Valentina Parisi

Defined by T. Pachmuss as “a Hypatia of the 20^th century,” Gippius is a seminal figure of Russian fin-de-siècle culture, yet an under-recognized one, as far as her position in the literary canon is concerned. By translating her essays Zhivye litsa into Italian, Valentina Parisi will shed light on her original thought, characterized by religious hereticism, political radicalism and sexual non-conventionality, and will contextualize her oeuvre in the framework of the aesthetical utopia of Russian modernism, which viewed life itself as an act of artistic creation.