The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci: translated from The Russian by Bernard Guilbert Guerney

The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci by Dmitri Merejkowski


translated from The Russian by Bernard Guilbert GuerneyPublisher: Modern Library #138 1928 (?)
Hardcover4.35 x 6.65 inches, 637 pages

Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky (August 1866 – December 9, 1941) was a Russian novelist, poet, religious thinker, and literary critic. A seminal figure of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry, regarded as a co-founder of the Symbolist movement, Merezhkovsky – with his wife, the poet Zinaida Gippius – was twice forced into political exile. During his second exile (1918–1941) he continued publishing successful novels and gained recognition as a critic of the Soviet Union. Known both as a self-styled religious prophet with his own slant on apocalyptic Christianity, and as the author of philosophical historical novels which combined fervent idealism with literary innovation, Merezhkovsky became a nine-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in literature, which he came closest to winning in 1933. However, because he was close to the Nazis, he has been virtually forgotten after World War 2.

Merezhkovsky a trip to Europe to visit Leonardo da Vinci's places. Several ugly rows with Volynsky finally prompted Gippius to send her scandalous-minded lover home. Volynsky reacted by expelling his ex-lover's husband from Severny Vestnik (some sources say it was the Merezhkovskys who withdraw their cooperation with the "Severny Vestnik" a year before the magazine shut down in 1898, along with Minsky and Sologub), made sure the major literary journals would shut the door on him and published (in 1900 under his own name a monograph Leonardo da Vinci, written and compiled by his adversary.

The scandal concerning plagiarism lasted for almost two years. Feeling sick and ignored, Merezhkovsky in 1897 was seriously considering leaving his country for good, being kept at home only by the lack of money. For almost three years the second novel, Resurrection of Gods. Leonardo da Vinci (The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci – in English and French) remained unpublished. It finally appeared in Autumn 1900 in Mir Bozhy under the title "The Renaissance". In retrospect these two books' "...persuasive power came from Merezhkovsky's success in catching currents then around him: strong contrasts between social life and spiritual values, fresh interest in the drama of pagan ancient Athens, and identification with general western European culture."
--------------------------Bernard Guilbert Guerney, a translator of Russian authors and the editor of many anthologies, was born in Nicolaiev, Russia, Mr. Guerney camed to the United States in 1905 and settled in Brooklyn.
and died in State College, Pa., where he had lived since moving from New York City.

Mr. Guerney was the proprietor of the Blue Fawn, a book store he operated near Greenwich and Seventh Avenues, and at various other locations in Manhattan since the early 1920's.

As a translator, Mr. Guerney was best known for his "Treasury of Russian Litrature," published by Vanguard Press in 1943. It included two full-length novels and other works by Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bunin and Kuprin.

He also translated Merezhkovsky's "The Romance of Leonardo de Vinci" and "The Anthology of Russian Literature," published by the Modern Library in 1960.