Background
Ivan Savvich Nikitin was born on September 21, 1824 in Voronezh, Russian Federation.
Ivan Savvich Nikitin was born on September 21, 1824 in Voronezh, Russian Federation.
Ivan Savvich Nikitin graduated from the Voronezh Theological School (1839), studied at the Voronezh Theological Seminary (1839-1843).
His father's violence and alcoholism brought the family to ruin and forced young Ivan to provide for the household by becoming an innkeeper. After his first publications, he joined a circle of local intelligentsia that included his future biographer (and the editor of his collected works) Mikhail De-Lupé. Ivan Savvich Nikitin taught himself French and German and read widely in world literature, and in 1859 he opened a bookstore and library that became an important center of literary and social life in Voronezh.
His first poems appeared in 1849 and his first collection in 1856. A second collection came out in 1859, and a prose "Seminarist's Diary" was published in 1861. Some of his poems became the basis for popular songs, set to music by such composers as Vasily Kalinnikov, Eduard Nápravník, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.