Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov was born in Nemyriv (now in Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine), Podolia Governorate. His father Alexey Sergeyevich Nekrasov was a descendant from Russian landed gentry, and an officer in the Imperial Russian Army. His mother, Alexandra Zakrzewska, was a Polish noblewoman, daughter of a wealthy landlord who belonged to szlachta.
In September 1832 Nekrasov joined the Yaroslavl Gymnasium but quit it prematurely. Nekrasov studied at St. Petersburg University, but his father’s refusal to help him forced him into literary and theatrical hack work at an early age.
His first book of poetry was published in 1840. An able businessman, he published and edited literary miscellanies and in 1846 bought from Pyotr Pletnev the magazine Sovremennik (“The Contemporary”), which had declined after the death of its founder, Aleksandr Pushkin. Nekrasov managed to transform it into a major literary journal and a paying concern, despite constant harassment by the censors. Both Ivan Turgenev and Leo Tolstoy published their early works in Sovremennik, but after 1856, influenced by its subeditor, Nikolay Chernyshevski, it began to develop into an organ of militant radicalism. It was suppressed in 1866, after the first attempt to assassinate Alexander II. In 1868 Nekrasov, with Mikhail Saltykov (Shchedrin), took over Otechestvenniye zapiski (“Notes of the Fatherland”), remaining its editor and publisher until his death.
Nekrasov’s work is uneven through its lack of craftsmanship and polish and a tendency to sentimentalize his subjects, but his major poems have lasting power and originality of expression. Moroz krasny-nos (1863; “Red-Nosed Frost, ” in Poems, 1929) gives a vivid picture of a brave and sympathetic peasant woman, and his large-scale narrative poem, Komu na Rusi zhit khorosho? (1879; Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia?, 1917), shows to the full his gift for vigorous realistic satire. In 1876, although suffering from a cancer, he still had the strength to write his Last Songs, which contains some of his most poignant poetry. He died at Saint Petersburg on January 8, 1878.
He is credited with introducing into Russian poetry ternary meters and the technique of dramatic monologue (On the Road, 1845). As the editor of several literary journals, notably Sovremennik, Nekrasov was also singularly successful and influential.
Nekrasov's estate in Karabikha, his St. Petersburg home, as well as the office of Sovremennik magazine on Liteyny Prospekt, are now national cultural landmarks and public museums of Russian literature. Many Libraries are named in his honor. One of them is the Central Universe Science Nekrasov Library in Moscow.
(Povest' "Poymat' prividenie" rasskazyvaet o rabotnikakh m...)
(This book contains poetry of russian poet Nikolay Nekraso...)
(This book contains poetry of russian poet Nikolay Nekraso...)
(A long picturesque novel, which Nekrasov wrote together w...)
Nikolai Nekrasov met Avdotya Panayeva in 1842 when she was already a promising writer and a popular hostess of a literary salon. In 1849 Panayeva gave birth to a son, but the boy soon died. In 1863, while still with Panayeva, Nekrasov met the French actress Celine Lefresne, who was at the time performing at the Mikhaylovsky Theatre with her troupe. She became his lover. In 1870 Nekrasov met and fell in love with 19-year-old Fyokla Anisimovna Viktorova (Zinaida Nikolayevna). She became his first wife.
