Gorodetsky S.M. (1884-1967), poet

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GORODETSKY Sergey Mitrofanovich (1884, St. Petersburg - 1967) poet, prose writer, translator and playwright. On graduating from the 6th St. Petersburg Gymnasium he studied (from 1902) at the Faculty of History and Philology of Petersburg University where he met A. A. Blok but failed to graduate. He entered literature in 1906 having read his poems on the Tower of Vyach. I. Ivanov; his collected poems Yar (1906, although written on the title-page is 1907) and Perun (1907) were first published in St. Petersburg and brought great popularity to the author due to the successful inclusion of ancient Slavonic mythological subjects in imagery and symbolism. Both subsequent collective poems and prose experiments of Gorodetsky were treated by critique writers as superficial and unconvincing. From 1911 until the spring of 1915, he was one of the leading members of the Poets Guild together with N. S. Gumilev, he is the author of one of the manifestos of acmeism and of the collected poems Willow (St. Petersburg, 1912, on the title-page - 1913), the Flourishing Stick. The chain of Octaves (St. Petersburg, 1914) written in the new manner. In 1915 he became a close friend of S. A. Esenin and the New Peasants Poets, he organized literary groups Krasa (Beauty) and Strada (Drudgery). In 1916 he left for the Caucasus. Subsequent creative works by Gorodetsky were not met by a broad response. In the 1910s, he lived on 143 Fontanka River Embankment and on 14 Malaya Posadskaya Street.

References: Блок А. А. Записные книжки, 1901-1920. М., 1965; Машинский С. И. Сергей Городецкий // Городецкий С. М. Стихотворения и поэмы. Л., 1974. С. 5-52; Гумилев Н. С. Письма о русской поэзии. М., 1990 (ук.).

T. M. Dvinyatina. Blok G.P.
Esenin Sergey Alexandrovich
Gorodetsky Sergey Mitrofanovich
Gumilev Nikolay Stepanovich
Ivanov Vyacheslav Ivanovich
Fontanka River Embankment/Saint Petersburg, city, house 143
Malaya Posadskaya St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 14
Блок А. А. Записные книжки, 1901-1920. М., 1965
Гумилев Н. С. Письма о русской поэзии. М., 1990
Машинский С. И. Сергей Городецкий // Городецкий С. М. Стихотворения и поэмы. Л., 1974 Poets Guild