Nekrasov's early years. Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseevich

short biography Nikolai Nekrasov

Nikolai Nekrasov is a Russian poet, writer, publicist and classic of Russian literature. In addition, Nekrasov was a democratic revolutionary, head of the Sovremennik magazine and editor of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine. The writer’s most famous work is the poem-novel “Who Lives Well in Rus'.”

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov was born on December 10, 1821 in Nemirov into a noble family. The writer spent his childhood years in the Yaroslavl province. At the age of 11, he entered the Yaroslavl gymnasium, where he studied for 5 years.

The writer's father was a rather despotic man. When Nikolai refused to become a military man at the insistence of his father, he was deprived of financial support.

At the age of 17, the writer moved to St. Petersburg, where, in order to survive, he wrote poetry to order. During this period he met Belinsky. When Nekrasov was 26 years old, together with the literary critic Panaev, he bought the Sovremennik magazine. The magazine quickly gained momentum and had great influence in society. However, in 1862 the government banned its publication.

While working at Sovremennik, several collections of Nekrasov’s poems were published. Among them are those who brought him fame in wide circles. For example, “Peasant Children” and “Peddlers”. In the 1840s, Nekrasov also began to collaborate with the journal Otechestvennye zapiski, and in 1868 he rented it from Kraevsky.

During the same period, he wrote the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” as well as “Russian Women,” “Grandfather,” and a number of other satirical works, including the popular poem “Contemporaries.”

In 1875, the poet became terminally ill. In recent years, he worked on a cycle of poems, “Last Songs,” which he dedicated to his wife and last love, Zinaida Nikolaevna Nekrasova. The writer died on January 8, 1878 and was buried at the St. Petersburg Novodevichy cemetery.

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov. Born on November 28 (December 10), 1821 in Nemirov, Podolsk province - died on December 27, 1877 (January 8, 1878) in St. Petersburg. Russian poet, writer and publicist, classic of Russian literature. From 1847 to 1866 - head of the literary and socio-political magazine Sovremennik, from 1868 - editor of the magazine Otechestvennye zapiski.

He is best known for such works as the epic poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” the poems “Frost, Red Nose,” “Russian Women,” and the poem “Grandfather Mazai and the Hares.” His poems were devoted mainly to the suffering of the people, the idyll and tragedy of the peasantry. Nekrasov introduced the richness of the folk language and folklore into Russian poetry, making extensive use of prosaisms and speech patterns of the common people in his works - from everyday to journalistic, from vernacular to poetic vocabulary, from oratorical to parody-satirical style. Using colloquial speech and folk phraseology, he significantly expanded the range of Russian poetry. Nekrasov was the first to decide on a bold combination of elegiac, lyrical and satirical motifs within one poem, which had not been practiced before. His poetry had a beneficial influence on the subsequent development of Russian classical and later Soviet poetry.

Nikolai Nekrasov came from a noble, once rich family from the Yaroslavl province. Born in the Vinnitsa district of the Podolsk province in the city of Nemirov. There at that time the regiment in which his father served, lieutenant and wealthy landowner Alexei Sergeevich Nekrasov (1788-1862), was quartered. The Nekrasov family weakness did not escape him - the love of cards ( Sergei Alekseevich Nekrasov (1746-1807), the poet’s grandfather, lost almost his entire fortune at cards).

Alexei Sergeevich fell in love with Elena Andreevna Zakrevskaya (1801-1841), the beautiful and educated daughter of a wealthy possessor of the Kherson province, whom the poet considered Polish. Elena Zakrevskaya's parents did not agree to marry their well-bred daughter to a poor and poorly educated army officer, which forced Elena to marry without the consent of her parents in 1817. However, this marriage was not happy.

Remembering his childhood, the poet always spoke of his mother as a sufferer, a victim of a rough and depraved environment. He dedicated a number of poems to his mother - “Last Songs”, the poem “Mother”, “Knight for an Hour”, in which he painted a bright image of the one who brightened up the unattractive environment of his childhood with her nobility. Warm memories of his mother affected Nekrasov’s work, appearing in his works about women’s lot. The very idea of ​​motherhood will appear later in his textbook works - the chapter “Peasant Woman” in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”, the poem “Orina, the Soldier’s Mother”. The image of the mother is the main one positive hero Nekrasov's poetic world. However, his poetry will also contain images of other relatives - his father and sister. The father will act as the despot of the family, an unbridled savage landowner. And a sister, on the contrary, is like a gentle friend, whose fate is similar to the fate of a mother. However, these images will not be as bright as the image of the mother.

Nekrasov spent his childhood on the Nekrasov family estate, in the village of Greshnevo, Yaroslavl province, in the district where his father Alexey Sergeevich Nekrasov, having retired, moved when Nikolai was 3 years old.

The boy grew up in a huge family (Nekrasov had 13 brothers and sisters), in a difficult situation of his father’s brutal reprisals against peasants, his stormy orgies with serf mistresses and a cruel attitude towards his “recluse” wife, the mother of the future poet. Neglected cases and a number of processes on the estate forced Nekrasov’s father to take the place of police officer. During his travels, he often took little Nikolai with him, and, while still a child, he often had the opportunity to see the dead, collecting arrears, etc., which became embedded in his soul in the form of sad pictures of people’s grief.

In 1832, at the age of 11, Nekrasov entered the Yaroslavl gymnasium, where he reached the 5th grade. He did not study well and did not get along very well with the gymnasium authorities (partly because of the satirical poems). At the Yaroslavl gymnasium, a 16-year-old boy began to write down his first poems in his home notebook. In his initial work one could trace the sad impressions of his early years, which to one degree or another colored the first period of his work.

His father always dreamed of a military career for his son, and in 1838, 17-year-old Nekrasov went to St. Petersburg to be assigned to a noble regiment.

However, Nekrasov met a gymnasium friend, a student of Glushitsky, and became acquainted with other students, after which he developed a passionate desire to study. He ignored his father’s threat to be left without any financial assistance and began to prepare for the entrance exam to St. Petersburg University. However, he failed the exam and entered the Faculty of Philology as a volunteer student.

From 1839 to 1841 he spent time at the university, but almost all of his time was spent searching for income, since his angry father stopped providing him with financial support. During these years, Nikolai Nekrasov suffered terrible poverty, not every day even having the opportunity to have a full lunch. He didn't always have an apartment either. For some time he rented a room from a soldier, but somehow he fell ill from prolonged starvation, owed the soldier a lot and, despite the November night, was left homeless. On the street, a passing beggar took pity on him and took him to one of the slums on the outskirts of the city. In this shelter, Nekrasov found a part-time job by writing to someone for 15 kopecks. petition. The terrible need only strengthened his character.

After several years of hardship, Nekrasov’s life began to improve. He began giving lessons and publishing short articles in the “Literary Supplement to the Russian Invalid” and the Literary Gazette. In addition, he composed ABCs and fairy tales in verse for popular print publishers, and wrote vaudevilles for the Alexandrinsky Theater (under the name of Perepelsky). Nekrasov became interested in literature. For several years he worked diligently on prose, poetry, vaudeville, journalism, criticism (“Lord, how much I worked!..”) - until the mid-1840s. His early poetry and prose were marked by romantic imitation and in many ways prepared the further development of Nekrasov's realistic method.

He began to have his own savings, and in 1840, with the support of some St. Petersburg acquaintances, he published a book of his poems entitled “Dreams and Sounds.” In the poems one could notice the imitation of Vasily Zhukovsky, Vladimir Benediktov and others. The collection consisted of pseudo-romantic imitative ballads with various “scary” titles like “Evil Spirit”, “Angel of Death”, “Raven”, etc.

Nekrasov took the book he was preparing to V.A. Zhukovsky to get his opinion. He singled out 2 poems as decent, the rest advised the young poet to publish without a name: “Later you will write better, and you will be ashamed of these poems.” Nekrasov hid behind the initials “N. N."

Literary critic Nikolai Polevoy praised the debutant, while critic V.G. Belinsky in “Notes of the Fatherland” spoke disparagingly about the book. The book of the aspiring poet “Dreams and Sounds” was not sold out at all, and this had such an effect on Nekrasov that he, like (who at one time bought up and destroyed “Hanz Küchelgarten”), also began to buy up and destroy “Dreams and Sounds”, which therefore became the greatest bibliographic rarity (they were not included in Nekrasov’s collected works).

Nevertheless, with all the severity of his opinion, in his review of the collection “Dreams and Sounds” he mentioned the poems as “coming from the soul.” However, the failure of his poetic debut was obvious, and Nekrasov tried his hand at prose. His early stories and short stories reflected his own life experience and his first impressions in St. Petersburg. In these works there are young commoners, hungry poets, officials living in need, poor girls deceived by the capital's bigwigs, moneylenders profiting from the needs of the poor. Despite the fact that his artistic skill was still imperfect, Nekrasov’s early prose can be safely attributed to the realistic school of the 1840s, led by Belinsky and Gogol.

Soon he turned to humorous genres: such were the joke poem “Provincial Clerk in St. Petersburg”, the vaudeville “Feoktist Onufrievich Bob”, “This is what it means to fall in love with an actress”, the melodrama “A Mother’s Blessing, or Poverty and Honor”, ​​the story of petty Petersburg officials "Makar Osipovich Random" and others.

In the early 1840s, Nekrasov became an employee of Otechestvennye Zapiski, starting work in the bibliographic department. In 1842, Nekrasov became close to Belinsky’s circle, who became closely acquainted with him and highly appreciated the merits of his mind. Belinsky believed that in the field of prose Nekrasov would not become anything more than an ordinary magazine employee, but he enthusiastically approved his poem “On the Road.” It was Belinsky who had a strong ideological influence on Nekrasov.

Soon Nekrasov began to actively engage in publishing activities. He published a number of almanacs: “Articles in verse without pictures” (1843), “Physiology of St. Petersburg” (1845), “April 1” (1846), “Petersburg Collection” (1846), in which D. V. Grigorovich made his debut , speakers I. S. Turgenev, A. N. Maikov. The “Petersburg Collection”, in which Dostoevsky’s “Poor People” were published, was a great success.

A special place in Nekrasov’s early work is occupied by a novel from modern life of that period, known as “The Life and Adventures of Tikhon Trostnikov.” The novel was begun in 1843 and was created on the threshold of the writer’s creative maturity, which was manifested both in the style of the novel and in the content itself. This is most noticeable in the chapter “Petersburg Corners”, which can be considered as an independent story of an essay nature and one of the best works of the “natural school”. It was this story that Nekrasov published separately (in the almanac “Physiology of St. Petersburg”, 1845). She was highly appreciated by Belinsky in his review of this almanac.

Nekrasov's publishing business was so successful that at the end of 1846 - January 1847, he, together with the writer and journalist Ivan Panaev, leased a magazine from P. A. Pletnev "Contemporary", founded by Alexander Pushkin. The literary youth, who created the main force of “Notes of the Fatherland,” left Kraevsky and joined Nekrasov.

Belinsky also moved to Sovremennik; he transferred to Nekrasov part of the material that he had collected for the collection “Leviathan” he had planned. Nevertheless, Belinsky was at Sovremennik at the level of the same ordinary journalist as Kraevsky had previously been. And Nekrasov was subsequently reproached for this, since it was Belinsky who most contributed to the fact that the main representatives of the literary movement of the 1840s moved from Otechestvennye Zapiski to Sovremennik.

Nekrasov, like Belinsky, became a successful discoverer of new talents. Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov, Alexander Herzen, Nikolai Ogarev, Dmitry Grigorovich found their fame and recognition on the pages of the Sovremennik magazine. Alexander Ostrovsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Gleb Uspensky were published in the magazine. Nikolai Nekrasov introduced Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy into Russian literature. Also published in the magazine were Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Nikolai Dobrolyubov, who soon became the ideological leaders of Sovremennik.

From the first years of publication of the magazine under his leadership, Nekrasov was not only its inspirer and editor, but also one of the main authors. His poems, prose, and criticism were published here. During the “dark seven years” of 1848-1855, the government of Nicholas I, frightened French revolution, began to haunt advanced journalism and literature. Nekrasov, as the editor of Sovremennik, in this difficult time for freethinking in literature, managed, at the cost of enormous efforts, despite the constant struggle with censorship, to preserve the reputation of the magazine. Although it was impossible not to note that the content of the magazine had noticeably faded.

The printing of long adventure novels “Three Countries of the World” and “Dead Lake”, written by Nikolai Nekrasov in collaboration with Stanitsky (pseudonym of Golovacheva-Panaeva), begins. With the chapters of these long novels, Nekrasov covered the gaps that formed in the magazine due to censorship restrictions.

Around the mid-1850s, Nekrasov became seriously ill with a throat disease, but his stay in Italy alleviated his condition. Nekrasov's recovery coincided with the beginning of a new period in Russian life. A happy time has also come in his work - he is being nominated to the forefront of Russian literature.

However, this period could not be called easy. The class contradictions that aggravated at that time were also reflected in the magazine: the editors of Sovremennik found themselves split into two groups, one of which, led by Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy and Vasily Botkin, who advocated for moderate realism and the aesthetic “Pushkin” principle in literature , represented the liberal nobility. They were counterbalanced by adherents of satirical “Gogolian” literature, promoted by the democratic part of the Russian “natural school” of the 1840s. In the early 1860s, the confrontation between these two trends in the journal reached its utmost intensity. In the split that occurred, Nekrasov supported the “revolutionary commoners”, the ideologists of “peasant democracy”. During this difficult period of the highest political upsurge in the country, the poet created such works as “The Poet and the Citizen” (1856), “Reflections at the Main Entrance” (1858) and “The Railway” (1864).

