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Fyodor Sologub Ronald Wilks Biography & Facts

Fyodor Sologub (Russian: Фёдор Сологу́б, born Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov, Russian: Фёдор Кузьми́ч Тете́рников, also known as Theodor Sologub; 1 March [O.S. 17 February] 1863 – 5 December 1927) was a Russian Symbolist poet, novelist, translator, playwright and essayist. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of European fin de siècle literature and philosophy into Russian prose. Early life Sologub was born in St. Petersburg into the family of a poor tailor, Kuzma Afanasyevich Teternikov, who had been a serf in Poltava guberniya, the illegitimate son of a local landowner. When his father died of tuberculosis in 1867, his illiterate mother. Tatiana Semyonovna Teternikova, was forced to become a servant in the home of the aristocratic Agapov family, where Sologub and his younger sister Olga grew up. The family took an interest in the education of young Fyodor, sending him to a pedagogical institution where Sologub was a model student. Seeing how difficult his mother's life was, Sologub was determined to rescue her from it, and after graduating from the St. Petersburg Teachers' Institute in 1882 he took his mother and sister with him to his first teaching post in Kresttsy, where he began his literary career with the 1884 publication in a children's magazine of his poem "The Fox and the Hedgehog" under the name Te-rnikov. Sologub continued writing as he relocated to new jobs in Velikiye Luki (1885) and Vytegra (1889), but felt that he was completely isolated from the literary world and longed to be able to live in the capital again; nevertheless, his decade-long experience with the "frightful world" of backwoods provincial life served him well when he came to write The Petty Demon. (He said later that in writing the novel he had softened the facts: "things happened that no one would believe if I were to describe them.") He felt sympathetic toward the writers associated with the journal Severnyi vestnik (Northern Herald), including Nikolai Minsky, Zinaida Gippius, and Dmitry Merezhkovsky, who were beginning to create what would be known as the Symbolist movement, and in 1891 he visited Petersburg hoping to see Minsky and Merezhkovsky, but met only the first. Early literary career In 1892 he was finally able to relocate to the capital, where he got a job teaching mathematics, started writing what would become his most famous novel, The Petty Demon, and began frequenting the offices of Severny Vestnik, which published much of his writing during the next five years. There, in 1893, Minsky, who thought Teternikov was an unpoetic name, suggested that he use a pseudonym, and the aristocratic name Sollogub was decided on, but one of the ls was omitted as an attempt (unavailing, as it turned out) to avoid confusion with Count Vladimir Sollogub. In 1894 his first short story, "Ninochkina oshibka" (Ninochka's Mistake), was published in Illustrirovanny Mir, and in the autumn of that year his mother died. In 1896 he published his first three books: a book of poems, a collection of short stories, and his first novel, Tyazhelye sny (Bad Dreams), which he had begun in 1883 and which is considered one of the first decadent Russian novels. In April 1897 he ended his association with Severny Vestnik and, along with Merezhkovsky and Gippius, began writing for the journal Sever (North). The next year his first series of fairy tales was published. In 1899 he was appointed principal of the Andreevskoe municipal school and relocated to their premises on Vasilievsky Island; he also became a member of the St. Petersburg District School Council. He continued to publish books of poetry, and in 1902 he finished The Petty Demon, which was published partially in serial form in 1905 (in Voprosy zhizni, which was terminated before the final installments). At this time his "Sundays," a literary group that met at his home, attracted poets, artists, and actors, including Alexander Blok, Mikhail Kuzmin, Alexei Remizov, Sergei Gorodetsky, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Léon Bakst, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and Sergei Auslender. Teffi wrote of him at this period: His face was pale, long, without eyebrows; by his nose was a large wart; a thin reddish beard seemed to pull away from his thin cheeks; dull, half-closed eyes. His face was always tired, always bored... Sometimes when he was a guest at someone's table he would close his eyes and remain like that for several minutes, as if he had forgotten to open them. He never laughed... Sologub lived on Vasilievsky Island in the small official apartment of a municipal school where he was a teacher and inspector. He lived with his sister, a flat-chested, consumptive old maid. She was quiet and shy; she adored her brother and was a little afraid of him, and spoke of him only in a whisper. He said in a poem: "We were holiday children, My sister and I"; they were very poor, those holiday children, dreaming that someone would give them "even motley-colored shells from a brook." Sadly and dully they dragged out the difficult days of their youth. The consumptive sister, not having received her share of motley shells, was already burning out. He himself was exhausted by his boring teaching job; he wrote in snatches by night, always tired from the boyish noise of his students... So Sologub lived in his little official apartment with little icon lamps, serving his guests mint cakes, ruddy rolls, pastila, and honey cakes, for which his sister went across the river somewhere on a horsecar. She told us privately, "I'd love to ride on the outside of the horsecar sometime, but my brother won't let me. He says it's unseemly for a lady."... Those evenings in the little apartment, when his close literary friends gathered, were very interesting. Fame and marriage At the time of the 1905 Revolution his politically critical skazochki ("little tales") were very popular and were collected into a book, Politicheskie skazochki (1906). The Petty Demon was published in a standalone edition in 1907 and quickly became popular, having ten printings during the author's lifetime. Sologub's next major prose work, A Created Legend (1905–1913) (literally "the legend in the making," a trilogy consisting of Drops of Blood, Queen Ortruda, and Smoke and Ash), had many of the same characteristics but presented a considerably more positive and hopeful description of the world. "It begins with the famous declaration that although life is 'vulgar . . . stagnant in darkness, dull and ordinary,' the poet 'creates from it a sweet legend . . . my legend of the enchanting and beautiful.'" His increasing literary success was tempered for him by his sister's tuberculosis; in 1906 he traveled with her to Ufa Guberniya for treatment, and in June 1907 he took her to Finland, where she died on 28 June. The next month he returned to St. Petersburg and retired after 25 years of teaching. In the autumn of 1908 he married the translator Anastasia Chebotarevskaya (born in 1876), whom .... Discover the Fyodor Sologub Ronald Wilks popular books. 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