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Abstract:

The article offers three textual fragments of the hitherto unpublished letters by the well-known Russian symbolist poet, literary historian, and translator Ellis (Lev Kobylinskii) to the book illustrator Nikolay Zaretskii. The commented texts demonstrate in detail Ellis’ autobiographic perspective insights into the atmosphere of his early literary interests supported by his father, the prominent Moscow pedagogue Lev Polivanov, mostly related to Pushkin, but also involving several persons from Ellis’ circle who were the alumni of Polivanov’s renowned gymnasium, notably Valery Briusov, Andrey Bely and Sergey Soloviev. It points out the difference between the presentation of Ellis’ father in a Russian professional context and less specified biographical mentions intended for Ellis’ German-speaking correspondents. The information obtained from the epistolographic sources presented in this paper reveals further aspects of Ellis’ attitudes to the traumatic theme of his provenance as an illegitimate child.

Keywords: Ellis (Lev Kobylinskii), Lev Polivanov, Andrey Bely, Nikolay Zaretskii, Fedor Dostoevskii, autobiography, Russian symbolism.