Dmitry Merezhkovsky by Z. Hippius-MerezhkovskayaReview by: Georgette DonchinThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 31, No. 77 (Jun., 1953), pp. 592-594Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4204489 .

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592 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Dmitry Merezhkovsky. By Z. Hippius-Merezhkovskaya. YMCA-Press, Paris,

I951- 3?8 Pages-

D. S. Merezhkovsky's personality has always eluded all those who have

attempted to portray him. The fairly numerous articles, essays and reminiscences which mention him have occasionally succeeded in placing his work and thought into proper perspective, but in depicting Merezh?

kovsky the writer, Merezhkovsky the man has always remained an indefi? nite quantity, an inwardly frozen lay figure devoid of the human touch. Those who met Merezhkovsky did not seem to be impressed by the man, who appeared somehow insignificant and disappointing even to those who admired his work profoundly. They were invariably impressed however by the Merezhkovsky household, by the 'magical atmosphere' around them,

by 'their intense awareness of ideas and by a complete absence in them of the commonplace' (N. Berdyayev, Dream and Reality, London, 1950, p. 147), although the couple were 'hated almost by everybody for one reason or another' (Blok to his father, 28 March 1905). Merezhkovsky by himself never came to life, but he and his wife together were considered a land? mark in the literary circles of St Petersburg.

There could therefore be no more appropriate biographer of Merezh?

kovsky than his wife, Zinaida Hippius, the only person perhaps who knew the writer intimately and who for fifty-two years shared all the vicissitudes and thoughts of her husband, herself being the real magnet of the Merezh?

kovsky household. The woman whom Bely considered to stand 'twenty- five heads above' her husband and to have sacrificed 'her life, her talent and her leisure to run the household of an "all-European" name' (Nachalo veka, 1933, p. 434)5 the brain behind many of Merezhkovsky's ideas, undertook once more to fulfil her marital duty and, two years after his death in 1941, started to write her reminiscences of him, although the idea of doing so and necessarily speaking about herself seemed repugnant to her (p. 5). Zinaida Hippius, we are told, did not intend to write a full- size biography of her husband (p. 11), nor did she seek to write general memoirs; she simply wanted to write about Merezhkovsky's life as it had

passed before her eyes (p. 79). This formula gives her an entirely free hand, but her book suffers from a lack of cohesion and a constant shifting of

emphasis. Now and again she tries to be consistent and orders her facts and

events, but her effort to keep to her subject while actually not doing so often disturbs the reader. Her narrative is much better when she forgets the professed object of her book and, stirred by some memory, launches into her vague yet characteristic impressions, biased more often than not, but full of shrewd observations.

The first thirty-odd pages belong probably to the best ever written by Zinaida Hippius. She actually succeeds in bringing Dmitry Merezh?

kovsky to life, unexpectedly, as a young man of twenty-three years, who had just graduated at the University and published his first book of verse, and who appeared so superior, serious and cosmopolitan?a 'real' writer?to the provincial youths of the summer resort where he met his

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reviews 593

future wife. During the days of courtship and the couple's first quarrels (Zinaida Hippius told him that his poems were worse than Nadson's) Merezhkovsky appears to us for the first time as a human being, both

body and soul. But this does not last long. After the first months of married

life, the figure of Merezhkovsky recedes into the background, and though his ideas are sometimes reverently recorded, they are entirely divorced from his own person, and we wonder to what extent one's trend of thought may appear impersonal and purely theoretical. If the development of

Merezhkovsky's thought were consistently followed and some light thrown on his works, this would be a compensation for his wife's ultimate failure to draw his full portrait. But in this respect too Dmitry Merezhkovsky proves unsatisfying. Zinaida Hippius neglects almost entirely the critical

aspect of her husband's work, though she mentions in passing that he was in a sense a reformer of Russian literary criticism (p. 69). She insists however on the fact that he was a religious writer (p. 40) and stresses his interest in all religions, noting at the same time the lack of religious upbringing in his life (p. 41). Zinaida Hippius denies that her own con? ventional and rather childish faith could have influenced him (p. 42) and dates his turn to Christianity from Tulian Otstupnik (p. 60), implying that his inner transformation was due to the loss of a beloved mother (p. 42). Incidentally, her aside that Merezhkovsky's love had been centred in his mother and that he never had a real friend (p. 43) may explain his isola? tion and the inability of other people to pierce his outer core and reach the man himself. Zinaida Hippius is aware that her husband's isolation was due to his aloofness and inborn tendency to retire into his shell (p. 115). On the other hand he was always engaged in something 'above himself and would never speak about his own person or bother to listen to others. And Zinaida Hippius who, in contrast, displayed a profound under?

