Dmitri Wassiljewitsch Grigorowitsch

Portrait of Grigorovich (1876) by Ivan Kramskoi

Dmitry Grigorovich ( Russian Дмитрий Васильевич Григорович , scientific. Transliteration Dmitrij Vasil'evič Grigorovic ; March 19 * ^{. Jul} / 31 March  1822 ^greg. In Nikolskoye-na-Tscheremschane, Ujesd Stavropol , † December 22, 1899 ^jul. / January 3  1900 ^Greg. In Saint Petersburg ) was a Russian folk writer. He was considered an important figure in Russia's literary circles in the 19th century and a mentor of the writer and playwright Anton Chekhov .

Life

Grigorowitsch was born in 1822 as the son of a Russian landlord and a French woman in the village of Nikolskoye-na-Cheremshane in the then Zimbirsk governorate . He grew up near Kaschira south of Moscow and at the age of eight was sent to a French school in Moscow and later to the engineering school in Saint Petersburg . He went to this school from 1836 to 1840. There he made friends with the later author Fyodor Dostoevsky , among others . Since Grigorowitsch could discover no interest in technology in himself, he later switched to the St. Petersburg Art Academy . There he studied art history and met other young writers, among them the poets Shevchenko and Nekrasov . In collaboration with the latter, Grigorowitsch wrote a short story for the Almanac Physiology of Petersburg , which met with positive criticism from the well-known publicist Belinsky .

In 1846 Grigorowitsch published his first major work, the novella The Village , in the literary magazine Otetschestwennye Sapiski , and a year later Anton the unlucky followed in the Sovremennik . These two stories were written in a style that is also characteristic of later Grigorowitsch works: the focus of the plot is always the everyday life of the simplest Russian peasants. The fact that Grigorowitsch, who himself came from the nobility and did not sufficiently know a typical peasant life, sometimes attached too much romanticism and sentimentality to this everyday life, brought him a lot of criticism, even in respected literary circles. On the other hand, his work was valued by those of his contemporaries who themselves sought to express sympathy for the peasantry in their works (including Nekrasov and Leo Tolstoy ).

The frequent criticism moved Grigorovich early 1860s ultimately to break with the Sovremennik editors to give up any literary activity for several decades and instead work in the Society for the Promotion of the Arts and a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences to dedicate. It was not until the 1890s that he wrote several books again, including the children's novel Der Junge aus Guttapercha .

Relationship with Chekhov

Grigorovich's grave in the Volkovo Cemetery in Petersburg

In December 1885, Grigorovich met the young author Anton Chekhov for the first time in Saint Petersburg , who was invited there on the initiative of his later publisher Alexei Suvorin and who was able to make his first acquaintance with the Petersburg literary scene. Grigorovich valued Chekhov's work very highly and repeatedly praised his literary talent. So he wrote to him in March 1886: "You have a real talent, a talent that lifts you high above the circle of writers of the new generation". It was also Grigorovich who expressly advised Chekhov not to write under pseudonyms and to try his hand at the novel genre. In fact, Chekhov, for whom Grigorovich's praise was an enormous boost in motivation, published his works under the real name from 1886 and for a time had plans to rewrite his novella The Steppe into a novel.

Works (selection)

• as Wassilij Grigorowitsch, Vasilij Grigorovič: The organ grinder of St. Petersburg. (Russian 1843.) Translated by Heinrich Riggenbach. Sanssouci, Zurich 1978 ISBN 3725403201
• The village. Russian Деревня novella, 1846
• Anton the unlucky one. Russian Антон-Горемыка novella, 1847
• The fishermen. Russian Рыбаки Roman, 1853
• The resettled. Russian Переселенцы Roman, 1855
• The boy from Gutta-percha (Russian Гуттаперчевый мальчик ; novella, 1893)

Web links

Commons : Dmitri Grigorowitsch  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Website about Grigorovich (Russian)
• Entry at hrono.info (Russian)
• Collection of works by Grigorowitsch (Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Anton Čechov: Letters in five volumes, Zurich 1979. Vol. I, p. 464f.
2. ↑ The two German editions abbreviate the author's first name with "DB". Translated by Auguste Zenker. Hartleben , Pesth 1859 & Bibliographische Anstalt Adolph Schumann, Leipzig (no year, approx. 1900)