Ivanov, Georgy

Georgy Vladimirovich Ivanov (1894-1958), Russian poety and prose writer, was born at Kovno (now part of Lithuania) into the Russian gentry. He emigrated to France in the early 1920s, and there he became a major Russian poet bitter, perceptive, difficult as a person, and chilling in his abilitiy to give voice to the despair, the utter negativity of his vision. At the same time there is implicit in his verse an abiding faith in poetry, particularly in the senseless, insane music of verbal art.