Zinaida Nikolayevna Gippius (1869-1945)
Autograph poem, 'Rydatel'noye'. 1922
Autograph manuscript, draft for a poem, 'Rydatel'noye' ('Sobbing'), [Paris, February 1922].

In Russian. In pencil and pen, 31 lines on 1½ pages, 205 x 134mm, extensive cancellations and revisions, doodles in ink at right margin.

Kipela v rechke temnaya voda,
pokhozhaya na zheltoye chernilo.
Rydal zakatnyy svet, kak nikogda,
i vso krugom rydatel'noye bylo.

Heavily worked draft of the poem 'Rydatel'noye' ('Sobbing'). 'Dark water boiled in the river / very like yellow ink. / The light of the sunset sobbed like never before / and everything around was weeping'. Gippius refers to the composition of the poem in a letter to her (also Merezhkovsky's) secretary, V.A. Zlobin on 25 February 1922: 'I finished the poem "Sobbing", wrote and wrote on scraps, tore up the first, and hid the last...'.

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