In the early 1860s, Dobrolyubov died, Chernyshevsky and Mikhailov were exiled to Siberia. All this was a blow for Nekrasov. The era of student unrest, riots of “liberated from the land” peasants and the Polish uprising began. During this period, the “first warning” was announced to Nekrasov’s magazine. The publication of Sovremennik was suspended, and in 1866, after Dmitry Karakozov shot the Russian Emperor, the magazine closed forever. Nekrasov, over the years of his leadership of the magazine, managed to transform it into the main literary magazine and a profitable enterprise, despite constant persecution by censors.

After the closure of the magazine, Nekrasov became close to the publisher Andrei Kraevsky and two years after the closure of Sovremennik, in 1868, he rented Otechestvennye zapiski from Kraevsky, making them a militant organ of revolutionary populism and turning them together into an organ of advanced democratic thought.

In 1858, N. A. Dobrolyubov and N. A. Nekrasov founded a satirical supplement to the Sovremennik magazine - “Whistle”. The author of the idea was Nekrasov himself, and Dobrolyubov became the main employee of “Svistok”. The first two issues of the magazine (published in January and April 1859) were compiled by Dobrolyubov, while Nekrasov began active collaboration from the third issue (October 1859). By this time, he was no longer just an employee, but was involved in organizing and editing the issue. Nekrasov also published his poems and notes in the magazine.

At all stages of the development of Nekrasov’s work, one of the most important places in it was occupied by satire, a tendency towards which began to emerge back in the 1840s. This craving for a sharply critical depiction of reality led in the 1860-1870s to the appearance of a whole series of satirical works. The poet created new genres, he wrote poetic pamphlets, review poems, and pondered a cycle of “club” satires.

He was able to master the art of social revelations, skillfully and subtle description the most pressing issues. At the same time, he did not forget about the lyrical beginning, he knew how to easily move from soulful intonations to the techniques of a prickly poetic feuilleton, often even close to a vaudeville style. All these subtleties of his work predetermined the emergence of a new type of satire, which had not yet existed in Russian literature before him. Thus, in his great satirical poem “Contemporaries” (1875), Nekrasov skillfully alternates the techniques of farce and grotesque, irony and sarcasm. In it, the poet, with all his talent, brought down the force of his indignation against the growing strength of the Russian bourgeoisie. According to the literary critic V.V. Zhdanov, Nekrasov’s satirical review poem “Contemporaries” in the history of Russian literature stands next to Shchedrin’s accusatory prose. Saltykov-Shchedrin himself spoke positively about the poem, which struck him with its strength and truth.

However, Nekrasov’s main work was the epic peasant poem-symphony “Who Lives Well in Rus',” which was based on the poet’s thought, which relentlessly haunted him in the post-reform years: “The people are liberated, but are the people happy?” This epic poem absorbed all his spiritual experience. This is the experience of a subtle connoisseur folk life and folk speech. The poem became, as it were, the result of his long thoughts about the situation and fate of the peasantry, ruined by this reform.

At the beginning of 1875, Nekrasov became seriously ill. Doctors discovered he had intestinal cancer, an incurable disease that left him bedridden for the next two years. During this time, his life turned into a slow agony. Nekrasov was operated on by surgeon Billroth, who specially arrived from Vienna, but the operation only slightly extended his life. News of the poet's fatal illness significantly increased his popularity. Letters and telegrams began to arrive to him in large quantities from all over Russia. The support greatly helped the poet in his terrible torment and inspired him to further creativity.

During this difficult time for himself, he writes “Last Songs,” which, due to the sincerity of his feelings, are considered one of his best creations. In recent years, the awareness of his significance in the history of the Russian word clearly emerged in his soul. Thus, in the lullaby “Bayu-Bayu,” death tells him: “do not be afraid of bitter oblivion: I already hold in my hand the crown of love, the crown of forgiveness, the gift of your meek homeland... The stubborn darkness will yield to the light, you will hear your song over the Volga, over the Oka, over the Kama, bye-bye-bye-bye!..”

In “A Writer’s Diary,” Dostoevsky wrote: “I saw him for the last time a month before his death. He seemed almost like a corpse then, so it was strange to even see such a corpse talking and moving his lips. But he not only spoke, but also retained all the clarity of his mind. It seems he still didn't believe in the possibility near death. A week before his death, he suffered from paralysis on the right side of his body.”

A huge number of people came to see the poet off on his final journey. His funeral became the first time a nation paid its last respects to the writer. The farewell to the poet began at 9 a.m. and was accompanied by a literary and political demonstration. Despite the severe frost, a crowd of several thousand people, mostly young people, escorted the poet’s body to his eternal resting place at the St. Petersburg Novodevichy Cemetery.

The youth did not even allow Dostoevsky, who spoke at the funeral itself, to speak, who assigned Nekrasov (with some reservations) third place in Russian poetry after Pushkin and Lermontov, interrupting him with shouts of “Yes, higher, higher than Pushkin!” This dispute then went into print: some supported the opinion of young enthusiasts, the other part pointed out that Pushkin and Lermontov were spokesmen for the entire Russian society, and Nekrasov - only the “circle”. There were still others who indignantly rejected the very idea of ​​a parallel between the creativity that brought Russian verse to the pinnacle of artistic perfection, and the “clumsy” verse of Nekrasov, which, in their opinion, was devoid of any artistic significance.

Representatives of “Land and Freedom” took part in the burial of Nekrasov, as well as other revolutionary organizations, who laid a wreath with the inscription “From the Socialists” on the poet’s coffin.

Personal life of Nikolai Nekrasov:

The personal life of Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov was not always successful. In 1842, at a poetry evening, he met Avdotya Panaeva (ur. Bryanskaya) - the wife of the writer Ivan Panaev. Avdotya Panaeva, an attractive brunette, was considered one of the most beautiful women in St. Petersburg at that time. In addition, she was smart and was the owner of a literary salon, which met in the house of her husband Ivan Panaev. Her own literary talent attracted the young but already popular Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Turgenev, Belinsky to the circle in the Panayevs’ house. Her husband, the writer Panaev, was characterized as a rake and a reveler. Despite this, his wife was distinguished by her decency, and Nekrasov had to make considerable efforts to attract the attention of this woman. Fyodor Dostoevsky was also in love with Avdotya, but he failed to achieve reciprocity. At first, Panaeva also rejected twenty-six-year-old Nekrasov, who was also in love with her, which is why he almost committed suicide.

During one of the trips of the Panaevs and Nekrasov to the Kazan province, Avdotya and Nikolai Alekseevich nevertheless confessed their feelings to each other. Upon their return, they began to live in a civil marriage in the Panaevs’ apartment, together with Avdotya’s legal husband, Ivan Panaev. This union lasted almost 16 years, until Panaev’s death.

All this caused public condemnation - they said about Nekrasov that he lives in someone else’s house, loves someone else’s wife and at the same time makes scenes of jealousy for his legal husband. During this period, even many friends turned away from him. But, despite this, Nekrasov and Panaeva were happy. Nekrasov created one of his best poetic cycles - the so-called “Panaevsky cycle” (they wrote and edited much of this cycle together). The co-authorship of Nekrasov and Stanitsky (pseudonym of Avdotya Yakovlevna) belongs to several novels that had big success. Despite such an unconventional lifestyle, this trio remained like-minded people and comrades-in-arms in the revival and establishment of the Sovremennik magazine.

In 1849, Avdotya Yakovlevna gave birth to a boy from Nekrasov, but he did not live long. At this time, Nekrasov himself fell ill. It is believed that it was with the death of the child that strong attacks of anger and mood swings were associated, which later led to a break in their relationship with Avdotya. In 1862, Ivan Panaev died, and soon Avdotya Panaeva left Nekrasov. However, Nekrasov remembered her until the end of his life and, when drawing up his will, mentioned her in it.

In May 1864, Nekrasov went on a trip abroad, which lasted about three months. He lived mainly in Paris with his companions - his sister Anna Alekseevna and the Frenchwoman Selina Lefresne, whom he met back in St. Petersburg in 1863.

Selina was an actress of a French troupe performing at the Mikhailovsky Theater. She was distinguished by her lively disposition and easy character. Selina spent the summer of 1866 in Karabikha, and in the spring of 1867 she went abroad, as before, together with Nekrasov and his sister Anna. However, this time she never returned to Russia. This did not interrupt their relationship - in 1869 they met in Paris and spent the whole of August by the sea in Dieppe. Nekrasov was very pleased with this trip, also improving his health. During the rest, he felt happy, the reason for which was Selina, who was to his liking, although her attitude towards him was even and even a little dry. Having returned, Nekrasov did not forget Selina for a long time and helped her. And in his dying will he assigned her ten and a half thousand rubles.

Later, Nekrasov met a village girl, Fyokla Anisimovna Viktorova, simple and uneducated. She was 23 years old, he was already 48. The writer took her to theaters, concerts and exhibitions to fill the gaps in her upbringing. Nikolai Alekseevich came up with her name - Zina. So Fyokla Anisimovna began to be called Zinaida Nikolaevna. She learned Nekrasov's poems by heart and admired him. Soon they got married. However, Nekrasov still yearned for his former love - Avdotya Panaeva - and at the same time loved both Zinaida and the Frenchwoman Selina Lefren, with whom he had an affair abroad. He dedicated one of his most famous poetic works, “Three Elegies,” only to Panaeva.

Should also be mentioned about Nekrasov’s passion for playing cards, which can be called the hereditary passion of his family, starting with Nikolai Nekrasov’s great-grandfather, Yakov Ivanovich, an “immensely rich” Ryazan landowner who quickly lost his wealth.

However, he again became rich quite quickly - at one time Yakov was a governor in Siberia. As a result of his passion for the game, his son Alexei inherited only the Ryazan estate. Having married, he received the village of Greshnevo as a dowry. But his son, Sergei Alekseevich, having mortgaged Yaroslavl Greshnevo for a period of time, lost him too. Alexey Sergeevich, when telling his son Nikolai, the future poet, his glorious pedigree, summarized: “Our ancestors were rich. Your great-great-grandfather lost seven thousand souls, your great-grandfather - two, your grandfather (my father) - one, I - nothing, because there was nothing to lose, but I also like to play cards.” And only Nikolai Alekseevich was the first to change his fate. He also loved to play cards, but became the first to not lose. At a time when his ancestors were losing, he alone won back and won back a lot. The count was in the hundreds of thousands. Thus, Adjutant General Alexander Vladimirovich Adlerberg, a famous statesman, minister of the Imperial Court and personal friend of Emperor Alexander II, lost a very large sum to him. And Finance Minister Alexander Ageevich Abaza lost more than a million francs to Nekrasov. Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov managed to return Greshnevo, where he spent his childhood and which was taken away for his grandfather’s debt.

Another hobby of Nekrasov, also passed on to him from his father, was hunting. The hound hunt, which was served by two dozen dogs, greyhounds, hounds, hounds and stirrups, was the pride of Alexei Sergeevich. The poet's father forgave his son long ago and, not without glee, followed his creative and financial successes. And the son, until his father’s death (in 1862), came to see him in Greshnevo every year. Nekrasov dedicated funny poems to dog hunting and even the poem of the same name “Dog Hunt”, glorifying the prowess, scope, beauty of Russia and the Russian soul. IN mature age Nekrasov even became addicted to bear hunting (“It’s fun to beat you, honorable bears...”). Avdotya Panaeva recalled that when Nekrasov was going to hunt the bear, there were large gatherings - expensive wines, snacks and just provisions were brought. They even took a cook with them. In March 1865, Nekrasov managed to catch three bears in one day. He valued the male bear-hunters and dedicated poems to them - Savushka (“who sank on the forty-first bear”) from “In the Village,” Savely from “Who Lives Well in Rus'.” The poet also loved to hunt game. His passion for walking through the swamp with a gun was limitless. Sometimes he went hunting at sunrise and returned only at midnight.

He also went hunting with the “first hunter of Russia” Ivan Turgenev, with whom they had been friends for a long time and corresponded. Nekrasov, in his last message to Turgenev abroad, even asked him to buy him a Lancaster gun in London or Paris for 500 rubles. However, their correspondence was destined to be interrupted in 1861. Turgenev did not answer the letter and did not buy a gun, and their long-term friendship was put to an end. And the reason for this was not ideological or literary differences. Nekrasov's common-law wife, Avdotya Panaeva, got involved in a lawsuit over the inheritance of the ex-wife of the poet Nikolai Ogarev. The court awarded Panaeva a claim for 50 thousand rubles. Nekrasov paid this amount, preserving the honor of Avdotya Yakovlevna, but thereby his own reputation was shaken. Turgenev found out from Ogarev himself in London all the intricacies of the dark matter, after which he broke all relations with Nekrasov.

Nekrasov the publisher also broke up with some other old friends - L. N. Tolstoy, A. N. Ostrovsky. At this time, he switched to the new democratic wave emanating from the camp of Chernyshevsky - Dobrolyubov. Fyokla Anisimovna, who became his late muse in 1870, and was named Zinaida Nikolaevna by Nekrasov in a noble manner, also became addicted to her husband’s hobby, hunting. She even saddled the horse herself and went hunting with him in a tailcoat and tight trousers, with a Zimmerman on her head. All this delighted Nekrasov. But one day, while hunting in the Chudovsky swamp, Zinaida Nikolaevna accidentally shot Nekrasov’s beloved dog, a black pointer named Kado. After this, Nekrasov, who devoted 43 years of his life to hunting, hung up his gun forever.

