Vladimir Zlobin

Vladimir Ananievich Zlobin (Владимир Ананьевич Злобин, 1894 (Saint Petersburg)-1967 (Paris)) was a Russian symbolist poet and secretary for Zinaida Gippius.^[1]

As a student, Zlobin was a member of a poets' group where he met Gippius.^[2] He emigrated from Russia in 1919 together with Gippius and her husband Dmitriy Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky, first to Poland^[3] and then to France where all three lived in one flat. Some scholars believe he had a sexual relationship with Gippius, although this is not mentioned in his memoir about Gippius, Difficult Soul.^[2] In the correspondence between Gippius and Zlobin, the two played with gender ambiguity in the Russian language. He wrote about a fantasy of sleeping with her.^[2]

In 1927-1928 he was the head of a journal "New Ship" together with Yuri Terapiano. He then worked on different projects for Gippius and helped to organise, in his Paris flat, "Sundays"^[vague] for Russian poets and writers.

Works

• A Difficult Soul: Zinaida Gippius. University of California Press, 1980.
• Literature diary: Articles// Возрождение. — 1958—1960. — pp. 80–100.