Nekrasov criticism. Education and the beginning of a creative path

Nikolai Nekrasov is a famous Russian poet, writer and publicist. His works have become classics of Russian literature. He was one of the first poets who began to pay great attention to peasant life.

After studying at the gymnasium for 5 years, he graduated in 1837, the year he tragically died. Since the father wanted to make his son a military man, in 1838 he enrolled him in the Konstantinovsky Artillery School, located in.

However, the future writer was not very interested in military affairs, as a result of which he decided to enter St. Petersburg University.

This decision infuriated my father. He threatened to stop financial support for his son if he went to university.

Interestingly, this did not frighten Nekrasov at all, as a result of which he began to actively prepare for passing the exams. But he failed to pass them, so he became a volunteer student at the Faculty of Philology.

Difficult years

Due to the fact that the father stopped sending money to his son, Nikolai found himself in dire need. He often went hungry, and often he simply had nowhere to sleep. For some time he lived on the street, eking out a miserable existence.

One day, a beggar passing by took pity on him and took him to one of the slums, where he could at least have a roof over his head.

These years will become the most difficult in Nekrasov’s biography, although they tempered his youth.

Literary activity

A few years later, Nekrasov managed to adapt to the conditions in which he lived. Soon he began writing short articles and publishing in various publications. In addition, he periodically gave lessons, thanks to which he had additional income.

Nikolai Alekseevich plunged headlong into literature, reading the works of Russian and foreign authors. After this, he began to hone his skills in writing poetry and vaudeville, and also worked hard on prose.

As a result, he earned the amount of money needed to publish his first collection of poems, Dreams and Sounds (1840).

An interesting fact is that Nekrasov was very upset by criticism of his works, since by nature he was a very emotional person.

Something similar was done before him, who bought and burned Hanz Küchelgarten.

However, despite the criticism, Nikolai Nekrasov did not give up, but rather continued to work on himself. Soon he began collaborating with the famous St. Petersburg publication Otechestvennye zapiski.

Every year his work became better and better, and pretty soon warm and friendly relations developed between Nekrasov and Belinsky.

During this period, Nekrasov’s biography and his works began to be actively published and received positive reviews from critics, including Belinsky himself.

The writer also did not experience any difficulties financially. In 1846, he, together with like-minded people, acquired the magazine Sovremennik, in which many writers later began to publish:, etc.

Due to the fact that the publication was under tsarist censorship, most of the works were of an adventure nature, but this in no way affected the popularity of the magazine.

In the mid-50s, a serious problem occurred in Nekrasov’s biography. He falls ill with a throat disease, as a result of which he has to go to Italy for treatment.

After staying there for some time, he recovered and returned to his homeland again. Meanwhile, his works began to be considered among the best, and Dobrolyubov was among his loyal friends and assistants.

In 1866, Sovremennik was closed, as a result of which Nekrasov had to look for new ways to continue his activities.

Soon he rented the publication Otechestvennye Zapiski, in which he began to successfully publish his own works, as well as collaborate with other writers.

The most famous work in Nekrasov’s biography is the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” which was completed in 1876.

It told the story of the journey of 7 simple men looking for a happy person.

After it, many poems came out from the poet’s pen, having positive reviews from both critics and ordinary readers.

Love in the life of a poet

In Nekrasov’s biography there were 3 women who differed from each other both in character and social status.

His first love was Avdotya Panaeva, whom Nekrasov first saw in 1842. Soon they began a whirlwind romance, as a result of which they began to live together.

And although they were not officially married, they managed to live together for more than 15 years. Avdotya was a literate and beautiful woman.

An interesting fact is that Fyodor Dostoevsky was in love with her, who, however, was never able to achieve reciprocity.

Nekrasov's next girlfriend was the Frenchwoman Selina Lefren, who was distinguished by her easy character and simplicity.

Their close relationship developed over several years, but it never came to marriage.

The third and last woman in Nekrasov’s biography was Fekla Viktorova.

She lived all her life in the village, and was a very simple and good-natured person.

Despite the fact that she had a meager education, Nikolai Alekseevich fell madly in love with her.

The couple got married six months before the poet’s death, unable to fully enjoy their married life.

Death

In 1875, Nekrasov was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. The illness caused a lot of suffering, which did not allow him to fully engage in writing.