Bibliography of Nikolai Nekrasov:

Poems by Nikolai Nekrasov:

The grief of old Nahum
Grandfather
Wax cabinet
Who can live well in Rus'?
Peddlers
Peasant children
Frost, Red Nose (poem dedicated by the poet to his sister Anna)
On the Volga
Recent time
About the weather (Street impressions)
Russian women
Knight for an hour
Contemporaries
Sasha
Court
Silence

Plays by Nikolai Nekrasov:

Actor
Rejected
Bear hunt
Theoklist Onufrich Bob, or the husband is out of his element
Lomonosov's youth

Tales of Nikolai Nekrasov:

Baba Yaga, Bone Leg

Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseevich

Poet; born on November 22, 1821 in a small Jewish town in the Vinnitsa district of the Podolsk province, where at that time the army regiment in which his father Alexei Sergeevich Nekrasov served was stationed. A.S. belonged to an impoverished noble landowner family of the Yaroslavl province; Due to his service duties, he had to constantly travel, mainly in the southern and western provinces of Russia. During one of these trips, he met the family of a wealthy Polish magnate who lived in retirement on his estate in the Kherson province, Andrei Zakrevsky. Zakrevsky's eldest daughter, Alexandra Andreevna, a brilliant representative of the then Warsaw society, a well-educated and pampered girl, was carried away by a handsome officer and linked her fate with him, marrying him against the will of her parents. Having risen to the rank of captain, A.S. retired and settled on his family estate in the village of Greshnev, Yaroslavl province, on the postal route between Yaroslav and Kostroma. Here the poet spent his childhood years, which left an indelible impression on his soul. On his estate, in freedom, A.S. led a riotous life among his drinking buddies and serf mistresses, “among the feasts of senseless arrogance, the debauchery of dirty and petty tyranny”; this “beautiful savage” behaved despotically in relation to his own family, “he crushed everyone with himself” and alone “breathed and acted and lived freely.” The poet's mother, Alexandra Andreevna, who grew up among bliss and contentment, European-bred and educated, was doomed to life in a remote village, where drunken revelry and hound hunting reigned. Her only consolation and subject of intense concern was her large family (13 brothers and sisters in total); raising children was a selfless feat of her short life, but boundless patience and warmth in the end defeated even her harsh despot husband, and had a tremendous influence on the development of the character of the future poet. The tender and sad image of the mother occupies a large place in N.’s work: it is repeated in a number of other female heroines, inseparably accompanies the poet throughout his life, inspires, supports him in moments of grief, guides his activities even at the last minute, at his deathbed , sings him a deeply touching farewell song (Bayushki-bayu). N. dedicates a number of poems to his mother and the unsightly environment of his childhood (the poem “Mother”, “A Knight for an Hour”, “Last Songs” and many others); in her person, according to the fair instructions of biographers, he created the apotheosis of Russian mothers in particular and Russian women in general.

All other impressions of his childhood were extremely bleak: upset affairs and a huge family forced A. S. Nekrasov to take the place of police officer. Accompanying his father during his official trips, the boy had the opportunity many times to observe the harsh conditions of people's life: autopsy of corpses, investigations, extortion of taxes and generally wild reprisals common at that time. All this sank deeply into his soul, and entering life from his family, N. carried away the passionate hatred of the oppressors that had accumulated in his heart and ardent sympathy for the “depressed and trembling slaves” who envied “the life of the last master’s dogs.” His muse, who grew up in such conditions, naturally did not know how to sing sweet songs and immediately became gloomy and unkind, “the sad companion of the sad poor, born to work, suffering and chains.”

At the age of 11, N. was assigned to the Yaroslavl gymnasium, where he studied unenviably and, barely reaching the fifth grade, was forced to leave school - partly due to complications with the school authorities, irritated by his satirical poems, which even then enjoyed enormous literary success among his comrades. The father, who dreamed of a military career for his son, took advantage of this and in 1838 sent him to St. Petersburg to be assigned to the then Noble Regiment. With a small amount of money in his pocket, with the passport of a “minor from the nobility” and with a notebook of poems, N. appeared from the wilderness of the village to the noisy capital. The question of joining the Noble Regiment had almost been decided when a chance meeting with a Yaroslavl comrade, student Andrei Glushitsky and prof. Theological Seminary by D.I. Uspensky prompted H. to deviate from his original decision: conversations with students about the advantages of university education captivated H. so much that he categorically informed his father of his intention to enter the university. His father threatened to leave him without any financial assistance, but this did not stop N., and with the assistance of his friends, Glushitsky and Uspensky, he began to diligently prepare for the university entrance exam. He, however, did not pass the exam and, on the advice of the rector P. A. Pletnev, entered the Faculty of History and Philology as a volunteer student, where he stayed for two years (from 1839 to 1841). N.’s financial situation during these “study years” was extremely deplorable: he settled on Malaya Okhta with one of his university friends, with whom he also lived as a serf boy; the three of them spent no more than 15 kopecks on lunch from a cheap kitchen. Due to his father’s refusal, he had to earn a living by giving penny lessons, proofreading, and some literary work; All the time was spent mainly in search of income. “For exactly three years,” says N., “I felt constantly, every day, hungry. More than once it got to the point that I went to a restaurant on Morskaya, where they allowed me to read newspapers, without even asking myself anything. “It used to be that you would just grab a newspaper for appearance’s sake, but you would push yourself a plate of bread and eat.” Chronic malnutrition led to complete exhaustion of strength, and N. became seriously ill; the young, strong body endured this test, but the illness aggravated the need even more, and once, when N., who had not yet recovered from the illness, returned home from a comrade on a cold November night, the owner-soldier did not let him into the apartment for non-payment of money; an old beggar took pity on him and gave him the opportunity to spend the night in some slum on the 17th line Vasilyevsky Island, where in the morning the poet found income for himself by writing a petition to someone for 15 kopecks. Best years, spent in a painful struggle for existence, only strengthened the stern tone of N.’s muse, who then “taught her to feel her suffering and blessed her to announce it to the world.”

To earn a meager livelihood, N. had to resort to menial literary work in the form of urgent notes, reviews of a wide variety of books, poems, and translations. At this time he wrote vaudevilles for the Alexandrinsky Theater, supplied booksellers with alphabet books and fairy tales in verse for popular prints, and also worked in various magazines of the late 30s and early 40s and, mainly, in “Literary supplements to Russian Invalid", in the "Literary Gazette", in the "Pantheon of Russian and all European Theaters", published by bookseller V. Polyakov. The stories and poems published in the Pantheon were signed by N. “N. Perepelsky” and “Bob”. There, by the way, there are N.’s vaudevilles: “Actor” (perhaps the first role in which the famous V.V. Samoilov had the opportunity to show his talent) and “You can’t hide an awl in a sack”, not included in the collected works - a poem "Ophelia" and a translation of the drama "La nouvelle Fanchon", entitled "A Mother's Blessing" (1840). Former instructor of the page corps Gr. Fr. Benetsky helped N. at this time, providing him with lessons in the Russian language and history at his boarding school, which significantly improved the poet’s affairs and even allowed him to publish, with his savings, a collection of his children’s and youth poems, “Dreams and Sounds” (1840), published under the initials N.N. Polevoy praised the author, V.A. Zhukovsky advised him, even before the release of the collection, to “remove his name from the book,” although he spoke favorably of some poems; but Belinsky severely condemned N.’s debut, admitting that the thoughts suggested by his collection “Dreams and Sounds” boil down to the following: “Mediocrity in poetry is unbearable” (“Otech. Zap.”, 1840, No. 3). After Belinsky’s recall, N. hastened to buy up “Dreams and Sounds” and destroy them, and subsequently never wanted to repeat them in a new edition (they were not included in N.’s collected works). Belinsky was right in his harsh review, since N.’s first experience was completely uncharacteristic of him and represented only a weak imitation of romantic models, generally alien to N.’s work (the collection contains “terrible” ballads - “Evil Spirit”, “Angel of Death” , “The Raven,” etc.), and for a long time after that N. did not dare to write poetry, limiting himself for now only to the role of a magazine laborer.

Having received a very meager education and realizing this, N. in subsequent years diligently completed it by reading European classics (in translation) and works of native literature. In the "Pantheon" and in the "Literary Gazette" he met the famous writer F.A. Koni, who supervised his first works; in addition, he was undoubtedly influenced by the works of Belinsky. In the early 40s, N. became one of the employees of Otechestvennye Zapiski and with some reviews attracted the attention of Belinsky, whom he met at the same time. Belinsky was immediately able to appreciate N.’s real talent; Realizing that in the field of prose N. would not make anything other than an ordinary literary worker, Belinsky, with his characteristic passion, welcomed N.’s poems: “On the Road” and “To the Motherland.” With tears in his eyes, he hugged the author, telling him: “Do you know that you are a poet and a true poet.” Belinsky learned the second poem, “To the Motherland” (“And here they are again, familiar places”) by heart and distributed it among his St. Petersburg and Moscow friends. From that moment on, N. became a permanent member of that literary circle, in the center of which stood Belinsky, who had a tremendous influence on the further development of N.’s literary talent. This time also dates back to publishing activity N.: he published a number of almanacs: “Articles in verse without pictures” (1843), “Physiology of St. Petersburg” (1845), “Petersburg Collection” (1846), “First of April” (1846). )· Apart from N., the following took part in these collections: Grigorovich, Dostoevsky, Herzen (Iskander), Ap. Maikov, Turgenev. The “Petersburg Collection” was a particular success, where Dostoevsky’s “Poor People”, which caused a stir in literature, first appeared. N.'s stories included in the first of these collections (and mainly in the almanac: "Physiology of St. Petersburg"), and the stories he previously wrote: "An Experienced Woman" ("Otech. Zap.", 1841) and "An Unusual Breakfast" ("Otech. Zap.", 1843) were of a genre, morally descriptive nature, but they already sufficiently highlighted one of the main features in N.'s literary talent - namely, the inclination towards realistic content (what Belinsky then called approvingly “efficiency”), as well as to a humorous story, which manifested itself especially clearly during the period of maturity of H.’s talent, in the comic side of his poetry.

N.'s publishing business was successful, and at the end of 1846 he, in company with I. I. Panaev, purchased Sovremennik from Pletnev, which he then began publishing with the participation of Belinsky. The transformed Sovremennik was, to a certain extent, new in terms of its elegant appearance, but in terms of its content it became the best magazine of that time. The editorial circle brought together the best talents of the time, who provided the magazine with rich and varied material: first, although not for long, Belinsky, then Turgenev, Goncharov, Grigorovich, Druzhinin, a little later gr. L. N. Tolstoy; from the poets Fet, Polonsky, Alexey Zhemchuzhnikov, Nekrasov himself; later the works of V. Botkin, scientific articles by Kavelin, Solovyov, Granovsky, Afanasyev, F. Korsh, Vl. Milyutin, Annenkov's letters, etc. All the literary youth, previously grouped around Kraevsky, now moved from Otechestvennye Zapiski to Sovremennik and transferred here the center of gravity of the entire literary movement of the 40s. Raising it to this height and continuing to keep the journal without dropping it was not easy, since this required skill, strength, and means; the publication was started by N. with borrowed money (a debt that N. did not soon repay). Having previously acquired some experience in publishing, N. managed to get out of great difficulties thanks to practicality generally taken from life. He tried to attract the best employees and by all means possible to keep them in the magazine, told them frankly when he was short of money, and himself increased the fee when things got better. The years from 1847 to 1855, after which the fair name of the period of reaction was established, were especially difficult for Sovremennik and its publisher: censorship with its prohibitions often put the magazine in a hopeless position, and fictional material was placed not only in a special section of the magazine, but also in There was literally not enough in the "mixture" department. H.'s correspondence with employees during this time shows the torment he experienced as an editor. "Your Breakfast, - N. writes to Turgenev in 1850, “it was played and was a success, but it was not published, because one of our censors became stubborn: he doesn’t like such stories, this is his personal whim...” “Turgenev! I'm poor, poor! - adds N. - For God's sake, send me your work as soon as possible." This was one of the main motivations for the fact that N. undertook with N. Stanitsky (pseudonym of A. Ya. Golovacheva-Panaeva) the joint composition of the endlessly long novels "Three countries of the world" (1849) and "Dead Lake" (1851). These were morally descriptive novels with a variety of adventures, with intricate stories, with spectacular scenes and denouements, written not without the influence of Dickens, Eugene Sue and Victor Hugo. The first of them is not devoid of autobiographical interest, since in the person of Kayutin, an intelligent proletarian, N., undoubtedly, recalls his youth (description of K.’s life in St. Petersburg); in addition, according to the fair remark of Academician Pypin, this was not a fictional fantasy of the French novel, but an attempt to push real Russian reality into the frame of the novel, which at that time was still unknown to few people. At the same time, N. published two of his genre stories in Sovremennik, “The Newly Invented Privilege Paint of Darling and Co.” (1850) and “Thin man" (1855). N. did not actually publish “critical articles” in Sovremennik, with the exception of a few small notes, then articles about minor Russian poets and about F.I. Tyutchev, in 1850 (the first collection of his poems was published by N. at “ Contemporary"). “Journal notes” published in Sovremennik in 1856 and attributed to N. belong almost exclusively to N. G. Chernyshevsky, and, as can be seen from the originals of these articles, only some comments and poems were inserted into them by N. himself.

In the mid-50s, N. became seriously ill with a throat disease; The best Russian and foreign doctors diagnosed throat consumption and sentenced the poet to death. The trip to Italy, however, improved N.’s health. His return to Russia coincided with the beginning of a new era in Russian life: in the public and governmental spheres, with the end of the Crimean campaign, there was a whiff of liberalism; The famous era of reforms began. Sovremennik quickly came to life and gathered around itself the best representatives of Russian social thought; Depending on this, the number of subscribers began to grow every year by the thousands. New employees - Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky - joined the magazine with new views both on public affairs and on the tasks of literature as a voice of public opinion. A new period began in N.'s journal activity, which lasted from 1856 to 1865 - the period of the greatest manifestation of his strength and the development of his literary activity. The censorship boundaries have expanded significantly, and the poet has had the opportunity to put into practice what he had hidden within himself before: to touch in his works on those burning topics and issues of the time that were previously impossible to write about due to censorship, that is, purely external conditions. All the best and more characteristic of what N. wrote belongs to this time: “Reflections at the Main Entrance”, “Song to Eremushka”, “Knight for an Hour”, “Peddlers”, “Peasant Children”, “Green Noise”, “ Orina", "Frost - Red Nose", "Railway" and others. The close participation of Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky in Sovremennik, as well as the literary views they expressed at the very beginning (Chernyshevsky's "Essays on the Gogol period" were published for the first time in Sovremennik ) caused H.'s break with his old friends and collaborators at the magazine. H. immediately fell in love with Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky, sensitively understanding all the mental strength and spiritual beauty of these natures, although his worldview developed under completely different conditions and on different foundations than that of his young colleagues. Chernyshevsky, refuting in published academician. A. N. Pypin notes the opinion established in literature that he and Dobrolyubov expanded N.’s mental horizons, notes: “Love for Dobrolyubov could refresh N.’s heart, and, I believe, refreshed it; but this is a completely different matter: not the expansion of mental and moral horizon, but a feeling of joy." In Dobrolyubov N. saw great mental value and exceptional moral strength, as indicated by the poet’s reviews cited in the memoirs of Golovacheva-Panaeva: “He has a wonderful head! One might think that the best professors supervised his mental development: after 10 years of his literary activity, Dobrolyubov will be as important in Russian literature as Belinsky." At times, N. deliberately sought "feelings of joy" in moments of blues, acute attacks of mental pain, to which N., in his own words, was subject ("a day or two goes well, and then you look - melancholy, melancholy, displeasure, anger ...") In communicating with people of a new type - Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky - N. sought mental refreshment and cures for their pessimism and misanthropy. Against the new direction presented in Sovremennik by Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, sharp protests began to be heard from the old circle, to which Belinsky's former collaborators belonged, who had already gone to their graves by this time. N. made every effort , so that things would not come to a break with old friends, but his efforts were in vain. According to a contemporary (A. N. Pypin), N. first of all appreciated the social direction of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, seeing in it a direct and consistent continuation of Belinsky’s ideas precisely for the last period of his activity; “The friends of the old circle did not understand this: the new criticism was unpleasant to them, the polemics were not interesting, and the economic questions raised again were simply incomprehensible.” N. not only understood the meaning and development of the new literary direction and gave Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky complete freedom of action in Sovremennik, but, in addition, he himself took part in Dobrolyubov’s “Whistle”, and “Notes on Magazines”, which were published in Sovremennik. , written by him together with Chernyshevsky ("there are, according to A.N. Pypin, pages started by one and continued by the other"). Be that as it may, Turgenev, Botkin, Fet and others abruptly broke with Sovremennik; in 1866, Botkin even rejoiced at the two warnings received by Sovremennik. The public reaction that followed the strong upsurge was also reflected in Sovremennik, which was closed in 1866. Two years later, N. rented Otechestvennye Zapiski from his former competitor, Kraevsky, inviting Saltykov and Eliseev as shareholders of the business and employees. Soon, Otechestvennye Zapiski rose to the same height as Sovremennik once did, and became the subject of N.’s tireless concerns, who included in them a number of works that were not inferior in talent to the previous ones; At this time he wrote: “Grandfather”, “Russian Women”, “Who Lives Well in Rus'” and “Last Songs”.

Already in 1875, the first ominous signs of an illness appeared, which brought the poet to a premature grave: initially N. did not attach serious importance to his illness, continued to work as before and monitor all the phenomena of literary life with unflagging attention. But soon a cruel agony began: the poet died a slow and painful death; a complex operation performed by a Viennese specialist, surgeon Billroth, led nowhere. The news of the poet's fatal illness quickly spread throughout Russia; from everywhere, even from distant Siberia, they began to receive sympathetic letters, poems, greetings, addresses, which brought him many bright moments. During this upsurge of strength, the swan song of Nekrasov’s poetry was created, his famous “Last Songs,” in which, with the same strength and freshness, with extraordinary sincerity of feeling, he painted pictures of his childhood, remembered his mother and suffered from the consciousness of the mistakes he had made in life. On December 27, 1877, N. passed away. The funeral took place on December 30: a large crowd, mostly young people, despite the severe frost, escorted the poet’s remains to the place of his eternal rest, the Novodevichy Convent. The fresh grave was thrown with an endless number of wreaths with a wide variety of inscriptions: “To the poet of the people’s suffering,” “To the sorrowful man of the people’s grief,” “From Russian women,” etc. A farewell speech was given over the grave, by the way, by F. M. Dostoevsky, who wrote in day of N.’s death in his “Diary” the following precious lines: “When I returned home, I could no longer sit down to work, I took all three volumes of Nekrasov and began to read from the first page. That night I reread almost two-thirds of everything I wrote N., and literally for the first time I realized how much N., as a poet, occupied a place in my life during all these 30 years.” After the death of the poet, slander and gossip entangled his name for a long time and gave rise to some critics (for example, N.K. Mikhailovsky) to strictly judge N. for his “weaknesses”, to talk about the cruelty he showed, about the fall, compromises, about “dirt, stuck to N.’s soul,” etc. The basis was partly the consciousness expressed by the poet in his last works of his “guilt” and the desire to justify himself before old friends (Turgenev, Botkin, etc.), “who looked reproachfully at him from the walls.” According to Chernyshevsky, “N. was a good person with some weaknesses, very ordinary” and easily explained by well-known facts from his life. At the same time, N. never hid his weaknesses and never shied away from a straightforward explanation of the motives for his actions. Undoubtedly, he was a major moral personality, which explains both the enormous influence that he enjoyed among his contemporaries and the mental discord that he experienced at times.

Around N.'s name a fierce and still unresolved dispute ensued about the meaning of his poetry. N.'s opponents argued that he had no talent, that his poetry was not real, but “tendentious,” dry and invented, designed for the “liberal crowd”; admirers of N.'s talent pointed to numerous and undoubted evidence of the strong impression that N.'s poems made not only on his contemporaries, but also on all subsequent generations. Even Turgenev, who denied N.’s poetic talent in moments of whim, felt the power of this talent when he said that “N.’s poems, collected into one focus, are burned.” H.’s whole fault was that he, being by nature a lively and receptive person who shared the aspirations and ideals of his time, could not remain an indifferent spectator of social and national life and withdraw into the sphere of purely subjective thoughts and feelings; because of this, the objects of concern and aspirations of the best part of Russian society, without distinction of parties and moods, became the subject of its concerns, its indignation, denunciation and regret; At the same time, N. had nothing to “invent,” since life itself gave him rich material, and the heavy everyday pictures in his poems corresponded to what he saw and heard in reality. As for characteristic features his talent - a certain bitterness and indignation, then they are explained by the conditions in which this talent was created and developed. “It was, in the words of Dostoevsky, a heart wounded at the very beginning of his life, and it was this wound that never healed that was the beginning and source of all his passionate, suffering poetry for the rest of his life.” From childhood he had to become familiar with grief, and then endure a series of clashes with the inexorable prose of life; his soul involuntarily hardened, and a feeling of revenge flared up in it, which was reflected in a noble impulse to expose the shortcomings and dark sides of life, in the desire to open the eyes of others to them, to warn other generations from those bitter grievances and painful suffering that the poet himself had to experience. N. did not limit himself to a personal complaint, a story about his suffering; having become accustomed to rooting for others in his soul, he merged himself with society, with the whole of humanity, in the just consciousness that “the world does not end with us; that we can not suffer from personal grief and cry with honest tears; that every cloud, threatening disaster, hangs over the life of the people , leaves a trace of the fatal in the soul alive and noble." By birth and upbringing, H. belonged to the 40s, when he entered the literary field; but in the spirit and cast of his thoughts he was least suited to this era: he did not have the idealistic philosophy, dreaminess, theoreticalism and “beautiful soul” characteristic of the people of the 40s; there were also no traces of that mental discord between the two generations, which Herzen, Turgenev, and Goncharov discovered in one form or another; on the contrary, he was a man of a practical nature, a lively worker, a hard worker who was not afraid of menial work, although somewhat embittered by it.

The beginning and first half of N.’s poetic activity coincided with the moment when the central issue of the Russian public was peasant question; when in Russian society interest and love arose for the peasant plowman, the breadwinner of his native land - for that mass that was previously considered “dark and indifferent, living without consciousness and meaning.” N. devoted himself entirely to this common hobby, declaring a mortal struggle against serfdom; he became the people's intercessor: "I was called to sing of your suffering, amazing the people with patience." Together with Turgenev and Grigorovich, he has the great merit of familiarizing Russian society with the life of the Russian peasantry and mainly with its dark sides. Already in his early work “On the Road” (1846), published before the appearance of “Anton Goremyka” and “Notes of a Hunter,” N. was the herald of a whole literary movement that chose the interests of the people as its subject, and until the end of his days he did not cease to be the people's sad man. “My heart beat somehow especially at the sight of my native fields and the Russian peasant,” wrote N. Turgenev, and this theme is to a certain extent the main one of his poems, in which the poet paints pictures of folk life and artistic images captures the features of peasant psychology (“Peddlers”, “Frost is a Red Nose”, “Who Lives Well in Rus'”). In 1861 N. warmly welcomed the long-desired freedom and all the humane measures of the new reign; but at the same time he did not close his eyes to what awaited the liberated people, realizing that one act of liberation was not enough, and that there was still a lot of work to be done to lead this people out of their mental darkness and ignorance. If in N.’s early works one can find features of sentimental populism, a kind of “tenderness” for the people and “humility” from the consciousness of one’s disunity with them, then since the 60s these features give way to new ideas - the education of the people and the strengthening of their economic well-being , i.e., ideas whose representatives in the 60s were Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. This new direction is most clearly expressed by H. in his poem “Song to Eremushka,” which delighted Dobrolyubov, who wrote about this to one of his friends: “Learn by heart and tell everyone you know to learn the song to Eremushka Nekrasov; remember and love these verses."

The main motive of N.’s poetry, mournful in its general tone, is Love. This humane feeling is first reflected in the depiction of the image of the poet’s own mother; The tragedy of her life forced N. to be especially sensitive to the fate of a Russian woman in general. Many times in his work, the poet dwells on the best forces of female nature and draws a whole gallery of types of peasant women (Orina - the soldier’s mother, Daria, Matryona Timofeevna) and intelligent women, full of a noble desire for goodness and light (Sasha in the poem of the same name, Nadya in "The Beautiful Party", Princesses Trubetskoy and Volkonskaya in "Russian Women"). IN female types N., as it were, left a covenant for future generations to “find the keys to a woman’s will,” from the shackles that constrain the Russian woman in her impulse to knowledge, to the manifestation of her spiritual powers. The images of children drawn by N. are also imbued with the same humane feeling of love: again a gallery of childish types and the poet’s desire to awaken in the reader’s heart a sympathetic attitude towards these defenseless creatures. “When composing my images,” says the poet, “I only listened to the voice of love and strict truth”; in fact, this is the poet’s credo: love for truth, for knowledge, for people in general and for the native people in particular; love for all the disadvantaged, the orphaned and the wretched, and next to it is faith in the people, in their strength and in their future, and in general faith in man, with which faith in the power of the convinced word, in the power of poetry is inextricably linked. That is why, despite all the sorrow of N.’s poetry, with a certain amount of pessimism, which forced the poet to mistakenly call his muse “the muse of revenge and sadness,” N.’s overall mood is generally cheerful and invigorating, although indignant.

N.'s creativity, due to purely historical conditions, took a somewhat one-sided path: all of his enormous artistic talent was spent on depicting mental movements, characters and faces (he does not, for example, have descriptions of nature). But his deep faith in his poetic calling and awareness of his significance in the history of the Russian word never left him. Sometimes, however, in difficult moments of reflection, doubts attacked him: “The people to whom I devoted all my strength, all my inspiration, do not know me; will all my work really pass without a trace, and those who call us Russian poets will be right? "pariahs of their native land? Is it possible that this native land, in which the poet believed so much, will not live up to his hopes"? But these doubts gave way to firm confidence in the significance of his feat; in the beautiful lullaby “Bayushki-Bayu,” his mother’s voice tells him: “don’t be afraid of bitter oblivion; I already hold in my hand the crown of love, the crown of forgiveness, the gift of your meek homeland... The stubborn darkness will give way to the light, you will hear your song over the Volga , over the Oka, over the Kama "...

In the question of N.'s creativity, a special place is occupied by the question of his style, of external form; in this regard, many of his works reveal some unevenness in the form and the verse itself, which N. was also aware of: “there is no free poetry in you, my harsh, clumsy verse.” The lack of form is compensated by other advantages of N.'s poetry: the brightness of pictures and images, the conciseness and clarity of characteristics, the richness and color of folk speech, which N. comprehended perfectly; life is in full swing in his works, and in his verse, in the poet’s own words, “living blood boils.” H. created for himself a paramount place in Russian literature: his poems - mainly lyrical works and poems - undoubtedly have enduring significance. The poet’s inextricable connection with “honest hearts” will remain forever, as proven by the all-Russian celebrations of the poet’s memory on the 25th anniversary of his death (December 27, 1902).

N.'s poems, in addition to the editions published during the author's lifetime, were published in eight posthumous editions of 10-15 thousand copies each. The first posthumous edition of N.'s works was published in 1879: "Poems by N. A. Nekrasov. Posthumous edition. St. Petersburg, vol. I, 1845-1860; vol. II, 1861-1872; vol. III, 1873 - 1877; Vol. IV, Appendices, notes and other indexes." With Volume I: foreword by the publisher (A. A. Butkevich); biographical information - Art. A. M. Skabichevsky, portrait of the poet and facsimile of “Grishina’s Song”; in volume IV: part I. Applications. Poems not included in the first 3 volumes, 1842-1846; and some poems from 1851-1877. Part II. 1. Appendices to all 4 volumes, compiled by S. I. Ponomarev. 2. Prose, publishing activities: a) vaudevilles, b) novels, short stories, small articles, c) collections and periodicals; 3. Literary debuts of N. - art. V. P. Gorlenka. III. List of articles about Nekrasov: during the poet’s life, posthumous articles and obituaries, poems on N.’s death, parodies of his poems, autographs and pseudonyms, music for his poems, translations into foreign languages. Indexes: subject and alphabetical. The later edition (St. Petersburg, 1902, 2 volumes) was printed in 20 thousand copies. In the quarter century since the poet's death, about 100,000 copies of his works have been published. In 1902, a translation of N.'s poems into German was published: "Friedrich Fiedler. Gedichte von N. A. Nekrasov. Im Versmass des Original. Leipzig."

