Zinaida Nikolayevna Gippius (1869-1945)
A satire on emigrant literary circles in Paris. c.1922-24
Autograph manuscript poem, [Nochnaya gost'ya] ('Night visitor'), n.p. [Paris], n.d. [c.1922-24].

In Russian. 44 lines on two pages, 220 x 161mm. Provenance: Temira Pachmuss (1927-2007, professor of Russian literature at Illinois University at Urbana-Champaign and leading Gippius scholar).

V chasy nochnyye vsye vozmozhno
Ya byl odin. Chital. Skuchal.
Vdrug chey-to shorokhostorozhnyy
Ya za dveryami uslykhal ...

A satire on emigrant literary circles in Paris, with their obsessions 'About bridge, money, Montparnasse / ... About the cinema, about the maestro in Grasse ...'. The poem takes the form of a dialogue between the poet and an unexpected night-visitor in the form of a 'thin and dirty' dog, a 'stray dog / From the distant banks of the Neva / ... Doomed to wander here too, / So that we, all night, half-asleep / Could talk about nonsense'. The 'maestro in Grasse' is a reference to Ivan Bunin. Published in Vozrozhdeniye, 82 (1958).

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