Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseevich - personal life. Literary and historical notes of a young technician Birthplace of N. Nekrasov

Nekrasov Nikolai Alekseevich, (1821-1877) Russian poet

Born in the town of Nemirovo (Podolsk province) in the family of a small nobleman. My childhood years were spent in the village of Greshnev on the family estate of my father, an extremely despotic man. At the age of 10 he was sent to the Yaroslavl gymnasium.

At the age of 17 he moved to St. Petersburg, but, refusing to devote himself to a military career, as his father insisted, he was deprived of material support. In order not to die of hunger, he began to write poetry commissioned by booksellers. At this time he met V. Belinsky.

In 1847, Nekrasov and Panaev acquired the Sovremennik magazine, founded by A.S. Pushkin. The influence of the magazine grew every year, until in 1862 the government suspended its publication and then completely banned the magazine.

While working on Sovremennik, Nekrasov published several collections of poems, including “Peddlers” (1856) and “Peasant Children” (1856), which brought him fame as a poet.

In 1869, Nekrasov acquired the right to publish the journal Otechestvennye zapiski and published it. During his work at Otechestvennye Zapiski, he created the poems “Who Lives Well in Rus'” (1866-1876), “Grandfather” (1870), “Russian Women” (1871-1872), wrote a series of satirical works, the pinnacle of which was the poem “ Contemporaries" (1875).

At the beginning of 1875, Nekrasov became seriously ill; neither the famous surgeon nor the operation could stop the rapidly developing rectal cancer. At this time, he began work on the cycle “Last Songs” (1877), a kind of poetic testament dedicated to Fekla Anisimovna Viktorova (in Nekrasov’s work Zinaida), the poet’s last love. Nekrasov died at the age of 56.

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

The poet's childhood

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

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

Difficult years

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

Literary activity of Nekrasov

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

last years of life

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

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

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

Love in the life of a poet

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



“Nekrasov retains immortality, which he well deserves.” F.M. Dostoevsky “Nekrasov’s personality is still a stumbling block for everyone who is in the habit of judging with stereotyped ideas.” A.M.Skobichevsky

ON THE. Nekrasov

On December 10 (November 28, old style), Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov was born - a brilliant publisher, writer-publicist, close to revolutionary democratic circles, permanent editor and publisher of the Sovremennik magazine (1847-1866).

Before Nekrasov, in the Russian literary tradition there was a view of poetry as a way of expressing feelings, and prose as a way of expressing thoughts. The 1850-60s are the time of the next “great turning point” in the history of Russia. Society did not just demand economic, social and political changes. A great emotional explosion was brewing, an era of revaluation of values, which ultimately resulted in fruitless flirtations of the intelligentsia with the popular element, fanning the revolutionary fire and a complete departure from the traditions of romanticism in Russian literature. Responding to the demands of his difficult times, Nekrasov decided to prepare a kind of “salad” of folk poetry and accusatory journalistic prose, which was very much to the taste of his contemporaries. The main theme of such “adapted” poetry is man as a product of a certain social environment, and sadness about this man (according to Nekrasov) is the main task of the best citizens of contemporary Russian society.

The journalistic essays of the “sorrowful man” Nekrasov, dressed in an emotional and lyrical package, have long been a model of civil poetry for democratic writers of the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. And although the sensible minority of Russian society did not at all consider Mr. Nekrasov’s rhymed feuilletons and proclamations to be high poetry, already during the author’s lifetime some of them were included in school curricula, and Nekrasov himself acquired the status of a “truly people’s poet.” True, only among the “repentant” noble-raznochin intelligentsia in every way. The people themselves did not even suspect the existence of the poet Nekrasov (as well as Pushkin and Lermontov).

Publisher of one of the most widely read magazines, successful businessman from literature, N.A. Nekrasov fit perfectly into his difficult era. For many years he managed to manipulate the literary tastes of his contemporaries, sensitively responding to all the demands of the political, economic, literary market of the second half of the 19th century. Nekrasov’s “Contemporary” became the focus and center of attraction for a wide variety of literary and political movements: from the very moderate liberalism of Turgenev and Tolstoy to the democratic revolutionaries (Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky).

In his poetic stylizations, Nekrasov raised the most painful, most pressing problems of pre-reform and post-reform Russia of the 19th century. Many of his plot sketches were subsequently reflected in the works of recognized classics of Russian literature. Thus, the entire philosophy and even the “poetics” of suffering in F.M. Dostoevsky's ideas were largely formed under the direct and strong influence of Nekrasov.

It is to Nekrasov that we owe many “catchphrases” and aphorisms that have forever entered our everyday speech. (“Sow what is reasonable, good, eternal”, “The happy are deaf to good”, “There have been worse times, but there have been no mean ones”, etc.)

Family and ancestors

ON THE. Nekrasov twice seriously tried to inform the public of the main milestones of his interesting biography, but each time he tried to do this at the most critical moments for himself. In 1855, the writer believed that he was terminally ill, and was not going to write the story of his life because he had recovered. And twenty years later, in 1877, being truly terminally ill, he simply did not have time.

However, it is unlikely that descendants would be able to glean any reliable information or facts from these author’s stories. Nekrasov needed an autobiography solely for self-confession, aimed at teaching and edifying literary descendants.

“It occurred to me to write for the press, but not during my lifetime, my biography, that is, something like confessions or notes about my life - in a fairly extensive size. Tell me: isn’t this too - so to speak - proud?” - he asked in one of his letters to I.S. Turgenev, on which he then tested almost everything. And Turgenev replied:

“I fully approve of your intention to write your biography; your life is precisely one of those that, putting all pride aside, must be told - because it represents a lot of things that more than one Russian soul will deeply respond to.”

Neither an autobiography nor a recording of N.A. Nekrasov’s literary memoirs ever took place. Therefore, everything that we know today about the early years of the “sorrowful man of the Russian land” was gleaned by biographers exclusively from the literary works of Nekrasov and the memories of people close to him.

As evidenced by several options for the beginning of Nekrasov’s “autobiography,” Nikolai Alekseevich himself could not really decide on the year, day, or place of his birth:

“I was born in 1822 in the Yaroslavl province. My father, the old adjutant of Prince Wittgenstein, was a retired captain...”

“I was born in 1821 on November 22 in the Podolsk province in the Vinnitsa district in some Jewish town, where my father was then stationed with his regiment...”

In fact, N.A. Nekrasov was born on November 28 (December 10), 1821 in the Ukrainian town of Nemirov. One of the modern researchers also believes that his place of birth was the village of Sinki in the current Kirovograd region.

No one has written the history of the Nekrasov family either. The noble family of the Nekrasovs was quite ancient and purely Great Russian, but due to their lack of documents, it was not included in that part of the genealogical book of the nobles of the Yaroslavl province, where the pillar nobility was placed, and the official count goes in the second part from 1810 - according to the first officer rank of Alexei Sergeevich Nekrasov (father of the future poet). The coat of arms of the Nekrasovs, approved by Emperor Nicholas II in April 1916, was also recently found.

Once upon a time the family was very rich, but starting from their great-grandfather, the Nekrasovs’ affairs went from bad to worse, thanks to their addiction to card games. Alexey Sergeevich, telling his glorious pedigree to his sons, 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.”

His son Nikolai Alekseevich was the first to change his fate. No, he did not curb his destructive passion for cards, he did not stop playing, but he stopped losing. All his ancestors lost - he was the only one who won back. And he played a lot. The count was, if not millions, then hundreds of thousands. His card partners included large landowners, important government dignitaries, and very rich people of Russia. According to Nekrasov himself, the future Minister of Finance Abaza alone lost about a million francs to the poet (at the then exchange rate - half a million Russian rubles).

However, success and financial well-being did not come to N.A. Nekrasov right away. If we talk about his childhood and youth, they were indeed full of deprivation and humiliation, which subsequently affected the character and worldview of the writer.

N.A. Nekrasov spent his childhood on the Yaroslavl estate of his father Greshnevo. The relationship between the parents of the future poet left much to be desired.

In an unknown wilderness, in a semi-wild village, I grew up among violent savages, And fate, by great mercy, gave me the leadership of hounds.

By “dogkeeper” we should here understand the father - a man of unbridled passions, a limited domestic tyrant and tyrant. He devoted his entire life to litigation with relatives on estate matters, and when he won the main case for the ownership of a thousand serf souls, the Manifesto of 1861 was published. The old man could not survive the “liberation” and died. Before this, Nekrasov’s parents had only about forty serfs and thirteen children. What kind of family idyll could we be talking about in such conditions?

The mature Nekrasov subsequently abandoned many of his incriminating characteristics against his serf-owning parent. The poet admitted that his father was no worse and no better than other people in his circle. Yes, he loved hunting, kept dogs, a whole staff of hounds, and actively involved his older sons in hunting activities. But the traditional autumn hunt for the small nobleman was not just fun. Given the general limitation of funds, hunting prey is a serious help in the economy. It made it possible to feed a large family and servants. Young Nekrasov understood this perfectly.

By the writer’s own admission, his early works (“Motherland”) were influenced by youthful maximalism and a tribute to the notorious “Oedipus complex” - filial jealousy, resentment against a parent for betraying his beloved mother.

Nekrasov carried the bright image of his mother, as the only positive memory of his childhood, throughout his life, embodying it in his poetry. To this day, Nekrasov’s biographers do not know anything real about the poet’s mother. She remains one of the most mysterious images associated with Russian literature. There were no images (if any), no belongings, no written documentary materials. From the words of Nekrasov himself, it is known that Elena Andreevna was the daughter of a rich Little Russian landowner, a well-educated, beautiful woman, who for some unknown reason married a poor, unremarkable officer and went with him to the Yaroslavl province. Elena Andreevna died quite young - in 1841, when the future poet was not even 20 years old. Immediately after the death of his wife, the father brought his serf mistress into the house as a mistress. “You saved the living soul in me,” the son will write in poetry about his mother. Her romantic image will be the main leitmotif throughout N.A.’s subsequent work. Nekrasova.

At the age of 11, Nikolai and his older brother Andrei went to study at a gymnasium in Yaroslavl. The brothers studied poorly, reaching only 5th grade without being certified in a number of subjects. According to the memoirs of A.Ya. Panaeva, Nekrasov said that the “in-law” high school students lived in the city, in a rented apartment under the supervision of only one drinking “guy” from their father’s serfs. The Nekrasovs were left to their own devices, walked the streets all day long, played billiards and did not bother themselves too much with reading books or going to the gymnasium:

At the age of fifteen, I was fully educated, as my father’s ideal demanded: The hand is steady, the eye is true, the spirit is tested, But I knew very little about reading and writing.

Nevertheless, by the age of 13-14, Nikolai knew “literate”, and quite well. For a year and a half, Nekrasov’s father held the position of police officer - district police chief. The teenager acted as his secretary and traveled with his parent, observing with his own eyes the criminal life of the county in all its unsightly light.

So, as we see, there was no trace of anything like the excellent home education of Pushkin or Lermontov behind the shoulders of the future poet Nekrasov. On the contrary, he could be considered a poorly educated person. Until the end of his life, Nekrasov never learned a single foreign language; The young man's reading experience also left much to be desired. And although Nikolai began writing poetry at the age of six or seven, by the age of fifteen his poetic creations were no different from the “test of the pen” of most of the noble minors of his circle. But the young man had excellent hunting skills, rode excellently, shot accurately, was physically strong and resilient.

It is not surprising that my father insisted on a military career - several generations of Nekrasov nobles quite successfully served the Tsar and the Fatherland. But the son, who had never been known for his love of science, suddenly wanted to go to university. There was a serious disagreement in the family.

“Mother wanted,” Chernyshevsky recalled from Nekrasov’s words, “for him to be an educated person, and told him that he should go to university, because education is acquired at a university, and not in special schools. But my father did not want to hear about it: he agreed to let Nekrasov go no other way than to enter the cadet corps. It was useless to argue, his mother fell silent... But he was traveling with the intention of entering not the cadet corps, but the university...”

Young Nekrasov went to the capital in order to deceive his father, but he himself was deceived. Lacking sufficient preparation, he failed the university exams and flatly refused to enter the cadet corps. The angry Alexey Sergeevich left his sixteen-year-old son without any means of subsistence, leaving him to arrange his own destiny.

Literary tramp

It is safe to say that not a single Russian writer had anything even close to the life and everyday experience that young Nekrasov went through in his first years in St. Petersburg. He later called one of his stories (an excerpt from the novel) “Petersburg Corners.” He could only have written, on the basis of personal memories, some kind of “Petersburg Bottom”, which Gorky himself had not visited.

In the 1839-1840s, Nekrasov tried to enter Russian literature as a lyric poet. Several of his poems were published in magazines (“Son of the Fatherland”, “Library for Reading”). He also had a conversation with V.A. Zhukovsky, the Tsarevich’s tutor and mentor to all young poets. Zhukovsky advised the young talent to publish his poems without a signature, because then he would be ashamed.

In 1840, Nekrasov published a poetry collection “Dreams and Sounds”, signing the initials “N.N.” The book was not a success, and the reviews from critics (including V.G. Belinsky) were simply devastating. It ended with the author himself buying up the entire circulation and destroying it.

Nevertheless, the then very young Nekrasov was not disappointed in his chosen path. He did not assume the pose of an offended genius, nor did he descend into vulgar drunkenness and fruitless regrets. On the contrary, the young poet showed the greatest sobriety of mind, complete self-criticism that never betrayed him in the future.

Nekrasov later recalled:

“I stopped writing serious poetry and began to write selfishly,” in other words - to earn money, for money, sometimes just so as not to die of hunger.

With “serious poetry,” as with the university, the matter ended in failure. After the first failure, Nekrasov made repeated attempts to prepare and take the entrance exams again, but received only units. For some time he was listed as a volunteer student at the Faculty of Philosophy. I listened to the lectures for free, since my father obtained a certificate from the Yaroslavl leader of the nobility about his “inadequate condition.”

Nekrasov’s financial situation during this period can be characterized in one word – “hunger.” He wandered around St. Petersburg almost homeless, always hungry, poorly dressed. According to later acquaintances, in those years even the poor felt sorry for Nekrasov. One day he spent the night in a shelter, where he wrote a certificate to a poor old woman and received 15 kopecks from her. On Sennaya Square, he earned extra money by writing letters and petitions to illiterate peasants. Actress A.I. Schubert recalled that she and her mother nicknamed Nekrasov “unfortunate” and fed him, like a stray dog, with the remains of their lunch.

At the same time, Nekrasov was a man of passionate, proud and independent character. This was precisely confirmed by the whole story of the break with his father, and his entire subsequent fate. Initially, pride and independence manifested themselves precisely in their relationship with their father. Nekrasov never complained about anything and never asked for anything from either his father or his brothers. In this regard, he owes his fate only to himself - both in a bad and in a good sense. In St. Petersburg, his pride and dignity were constantly tested, he suffered insults and humiliation. It was then, apparently, on one of the bitterest days, that the poet promised himself to fulfill one oath. It must be said that oaths were in fashion at that time: Herzen and Ogarev swore on Vorobyovy Gory, Turgenev swore an “Annibal oath” to himself, and L. Tolstoy swore in his diaries. But neither Turgenev, nor Tolstoy, much less Ogarev and Herzen, were ever threatened with starvation or cold death. Nekrasov, like Scarlett O'Hara, the heroine of M. Mitchell's novel, vowed to himself only one thing: not to die in the attic.

Perhaps only Dostoevsky fully understood the ultimate meaning, the unconditional significance of such an oath of Nekrasov and the almost demonic rigor of its fulfillment:

“A million - that’s Nekrasov’s demon! Well, did he love gold, luxury, pleasures so much and, in order to have them, indulged in “practicalities”? No, rather it was a demon of a different nature, it was the darkest and most humiliating demon. It was a demon of pride, the thirst for self-sufficiency, the need to protect yourself from people with a solid wall and independently, calmly look at their threats. I think this demon latched onto the heart of a child, a child of fifteen years old, who found himself on the St. Petersburg pavement, almost running away from his father... It was a thirst for gloomy, gloomy, isolated self-sufficiency, so as not to depend on anyone. I think that I am not mistaken, I remember something from my very first acquaintance with him. At least that’s how it seemed to me all my life. But this demon was still a low demon...”

Lucky case

Almost all Nekrasov’s biographers note that no matter how the fate of the “great sad man of the Russian land” turned out, he would sooner or later be able to get out of the St. Petersburg bottom. At any cost, he would have built his life as he saw fit, and would have been able to achieve success, if not in literature, then in any other field. One way or another, Nekrasov’s “low demon” would be satisfied.

I.I. Panaev

However, it is no secret to anyone that to firmly enter the literary environment and embody all his talents - as a writer, journalist, publicist and publisher - N.A. Nekrasov was helped by that “happy occasion” that happens once in a lifetime. Namely, a fateful meeting with the Panayev family.

Ivan Ivanovich Panaev, Derzhavin’s grandnephew, a rich darling of fortune, a dandy and rake known throughout St. Petersburg, also dabbled in literature. In his living room there was one of the most famous literary salons in Russia at that time. Here, at times, one could simultaneously meet the entire flower of Russian literature: Turgenev, L. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Goncharov, Belinsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Ostrovsky, Pisemsky and many, many others. The hostess of the hospitable house of the Panayevs was Avdotya Yakovlevna (nee Bryanskaya), the daughter of a famous actor of the imperial theaters. Despite an extremely superficial education and blatant illiteracy (until the end of her life she made spelling errors in the simplest words), Avdotya Yakovlevna became famous as one of the very first Russian writers, albeit under the male pseudonym N. Stanitsky.