standing of others (blended with a capacity for inflicting pain on them, according to Berdyayev), had often to play the role of intermediary between him and other people. She claims that she alone knew all the good qualities of her husband, though even she could but rarely penetrate into the depths of his soul (p. 117).

Zinaida Hippius confirms what has often been said, namely that many ideas of Merezhkovsky's had originally emanated from her. Yet, she

modestly adds, he would accept an idea of hers immediately, merely because it was in reality his own and she had only sensed it before him. Her role would end after the first formulation, chiefly because in his interpreta? tion the idea took on more body and also because, especially in her younger days, she was incapable of supporting it by argument (pp. 42-3). This kind of cooperation proved successful however, and in later years Zinaida

Hippius often wrote articles in the name of her husband (pp. 170 and 187). She does not seem to resent this role in the least, and though she realised her own capabilities, her respect for her husband (based mainly, it would

appear, on her profound admiration for Merezhkovsky's erudition and 'the complete absence of laziness' in him, pp. 61-2) does not suffer by any comparison. And despite Zinaida Hippius' notoriously malicious tongue, we cannot but feel more sympathy for her than for her husband. The whole

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594 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

book gives us more insight into the author's character than into that of its

subject. Zinaida Hippius devotes more space to her memoirs of the epoch than

students of Merezhkovsky might have wished. But she is aware that she and her husband lived through interesting times and she wants to record 'the air Merezhovsky breathed' (p. 239). Thus we are told in thirty pages about the Religio-Philosophical Society which was to serve as a common

platform for the clergy and the intelligentsia, and at great length about

many different Russian and French circles in Paris before the first world

war, as well as about Poland of the 1920's. Pages devoted to the last con? tain some of Zinaida Hippius' most vitriolic indictments of the bolshevik

regime, coupled with savage attacks against England and Europe in

general. One regrets the comparatively few details given on the literary scene of St Petersburg at the beginning of the century and the unavoidable sketchiness of her reminiscences of Paris after 1920.

Such reminiscences as the author chooses to impart are naturally not devoid of interest; their historical value however is not always uniform.

Firstly, her facts are often inaccurate (cf. the editor's corrections on pp. 9, 63, 230) and her memory cannot be relied upon except on the occasions when she is able to make use of old notebooks. Secondly, as in all her critical essays and especially in her memoirs, Zhivyye litsa, she writes

occasionally with most unpleasant and often unjustified venom. But in

spite of these shortcomings, Dmitry Merezhkovsky is of great interest and is

probably one of the last of the series of memoirs which help us to understand the characteristic Russian atmosphere at the turn of the century.

London Georgette Donchin

Summary Notices

Pussy s Water Mill. By Karlis Skalbe. Translated from the Latvian by W. K. Matthews. M. Goppers, Stockholm, 1952. 70 pages. Illustrations by V. Krastins, notes, essay-afterpiece, and colophon.

Only the remoteness of his country and the unfamiliarity of his mother

tongue can explain the lack of world recognition that would inevitably have come long since to Karlis Skalbe, 'the Hans Andersen of Latvia'. He is one of the greatest of all tellers of fairy-tales, and Professor Matthews has done well by the English-speaking world in making one of his little stories available in our tongue.

Skalbe was born the son of a blacksmith in Vecpiebalga, Southern

Livonia, on 7 November 1879. From 1906 to 19io he lived in exile in Fin? land and Scandinavia, avoiding the fury of the tsarist secret police against his Latvian spirit of independence. Growing homesick, he returned to Latvia in 1910, was arrested by the Russians, and spent several months in

prison. It was during this incarceration that he wrote Pussy's Water Mill. The first world war saw him a war correspondent and a rifleman. With the emergence of the free Latvian Republic he became a member of

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