Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/45

Rh cally and from books. This opinion is false, and is perhaps due to defects in my literary ability.

I can assert with a clear conscience: All religious ideas expressed by me, come neither from books nor from foreign influences, but from my own experiences, for I have experienced them all myself.

In my first collection of critical essays: "On the causes of the decay and on the new tendencies in Russian literature," I endeavoured to establish the doctrines of symbolism not so much from an aesthetic as from a religious point of view.

In the following years I travelled a great deal. I lived for some time in Rome, Florence and Taormina, besides going to Athens and Constantinople. My second collection of essays, "The Eternal Companions," dates back to this period. I also translated a series of Greek tragedies.

In the year 1893 I began the trilogy "Christ and Anti-Christ," at which I worked for nearly 12 years. For a long time I could nowhere dispose of "Julian the Apostate"; no editor would take it. At last, with great difficulty, I had it accepted by the "Northern Herald"; they really took the novel out of pity. Altogether I had an unfriendly reception in Russian literature, and even to-day I have to put up with many hostilities. I might celebrate a 25 years' anniversary of pitiless persecutions on the part of the Russian critics.