Her husband Ivan Panaev not only wrote stories, novels and stories, but also loved to act as a patron of the arts and benefactor for poor writers. So, in the fall of 1842, rumors spread throughout St. Petersburg about another “good deed” by Panaev. Having learned that his colleague in the literary workshop was in poverty, Panaev came to Nekrasov in his smart carriage, fed him and lent him money. Saved, in general, from starvation.

In fact, Nekrasov did not even think about dying. During that period, he supplemented himself with occasional literary work: he wrote custom poems, vulgar vaudeville acts for theaters, made posters, and even gave lessons. Four years of wandering life only strengthened him. True to his oath, he waited for the moment when the door to fame and money would open before him.

This door turned out to be the door to the Panayevs’ apartment.

Nekrasov and Panaev.
Caricature by N.A. Stepanova,
"Illustrated Almanac", 1848

At first, writers only invited the young poet to their evenings, and when he left, they kindly laughed at his simple poems, poor clothes, and uncertain manners. Sometimes they simply felt sorry as human beings, just as they feel sorry for homeless animals and sick children. However, Nekrasov, who was never overly shy, with surprising speed took his place in the literary circle of young St. Petersburg writers united around V.G. Belinsky. Belinsky, as if repenting for his review of “Dreams and Sounds,” took literary patronage over Nekrasov, introduced him to the editorial office of “Otechestvennye Zapiski,” and allowed him to write serious critical articles. They also began publishing an adventure novel by a young author, “The Life and Adventures of Tikhon Trostnikov.”

The Panaevs also developed a feeling of sincere friendship for the talkative, witty Nekrasov. The young poet, when he wanted, could be an interesting conversationalist and knew how to win people over. Of course, Nekrasov immediately fell in love with the beautiful Avdotya Yakovlevna. The hostess behaved quite freely with the guests, but was equally sweet and even with everyone. If her husband’s love affairs often became known to the whole world, then Mrs. Panaeva tried to maintain external decency. Nekrasov, despite his youth, had another remarkable quality - patience.

In 1844, Panaev rented a new spacious apartment on the Fontanka. He made another broad gesture - he invited family friend Nekrasov to leave his miserable corner with bedbugs and move to live with him on Fontanka. Nekrasov occupied two small cozy rooms in Ivan Ivanovich’s house. Absolutely free. In addition, he received as a gift from the Panayevs a silk muffler, a tailcoat and everything that a decent socialite should have.

"Contemporary"

Meanwhile, there was a serious ideological division in society. Westerners rang the “Bell”, calling to be equal to the liberal West. Slavophiles called to the roots, plunging headlong into the still completely unexplored historical past. The guards wanted to leave everything as it was. In St. Petersburg, writers were grouped “by interests” around magazines. Belinsky’s circle was then warmed up by A. Kraevsky in Otechestvennye zapiski. But under conditions of strict government censorship, the not-too-brave Kraevsky devoted most of the magazine space to proven and safe historical novels. The youth were cramped within these narrow confines. In Belinsky's circle, conversations began about opening a new, their own magazine. However, fellow writers were not distinguished by either their practical acumen or their ability to get things done. There were voices that it would be possible to hire a smart manager, but to what extent would he share their beliefs?

And then in their midst there was such a person - Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov. It turned out that he knows something about publishing. Back in 1843-46, he published the almanacs “Articles in Poems”, “Physiology of St. Petersburg”, “First of April”, “Petersburg Collection”. In the latter, by the way, “Poor People” by F.M. were first published. Dostoevsky.

Nekrasov himself later recalled:

“I was the only practical person among the idealists, and when we started the magazine, the idealists told me this directly and entrusted me with a kind of mission to create a magazine.”

Meanwhile, in addition to desire and skill, to create a magazine you also need the necessary funds. Neither Belinsky nor any of the writers, except Ivan Panaev, had enough money at that time.

Nekrasov said that it would be cheaper to buy or lease an existing magazine than to create something new. I found such a magazine very quickly.

Sovremennik, as you know, was founded by Pushkin in 1836. The poet managed to release only four issues. After Pushkin’s death, Sovremennik passed to his friend, poet and professor at St. Petersburg University P.A. Pletnev.

Pletnev had neither the time nor the energy to engage in publishing work. The magazine eked out a miserable existence, did not bring in any income, and Pletnev did not abandon it only out of loyalty to the memory of his deceased friend. He quickly agreed to lease Sovremennik with subsequent sale in installments.

Nekrasov needed 50 thousand rubles for the initial payment, bribes to censors, fees and first expenses. Panaev volunteered to give 25 thousand. It was decided to ask for the remaining half from Panaev’s old friend, the richest landowner G.M. Tolstoy, who held very radical views, was friends with Bakunin, Proudhon, and was friends with Marx and Engels.

In 1846, the Panaev couple, together with Nekrasov, went to Tolstoy in Kazan, where one of the estates of the supposed philanthropist was located. From a business perspective, the trip turned out to be pointless. Tolstoy at first willingly agreed to give money for the magazine, but then refused, and Nekrasov had to collect the remaining amount bit by bit: Herzen’s wife gave five thousand, the tea merchant V. Botkin donated about ten thousand, Avdotya Yakovlevna Panaeva allocated something from her personal capital. Nekrasov himself obtained the rest with the help of loans.

Nevertheless, on this long and tiring trip to Kazan, a spiritual rapprochement between Nikolai Alekseevich and Panaeva took place. Nekrasov used a win-win trump card - he told Avdotya Yakovlevna in every detail about his unhappy childhood and poverty-stricken years in St. Petersburg. Panaeva took pity on the unfortunate unfortunate man, and such a woman was only one step from pity to love.

Already on January 1, 1847, the first book of the new, already Nekrasov’s Sovremennik was brought from the printing house. The first issue immediately attracted the attention of readers. Today it seems strange that things that had long since become textbooks were once published for the first time, and almost no one knew the authors. The first issue of the magazine published “Khor and Kalinich” by I.S. Turgenev, “A Novel in Nine Letters” by F.M. Dostoevsky, “Troika” by N.A. Nekrasov, poems by Ogarev and Fet, and the story “Relatives” by I. Panaev. The critical section was decorated with three reviews by Belinsky and his famous article “A Look at Russian Literature of 1846.”

The publication of the first issue was also crowned by a large gala dinner, which opened, as Pushkin would say, “a long row of dinners” - a long-standing tradition: this is how the release of each magazine book was celebrated. Subsequently, Nekrasov's rich drunken feasts came not so much from lordly hospitality, but from sober political and psychological calculations. The success of the magazine's literary affairs was ensured not only by written tables, but also by feast tables. Nekrasov knew very well that “when drunk” Russian affairs are accomplished more successfully. Another agreement over a glass may turn out to be stronger and more reliable than an impeccable legal deal.

Publisher Nekrasov

From the very beginning of his work at Sovremennik, Nekrasov proved himself to be a brilliant businessman and organizer. In the first year, the magazine's circulation increased from two hundred copies to four thousand (!). Nekrasov was one of the first to realize the importance of advertising for increasing subscriptions and increasing the financial well-being of the magazine. He cared little about the ethical standards of publishing that were accepted at that time. There were no clearly defined laws. And what is not prohibited is permitted. Nekrasov ordered the printing of a huge number of color Sovremennik advertising posters, which were posted all over St. Petersburg and sent to other cities. He advertised subscriptions to the magazine in all St. Petersburg and Moscow newspapers.

In the 1840s and 50s, translated novels were especially popular. Often the same novel was published in several Russian magazines. To get them, you didn’t have to buy publishing rights. It was enough to buy a cheap brochure and print it in parts, without waiting for the entire novel to be translated. It’s even easier to get several issues of foreign newspapers, where modern fiction was published in the “basements.” Nekrasov kept a whole staff of travelers who, when visiting Europe, brought newspapers from there, and sometimes stole fresh proofs directly from the desks in the editorial offices. Sometimes typesetters or copyists (typists) were bribed to copy out the authors' scribbles. It often happened that a novel in Russian translation was published in Sovremennik faster than it was published entirely in its native language.

Numerous book supplements also helped to increase the magazine's circulation - for subscribers at a reduced price. To attract a female audience, a paid application was released with beautiful color pictures of the latest Parisian fashions and detailed explanations by Avdotya Yakovlevna on this issue. Panayeva’s materials were sent from Paris by her friend, Maria Lvovna Ogareva.

In the very first year, the talented manager Nekrasov ensured that the number of Sovremennik subscribers reached 2,000 people. Next year – 3100.

Needless to say, none of the fellow writers around him possessed either such practical acumen or (most importantly) the desire to deal with financial affairs and “promote” the magazine. Belinsky, admiring the extraordinary abilities of his recent mentee, did not even advise any of his friends to meddle in the business affairs of the publishing house: “You and I have nothing to teach Nekrasov; Well, what do we know!..”

