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Whatever sentence will bear to be read twice, we may be sure was thought twice. - Henry David Thoreau
Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky (1866-1941)
Dmitry was born into the family of a court official. From 1884 to 1889 he studied History and Philology at Moscow University and St. Petersburg University. In 1888, he met 18 year old Z.N. Gippius, who became his wife.
Merezhkovsky is one of the founding fathers of Symbolism in Russian literature. He published "Symbolism, Poems" in 1892, and "The Reasons for Decline of Modern Russian Literature: Essays" in 1893. He was the author of a large number of spiritual-religious writings and literary criticism. He published "Eternal Companions. Portraits from Worldwide Literature" in 1897, "Tolstoy and Dostoevsky," volumes 1 and 2 from 1901 to 1902, "Gogol and the Devil" in 1906, the collection of articles "Gradushchy Kham" in 1906, "Not Peace, but the Sword. To Future Critics of Christianity" in 1908, "Sick Russia" in 1910, etc. He also put out a few collections of poetry including "Poetic Collection. 1883-1903" in 1904, and "Poetic Collection. 1883-1910" in 1910. He put out translations of tragedies written by Euripides and Sophocles, Longus' novel "Dafnis and Chloe", Goethe, Edgar Allen Po, and others.
Merezhkovsky asserted himself as a prosaic with his trilogy "Christ and the Antichrist", written from 1895 to 1905. Merezhkovsky's second trilogy, made up of one drama and two novels, was entirely devoted to Russia. It consisted of "Pavel I", in 1908, "Alexander I" in 1913, and "December 14th", in 1918. The works of Merezhkovsky's latter years were written in the form of artistic-philosophical prose. He wrote "Napoleon" in 1929, "Secret of the West: Atlantis-Europe" in 1931, and "Dante" in 1939.
Merezhkovsky emigrated in 1920 and stayed abroad until his death in 1941.
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