From the History of the Journal “Severny Vestnik”. Commentary to the Commentary

Abstract

The history of literary associations, including the history of any journal, is primarily the history of people's relationships with each other. In such a history, personal likes and dislikes play the most essential role. This law of personal sympathies and antipathies manifests itself very expressively in a rather short history of the journal “Severny Vestnik”, published by L.Ya. Gurevich (1891–1898). The article offers significant additions to comments to published texts on the history of the journal. A.L. Volynsky and N.K. Mikhailovsky showed equal harshness and indelicacy in their polemics, but their contemporaries almost unanimously sided with Mikhailovsky as an older and deserved writer. Volynsky acquired a reputation as an unscrupulous person and gossip begins to gather around his name. Volynsky demonstrated unacceptable immodesty towards D.S. Merezhkovsky and Z.N. Gippius and allowed himself to use of someone else's material, bordering on plagiarism. But most importantly, in the plot of the book about Leonardo da Vinci, he depicted his personal relationship with Merezhkovsky and Gippius and his interpretation of the relationship between them. In addition, he expelled Merezhkovsky from the journal “Severny Vestnik”, which closed for him the opportunity to publish his novel about Leonardo da Vinci.

Keywords

• “severny vestnik”
• literary life
• a.l. volynsky
• l.ya. gurevich
• n.k. mikhaylovsky
• d.s. merezhkovsky
• z.n. gippius