There is nothing surprising in the fact that the efficient publisher very quickly removed his co-owner Panaev from any business at Sovremennik. At first, Nekrasov tried to divert his companion’s attention to writing, and when he realized that Ivan Ivanovich was not very capable of this, he simply wrote him off, both in business and personal terms.

“You and I are stupid people...”

Some contemporaries, and subsequently biographers of N.A. Nekrasov, more than once spoke about the mental imbalance and even ill health of Nikolai Alekseevich. He gave the impression of a man who had sold his soul to the devil. It was as if two different entities existed in his bodily shell: a prudent businessman who knows the value of everything in the world, a born organizer, a successful gambler and at the same time a depressed melancholic, sentimental, sensitive to the suffering of others, a very conscientious and demanding person. At times he could work tirelessly, single-handedly carry the entire burden of publishing, editorial, and financial affairs, showing extraordinary business activity, and at times he fell into impotent apathy and moped for weeks alone with himself, idle, without leaving the house. During such periods, Nekrasov was obsessed with thoughts of suicide, held a loaded pistol in his hands for a long time, looked for a strong hook on the ceiling, or got involved in dueling disputes with the most dangerous rules. Of course, the character, worldview, and attitude towards the world around the mature Nekrasov were affected by years of deprivation, humiliation, and struggle for his own existence. In the earliest period of his life, when the generally prosperous young nobleman had to endure several serious disasters, Nekrasov may have consciously abandoned his real self. Instinctively, he still felt that he was created for something else, but the “low demon” conquered more and more space for himself every year, and the synthesis of folk stylizations and social problems led the poet further and further away from his true purpose.

There is nothing surprising. Reading, and even more so composing such “poems” as “I’m Driving Down a Dark Street at Night” or “Reflections at the Front Entrance”, you will involuntarily fall into depression, develop mental illness, and become disgusted with yourself...

The substitution of concepts not only in literature, but also in life played a fatal, irreversible role in the personal fate of the poet Nekrasov.

1848 turned out to be the most unlucky year for Sovremennik. Belinsky died. A wave of revolutions swept across Europe. Censorship was rampant in Russia, prohibiting everything from moderately liberal statements by domestic authors to translations of foreign literature, especially French. Due to censorship terror, the next issue of Sovremennik was under threat. Neither bribes, nor lavish dinners, nor deliberate losses at cards to the “right people” could radically change the situation. If one bribed official allowed something, then another immediately prohibited it.

AND I. Panaeva

But the inventive Nekrasov found a way out of this vicious circle. To fill the pages of the magazine, he invites Avdotya Panayeva to urgently write an exciting, adventure and absolutely apolitical novel with a sequel. So that it does not look like “women’s handicraft,” Nekrasov becomes a co-author of his beautiful lady, who initially wrote under the male pseudonym N. Stanitsky. The novels “Three Countries of the World” (1849) and “Dead Lake” (1851) are the product of joint creativity, which allowed Sovremennik as a commercial enterprise to stay afloat during the years of pre-reform strengthening of the regime, which historians later called the “dark seven years” (1848-1855) .

Co-authorship brought Panaeva and Nekrasov so close that Avdotya Yakovlevna finally put an end to her imaginary marriage. In 1848, she became pregnant by Nekrasov, then they had a child desired by both parents, but he died a few weeks later. Nekrasov was very upset by this loss, and the unfortunate mother seemed petrified with grief.

In 1855, Nekrasov and Panaev buried their second, perhaps even more desired and expected son. This almost became the reason for the final break in relations, but Nekrasov became seriously ill, and Avdotya Yakovlevna could not leave him.

It just so happened that the fruit of the great love of two far from ordinary people remained only two commercial novels and truly lyrical poems, which were included in literature under the name “Panaevsky cycle”.

The true love story of Nekrasov and Panaeva, like the love lyrics of the “sorrowful” poet, the poet-citizen, destroyed all hitherto familiar ideas about the relationship between a man and a woman and their reflection in Russian literature.

For fifteen years, the Panaevs and Nekrasovs lived together, practically in the same apartment. Ivan Ivanovich did not interfere in any way with the relationship of his legal wife with “family friend” Nekrasov. But the relationship between Nikolai Alekseevich and Avdotya Yakovlevna was never smooth and cloudless. The lovers either wrote novels together, then ran away from each other in different cities and countries of Europe, then parted forever, then met again in the Panayevs’ St. Petersburg apartment, so that after some time they could run away and look for a new meeting.

Such relationships can be characterized by the proverb “together it’s crowded, but apart it’s boring.”

In the memoirs of contemporaries who observed Nekrasov and Panaeva at different periods of their lives, judgments are often found that these “stupid people” could never form a normal married couple. Nekrasov by nature was a fighter, hunter, and adventurer. He was not attracted by quiet family joys. During “quiet periods” he fell into depression, which at its climax often led to thoughts of suicide. Avdotya Yakovlevna was simply forced to take active actions (run away, sneak away, threaten to break up, make her suffer) in order to bring her loved one back to life. In Panaeva, Nekrasov - willingly or unwillingly - found the main nerve that for many years held the entire nervous basis of his creativity, his worldview and almost his very existence - suffering. The suffering that he received from her in full and which he fully endowed with her.

A tragic, perhaps defining imprint on their relationship was the suffering due to failed motherhood and fatherhood.

Modern researcher N. Skatov in his monograph on Nekrasov attaches decisive importance to this fact. He believes that only happy fatherhood could perhaps lead Nekrasov out of his spiritual impasse and establish normal family relationships. It is no coincidence that Nekrasov wrote so much about children and for children. In addition, the image of his beloved woman for him was always inextricably linked with the image of his mother.

For many years, Panaeva divided her failed maternal feelings between Nekrasov and her “unfortunate”, degraded husband, forcing the entire capital’s elite to practice barbs about this unusual “triple alliance.”

In Nekrasov's poems, the feeling of love appears in all its complexity, inconsistency, unpredictability and at the same time - everyday life. Nekrasov even poeticized the “prose of love” with its quarrels, disagreements, conflicts, separation, reconciliation...

You and I are stupid people: Any minute, the flash is ready! Relief from an agitated chest, An unreasonable, harsh word. Speak when you are angry, Everything that excites and torments your soul! Let us, my friend, be openly angry: The world is easier, and sooner it will get boring. If prose in love is inevitable, then let’s take a share of happiness from it: After a quarrel, the return of love and participation is so complete, so tender... 1851

For the first time, not one, but two characters are revealed in his intimate lyrics. It’s as if he is “playing” not only for himself, but also for his chosen one. Intellectual lyrics replace love ones. Before us is the love of two people busy with business. Their interests, as often happens in life, converge and diverge. Severe realism invades the sphere of intimate feelings. He forces both heroes to make, albeit incorrect, but independent decisions, often dictated not only by their hearts, but also by their minds:

A difficult year - illness broke me, Trouble overtook me, - happiness changed, - And neither enemy nor friend spares me, And even you did not spare! Tormented, embittered by the struggle With her blood enemies, Sufferer! you stand before me, a beautiful ghost with crazy eyes! Hair has fallen to the shoulders, Lips are burning, cheeks are blushing, And unbridled speech Merges into terrible reproaches, Cruel, wrong... Wait! It was not I who doomed your youth to a life without happiness and freedom, I am a friend, I am not your destroyer! But you don't listen...

In 1862, I.I. Panaev died. All friends believed that now Nekrasov and Avdotya Yakovlevna should finally get married. But this did not happen. In 1863, Panaeva moved out of Nekrasov’s apartment on Liteiny and very quickly married Sovremennik secretary A.F. Golovachev. This was a deteriorated copy of Panaev - a cheerful, good-natured rake, an absolutely empty person who helped Avdotya Yakovlevna quickly lose all her considerable fortune. But Panaeva became a mother for the first time, at the age of over forty, and became completely immersed in raising her daughter. Her daughter Evdokia Apollonovna Nagrodskaya (Golovacheva) would also become a writer - albeit after 1917 - in the Russian diaspora.

Split in Sovremennik

Already in the mid-1850s, Sovremennik contained all the best that Russian literature of the 19th century had and would have in the future: Turgenev, Tolstoy, Goncharov, Ostrovsky, Fet, Grigorovich, Annenkov, Botkin, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov. And it was Nekrasov who collected them all into one magazine. It still remains a mystery how, besides high fees, the publisher of Sovremennik could keep such diverse authors together?

“Old” edition of the magazine “Sovremennik”:
Goncharov I.A., Tolstoy L.N., Turgenev I.S.,
Grigorovich D.V., Druzhinin A.V., Ostrovsky A.N.

It is known that in 1856 Nekrasov concluded a kind of “binding agreement” with the leading authors of the magazine. The agreement obligated writers to submit their new works only to Sovremennik for four years in a row. Naturally, nothing came of this in practice. Already in 1858, I.S. Turgenev terminated this agreement unilaterally. In order not to completely lose the author, Nekrasov was then forced to agree with his decision. Many researchers regard this step by Turgenev as the beginning of a conflict in the editorial office.

