#Zinaida Gippius

[mournfulroses]

Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius, from The Selected Works; “Memoirs of Martynov,”

[majestativa]

She’s as cold as a snake. […] She caresses me in her coils, And strangles me in her hold.

— Zinaida Gippius, The Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence: Perversity, Despair and Collapse, transl by Kristen Lodge, Margo Shohl Rosen & Grigory Dashevsky, (2007)

[winged-cries]

I trace the dark with red coal, With a pointed sting I lick the flesh, Tightly, tightly, I spin the tourniquet, Bend and break and knit.

With a string I twist, Tighten and wet, With a game awaken, With a needle pierce.

And I’m so kind, If I fall in love — I will drain. As a gentle cobra, Caressing, will clasp.

And again I will grip and crush, Turn the screw in tardily, Gnaw as long as I want. I am faithful and will not deceive.

You are tired — I will rest, Go away and wait, I am loyal, and will get love back, I will come to you again, I want to play with you, Trace you over with red coal.

| Zinaïda Gippius, ‘Pain’, tr. Linda Southby

[liebesfraulein]

December’s immaculate coldness feels warm. December feels like blood.

— Zinaida Gippius

[random-bakwaas]

The White Cliffs, by Alice Duer Miller // The Snowstorm, by Francisco Goya // The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe // Goldenrod in December, by Charles Ephraim Burchfield // The Chinese Nightingale, by Vachel Lindsay // Returning Home in a Winter Woodland, by Moras Walter // Zinaida Gippius // The Train in the Snow, by Claude Monet // Sonnet 97, by William Shakespeare // Landscape with Snow, by Vincent Van Gogh // A Teaspoon of Stars, by Chandrama Deshmukh // Winter, by The Rolling Stones // The Magpie, by Claude Monet // How Did It Get So Late So Soon? by Dr. Seuss // Screaming Through December, by Hall and Oats

[variousqueerthings]

“Shuffle the cards. Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that suits me.”

“Illusion and truth are twin children who have swapped their pink and blue ribbons so often that by naming them according to their color I would get them teased, even if I happened to be right.”

“I do not desire exclusive femininity, just as I do not desire exclusive masculinity. Each time someone is insulted and dissatisfied within me; with women, my femininity is active, with men-my masculinity! In my thoughts, my desires, in my spirit-I am more a man; in my body-I am more a woman. Yet they are so fused together that I know not.”

[makingqueerhistory]

Zinaida Gippius

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[litandlifequotes]

I need what is not in this world.

— Zinaida Gippius

[blogdemocratesjr]

—Z.N. Gippius, in Between Paris and St. Petersburg: Selected Diaries of Zinaida Hippius

[opalid]

"Similar, in some ways, to the writers, artists, and intellectuals associated with the Bloomsbury group in London, the Russian symbolists were involved in untraditional unions that privileged artistic creativity over procreation and were often tolerant of extramarital affairs, both heterosexual and homosexual in nature. This was the case not only for Gippius and Merezhkovsky, who were involved for many years in a mystical ménage-à-trois with Dmitry Filosofov, but also for other famous symbolist couples such as Alexander Blok and Liubov Mendeleeva and Viacheslav Ivanov and Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal. The writers’ fascination with sublimated love influenced not just their unorthodox marriage practices and their views about childbearing but also the ways in which they envisioned the creative process. Although symbolist writers such as Konstantin Balmont and Valery Briusov, who were more inclined toward the decadent mode, sought inspiration for their art in ecstatic moments or migi, many of the other writers found creative inspiration in the obverse, that is to say, the denial of procreation and the body."

— Jenifer Presto, Beyond the Flesh: Alexander Blok, Zinaida Gippius, and the Symbolist Sublimation of Sex

[anndreiicaa]

[majestativa]

They sing of […] universal destruction.

— Zinaida Gippius, The Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence: Perversity, Despair and Collapse, transl by Kristen Lodge, Margo Shohl Rosen & Grigory Dashevsky, (2007)

[wehavewords]

“December's immaculate coldness feels warm. December feels like blood.”

Zinaida Gippius

[mournfulroses]

Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius, from The Selected Works; “Memoirs of Martynov,”

[petaltexturedskies]

Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius, from "Finally, The Party At Rach" in Selections

[variousqueerthings]

back in the day a cool and sexy asexual transmasc with squiggly gender presentation would sometimes get into a relationship with a cisgender gay man or two and they'd build a life together and it was pretty chill. part of the queer ecosystem.