July 6, 1877
Writer and artist Alexei Remizov, a prominent figure in Russian modernism, was born.
…The curse is not that man is a beast to man, and a rabid one at that, but that man is a log to man
His father was a merchant haberdasher. His mother, also from a merchant family, was an educated woman and a nihilist. She married Remizov Sr. out of spite, suffering from unrequited love for another. She gave birth to five children and filed for divorce. She would later become the prototype for several tragic female characters in the works of her youngest son, Alyosha.
In life there is either happiness, or falsehood, or art.
Alyosha received a good education at home. He entered Moscow University, studying physics and mathematics. He read Herzen, Chernyshevsky, and Marx with interest. At 19, he was arrested for participating in student unrest. Then, a second time, for attempting to organize a workers' union. He spent six years in exile. While in Penza, he became close friends with Meyerhold. In Vologda, he became acquainted with socialists such as Lunacharsky, Berdyaev, and Savinkov.
If people looked into each other and noticed each other, if everyone were given eyes, then only an iron heart would endure all the horror and mystery of life. And perhaps an iron heart wouldn't be necessary at all if people noticed each other.
In 1902, a joint translation with Meyerhold of Rohde's book "Hauptmann and the Beggars" was published. He found his original "impressionistic" style a little later—plotless prose, in which the hopelessness of the tragedy of existence was intertwined with the lyricism of narrative. Tsvetaeva described it as "a living treasure trove of the Russian soul and speech."
The blood spilled on fraternal fields spared the human heart, but you have torn the soul from the Russian people. And now I hear the monkey's whoop. My Rus', you are burning! My Rus', you have fallen, you cannot be lifted, you will not rise!
Remizov rejected the Bolshevik coup. He emigrated in 1921 and lived in Germany and France. There, he painted "Rus' in Turbulence" and "With Trimmed Eyes." He was a brilliant artist—his works were praised by Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso. He died in 1957.
