Gippius, Zinaida Nikolayevna

▪ Russian poet

Gippius also spelled  Hippius  

born Nov. 20 [Nov. 8, Old Style], 1869, Belyov, Russia

died Sept. 9, 1945, Paris, Fr.

      Russian Symbolist poet who wrote in a metaphysical vein.

      The wife of the poet and novelist Dmitry Merezhkovsky (Merezhkovsky, Dmitry Sergeyevich), who was a leader among the Symbolists of the early 1900s, Gippius made her own place in Russian literature. In addition to her poetry, she wrote plays, novels, short stories, and critical and political essays.

      During the Revolution of 1905, Gippius and her husband became zealous revolutionaries, and she wrote much political verse. With the failure of the revolution, the couple emigrated to Paris; they returned to Russia before the outbreak of World War I but took a vehemently anti-Bolshevik attitude. In late 1919 they left the Soviet Union, traveling first to Poland and working for a while with counterrevolutionaries, then settling in Paris. Gippius continued to write and produced some very bitter, angry works against the Bolsheviks. She held that matter was more significant than manner, but her later works were so subjective and capricious that they were noted more for their form than for their content.

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