Stray Dog Café facts for kids
The Stray Dog (also known as the Stray Dog Cafe or Stray Dog Cellar) was a famous meeting spot for writers and poets. It was located in St. Petersburg, Russia, at Mikhailovckaya Ploshchad, 5. This special cafe was open from 1911 to 1915.
It was a place where creative people, especially poets, gathered to share their ideas. They would read their poems aloud and even put on small plays. The poets who met there called themselves "stray dogs." This was because they felt different from the more traditional or "proper" society of the time. After being closed for many years, the cafe reopened in 2001.
A Secret Meeting Place
The Stray Dog Cafe was in the basement of a building called the Dashkov mansion. It opened its doors on New Year's Eve in 1911. A man named Boris Pronin ran the cafe. It quickly became a popular spot for new literary groups like the Acmeists and Futurists. These groups had fresh ideas about poetry and art. They did not agree with the older style called Symbolism.
The cafe was a place where these new ideas could grow. It was a hub for lively discussions and performances. However, the cafe was closed down by the authorities in 1915. This happened around the time World War I began.
Poets and Performers
Before the Stray Dog, many poets in St. Petersburg met at a place called the Tower. This was the home of a Symbolist poet named Vyacheslav Ivanov. He also influenced how theater was done. Many of these poets later started going to the Stray Dog Cafe.
Many famous poets and writers visited and performed at the Stray Dog Cafe. Some of the well-known names include:
- Anna Akhmatova
- Nikolay Gumilyov (Anna Akhmatova's husband)
- Velimir Khlebnikov
- Vladimir Mayakovsky
- Marina Tsvetaeva
- Boris Pasternak
- Sergei Esenin
- Mikhail Kuzmin
- Osip Mandelstam
These artists helped make the Stray Dog Cafe a very important place in Russian literature. It was a time when new and exciting artistic movements were starting.