However, after he began to receive letters from devoted readers, he perked up and took up the pen again.

Sick Nekrasov continues to work in bed

In the last years of his life, he managed to write the satirical poem “Contemporaries”, and also composed a number of poems “Last Songs”.

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov died on December 27, 1877 at the age of 56 years. Despite the severe December frosts, thousands of people came to say goodbye to the Russian poet.

If you liked Nekrasov’s biography, share it on social networks. If you generally like biographies of great people, subscribe to the site website. It's always interesting with us!

Did you like the post? Press any button.

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 positive hero of 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.

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.

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 by the French Revolution, began to persecute advanced journalism and literature. Nekrasov, as the editor of Sovremennik, during 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 succeeded in the art of social revelations, skillful and subtle description of 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 of 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 that he still did not believe in the possibility of imminent death. A week before his death, he suffered from paralysis on the right side of his body.”

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.

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 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, 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.

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 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. 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

Nikolai Nekrasov is known to modern readers as the “most peasant” poet of Russia: he was one of the first to talk about the tragedy of serfdom and explore the spiritual world of the Russian peasantry. Nikolai Nekrasov was also a successful publicist and publisher: his Sovremennik became a legendary magazine of its time.

“Everything that has entangled my life since childhood has become an irresistible curse on me...”

Nikolai Nekrasov was born on December 10 (according to the old style - November 28), 1821 in the small town of Nemirov, Vinnitsa district, Podolsk province. His father Alexey Nekrasov came from a family of once wealthy Yaroslavl nobles, was an army officer, and his mother Elena Zakrevskaya was the daughter of a possessor from the Kherson province. The parents were against the marriage of a beautiful and educated girl to a military man who was not rich at that time, so the young couple got married in 1817 without their blessing.

However, the couple’s family life was not happy: the future poet’s father turned out to be a stern and despotic man, including in relation to his soft and shy wife, whom he called a “recluse.” The difficult atmosphere that reigned in the family influenced Nekrasov’s work: metaphorical images of parents often appeared in his works. Fyodor Dostoevsky said: “It was a heart that was wounded at the very beginning of 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.”.

Konstantin Makovsky. Portrait of Nikolai Nekrasov. 1856. State Tretyakov Gallery

Nikolay Ge. Portrait of Nikolai Nekrasov. 1872. State Russian Museum

Nikolai's early childhood was spent on his father's family estate - the village of Greshnevo, Yaroslavl province, where the family moved after Alexei Nekrasov retired from the army. The boy developed a particularly close relationship with his mother: she was his best friend and first teacher, and instilled in him a love of the Russian language and the literary word.

Things were seriously neglected on the family estate, it even came to the point of litigation, and Nekrasov’s father took on the duties of a police officer. When leaving on business, he often took his son with him, so from an early age the boy saw pictures that were not intended for children’s eyes: extorting debts and arrears from peasants, cruel reprisals, all kinds of manifestations of grief and poverty. In his own poems, Nekrasov recalled the early years of his life:

No! in my youth, rebellious and harsh,
There is no memory that pleases the soul;
But everything that has entangled my life since childhood,
An irresistible curse fell upon me, -
Everything begins here, in my native land!..

First years in St. Petersburg

In 1832, Nekrasov turned 11 years old and entered the gymnasium, where he studied until the fifth grade. Studying was difficult for him, relations with the gymnasium authorities did not go well - in particular, because of the caustic satirical poems that he began to compose at the age of 16. Therefore, in 1837, Nekrasov went to St. Petersburg, where, according to his father’s wishes, he was supposed to enter military service.

In St. Petersburg, young Nekrasov, through his friend at the gymnasium, met several students, after which he realized that education interested him more than military affairs. Contrary to his father’s demands and threats to leave him without financial support, Nekrasov began to prepare for the entrance exams to the university, but failed them, after which he became a volunteer student at the Faculty of Philology.

Nekrasov Sr. fulfilled his ultimatum and left his rebellious son without financial help. Nekrasov spent all his free time from studying looking for work and a roof over his head: it got to the point that he could not afford lunch. For some time he rented a room, but in the end he was unable to pay for it and ended up on the street, and then ended up in a shelter for beggars. It was there that Nekrasov discovered a new opportunity to earn money - he wrote petitions and complaints for a small fee.

Over time, Nekrasov’s affairs began to improve, and the stage of dire need was passed. By the early 1840s, he made a living by writing poems and fairy tales, which were later published in popular prints, published small articles in the Literary Gazette and the Literary Supplement to the Russian Invalid, gave private lessons and composed plays for Alexandrinsky Theater under the pseudonym Perepelsky.

In 1840, using his own savings, Nekrasov published his first poetry collection, “Dreams and Sounds,” which consisted of romantic ballads, which were influenced by the poetry of Vasily Zhukovsky and Vladimir Benediktov. Zhukovsky himself, having familiarized himself with the collection, called only two poems quite good, but recommended publishing the rest under a pseudonym and argued it this way: “Later you will write better, and you will be ashamed of these poems.” Nekrasov heeded the advice and published a collection under the initials N.N.

The book “Dreams and Sounds” was not particularly successful with either readers or critics, although Nikolai Polevoy spoke very favorably of the aspiring poet, and Vissarion Belinsky called his poems “coming from the soul.” Nekrasov himself was upset by his first poetic experience and decided to try his hand at prose. He wrote his early stories and novellas in a realistic manner: the plots were based on events and phenomena in which the author himself was a participant or witness, and some characters had prototypes in reality. Later, Nekrasov turned to satirical genres: he created the vaudeville “This is what it means to fall in love with an actress” and “Feoktist Onufrievich Bob”, the story “Makar Osipovich Random” and other works.

Nekrasov’s publishing activities: “Sovremennik” and “Whistle”

Ivan Kramskoy. Portrait of Nikolai Nekrasov. 1877. State Tretyakov Gallery

Nikolai Nekrasov and Ivan Panaev. Caricature by Nikolai Stepanov, “Illustrated Almanac”. 1848. Photo: vm.ru

Alexey Naumov. Nikolai Nekrasov and Ivan Panaev visiting the sick Vissarion Belinsky. 1881

From the mid-1840s, Nekrasov began to actively engage in publishing activities. With his participation, the almanacs “Physiology of St. Petersburg”, “Articles in Poems without Pictures”, “April 1”, “Petersburg Collection” were published, and the latter was a particularly great success: Dostoevsky’s novel “Poor People” was published for the first time in it.

At the end of 1846, Nekrasov, together with his friend, journalist and writer Ivan Panaev, rented the Sovremennik magazine from the publisher Pyotr Pletnev.

Young authors, who had previously published mainly in Otechestvennye zapiski, willingly moved to Nekrasov’s publication. It was Sovremennik that made it possible to reveal the talent of such writers as Ivan Goncharov, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Herzen, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. Nekrasov himself was not only the editor of the magazine, but also one of its regular authors. His poems, prose, literary criticism, and journalistic articles were published on the pages of Sovremennik.

The period from 1848 to 1855 became a difficult time for Russian journalism and literature due to the sharp tightening of censorship. To fill the gaps that arose in the content of the magazine due to censorship bans, Nekrasov began publishing in it chapters from the adventure novels “Dead Lake” and “Three Countries of the World,” which he co-wrote with his common-law wife Avdotya Panayeva (she was hiding under the pseudonym N N. Stanitsky).

In the mid-1850s, censorship requirements relaxed, but Sovremennik faced a new problem: class contradictions split the authors into two groups with opposing beliefs. Representatives of the liberal nobility advocated realism and aesthetic principles in literature, while supporters of democracy adhered to the satirical direction. The confrontation, of course, spilled onto the pages of the magazine, so Nekrasov, together with Nikolai Dobrolyubov, founded a supplement to Sovremennik - the satirical publication “Whistle”. It published humorous stories and short stories, satirical poems, pamphlets and caricatures.

At different times, Ivan Panaev, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Alexey Tolstoy published their works on the pages of “Whistle”. The supplement was first published in January 1859, and its last issue was released in April 1863, a year and a half after Dobrolyubov’s death. In 1866, after the assassination of Emperor Alexander II, the Sovremennik magazine itself was closed. “Who Lives Well in Rus'.”

Nekrasov came up with the idea for the poem back in the late 1850s, but he wrote the first part after the abolition of serfdom - around 1863. The basis of the work was not only the literary experiences of the poet’s predecessors, but also his own impressions and memories. According to the author's idea, the poem was supposed to become a kind of epic, demonstrating the life of the Russian people from different points of view. At the same time, Nekrasov purposefully used to write it not in “high style,” but in simple colloquial language, close to folk songs and tales, replete with colloquial expressions and sayings.

Work on the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” took Nekrasov almost 14 years. But even during this period, he did not have time to fully realize his plan: a serious illness prevented him, which confined the writer to his bed. Originally the work was supposed to consist of seven or eight parts. The travel route of the heroes, looking for “who lives cheerfully and freely in Rus',” lay across the entire country, all the way to St. Petersburg, where they had a meeting with an official, a merchant, a minister and a tsar. However, Nekrasov understood that he would not have time to complete the work, so he reduced the fourth part of the story - “A Feast for the Whole World” - to an open ending.

During Nekrasov’s lifetime, only three fragments of the poem were published in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski - the first part with a prologue, which does not have its own title, “The Last One” and “The Peasant Woman”. “A Feast for the Whole World” was published only three years after the author’s death, and even then with significant censorship cuts.

Nekrasov died on January 8, 1878 (December 27, 1877, old style). Several thousand people came to say goodbye to him and escorted the writer’s coffin from his home to the Novodevichy cemetery in St. Petersburg. This was the first time that a Russian writer was given national honors.

Biography and episodes of life Nikolai Nekrasov. When born and died Nikolai Nekrasov, memorable places and dates of important events of his life. Poet quotes, Photo and video.

Years of life of Nikolai Nekrasov:

born November 28, 1821, died December 27, 1877

Epitaph

“Do not be afraid of bitter oblivion:
I already hold in my hand
Crown of love, crown of forgiveness,
A gift from your gentle homeland...
The stubborn darkness will give way to the light,
You will hear your song
Over the Volga, over the Oka, over the Kama,
Bye-bye-bye-bye!..”
From the poem “Bayushki-Bayu” by N. Nekrasov, written by him in the year of his death

Biography

Nikolai Nekrasov, familiar to us from school with his “folk” poems, with which he evoked compassion for the people’s suffering, was himself familiar first-hand with hardships and deprivations. Even as a child, “thanks” to his father, he saw violence, cruelty and death; Subsequently, he suffered greatly from poverty, and in the last years of his life he suffered terribly from an incurable disease. Perhaps it was misfortune that filled Nekrasov’s poetry with that feeling that evoked such a wide response from readers and put him in the eyes of many contemporaries on a par with Pushkin.

Nekrasov was born into a noble, once rich family. The father wanted the young man to join the noble regiment in St. Petersburg, but once in the capital, Nekrasov realized that he wanted to get an education. The young man failed the exam and remained at the university as a volunteer student. Moreover, his father became so angry that he stopped helping him financially, and young Nekrasov, suffering from dire need, was forced to look for any kind of income.

A few years later, the future poet’s affairs improved a little: he gave private lessons and published articles. Nekrasov long ago realized that the meaning of his life was in literature. Nekrasov’s first collection of poems was a youthfully maximalistic imitation of the romantic poets, rather unsuccessful, so Vasily Zhukovsky advised the aspiring author to publish without a name, so as not to blush for these poems later.

But Nekrasov did not give up: he continued to write, now in the humorous and satirical genre, and began working on prose. He became close to V. Belinsky and his literary circle, and the famous critic had a huge influence on the poet and supported him. But for now it was publishing that made Nekrasov famous: he began to publish almanacs in which Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Maikov were published. And in Sovremennik, which he headed, with the help of Nekrasov, such names as Ivan Goncharov, Nikolai Herzen, Leo Tolstoy were discovered. Here, in Sovremennik, the poetic talent of Nekrasov himself flourishes.

One way or another, it was only in his mature years that the poet gained the fame that he rightfully deserved. The main work in Nekrasov’s life was the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” the result of many years of observations and thoughts about the serfdom system and the life of the people. By the time the poem was created, Nekrasov had already formed his own poetic school: a group of realist poets who contrasted their work with “pure art.” It was Nekrasov who became a symbol of the civic significance of poetry.

Two years before his death, doctors discovered Nekrasov had intestinal cancer, which made the last years of his life unbearably painful. The news that Nekrasov was terminally ill spread throughout Russia, and words of support and consolation poured in from all over. Nekrasov’s death caused a huge public outcry: several thousand people, mostly young people, escorted the coffin with his body from Nekrasov’s apartment to the Novodevichy cemetery. And when Dostoevsky, who spoke at the funeral, put Nekrasov in third place in Russian poetry after Pushkin and Lermontov, he was not allowed to finish, declaring the poet higher than Pushkin.

Life line

November 28, 1821 Date of birth of Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov.
1832 Admission to the Yaroslavl gymnasium.
1838 Moving to St. Petersburg.
1839 Admission as a volunteer to the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg University.
1840 Release of the first collection of poems “Dreams and Sounds”.
1842 Meet Avdotya Panayeva.
1843 Start of publishing activity.
1847 Nekrasov becomes the head of the Sovremennik magazine.
1858 Release of a satirical supplement to Sovremennik - the magazine Whistle.
1865 Creation of the first part of the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'.”
1868 Appointment as editor of the journal Otechestvennye zapiski.
1875 Disease.
December 27, 1877 Date of death of Nikolai Nekrasov.
December 30, 1877 Nekrasov's funeral at the Novodevichy cemetery in St. Petersburg.

Memorable places

1. G. Nemirov, where Nekrasov was born.
2. House No. 11 on Revolutionary (formerly Voskresenskaya) street, the building of the Yaroslavl gymnasium, where Nekrasov studied from 1832 to 1838.
3. House No. 13 on Povarsky Lane in St. Petersburg, where in apt. 7 Nekrasov lived from 1845 to 1848.
4. Nekrasov Memorial Apartment Museum in the former Kraevsky House (No. 36 on Liteiny Prospekt) in St. Petersburg, where the editorial offices of the magazines “Sovremennik” and “Otechestvennye Zapiski” were located and where Nekrasov lived from 1857 to 1877.
5. Literary and memorial museum-reserve "Karabikha", where Nekrasov lived in the summer months in 1861-1875.
6. House-museum in the former hunting lodge of Nekrasov in Chudovo, where the writer spent the summer months from 1871 to 1876.
7. Novodevichy cemetery in St. Petersburg, where Nekrasov is buried.

Episodes of life

Nekrasov's father was a family despot who treated both his own wife and the serfs horribly. For the poet, his image personified the tyranny and cruelty of those in power, while Nekrasov’s mother became in his eyes a symbol of meek and long-suffering Russia.

Nekrasov’s personal life caused a lot of gossip and outrage in society. The poet was in love with Avdotya, the wife of his friend, writer Ivan Panaev, and the trio lived together in the Panaevs’ apartment for more than 15 years, which was the reason for public condemnation. And already at the mature age of 48, Nekrasov met a peasant girl, Fyokla Viktorova, whom he took out into the world, calling him by the more noble name Zinaida, and with whom he subsequently married.

Nekrasov, like his male ancestors, was an avid card player. But, unlike them, he won, and not vice versa. Thus, with the help of a card game, he managed to return the ancestral estate of Greshnevo, the poet’s childhood home, taken away for his grandfather’s debts.

Testaments

“Man was created to be a support for others, because he himself needs support.”

“Love as long as you love,
Be patient as long as you can,
Goodbye while it's goodbye
And God will be your judge!”

“I’m always annoyed when I come across the phrase “there are no words to express,” etc. Nonsense! There are always words, but our minds are lazy.”

As part of the “Living Poetry” project, Mikhail Polizeimako reads Nekrasov’s poem “Frost, Red Nose”

Condolences

“His glory will be immortal... Russia’s love for him, the most brilliant and noble of all Russian poets, will be eternal.”
N. G. Chernyshevsky, writer

“I respect Nekrasov, as a poet, for his ardent sympathy for the suffering of the common man, for his word of honor, which he is always ready to put in for the poor and oppressed.”
Dmitry Pisarev, literary critic

“After Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Nekrasov are our first city poets...”
Valery Bryusov, poet

“... a gentle, kind, unenvious, generous, hospitable and completely simple man... a man with a real... Russian nature - ingenuous, cheerful and sad, capable of being carried away by both joy and grief to the point of excess.”
Ivan Panaev, writer and friend of Nekrasov

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov(November 28 (December 10) 1821, Nemirov, Podolsk province, Russian Empire - December 27, 1877 (January 8, 1878), St. Petersburg) - Russian poet, writer and publicist, democratic revolutionary, 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 poem-novel “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.

Birth and origin

Nikolai Nekrasov came from a noble, once rich family of the Yaroslavl province. He was born in the Vinnitsa district of Podolsk province in the city of Nemirov, where at that time the regiment in which his father, lieutenant and wealthy landowner Alexey Sergeevich Nekrasov (1788-1862), served, was stationed, who was not spared by the Nekrasov family weakness - the love of cards (Sergey 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 minor Little Russian official, 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 positive hero of 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.

early years

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 (1788-1862), 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.

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.

Beginning of literary activity

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 imitations 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 that was being prepared 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 N.V. Gogol (who at one time bought up and destroyed “Hans 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, Belinsky, with all the severity of his opinion, mentioned in his review of the collection “Dreams and Sounds” 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 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 , F. M. Dostoevsky, speakers were I. S. Turgenev, A. I. Herzen, A. N. Maikov. The “Petersburg Collection”, in which Dostoevsky’s “Poor People” were published, was a great success.

"Contemporary"

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 from P. A. Pletnev the Sovremennik magazine, 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.

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 Alexander II, 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 Domestic Notes from Kraevsky, making them a militant organ of revolutionary populism and turning them, together with M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, into organ of progressive democratic thought.

Satirical supplement to the magazine - “Whistle”

Later years

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 desire for a sharply critical depiction of reality led in the 1860s and 70s 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 succeeded in the art of social revelations, skillful and subtle description of 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.

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 of the people greatly helped the poet in his terrible torment and inspired him to further creativity.

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.

Personal life

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 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.

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. She even managed to get pregnant from him, and 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 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 strong attacks of anger and mood swings are associated with the death of the child, which soon led to a break in their relationship with Avdotya. In the 1860s, 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, and he always remained on very good terms with Panaev. Nekrasov dedicated many of his fiery poems to Panaeva, this spectacular brunette.

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 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. 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.

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 - Tolstoy, 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.

The image of a revolutionary democrat in the poetry of N. A. Nekrasov

According to the Russian literary critic, professor at Leningrad University V. E. Evgeniev-Maksimov, Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov was the most remarkable poet of Russian revolutionary democracy. According to Evgeniev-Maksimov, thoughts about the plight of the people led the writer to sympathy for the oppressed, that is, the serfs, and a negative attitude towards the landowners.

Even before the October Revolution, V.I. Lenin considered him a revolutionary democrat. Lenin considered one of Nekrasov’s merits to be that he taught Russian society to discern its proprietary interests under the appearance of education of the feudal landowner, and fought both against serfdom and against hypocritical Russian liberalism.

M.I. Kalinin in his article “On the moral character of our people” (1945) spoke about the social and educational significance of Nekrasov’s poetry, that with his works he awakened in people hatred of slave owners, love for the people, and called for struggle.

As the literary scholar and critic V.V. Zhdanov argued, Nekrasov not only sympathized with the people, but also identified himself with peasant Russia, spoke on its behalf and in its language, and was also an exponent of the awakening self-awareness of the masses, which became the basis of ideological and artistic features his creativity.

According to the Russian writer, democratic revolutionary Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Nekrasov sharply negatively perceived the Manifesto of February 19, 1861, responding to the reform with the poem “Freedom,” which reflected his own observations of changes in the village: “Motherland! I have never traveled across your plains with such a feeling!” These feelings were caused by hopes for improving the life of the peasant, and he considered the new peasant reform to be just another “network” for the peasantry: “I know: instead of the serfs’ networks, people came up with many others...”.

It is noteworthy that Nekrasov saw a successful solution for the peasantry in individual farming. He was a supporter of the American path of development of capitalism in Russia, advocated the elimination of the remnants of serfdom, the transfer of landowners' land to the peasantry, and the political and cultural growth of the peasant. At the same time, he had a negative attitude towards the “Prussian” version of capitalism and exposed Russian capitalism, which at that time was still very weak.

