Nikolay Nekrasov is known to modern readers as the "most peasant" poet in Russia: it was he who was one of the first to speak about the tragedy of serfdom and explored 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, having entangled my life from childhood, an irresistible curse fell on me ...”
Nikolai Nekrasov was born on December 10 (November 28 according to the old style) in 1821 in the small town of Nemirov, Vinnitsa district, Podolsk province. His father Alexei Nekrasov came from a family of once wealthy Yaroslavl nobles, he was an army officer, and his mother Elena Zakrevskaya was the daughter of a possessor from the Kherson province. Parents were against the marriage of a beautiful and educated girl with a poor military man at that time, so the young people got married in 1817 without their blessing.
However, the couple's family life was not happy: the father of the future poet turned out to be a harsh and despotic man, including in relation to his soft and shy wife, whom he called a "recluse". The painful 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 wounded at the very beginning of life; and this wound that never healed 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
Nicholas Ge. Portrait of Nikolai Nekrasov. 1872. State Russian Museum
Nikolai's early childhood was spent in his father's family estate - the village of Greshnevo, Yaroslavl province, where the family moved after the resignation of Alexei Nekrasov from the army. The boy developed a particularly close relationship with his mother: she was his best friend and first teacher, instilled in him a love for the Russian language and the literary word.
Things in the family estate were very neglected, it even came to 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 had a chance to see pictures that were not intended for children's eyes: knocking out 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 as follows:
There is no remembrance that pleases the soul;
But all that, having entangled my life from childhood,
An irresistible curse fell on me, -
Everything began here, in my native land! ..
The first years in St. Petersburg
In 1832, Nekrasov turned 11 years old, and he 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 the wishes of his father, he was supposed to enter the 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. Despite the demands of his father and the threats to leave him without material support, Nekrasov began to prepare for the entrance exams to the university, but failed them, after which he became a volunteer at the Faculty of Philology.
Nekrasov Sr. fulfilled his ultimatum and left his rebellious son without financial assistance. All of Nekrasov's free time from studies was spent looking for work and a roof over his head: it got to the point that he could not afford to have lunch. For some time he rented a room, but in the end he could not pay for it and ended up on the street, and then ended up in a beggar's shelter. It was there that Nekrasov discovered a new opportunity for earning 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 composing poems and fairy tales, which later appeared in the form of 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, at the expense of his own savings, Nekrasov published his first collection of poetry, Dreams and Sounds, consisting of romantic ballads, which traced the influence of the poetry of Vasily Zhukovsky and Vladimir Benediktov. Zhukovsky himself, having familiarized himself with the collection, called only two poems not bad, while he recommended printing the rest under a pseudonym and argued this as follows: “Later you will write better, and you will be ashamed of these poems.” Nekrasov heeded the advice and released 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 of the beginning poet very favorably, and Vissarion Belinsky called his poems "come out of the soul." Nekrasov himself was upset by his first poetic experience and decided to try himself in prose. He wrote his early stories and novels 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 also 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.
Publishing activities of Nekrasov: 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 at the patient Vissarion Belinsky. 1881
From the mid-1840s, Nekrasov began to actively engage in publishing activities. With his participation, the almanacs "Physiology of Petersburg", "Articles in Poetry without Pictures", "April 1", "Petersburg Collection" were published, and the latter was especially successful: Dostoevsky's novel "Poor People" was first published 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 switched 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 contributors. His poems, prose, literary criticism, 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 a sharp tightening of censorship. To fill in the gaps that arose in the content of the magazine due to censorship bans, Nekrasov began to publish in it chapters from the adventure novels Dead Lake and Three Countries of the World, which he wrote in collaboration with his common-law wife Avdotya Panaeva (she was hiding under the pseudonym N .N. Stanitsky).
In the mid-1850s, the demands of censorship softened, but the Sovremennik faced a new problem: class contradictions split the authors into two groups with opposing beliefs. Representatives of the liberal nobility advocated realism and the aesthetic principle in literature, supporters of democracy adhered to a satirical direction. The confrontation, of course, splashed out on the pages of the magazine, so Nekrasov, together with Nikolai Dobrolyubov, founded an appendix to Sovremennik - the satirical publication Whistle. It published humorous novels and stories, satirical poems, pamphlets and caricatures.
At various times, Ivan Panaev, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Alexei Tolstoy published their works on the pages of the 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 should live well in Russia.”
The idea for the poem appeared to Nekrasov as early as 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 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 for writing it not a “high calm”, but a simple colloquial language close to folk songs and legends, replete with colloquial expressions and sayings.
Work on the poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" 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 chained the writer to bed. Initially, the work was supposed to consist of seven or eight parts. The route of the heroes' journey, looking for "who lives cheerfully, freely in Russia", lay across the whole country, to St. Petersburg itself, where they were to meet with an official, merchant, minister and 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 the life of Nekrasov, 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 name, "Last Child" and "Peasant Woman". "A Feast for the Whole World" was published only three years after the death of the author, and even then with significant censorship cuts.
Nekrasov died on January 8, 1878 (December 27, 1877 according to the old style). Several thousand people came to say goodbye to him, who accompanied the coffin of the writer from home to the Novodevichy cemetery in St. Petersburg. This was the first time that a Russian writer was given national honors.
(1821 77/78), Russian poet.
In 1847 66 editor and publisher of the journal Sovremennik, from 1868 editor (together with M.-E. Saltykov) of the journal Domestic Notes.
In depicting the everyday life of the urban lower classes, peasant everyday life, women's lot, the world of childhood, the "muse of revenge and sorrow" of the poet is especially sensitive to injustice, to human pain. Poems: "Pedlars" (1861), "Frost, Red Nose" (1864), "Russian Women" (1871 72), "Who Lives Well in Russia" (1866 76) paint a diverse picture of modern Russian life, first of all peasantry, with its dreams of universal national happiness. Satire (poem "Contemporaries", 1875 76). Tragic motifs in the cycle of poems "Last Songs" (1877). Prose. Criticism.
Biography
Born on November 28 (October 10, NS) in the town of Nemirov, Podolsk province, in the family of a small estate nobleman. Childhood years were spent in the village of Greshnevo, in the family estate of his father, a man of a despotic character, who oppressed not only serfs, but also his family, which the future poet witnessed. F. Dostoevsky later wrote about Nekrasov: "It was a heart wounded at the very beginning of his life; and this wound that never healed was the beginning and source of all his passionate, suffering poetry for the rest of his life." The poet's mother, an educated woman, was his first teacher, she instilled in him a love for literature, for the Russian language,
In 1832 1837 Nekrasov studied at the Yaroslavl gymnasium. Then he began to write poetry.
In 1838, against the will of his father, the future poet went to St. Petersburg to enter the university. Unable to pass the entrance exams, he decided to become a volunteer and attended lectures at the Faculty of Philology for two years. Upon learning of this, his father deprived him of any material support. The disasters that befell Nekrasov were subsequently reflected in his poems and the unfinished novel The Life and Adventures of Tikhon Trostnikov.
Since 1841 he began to collaborate in the "Notes of the Fatherland".
In 1843 Nekrasov met with Belinsky, whose ideas resonated in his soul. Realistic poems appear, the first of which On the Road (1845) was highly appreciated by critics. Thanks to his sharp critical mind, poetic talent, deep knowledge of life and enterprise, Nekrasov became a skillful organizer of the literary business. He collected and published two almanacs: "Physiology of Petersburg" (1845), "Petersburg Collection" (1846), where essays, short stories, novels by Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Belinsky, Herzen, Dahl and others were published.
In 1847 1866 he was the publisher and actual editor of the Sovremennik magazine, which rallied the best literary forces of its time. The journal became an organ of the revolutionary democratic forces.
During these years, Nekrasov created lyrical poems dedicated to his common-law wife Panaeva, poems and cycles of poems about the urban poor ("On the street", "About the weather"), about the fate of the people ("Uncompressed strip", "Railway", etc.) , about peasant life ("Peasant Children", "Forgotten Village", "Orina, a Soldier's Mother", "Frost, Red Nose", etc.).
During the period of the public upsurge of 1850 1860 and the peasant reform, he published "The Poet and the Citizen", ("The Song of Eremushka", "Reflections at the Front Door", the poem "Peddlers".
In 1862, after the events of 1861, when the leaders of the revolutionary democracy were arrested, Nekrasov visited his native places - Greshnev and Abakumtsevo, the result of which was the lyric poem "Knight for an Hour" (1862), which the poet himself singled out and loved. That year, Nekrasov acquired the Karabikha estate, not far from Yaroslavl, where he came every summer, spending time hunting and socializing with friends from the people.
After the closure of the Sovremennik magazine, Nekrasov acquired the right to publish Fatherland Notes, with which the last ten years of his life were associated. During these years, he worked on the poem "To whom it is good to live in Russia" (1866 76), wrote poems about the Decembrists and their wives ("Grandfather", 1870; "Russian Women", 1871 72). In addition, he created a series of satirical works, the top of which was the poem "Contemporaries" (1875).
The late lyrics of Nekrasov are characterized by elegiac motifs: "Three Elegies" (1873), "Morning", "Despondency", "Elegy" (1874), associated with the loss of many friends, consciousness of loneliness, serious illness (cancer). But there are also such as "The Prophet" (1874), "To the Sowers" (1876). In 1877 a cycle of poems "Last Songs".
It was Nekrasov who expanded the range of the poetic genre with colloquial speech and folklore. Before him, no one practiced such combinations. This innovation had a great influence on the further development of literature.
Nekrasov was the first to decide on a combination of sadness, satire and lyrics within one work.
Biographers like to divide the history of the development of Nikolai Alekseevich as a poet into three periods:
✪ The moment of the release of the collection "Dreams and Sounds". This is the image of the poet, which was created in the lyrics of Pushkin, Lermontov, Baratynsky. The young man still wants to be like this image, but he is already looking for himself in his own, personal work. The writer has not yet decided on his direction, and is trying to imitate the recognized writers.
✪ Since 1845. Now the poet depicts street scenes in his verses, and he likes it, it is welcome. Before us is a poet of a new format, who already knows what he wants to say.
✪
Late 40s - Nekrasov is a famous poet and successful writer. He edits the most influential literary world at that time.
At the beginning of the creative path
Very young, with great difficulty, eighteen-year-old Nekrasov reached St. Petersburg. With him he kept a notebook of youthful poems. The young man believed in his abilities. It seemed to him that the glory of the poet would happen as soon as people began to read his poems.
Indeed, a year later he was able to publish his first book - poetry. The book was called Dreams and Sounds. The success that the author had hoped for did not follow. This did not break the poet.
The young man aspired to education. He decided to attend lectures at St. Petersburg University as a volunteer, but this was also a very short-lived project of his, which ended in failure. His father deprived him of all help, there was nothing to live on. The young man put aside his high nickname for several years and began to write in various magazines, newspapers, while becoming a literary day laborer. Vaudeville, prose, satirical stories - this is what Nikolai earned in his early years.
Fortunately, in 1845 everything changed. Together with the poet Ivan Panaev, the young authors published an almanac with the attractive title "Physiology of St. Petersburg". The collection was a success. Absolutely new heroes appeared to the Russian reader. These were not romantic characters, not duelists. These were ordinary residents of St. Petersburg: janitors, organ grinders, in general, those who need sympathy.
Contemporary
A year later, at the end of 1846, young writers go even further. They are a well-known magazine "Contemporary" arrange for rent. This is the same magazine that was founded in 1836 by Pushkin.Already in January 1847, the first issues of Sovremennik were published.
Contemporary is also a resounding success. New Russian literature begins with this magazine. Nikolai Alekseevich is a new type of editor.
He assembled an excellent team of literary professionals. All Russian literature seems to have narrowed down to a narrow circle of like-minded people. For a writer to make himself known, it was enough to show his manuscript to Nekrasov, Panaev or Belinsky, like it and get it published in Sovremennik.
The journal began to educate the public in an anti-serfdom and democratic spirit.
When Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky began to publish in the publication, the old employees began to resent. But Nikolai Alekseevich was sure that due to the diversity of the magazine, its circulation would increase. The bet worked. The magazine, designed for diverse youth, attracted more and more readers.
But in 1862, a warning was issued to the writing team, and the government decided to suspend the publication. It was reopened in 1863.
After the assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander II, in 1866, the magazine was closed forever.
creative flourishing
In the middle of the 1940s, while working at Sovremennik, Nikolai Alekseevich became famous as a poet. This fame was undeniable. Many did not like the poems, they seemed strange, shocking. For many, there were few beautiful paintings, landscapes.
With his lyrics, the writer sings of simple everyday situations. Many people think that the position of the people's intercessor is just a mask, but in life the poet is a completely different person.
The writer himself worked a lot on his own biography, creating the image of a poor man and, therefore, well understanding the soul of the poor. At the beginning of his creative career, he really ate bread in public canteens, covering himself with shame with a newspaper, for some period he slept in an overnight shelter. All this, of course, tempered his character.
When, finally, the writer began to live the life of a wealthy writer, this life ceased to fit in with the legend, and contemporaries formed a counter myth about the voluptuary, the player, the spender.
Nekrasov himself understands the duality of his position and reputation. And he repents in his poetry.
I deeply despise myself for this.
That I live - day after day uselessly ruining;
That I, not torturing my strength on anything,
He condemned himself with a merciless judgment ...
The brightest works
There were different periods in the author's work. They all found their reflection: classical prose, poetry, dramaturgy.The debut of literary talent can be considered a poem "On the road" , written in 1945, where the conversation between the master and the serf reveals the attitude of the nobility towards the common people. The gentlemen wanted it - they took a girl into the house for education, and after the audit of the serfs, the grown up, well-bred girl was taken and put out of the manor house. She is not adapted to rural life, but no one cares about that.
For about ten years, Nekrasov has been published on the pages of a magazine, of which he himself is the editor. Not only poems occupy the writer. Having become close to the writer Avdotya Panaeva, falling in love with her, appreciating her talent, Nikolai creates a kind of tandem.
One after another, novels written in collaboration are published. Panaeva published under the pseudonym Stanitsky. Most notable "Dead Lake", "Three Countries of the World" .
Early significant works include poems: "Troika", "Drunkard", "Hound Hunting", "Motherland" .
In 1856, his new collection of poems was published. Each verse was saturated with pain about the people, their heavy lot in conditions of complete lack of rights, poverty and hopelessness: "Schoolboy", "Lullaby", "To the temporary worker" .
A poem born in agony "Reflections at the Front Door" in 1858. It was the usual material of life, only seen from the window, and then, decomposed into the themes of evil, judgment and retribution.
In mature work, the poet did not change himself. He described the difficulties that all sectors of society faced after the abolition of serfdom.
A special textbook place is occupied by such nicknames:
✪ A large verse dedicated to the poet's sister, Anna Alekseevna "Jack Frost" .
✪ "Railway" , where the author, without embellishment, shows the reverse side of the construction medal. And he does not hesitate to say that nothing changes in the life of serfs who have received freedom. They are also exploited for a penny, and the masters of life fraudulently use illiterate people.
✪ poet "Russian women" , was originally supposed to be called "Decembrists". But the author changed the title, trying to emphasize that any Russian woman is ready for sacrifice, and she has enough mental strength to overcome all obstacles.
✪
Even though the poem "Who in Russia to live well"
was conceived as a voluminous work, only four parts saw the light. Nikolai Alekseevich did not have time to finish his work, but he tried to give the work a finished look.
Idioms
The extent to which Nekrasov's work remains relevant to this day can be judged by the most famous phrases. Here are just a few of them.
✪ The poem "The Poet and the Citizen" opened the collection of 1856. In this poem, the poet is inactive, does not write. And then a citizen comes to him and urges him to start working.
You may not be a poet
But you have to be a citizen.
There is such a philosophy in these two lines that writers still interpret them differently.
✪ The author constantly used gospel motifs. The poem "To the Sowers", written in 1876, was based on a parable about a sower who sowed grain. Some grain sprouted and brought forth good fruit, while others fell on the stone and perished. Here the poet exclaims:
Sower of knowledge to the people's field!
Do you find the soil barren,
Are your seeds bad?
Sow reasonable, good, eternal,
Sow! Thank you heartily
Russian people…
The conclusion suggests itself. Not always and not everyone says thank you, but the sower sows, choosing fertile soil.
✪ And this passage, known to everyone, from the poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" can be considered the culminating last chord of Nekrasov's work:
You are poor
You are abundant
You are powerful
You are powerless
Mother Russia!
Biography and episodes of life Nikolay Nekrasov. When born and died Nikolai Nekrasov, memorable places and dates of important events in 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:
Already I hold in my hand
Crown of love, crown of forgiveness
The gift of your meek homeland ...
The stubborn darkness will give way to the light,
Hear your song
Over the Volga, over the Oka, over the Kama,
Bye-bye-bye-bye! .. "
From N. Nekrasov's poem "Bayushki-bayu", written by him in the year of his death
Biography
Nikolai Nekrasov, familiar to us from the school bench with his "folk" poems, which aroused compassion for the people's torment, was himself familiar with hardships and hardships firsthand. As a child, "thanks" to his father, he saw violence, cruelty and death; subsequently suffered greatly from want, and in the last years of his life he suffered terribly from an incurable disease. Perhaps it was the misfortunes that filled Nekrasov's poetry with that feeling that evoked such a wide response from readers and put him on a par with Pushkin in the eyes of many contemporaries.
Nekrasov was born into a noble, once rich family. The father wanted the young man to enter the noble regiment in St. Petersburg, but once in the capital, Nekrasov realized that he wanted to get an education. The young man did not pass the exam and remained at the university as a volunteer. Moreover, his father was so angry that he stopped helping him financially, and the young Nekrasov, enduring a terrible need, was forced to look for any kind of income.
A few years later, the affairs of the future poet improved a bit: he gave private lessons and published articles. Nekrasov has long understood that the meaning of his life is in literature. The first collection of Nekrasov's poems was a youthfully maximalistic imitation of romantic poets, rather unsuccessful, so Vasily Zhukovsky advised the novice author to publish without a name, so as not to blush later for these poems.
But Nekrasov did not give up: he continued to write now in the humorous and satirical genre, began to work on prose. He became close to V. Belinsky and his literary circle, and the famous critic had a great influence on the poet and supported him. But for the time being, it was precisely the publishing activity that glorified Nekrasov: he began to publish almanacs in which Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Maikov were published. And in the Sovremennik headed by him, 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, but only in his mature years did the poet gain the fame that he rightfully deserved. The main work in Nekrasov's life was the poem "Who Lives Well in Russia", the result of many years of observation and reflection on the serf 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 opposed their work to “pure art”. It was Nekrasov who became the symbol of the civic significance of poetry.
Two years before his death, doctors diagnosed Nekrasov with bowel cancer, which made the last years of his life unbearably painful. The news that Nekrasov was mortally ill spread around Russia, and words of support and consolation rained down on him from all its ends. The death of Nekrasov caused a huge public outcry: several thousand people, mostly young people, accompanied the coffin with the 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 Petersburg.
1839 Admission as a volunteer to the philological faculty of St. Petersburg University.
1840 Release of the first collection of poems "Dreams and Sounds".
1842 Acquaintance with Avdotya Panaeva.
1843 Beginning of publishing activity.
1847 Nekrasov becomes the head of the Sovremennik magazine.
1858 Release of a satirical supplement to Sovremennik - the Whistle magazine.
1865 Creation of the first part of the poem "To whom in Russia it is good to live."
1868 Appointment as editor of the journal "Domestic Notes".
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 number 11 on Revolutionary (formerly Voskresenskaya) Street, the building of the Yaroslavl gymnasium, where Nekrasov studied from 1832 to 1838.
