A Difficult Soul: Zinaida Gippius - Paperbackby Vladimir Zlobin (Author), Simon Karlinsky (Editor) guide the Symbolist movement which dominated Russian literature for the first third of the twentieth century. A major poet, important playwright, and influential literary critic, she was also a sexual rebel who rejected traditional male female roles as early as the 1890s. Vladimir Zlobin, her secretary and factotum from the time of her emigration to Paris after the revolution until her death in