Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin

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Portrait of Saltykov Shchedrin by Ivan Kramskoi

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin ( Russian Михаил Евграфович Салтыков-Щедрин , scientific. Transliteration Mikhail Evgrafovič Saltykov-Ščedrin ; emphasis: Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin , born 15 jul. / 27. January  1826 greg. In Spas-Ugol , Ujesd Kalyazin ; † April 28 . jul / 10. May  1889 greg. in Saint Petersburg ) nickname: N. Shchedrin , was a Russian writer and satirist.

Life

Saltykow-Shchedrin came from a noble landowner family and grew up on his father's estate in Spas-Ugol in Central Russia, which is now part of the northern Moscow Oblast . At the age of ten he was sent to a posh high school in Moscow , where he performed so well that two years later he was allowed to study at the renowned Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum near Saint Petersburg . There Saltykov became enthusiastic about literature at an early age and initially wrote poetry. In addition, in his youth he made the acquaintance of the well-known literary critic Vissarion Belinski , which - together with his own childhood experiences on the family estate, where the misery and oppression of the peasants could not be overlooked - the later revolutionary views of Saltykov and his aversion to the im The Russian empire at that time had a decisive influence on the existing serfdom .

After graduating from the Lyceum, Saltykov worked in the Chancellery of the Ministry of War in Petersburg from 1844. At the same time he tried to publish his early works, which he succeeded for example in 1844 and 1845 with the publication of some poems in the literary newspaper Sowremennik ("Zeitgenosse"). However, he soon moved away from poetry. He enthusiastically studied contemporary writings by French utopian socialists and for a time joined the circle of so-called Petraschewzen around Michail Petraschewski . At the end of the 1840s he published shorter prose works and essays for the first time. Some of them were classified by the tsarist censors as too free-thinking , for which Saltykov was transferred from Petersburg to Vyatka in 1848 . There he worked in the government administration ; During this time he no longer wrote, but was able to process a large number of his impressions from provincial life in later works.

After the death of Tsar Nicholas I in 1855, Saltykov was allowed to move back to Petersburg. He served in the Ministry of the Interior, where he took part in the preparation of the peasant reform carried out in 1861 (which, among other things, consisted of the abolition of serfdom). As the first literary work after his exile, he published the sketches from the governorate under the pseudonym N. Shchedrin . In the course of the 1860s Saltykov worked in the civil service in several central Russian governorates, including as vice governor in Tver and Ryazan . At the same time he wrote his first satirical works, in which he also denounced the corruption known to him from his own experience as a civil servant . Until 1868 he published his writings mainly in the Sovremennik , then in the journal Otetschestwennye Sapiski ("Vaterländische Annalen"), where he worked closely with the socially critical folk poet Nekrasov , who was also the magazine's editor-in-chief.

Also in 1868, Saltykov resigned from civil service and from that point on devoted himself exclusively to writing. After Nekrasov's death, Saltykov became his successor in the role of editor-in-chief of Otetschestvennyje Sapiski . During this period, essentially in the 1870s and early 1880s, he wrote and published his most famous literary works, including The History of a City and Messrs . Golovlyov . In 1884 the magazine was classified by the censors as too liberal and banned, which hit Saltykov very hard and, according to his own description, also impaired his health. He published his later works mainly in the magazine Westnik Jewropy ("European news sheet"), including his last novel Province of Poschechonia . He died in Saint Petersburg in 1889 and, according to his wishes, was buried next to Ivan Turgenev in the Volkovo Cemetery (section "Literary Bridges") .

plant

Saltykov Shchedrin's tomb

Saltykov's first major work, the Sketches from the Gouvernement (Russian Губернские очерки , German in 1860), was highly valued by contemporary revolutionary critics Nikolai Tschernyshevsky and Nikolai Dobroljubow . They represent the literary result of his exile in Vyatka, with which he openly declared war on the tsarist autocracy. In the years of his work at Sovremennik and Otetschestwennyje Zapiski Saltykov created his most famous masterpieces, the novels The history of a city ( История одного города , 1870 German), Messrs Tashkent ( Господа ташкентцы , 1869/1872 German) and Messrs Golowljow ( Господа Головлёвы , 1875/1880 German), in which his revolutionary-democratic views and his combative criticism of the social conditions expressed in his artistic combination of ruthless satire and journalistic-political sharpness.

An apt psychological characteristics of the individual social groups of Tsarist Russia gave Saltykov in the cycle of satirical political mores pictures Pompadour and Pompadourin ( Помпадуры и помпадурши , 1863/1874 German), in the family chronicle Province Poschechonien ( старина Пошехонская , 1887/1889 German) and in his fairy tales (also: The Virtues and Vices ; Russian Сатирические сказки , 1882/1886) as well as in many other satirical works. The fairy tales , which found echo early on in the German labor movement, castigate the parasitic bureaucracy, the aristocratic followers of serfdom, the frightened petty-bourgeois intelligentsia and the salable liberals. In the story the plight of the masses is portrayed, at the same time Saltykov expresses his belief in revolutionary change and humanity. Thus Saltykov is considered one of the most consistent combative satirists of Russian critical realism.

Saltykov's best-known drama is the four-act comedy Pasuchin's Death (1857).

Honors

After Saltykow-Shchedrin, among other things, the Saint Petersburg Saltykow-Shchedrin library was named. Also a side street off Karl-Marx-Straße in Berlin-Neukölln.

Web links

Commons : Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail Yevgrafovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES N. Shchedrin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian writer and satirist
DATE OF BIRTH January 27, 1826
PLACE OF BIRTH Spas Ugol
DATE OF DEATH May 10, 1889
Place of death St. Petersburg