Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Poetry of Spiritual Despair

  • Chapter
Dmitri Sergeevich Merezhkovsky and the Silver Age

  • 79 Accesses

Abstract

Merezhkovsky’s emotional make-up, as revealed by his writings, chiefly his poetry, of the eighties and early nineties is the subject of this chapter. My purpose is not to reduce Merezhkovsky to a set of neuroses, but to suggest that his own problems made him acutely sensitive to the stresses and strains of modern life. Reacting to loneliness, emotional repression, and sexual frustration he was led to criticize all existing ideas and institutions. A biographical sketch of his formative years is necessary to provide the psychological matrix in which his thought developed.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. If not for its value in indicating the seeds of Merezhkovsky’s mature ideology, we would not deal with it at all; as poetry it is not great.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Zinaida Gippius, Dmitri Merezhkovsky (Paris, 1951), p. 115.

    Google Scholar 

  3. B. Meilakh, “Simvolisty v’ 1905 gody,” Literaturnoe Nasledstvo, vol. XXVII-XXVIII, p. 189.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Evgenii Anichkov, Literaturnye obrazi i mneniia (St. Petersburg, 1904, p. 159.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Teffi, “O Merezhkovskikh,” Columbia University Archive no. 1531. (pages unnumbered).

    Google Scholar 

  6. V. V. Rozanov, “Sredi inoiazychnikhi,” Novyi Put’ 1903, no. 10 (Oct.), p. 227.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Evgenii Trubetskoi, quoted by Merezhkovsky in V tikhom omute, PSS XVI, 94.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Ibid.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Andrei Bely, Nachalo veka (Moscow, 1933), pp. 173–76, 189-90, 423-24. See also his Epopeia: Vospominaniia o Bloke (Moscow, 1922), pp. 167, 212.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Bely, Epopeia, p. 212.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Aleksandr Blok, “Merezhkovsky,” Rech, no. 30 (Jan. 31, 1909), p. 3. 12 Pertsov, p. 95. See also pp. 86-87, 218.

    Google Scholar 

  12. “Kriticheskie zamet’ki,” Mir Bozhii 1896 no. 7 (July) p. 239. This was not a journal of the left, but the tone of the criticism is similar.

    Google Scholar 

  13. D. S. Polityko, ed. A. P. Chekhov o literature i iskusstva (Minsk, 1954), p. 390; A. N. Egolin and N. S. Tikhonov eds. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem A. P. Chekhova (Moscow, 1949), XV, 144, 329, 400-401; XX, 20.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Merezhkovsky, “Avtobiograficheskiia zametki,” PSS XXIV, 107-15.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Gippius, pp. 34-36. Though not explicitly stated, it is obvious.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Merezhkovsky, “Starinnyia oktavy,” PSS XXIV, 65-72, especially, pp. 8-9, 12-14.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Ibid., p. 51. My translation of this and the poems that follow is essentially a paraphrase intended to convey the meaning and mood of the original. I have copied the line structure except where it would result in a garbled translation but have not attempted to duplicate the rhyme and meter.

    Google Scholar 

  18. lbid., pp. 15-16.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Ibid., p. 51.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Ibid., p. 16.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Temira Pachmuss, Zinaida Hippius: An Intellectual Portrait (Carbondale, 1971), p. 143.

    Google Scholar 

  22. “Starinnyia,” p. 63.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Ibid., p. 57. See also “Avtobiograficheskiia,” p. 109.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Ibid., pp.. 57-59.

    Google Scholar 

  25. This is the name of a novella written in 1897 and the theme of many works including “Vera.”

    Google Scholar 

  26. “Starinnyia,” pp. 71-72.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Merezhkovsky, Taina Trekh (Prague, 1925), pp. 363–64. Merezhkovsky also states, “the world is perishing because it has forgotten the mother. Men have ruled over women. War is a masculine affair, hence endless war.” Also, on p. 343, the “third person” in the Holy Trinity is a woman; “spirit is always in the feminine gender.”

    Google Scholar 

  28. Merezhkovsky, “Misticheskoe dvizhenie nashego veka,” Trud, 1893, no. 4 (Apr.), p. 35.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Merezhkovsky, Griadushchii Kham, PSS XIV, 166–67.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Alexander Benois, Memoirs, vol. II (London, 1960), p. 124. See also Pertsov, pp. 227-28 and Makovsky, pp. 89, 113-14.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Merezhkovsky, “Liubov-vrazhda,” PSS XXII, 173.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Merezhkovsky, “Odinochestvo v liubvi,” PSS XXII, 174-75.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Merezhkovsky, “Rabstvo liubvi,” PSS XXII, 47.

    Google Scholar 

  34. Robert Brustein, The Theatre of Revolt (Boston, 1962), p. 125. Brustein cites Norman O. Brown’s Life Against Death as his own source.

    Google Scholar 

  35. Merezhkovsky, Jesus Manifest, trans. Edward Gellibrand (London, 1935), p. 288. There are definite sado-masochist elements here as well as a type of “death-wish.”

    Google Scholar 

  36. Nietzsche speaks of the heart’s “double will,” and uses the imagery of the abyss in Thus Spoke Zarathustra in The Portable Nietzsche, W. Kaufman, ed. and trans. (New York, 1958), p. 254.

    Google Scholar 

  37. Merezhkovsky, “Odinochestvo,” PSS XXIII, 156.

    Google Scholar 

  38. Teffi.

    Google Scholar 

  39. Bely, Nachalo, p. 434. Bely may have been in love with her.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Merezhkovsky, “Tish i mrak,” PSS XXII, 13; “Kogda bezmol’nyia svetila,” Ibid., p. 20; “Nirvana,” Ibid., p. 182; “Chto ty mozhesh’,” Ibid., p. 179; “Dvoinaia bezdna,” Ibid., p. 190. These poems were written over a twelve year span indicating an underlying constancy of mood despite changes in philosophy.

    Google Scholar 

  41. Merezhkovsky, “Seryi den’,” Ibid., p. 38; “Goluboe nebo,” Ibid., p. 172. Baudelaire’s “The Stranger,” is in Paris Spleen (New York, 1970), p. 1.

    Google Scholar 

  42. Merezhkovsky, “Solntse,” PSS XXII, 62. The theme is the Aztec rite of human sacrifice.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Merezhkovsky, “Poroi kak obraz Prometeiia,” Ibid., p. 10.

    Google Scholar 

  44. Merezhkovsky, “Naprasno ya khotel’,” Ibid., p. 12. See also, “I khochu no ne v silakh liubit ya liudei,” Ibid., p. 11.

    Google Scholar 

  45. Merezhkovsky, Jesus The Unknown, p. 371.

    Google Scholar 

  46. Merezhkovsky, Vechnye Sputniki (PSS XVII, XVIII), XVII, 28.

    Google Scholar 

  47. Ibid., p. 44.

    Google Scholar 

  48. Ibid., p. 116.

    Google Scholar 

  49. Berdyaev, p. 149.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1975 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Rosenthal, B.G. (1975). The Poetry of Spiritual Despair. In: Dmitri Sergeevich Merezhkovsky and the Silver Age. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9036-7_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9036-7_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-011-8353-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-9036-7

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation