Aleksey Mikhaylovich Remizov

Aleksey Mikhaylovich Remizov (born July 6 [June 24, Old Style], 1877, Moscow—died Nov. 26, 1957, Paris) was a Symbolist writer whose works had a strong influence on Russian writers before and after the 1917 Revolution.

Born into a poor family of merchant ancestry, Remizov gained his early experiences in the streets of Moscow. He attended the University of Moscow but was expelled in 1897 for participation in student riots, put in prison, and exiled to the provinces. In 1905 he settled in St. Petersburg, where he immediately began to frequent literary circles, particularly the Symbolist group. His works had begun to appear in various modernist periodicals, but his fame and popularity did not come until the publication in 1910 of Neuyomny buben (“The Indefatigable Tambourine”). This story of provincial life is among his best works, and it embodies many of the characteristics often found in his writing, including elements of the weird, the grotesque, and the whimsical. That same year Remizov published the short novel Krestovye syostry (“Sisters of the Cross”), one of his most popular works. Although close to the Symbolists, Remizov did not fully believe in the principles of this movement. A vital element in his prose was his exploitation of the full potential of the Russian language, from the contemporary popular idiom to the language of ancient Russian chronicles and folk tales.

Preferring to keep a distance from politics, he worked for magazines that had a patriotic stance during World War I. In 1917, before the Bolsheviks came to power, he published “Slovo o pogibeli russkoy zemli” (“Threnody on the Destruction of the Russian Land”). In 1921 he emigrated, settling first in Berlin and then, in 1923, in Paris. The large number of books that Remizov wrote during his émigré years were not commercially successful, and some were not published until after his death. Yet they had a vital effect on many writers because of his elaborate use of language and his constant interest in the hidden sides of a character’s personality. Remizov’s books were rarely published in Russia during the Soviet era but were widely republished beginning in the late 1980s.