Nikolai Petrovich Wagner was a Russian zoologist, editor, essayist, and writer. He was also a corresponding member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
Background
Nikolai Petrovich Wagner was born on July 30, 1829, in the Bogoslovsky Zavod in Perm Governorate (now Karpinsk, Sverdlovsk Oblast) to a noble family. His father Pyotr Petrovich Wagner (1899-1876), originally a doctor in the Urals, later lectured as a professor of geology, mineralogy, and anatomy at Kazan University.
Education
Nikolai Petrovich attended the private M.N. Lvov boarding school, then the 2nd Kazan Gymnasium which he graduated from in 1845 to enroll in Kazan University's faculty of natural sciences. While still a student, in 1848, he debuted as a published author with popular articles on beetles in Russkaya Illyustratsia.
Until 1851, Nikolai Petrovich was a lecturer at the Nizhny Novgorod Nobility Institute, then an adjunct at Kazan University, where he received a master's degree in 1851 and a doctoral degree in 1855. In 1861-1864 he edited the Scientific notes of Kazan University. In his treatise Spontaneous Reproduction among the Larvae of Insects for the first time, he substantiated pedogenesis - asexual reproduction of some invertebrates even at larval age.
In the years of 1858-1859 and many times in the future, Nikolai Petrovich went on scientific trips abroad. Since 1860 he was a professor of zoology (since 1862 an ordinary professor) of Kazan University, and in 1870-1885 - Petersburg University where he continued to give lectures until 1894. He was the organizer and director of the Solovetsky Biostation (now the Murmansk Marine Biological Institute). In 1877-1879 he edited the popular science magazine "Light". Wagner’s popular science essays are collected in the book "Pictures from the Life of Animals" (1901). Nikolai Petrovich was the author of the zoology book, works on the unconscious mental activity of man; since 1891, he presided the Russian Society of Experimental Psychology.
Nikolai Petrovich was a convinced supporter of spiritualism. He collaborated in Rebus, actively polemicized with D.I. Mendeleev, N.N. Strakhov and other critics of this movement. In the summer of 1875, he met F.M. Dostoevsky and since then he was in correspondence with him.
Nikolai Petrovich got his literary fame due to a collection of philosophical tales and parables Skazki kota Murlyki (Cat Purr's Fairytales). He admitted that these stories were influenced by H.K. Andersen. A philosophical tale is Wagner’s favorite genre which includes stories, parables, novels, legends, novels. The narration in such philosophical tales is conducted mainly on behalf of the narrator, sometimes it has the features of a tale. Nikolai Petrovich wrote in a fascinating way, often for children and about children, although he did not make a strict genre difference between the fairy tale for children and adults. Wagner's central theme in his work is the relationship between common sense and feelings in a person. In the allegory "Pri Tsare Gorokhe", the author claims that humanity oscillates between the functions of the brain and heart, which are constantly steamrolling over each other. Thus there is a need for a resultant, but nobody knows how to find it. Some works describe what the advantage of one of the forces leads to (the novel Grizzlies, Twinkle).
The hero of the story In Spring declares that love is a whim of nerves. He commits suicide in front of the bride in order to prove the superiority of will and reason over senses. Nikolai Petrovich criticized the Russian and European reality of the 19th century for the fact that love and compassion were suppressed by clear calculations. He believed that people were still burdened by their feelings (the novel Towards the Light; the story Light and Darkness). Wagner’s characters have an increased susceptibility, fainting, hallucinations, prophetic and lethargic dreams (they often fly in dreams); they have a weak physical organization - a bodily tribute to their spiritual over responsiveness. Some of them are obsessed with asceticism, prefer monastic life, profess the commandments of meekness, forgiveness (the story Knyaz Kostya, the stories Khristov batrak, Lazar' ubogiy). Some works are close to science fiction, partly to the traditions of V.F. Odoevsky. The stories In the Dark, Ol'd-Diks contain ideas that anticipate natural science thought and technology of the 20th century: Freudianism, a computer, a gas chromatograph, and a man’s entry into space.
With less artistic harmony, the author’s thoughts were expressed in Wagner’s most voluminous work - the novel The Dark Way (1890), which claims to depict the events of Russian and European public life of the 50-70s of the 19 century. It was a kind of an anti-nihilistic novel. Being the master of the external effect, Nikolai Petrovich was not able to develop the psychology of the character, describe the character, landscape, he did not know the art of literary portraiture. Criticism was sympathetic to the Wagner-storyteller, it recognized the wealth of imagination, the gift to appeal to the reader. However, individual tales and especially novels received a negative assessment. The author’s ability to build large-scale works and create realistic images was denied. Wagner's story The Dream of the Artist Papillon (1895) provoked a negative assessment by Tolstoy.
Nikolai Petrovich died in 1907 of paralytic dementia.
Nikolai Petrovich, a Slavophile (through the influence of Sergey and Konstantin Aksakovs), remained an atheist and a Darwinist up until 1874 when he started to attend the spiritualist séances. Along with professor Alexander Butlerov and Aksakov, he organized a series of scientifically-based examinations of the phenomenon. In the course of his psychic research, while having come across numerous frauds, he still came to the conclusion that the phenomenon was genuine. He became a staunch Spiritualist and got himself involved in heated correspondence defending his views, polemicizing with Dmitry Mendeleyev and criticizing Leo Tolstoy for having ridiculed what he had little information about in The Fruits of Enlightenment, a broad swipe at Spiritualism. His spiritualistic beliefs have put an end to his friendship with Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Membership
Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences
,
Saint Petersburg City
Connections
Nikolai Petrovich was married to Ekaterina Alexandrovna, nee Khudyakova. They had 6 children.