The literature about H. has now reached significant proportions. A list of magazine and newspaper articles about N. from 1840-1878 was compiled by S. I. Ponomarev and published in “Notes of the Fatherland” in 1878 (May), and then repeated in A. Golubev’s book: “N. A. Nekrasov. Biography" (St. Petersburg, 1878) and in the first posthumous edition of N.'s works (see above). An addition to the above list is a detailed bibliographic review of all literature about N. (magazine and newspaper articles, monographs, brochures, historical and literary works, memoirs, publications of essays, translations), from the day of the poet’s death until 1904, attached to the book A. N. Pypin "N. A. Nekrasov" (St. Petersburg, 1905). The value of this review is increased by the fact that outstanding newspaper articles about N. are included in it entirely or in extenso. An attempt to collect critical literature about N. belongs to Zelinsky (Collection of critical articles about N. Moscow, 1886-87; 2nd ed., 1902). Useful instructions for studying literature about N. are also found in A. V. Mezier (Russian literature in the XI-XIX centuries, incl. Bibliographic index. Part II. St. Petersburg, 1899-1902). The main works can be considered the following: Golovacheva-Panaeva. Russian writers and artists. St. Petersburg, 1892 (memoirs); Skabichevsky A. N. A. Nekrasov, his life and poetry. Sochin. vol. II; Dostoevsky F. Diary of a Writer 1877 (December); Eliseev G. Nekrasov and Saltykov. Russian Bog., 93, 9: Boborykin P. N. A. Nekrasov according to personal memories. Observation 82, 4; Arsenyev K. N. A. Nekrasov. Critical etudes vol. II; Burenin V. Literary essays; Vengerov S. Literary portrait of N. Ned. 78, 10-13 and 16 article in the encycl. words., Brockhaus and Efron, vol. XX; Mikhailovsky N. Literary memories and literary unrest, vol. I; Bobrishchev-Pushkin A. N. A. Nekrasov, V. E. 1903 (April); Notes of Princess M. N. Volkonskaya. St. Petersburg, 1904 V. Rozanov. "25th anniversary of the death of H." New Vr. December 24, 1902 - H. A. H-in and theater criticism (data for the poet’s biography) in the “Annual of the Imperial Theaters” 1910, issue. II. The review of the literature about N., compiled by A. N. Pypin (see above), did not include articles: V. V. Kranichfeld “N. A. Nekrasov” (An experience in literary characterization), in “The World of God” 1902 (December) and articles about N. in the Great Encyclopedia, vol. 13; The following works were not included there either: P. E. Shchegolev “On Russian women N. in connection with the question of the legal rights of the wives of the Decembrists” (Collection in favor of Higher Women’s Courses, 1905 and separately); Andreevich. Experience in the philosophy of Russian literature. St. Petersburg, 1905. (Petersburg songs N., p. 235), and D. N. Ovsyanniko-Kulikovsky. History of the Russian intelligentsia. Part I. M. 1906 (Chapter XII. N. A. Nekrasov). The most valuable of the latest works on N. is the work of A. N. Pypin (see above): in addition to Pypin’s personal memories of N. and a review of his literary activities, there are also “historical and literary references” containing interesting data on journal activities N.; N.'s letters to Turgenev (1847-1861) were immediately published; In general, in his book A.V. Pypin subjected a thorough review to the question of Nekrasov.

V. N. Korablev.

(Polovtsov)

Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseevich

Famous poet. He belonged to a noble, once rich family of the Yaroslavl province; born on November 22, 1821 in Vinnitsa district, Podolsk province, where at that time the regiment in which N.’s father served was stationed. He was a man who experienced a lot in his life. He was not spared by the Nekrasov family weakness - the love of cards (Sergei N., the poet’s grandfather, lost almost his entire fortune at cards). In the life of the poet, cards also played a big role, but he played happily and often said that fate only does what it should, returning to the family through the grandson what it took away through the grandfather. A keen and passionate man, Alexey Sergeevich N. was very popular with women. Alexandra Andreevna Zakrevskaya, a Warsaw native, the daughter of a wealthy possessor of the Kherson province, fell in love with him. The parents did not agree to marry their well-bred daughter to a poor, poorly educated army officer; the marriage took place without their consent. He wasn't happy. Turning to childhood memories, the poet always spoke of his mother as a sufferer, a victim of a rough and depraved environment. In a number of poems, especially in “The Last Songs,” in the poem “Mother” and in “The Knight for an Hour,” N. painted a bright image of the one who brightened up the unattractive environment of his childhood with her noble personality. The charm of memories of his mother was reflected in N.’s work through his extraordinary participation in women’s lot. Nobody of the Russian poets did not do as much for the apotheosis of wives and mothers as the stern and “allegedly callous” representative of the “muse of revenge and sadness.”

N.'s childhood passed on N.'s family estate, the village of Greshnevo, Yaroslavl province and district, where his father, having retired, moved. A huge family (N. had 13 brothers and sisters), neglected affairs and a number of processes on the estate forced him to take the place of police officer. During his travels, he often took N.A. with him. The arrival of a police officer in the village always marks something sad: a dead body, the collection of arrears, etc. - and thus many sad pictures of the people’s grief were embedded in the boy’s sensitive soul . In 1832 N. entered the Yaroslavl gymnasium, where he reached the 5th grade. He studied poorly, did not get along with the gymnasium authorities (partly because of satirical poems), and since his father always dreamed of a military career for his son, in 1838 16-year-old N. went to St. Petersburg to be assigned to a noble regiment. Things were almost settled, but a meeting with a gymnasium friend, student Glushitsky, and acquaintance with other students aroused in N. such a thirst for learning that he ignored his father’s threat to leave him without any financial help and began to prepare for the entrance exam. He could not stand it and entered the Faculty of Philology as a volunteer student. From 1839 to 1841 N. spent time at the university, but almost all of his time was spent searching for income. N. suffered terrible poverty; not every day he had the opportunity to have lunch for 15 kopecks. “For exactly three years,” he later said, “I felt constantly, every day, hungry. More than once it got to the point that I went to a restaurant on Morskaya, where they were allowed to read newspapers, without even asking myself anything. Take it, it happened , a newspaper for show, and you push yourself a plate of bread and eat.” Even N. didn’t always have an apartment. He fell ill from prolonged starvation and owed a lot to the soldier from whom he rented a room. When, still half-sick, he went to see a comrade, when the soldier returned, despite the November night, he did not let him back. A passing beggar took pity on him and took him to some slum on the outskirts of the city. In this overnight shelter, N. also found income for himself by writing to someone for 15 kopecks. petition. Terrible need hardened N., but it also had an adverse effect on the development of his character: he became a “practitioner” not in best value this word. His affairs soon settled down: he gave lessons, wrote articles in the “Literary Supplement to the Russian Invalid” and “Literary Gazette”, composed ABCs and fairy tales in verse for popular print publishers, staged vaudevilles on the Alexandria stage (under the name Perepelsky). His savings began to appear, and he decided to publish a collection of his poems, which were published in 1840, with the initials N. N., entitled "Dreams and Sounds". Polevoy praised the debutant, according to some news, Zhukovsky reacted favorably to him, but Belinsky in “Notes of the Fatherland” spoke disparagingly about the book, and this had such an effect on N. that, like Gogol, who once bought and destroyed “Hans Küchelgarten,” he himself bought and destroyed “Dreams and Sounds,” which therefore became the greatest bibliographic rarity (they were not included in N.’s collected works). The interest of the book is that here we see N. in a sphere completely alien to him - in the role of a writer of ballads with various “scary” titles like “Evil Spirit”, “Angel of Death”, “Raven”, etc. “Dreams and Sounds” "are characteristic not in that they are a collection of bad poems by N. and, as it were, inferior stage in his work, but because they no stage in the development of talent N. are not themselves. N. the author of the book “Dreams and Sounds” and N. the later are two poles that cannot be merged in one creative image.

In the early 40s. N. becomes an employee of Otechestvennye Zapiski, first in the bibliographic department. Belinsky got to know him closely, fell in love with him and appreciated the merits of his great mind. He realized, however, that in the field of prose N. would not make anything other than an ordinary magazine employee, but he enthusiastically approved of his poem “On the Road.” Soon N. began diligently publishing. He published a number of almanacs: “Articles in verse without pictures” (1843), “Physiology of St. Petersburg” (1845), “April 1” (1846), “Petersburg Collection” (1846). Grigorovich, Dostoevsky made their debut in these collections, Turgenev, Iskander, Apollon Maikov performed. The “Petersburg Collection”, in which Dostoevsky’s “Poor People” appeared, was particularly successful. N.'s publishing business went so well that at the end of 1846 he, together with Panaev, purchased Sovremennik from Pletnev. The literary youth, who gave strength to Otechestvennye Zapiski, abandoned Kraevsky and joined N. Belinsky also moved to Sovremennik and handed over to N. part of the material that he had collected for the collection Leviathan he had started. In practical matters, “stupid to the point of holiness,” Belinsky found himself in Sovremennik the same magazine laborer as he was in Kraevsky. Subsequently, N. was rightly reproached for this attitude towards the person who most of all contributed to the fact that the center of gravity of the literary movement of the 40s was transferred from Otechestvennye Zapiski to Sovremennik. With the death of Belinsky and the onset of reaction caused by the events of 1948, Sovremennik changed to a certain extent, although it continued to remain the best and most widespread of the magazines of that time. Having lost the leadership of the great idealist Belinsky, N. made various concessions to the spirit of the times. The publication in Sovremennik begins of endlessly long novels filled with incredible adventures, “Three Countries of the World” and “Dead Lake,” written by N. in collaboration with Stanitsky(pseudonym of Golovacheva-Panaeva; see).

Around mid 50's. N. seriously, they thought it was fatal, fell ill with a throat disease, but his stay in Italy averted the catastrophe. N.'s recovery coincides with the beginning of a new era of Russian life. In N.’s work there also comes happy period, who brought him to the forefront of literature. He now found himself in a circle of people of high moral order; Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov become the main figures of Sovremennik. Thanks to its remarkable sensitivity and ability to quickly assimilate moods and views environment, N. becomes a poet-citizen par excellence. With his former friends, including Turgenev, who were less surrendered to the rapid flow of the advanced movement, he gradually diverged, and around 1860 things came to a complete break. The best sides of N.'s soul are revealed; only occasionally his biographer is saddened by episodes like the one that N. himself hints at in the poem “I Will Die Soon.” When Sovremennik (see) was closed in 1866, N. became friends with his old enemy Kraevsky and rented from him in 1868 Otechestvennye Zapiski, which he placed at the same height as Sovremennik occupied. At the beginning of 1875, N. became seriously ill, and soon his life turned into slow agony. It was in vain that the famous surgeon Billroth was discharged from Vienna; The painful operation led to nothing. News of the poet's fatal illness brought his popularity to the highest tension. Letters, telegrams, greetings, and addresses poured in from all over Russia. They brought great joy to the patient in his terrible torment, and his creativity filled with a new key. The “Last Songs” written during this time, due to the sincerity of their feelings, focused almost exclusively on memories of childhood, mother and mistakes made, belong to the best creations of his muse. Along with the consciousness of his “wines”, in the soul of the dying poet, the consciousness of his significance in the history of the Russian word clearly emerged. In the beautiful lullaby “Bayu-bayu,” death tells him: “do not be afraid of bitter oblivion: I already hold in my hand the crown of love, the crown of forgiveness, the gift of your meek homeland... The stubborn darkness will yield to the light, you will hear your song over the Volga, over Okoya, above the Kama..." N. died on December 27, 1877. Despite the severe frost, a crowd of several thousand people, mostly young people, escorted the poet's body to his eternal resting place in the Novodevichy Convent.

N.'s funeral, which took place spontaneously without any organization, was the first case of a nationwide giving of last honors to the writer. Already at N.'s funeral, a fruitless dispute began, or rather continued, about the relationship between him and the two greatest representatives of Russian poetry - Pushkin and Lermontov. Dostoevsky, who said a few words at N.’s open grave, put (with certain reservations) these names side by side, but several young voices interrupted him with shouts: “N. is taller than Pushkin and Lermontov.” The dispute went into print: some supported the opinion of young enthusiasts, others pointed out that Pushkin and Lermontov were spokesmen for the entire Russian society, and N. - only the “circle”; finally, still others indignantly rejected the very idea of ​​a parallel between the creativity that brought Russian verse to the pinnacle of artistic perfection, and N.’s “clumsy” verse, supposedly devoid of any artistic significance. All these points of view are one-sided. N.'s significance is the result of a number of conditions that created both his charm and the fierce attacks to which he was subjected both during life and after death. Of course, from the point of view of the grace of verse, N. not only cannot be placed next to Pushkin and Lermontov, but is even inferior to some minor poets. None of our great poets has so many poems that are downright bad from all points of view; He himself bequeathed many poems not to be included in the collected works. N. is not consistent even in his masterpieces: and in them prosaic, sluggish and awkward verse suddenly hurts the ear. Among the poets of the “civil” movement there are poets who are much higher than N. in technique: Pleshcheev is elegant, Minaev is a downright virtuoso of verse. But it is precisely the comparison with these poets, who were not inferior to N. in “liberalism,” that shows that the secret of the enormous, hitherto unprecedented influence that N.’s poetry had on a number of Russian generations is not in civic feelings alone. Its source is that, not always achieving external manifestations of artistry, N. is not inferior to any of the greatest artists of the Russian word in strength. No matter which way you approach N., he never leaves you indifferent and always excites. And if we understand “art” as the sum of impressions leading to the final effect, then N. is a profound artist: he expressed the mood of one of the most remarkable moments of Russian historical life. The main source of strength achieved by N. lies precisely in the fact that his opponents, taking a narrow aesthetic point of view, especially reproached him for his “one-sidedness.” Only this one-sidedness was in complete harmony with the tune of the “unkind and sad” muse, to whose voice N. listened from the first moments of his conscious existence. All people of the forties were, to a greater or lesser extent, mourners of the people's grief; but the brush painted them softly, and when the spirit of the time declared a merciless war on the old order of life, N was the only exponent of the new mood. He persistently, inexorably hits the same point, not wanting to know any mitigating circumstances. The muse of “revenge and sorrow” does not enter into transactions; she remembers the old lies too well. Let the viewer's heart be filled with horror - this is a beneficial feeling: from it came all the victories of the humiliated and insulted. N. does not give his reader a rest, does not spare his nerves and, without fear of accusations of exaggeration, in the end he completely achieves active impression. This gives N.'s pessimism a very unique character. Despite the fact that most of his works are full of the most bleak pictures of people's grief, the main impression that N. leaves in his reader is undoubtedly invigorating. The poet does not give in to sad reality, does not bow his neck obediently before it. He boldly enters into battle with the dark forces and is confident of victory. Reading N. awakens that anger that carries within itself the seed of healing.

However, the entire content of N.’s poetry is not exhausted by the sounds of revenge and sadness about the people’s grief. If there can be a dispute about the poetic meaning of N.’s “civil” poems, then the disagreements are significantly smoothed out and sometimes even disappear when it comes to N. as an epic and lyrics. N.’s first major poem, “Sasha,” which opens with a magnificent lyrical introduction - a song of joy about returning to one’s homeland, belongs to the best images of the people of the 40s, consumed by reflection, people who “scour the world, looking for gigantic things to do for themselves.” , fortunately, the inheritance of rich fathers freed them from small labors,” for whom “love worries their heads more than blood,” for whom “what the last book says will lie on top of their souls.” Written earlier than Turgenevsky's "Rudina", Nekrasovskaya's "Sasha" (1855), in the person of the hero of the poem Agarin, was the first to note many of the most essential features of the Rudinsky type. In the person of the heroine, Sasha, N., also earlier than Turgenev, brought out a nature striving for light, the main outlines of its psychology reminiscent of Elena from “On the Eve”. The poem "The Unfortunate" (1856) is scattered and motley, and therefore not clear enough in the first part; but in the second, where in the person of Krot N., who was exiled for an unusual crime, he, in part, brought out Dostoevsky, there are strong and expressive stanzas. "Peddlers" (1861) is not very serious in content, but is written in an original style, in the folk spirit. In 1863, the most consistent of all N.’s works appeared - “Red Nose Frost.” This is the apotheosis of the Russian peasant woman, in whom the author sees a disappearing type of “stately Slav woman.” The poem depicts only the bright sides of peasant nature, but still, thanks to the strict consistency of the stately style, there is nothing sentimental in it. The second part is especially good - Daria in the forest. Voivode Frost's patrolling, the young woman's gradual freezing, the bright pictures of past happiness flashing before her - all this is excellent even from the point of view of "aesthetic" criticism, because it is written in magnificent poetry and because all the images, all the paintings are here. In general terms, “Red Nose Frost” is closely related to the previously written charming idyll “Peasant Children” (1861). The fierce singer of grief and suffering was completely transformed, becoming surprisingly gentle, soft, and kind, as soon as it came to women and children. The latest folk epic of N. - the huge poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” (1873-76), written in an extremely original size, could not have been completely successful for the author due to its size alone (about 5000 verses). There is a lot of buffoonery in it, a lot of anti-artistic exaggeration and thickening of colors, but there are also many places of amazing power and precision of expression. The best thing about the poem is the individual, occasionally inserted songs and ballads. The best, last part of the poem is especially rich in them - “A Feast for the Whole World”, ending with the famous words: “you and the poor, you and the abundant, you and the mighty, you and the powerless, Mother Rus'” and a cheerful exclamation: “in slavery the saved heart is free , gold, gold, people's heart." N.’s other poem, “Russian Women” (1871-72), is not entirely consistent, but its end—Volkonskaya’s meeting with her husband in the mine—belongs to the most touching scenes in all Russian literature.

N.'s lyricism arose on the fertile soil of the burning and strong passions that possessed him, and a sincere awareness of his moral imperfection. To a certain extent, it was his “guilts” that saved the living soul in N., which he often spoke about, turning to portraits of friends who “reproachfully looked at him from the walls.” His moral shortcomings gave him a living and immediate source of impetuous love and thirst for purification. The power of N.’s calls is psychologically explained by the fact that he acted in moments of sincere repentance. In none of our writers has repentance played such a prominent role as in U.N. He is the only Russian poet who has developed this purely Russian trait. Who forced this “practitioner” to speak with such force about his moral failures, why was it necessary to expose himself from such an unfavorable side and indirectly confirm gossip and tales? But obviously it was stronger than him. The poet defeated the practical man; he felt that repentance brought forth the best pearls from the bottom of his soul and gave himself entirely to the impulse of his soul. But N. owes his best work to repentance - “A Knight for an Hour,” which alone would be enough to create a first-class poetic reputation. And the famous “Vlas” also came out of a mood that deeply felt the cleansing power of repentance. This also includes the magnificent poem “When out of the darkness of delusion I called out to a fallen soul,” about which even such critics, who had little sympathy for N., such as Almazov and Apollo Grigoriev, spoke with delight. The strength of feeling gives lasting interest to N.'s lyric poems - and these poems, along with poems, provide him with a primary place in Russian literature for a long time. His accusatory satires are now outdated, but from N.’s lyric poems and poems one can compose a volume of high literary merit, the meaning of which will not die as long as the Russian language lives.

After his death, N.'s poems went through 6 editions, 10 and 15 thousand copies each. About him cf. "Russian Library", ed. M. M. Stasyulevich (issue VII, St. Petersburg, 1877); "Collection of articles dedicated to the memory of N." (SPb., 1878); Zelinsky, "Collection of critical articles about N." (M., 1886-91); Evg. Markov in "Voice" 1878, No. 42-89; K. Arsenyev, " Critical studies"; A. Golubev, "N. A. Nekrasov" (St. Petersburg, 1878); G. Z. Eliseev in "Russian Wealth" 1893, No. 9; Antonovich, "Materials for characterizing Russian literature" (St. Petersburg, 1868); him, in "The Lay", 1878, No. 2; Skabichevsky, in "Domestic Notes", 1878, No. 6; Belogolovy, in "Domestic Notes", 1878, No. 10; Gorlenko, in "Domestic Notes", 1878, No. 12 (“Literary debuts of N.”); S. Andreevsky, “Literary Readings” (St. Petersburg, 1893).

S. Vengerov.

(Brockhaus)

Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseevich

The most prominent Russian revolutionary-democratic poet. Genus. December 4, 1821 in the family of a wealthy landowner. He spent his childhood in the Greshnevo estate in Yaroslavl province. in an extremely difficult situation of the father’s brutal reprisals against the peasants, his stormy orgies with his serf mistresses and the brazen mockery of his “recluse” wife. At the age of 11, N. was sent to the Yaroslavl gymnasium, where he did not complete the course. At the insistence of his father, he went to St. Petersburg in 1838 to enlist in military service, but instead got a job as a volunteer at the university. The enraged father stopped providing him with financial support, and N. had to endure a painful struggle with poverty for a number of years. Already at this time, N. was attracted to literature, and in 1840, with the support of some St. Petersburg acquaintances, he published a book of his poems entitled “Dreams and Sounds,” replete with imitations of Zhukovsky, Benediktov, etc. Young Nekrasov soon left lyrical experiments in the spirit of romantic epigonism turned to humorous genres: poems full of undemanding jokes ("Provincial Clerk in St. Petersburg"), vaudeville ("Feoktist Onufrievich Bob", "This is what it means to fall in love with an actress"), melodramas ("A Mother's Blessing, or Poverty and Honor"), stories about petty St. Petersburg officials (“Makar Osipovich Random”), etc. The first publishing enterprises of N. date back to 1843-1845 - “Physiology of St. Petersburg,” “Petersburg Collection,” the humorous almanac “First of April,” etc. In 1842, N.’s rapprochement took place. with the Belinsky circle, which had a huge ideological influence on the young poet. The great critic highly valued his poems “On the Road”, “Motherland” and others for tearing away the romantic flair from village and estate reality. Since 1847, N. was already a tenant of the Sovremennik magazine, where Belinsky also moved from Otechestvennye Zapiski. By the mid-50s. Sovremennik won the enormous sympathy of the reading public; simultaneously with the growth of his popularity, the poetic fame of N. himself grew. In the second half of the 50s. N. became close to the most prominent representatives of revolutionary democracy - Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov.

The aggravated class contradictions could not help but affect the magazine: the editorial board of Sovremennik was actually split into two groups: one represented the liberal nobility led by Turgenev, L. Tolstoy and the big bourgeoisie Vas who joined them. Botkin - a movement that advocated for moderate realism, for the aesthetic "Pushkin" principle in literature as opposed to the satirical - "Gogolian" principle, promoted by the democratic part of the Russian "natural school" of the 40s. These literary differences reflected the differences between his two opponents, which deepened as serfdom fell - the bourgeois-noble liberals, who sought to prevent the threat of a peasant revolution through serfdom reforms, and the democrats, who fought for the complete elimination of the feudal-serf system.

In the early sixties, the antagonism of these two movements in the magazine (more about this cm. article " Contemporary") reached its utmost severity. In the split that occurred, N. remained with the “revolutionary raznochintsy,” ideologists of peasant democracy who fought for the revolution, for the “American” type of development of capitalism in Russia and sought to make the magazine the legal basis for their ideas. It is from this period of the highest political rise of the movement that such works by Nekrasov as “The Poet and the Citizen”, “Reflections at the Front Entrance” and “The Railway” belong. However, the beginning of the 60s. brought new blows to Nekrasov - Dobrolyubov died, Chernyshevsky and Mikhailov were exiled to Siberia. In the era of student unrest, riots of peasants liberated from the land and the Polish uprising, the “first warning” was announced to N.’s magazine, the publication of Sovremennik was suspended, and in 1866, after Karakozov shot Alexander II, the magazine was closed forever. One of the most painful episodes of N.’s social biography is connected with the last date - his laudatory ode to Muravyov the hangman, read by the poet at the aristocratic English Club in the hope of softening the dictator and preventing the blow. As one would expect, N.’s sabotage was unsuccessful and brought him nothing but furious accusations of renegade and bitter self-flagellation: “The enemy rejoices, Yesterday’s friend is silent in bewilderment, shaking his head. Both you and you recoiled in embarrassment, Standing invariably before by me, Great suffering shadows..."

Two years after the closure of Sovremennik, N. rented Domestic Notes from Kraevsky ( cm.) and made them a militant organ of revolutionary populism. Such works of N. of the 70s as the poems “Grandfather”, “Decembrists” (due to censorship reasons called “Russian Women”) and especially the unfinished poem “Who Lives Well in Russia”, in the last chapter of which are aimed at glorifying the latter, are also aimed at glorifying the latter. The son of a rural sexton, Grisha Dobrosklonov, acts: “Fate had prepared for him a glorious Path, a great name for the People’s Intercessor, Consumption and Siberia.”

An incurable disease - rectal cancer, which confined N. to bed for the last two years of his life, led him to his death on December 27, 1877. N.'s funeral, which attracted many people, was accompanied by a literary and political demonstration: a crowd of young people did not allow Dostoevsky, who had given N. third place in Russian poetry after Pushkin and Lermontov, to speak, interrupting him with shouts of “Higher, higher than Pushkin!” Representatives of “Land and Freedom” and other revolutionary organizations took part in N.’s burial, laying a wreath with the inscription “From the Socialists” on the poet’s coffin.

The Marxist study of Nekrasov’s work was for a long time headed by an article about him by G. V. Plekhanov (see volume X of his works), written by the latter on the 25th anniversary of the poet’s death, in 1902. It would be unfair to deny the major role played by this article played a role in its time. Plekhanov drew a sharp line between N. and noble writers and sharply emphasized the revolutionary function of his poetry. But recognition of historical merits does not exempt Plekhanov’s article from a number of major shortcomings, the overcoming of which at the current stage of Marxist-Leninist literary criticism is especially important. By declaring N. a “poet-commoner,” Plekhanov did not differentiate this sociologically vague term in any way and, most importantly, isolated N. from that phalanx of ideologists of peasant democracy with which the author of “The Railway” was so closely and organically connected.

This gap is due to Plekhanov’s Menshevik disbelief in the revolutionary nature of the Russian peasantry and a misunderstanding of the connection between the revolutionary commoners of the 60s. and a small commodity producer, which he so persistently pointed out already in the 90s. Lenin. Plekhanov’s article is also less satisfactory in terms of artistic assessment: N.’s work, which represents a new quality in Russian poetry, is criticized by Plekhanov from the standpoint of the very noble aesthetics with which N. fought fiercely. Standing on this fundamentally vicious position, Plekhanov looks for N.’s numerous “errors” against the laws of artistry, blaming him for the “unfinished” and “clumsiness” of his poetic manner. And finally, Plekhanov’s assessment does not give an idea of ​​​​the dialectical complexity of Nekrasov’s creativity, does not reveal the internal contradictions of the latter. The task of modern N. researchers, therefore, is to overcome the remnants of Plekhanov’s views that still persist in the literature about N. and to study his work from the standpoint of Marxism-Leninism.

