Vyacheslav Ivanov (Вячесла́в Ива́нов) (1866-1949)

Death: 16th July 1949
Location: Cimitero acattolico / Protistant Cemetery, Rome, Lazio, Italy
Photo taken by: Massimo Consoli

Russian poet and playwright associated with the Russian Symbolist movement.
After studying at Moscow University he moved, in 1886, to Berlin University to study Roman law and economics under Theodor Mommsen. From 1892, he studied archaeology in Rome, and completed his doctoral dissertation there. In Rome, he met Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal, a poet and translator, and they married in 1899.
Ivanov's first poetry collection, Lodestars, was published in 1903. It was praised by the critics as a new chapter in the Russian Symbolism; the poems were compared to those of Milton and Trediakovsky.
Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal died in 1907 and Ivanov claimed to have had a vision of his late wife ordering him to marry Vera Shvarsalon, her daughter by her first marriage. He married 23-year-old Vera in the summer of 1913; their son Dmitry had been born in 1912. Vera's death in 1920, at the age of 30, broke his heart.  Ivanov returned to Italy, where he settled in Rome until his death.

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