Mikhail Kuzmin

Poet, writer, playwright, translator, art critic, composer. Uncle of Sergei Ausländer. Born in Yaroslavl (1872) in the family of nobleman Alexei Kuzmin (1812–1886) and Nadezhda Fedorova (1834–1904). Studied at the Eighth Grammar School and under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at the St Petersburg Conservatoire  (from 1884). Befriended such members of the World of Art as Walter Nouvel, Alfred Nurok, Konstantin Somov and Sergei Diaghilev at the Soirées of Contemporary Music. Made his literary debut when his sonnets and the play The Story of the Knight Astorred Allessio were printed in the Green Collection of Poems and Prose (1905). Valery Bryusov published his poems from the Songs of Alexandria cycle and the short story Wings in Libra (1906). Contributed to other Symbolist periodicals. Published The Leader (1918). Compared himself to Jonah in the belly of the whale in post-revolutionary Petrograd. Died in Leningrad and buried at the Volkovo Cemetery (1936).