D.S. Merezhkovsky in Exile: The Master of the Genre of Biographie Romancee

This study of the works of the Russian writer and religious thinker Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1865-1941) guides the reader through his published and unpublished biographies romancees, written in exile (1919-1941). His complex genre of fictionalized biography has its own inimitable technique and its own internal code of aesthetics. Merezhkovsky’s other works, written in exile, revealing the inherent dialectics of his ideas and aspirations, identify features of continuity and change between his earlier novels and his prose of 1920-1941. This study seeks to restore Merezhkovsky’s rightful place in the pantheon of Russian and world literature.