43 Facts About Dmitry Merezhkovsky

Dmitry Merezhkovsky's mother Varvara Vasilyevna Merezhkovskaya was a daughter of a senior Saint Petersburg security official.

Fond of arts and literature, she was what Dmitry Merezhkovsky later remembered as the guiding light of his rather lonely childhood.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky spent his early years on the Yelagin Island in Saint Petersburg, in a palace-like cottage which served as a summer dacha for the family.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky saw this as 'moral prophylactics' for his children, regarding luxury-seeking and reckless spending as the two deadliest sins.

In 1876 Dmitry Merezhkovsky joined an elite grammar school, the St Petersburg Third Classic Gymnasium.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky became fascinated with the works of Moliere to such an extent as to form a Moliere Circle in the Gymnasium.

Much as Dmitry Merezhkovsky disliked his tight upper-lipped, stone-faced father, later he had to give him credit for being the first one to have noticed and, in his emotionless way, appreciate his first poetic exercises.

Nadson died in 1887, Varvara Vasilyevna two years later; feeling that he had lost everything he'd ever had in this world, Dmitry Merezhkovsky submerged into deep depression.

Nevertheless, Dmitry Merezhkovsky's poems remained popular, and some major Russian composers, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky among them, have set dozens of them to music.

From 1884 to 1889 Dmitry Merezhkovsky studied history and philology at the University of Saint Petersburg where his PhD thesis was on Montaigne.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky learned several foreign languages and developed strong interests in French literature, the philosophy of positivism, and the theories of John Stuart Mill and Charles Darwin.

In 1884 Dmitry Merezhkovsky joined the Saint Petersburg's Literary Society, on Aleksey Pleshcheyev's recommendation.

At the time Dmitry Merezhkovsky was seriously considering leaving the capital to settle down in some far-out country place and to become a teacher.

In early 1888 Dmitry Merezhkovsky graduated from the University and embarked upon a tour through southern Russia, starting in Odessa.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky continued in the same vein and thus invented the whole new genre of a philosophical essay as a form of critical thesis, something unheard of in Russian literature before.

Bryusov "absolutely fell in love with it," and Pyotr Pertsov years later admitted: "For my young mind Dmitry Merezhkovsky's Vera sounded so much superior to this dull and old-fashioned Pushkin".

All of a sudden Dmitry Merezhkovsky found that his debut novel was to be published in Severny Vestnik after all.

In 1907 the Meetings revived under the new moniker of The Religious-Philosophical Society, Dmitry Merezhkovsky promoting his 'Holy Ghost's Kingdom Come' ideas.

In 1909 Dmitry Merezhkovsky found himself in the center of another controversy after coming out with harsh criticism of Vekhi, the volume of political and philosophical essays written and compiled by the group of influential writers, mostly his former friends and allies, who promoted their work as a manifesto, aiming to incite the inert Russian intelligentsia into the spiritual revival.

Some argued Dmitry Merezhkovsky's stance was inconsistent with his own ideas of some five years ago.

In 1911 Dmitry Merezhkovsky was officially accused of having links with terrorists.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky viewed the October Socialist Revolution of 1917 as a catastrophe.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky saw it as the Coming of Ham he wrote about a decade later, the tragic victory for, as he choose to put it, Narod-Zver, the political and social incarnation of universal Evil, putting the whole of human civilization in danger.

In Warsaw Dmitry Merezhkovsky did practical work for some Russian immigrant organizations, Gippius edited the literary section in Svoboda newspaper.

On behalf of the Committee Dmitry Merezhkovsky issued a memorandum calling the peoples of Russia to stop fighting the Polish army and join its ranks.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky's calling for the international intervention into Russia angered the left; rejecting the restoration of the Russian monarchy antagonized the right.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky insisted upon severing all the International PEN's contacts with Communist Russia and cancelling French help for the victims of mass hunger in Russian Volga Region arguing, not unreasonably, that those in need will not ever see any of the money or food sent.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky criticised the exiled Russian Constituent Assembly's communique which was, in his opinion, too conciliatory in tone.

In November 1932 Gippius in a letter to Vera Bunina expressed her opinion that Dmitry 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.

Impressed, Dmitry Merezhkovsky started to see his new friend almost as an incarnation of Dante.

All the while Dmitry Merezhkovsky was trying to convince Mussolini that it was the latter's mission to start the "Holy War against Russia".

Dmitry Merezhkovsky tried to contact General Francisco Franco, now seeing Spain as the last anti-Communist citadel of Europe - and failed.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky had never seen Fascism as an alternative to Communism.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky thought he found a leader who'd be able to take the whole of Antichrist Kingdom upon himself, this outweighing for him such trivia as the fact that his own Joan of Arc was banned in Germany on the day of its release.

Biographer Zobnin doubts that Dmitry Merezhkovsky appeared on German radio at all, noting that none of the memoirists who mentioned it had himself heard Dmitry Merezhkovsky speaking on air.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky pronounced a lengthy tirade which rather frightened the Russian camp.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky was buried at the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois Russian Cemetery, with just several people attending the ceremony.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky's first adopted philosophical trend was the then popular positivism.

Soon, disillusioned in this idea, although never rejecting it wholly, Dmitry Merezhkovsky turned to religion.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky saw the Third Testament as a synthesis of the two original revelations: that "about Earth" and that "about Heaven".

Human history, according to Dmitry Merezhkovsky, was one ceaseless "battle of two abysses": the abyss of Flesh and the abyss of Spirit.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky has been given credit for his exceptional erudition, the scientific approach to writing, literary gift and stylistic originality.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky is a Thing that ceaselessly speaks; a jacket and trousers combination producing a torrent of noise.