3. House number 13 on Povarsky Lane in St. Petersburg, where in the square. 7 Nekrasov lived from 1845 to 1848.
4. The Nekrasov Memorial Museum-Apartment in the former Kraevsky House (No. 36 on Liteiny Prospekt) in St. Petersburg, where the editorial offices of the Sovremennik and Domestic Notes magazines 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 Nekrasov's former hunting lodge 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 wife and the serfs terribly. 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 indignation in society. The poet was in love with Avdotya, the wife of his friend, the writer Ivan Panaev, and the trinity 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 her a more noble name Zinaida, and whom he later married.
Nekrasov, like his male ancestors, was an avid card player. But, unlike them, he won, and not vice versa. So, with the help of a card game, he managed to return the inherited estate Greshnevo, the poet's childhood home, taken away for grandfather's debts.
Testaments
“Man was created to be a support to another, because he himself needs support.”
"Love as long as you love,
Endure as long as you endure
Goodbye while goodbye
And God be your judge!
“I am always annoyed when I meet the phrase “there are no words to express,” etc. Nonsense! There are always words, but our mind is lazy.
As part of the Living Poetry project, Mikhail Politseymako reads Nekrasov's poem "Frost, Red Nose"
condolences
"His glory will be immortal ... Russia's love for him, the most brilliant and noblest of all Russian poets, is eternal."
N. G. Chernyshevsky, writer
“Nekrasov, as a poet, I respect for his ardent sympathy for the suffering of the common man, for his word of honor, which he is always ready to put in a good word for the poor and the oppressed.”
Dmitry Pisarev, literary critic
“After Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Nekrasov are our first poets of the city ...”
Valery Bryusov, poet
"... a gentle, kind, unenvious, generous, hospitable and completely simple person ... a person with a real ... Russian nature - simple, cheerful and sad, capable of being carried away by both fun and grief to excess."
Ivan Panaev, writer and friend of Nekrasov
Nikolay Alekseevich Nekrasov was born in the family of an officer on November 28 (December 10), 1821. Two years after the birth of his son, his father retired and settled on his estate in the village of Greshnevo. Childhood years left heavy memories in the soul of the poet. And this was primarily due to the despotic nature of his father, Alexei Sergeevich. For several years Nekrasov studied at the Yaroslavl gymnasium. In 1838, following the will of his father, he left for St. Petersburg to enter the Noble Regiment: the retired major wanted to see his son as an officer. But, once in St. Petersburg, Nekrasov violates his father's will and tries to enter the university. The punishment was very severe: the father refused his son financial assistance, and Nekrasov had to earn his own living. The difficulty lay in the fact that Nekrasov's preparation was not enough to enter the university. The dream of the future poet to become a student never came true.
Nekrasov became a literary day laborer: he wrote articles for newspapers and magazines, poems for the occasion, vaudeville for the theater, feuilletons - everything that was in great demand. It gave little money, obviously not enough to live on. Much later, in their memoirs, his contemporaries would draw a portrait of the young Nekrasov that they remembered, “trembling in deep autumn in a light coat and unreliable boots, even in a straw hat from a push market.” The difficult years of his youth then affected the health of the writer. But the need to earn his own living turned out to be the strongest impulse to the writing field. Much later, in his autobiographical notes, he recalled the first years of his life in the capital in this way: “It’s incomprehensible to the mind how much I worked, I think I won’t exaggerate if I say that in a few years I completed up to two hundred printed sheets of journal work.” Nekrasov writes mostly prose: stories, stories, feuilletons. His dramatic experiments, primarily vaudeville, also belong to the same years.
The romantic soul of the young man, all his romantic impulses, echoed in a collection of poetry with the characteristic title "Dreams and Sounds". It came out in 1840, but did not bring the young author the expected fame. Belinsky wrote a negative review of it, and this was a verdict for the young author. “You see from his poems,” Belinsky argued, “that he has both a soul and a feeling, but at the same time you see that they remained in the author, and only abstract thoughts, commonplaces, correctness, smoothness passed into the verses. , and boredom. Nekrasov bought up most of the publication and destroyed it.
