Leonid Andreev's Letters to Zinaida Sibileva. Part II (1892, 1902)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-8297-2022-23-100-145
УДК / UDK: 821.161.1.0
Issue:

2022 №23
Author: Natalia P. Generalova (text prep.)
About the author:

Natalia P. Generalova — DSc in Philology, Leading Research Fellow, Institute of Russian Literature (Puskin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Makarov Emb. 4, 199034 St. Petersburg, Russia.

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Author 2: Mikhail V. Koz’menko (comment.)
About the author 2:

Mikhail V. Koz'menko — PhD in Philology, Leading Research Fellow, A.M. Gor'ky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.

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Abstract:

This is the first complete publication of Leonid Andreev's letters to his first lover, Zinaida Nikolaevna Sibileva. The course of their relationship between 1889 and 1892 was stormy and very uneven. The letters reveal many previously unknown features of Andreev's life as a schoolboy and student. But they are more important for what might be called the diary of their writer's “inner states” reflected in them, the stream of his complex, sometimes “liminal” psychological experiences. Accepting (on Maupassant's authority) that letters illuminate someone's personality more clearly, that they “expose the soul without any embellishments”, Andreev nevertheless regarded his epistolary output (as well as his diaries) as a kind of exercise in creative writing.
Keywords: Leonid Andreev at school and university, letters as a source of information and an “exercise in creative writing,” early 20th-century Russian literature, modernism.
For citation:

“Leonid Andreev's Letters to Zinaida Sibileva. Part II (1892, 1902).”, text prep. by N.P. Generalova, comment. by M.V. Koz'menko Literaturnyi fact, no. 1 (23), 2022, pp. 100–145. https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-8297-2022-23-100-145
References:

1. Andreev, L. “Dnevnik 1891–1892 gg.” [“Dairy. 18912–1892”], publ. by N.P. Generalova. Ezhegodnik Rukopisnogo otdela Pushkinskogo Doma na 1991 g. [The Yearbook of the Manuscript Department of the Pushkin House for 1991]. St. Petersburg, 1994, pp. 81–142. (In Russ.)

2. Andreev L.N. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem: v 23 t. [Complete Works and Letters: in 23 vols.], vol. 1. Moscow, Nauka Publ, 2005. 808 p. (In Russ.)

3. “’Dnevnik’ Leonida Andreeva” [“’Dairy’ by Leonid Andreev”], publ. by N.P. Generalova. Literaturnyi arkhiv: Materialy po istorii russkoi literatury i obshchestvennoi mysli [Literary Archive: Materials on the History of Russian Literature and Social Thought]. St. Petersburg, 1994, pp. 247–294. (In Russ.)

4. “Vospominaniia Mikhaila O-na (Ol'gina) o Leonide Andreeve (Devianostye gody proshlogo stoletiia chasti moskovskogo studenchestva)” [“Memoirs of Mikhail Oh-na (Olgin) about Leonid Andreev (1890s of the Last Century, Part of Moscow Studensheep)”], introd., text prep. and comm. by L.V. Ivanova. Leonid Andreev: Materialy i issledovaniia [Leonid Andreev: Materials and Researches]. Moscow, Nasledie Publ., 2000, pp. 151–161. (In Russ.)