A Silver Age Diotima: Lydia Zinov’eva-Annibal's Visions of Love and Feminine Inspiration

• In Event: Classical Memories, Modern Identities in Russian Literary Imaginations

Abstract

In 1905, Lydia Zinov’eva-Annibal and Viacheslav Ivanov left Europe for St. Petersburg, where they famously established their “Wednesdays,” a weekly salon that attracted the leading artistic figures of St. Petersburg. Ivanov, who had signed an 1895 letter to Zinov’eva-Annibal with the name Socrates, gave his wife, whom he saw as his muse, a nickname as well: Diotima. Interestingly, Zinov’eva-Annibal chose the same name for herself when she started an all-female group, Fias, named for an ancient Greek Dionysian gathering. The duo were trying to resurrect a Platonic text through their own activities, Ivanov leading the discussion but Zinov’eva-Annibal, by inference, leading him. And yet, the Symbolists absorbed Platonic views of love through the prism of Vladimir Solov’ev and thus tended to put women on an unrealistic pedestal, fitting them to an ideal while ignoring them as people. My goal in this essay is to examine whether Zinov’eva-Annibal and Ivanov assigned the same significance to the name Diotima. Looking at her creative texts, particularly the infamous “Thirty-three Abominations,” I will explore whether or not Zinov’eva-Annibal moved away from Ivanov’s definitions and prescriptions to present an alternate vision of love and feminine inspiration.

Author

• Judith E. Kalb, U of South Carolina