Ryurik Ivnev
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Ryurik Ivnev, Рюрик Ивнев, real name - Михаил Александрович Ковалев) (1891–1981), a Russian poet. He was born in Tiflis on 11 February, 1891, (by the old style) to a noble family. His father, A. S. Kovalev, the captain of Russian army, served as the assistant to judge advocate Kavkaz Military - circumferential law court, and he was the son of the outdoor adviser of Erivan province. The children (Mikhail had an elder brother, Nikolai) had been brought up by their mother, A. P. Kovaleva-Prince. Among her ancestors there was a Dutch count, who arrived into Russia with Peter I. After the death of their father in 1894 the family moved to Kars city, where the mother obtained the post of principal in an all-girl secondary school. By the insistence of mother the sons entered into the Tiflis Military school, where Mikhail studied from 1900 through 1908. After the end of military school, Mikhail came to the thought that the career of serviceman was not for him, and he went to Saint Petersburg, where he became a student of the juridical department of the Emperor University. In 1912 he was forced to leave Petersburg University and moved into Moscow to continue his education. In 1913 he graduated from Moscow University with a law diploma and returned to Petersburg, where he entered service in the office of government control.
The first literary tests of Mikhail Kovalev were during the years of instruction in military school. In 1904, the first poems, which he called "his friends", were written. In 1909 his first publication appeared in the collective "Student collection", which was published in Vyshnij Volochek: the poem "Our days" (signed: M. Kovalev). Two years later he decided to show his poems and prose to Alexander Blok, after arriving at home on his birthday, and received unfavorable opinion. The next two poems were published in 1912 in the Bolshevik newspaper "Star". Soon Mikhail, together with Vadim Shershenevich, K. Olimpov, Vasilisk Gnedov joined the group of Egofuturists and he began to be printed frequently in the almanacs and the collections by the publishing houses "Peterburgskiy Glashatay", "Centrifuge" and "Mezzanine of poetry". In 1913 his first book of poems was published: "Self-immolation" (Revelations).
Mikhail Kovalev became Ryurik Ivnev. The poet himself said that this pseudonym was dreamed up in his sleep, on the day before the print of "Self-immolations". The book did not remain unnoticed- the young poet obtained a great reputation. The doors of guest and literary salons were thrown open before him. He became acquainted with many well-known, amateur poets and writers - Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius, Mikhail Kuzmin, Nikolay Gumilyov, Anna Akhmatova, Fyodor Sologub and Vladimir Mayakovsky.
In 1925 Ivnev visited Germany, then worked in Vladivostok in the publishing house "Knijnoe delo". In 1927 he visited Japan. In the second-half of the twenties Ryurik Ivnev published an epic trilogy,the "Life of actress" , which contained the novels "Love without the love" (1925), the "Open house" (1927) and the "Hero of novel" (1928), and were not very well-known in the world of literature. At the end of the thirties he worked on an autobiographical novel, "At the Foot Of Mtatsmindy". In the same years he began work on one more autobiographical novel - "Bohemia", which Ivnev completed in the month before his death. He then lived in Tbilisi, then in 1950 he returned to Moscow. After the end of the World War II Ryurik Ivnev turned to the historical past of Russia, worked in the genre of dramaturgy, wrote the historical chronicles, the "Tragedy of Tsar Boris", "Sergey Esenin" and "Emel'yan Pugachev", and wrote more poems. In the later years of his life he worked at his memoirs. He died on 19 February, 1981, three days before his ninetieth birthday.
