Dekadencka Madonna, Biała Diablica, Lorelei... Zinaida Gippius w egodokumentach współczesnych

The paper is devoted to Zinaida Gippius’s literary portraits left on the pages of ego-documents, especially memoirs. She was one of the most significant figures of the Russian Silver Age. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, the writer created her own legend and image based on internal conflict, which in turn influenced the diversity of her portraits in memoirs. Their analysis leads to the conclusion that these portraits fit into the stereotyped, ambivalent perception of a woman, and majority of the authors reveal the tendency to mythologize and dehumanize her heroine: on the one hand her divinization, and on the other – reification. It also proves that the memoirist had perpetuated and widened the legend about her.