In Nekrasov's lyrics of the first half of the 1860s. The tense atmosphere that existed in the society of that time is noticeable: this is the rise of the liberation movement during the years of the revolutionary situation, a noticeable increase, and then a decline in post-reform peasant unrest. Government repressions and arrests of revolutionaries also had an impact. All these events gave Nekrasov’s poems in some cases a gloomy flavor, and in others they filled them with rebellious pathos and a sense of protest. In 1864, the poet wrote a short poem “The Railway,” which reflected the harsh reality of the life and work of the Russian peasant and carried out a strict social analysis. In this poem, Nekrasov touched upon the acute social theme of the exploitation of workers, yesterday’s peasants, in the heavy construction of railways. In the poem, he pointed to the post-reform devastation of the village and connected it with the beginning of the process of capitalization of Russia.

In the mid-1860s, Nekrasov wrote a sharp satire “Gazetnaya”, in which he ridiculed his original enemy - censorship: he showed a negative image of the censor of Nikolaev times, who, by inertia, continued to look for “sedition” in newspapers. Nekrasov devoted an extensive cycle of satirical poems “Songs about Free Speech” (1865-1866) to the topic of the fight against censorship and liberalism, written in response to censorship “reforms” that put his journal “Sovremennik” in a difficult position. In these verses, he ridiculed the government's censorship policy, as well as the liberal press, which praised this policy.

At the same time, trying to save the Sovremennik magazine, Nekrasov wrote an ode of praise, which he read to Muravyov the Hangman, who brutally suppressed the Polish uprising, at a dinner at the English Club on April 16, 1866. This could not but outrage the revolutionaries, and not only them, but even some gendarmes, since in this ode the poet persistently demanded punishment for those whom he himself called to revolutionary exploits. Some former fans of Nekrasov tore his portraits from the walls and tore them to shreds, and also wrote “scoundrel” on these portraits and sent them to him by mail. This act was not liked even by most of the club members who heard the ode. Moreover, the verse did not leave an impression even on Muravyov himself, and when Nekrasov asked whether it was worth publishing, he answered in the negative.

The writer at that time could not write directly about the revolutionaries who were persecuted by the government, and therefore looked for workarounds to convey his thoughts. However, in 1868 he wrote the poem “Stuffy! Without happiness and will...", in which he manages to almost directly express the revolutionary call and the idea of a storm brewing in the long night that will spill the "cup of universal grief": "A storm would break out, or what? The cup is full!”

Nekrasov's lyrics of the 1870s, his poems are imbued with revolutionary sentiments. They reflect the influence of the liberation struggle, the rise and fall of the populist movement, “going to the people,” with which the poet sincerely sympathized.

Nekrasovskaya school

In the poetry of the 1860s, such a concept as the “Nekrasov school” was formed. This was a group of poets who opposed themselves to the poets of “pure art” as poets of the real and civil movement - Dmitry Minaev, Nikolai Dobrolyubov, Ivan Nikitin, Vasily Kurochkin and others. The very concept of “Nekrasov School” did not mean at all that they were Nekrasov’s students in the literal sense. Rather, Nikolai Nekrasov managed to most fully express the totality of those tendencies in civil poetry of the 1840-60s that were significant in their work: Dobrolyubov and Minaev were predominantly satirical poets, Nikitin was a peasant poet, and the same with other poets.

Chernyshevsky also stated that Nekrasov is the creator of a new period in Russian literature. The appearance of the term “Nekrasov school” was influenced by such a concept as “natural school”, which in the mid-1840s was also largely associated with the name of Nekrasov. The definition “Nekrasov school” was first heard in connection with the characterization of the poetry of Dmitry Minaev. The existence of such a trend was also recognized by critics who were hostile to democratic poetry. By this school we can understand the system of artistic principles that developed in Russian (primarily democratic) poetry by the middle of the 19th century. The school had its influence on Russian poetry. Traces of the Nekrasov school are found even in poets of later times - in Andrei Bely, in Alexander Blok. However, usually the school of Nekrasov refers to the poets of the 1850s-70s, who were ideologically and artistically closest to him and were directly influenced by him. Most of them were formed around a few democratic publications: Nekrasov’s Sovremennik, Russkoe Slovo, Iskra. Nekrasov's poetry itself was characterized by nationality. Nekrasov was a poet who not only wrote about the people, but also spoke their language.