Historical Dictionary of Russian Literature by Stone Jonathan;

Author:Stone, Jonathan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

NEKRÁSOV, NIKOLÁI ALEKSÉEVICH (1821–1878)

Poet and literary critic. Nekrasov was one of the few prominent Russian poets in the mid-19th century, primarily the territory of the weighty psychological and ideological novel. He was able to remain an integral contributor to the politically charged literary scene through the genre of civic poetry. Nekrasov’s work took on overtly social themes and thus transported many of the key facets of realism into poetry and established his role as a leading advocate for radical change in Russian society. His most constant topic was the Russian peasantry (although often in urban settings), and he employed folk styles and forms in his poems to enhance their feel of authenticity. His works drew from the novel’s main devices of a strong narrative voice and a penchant for detail (particularly in descriptions of people and nature). Through his longer narrative poems, Nekrasov presented the harsh realities of peasant life with a sense of pessimism that was consistent with later 19th-century Russian literature’s charge to function as the conscience of the nation. His most ambitious work was Who Lives Well in Russia? (begun in 1866 and unfinished at the time of Nekrasov’s death), an extremely long poem that attempts to encompass as wide an array of social and philosophical questions as does the most capacious of Russian novels.

Nekrasov’s importance as a writer was complemented by his central role in the thick journals that dominated the cultural debates of the age. He was the editor responsible for reviving Aleksandr Pushkin’s The Contemporary and turning it into the mouthpiece for the radical intelligentsia and polemical forums for such figures as Nikolai Chernyshevskii. As a journalist and poet, Nekrasov was at the heart of Russian literature at a moment when writers occupied seminal positions in nearly every aspect of Russian intellectual life.

See also DOSTOÉVSKY, FËDOR MIKHÁILOVICH (1821–1881); SALTYKÓV-SHCHEDRÍN, MIKHAÍL EVGRÁFOVICH (1826–1889); TOLSTÓI, LEV NIKOLÁEVICH (1828–1910); TURGÉNEV, IVÁN SERGÉEVICH (1818–1883).

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