About ex.editors:
Oleg A. Korostelev (1959–2020), PhD in Philology, А.М. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 а, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1588-717X
Monika L. Spivak, DSc in Philology, Head of the Department of Literary Heritage, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia
Acknowledgments:
The publication is carried out with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research under the project No. 21-112-00027.
Abstract:
Zinaida Gippius’s letters are a unique aesthetic phenomenon not only in Russian epistolary culture, but in the culture of the late 19th – first half of the 20th centuries in general. Gippius belonged to a generation of writers who loved (and knew how) to write letters, brilliantly mastering the tradition of the epistolary genre. According to authoritative critics, for example G.V. Adamovich, Z.N. Gippius’s letters are the best she has written, the most valuable part of her creative heritage. Despite the fact that quite a few letters have already been published, each subsequent publication reveals new facets of Gippius’s talent and personality as a writer, literary critic, memoirist, original thinker, leader of the Russian religious movement, commentator on contemporary politics. Among the Z.N. Gippius’s addressees presented in this volume are Andrei Bely, Vyach. Ivanov and A.I. Tinyakov, A.M. Remizov, S.P. Remizova-Dovgello, V.A. Zlobin, E.F. Hollerbach, G.V. Adamovich, S.P. Melgunov. The appendices and comments to publications include letters from contemporaries – participants in the literary life of the 1900–1940s. in Russia and abroad.
The volume contains materials from the following archives: Scientific Research Manuscript Department of the Russian State Library (Moscow), Manuscript Department of the Russian National Library (Saint Petersburg), Department of Manuscript Collections of the V.I. Dahl State Museum for History of Russian Literature (Moscow), Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (Moscow), Manuscript Department and Literary Museum of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the RAS (Saint Petersburg), Amherst Center for Russian Culture (Amherst, Mass.)