pessimistic as regards what her husband referred to as his 'mission'. "Our slavery is so unheard of and our revelations are so outlandish that for a free man it is difficult to understand what we are talking about," she conceded. Encouraged by the success of Merezhkovsky's Da Vinci series of lectures and Benito Mussolini's benevolence, in 1933 the couple moved to Italy where they stayed for about three years, visiting Paris only occasionally. With the Socialist movement rising there and anti-Russian emigration feelings spurred by President Paul Doumer's murder in 1932, France felt like a hostile place to them. Living in exile was very hard for Gippius psychologically. As one biographer put it, "her metaphysically grandiose personality, with its spiritual and intellectual overload, was out of place in what she herself saw as a 'soullessly pragmatic' period in European history." Regardless of whether or not the 1944 text of Merezhkovsky's allegedly pro-Hitler "Radio speech" was indeed a prefabricated montage (as his biographer Zobnin asserted), there was little doubt that the couple, having become too close to (and financially dependent on) the Germans in Paris, had lost respect and credibility as far as their compatriots were concerned, many of whom expressed outright hatred toward them. His death came as a heavy blow to Gippius, and she began to contemplate suicide. With her secretary Vladimir Zlobin still around, though, Gippius resorted to writing what she hoped would some day gel into the comprehensive life story of her late husband. As Teffi remembered, In March 1944, Gippius began to complain of a feeling of paralysis and in the right side of her body. A physician was called, who diagnosed her with sclerosis; this fact was kept hidden from Gippius. In March of 1945, her condition worsened; by August, she experienced difficulties in speaking. Gippius died on 9 September 1945, at 3:33 PM. Her last written words were: "Low is my price.... And wise is God." She was interred in Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois Russian Cemetery with her husband. A small group of people attended the ceremony, among them Ivan Bunin. ==Legacy==