Zinaida Gippius - Legacy

Legacy

Modern critics see Zinaida Gippius’ earliest work as romantically tinged and largely derivative, mentioning Nadson and Nietzche as most obvious influences. Dmitry Merezhkovky’s Causes... manifesto became for her a turning point: in several years time Gippius gained the reputation of not just Russian symbolism’s major figure but of one of Russian modernism’s ideologist. Her early prose was symbolist too, protagonists being engaged in a search of such things as ‘new beauty’, etc., but Dostoyevsky’s influence was there too, even one of her later novels, Roman Tzarevich (1912) was compared to Besy.

Gippius’ first two books of short stories, New People (1896) and Mirrors (1898) were regarded as somewhat formulaic, maintaining as they were "intuitiveness as the only way of seeing things in their true light" and examining "the nature of beauty in all of its manifestations and contradictions". Her Third Book of Short Stories (1902) marked a change of direction and caused a bit of a stir: this research on ‘metaphysics of love’, in the world of ‘spiritual twilight’ was ‘sickly idiosyncratic’ and full of ‘highbrow mysticism’, as critics saw it. Later some parallels were drawn between Gippius' early 20th century prose and Vladimir Solovyov’s Meaning of Love, both authors seeing the quest for Love as the means for soul self-fulfillment and reaching one’s higher self, rooted in Infinity.

It was not prose but poetry though, which made Gippius a major innovative force. "Gippius the poet holds very special place in the Russian literature; her poems are deeply intellectual, immaculate in form and genuinely exciting", the B&E Encyclopedia wrote in the early 1910s. Critics praised her originality, true wordsmith virtuoso ways and saw her as "true heir of Baratynsky’s muse".

Gippius’ debut book of poetry published in 1904 became a major event in Russian cultural life. Having defined the world of poetry’s three dimensional structure as ‘Love and Eternity’s meeting point in Death’ she developed her own style of ethic and aesthetic minimalism, symbolism dilemmas (like that of "suffering from alienation and longing for solitude") always being at the very core of things. Symbolist writers were, naturally first to praise her very special way of half-spokenness, ‘hint and pause’ metaphoric technique, the art of "extracting sonorous chords out of silent pianos", as Innokenty Annensky put it. It was the latter who declared this debut the peak of Russia’s 15 years of modernism and argued that "not a single man would ever be able to dress abstractions into clothes of such charm ".

Men admired Gippius' outspokenness too: of her inner conflicts, full of ‘demonic temptations’ (inevitable for the one whose mission was ‘creating one’s new, true soul’, as she saw it, Gippius spoke with unusual frankness. Bryusov and Annensky were fans: both treated Gippius’ early poems as an example of true virtuosity in poetry, rich in melodism and rhythmic undertones.

The 1906 Scarlet Sward book of short stories brought about the new turn: it was a research in ‘human soul metaphysics’ performed in the light of neo-Christianity. Viewing God and man as a single being, the author saw the act of self-denying as equaled to God-betraying sin: many chose to suspect blasphemy in this egocentric stance. Sex and death themes, investigated in obliquely impressionist manner formed the leitmotif of her next, Black on White (1908) book of prose: again, Dostoyevsky’s influences there were distinct. The 20th century also saw the rise of Gippius the playwright (Saintly Blood, 1900, Poppies Blossom, 1908), her later work Green Ring (1916), somewhat futuristic - in theme, if not in form, - was generally regarded as the strongest of all; Vsevolod Meyerhold staged it successfully in Alexandrovsky theater.

Anton Krainy, one of Gippius’ better known alter egos, was highly respected and much feared literary critic whose articles featured regularly in Novy Put, Vesy and Russkaya Mysl magazines. Gippius critical analysis, according to B&E, was incisive and full of insight, occasionally extremely harsh but rarely objective.

Gippius’ Poems. Book 2. 1903-1909 published in 1910, was in many ways the continuation of the first one, its hero(ine) looking for higher justification for lower life tribulations, unwilling to make peace with the state of things where "both happiness and the lack of it were equally unbearable". It garnered good reviews; Bunin called Gippius poetry ‘electric’, noticing the special way the oxymoron were used as an electrifying force in the hermetic non-emotional world.

Some contemporaries found Gippius’ works as characteristically non-feminine. Vladislav Khodasevich spoke of the conflict between her ‘poetic soul and non-poetic mind’. "Everything is strong and spatial in her verse, there is little room for details. Her lively, sharp thought, dressed in emotional complexity, sort of rushes out of her poems, looking for spiritual wholesomeness and ideal harmony", one critic wrote.

Gippius’ two early 1910s novels, Devil’s Doll and Roman Tzarevich, aiming to "lay bare the very roots of Russian reactionary ideas", weren’t successful: critics found them artistically helpless and totally tendentious. It was at this time that B&E wrote:

The October 1917 event led to Gippius’ severing all ties with most of those who admired her poetry: Block, Brysov, Bely. The history of this schism and the reconstruction of ideological collisions that made such catastrophe possible became the subject matter of her memoirs The Living Faces (1925). While Block (the man whom she famously refused a hand in 1918) saw the Revolution as a ‘purifying storm’, Gippius was appalled by ‘suffocating dourness’ of the whole thing, seeing it as one huge monstrosity "leaving one with just one wish: to go blind and deaf". At the base of it Gippius suspected some kind of 'monumental madness'; all the more important it was for her to keep "healthy mind and strong memory", she explained.

The title of her Last Poems (1918) book, though, was not to become prophetic. Two more: Poems. 1911-1920 Diaries (1922) and The Shining Ones (1939) were published in emigration. In her poetry, prose and essays of those years Gippius was utterly pessimistic: the rule of Beastliness on ruins of human culture and civilization’s demise were her major themes. Most valuable for Gippius were her Diaries: she saw these personal history’s flashpoints as essential for future generations to restore the true course of things. In retrospect though her heritage seems less dark and more humane. As one of the modern Russian critics put it, "Gippius works, for all of its inner dramatism and antinomy, it’s passionate, forceful longing for the unfathomable, has always... bore the ray of hope, the fiery, inexterminable belief in higher truth and ultimate harmony crowning person's destiny. As she herself wrote in one of her last poems, - 'Alas, now they are torn apart: the timelessness and all things human / But time will come and both will intertwine into one shimmering Eternity'".