The Stray Dog (, also known as the Stray Dog Cellar, Stray Dog Cabaret and the Society for Intimate Theatre) was a café and cabaret located at Mikhailovskaya Ploshchad, 5 (Ploshchad Isskustv), Square of the Arts up to Summer Gardens,

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. Theatrical performances, lectures, poetry and musical evenings were held here. The Stray Dog Café was a meeting place for writers and poets between 1911 and 1915. The

Acmeist Acmeism, or the Guild of Poets, was a modernist transient poetic school, which emerged or in 1912 in Russia under the leadership of Nikolay Gumilev and Sergei Gorodetsky. Their ideals were compactness of form and clarity of expression. The term ...

poets (

Nikolay Gumilyov Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev (also Gumilyov; , ; – August 26, 1921) was a Russian poet, literary critic, traveler, and military officer. He was a co-founder of the Acmeist poetry, Acmeist movement. He was the husband of Anna Akhmatova and the ...

Mandelstam Mandelstam or Mandelshtam () is a Jewish surname which may refer to: * Leonid Mandelstam (1879–1944), Russian theoretical physicist ** Mandel'shtam (crater), lunar crater named for Leonid Mandelstam * Nadezhda Mandelstam (1899–1980), Russian ...

Mikhail Kuzmin Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin () ( – March 1, 1936) was a Russian poet, musician and novelist, as well as a prominent contributor to the Silver Age of Russian Poetry. Biography Born into a noble family in Yaroslavl, Kuzmin grew up in St. Petersb ...

, etc.) gathered there to discuss theories of literature, give poetry readings, and perform theatre. They considered themselves "'stray dogs' shunted aside by proper

aristocratic Aristocracy (; ) is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats. Across Europe, the aristocracy exercised immense economic, political, and social influence. In Western Christian co ...

society", which led to the name. The cafe was in disrepair for many years and reopened in 2001. Run by proprietor Boris Pronin, out of the cellar of the Dashkov mansion, it opened New Year's Eve, 1911 and was shut down by the authorities in 1915.Ljudmila Shtern & Joseph Brodsky 2004. ''Brodsky: a personal memoir.'' Baskerville Publishers, Inc. s. 279.
Its closing was linked to the start of

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. A key locale for the followers of the emerging acmeist and

futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futures studies or futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities ...

literary movements, the Stray Dog clientele rejected the

symbolist Symbolism or symbolist may refer to: *Symbol, any object or sign that represents an idea Arts *Artistic symbol, an element of a literary, visual, or other work of art that represents an idea ** Color symbolism, the use of colors within various c ...

school of thought. The previous salon for St. Petersburg poets had been the Tower. This was the apartment of the symbolist poet Vyacheslav Ivanov, who also influenced

Vsevolod Meyerhold Vsevolod Emilyevich Meyerhold (; born ; 2 February 1940) was a Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor and theatrical producer. His provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting m ...

's use of theatre. Many of these poets later became patrons of the Stray Dog. Poets/performers at the Stray Dog Café included

Anna Akhmatova Anna Andreyevna Gorenko rus, А́нна Андре́евна Горе́нко, p=ˈanːə ɐnˈdrʲe(j)ɪvnə ɡɐˈrʲɛnkə, a=Anna Andreyevna Gorenko.ru.oga, links=yes; , . ( – 5 March 1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova,. ...

, her husband

Velimir Khlebnikov Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov, better known by the pen name ( rus, Велими́р Хле́бников, p=vʲɪlʲɪˈmʲir ˈxlʲɛbnʲɪkəf; – 28 June 1922), was a Russian poet and playwright, a central part of the Russian Futurist ...

Vladimir Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky ( – 14 April 1930) was a Russian poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, Russian Revolution, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Ru ...

Marina Tsvetaeva Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva ( rus, Марина Ивановна Цветаева, p=mɐˈrʲinə ɪˈvanəvnə tsvʲɪˈta(j)ɪvə, links=yes; 31 August 1941) was a Russian poet. Her work is some of the most well-known in twentieth-century Russ ...

Boris Pasternak Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (30 May 1960) was a Russian and Soviet poet, novelist, composer, and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pasternak's first book of poems, ''My Sister, Life'', was published in Berlin in 1922 and soon became an imp ...

Sergei Esenin Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin (, ; 1895 – 28 December 1925), sometimes spelled as Esenin, was a Russian lyric poet. He is one of the most popular and well-known Russian poets of the 20th century. One of his narratives was "lyrical evocations ...

Osip Mandelstam Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam (, ; – 27 December 1938) was a Russian and Soviet poet. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school. Osip Mandelstam was arrested during the repressions of the 1930s and sent into internal exile wi ...

, etc.

References

Further reading