Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov
1821-1878


Poems in this Collection

В день смерти Гоголя/On the Day of Gogol's Death
Размышления у парадного подъезда/Thoughts at a Vestibule
Утро/Morning
Скоро стану добычею тленья.../I shall soon fall prey to rot...

Timeline for N. A. Nekrasov

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1821
Born on country estate northeast of Moscow to Russian father and Polish mother (a fact long-hidden). Learns love of poetry and awareness of the plight of the peasant from mother

1840
While living hand-to-mouth (tutoring and hack-writing) publishes first collection of romantic poems Dreams and Sounds, which was roundly criticized, most notably by Belinsky

1842
Becomes critic for Notes of the Fatherland where he impressed Belinsky with his work and received encouragement to pursue more social and political themes

1844
Writes his first "civic" poems, demonstrating concern for the Russian peasant. Works include "On the Road," and "Homeland"

1845
Edits and publishes A Physiology of Petersburg, which, along with the following year's A Petersburg Miscellany, become the best examples of the Natural School

1846
Purchases, with friend Ivan Panev, the journal The Contemporary (founded by Pushkin in 1836) and becomes chief editor. The radically-oriented "thick" journal becomes the most respected of the time, publishing Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Chernyshevsky, among others; Writes "Riding to the Hounds," a satiric idyll that is critical of the violence of the hunter

1854
Writes "The Unreaped Row" and "Vlas" which speak without sentimentality of the hard life of the common people

1855
Writes "A Forgotten Village" and "Poet and Citizen"

1860
Writes "On the Volga" and "Knight for an Hour"

1861
Writes The Peddlers, the best example of his use of Russian folklore, both in language and content, as it resembles a Russian folksong in its sound quality. He generally uses ternary meters and dactylic rhymes which serve to reproduce the "lilt" of a song

1863
Writes Red-Nose Frost, which lyrically and realistically presents peasant life, a topic he pursues even after the liberation of the serfs; begins the work Who's Happy in Russia which he nearly finished before he died. The work functions as an encyclopedia of peasant life and stands out among his lesser later works, written in a stylized folk verse style

1866
The government, unhappy with the poem "The Railroad" (1864), which was critical of the quality of life among workers on the Russian railroad, shuts down The Contemporary

1867
Acquires Notes of the Fatherland and becomes editor-in-chief

1870
Writes "Grandfather," which deals with the Decembrists, as does "Russian Women," written two years later

1875
Writes Contemporaries, a collection of pieces on Russian financiers

1877
Publishes final collection Last Songs, a more lyrical collection than his previous work, a quality embodied by the poems "Muse of vengeance and grief"

1878
Dies, eulogized by Dostoevsky, who compared him to Pushkin and Lermontov