Society and Culture: Exhibition “Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin and His Contemporaries” presented in Moscow

An exhibition from the collections of the Manuscripts Department, marking the 150th anniversary of the remarkable Russian writer, publicist, traveler, philosopher, thinker Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin, has opened in the Rumyantsev Hall of the Pashkov House.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin (1873—1954) was a writer whom many recognize since childhood due to his stories about nature. Nevertheless, he has only recently fully opened up thanks to the publication of diaries that he has kept throughout his life. They reflected the writer’s era and worldview.

The exhibition presents books by Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin The Bun, Kurymushka, Berendey’s Springs, The Chain of Kashchey with inscriptions to David Lazarevich Talnikov and Mikhail Osipovich Gershenzon. Out of the epistolary legacy of Mikhail Mikhailovich, the writer’s letters to Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov, Vladimir Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich, Ivan Alexandrovich Ryazanovsky, Yevdoxia Feodorovna Nikitina, Mikhail Osipovich Gershenzon, Georgy Ivanovich Chulkov are especially interesting.

The biographical documents exhibited include the Statement to the Group Committee of Writers on the allocation of a land plot for a dacha dated April 7, 1942, a proposal to accept Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin into the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature dated April 23, 1924, extracts from diaries made by his wife Valeria Dmitriyevna Prishvina.

It is impossible to ignore the contemporaries of the writer who influenced the work of Mikhail Mikhailovich: first of all, his teacher Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov, whose manuscripts and photographs are also presented at the exhibition, and a fellow student at the Yelets Gymnasium Ivan Alexeyevich Bunin.

A special section of the exhibition displays literary works dedicated to the work of Prishvin: the monograph Odyssey of the Last Romantic by David Lazarevich Talnikov, as well as memories of the writer.

Unique photographs of the writer’s mother Maria Ivanovna, nieces Ignatovs, prototypes of the autobiographical work The Chain of Kashchey, Mikhail Mikhailovich in a group of Russian writers in 1914 complement the documents of the exhibition.

The exhibition will be of interest to all lovers of the work of the Russian writer Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin. It will run until February 25, 2023.