Mikhail Kuzmin

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Portrait by Konstantin Somov (1909).

Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin (Михаил Алексеевич Кузмин, October 6, 1872 - March 1, 1936) was a prominent contributor to the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.

Kuzmin's views on art had much in common with Sergei Diaghilev and the Mir iskusstva (World of Art). He was fascinated with Voltaire's fiction and the ancient Greek novels, imitating them and translating The Golden Ass (by Lucius Apuleius) into Russian. In 1906, he issued the first Russian novel with a homosexual theme, Крылья (Kryl'ia, Wings, 1906), which would be mocked by Vladimir Nabokov in his 1930 novella The Eye.

As a poet, his earlier works tend to be considered Symbolist in nature, while his later works are usually grouped with the Acmeist movement. Kuzmin wrote the first substantial body of free verse in Russian literature. The Trout Breaks the Ice (1929) is his most significant poem sequence exploring homosexual themes. Kuzmin spent his declining years translating Shakespeare's plays.