Old House & Other Tales

Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov was born on 1st March 1863 in St. Petersburg into the family of a poor tailor. When his father died of tuberculosis in 1867, his illiterate mother was forced to become a servant in the home of an aristocrat, where Sologub and his younger sister grew up.

Seeing how difficult his mother''s life was, Sologub was determined to rescue her from it, and after graduating from the St. Petersburg Teachers'' Institute in 1882 he took his mother and sister with him to his first teaching post in Kresttsy. It was here he began his literary career in 1884 with his poem ‘The Fox and the Hedgehog’ under the name Te-rnikov.

It would be another decade before he could escape his various jobs to move to Moscow and begin his literary career on what would be his most famous novel, ‘The Petty Demon’. It was now suggested that he use a pseudonym and so Sologub became his new identity.

In 1896 he published a book of poems, a collection of short stories, and his first novel, ‘Bad Dreams’, which is considered one of the first decadent Russian novels.

In 1905 ‘The Petty Demon’, was published, initially in serial form. But life was still difficult unrewarding jobs, little time to write and a small, cramped apartment lightened only by gatherings of friends, poets and writers.

By the October Revolution his work was becoming popular and with the novel of ‘The Petty Demon’, finally published as a book, he now had a growing income.

His sister''s tuberculosis could now be more easily treated with treatments in proper sanitoria, even as far away as Finland, but in June 1907 she passed.

He returned to St. Petersburg and retired. The following year he married the translator Anastasia Chebotarevskaya who reordered his life. A big new apartment was rented, small gilt chairs were bought, and the walls of the large cold office were decorated with paintings.

Sologub continued to write and publish poems, plays, and translations and in 1914 he started a magazine, Writers'' Journals, but the outbreak of World War I put an end to it.

The October Revolution, with publishing under Bolshevik control, ensured he now had no outlets for his writing and could only lecture.

His wife’s suicide in September 1921, mainly due to deprivation and uncertainty, as they prepared for a new life abroad, grieved him for the rest of his life.

In May 1927 Sologub became seriously ill, and by summer he could leave his bed only rarely.

After a long struggle, Fyodor Sologub died on 5th December 1927 in Leningrad. He was 64.