Zinaida Nikolayevna Gippius (1869-1945)
Rejecting Kartashev's advances. 1904
Autograph letter signed (with initial, 'Z') to [Anton Vladimirovich] Kartashev, 3 December 1904.

In Russian. Four pages, 201 x 125mm, on a bifolium.

'I know that I am fragile but then, you are too': Gippius rejects Kartashev's advances and pleads for a simpler, less destructive relationship. In an extraordinary, impassioned letter, Gippius attempts to reason Kartashev into an untangling of their relationship, complaining of the pointlessness of their situation, of the meaningless of many of his words, and of the distress it is causing to her husband, Merezhkovsky, and her sister Tatiana. She abjures him to 'spit upon me from now on – and it's over. Until you understand ... that I am treating you selflessly, ... you are destroying me, – and with that for some reason (as usual) you are destroying yourself ... This state of affairs – is unendurable for me. (You yourself know it. You have even written about it) ... Let us think together in a friendly way (if it is impossible to do it with love) how to make ourselves as comfortable as we can. Why should we conduct ourselves in an unworthy fashion? / I know that I am fragile but then, you are too. Really, I am ashamed that "I" and "you" have obscured that which lies behind those pronouns...'

At this time, Gippius was proposing a future in which sexual intercourse would be abolished, replaced with a purer erotic love detached from physical relations. Her diary records her early interest in A.V. Kartashev (1875-1960) when he began to participate in the Religious and Philosophical Meetings which Gippius had founded with Merezhkovsky in 1901: 'Of all [the new participants] the most noticeable was Kartashev, clever, strange, talkative at the Meetings ... A thought flashed through my mind: these strange, uncultured and seemingly culture-hungry people - after all, they are virgins!'. Her diary also records the shift in their relationship to an erotic level, which may have precipitated the crisis evoked in the present letter: 'Saying goodbye, on the dark threshold, I kissed him ... But, God, how strange! Cold, even more trembling - and suddenly greedy lips. Powerlessly greedy ...'. The crisis appears to have been resolved, as Kartashev continued to be a prominent attendee of the Meetings, and contributed to the periodical Novy Put' which was launched as a vehicle for the gatherings. He was later to be a member of the Provisional Government after the February Revolution in 1917, and after a period of imprisonment left Russia in 1919 to live the remainder of his life in exile, principally in France.

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