Unknown pages of the biography of Fedor Sologub

MOSCOW. The publishing house "New Literary Review" published a collection dedicated to the symbolist writer Fedor Sologub.

The lack of memoirs and an epistolary heritage that can shed light on the circumstances of Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov’s private life, only increase interest in this mysterious person. The writer, who worked under the pseudonym Sologub, carefully guarded the details of his private life.

Correspondence is mainly business. In response to requests from publishers and journalists for details of the biography - a polite but firm refusal. Sologub adhered to a similar line of behavior since adolescence. He did not open the gates in the barrier that he himself erected even after the significant success of The Little Devil, when interest in the author’s personality went wild, and the novel about the sadistic teacher Peredonov was constantly reprinted. The famous writer and critic of the Amphitheaters, and not just him, considered Fedor Kuzmich a great writer, and his best novel was comparable in importance to Gogol’s “Dead Souls”. Sologub preferred writing novels, articles, essays, plays, collections of short stories and poems, rather than arranging emotional striptease.

His reaction to the 1917 Bolshevik coup was sharply negative. Even the contacts of his wife, Anastasia Chebotarevskaya, with the revolutionary milieu could not affect the attitude to the new government. He was not printed, thereby depriving him of his livelihood. Previously considered unacceptable discussion of the issue of emigration, in 1921 he decided to leave, which was not destined to take place. Bureaucratic delays and outright indifference to the destinies of talented people deprived the chance of saving Blok, who is dying from a serious illness, and Sologub the opportunity to live and work fully. After the tragic death of his wife, he lost hope of this forever. After 6 years he was gone.

The book about Sologub is a voluminous work that uses rare archival documents to find out at least some of its secrets.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru