Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky

“ I owe my life to my mother's devoted care.
My father used to go on long official journeys abroad, and to Livadia in the Crimea, where the invalid Empress was then residing, and he left us children in the care of Amalia Christianovna, the old housekeeper, a German woman from Reval. She was a good-natured, but narrow-minded and shy sort of person. What I felt for her was not so much love, as childlike pity. I also had an old nurse who used to tell me Russian folk-tales and legends of the saints. ”

“ My father, who is now dead, told me that my great-grandfather, Fyodor Merezhky, was a major in the Cossack army at Glukhov, in Little Russia. My grandfather, Ivan Fyodorovitch, came to Petrograd towards the end of the 18th century in the reign of Paul I., and being a man of title, was admitted into the Ismailov regiment of the guards. It was probably about that time that he changed his Little Russian name Merezhky for the Great Russian Merezhkovsky. Later on my grandfather was transferred from Petrograd to Moscow, and took part in the war of 1812. ”

“ In 1880, at the house of Countess Tolstoy, the widow of the poet, my father made the acquaintance of Dostoyevsky, and thereupon he took me to see him. I still remember the little apartment in Kolokolnaya Street, the narrow ante-room which was filled with copies of "The Brothers Karamazov," and the equally narrow study where Fyodor Mikhailovitch was sitting and correcting proofs. ”

“ Later, my father came home to lunch direct from the castle. He was terribly upset, tear-stained and pale, and told us of an attempt upon the Emperor's life.
"There you have the fruits of Nihilism," he said. "What more do these monsters want? They have not spared even such an angel as that. . ."
My eldest brother, Constantine, a science student (later a well-known biologist) , a passionate nihilist, attempted to defend the "monsters." My father flew into a rage, stamped his feet, cursed his son, and drove him out of the house. ”

“ My first appearance in public was, if I am not mistaken, in the year 1882, with a poem which was printed in the "Illustrated Review," under the management of Scheller-Mikhailov. My subsequent works were issued in the "National Annals." After I had passed out of the High School in 1884, I entered the historical-philological faculty of Petrograd University. I am scarcely more indebted to the University than to the High School. So that really I grew up without any schooling as well as without fatherly guidance. ”

“ In the students' Historical Society, I debated with the convinced positivist Vodovosov, and endeavoured to prove that a conception of the world which is to assign a meaning to life cannot possibly be based upon the "impenetrable" of Spencer.
Through Pleshtcheyev I became a visitor at Madame Davydov's, the wife of the famous musician and director of the Petrograd Conservatoire. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1970, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 53 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”