Background
Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky was born on May 30, 1811, in Suomenlinna (Sveaborg), Finland. He was the son of a naval doctor. His youth was spent in Chembar, Penza Province, Russia, where his father was a district doctor.
Penza Gymnasium
Moscow State University
Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky was born on May 30, 1811, in Suomenlinna (Sveaborg), Finland. He was the son of a naval doctor. His youth was spent in Chembar, Penza Province, Russia, where his father was a district doctor.
Vissarion Grigoryevich attended the local grammar school and the Penza Gymnasium. In 1829 he entered Moscow University (now Moscow State University) as a student of literature.
His record was not brilliant because he was already weakened by tuberculosis and furthermore was concentrating all his energy on literary projects outside the university. In 1831 Vissarion Grigoryevich published some reviews and poems in "Listok". The following year he was expelled from the university because of his play "Dmitry Kalinin" which criticizes serfdom.
In 1834 Vissarion Grigoryevich published a series of critical articles, "Literary Reviews" in Molva, the literary supplement of the newspaper Teleskop. This "elegy in prose" brought Belinsky instant fame. In 1836 the government suppressed "Teleskop". In 1838 Vissarion Grigoryevich worked on the Moscow Observer, but it too was closed a year later. He moved to Saint Petersburg, where he became a chief literary critic for the magazine Fatherland Notes.
From 1841 until his death Vissarion Grigoryevich published an annual survey of Russian literature, the last two of which (1846 and 1847) are among his most important theoretical statements. In 1846 he joined the journal Contemporary and served as its chief literary critic until his death. In July 1847 he wrote what is probably his best-known work, Letter to Gogol. Not published until 1905, it was widely circulated in manuscript and became an important document among later revolutionaries.
Vissarion Grigoryevich died on May 26, 1848.
His critical articles, "Literary Reveries", reflected the ideas of the German philosopher F. W. J. von Schelling. He was later greatly influenced by the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel and German idealism. In certain articles of 1839 and 1840 he, under Hegel's influence, even defended the institution of autocracy. Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky experienced a moral crisis in 1841 and abandoned Hegelianism.
In 1843 Vissarion Grigoryevich married his childhood friend M.V. Orlova.