The Modern Novel

Biography

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky was born in 1887 in Kyiv. His family was Polish. He was the youngest of four and the only boy. He was initially home-schooled before going to the local school when he was older. He studied law at Kyiv University , while attending lectures at the Faculty of History and Philology. He had already started writing poetry and then travel accounts after travel to various European countries. He graduated in 1913 and became an assistant barrister but left the position in 1918, influenced by the changes following the Russian Revolution. Initially he devoted himself to writing. He also lectured at the Kyiv Conservatory, the Lysenko Music and Drama Institute and the Jewish Studio of Kyiv. In 1922 he moved to Moscow.

He became involved in literary circles, particularly theatrical circles. He gave readings of his stories and essays but was unable to get them published, so had to earn his living elsewhere, working as an editor for the Soviet Encyclopedia and as a screenwriter and librettist. He also wrote articles, particularly on Pushkin and Shakespeare. Most of the prose fiction for which he is now known was written in the 1920s and 1930s but was rejected for publication and only published after the fall of the Soviet Union, even though he became a member of the Writers’ Union in 1939. He ceased writing fiction after 1940 and earned a living translating Polish literature. He died in 1950. His place of burial is unknown. His widow, Anna Bovshek, preserved his manuscripts.

Other links

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
On the Experimental Realism of an Eccentric Russian Anglophile
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky and Russia’s Belated Modernism
Evicted From His Own Head: On Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
Krzhizhanovsky, the Known Unknown
The Known Unknown: On Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (not the same as the one above)