Andrei Bely writes that Merezhkovsky wore shoes with pompoms, and that these pompoms epitomized the whole of Merezhkovsky’s life. Both his speech and his thought had “pompoms”.[1]
Not the most precise of descriptions, but certainly not a very kind one. Though Andrei Bely was not without “pompoms” of his own.
Alexei Remizov calls Merezhkovsky a walking coffin, and says that “Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius was all bones and springs—a complex mechanical apparatus—but it was impossible to think of her as a living human being. With stinging malice they rejected every manifestation of life.”
The complex mechanical apparatus called Zinaida Gippius was in fact a great deal more complex than “bones and springs”.
I’ve more than once had occasion to read extremely spiteful literary reminiscences about “friends”. Something along the lines of an earthly Last Judgment. A man is stripped of all his coverings and ornaments and his naked corpse is dragged out into the open to be ridiculed.
This is cruel and wrong. We must not forget how difficult it is to be a human being.
After reading memoirs like this, one writer recently said, “You know, for the first time in my life, I’ve felt terrified by the thought of dying.”
And I was reminded of a sweet lady from Petersburg who said of a friend, “There’s nothing this woman won’t stoop to if she thinks she’ll gain by it. You can take my word for it—I’m her best friend.”
Trying to describe Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius really is very difficult.
Each was one of a kind, completely out of the ordinary—the usual yardsticks did not apply to them. Their literary gifts aside—considered simply as people—each could have been the central character in a long psychological novel.
Their extraordinary, almost tragic egocentricity was understandable once one had found the key to it. This key was their utter detachment from everyone else, a detachment that seemed innate and which they had no compunctions about. Like Gogol’s Khoma Brut, who had drawn a circle around himself.[2] Neither howling demons nor the flying coffin of a dead sorceress could touch him. He felt cold and he was alone, although there was nothing but a circle separating him—and separating the Merezhkovskys—from people and life. When the Merezhkovskys felt frightened, they briskly sought the help of holy intercessors. They decorated their statuette of Saint Theresa with flowers and, with neither faith nor divine inspiration, mumbled their way through their invocations. On Dmitry Sergeyevich’s death, Zinaida Nikolaevna felt so upset with Saint Theresa for allowing this bad thing to happen that she threw a shawl over the statuette and stood it in the corner. Just like a savage who smears his deity with fat when things go well, and flogs it in the event of misfortune. That is just the way she was. And—at the same time—Zinaida Gippius was an intelligent, subtle and talented poet. An extraordinary combination. She was indeed one of a kind.
When he was told that war had been declared, Dmitry Sergeyevich observed perfectly coolly, “Ah well—but I think the trains will keep running.”
The trains would keep running—and he would be able to take himself off somewhere far, far away, so that the circle he had drawn would not be broken, so that he, Merezhkovsky, would not feel the touch of hard, wicked life; and as for what lay out there, beyond the magic circle—cold, hunger, violence and death—that would be other people’s concern, it wouldn’t touch him.
The Merezhkovskys led strange lives and were so out of touch with reality that it was positively startling to hear them come out with ordinary words like “coal”, “boiled water” and “macaroni”. The word “ink” was less startling—at least it had to do with writing and ideas… They both lived in the world of ideas, and they were unable to see or in any way understand either people or life itself. You won’t find a single real person in any of their writings. Zinaida Gippius freely acknowledged this, saying that the actors in her stories were not people but ideas.
Since I don’t intend to discuss their literary work but simply to describe the Merezhkovskys as they appeared to me, this peculiarity of theirs might seem irrelevant—but it did in fact play a crucial role in their whole approach to people and life.
All around them were scarcely perceptible shades, phantoms and spectres. These shades had names and they spoke, though what they said had no meaning. As for Merezhkovsky, he never conversed. Dialogue meant nothing to him. The Merezhkovskys never knew what any particular person felt about them, nor did they have the least wish to know. They could be attentive (Merezhkovsky could even be absurdly flattering) to someone useful, but without taking any real interest in this person or why they might want to make themselves useful to him.
As to whether they had ever felt simple human love towards someone… I doubt it.
At one time they were very good friends with Dmitry Filosofov. For a long time they formed an inseparable trio.
When a rumour went round Biarritz that Filosofov had died, I thought, “Someone is going to have to tell the Merezhkovskys.”
That day I happened to meet them on the street.
“Have you heard the sad news about Filosofov?”
“What news? Has he died?” asked Merezhkovsky.
“Yes.”
“Do they know what from?” he asked. And without waiting for an answer, he said, “Well, we must be on our way, Zina, or we’ll be late again and all the best dishes will be gone.”
“We’re having lunch at a restaurant today,” he explained.
And that was that.
In Petersburg I had only seldom come across the Merezhkovskys. We didn’t get to know one another at all well until our time in Biarritz.[3] There we saw a lot of one another and talked a great deal.
Life did not go well for the Merezhkovskys in Biarritz. It was not easy for any of us, but it must have been especially hard for them, since they took any kind of disorder in their living arrangements as a personal affront.
We refugees had been allocated the magnificent Maison Basque hotel. Each of us had a beautifully appointed room and bathroom for ten francs a day. But the Merezhkovskys were reluctant to pay even this. They considered it unjust. All their practical affairs were seen to by their secretary, Vladimir Zlobin, a touchingly steadfast friend. A talented poet himself, Zlobin had abandoned literature in order to fully devote himself to looking after the Merezhkovskys.
Money, of course, was tight, and we had to be inventive. A grand fundraising celebration was arranged for Dmitry Sergeyevich’s seventy-fifth birthday.[4]
Presided over by Countess G., the guests—some wearing German uniforms—assembled on the enormous terrace of our hotel. Merezhkovsky gave a long speech that greatly alarmed all the Russians living in the hotel. In this speech he attacked both the Bolsheviks and the Germans. He trusted that the present nightmare would soon be over, that the antichrists terrorizing Russia and the antichrists that now had France by the throat would soon be destroyed, and that the Russia of Dostoevsky would hold out a hand to the France of Pascal and Joan of Arc.
“Now the Germans will throw us out of the hotel,” the Russians whispered fearfully.
But the Germans seemed not to understand Merezhkovsky’s prophecies and they applauded genially along with everyone else. They did not throw us out of the hotel. Nevertheless, we were unable to stay there long. The hotel was to be made into an army barracks and we all had to find rooms in private apartments.
The Merezhkovskys managed to install themselves in a wonderful villa, which naturally they could not afford. Dmitry Sergeyevich was ill; it was thought he had a stomach ulcer. And Zinaida Nikolaevna was nursing him dutifully.
1
A reference to Bely’s “Memories of Blok”, published in Berlin in 1922–23. Merezhkovsky’s habit of wearing carpet slippers with pompoms is mentioned by several other memoirists.
3
In June 1940, as the German army advanced on Paris, around three quarters of the city’s population fled in panic. Many of the Russian émigrés went to Biarritz, though this too was soon under German occupation.
4
Merezhkovsky turned seventy-five on 14th August 1940. Zlobin writes in