Sologub, Feodor

Sologub, Feodor fyô´dər sələgo͞op´ [key], pseud. of Feodor Kuzmich Teternikov, 1863–1927, Russian poet and prose writer. By profession a schoolteacher and as a poet one of the older symbolists, he began his literary career in 1896 with a volume of verse, a collection of tales, and a novel, Bad Dreams, which described the squalid existence of a schoolmaster. His masterpiece of fiction is the novel The Little Demon (1907, tr. 1916), in which the perverted schoolteacher Peredonov embodies senseless evil. Peredonovism became a common term in Russia to denote the moral corruption of petty officials. Two collections of Sologub's poetry notable for pessimism are The Circle of Fire (1908) and Pearly Stars (1913). Sologub remained in the Soviet Union after the revolution but, opposed to the Bolsheviks, ultimately lapsed into silence.

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