Zinaida Gippius - Biography

Biography

Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius was born on November 20, 1869, in Belev, Tula, the oldest of four daughters. Her father, Nikolai Romanovich Gippius, was a German-Russian, whose ancestor Adolphus von Gingst, later von Hippius, came to Moscow in the 16th century. Nikolai was a renowned lawyer and a senior officer in the Russian Senate. Her mother, Anastasia Vasilevna (née Stepanova), was a daughter of the Ekaterinburg Chief of Police.

Nikolai Gippius's job required almost continuous city-to-city traveling, and his daughters received little formal education; taking lessons from governesses and visiting tutors, they attended schools sporadically in whatever city (Saratov, Tula, Kiev, etc.) the family happened to stay for a more or less substantial period of time. A major crisis struck when their beloved father died of tuberculosis at the age of 48, leaving his extensive family without much money to live on. Worse still, all four girls inherited a predisposition to the illness that killed him. Worrying most about the eldest daughter, their mother moved the family southwards, first to Yalta (where Zinaida had to undergo treatment) then in 1885 to Tiflis, closer to their uncle Alexander Stepanov's home.

By this time, Zinaida Gippius had already studied for two years at a girl's school in Kiev (1877—1878) and for a year at Moscow's Fischer gymnasium where, because of her chronically sad disposition, she was remembered as a "tiny troubled creature". It was only in Borzhomi where her uncle Alexander, a man of considerable means, had rented a dacha for her, that Zinaida started to get back to normal after the profound shock caused by her father's death. Dancing and poetry reading parties were frequent in her uncle Alexander's large house, and the girl started to enjoy herself for the first time in her life.

Zinaida began writing poetry at the age of seven. By the time she met Dmitry Merezhkovsky in 1888, she was already a published poet. "By the year 1880 I was writing verses, being so great a believer in 'inspiration' as to make a point to never take pen off paper. People around me saw these poems as a sign of me being 'spoiled', but I never tried to conceal them and, of course, I wasn't spoiled at all, what with my religious upbringing", she wrote in 1902 in a letter to Valery Bryusov. A good-looking girl, Zinaida attracted a lot of attention in Borzhomi and gained considerable experience in thwarting unwanted advances, but one of her new acquaintances, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, was of a different mould. Exceptionally well-educated, and introverted, Merezhkovsky made an instant impression on her. He turned out to be a kindred spirit: on a cerebral level the two got on like a house on fire. In fact, so overwhelming was the feeling of 'two hearts beating in unison' that the moment he proposed she accepted him without hesitation, never in her lifetime regretting what for some might have seemed a hasty decision.

On January 8, 1889, in Tiflis, Gippius and Merezhkovsky, ignoring the ceremonial part as much as they possibly could, were married, thus forming what turned out to become the most extraordinary husband and wife tandem in the history of Russian literature. They embarked on a short 'honeymoon tour' involving a stay in Crimea, then returned to Petersburg and moved into a flat in a house which was known as the Mauruzi House, which Merezhkovsky's mother had rented and furnished for them as a wedding gift.