In the acute political struggle of the post-reform period, two directly opposite positions of the main authors of the magazine became even more pronounced. Some (Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov) actively called Rus' “to the axe,” foreshadowing a peasant revolution. Others (mostly noble writers) took more moderate positions. It is believed that the culmination of the split within Sovremennik was the publication by N. A. Nekrasov, despite the protest of I. S. Turgenev, of an article by N. A. Dobrolyubova about the novel “On the Eve”. The article was titled “When Will the Real Day Come?” (1860. No. 3). Turgenev had a very low opinion of Dobrolyubov’s criticism, openly disliked him as a person and believed that he had a harmful influence on Nekrasov in matters of selecting materials for Sovremennik. Turgenev did not like Dobrolyubov’s article, and the author directly told the publisher: “Choose, either I or Dobrolyubov.” And Nekrasov, as Soviet researchers believed, decided to sacrifice his long-standing friendship with the leading novelist for the sake of his political views.

In fact, there is every reason to believe that Nekrasov did not share either one or the other views. The publisher relied solely on the business qualities of its employees. He understood that the magazine was made by common journalists (the Dobrolyubovs and Chernyshevskys), and with the Turgenevs and Tolstoys it would simply go down the drain. It is significant that Turgenev seriously suggested that Nekrasov take Apollo Grigoriev as the leading critic of the magazine. As a literary critic, Grigoriev stood two or three orders of magnitude higher than Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky combined, and his “brilliant insights” even then largely anticipated his time, which was later unanimously recognized by his distant descendants. But businessman Nekrasov wanted to make a magazine here and now. He needed disciplined employees, not disorganized geniuses suffering from depressive alcoholism. In this case, what was more important to Nekrasov was not old friendship, or even a dubious truth, but the fate of his favorite business.

It must be said that the official version of the “split of Sovremennik”, presented in Soviet literary criticism, is based exclusively on the memoirs of A.Ya. Panaeva is a person directly interested in considering the “split” in the magazine not just a personal conflict between Dobrolyubov (read Nekrasov) and Turgenev, but giving it an ideological and political character.

At the end of the 1850s, the so-called “Ogarevsky case” - a dark story with the appropriation of A.Ya. - received wide publicity among writers. Panaeva money from the sale of the estate of N.P. Ogarev. Panaeva volunteered to be a mediator between her close friend Maria Lvovna Ogareva and her ex-husband. As a “compensation” for N.P.’s divorce. Ogarev offered Maria Lvovna the Uruchye estate in the Oryol province. The ex-wife did not want to deal with the sale of the estate, and trusted Panaev in this matter. As a result, M.L. Ogareva died in Paris in terrible poverty, and where the 300 thousand banknotes proceeds from the sale of Uruchye went remains unknown. The question of how involved Nekrasov was in this case still causes controversy among literary scholars and biographers of the writer. Meanwhile, the inner circle of Nekrasov and Panaeva were sure that the lovers together embezzled other people’s money. It is known that Herzen (a close friend of Ogarev) called Nekrasov nothing more than a “sharp,” “thief,” “scoundrel,” and resolutely refused to meet when the poet came to him in England to explain himself. Turgenev, who initially tried to defend Nekrasov in this story, having learned about all the circumstances of the case, also began to condemn him.

In 1918, after the opening of the archives of the III department, a fragment of a illustrated letter from Nekrasov to Panaeva, dated 1857, was accidentally found. The letter concerns the “Ogarev case”, and in it Nekrasov openly reproaches Panaeva for her dishonest act in relation to Ogareva. The poet writes that he still “covers up” Avdotya Yakovlevna in front of his friends, sacrificing his reputation and good name. It turns out that Nekrasov is not directly to blame, but his complicity in a crime or its concealment is an indisputable fact.

It is possible that it was the “Ogarev” story that served as the main reason for the cooling of relations between Turgenev and the editors of Sovremennik already in 1858-59, and Dobrolyubov’s article about “On the Eve” was only the immediate reason for the “schism” in 1860.

Following the leading novelist and oldest employee Turgenev, L. Tolstoy, Grigorovich, Dostoevsky, Goncharov, Druzhinin and other “moderate liberals” left the magazine forever. Perhaps the above-mentioned “aristocrats” might also have found it unpleasant to deal with a dishonest publisher.

In a letter to Herzen, Turgenev will write: “I abandoned Nekrasov as a dishonest man...”

It was he who “abandoned” him, just as people are abandoned who have once betrayed their trust, are caught cheating in a card game, or have committed a dishonest, immoral act. It is still possible to have a dialogue, an argument, or defend one’s own position with an ideological opponent, but a decent person has nothing to talk about with a “dishonest” person.

At the first moment, Nekrasov himself perceived the break with Turgenev only as personal and far from final. Evidence of this is the poems of 1860, later explained by the phrase “inspired by the discord with Turgenev,” and the last letters to a former friend, where repentance and a call for reconciliation are clearly visible. Only by the summer of 1861 did Nekrasov realize that there would be no reconciliation, finally accepted Panayeva’s “ideological” version and dotted all the i’s:

We went out together... At random I walked in the darkness of the night, And you... your mind was already bright and your eyes were sharp. You knew that the night, the dead of night, would last our whole lives, And you did not leave the field, And you began to fight honestly. You, like a day laborer, went to work before light. You spoke the truth to the Mighty Despot. You did not let me sleep in lies, branding and cursing, and boldly tore off the mask from the jester and scoundrel. And well, the ray barely flashed the Doubtful light, Rumor says that you blew out Your torch... waiting for the dawn!

"Contemporary" in 1860-1866

After a number of leading authors left Sovremennik, N.G. became the ideological leader and most published author of the magazine. Chernyshevsky. His sharp, polemical articles attracted readers, maintaining the competitiveness of the publication in the changed conditions of the post-reform market. During these years, Sovremennik acquired the authority of the main organ of revolutionary democracy, significantly expanded its audience, and its circulation continuously grew, bringing considerable profits to the editors.

However, Nekrasov's bet on young radicals, which looked very promising in 1860, ultimately led to the death of the magazine. Sovremennik acquired the status of an opposition political magazine, and in June 1862 it was suspended by the government for eight months. At the same time, he also lost his main ideologist N.G. Chernyshevsky, who was arrested on suspicion of drawing up a revolutionary proclamation. Dobrolyubov died in the fall of 1861.

Nekrasov, with all his revolutionary poetic proclamations (“Song to Eremushka”, etc.) again remained on the sidelines.

Lenin once wrote words that for many years determined the attitude towards Nekrasov in Soviet literary criticism: “Nekrasov, being personally weak, hesitated between Chernyshevsky and the liberals...”

It is impossible to come up with anything more stupid than this “classic formula”. Nekrasov never didn't hesitate and did not concede in any principled position or on any significant issue - neither to the “liberals” nor to Chernyshevsky.

Praised by Lenin, Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky were boys who looked up to Nekrasov and admired his confidence and strength.

Nekrasov could have been in a state of weakness, but, as Belinsky used to say about the famous Danish prince, a strong man in his very fall is stronger than a weak man in his very uprising.

It was Nekrasov, with his outstanding organizational skills, financial capabilities, unique social flair and aesthetic sense, who should have taken the role center, combiner, collision absorber. Any hesitation in such a situation would be fatal to the cause and suicidal for the one who hesitates. Fortunately, being personally strong, Nekrasov avoided both the unreasonable “leftism” of Chernyshevsky and the unpopular attacks of moderate liberals, taking in all cases a completely independent position.

He became “a friend among strangers and a stranger among his own.” Still, the old editors of Sovremennik, with which Nekrasov was connected by ties of long-standing friendship, turned out to be more “at home” with him than the young and zealous commoners. Neither Chernyshevsky nor Dobrolyubov, unlike Turgenev or Druzhinin, ever claimed friendship or personal relations with the publisher. They remained only employees.

In the last period of its existence, from 1863, the new editors of Sovremennik (Nekrasov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Eliseev, Antonovich, Pypin and Zhukovsky) continued the magazine, maintaining the direction of Chernyshevsky. At that time, the literary and artistic department of the magazine published works by Saltykov-Shchedrin, Nekrasov, Gleb Uspensky, Sleptsov, Reshetnikov, Pomyalovsky, Yakushkin, Ostrovsky, and others. In the journalistic department, not the most talented publicists came to the forefront - Antonovich and Pypin. But this was not at all the same Sovremennik. Nekrasov intended to leave him.

In 1865, Sovremennik received two warnings; in the middle of 1866, after the publication of five books in the magazine, its publication was discontinued at the insistence of a special commission organized after Karakozov’s assassination attempt on Alexander II.

