Dmitry Merezhkovsky - Legacy

Legacy

Throughout his lifetime Dmitry Merezhkovsky polarized opinion in his native Russia, bringing upon himself both praise and scorn, occasionally from the same quarters. According to Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Merezhkovsky became Russia's first ever "new-type, universal kind of dissident who managed to upset just about everybody who thought themselves to be responsible for guarding morality and order":

Merezhkovsky's works were always causing controversy. In the words of a modern biographer, "history placed him alongside Marquis de Sade, Nietzsche and Henry Miller, those classics who — in the process of being condemned and ostracized by the many could have been approached and appreciated by the few". "I was disliked and scolded in Russia, loved and praised abroad, but here and there — misunderstood", Merezhkovsky wrote in a letter to Nikolai Berdyaev.

There were things, though, Merezhkovsky was unanimously given credit for. Nobody denied that his were — exceptional erudition, all characteristics of a true scientist, literary gift and stylistic originality. Seen (in retrospect) as the first ever (and, arguably, the only one) Russian "cabinet writer of a European type", Merezhkovsky was "one of the best-educated people in St. Petersburg of the first quarter of the 20th century" (N. Berdyaev). Korney Chukovsky, pondering on the dire state of the early 20th century Russia's cultural elite, admitted that "the most cultured of them all" was this "mysterious, unfathomable, almost mythical creature — Merezhkovsky". Anton Chekov, not much of a fan, (unsuccessfully) demanded that the Russian Academy of Science should appoint Merezhkovsky its honorary academic, as early as 1902.

In some ways Merezhkovsky was an indisputable innovator. He was the first in Russia to formulate basic principles of symbolism and modernism, as opposed to 'decadence', a tag he was battling with. Never aspiring to a leading role in the movement, he soon became, according to I. Koretzkaya, "a kind of handy encyclopedia for the ideology of symbolism", from which others "could borrow aesthetic, socio-historical and even moral ideas from". Having added a new ("thought-driven") dimension to a historical novel genre and turning it into a modern, intriguing art form, Merezhkovsky influenced some prominent masters of Russian and European experimental novel: Andrey Bely, Aleksey Remizov, Thomas Mann, James Joyce. Less avant-garde and more traditional authors like Valery Bryusov, Aleksey N. Tolstoy, Mikhail Bulgakov and Mark Aldanov owed much to his early experiments too. It was to Merezhkovsky's credit that the concepts and terms of 'modernist novel' and 'symbolic historical novel' were introduced to the rather stale and conservative Russian literature scene of the late 1890s.

Merezhkovsky was praised as an extraordinarily essayist. Many marveled at his unique (perhaps over-used, as some argued) talent for 'quotation-juggling'. Some critics loathed the repetitiveness in Merezhkovsky's prose, but no one could dispute the authenticity of his (in a broad sense) very musical manner of employing certain ideas almost as symphonic themes, which was new at the time and also much imitation-spawning.

No less influential, even if so much more controversial, were Merezhkovsky's philosophical, religious and political ideas. Alongside the obvious list of contemporary followers (Bely, Blok, etc.; almost all of them – later turned detractors) deeply interested in his theories were political figures (Fondaminsky, Kerensky, Savinkov), psychologists (Freud), philosophers (Berdyaev, Rickert, Stepun), lawyers (Kowalewsky). Thomas Mann wrote of Merezhkovsky as of a "genius critic and specialist in world psychology, second only to Nietzche".

Some later researchers mentioned as one of the main factors in Merezhkovsky's significance his willingness to question dogmas and thwart tradition with total disregard to public opinion, never shying controversy and even scandal — certainly a rare quality in the cultural life of pre-Modernism Russia. Crucial in this context was (according to O. Dafier) his "quest for ways of overcoming deep crisis which came as a result of the Russian traditionalist Church losing its credibility". All the while, Merezhkovsky's ever changing views of the world that was changing as quickly, caused much misconception and a lot of criticism from all quarters.