Vyacheslav Ivanov and C.M. Bowra: a ... - UCL Discovery

INTRODUCTION
Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949), the poet, classical scholar and leading theoretician of
religious Symbolism, is rightly regarded as one of the most cultured and erudite
‘Russian Europeans’ of the Silver Age. And yet, although he had an impressive
command of a wide range of languages and cultures, his links with England were not as
well developed as they were, for example, with France, Germany, or Italy. To some
extent this difference can be explained by biographical factors. Ivanov spent only one
extended period of time living in England, amounting to some eight months between
October 1899 and May 1900. At first he stayed in London, renting a flat near the British
Museum with his second wife, Lidiya Zinov'eva-Annibal, her three children from her
first marriage and their two young daughters, including the newborn Elenushka. This
was not an easy period in the couple's lives. Lidiya had only recently obtained a divorce
and been able to marry Ivanov; she was now anxious to conceal the whereabouts of her
children from her first husband. In November Elenushka suddenly fell ill and died at the
age of just over ten weeks; she was buried at a cemetery in Norwood. Although Ivanov
continued his work on ancient Greek religion in the library of the British Museum and
wrote some remarkable poetry during his stay with Lidiya at Tintagel, Cornwall in April
and May 1900, he did not establish any significant links with contemporary English
cultural circles. In fact, the only English person who seems to have made a substantial
impression on him was Mr J.L. Paton, the kindly headmaster of University College
School, who lent him an uncensored English translation of Tolstoi's Resurrection. 1
Ivanov's relative lack of involvement with English culture was not, however, just
1 Lidiya Zinov’eva-Annibal's eldest son attended Mr Paton’s school. For a general account of this period in
Ivanov’s life, based on archival documents, see Grigorii Kruzhkov, ‘“My – dvukh tenei skorbyashchaya
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