page_title: Mirra Lokhvitskaya
section_title: Literary career
hierarchical_section_title: Mirra Lokhvitskaya / Biography / Literary career
caption_attribution_description: English: Russian poet Mirra Lokhvitskaya and her husband Eugeny Gilbert Русский: Мирра Лохвицкая и Евгений Эрнестович Жибер
context_page_description: Mirra Lokhvitskaya was a Russian poet who rose to fame in the late 1890s. In her lifetime she published five books of poetry, the first and the last of which received the prestigious Pushkin Prize. Due to the erotic sensuality of her works, Lokhvitskaya was regarded as the "Russian Sappho" by her contemporaries, which did not correspond with her conservative life style of dedicated wife and mother of five sons. Forgotten in Soviet times, in the late 20th century Lokhvitskaya's legacy was reassessed and she came to be regarded as one of the most original and influential voices of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry and the first in the line of modern Russian women poets who paved the way for Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva.
context_section_description: Lokhvitskaya rose to fame in 1891 after her first long poem, "By the Seaside" (У моря), appeared in the August issue of the Russkoye Obozrenye (Russian Review) magazine. She became a popular figure in the Petersburg literary circles and became friends with Vsevolod Solovyov, Ieronim Yasinsky, Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko, Pyotr Gnedich, and Vladimir Solovyov. In late 1891, Lokhvitskaya married Eugeny Gibert, a French construction engineer, and the couple moved first to Yaroslavl, then to Moscow. They had five sons.
  Lokhvitskaya's first major book, a collection called Poems, 1889–1895 (Стихотворения, 1889–1895), drew positive response and brought her the prestigious Pushkin Prize in 1896, a year after its publication. "Never since Fet has a single poet managed to get a grip of their readership in such a way," wrote her friend Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko. Volume II (1896–1898) followed in 1898 and two years later was re-issued, coupled with the first volume, in The Complete... edition.
  In the course of the next few years, Lokhvitskaya published dozens of new poems, including the extensive Him and Her. Two Words (Он и Она. Два слова) and two epic dramas, Eastward (На пути к Востоку) and Vandelin. Springtime Fairytale. By the time her Volume III (1898–1900) came out, Lokhvitskaya was Russia's most popular and best-loved woman poet. Far from enjoying her stardom, though, she spent the last five years of her life in physical pain and mental turmoil.
caption: Mirra and Eugeny Gibert
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