Two more years passed, and the poet and the critic met. During these two years, Nekrasov has changed. I.I. Panaev, the future co-editor of the Sovremennik magazine, believed that Belinsky was attracted to Nekrasov's "sharp, somewhat hardened mind." He fell in love with the poet "for the suffering that he experienced so early, seeking a piece of daily bread, and for that bold practical look beyond his years, which he took out of his hard-working and suffering life - and which Belinsky always envied painfully." Belinsky's influence was enormous. One of the poet's contemporaries, P.V. Annenkov wrote: “In 1843, I saw how Belinsky set to work on him, revealing to him the essence of his own nature and its strength, and how the poet dutifully listened to him, saying: “Belinsky makes me from a literary vagabond into a nobleman.”
But the point is not only in the writer's own searches, his own development. Beginning in 1843, Nekrasov also acted as a publisher, he played a very important role in uniting the writers of the Gogol school. Nekrasov initiated the publication of several almanacs, the most famous of which is "Physiology of Petersburg" (1844-1845), "almost the best of all the almanacs that have ever been published," according to Belinsky. Four articles by Belinsky, an essay and a poem by Nekrasov, works by Grigorovich, Panaev, Grebenka, Dahl (Lugansky), and others were published in two parts of the almanac. But Nekrasov achieves even greater success both as a publisher and as the author of another almanac published by him - “The Petersburg Collection "(1846). Belinsky and Herzen, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Odoevsky took part in the collection. Nekrasov placed a number of poems in it, including the immediately famous "On the Road".
The "unprecedented success" (to use Belinsky's words) of the publications undertaken by Nekrasov inspired the writer to implement a new idea - to publish a magazine. From 1847 to 1866, Nekrasov edited the Sovremennik magazine, whose importance in the history of Russian literature can hardly be overestimated. On its pages appeared the works of Herzen ("Who is to blame?", "The Thieving Magpie"), I. Goncharov ("Ordinary History"), stories from the series "Notes of a Hunter" by I. Turgenev, stories by L. Tolstoy, articles by Belinsky. Under the auspices of Sovremennik, the first collection of Tyutchev's poems is published, first as an appendix to the magazine, then as a separate publication. During these years, Nekrasov also acts as a prose writer, novelist, author of the novels "Three Countries of the World" and "Dead Lake" (written in collaboration with A.Ya. Panaeva), "The Thin Man", and a number of stories.
In 1856, Nekrasov's health deteriorated sharply, and he was forced to transfer the editing of the magazine to Chernyshevsky and go abroad. In the same year, the second collection of Nekrasov's poems was published, which had a tremendous success.
1860s belong to the most intense and intense years of creative and editorial activity of Nekrasov. New co-editors come to Sovremennik - M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, M.A. Antonovich and others. The journal is engaged in a fierce polemic with the reactionary and liberal Russky Vestnik and Otechestvennye Zapiski. During these years, Nekrasov wrote the poems "Pedlars" (1861), "Railway" (1864), "Frost, Red Nose" (1863), work began on the epic poem "Who Lives Well in Russia."
The ban on Sovremennik in 1866 forced Nekrasov to give up his editorial work for a while. But a year and a half later, he managed to negotiate with the owner of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine, A.A. Kraevsky about transferring the editorial board of this journal into his hands. During the years of editing Otechestvennye Zapiski, Nekrasov attracted talented critics and prose writers to the magazine. In the 70s. he creates the poems “Russian Women” (1871-1872), “Contemporaries” (1875), chapters from the poem “Who Lives Well in Russia” (“Last Child”, “Peasant Woman”, “Feast for the Whole World”).
In 1877, Nekrasov's last lifetime collection of poems was published. At the end of this year, Nekrasov died.
In his penetrating word about Nekrasov, Dostoevsky accurately and succinctly defined the pathos of his poetry: “It was a wounded heart, once for a lifetime, and this wound that did not close was the source of all his poetry, all this man’s passionate to torment love for everything that suffers from violence, from the cruelty of unbridled will that oppresses our Russian woman, our child in a Russian family, our commoner in his bitter, so often, share of him ... ”, - F.M. said about Nekrasov. Dostoevsky. These words, indeed, are a kind of key to understanding the artistic world of Nekrasov's poetry, to the sound of his most intimate themes - the theme of the fate of the people, the future of the people, the theme of the purpose of poetry and the role of the artist.
