Background
Merezhkovsky was born in St. Petersburg, Russia on August 2, 1865 of a family of court officials.
(The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci ( Resurrected Gods. Leon...)
The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci ( Resurrected Gods. Leonardo da Vinci, in literal translation) is the second novel by Dmitry Merezhkovsky, first published in 1900 by Mir Bozhy magazine, then released as a separate edition 1901. The novel constitutes the second part of the Christ and Antichrist trilogy (1895-1907), started by the writer's debut novel The Death of the Gods. The novel starts with the merchant Buonarcozzi digging out the statue of Venus, with Leonardo invited as an expert. This echoes the final scene of The Death of the Gods with Arsinoya's prophecy about "future brothers" who will dig out the precious bones of Hellas, and start worshipping them again. The adventures of the great artist and thinker of the Renaissance are set against the background of conflicts and tragedies, all going to show the new epoch's re-emerging humanism, harking back to the spirit of Antiquity and contrasting the monastic horrors of the Middle Ages.
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(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
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critic novelist translator poet
Merezhkovsky was born in St. Petersburg, Russia on August 2, 1865 of a family of court officials.
He graduated from the University of St. Petersburg, published his first book of poetry in 1888, and, until the Russian Revolution, lived mostly in St. Petersburg and traveled abroad.
Merezhkovsky was less significant as a poet than as a promoter of Nietzcheanism and of the new currents in literature. He proclaimed the coming of a new art, which had a mystical content, made use of symbols, and tended to broaden artistic receptiveness.
His first trilogy, Christ and Antichrist (1895 - 1905), illustrates well his mystical conception of the world. This conception, based on the Hegelian triad, led him to his theory of three kingdoms and his portrayal of a conflict between paganism and Christianism, resulting in an ultimate union of the two. His thought and art were limited by his fondness for antithesis, dualism, and polarization, and, overwhelmed by his own erudition and by the laws of his symbolic art, he often lost the gift of direct expression. Despite these artistic defects and a mechanical quality in the use of historical documents, his first trilogy had a considerable success. His second historical trilogy--a play, Paul I (1908), and two novels, Alexander I (1911), and December Fourteenth (1920)--deals entirely with Russian history and shows elements of literary technique similar to those of the earlier trilogy.
The fame of Merezhkovsky's novels made him the precursor of the so-called biographie-romancée. Merezhkovsky's finest work of literary criticism is his Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky (1901 - 1902), which is also based on the principle of antithesis; despite exaggerations and traces of preconceived opinions, it is a classic in its field. Also noteworthy are his Eternal Companions (1897), which contains brilliant studies on Pushkin and Greek and Latin authors, his Gogol, and his translations from the Greek tragedians.
In exile he wrote philosophical-historical biographies, among them Napoleon (1929), and Jesus the Unknown (1933).
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
(The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci ( Resurrected Gods. Leon...)
In later years Merezhkovsky became a political émigréand an active enemy of the Soviet regime in Poland and in Paris.
Merezhkovsky's political thought went through several phases. First in sympathy with Orthodox and Slavophile ideology, he found himself about 1905 on the side of the revolution. Later, frightened by the "terrifying face" of the "senseless and ruthless Russian revolt, " he deserted it, becoming one of the most eloquent antirevolutionary prophets of the "approaching Kingdom of the Brute. "
He married a Russian poet, Zinaida Hippius, and together they edited the religious-philosophical journal The New Way.