| Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 17 February 1866 Saint Peterburg, Russian Empire |
| Died | 17 October 1907 Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire |
Lydia Dmitrievna Zinovieva-Annibal (Russian: Ли́дия Дми́триевна Зино́вьева-Анниба́л; 1866–1907) was a Russian prose writer and dramatist. Annibal was her mother's maiden name.
Biography
She was born into the hereditary Russian nobility. Her grandfather was Senator V.N. Zinoviev [ru], her uncle was General V.V. Zinoviev [ru] and her brother, A.D. Zinoviev became the Governor of Saint Petersburg. Her mother was the Baroness Weimar and, through her mother's similar descent from Afro-Russian aristocrat Abram Petrovich Gannibal, Lidia was a distant relation of Russian national poet Alexander Pushkin.
Most of her education was from private tutors. She did attend the Saint Petersburg women's gymnasium for a short time, but was expelled for being "obstinate". In 1884, she married one of her tutors, Konstantin Shvarsalon. Under his influence, she developed an interest in agrarian socialism and became associated with the Narodniks. Clandestine meetings were often held at their home.
In 1893, she separated from her husband and fled to Rome, where she met the poet Vyacheslav Ivanov. Two years later, Ivanov divorced his wife, but her husband refused to consent and their divorce proceedings dragged on for three years. During the 1900s, after returning to Saint Petersburg, she and Ivanov hosted the literary salon "Среды Иванова [ru]" (Ivanov Wednesdays, better known as "On the Tower", from its location).
Zinovieva-Annibal was associated with both Russian Symbolism and with the Silver Age of Russian Poetry. Her short novel Tridsat'-tri uroda (Thirty-Three Abominations) was one of the few works of its day to openly discuss lesbianism.
She died of scarlet fever. The location of her grave at Nikolskoe Cemetery has been lost. In 1913, Ivanov remarried Lydia's daughter, Vera, from her marriage with Shvarsalon.
Works
- Torches (1903)
- Rings (1904)
- Thirty-Three Abominations (1907) short novel. Transl. by S. D. Cioran in The Silver Age of Russian Culture.
- The Tragic Menagerie (1907) stories. Transl. by Jane T. Costlow, 1999, Northwestern University Press, ISBN 0810114836
- No!' (1918)
References
- Chris Tomei, 'Lidia Dmitrievna Zinov`eva-Annibal', in Katherine Wilson, ed., An Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers, Vol. 2, 1991, pp.1382-3
- Mentioned in an essay by Georgy Chulkov and a study by Tatyana Nikolskaya [ru]
- Adele Marie Barker and Jehanne M. Gheith, A History of Women's Writing in Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2002: ISBN 0-521-57280-0), p. 195.
Further reading
- Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature
- P. Davidson, The Poetic Imagination of Viacheslav Ivanov
- 1866 births
- 1907 deaths
- Writers from Saint Petersburg
- People from Sankt-Peterburgsky Uyezd
- Dramatists and playwrights from the Russian Empire
- Novelists from the Russian Empire
- Short story writers from the Russian Empire
- Bisexual women writers
- Bisexual dramatists and playwrights
- People from the Russian Empire of African descent
- Russian bisexual women
- Russian LGBTQ dramatists and playwrights
- Deaths from streptococcus infection
- Burials at Nikolskoe Cemetery
- 19th-century LGBTQ people from the Russian Empire
- 19th-century dramatists and playwrights from the Russian Empire