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Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius
(1869 - 1945) Russia

Zinaida Gippius

Poet

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Her surname is also spelled Hippius. Born in Belev, Russia, her St. Petersburg salon was a meeting place (1905-17) for young poets of the symbolist movement. Self-educated, she wrote Dostoyevskian novels, morbid and mystical poetry, and essays. Her best-known poetry appeared in Sobraniye stikhov (1904-10). With her husband, the philosopher and writer D. S. Merezhkovsky, she fled Russia in December 1919, after the Bolshevik Revolution. They lived in Poland until October 1920, then moved to Paris.

Zinaida GippiusZinaida Gippius was a prolific poet, fiction writer, playwright, essayist, memoirist, and critic. Gippius wrote many critical essays on literature, religion, and political issues. They were published in leading Moscow and St. Petersburg literary journals and newspapers under various pseudonyms including Anton Krajny and Roman Arensky.

Gippius put out several volumes of poetic compilations. In 1904, she published one compilation containing all her poetry from 1889 to 1904, and in 1910 she published another compilation containing all her poetry from 1903 to 1909.

Six books of short stories and two novels comprise the whole of Gippius' artistic prose. The novel The Bitter End was published in 1911, and the novel Roman-Tsarevich was published in 1912. Gippius also defended Symbolist ideas as a critic in Literary Journal in 1908. This was written under the pseudonym Anton Krainy.

These were followed by Last Verses, published in 1918, Verses, published in 1922, and Radiance, published in 1938. She worked on a two volume book of her own recollections entitled Living Persons, which was published in 1925. The book Dmitri Merezhkovsky occupies a special place in Gippius' literary legacy.

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