In his work, N. sharply broke with the idealization of “noble nests”, so characteristic of “Eugene Onegin”, “The Captain's Daughter”, “Fathers and Sons”, “Childhood, Adolescence and Youth”. "Family Chronicle". The authors of these works more than once witnessed the gross violence against the personality of the serf peasants raging in the estate, and nevertheless, due to their class nature, they all passed by these negative aspects of landowner life, chanting what, in their opinion, was positive and progressive. In N.’s case, these loving and elegiac sketches of noble estates gave way to a merciless exposure: “And here they are again, familiar places, Where the life of my fathers is barren and empty, Flowed among feasts, senseless arrogance, The depravity of dirty and petty tyranny, Where a swarm of suppressed and tremulous slaves Envyed the lives of the last master's dogs..." N. is not only rejected, but also the illusion of love of serfs for their owners, traditional for all noble literature, is exposed: "dirty and petty tyranny" is opposed here by "depressed and trembling slaves." And even from the landscape, from the more than once glorified beauties of N.’s estate nature, the poetic veil was torn away: “And with disgust, casting my gaze around, With joy I see that the dark forest has been cut down, In the languid summer heat there is protection and coolness, And the field is scorched and slumbers idly the herd, Hanging its head over the dried-up stream, And the empty and gloomy house is falling on its side...” So already in the early poem “Motherland” one can hear that hatred of serfdom, which then passed through all the poet’s work. The landowners depicted by N. have nothing in common with the dreamy and beautiful-hearted heroes of liberal literature. These are tyrants poisoning peasant cattle (“Hound Hunt”), these are libertines who shamelessly exercise their right of the first night (“Excerpts from the travel notes of Count Garansky,” 1853), these are willful slave owners who do not tolerate contradictions in anyone: “ The law is my desire, - the landowner Obolt-Obolduev proudly announces to the peasants he meets, - the fist is my police! A spark-sprinkling blow, a teeth-crushing blow, a blow to the cheekbones" ("Who Lives Well in Russia", chapter "Landowner").

“The terrible spectacle of a country where people traffic in people,” which Belinsky mentioned in his wonderful letter to Gogol, is N.’s spectacle unfolded into the broadest narrative canvas. The verdict on the feudal-serf system, pronounced by the poet in the poem “Grandfather”, in “The Last One” and in many small poems, is decisive and merciless.

But if the break with serfdom was clearly reflected in the work of young N., then his attitude towards noble liberalism was much more complex and contradictory. It is necessary to remember here that the era of the 40s, when N. began his creative career, was characterized by insufficient demarcation between democrats and liberals. The serfs were still strong and suppressed any attempts to replace their dominance with a new system of relations. The path of the democrats at that time was not yet completely independent. Belinsky did not yet have his own journal; his path was still close to the path of Turgenev and Goncharov, with whom the ideological successors of Belinsky’s work subsequently diverged. On the pages of Sovremennik, future enemies were still neighbors with each other, and it was quite natural that with this proximity of roads, democrats should from time to time have liberal assessments of reality. They naturally arose at that time in Nekrasov as well. Having broken with serfdom, he did not immediately get rid of the remnants of the liberal-noble ideology, which, as we will see below, was nourished in him by the entire balance of class forces in that era. In N.'s work, the process of transition of the declassed nobility to the camp of ideologists of peasant democracy finds expression. N.’s departure from the estate and his break with his father cannot be considered facts of his personal biography - here the process of economic “washing out” and political withdrawal of certain groups of the nobility from their class undoubtedly received its particular expression. “In those periods when the class struggle is nearing its denouement, the process of disintegration among the ruling class within the entire old society takes on such a sharp character that a certain part of the ruling class separates from it and joins the revolutionary class bearing the banner of the future.” This position of the "Communist Manifesto" indisputably clarifies social path N. to the ideologists of the revolutionary peasantry. This path very quickly led Nekrasov to the democrat camp. But this camp itself was in the 40-50s. has not yet sufficiently isolated himself from the liberal-noble camp. Hence N.’s temporary connection with these fellow travelers, with the liberals who fought to replace feudalism with capitalism. This insufficient demarcation of the two camps complicated N.'s creative path with hesitations and rudiments of liberal-noble reactions, which were especially strong in the first period of his work.

It is from these “residual” sentiments that it arises that N. intertwined confessions that complicate it into exposing the slave-owning nature of the noble estate. In this estate “I learned to endure and hate, but hatred was shamefully hidden in my soul”, there “sometimes I was a landowner”, there “blessed peace flew away from my soul, which was prematurely corrupted, so early.” This recognition of "Motherland" can be confirmed by similar recognitions in the poem "In the Unknown Wilderness". It goes without saying that N. was not one bit inclined to soften his sentence on the serfdom system; but in that era, when the Democrats were still very weak as an independent group, the liberals still played some progressive role. That is why Nekrasov’s preaching of new democracies. relations are often complicated by liberal fluctuations. In the poem "Sasha"; Efremin A., The struggle for Nekrasov, “Literature and Marxism”, 1930, II; The life and adventures of Tikhon Trostnikov, GIHL, M. - L., 1931 . Letters from Nekrasov: Archive of the village of Karabikhi. Letters from N.A. Nekrasov and to Nekrasov, compiled by N. Ashukin, M., 1916; Nekrasov collection, ed. V. Evgenieva-Maksimova and N. Piksanova, P., 1918. Nekrasov’s letters, scattered across a number of periodicals, are collected in volume V of Nekrasov’s Collected Works, ed. V. E. Evgenieva-Maksimova, Giza, Moscow-Leningrad, 1930.

II. Nekrasov in memoir literature: Kovalevsky P., Meetings on the path of life, N. A. Nekrasov, “Russian Antiquity”, 1910, I; Kolbasin E., Shadows of the old “Sovremennik”, “Sovremennik”, 1911, VIII; Vetrinsky Ch., N. A. Nekrasov in the memoirs of contemporaries, letters and uncollected works, Moscow, 1911; Koni A., Nekrasov, Dostoevsky according to personal memories, P., 1921; Figner V.N., Student years, “The Voice of the Past,” 1923, I (and in “Collected Works,” vol. V, M., 1929); Panaeva A., Memoirs, "Academia", L., 1927; Deitch L., Nekrasov and the seventies, “Proletarian Revolution”, 1921, III; Annenkova P.V., Literary memoirs, "Academia", L., 1928; Grigorovich D., Literary memoirs, "Academia", L., 1928; Bykov P.V., My memories of N.A. Nekrasov, collection. "Proletarian Writers to Nekrasov", M. - L., 1928; Nekrasov in memoirs and documents, "Academia", M., 1929. Nekrasov as a journalist: Materials for characterizing modern Russian literature, St. Petersburg, 1869; Lyatsky E., N. G. Chernyshevsky as revised by Sovremennik, Sovremennik, 1911, IX - XI; Belchikov N. and Pereselenko in S., N. A. Nekrasov and censorship, "Red Archive", 1922, I; Evgeniev-Maksimov V., Essays on the history of socialist journalism in Russia in the 19th century, Guise, L., 1929. Literature about Nekrasov of pre-Marxist trends (excluding his poetics): Dostoevsky F., Diary of a Writer, 1877, December; Wed also 1876, January, and 1877, January; Arsenyev K., Critical Studies, vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1888; Pypin A., Nekrasov, St. Petersburg, 1905; Maksimov V. (V. Evgeniev), Literary debuts of Nekrasov, vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1908; Gornfeld A., Russian women of Nekrasov in a new light, collection. Art. "On Russian Writers", vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1912; Chukovsky K., Nekrasov and the modernists, collection of articles. Art. "Faces and masks." P., 1914; Merezhkovsky D., Two secrets of Russian poetry - Nekrasov and Tyutchev, M., 1915; Rozanov I. N., N. A. Nekrasov, Life and Fate, P., 1924; Evgeniev-Maksimov V., N. A. Nekrasov and his contemporaries, L., 1930; Him, Nekrasov as a person, journalist and poet, Guise, M. - L., 1930. Poetics of Nekrasov: Andreevsky S., Nekrasov, in collection. Art. "Literary Essays", ed. 3rd, St. Petersburg, 1902; Slonimsky A., Nekrasov and Mayakovsky (to the poetics of Nekrasov), “Book and Revolution”, 1921, No. 2 (14); Tynyanov Yu., Nekrasov’s verse forms, “Chronicle of the House of Writers”, 1921, IV, and in collection. Art. "Archaists and Innovators", Leningrad, 1929; Sakulin P.N., Nekrasov, M., 1922; Eikhenbaum B., Nekrasov, “The Beginning”, 1922, II, and in collection. "Through Literature", Leningrad, 1924; Chukovsky K., Nekrasov, Articles and materials, ed. Kubuch, L., 1926; Him, Stories about Nekrasov, L., 1930; Shuvalov S., Comparisons of Nekrasov in the book “Seven Poets”, M., 1927 (all these works suffer from formalism); Ashukin N. S., How Nekrasov worked, M., 1933. Marxist criticism about Nekrasov: Lenin V. I., Collection. works, ed. 1st, vol. XII, part 1, Guise, 1926; ed. 3rd, vol. XVI, etc. (see index of names); Polyansky V. (P. Lebedev), N. A. Nekrasov, Guise, M., 1921, ed. 2nd, M., 1925; Pokrovsky M.N., Nekrasov, Pravda, 1921, No. 275; Kamenev L., Severe tunes (In memory of N. Nekrasov), M., 1922; Lunacharsky A., Literary silhouettes, M., 1923 (articles “N. A. Nekrasov”, “Pushkin and Nekrasov”); Plekhanov G., N. A. Nekrasov, Works, vol. X, M., 1926; Kamegulov A., Labor and capital in the work of Nekrasov, collection. "Proletarian Writers to Nekrasov", M., 1928; Lelevich G., Poetry of revolutionary commoners, M., 1931; Gorbachev G., The heroic era in the history of the democratic intelligentsia and Nekrasov, ch. in the book "Capitalism and Russian Literature", Guise, M. - L., 1925 (last edition, 1930). The latest work is based on an anti-Leninist understanding of the Russian historical process. Nekrasov in the history of Russian literature. Oksenov I., Nekrasov and Blok, Nekrasov, memo, Giza, P., 1921; Rashkovskaya A., Nekrasov and the Symbolists, "Bulletin of Literature", 1921, No. 12 (36); Libedinsky Yu., Under the sign of Nekrasov, “At the literary post”, 1927, No. 2-3; Peasant writers about Nekrasov, “Zhernov”, 1927, No. 7 (18). Collections of critical literature about Nekrasov: Zelinsky V., Collection of critical articles about Nekrasov, 3 parts, M., 1887-18U7 (2nd ed., M., 1903-1905); Pokrovsky V., Nekrasov, his life and works, Sat. historical and literary articles, ed. 2nd, M., 1915; N. A. Nekrasov, Sat. articles, ed. "Nikitinsky Subbotniks", M., 1929.

III. Golubev A.. N.A. Nekrasov, St. Petersburg, 1878 (there is also an index of magazine and newspaper literature about Nekrasov for 1840-1878, compiled by S. Ponomarev); Mezier A. V., Russian literature from the 11th to the 19th centuries. inclusive, part 2, St. Petersburg, 1902; Lobov L., Bibliographic review of the literature about Nekrasov, St. Petersburg, 1903; Chernyshov, Nekrasov in life and after death, St. Petersburg, 1908; Vengerov S. A., Sources of the dictionary of Russian writers, vol. IV, P., 1917; Belchikov N.F., Literature about Nekrasov during the years of the revolution, M., 1929. See also general indexes by I.V. Vladislavlev and R.S. Mandelstam.

A. Tseytlin.

(Lit. enc.)

Large biographical encyclopedia. 2009 .

• - Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov. NEKRASOV Nikolai Alekseevich (1821 1877/78), Russian poet. In 1847 66 editor and publisher of the Sovremennik magazine; from 1868 editor (together with M.E. Saltykov) of the journal Otechestvennye zapiski. In the depiction of everyday... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

Famous poet. He came from a noble, once rich family. Born on November 22, 1821 in Vinnitsa district, Podolsk province, where at that time the regiment in which Nekrasov’s father served was stationed. Alexey is an enthusiastic and passionate person... ... Biographical Dictionary

Russian poet, literary figure. N.'s childhood years were spent in the village. Greshnevo (now the village of Nekrasovo) near Yaroslavl, on his father’s estate. Here he got to know... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

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Nekrasov Nikolai Alekseevich, whose biography begins on November 28 (December 10), 1821, was born in the small town of Nemirov, located on the territory of the Vinnitsa district of the Podolsk province (now the territory of Ukraine).

The poet's childhood

After the birth of their son, the Nekrasov family lived in the village of Greshnev, which at that time belonged to the Yaroslavl province. There were a lot of children - thirteen (although only three of them survived), and therefore it was very difficult to support them. Alexey Sergeevich, the head of the family, was forced to also take on the job of a police officer. This work could hardly be called fun and interesting. Little Nikolai Nekrasov Sr. often took little Nikolai Nekrasov Sr. with him to work, and therefore the future poet from a very early age saw the problems that ordinary people faced and learned to sympathize with them.

At the age of 10, Nikolai was sent to the Yaroslavl gymnasium. But at the end of the 5th grade, he abruptly stopped studying. Why? Biographers have differing opinions on this issue. Some believe that the boy was not too diligent in his studies, and his success in this field left much to be desired, while others are of the opinion that his father simply stopped paying for his education. Or perhaps both of these reasons occurred. One way or another, Nekrasov’s biography continues in St. Petersburg, where a sixteen-year-old young man is sent to enter a military school (noble regiment).

