Dmitry Merezhkovsky

• 1. Childhood Shadows And Early Poetry

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  Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky was born on the 1st of August 1865 in Saint Petersburg, the sixth son in a family that included five brothers and three sisters. His father, Sergey Ivanovich Merezhkovsky, served as a senior official in several Russian local governors' cabinets before entering Emperor Alexander II's court office as a Privy Councillor. The family spent their early years on Yelagin Island in a palace-like cottage that served as a summer dacha for them. In the city, they occupied an old house facing the Summer Gardens near the Neva River. An old German housekeeper named Amalia Khristianovna spent much time with the children, amusing them with Russian fairytales and Biblical stories. It was her recounting of saints' lives that helped Dmitry develop fervent religious feelings in his early teens. He later remembered his mother Varvara Vasilyevna as a woman of rare beauty and angelic nature who became the guiding light of his rather lonely childhood. At thirteen, Dmitry started writing poetry in the vein of Pushkin's Bakhchisarai Fountain. He became fascinated with the works of Molière to such an extent that he formed a Molière Circle within the Gymnasium. This group aroused the interest of the secret police, and each member was summoned one by one to the Third Department's headquarters by the Politzeisky Bridge to be questioned. Only his father's efforts prevented him from being expelled from the school.

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• 2. The Birth Of A Symbolist Movement

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  In October 1892, Merezhkovsky delivered a lecture titled The Causes of the Decline of the Contemporary Russian Literature and the New Trends in it. This public reading marked the beginning of what would soon become the Symbolist movement in Russia. Often called the first manifesto of Russian Symbolism, the essay argued that all three streaks of Modern art could be traced back to the works of Lev Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. The general reaction to this lecture was mostly negative, with liberals condemning his ideas as new obscurantism while members of posh literary salons treated his revelations with scorn. Only one small group of people greeted The Causes unanimously, and that was the staff of Severny Vestnik which welcomed him back. In 1895, his novel The Death of the Gods opened the Christ & Antichrist trilogy and is regarded retrospectively as the first Russian symbolist novel. Sceptics prevailed, most denouncing the author's alleged Nietzscheanity, but allies were ecstatic. Bryusov marveled at the work calling it a novel made for eternity. Five years later Julian the Apostate was published in France and translated by Zinaida Vasilyeva. By 1896, Merezhkovsky was rated as a well-known poet by the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary.

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• 3. The Third Testament And Religious Chaos

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  In the early 1900s, the Merezhkovskys formed a group called the Religious-Philosophical Meetings based on the concept of the New Church suggested by Gippius. This supposed alternative to the old Orthodox doctrine claimed to provide a tribune for open discussion of questions concerning religious and cultural problems. They promoted neo-Christianity, social organization, and whatever served perfecting human nature. After the 22nd session in April 1903, the Meetings were cancelled by the procurator of the Holy Synod Konstantin Pobedonostsev due to Merezhkovsky's frequent visits to places of mass sectarian settlements. The couple then created their own domestic church involving miriskusniks. Of these, only Filosofov took the idea seriously and became the third member of the so-called Troyebratstvo or Brotherhood of Three. This loosely followed the Holy Trinity format and had to do with the obscure 12th century idea of the Third Testament. Merezhkovsky developed it into the Church of the Holy Ghost destined to succeed older churches first of the Father and then of the Son. Services at Troyebratstvo with traditional Russian Orthodox elements organized into bizarre rituals were seen by many as blasphemy and divided the St. Petersburg intellectual elite.

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• 4. Flight From Revolution And Exile

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  Merezhkovsky viewed the October Socialist Revolution of 1917 as a catastrophe he called the Coming of Ham. He saw it as the tragic victory for what he chose to put it as Narod-Zver or The Beast-nation putting the whole of human civilization in danger. In 1919 having sold everything including dishes and extra clothes, the Merezhkovskys started collaborating with Maxim Gorky's new organization receiving a salary and food rations. They left Petrograd on the 14th of December 1919 along with Filosofov and Zlobin obtaining from Anatoly Lunacharsky signed permission to leave for reading lectures on Ancient Egypt to Red Army fighters. In Warsaw, Boris Savinkov arrived to have talks with Józef Piłsudski and engaged Merezhkovsky and Filosofov in activities of the so-called Russian Evacuation committee. On behalf of the Committee, Merezhkovsky issued a memorandum calling peoples of Russia to stop fighting the Polish army and join its ranks. The whole thing flopped though as Poland and Russia reached an armistice agreement. They eventually left for France where Merezhkovsky founded the Religious Union later known as Soyuz Neprimirimykh or the Union of the Unpacified.

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• 5. The Nobel Prize And Fascist Alliances

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  From 1930 onwards Sigurd Agrell professor of Slavic languages in Lund University started methodically nominating Merezhkovsky for the Nobel Prize although invariably in tandem with Ivan Bunin. In November 1932 Gippius expressed her opinion that Merezhkovsky had no chance of winning because of his anti-Communist stance but the truth was Bunin wrote books that were more accessible and generally popular. He won the Prize in 1933. Agrell continued nominating Merezhkovsky up until his own death in 1937 making eight such nominations in all. Each year the latter's chances were getting slimmer. Although never a Russian nationalist, Merezhkovsky 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 he thought he found his hero in Benito Mussolini who sponsored his book on Dante. Later he tried to contact General Francisco Franco now seeing Spain as the last anti-Communist citadel of Europe and failed. Thus his choice of new European heroes narrowed down to Adolf Hitler. The danger of the Fuhrer's possible subjugation of Europe was still the lesser evil for him compared to possible Communist expansion.

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• 6. The Final Years And Death

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  On the 27th of June 1940 the German Wehrmacht occupied Biarritz where the couple spent the next three months communicating mainly with French and English military officers. Here in a hotel on August 14 the writer's 75th anniversary celebration was held organized by a group of French writers. It was there that Merezhkovsky made comments which according to biographer Yuri Zobnin were later presented by some memoirists as his infamous German radio speech. In the autumn of 1941 he found himself in the center of his German admirers students mostly but army officers too. On December 6 husband and wife returned from one of their regular walks and spent the evening arguing about the 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. He was sitting unconscious next to a cold fireplace. The doctor arrived in 15 minutes' time and diagnosed brain hemorrhage. In half an hour Merezhkovsky was pronounced dead on the 9th of December 1941.

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