Nekrasov was one of the first to learn that the magazine was doomed. But he did not want to give up without a fight and decided to use his last chance. The story about “Muravyov’s ode” is connected with this. On April 16, 1866, in an informal setting of the English Club, Nekrasov approached the main pacifier of the Polish uprising of 1863, Count M.N. Muravyov, with whom he was personally acquainted. The poet read patriotic poems dedicated to Muravyov. There were eyewitnesses to this action, but the text of the poem itself has not survived. Witnesses subsequently claimed that Nekrasov’s “sycophancy” was unsuccessful, Muravyov treated the “ode” rather coldly, and the magazine was banned. This act dealt a serious blow to Nekrasov’s authority in revolutionary democratic circles.

In this situation, the surprising thing is not that the magazine was eventually banned, but how long it was not banned. Sovremennik owes its “delay” of at least 3-4 years exclusively to N.A.’s extensive connections. Nekrasov in the bureaucratic and government-court environment. Nekrasov was able to enter any door and could resolve almost any issue in half an hour. For example, he had the opportunity to “influence” S. A. Gedeonov, the director of the imperial theaters, a kind of minister, or his constant card partner A. V. Adlerberg, already then, without five minutes, the minister of the imperial court, a friend of the emperor himself. Most of his high-ranking friends did not care what the publisher wrote or published in his opposition magazine. The main thing is that he was a man of their circle, rich and well-connected. It never occurred to the ministers to doubt his trustworthiness.

But the closest employees of Sovremennik did not trust their publisher and editor at all. Immediately after the unsuccessful action with Muravyov and the closure of the magazine, the “second generation” of young radicals - Eliseev, Antonovich, Sleptsov, Zhukovsky - went to the accounting office of Sovremennik in order to obtain a full financial report. The “revision” by the employees of their publisher’s box office said only one thing: they considered Nekrasov a thief.

Truly “one of our own among strangers”...

Last years

After the closure of Sovremennik, N.A. Nekrasov remained a “free artist” with a fairly large capital. In 1863, he acquired the large Karabikha estate, becoming also a wealthy landowner, and in 1871 he acquired the Chudovskaya Luka estate (near Novgorod the Great), converting it specifically for his hunting dacha.

One must think that wealth did not bring Nekrasov much happiness. At one time, Belinsky absolutely accurately predicted that Nekrasov would have capital, but Nekrasov would not be a capitalist. Money and its acquisition have never been an end in itself, nor a way of existence for Nikolai Alekseevich. He loved luxury, comfort, hunting, beautiful women, but for full realization he always needed some kind of business - publishing a magazine, creativity, which the poet Nekrasov, it seems, also treated as a business or an important mission for the education of humanity.

In 1868, Nekrasov undertook a journalistic restart: he rented his magazine “Domestic Notes” from A. Kraevsky. Many would like to see a continuation of Sovremennik in this magazine, but it will be a completely different magazine. Nekrasov will take into account the bitter lessons that Sovremennik has gone through in recent years, descending to vulgarity and direct degradation. Nekrasov refused to cooperate with Antonovich and Zhukovsky, inviting only Eliseev and Saltykov-Shchedrin from the previous editorial office.

L. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Ostrovsky, faithful to the memory of the “old” editors of Sovremennik, will perceive Nekrasov’s “Notes of the Fatherland” precisely as an attempt to return to the past, and will respond to the call for cooperation. Dostoevsky will give his novel “Teenager” to Otechestvennye Zapiski, Ostrovsky will give his play “The Forest,” Tolstoy will write several articles and will negotiate the publication of “Anna Karenina.” True, Saltykov-Shchedrin did not like the novel, and Tolstoy gave it to Russky Vestnik on more favorable terms.

In 1869, the “Prologue” and the first chapters of “Who Lives Well in Rus'” were published in Otechestvennye Zapiski. Then the central place is occupied by Nekrasov’s poems “Russian Women”, “Grandfather”, and the satirical and journalistic works of Saltykov-Shchedrin.

F. Viktorova - Z.N. Nekrasova

At the end of his life, Nekrasov remained deeply lonely. As the famous song goes, “friends don’t grow in gardens; you can’t buy or sell friends.” His friends had long ago turned their backs on him, his employees, for the most part, betrayed him or were ready to betray him, there were no children. Relatives (brothers and sisters) scattered in all directions after the death of their father. Only the prospect of receiving a rich inheritance in the form of Karabikha could bring them together.

Nekrasov also preferred to buy off his mistresses, kept women, and fleeting love interests with money.

In 1864, 1867 and 1869, he traveled abroad in the company of his new passion, the Frenchwoman Sedina Lefren. Having received a large sum of money from Nekrasov for services rendered, the Frenchwoman safely remained in Paris.

In the spring of 1870, Nekrasov met a young girl, Fyokla Anisimovna Viktorova. She was 23 years old, he was already 48. She was of the simplest origin: the daughter of a soldier or a military clerk. No education.

Later, there were also dark hints about the establishment from which Nekrasov allegedly extracted her. V. M. Lazarevsky, who was quite close to the poet at that time, noted in his diary that Nekrasov took her away from “some merchant Lytkin.” In any case, a situation has developed that is close to that once proclaimed in Nekrasov’s poems:

When from the darkness of delusion, with a hot word of conviction, I brought out a fallen soul, And all full of deep torment, You cursed, wringing your hands, the vice that entangled You...

Initially, apparently, Feklusha was destined for the fate of an ordinary kept woman: with accommodation in a separate apartment. But soon she, if not yet full, then after all mistress enters the apartment on Liteiny, occupying its Panaevsky half.

It is difficult to say in what role Nekrasov himself saw himself next to this woman. Either he imagined himself as Pygmalion, capable of creating his own Galatea from a piece of soulless marble, or with age, the complex of unrealized fatherhood began to speak more and more powerfully in him, or he was simply tired of the salon dryness of unpredictable intellectuals and wanted simple human affection...

Soon Feklusha Viktorova was renamed Zinaida Nikolaevna. Nekrasov found a convenient name and added a patronymic to it, as if he had become her father. This was followed by Russian grammar classes and the invitation of music, vocal and French teachers. Soon, under the name of Zinaida Nikolaevna, Fyokla appeared in society and met Nekrasov’s relatives. The latter strongly disapproved of his choice.

Of course, Nekrasov failed to turn a soldier’s daughter into a high-society lady and salon owner. But he found true love. The devotion of this simple woman to her benefactor bordered on selflessness. The middle-aged, experienced Nekrasov, it seemed, also sincerely became attached to her. It was no longer love-suffering or love-struggle. Rather, the grateful indulgence of an elder towards a younger, the affection of a parent for a beloved child.

Once, while hunting in Chudovskaya Luka, Zinaida Nikolaevna accidentally shot and mortally wounded Nekrasov’s favorite dog, the pointer Kado. The dog was dying on the poet’s lap. Zinaida, in hopeless horror, asked Nekrasov for forgiveness. He was always, as they say, a crazy dog ​​lover, and would not forgive anyone for such a mistake. But he forgave Zinaida, as he would have forgiven not just another kept woman, but his beloved wife or his own daughter.

During the two years of Nekrasov’s fatal illness, Zinaida Nikolaevna was by his side, caring for him, comforting him, and brightening up his last days. When he passed away from the last painful battle with a fatal illness, she remained, as they say, an old woman:

For two hundred days, two hundred nights, my torment continues; Night and day My groans echo in your heart. Two hundred days, two hundred nights! Dark winter days, Clear winter nights... Zina! Close your tired eyes! Zina! Go to sleep!

Before his death, Nekrasov, wanting to ensure the future life of his last girlfriend, insisted on getting married and entering into an official marriage. The wedding took place in a military military church-tent, pitched in the hall of Nekrasov’s apartment. The ceremony was performed by a military priest. They were already leading Nekrasov by the arms around the lectern: he could not move on his own.

Nekrasov died for a long time, surrounded by doctors, nurses, and a caring wife. Almost all former friends, acquaintances, employees managed to say goodbye to him in absentia (Chernyshevsky) or in person (Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin).

Crowds of thousands accompanied Nekrasov's coffin. They carried him in their arms to the Novodevichy Convent. Speeches were made at the cemetery. The famous populist Zasodimsky and the unknown proletarian worker, the later famous Marxist theorist Georgy Plekhanov and the already great writer-soilist Fyodor Dostoevsky spoke...

Nekrasov's widow voluntarily gave up almost the entire considerable fortune left to her. She transferred her share of the estate to the poet’s brother Konstantin, and the rights to publish works to Nekrasov’s sister Anna Butkevich. Forgotten by everyone, Zinaida Nikolaevna Nekrasova lived in St. Petersburg, Odessa, Kyiv, where, it seems, only once she loudly and publicly shouted out her name - “I am Nekrasov’s widow,” stopping the Jewish pogrom. And the crowd stopped. She died in 1915, in Saratov, stripped to the skin by some Baptist sect.

Contemporaries highly valued Nekrasov. Many noted that with his passing, the great center of gravity of all Russian literature was forever lost: there was no one to look up to, no one to set an example of great service, no one to show the “right” path.

Even such a consistent defender of the theory of “art for art’s sake” as A.V. Druzhinin argued: “... we see and will always see in Nekrasov a true poet, rich in future and who has done enough for future readers.”

F.M. Dostoevsky, delivering a farewell speech at the poet’s grave, said that Nekrasov took such a prominent and memorable place in our literature that in the glorious ranks of Russian poets he “is worthy to stand right next to Pushkin and Lermontov.” And from the crowd of the poet’s fans shouts were heard: “Higher, higher!”

Perhaps Russian society of the 1870s lacked its own negative emotions, thrills and suffering, which is why it so gratefully shouldered the depressive outbursts of poetic graphomaniacs?..

However, the closest descendants, capable of soberly assessing the artistic merits and shortcomings of Nekrasov’s works, rendered the opposite verdict: “singer of the people’s suffering”, “exposer of public ills”, “brave tribune”, “conscientious citizen”, able to correctly write down rhymed lines - this is not yet poet.

“An artist does not have the right to torture his reader with impunity and senselessly,” said M. Voloshin regarding L. Andreev’s story “Eliazar.” At the same time, it was no coincidence that he contrasted Andreev’s “anatomical theater” with Nekrasov’s poem, written upon his return from Dobrolyubov’s funeral...

If not in this, then in many of his other works N.A. For many years, Nekrasov allowed himself to torture the reader with impunity with pictures of inhuman suffering and his own depression. Moreover, he allowed himself to raise a whole generation of magazine critics and followers of the poetics of “people's suffering” who did not notice in these “tortures” anything anti-artistic, aggressive, or contrary to the feelings of a normal person.

Nekrasov sincerely believed that he was writing for the people, but the people did not hear him, did not believe in the simple peasant truth stylized by the master poet. Man is designed in such a way that he is interested in learning only the new, unfamiliar, unknown. But for the common people, there was nothing new or interesting in the revelations of the “people's saddener”. This was their daily life. For the intelligentsia it is the opposite. She believed Nekrasov, heard the bloody revolutionary alarm bell, got up and went to save the great Russian people. Ultimately, she died, falling victim to her own delusions.

It is no coincidence that none of the poems of “the most popular Russian poet” Nekrasov (except for “Peddlers” in various versions and “folk” adaptations) ever became a folk song. From “Troika” (its first part) they made a salon romance, omitting, in fact, what the poem was written for. Nekrasov’s “suffering” poems were sung exclusively by the populist intelligentsia - in living rooms, in exile, in prisons. For her it was a form of protest. But the people did not know that they also needed to protest, and therefore they sang apolitical ditties and the naive “Kalinka”.

Soviet art criticism, which rejected decadent abstruseness, like all the artistic achievements of the Russian “Silver Age,” again raised Nekrasov to unattainable heights and again crowned him with the laurels of a truly national poet. But it’s no secret that during this period people liked S. Yesenin more - without his early modernist twists and “folk” stylizations.

It is also significant that Soviet ideologists did not like Yesenin’s clear and clear voice. Only through the example of the “sufferer” Nekrasov could it be clearly proven: even before the revolution, before the rivers of shed blood, before the horrors of the Civil War and Stalin’s repressions, the Russian people were constantly groaning. This largely justified what was done to the country in 1920-30, justified the need for the most severe terror, violence, and physical extermination of entire generations of Russian people. And what’s interesting: in the Soviet years, only Nekrasov was recognized as having the right to hopeless pessimism and glorifying the theme of death in his lyrics. Soviet poets were persecuted at party meetings for such themes and were already considered “non-Soviet.”

In the few works of today's literary philologists, the activities of Nekrasov as a publisher, publicist, and businessman are often distinguished from literature and his poetic creativity. This is true. It's time to get rid of the textbook cliches that we inherited from the populist terrorists and their followers.

Nekrasov was, first of all, a man of action. And Russian literature of the 19th century was incredibly lucky in that N.A. Nekrasov chose it as the “work” of his entire life. For many years, Nekrasov and his Sovremennik constituted a unifying center, acting as a breadwinner, protector, benefactor, assistant, mentor, warm friend, and often a caring father for the people who made up the truly great edifice of Russian literature. Honor and praise to him for this both from his deceased contemporaries and from his grateful descendants!

Only merciless time has long ago put everything in its place.

Today, placing the poet Nekrasov above Pushkin, or at least on a par with him, would not occur to even the most loyal admirers of his work.

The experience of many years of school study of Nekrasov's poems and poems (in complete isolation from the study of the history of Russia, the personality of the author himself and the time context that should explain many things to the reader) led to the fact that Nekrasov had practically no fans left. To our contemporaries, people of the 20th-21st centuries, the “school” Nekrasov did not give anything except an almost physical disgust for the unknown why rhymed lines of satirical feuilletons and social essays “in spite” of that long-ago day.

Guided by the current legislation banning the promotion of violence, Nekrasov’s works of art should either be completely excluded from the school curriculum (for depicting scenes of human and animal suffering, calls for violence and suicide), or they should be carefully selected, providing accessible comments and links to the general historical context of the era .

Application

What feelings, besides depression, can such a poem evoke:

MORNING You are sad, your soul is suffering: I believe that it is difficult not to suffer here. Here nature itself is at one with the poverty that surrounds us. Infinitely sad and pitiful, These pastures, fields, meadows, These wet, sleepy jackdaws, That sit on top of the haystack; This nag with a drunken peasant, galloping through the force into the distance, hidden by the blue fog, this muddy sky... At least cry! But the rich city is no more beautiful: The same clouds are running across the sky; It's terrible for the nerves - with an iron shovel There they are now scraping the pavement. Work begins everywhere; The fire was announced from the tower; They brought someone to the shameful square - the executioners are already waiting there. The prostitute goes home at dawn Hastens, leaving the bed; Officers in a hired carriage are galloping out of town: there will be a duel. The traders wake up together and rush to sit behind the counters: They need to measure all day long, so that they can have a hearty meal in the evening. Chu! Cannons fired from the fortress! Flooding threatens the capital... Someone has died: Anna is lying on a red pillow of the First Degree. The janitor beats the thief - got caught! They drive a flock of geese to slaughter; Somewhere on the top floor a Shot was heard - someone had committed suicide. 1874

Or this:

* * * Today I am in such a sad mood, So tired of painful thoughts, So deeply, deeply calm My mind, tormented by torture, - That the illness that oppresses my heart, somehow cheers me bitterly, - Meeting death, threatening, coming, I went myself would... But the dream will refresh - Tomorrow I will get up and run out greedily to meet the first ray of the sun: My whole soul will stir joyfully, And I will want to live painfully! And the illness, crushing strength, Will also torment tomorrow And about the proximity of the dark grave It is also clear to the soul to speak... April 1854

But this poem, if desired, can be brought under the law prohibiting the promotion of violence against animals:

Under the cruel hand of man, barely alive, ugly skinny, the crippled horse is straining, carrying an unbearable burden. So she staggered and stood. "Well!" - the driver grabbed the log (It seemed like the whip was not enough for him) - And he beat her, beat her, beat her! Its legs somehow spread wide, all smoking, settling back, the horse just sighed deeply and looked... (as people look, submitting to wrongful attacks). He again: along the back, on the sides, And running forward, over the shoulder blades And over the crying, meek eyes! All in vain. The nag stood, striped all over from the whip, only responding to each blow with a uniform movement of its tail. This made the idle passers-by laugh, Everyone put in a word of their own, I was angry - and thought sadly: “Shouldn’t I stand up for her? In our time, it’s fashionable to sympathize, We wouldn’t mind helping you, Unrequited sacrifice of the people, - But we don’t know how to help ourselves! " And it was not for nothing that the driver worked hard - Finally, he got the job done! But the last scene was more outrageous to look at than the first: The horse suddenly tensed up - and walked somehow sideways, nervously quickly, And the driver at each jump, in gratitude for these efforts, gave her wings with blows And he himself ran lightly next to him.

It was these poems by Nekrasov that inspired F.M. Dostoevsky to depict the same monstrous scene of violence in prose (the novel “Crime and Punishment”).

Nekrasov’s attitude towards his own work was also not entirely clear:

The celebration of life - the years of youth - I killed under the weight of labor And I was never a poet, the darling of freedom, A friend of laziness. If long-restrained torment boils up and approaches my heart, I write: rhyming sounds Disturb my usual work. Still, they are no worse than flat prose And they excite soft hearts, Like tears suddenly gushing from a saddened face. But I’m not flattered that any of them survives in people’s memory... There is no free poetry in you, My harsh, clumsy verse! There is no creative art in you... But living blood boils in you, A vengeful feeling triumphs, Burning love glows, - That love that glorifies the good, That brands the villain and the fool And bestows a crown of thorns on the Defenseless singer... Spring 1855

Elena Shirokova

Based on materials:

Zhdanov V.V. Life of Nekrasov. – M.: Mysl, 1981.

