The Death of Gods. Julian the Apostate came out in 1895 (Severny Vestnik, ##1–6); it opened the Christ & Antichrist trilogy and in retrospect is regarded as the first Russian symbolist novel. This publication made all the difference [...] Critics there were aplenty (most of them denouncing the author’s alleged Nietzscheanity), but not one of them dared to question this debut’s major significance. As for allies, they were ecstatic. “A novel made for eternity”, Bryusov marveled. Five years later Julian the Apostate was published in France (translated by Z. Vassilieva) and made Merezhkovsky a respected European author. Read the book in English online, here:
http://archive.org/stream/deathgods01meregoog#page/n10/mode/2up
wiki page about Merezhkovsky:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Merezhkovsky
Describing an author as ‘an eccentric loony’ seems to entirely defeat the purpose of posting on a literary work. either Merezhkovsky was, in which case why would his literary work still attract attention, or the reviewer is perpetuating a character defamation which does no service to the author’s literary skills. If Bryusov, himself an author of a symbolist novel (The fiery angel) respected Bryusov i’m inclined to respect the author., Words matter, and if I read a review of a book in which words such as ‘eccentric looney’ are bandied about I’m rather inclined to dismiss the poster’s empathy and knowledge of the author concerned,
Maybe I should take a little artistic liberty and remove that line from the quote; what do you think?
I’ve removed the offensive phrase and replaced it with an editorial [...] but your comment still stands as you make a very good point!! : )
Maybe just me being too critical.
Bryusov’s -The Fiery Angel is a great read,
I’ll see if this one is available via Amazon…..Yes, but pricey.
It’s Emperor Julian that interests me to be honest, and the religious and political intrigues of that time around his time as Emperor. I hadn’t read a serious bio about him before reading Gore Vidal’s book Julian, which itself led me to research many of the characters and incidents from various sources. I found an interesting pdf today http://home.uchicago.edu/~ksalib/papers/Julian.pdf then the link to the online version of the Merezhkovsky book!
Merezhkovsky seems to have been a complicated character to say the least!
What’s Bryusov’s The Fiery Angel about? I treid to search for it but the results were all useless
~Jaq