Aleksey Remizov

Aleksey Remizov

Aleksei Mikhailovich Remizov ( _ru. Алексей Михайлович Ремизов) (OldStyleDate|6 July|1877|24 June, MoscowNovember 26, 1957, Paris) was a Russian modernist writer whose creative imagination veered to the fantastic and bizarre. Apart from literary works, Remizov was an expert calligrapher who sought to revive this medieval art in Russia.

Remizov was reared in the merchant milieu of Moscow. As a student of the Moscow University, he was involved in the radical politics and spent eight years in prison and Siberian exile. At that time, he developed a keen interest in Russian folklore and married a student of ancient Russian art, who brought him in contact with the Roerichs.

In 1905, he settled in Saint Petersburg and started to imitate medieval folk tales. His self-professed ambition was to catch "the bitterness and absurdity of folklore imagination". Remizov's whimsical stylizations of the saints' lives were ignored at first, partly due to their florid and turgid language, but his more traditional prose works set in the underworld of Russian cities gained him a great deal of publicity.

In his satirical novel "The Indefatigable Cymbal" (1910) Remizov depicted the eccentricities and superstitions of rural sectarians. Another striking work of this period is "The Sacrifice", a Gothic horror story in which "a ghostly double of a father comes to kill his innocent daughter in the mistaken belief that she is a chicken". [Charles Moser. "The Cambridge History of Russian Literature". Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-521-42567-0. Page 442.]

By the time of the Russian Revolution, Remizov had concentrated on imitating more or less obscure works of medieval Russian literature. He responded to the revolution by the "Lay of the Ruin of the Russian Land", a paraphrase of the 13th-century work bemoaning the Mongol invasion of Russia. In 1921 he emigrated to Paris, where he published an account of his attitudes towards the revolution under the title "Whirlwind Russia" (1927).

During his years in exile, Remizov brought out a number of bizarre works, featuring demons and nightmare creatures. Although he was so prolific that many of his works failed to find a publisher, Remizov was also the first Russian modernist author to attract the attention of the luminaries of the Parisian literary world, such as James Joyce. His reputation suffered a decline when, following World War II, he announced his interest in returning to the Soviet Union and even obtained a Soviet passport. After that, Remizov was abhorred by the émigré litterateurs, the most famous of which, Vladimir Nabokov, used to say that the only nice thing about Remizov was that he really lived in the world of literature. [Andrew Field. "The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov". New York, 1986. Page 188.]

References


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать курсовую

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Remizov, Aleksey Mikhaylovich — ▪ Russian writer born July 6 [June 24, Old Style], 1877, Moscow died Nov. 26, 1957, Paris       Symbolist writer whose works had a strong influence on Russian writers before and after the 1917 Revolution.       Born into a poor family of merchant …   Universalium

  • List of Russian language novelists — Russian Writers by Sergei Levitsky, 1856. This is a list of authors who have written works of fiction in the Russian language. The list encompasses novelists and writers of short fiction. For the plain text list, see Category:Russian novelists.… …   Wikipedia

  • Nikolai Leskov — Portrait of Leskov by Valentin Serov, 1894 Born February 16, 1831(1831 02 16) Oryol, Russia Died March 5, 1 …   Wikipedia

  • Dmitry Merezhkovsky — For his brother, a Russian biologist, see Konstantin Mereschkowski. Born Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky 2 August 1865(1865 08 02) St Petersburg, Russia Died 9 December 1941( …   Wikipedia

  • Ivan Kalyayev — Ivan Platonovich Kalyayev ( ru. Иван Платонович Каляев; July 6, 1877 May 23, 1905) was a Russian poet, terrorist and member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, who assassinated Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and was subsequently hanged.Kalyaev …   Wikipedia

  • skaz — ▪ Russian literature       in Russian literature, a written narrative that imitates a spontaneous oral account in its use of dialect, slang, and the peculiar idiom of that persona. Among the well known writers who have used this device are… …   Universalium

  • Yuri Annenkov — Yuri Pavlovich Annenkov ( ru. Юрий Павлович Анненков; OldStyleDate|23 July|1889|11 July 1889 in Petropavlovsk, Russian Empire – 18 July 1974 in Paris, France), [Names by which he is credited for his work on films include Georges Annenkov ,… …   Wikipedia

  • Russian literature — This article is about literature from Russia. For the song by Maxïmo Park, see Our Earthly Pleasures. Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian language literature of several independent nations once …   Wikipedia

  • Nikolai Gogol — Gogol redirects here. For other uses, see Gogol (disambiguation). For the Soviet sprint canoer, see Nikolay Gogol (canoer). Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol Daguerreotype of Gogol taken in 1845 by Sergey Lvovich Levitsky (1819–1898) Born …   Wikipedia

  • List of people from Saint Petersburg — This is a list of famous people who have lived in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Please add new people and also add the dates they lived in Saint Petersburg, if known. * Anya Rozova, America s Next Top Model Runner Up Cycle 10 * Svetlana Abrosimova,… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”