About a century ago, a revival of dueling in Russia ended with a this duel by

Nikolay Gumilyov and Maximilian Voloshin. “The offense seems cliché at first,” Nick Moran writes. “Gumilyov had—like many of his peers—become enamored with the female poet Cherubina de Gabriak, and Voloshin stood in his way. It was soon discovered, however, that de Gabriak did not actually exist in corpus, and was instead a pseudonym manufactured by Voloshin and a then-unknown schoolteacher named Elisaveta Dmitrievna. The two had concocted the exotic alias in order to get two dozen poems published. Gumilyov, publisher of some of these poems, wound up penning amorous letters to de Gabriak, and he began receiving equally amorous responses. The offense could not go unpunished. This time, both duelists survived unscathed.”

Nick describes this period and the literature that sprang up with it on The Millions.