A Symbolist under Soviet Rule: Sologub's Late Poetry

Most literary critics mark the end of Russian symbolism by 1910 – and they have good reason to do so. Nevertheless, it should be taken into account that literary epochs do not end abruptedly and that history of literature is a construct of theoreticians who are forced to structure their topic into chapters. As a consequence, a writer whose development does not correspond with comfortable "isms" often falls out of the neat schemes of the academic administration of literature. A case in point is Fedor Sologub, who after the "end" of Russian symbolism continued to produce Symbolist poetry until his death in 1927. His entire work appears to be so consistent that Xodasevic¬ spoke of him as a poet without any evolution (1939, 168; cf. Anic¬kov 1923, 81). This view was shared by Blok and Gumilev who complained about the endless repetitions in Sologub’s poems (1960, VIII, 152; Lavrov 1989, 165); Kornej Cμukovskij went so far as to maliciously characterize Sologub’s work as "preservation of expired inspirations" (1964, VI, 347). However, such an interpretation may be too simplistic. The first attempts at a periodization of Sologub’s poetry were undertaken only in the 1970’s and stem from the Structuralist School of Tartu. Minc and Pustygina identified 7 periods in Sologub’s work (1975, 150 f.):