Le stagioni dell'amore

Michail Kuzmin was a very prominent figure in the Petersburg symbolist circles: eccentric, eclectic, dandy. He embodied the prototype of the artist and the fin de siècle intellectual. Known above all as a poet, he was also a prolific prose writer and fine essayist, also distinguishing himself for his skills as a composer, albeit only at the level of high amateurism. These traits, combined with a strong interest in the figurative arts and the theatre, combine to make him one of the most interesting creators of the aesthetic conception of the Wagnerian "synthesis of the arts", which spread in Russia between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His significant contribution, in this sense, is The Seasons of Love (1910), a poetic cycle designed for theatrical transposition, in which Kuzmin engages in the multiple roles of the author of the texts, music, actor and collaborator in the direction. Accompanied in the publication by the lithographs of two of the most renowned graphic artists of the time, Sergej Sudejkin and Nikolaj Feofilaktov, the work represents a small jewel of Russian Wagnerism.