Kuzmenko P.V. The most scandalous triangles in Russian history. – M.: Astrel, 2012.

Muratov A.B. N.A. Dobrolyubov and I.S. Turgenev’s break with the magazine “Sovremennik” // In the world of Dobrolyubov. Digest of articles. – M., “Soviet Writer”, 1989

I dedicated the lyre to my people.
Perhaps I will die unknown to him,
But I served him, and my heart is calm...
ON THE. Nekrasov

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov(1821-1877/78) occupies a special place in Russian poetry of the 19th century. A citizen poet and at the same time a subtle lyricist, a successful publisher and editor of a literary magazine, who opened the way to great literature for many talented writers: Goncharov, Tolstoy, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Tyutchev, Turgenev and others, he became the first nobleman poet to choose himself the role of people's intercessor. Nekrasov was the first to glorify the Decembrists and their wives in literature (the poem "Russian Women"), and dedicated several large poems to Russian peasants ("Peasant Children", "Red Nose Frost", "Who Lives Well in Rus'"). In poetry, Nekrasov did the same as Gogol in prose: he made poetry extremely realistic and socially oriented, turned it to the problems of the “little man,” brought the language of poetry closer to colloquial speech, and dedicated the lyrics of love to the “prose” of the relationship between a man and a woman.

Nekrasov born December 10, 1821 in the city of Nemirov (now Vinnitsa region of Ukraine) in the large family of landowner and officer Alexei Sergeevich Nekrasov and the Polish beauty Elena Andreevna Zakrevskaya. The future poet had 13 brothers and sisters. In 1824, the Nekrasovs moved to the village of Greshnevo, Yaroslavl province. The main influence on young Nekrasov was his mother, who differed from her rude father in her exceptional education and culture. The father predicted a military career for his son and in 1838 sent him to St. Petersburg to join the Noble Regiment, but Nekrasov ignored his father’s threats to remain without money and, instead of military service, tried to enroll in the philological faculty of St. Petersburg University. Having failed the entrance exam, he was enrolled as a volunteer. The father kept his word and deprived his son of financial support, so he had to combine his studies with the search for income. Having once been expelled from a rented room for non-payment, he ended up in the house of beggars who sheltered him. In particular, he writes short stories, novellas and poems for the magazine "Pantheon" and "Literary Gazette".

In 1840, 18-year-old Nekrasov released his first collection of poetry "Dreams and Sounds" , about which the father of Russian romanticism V.A. Zhukovsky responded like this: “Subsequently you will write better, and you will be ashamed of these poems.” Due to obvious poetic failure, Nekrasov temporarily gives up writing poetry and tries his hand at prose.

Becomes an employee of the journal Otechestvennye zapiski, becomes close to the leading literary critic of the time V.G. Belinsky and begins to engage in publishing activities. Aspiring writers, who were close to the ideas of the “natural school” (as realism was called at that time), rallied around Nekrasov and Belinsky. In the period from 1843 to 1846. Nekrasov publishes the almanacs “Articles in verse without pictures”, “Physiology of St. Petersburg”, “April 1”, “Petersburg collection”. The first works of Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Grigorovich, and Herzen were published in these almanacs. Inspired by the success of the publishing business, Nekrasov in 1846, together with the publisher I.I. Panaev acquires publishing rights magazine "Sovremennik", which was founded by Pushkin ten years ago. Most of the authors and employees of Otechestvennye Zapiski went to Nekrasov, including the critic Belinsky.

Nekrasov's talent as a publisher was so strong that the Sovremennik magazine can be considered the most successful literary commercial project of the 19th century. It was thanks to Sovremennik that such writers as I.A. Goncharov, I.S. gained fame and literary fame. Turgenev, A.I. Herzen, A.N. Ostrovsky, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, D.V. Grigorovich, F.M. Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy, N.G. Chernyshevsky, critic N.A. Dobrolyubov. It is noteworthy that Nekrasov himself writes almost nothing, and for the time being the magazine brings him fame only as a publisher.

Avdotya Yakovlevna Panaeva (Golovacheva)

Collaboration with I.I. Panaev is also connected with the most important personal circumstance for Nekrasov: he was in love with his friend’s wife Avdotya Yakovlevna Panaeva, who after the death of her husband became the poet’s common-law wife (according to some sources, Nekrasov, Panaev and Panaeva lived in the same house for many years) and an employee of the Sovremennik magazine, where she published her stories and novels under the male pseudonym “N.N. Stanitsky”. Nekrasov and Panaeva would have a son in 1849, who, unfortunately, would die in infancy. Subsequently, Nekrasov’s love poems (he called them intimate lyrics) under the general title “Panaevsky cycle” will be dedicated to Panaeva.

After breaking up with Avdotya Panaeva, the poet had a relationship with the Frenchwoman Selina Lefren for several years.

In 1869, 48-year-old Nekrasov married 23-year-old Fyokla Anisimovna Viktorova, who in marriage would change not only her last name, but also her first name and patronymic, becoming Zinaida Nikolaevna Nekrasova. However, even in his marriage to Viktorova, Nekrasov will continue to devote his poems to Panaeva.

Zinaida Nikolaevna Nekrasova (before marriage - Fyokla Anisimovna Viktorova)

The fame of the poet comes to Nekrasov relatively late. Only in 1856 the first full-fledged collection of poetry was published. "Poems by N. Nekrasov", a resounding success. The collection opens with a poetic declaration "Poet and Citizen" , written in the poetic form traditional for this kind of work (suffice it to recall Lomonosov’s “Conversation with Anacreon” “The Poet and the Crowd” and “Conversation of a Bookseller with a Poet” by Pushkin, “Journalist, Reader and Writer” by Lermontov). This poem continues the discussion about the role of the poet in society and the purpose of poetry. In Nekrasov’s view, the poet is a teacher and protector of the people, and his life is a sacrifice to the Fatherland. This is how a manifesto of civic poetry is born, the slogan of which is a quote from “The Poet and the Citizen”: “ You may not be a poet, but you must be a citizen"The collection of 1856 also included 72 poems and the poem "Sasha", which made up four sections: 1) poems about the people, 2) poems exposing the oppressors of the people, 3) the poem "Sasha", 4) intimate lyrics.

The ideological continuation of the first collection are poems "Reflections at the Front Door" (1858), acutely raising the question of the future destinies of the Russian people, and "Railway" (1864).

Poems of the 1860s are also dedicated to the theme of people’s suffering: "Peasant Children" (everyone knows the fragment "Once upon a time in the cold winter..."), "Peddlers" , "Jack Frost" .

At the same time, Nekrasov begins work on his most significant work - an epic poem "Who lives well in Rus'" (1863-1877), written after the abolition of serfdom. The plot of the poem will be based on the search of seven men for a happy man. The poem was created in separate completed chapters and, according to the original plan, should have consisted of seven or eight parts. However, Nekrasov’s serious illness and death did not allow him to complete his plan. The poem was composed after the poet's death. Its contents consisted of four parts: “Prologue. Part One”, “Last One”, “Peasant Woman”, “Feast for the Whole World”. The arrangement of the poem according to the principle of individual plot-completed chapters complied with the laws of classical epic. All parts are connected by the image of the road and the “collective hero” - traveling men. The fairy-tale motifs introduced into the poem (a fairy-tale beginning, an indefinite chronotope, talking animals, a self-assembled tablecloth, etc.) allowed Nekrasov to freely handle time and space: transfer the action from one end of the country to the other, slow down and speed up the time of action.

In 1866, after the assassination attempt on Alexander II, censorship intensified and the Sovremennik magazine was closed. Since 1868, Nekrasov has been publishing and editing the journal Otechestvennye zapiski. In the 1870s. writes poems "Grandfather" , "Recently."

Poem "Russian women "(1872) became the first open mention of the Decembrists in Russian literature, accompanied by admiration for their courage and the courage of their wives who followed their heroic spouses into Siberian exile. The first part of the poem is dedicated to Ekaterina Ivanovna Trubetskoy, the wife of the Decembrist Sergei Petrovich Trubetskoy, and the second to Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya, the wife of the Decembrist Sergei Grigoryevich Volkonsky, Ekaterina Ivanovna, having gone into exile following her husband, died there at the age of 53 from cancer, and Maria Nikolaevna, having returned from exile to Moscow, died at the age of 63 on her husband’s estate in the Chernigov province.

Being terminally ill, Nekrasov writes a farewell cycle of poems, “Last Songs,” which sums up the poet’s life with amazing sincerity.

Nekrasov died December 27, 1877 old style, or January 8, 1878 according to the modern calendar.

Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseevich

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

V. N. Korablev.

(Polovtsov)

Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseevich

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

S. Vengerov.

(Brockhaus)

Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseevich

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A. Tseytlin.

(Lit. enc.)

Large biographical encyclopedia. 2009 .

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

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

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

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