Difficult years

The poet had every opportunity to become an honest servant, but fate decided otherwise. Arriving in the cultural capital of the empire - St. Petersburg - Nekrasov meets and communicates with the students there. They awakened in him a strong thirst for knowledge, and therefore the future poet decides to go against the will of his father. Nikolai begins to prepare to enter university. He fails: he could not pass all the exams. However, this did not stop him: from 1839 to 1841. The poet goes to the Faculty of Philology as a volunteer student. In those days, Nekrasov lived in terrible poverty, because his father did not give him a single penny. The poet often had to go hungry, and it even got to the point that he spent the night in homeless shelters. But there were also bright moments: for example, it was in one of these places that Nikolai earned his first money (15 kopecks) for help in writing a petition. The difficult financial situation did not break the spirit of the young man and he vowed to himself, despite any obstacles, to achieve recognition.

Literary activity of Nekrasov

A biography of Nekrasov is impossible without mentioning the stages of his formation as a poet and writer.

Soon after the events described above, Nikolai's life began to improve. He got a job as a tutor, and was often tasked with composing fairy tales and ABCs for popular print publishers. A good part-time job was writing small articles for the Literary Newspaper, as well as the Literary Supplement to the Russian Invalid. Several vaudevilles he composed and published under the pseudonym “Perepelsky” were even staged on the Alexandria stage. Having put aside some money, in 1840 Nekrasov published his first collection of poems, which was called “Dreams and Sounds.”

Nekrasov’s biography was not without struggle with critics. Despite the fact that they treated him ambiguously, Nikolai himself was extremely upset negative feedback authoritative Belinsky. It even got to the point that Nekrasov himself bought up most of the circulation and destroyed the books. However, the few remaining copies made it possible to see Nekrasov in a completely unusual role as a writer of ballads. Later he moved on to other genres and topics.

Nekrasov spent the forties of the 19th century working closely with the journal Otechestvennye zapiski. Nikolai himself was a bibliographer. The turning point in his life can be considered his close acquaintance and the beginning of his friendship with Belinsky. After quite a bit of time, Nikolai Nekrasov’s poems began to be actively published. In a fairly short period of time, the almanacs “April 1”, “Physiology of St. Petersburg”, “Petersburg Collection” were published, in which the poems of the young poet were side by side with the works of the best authors of that period. Among them, among others, there were works by F. Dostoevsky, D. Grigorovich, I. Turgenev.

Publishing business was going well. This allowed Nekrasov and his friends to purchase the Sovremennik magazine at the end of 1846. In addition to the poet himself, many talented writers contribute to this magazine. And Belinsky gives Nekrasov an unusually generous gift - he gives the magazine a huge amount of materials that the critic had been collecting for a long time for his own publication. During the period of reaction, the content of Sovremennik was controlled by the tsarist authorities, and under the influence of censorship, they began to publish mostly works of the adventure genre. But, nevertheless, the magazine does not lose its popularity.

Next, Nekrasov’s biography takes us to sunny Italy, where the poet went in the 50s to be treated for a throat disease. Having recovered his health, he returns to his homeland. Here life is in full swing - Nikolai finds himself in advanced literary streams, communicates with people of high morality. At this time, the best and hitherto unknown sides of the poet’s talent are revealed. While working on the magazine, Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky became his faithful assistants and colleagues.

Despite the fact that Sovremennik was closed in 1866, Nekrasov did not give up. The writer rents Otechestvennye zapiski from his former “competitor,” which quickly rises to the same height as Sovremennik in its time.

Working with two the best magazines of his time, Nekrasov wrote and published a lot of his works. Among them are poems (“Who Lives Well in Rus'”, “Peasant Children”, “Frost, Red Nose”, “Sasha”, “Russian Women”), poems (“Railroad”, “Knight for an Hour”, “Prophet ") and many others. Nekrasov was at the zenith of his fame.

last years of life

At the beginning of 1875, the poet was given a terrible diagnosis - “intestinal cancer”. His life became a complete misery, and only the support of devoted readers helped him somehow hold on. Telegrams and letters came to Nikolai even from the farthest corners of Russia. This support meant a lot to the poet: while struggling with pain, he continued to create. At the end of his life, he writes a satirical poem called “Contemporaries”, a sincere and touching cycle of poems “Last Songs”.

The talented poet and literary activist said goodbye to this world on December 27, 1877 (January 8, 1878) in St. Petersburg, at the age of only 56 years.

Despite the severe frost, thousands of people came to say goodbye to the poet and accompany him to his final resting place (Novodevichy Cemetery in St. Petersburg).

Love in the life of a poet

N.A. Nekrasov, whose biography is a real charge of vitality and energy, met three women in his life. His first love was Avdotya Panaeva. They were not officially married, but lived together for fifteen years. After some time, Nekrasov fell in love with a charming Frenchwoman, Selina Lefren. However, this novel was unsuccessful for the poet: Selina left him, and before that she squandered a fair part of his fortune. And finally, six months before his death, Nekrasov got married to Fyokla Viktorova, who loved him dearly and took care of him until his last day.

Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseevich - Personal life

Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseevich
Personal life

S. L. Levitsky. Photo portrait of N. A. Nekrasov

The personal life of Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov was not always successful. In 1842, at a poetry evening, he met Avdotya Panaeva (ur. Bryanskaya) - the wife of the writer Ivan Panaev.

Avdotya Panaeva, an attractive brunette, was considered one of the most beautiful women in St. Petersburg at that time. In addition, she was smart and was the owner of a literary salon, which met in the house of her husband Ivan Panaev.

Her own literary talent attracted the young but already popular Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Turgenev, Belinsky to the circle in the Panayevs’ house. Her husband, the writer Panaev, was characterized as a rake and a reveler.

Kraevsky House, which housed the editorial office of the journal “Domestic Notes”,
and also Nekrasov’s apartment was located

Despite this, his wife was distinguished by her decency, and Nekrasov had to make considerable efforts to attract the attention of this wonderful woman. Fyodor Dostoevsky was also in love with Avdotya, but he failed to achieve reciprocity.

At first, Panaeva also rejected twenty-six-year-old Nekrasov, who was also in love with her, which is why he almost committed suicide.

Avdotya Yakovlevna Panaeva

During one of the trips of the Panaevs and Nekrasov to the Kazan province, Avdotya and Nikolai Alekseevich nevertheless confessed their feelings to each other. Upon their return, they began to live in a civil marriage in the Panaevs’ apartment, together with Avdotya’s legal husband, Ivan Panaev.

This union lasted almost 16 years, until Panaev’s death. All this caused public condemnation - they said about Nekrasov that he lives in someone else’s house, loves someone else’s wife and at the same time makes scenes of jealousy for his legal husband.

Nekrasov and Panaev.
Caricature by N. A. Stepanov. "Illustrated Almanac"
prohibited by censorship. 1848

During this period, even many friends turned away from him. But, despite this, Nekrasov and Panaeva were happy. She even managed to get pregnant from him, and Nekrasov created one of his best poetic cycles - the so-called (they wrote and edited much of this cycle together).

The co-authorship of Nekrasov and Stanitsky (pseudonym of Avdotya Yakovlevna) belongs to several novels that have had great success. Despite such an unconventional lifestyle, this trio remained like-minded people and comrades-in-arms in the revival and establishment of the Sovremennik magazine.

In 1849, Avdotya Yakovlevna gave birth to a boy from Nekrasov, but he did not live long. At this time, Nikolai Alekseevich also fell ill. It is believed that it was with the death of the child that strong attacks of anger and mood swings were associated, which later led to a break in their relationship with Avdotya.

In 1862, Ivan Panaev died, and soon Avdotya Panaeva left Nekrasov. However, Nekrasov remembered her until the end of his life and, when drawing up his will, he mentioned her in it to Panaeva, this spectacular brunette, Nekrasov dedicated many of his fiery poems.

In May 1864, Nekrasov went on a trip abroad, which lasted about three months. He lived mainly in Paris with his companions - his sister Anna Alekseevna and the Frenchwoman Selina Lefresne, whom he met back in St. Petersburg in 1863.

ON THE. Nekrasov during the period of "Last Songs"
(painting by Ivan Kramskoy, 1877-1878)

Selina was an ordinary actress of the French troupe performing at the Mikhailovsky Theater. She was distinguished by her lively disposition and easy character. Selina spent the summer of 1866 in Karabikha. And in the spring of 1867, she went abroad, as before, together with Nekrasov and his sister Anna. However, this time she never returned to Russia.

However, this did not interrupt their relationship - in 1869 they met in Paris and spent the whole of August by the sea in Dieppe. Nekrasov was very pleased with this trip, also improving his health. During the rest, he felt happy, the reason for which was Selina, who was to his liking.

Selina Lefren

Although her attitude towards him was even and even a little dry. Having returned, Nekrasov did not forget Selina for a long time and helped her. And in his dying will he assigned her ten and a half thousand rubles.

Later, Nekrasov met a village girl, Fyokla Anisimovna Viktorova, simple and uneducated. She was 23 years old, he was already 48. The writer took her to theaters, concerts and exhibitions to fill the gaps in her upbringing. Nikolai Alekseevich came up with her name - Zina.

So Fyokla Anisimovna began to be called Zinaida Nikolaevna. She learned Nekrasov's poems by heart and admired him. Soon they got married. However, Nekrasov still yearned for his former love - Avdotya Panaeva - and at the same time loved both Zinaida and the Frenchwoman Selina Lefren, with whom he had an affair abroad.

He dedicated one of his most famous poetic works, “Three Elegies,” only to Panaeva.

It should also be mentioned about Nekrasov’s passion for playing cards, which can be called the hereditary passion of the Nekrasov family, starting with Nikolai Nekrasov’s great-grandfather, Yakov Ivanovich, an “immensely rich” Ryazan landowner, who rather quickly lost his wealth.

However, he again became rich quite quickly - at one time Yakov was a governor in Siberia. As a result of his passion for the game, his son Alexei inherited only the Ryazan estate. Having married, he received the village of Greshnevo as a dowry. But his son, Sergei Alekseevich, having mortgaged Yaroslavl Greshnevo for a period of time, lost him too.

Alexey Sergeevich, when telling his son Nikolai, the future poet, his glorious pedigree, summarized:

“Our ancestors were rich. Your great-great-grandfather lost seven thousand souls, your great-grandfather - two, your grandfather (my father) - one, I - nothing, because there was nothing to lose, but I also like to play cards.”

And only Nikolai Alekseevich was the first to change his fate. He also loved to play cards, but became the first to not lose. At a time when his ancestors were losing, he alone won back and won back a lot.

The count was in the hundreds of thousands. Thus, Adjutant General Alexander Vladimirovich Adlerberg, a famous statesman, minister of the Imperial Court and personal friend of Emperor Alexander II, lost a very large sum to him.

And Finance Minister Alexander Ageevich Abaza lost more than a million francs to Nekrasov. Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov managed to return Greshnevo, where he spent his childhood and which was taken away for his grandfather’s debt.

Another hobby of Nekrasov, also passed on to him from his father, was hunting. The hound hunt, which was served by two dozen dogs, greyhounds, hounds, hounds and stirrups, was the pride of Alexei Sergeevich.

The poet's father forgave his son long ago and, not without glee, followed his creative and financial successes. And the son, until his father’s death (in 1862), came to see him in Greshnevo every year. Nekrasov dedicated funny poems to dog hunting and even the poem of the same name “Dog Hunt”, glorifying the prowess, scope, beauty of Russia and the Russian soul.

In adulthood, Nekrasov even became addicted to bear hunting (“It’s fun to beat you, honorable bears...”).

Avdotya Panaeva recalled that when Nekrasov was going to hunt the bear, there were large gatherings - expensive wines, snacks and just provisions were brought. They even took a cook with them. In March 1865, Nekrasov managed to catch three bears in one day. He valued the male bear-hunters and dedicated poems to them - Savushka (“who sank on the forty-first bear”) from “In the Village,” Savely from “Who Lives Well in Rus'.”

The poet also loved to hunt game. His passion for walking through the swamp with a gun was limitless. Sometimes he went hunting at sunrise and returned only at midnight. He also went hunting with the “first hunter of Russia” Ivan Turgenev, with whom they had been friends for a long time and corresponded.

Nekrasov, in his last message to Turgenev abroad, even asked him to buy him a Lancaster gun in London or Paris for 500 rubles. However, their correspondence was destined to be interrupted in 1861. Turgenev did not answer the letter and did not buy a gun, and their long-term friendship was put to an end.

And the reason for this was not ideological or literary differences. Nekrasov's common-law wife, Avdotya Panaeva, got involved in a lawsuit over the inheritance of the ex-wife of the poet Nikolai Ogarev. The court awarded Panaeva a claim for 50 thousand rubles. Nekrasov paid this amount, preserving the honor of Avdotya Yakovlevna, but thereby his own reputation was shaken.

Turgenev found out from Ogarev himself in London all the intricacies of the dark matter, after which he broke all relations with Nekrasov. Nekrasov the publisher also broke up with some other old friends - L. N. Tolstoy, A. N. Ostrovsky. At this time, he switched to the new democratic wave emanating from the camp of Chernyshevsky - Dobrolyubov.

Zinaida Nikolaevna Nekrasova (1847-1914)
- wife of the Russian poet Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov

Fyokla Anisimovna, who became his late muse in 1870, and was named Zinaida Nikolaevna by Nekrasov in a noble manner, also became addicted to her husband’s hobby, hunting. She even saddled the horse herself and went hunting with him in a tailcoat and tight trousers, with a Zimmerman on her head. All this delighted Nekrasov.

But one day, while hunting in the Chudovsky swamp, Zinaida Nikolaevna accidentally shot Nekrasov’s beloved dog, a black pointer named Kado. After this, Nekrasov, who devoted 43 years of his life to hunting, hung up his gun forever