Sologub’s Literary Mothers. The Child-Mother Devotion in Fyodor Sologub’s Short Stories

Best known outside Russia as the author of The Petty Demon (Melkiy bes, 1905), the Symbolist-writer Fyodor Sologub (1863-1927) also published a great number of short stories. In these stories, besides developing the main themes of his own literary production – which reflects his life-conception (beauty, death, madness, children‟s innocence and purity, etc.) –, Sologub gives a special relevance to family relationships, in particular, the mother- child‟s one. Within this paper, I will analyze the peculiar mother-child relationship that Sologub explores in his short stories.