Nestor Wassiljewitsch Kukolnik

Nestor Kukolnik - the portrait of Karl Brjullow .

Nestor Kukolnik ( Russian Нестор Васильевич Кукольник ; born September 8 ^jul. / 20th September  1809 ^greg. In Saint Petersburg , † December 8 ^jul. / 20th December  1868 ^greg. In Taganrog ) was a Russian novelist , poet and playwright .

Life

Kukolnik was born in 1809 as the son of a professor. He received his education in Neschin (today Ukraine ) at the Gymnasium der Wissenschaft (Prince Besborodko's Lyceum). He worked as a Russian teacher at the Vilna grammar school . In 1833 he appeared with huge success with dramatic imagination. His next fantasy, “Jacobo-Sannasar”, appeared in 1839. It was followed by a condensed five-story drama “The hand of the Almighty saved the fatherland” from the era of the interregnum, which was also extremely successful. The drama “Prince Michail Wassiljewitsch Skopin-Schuiski ” , published around 1835, was no less popular . It remained one of the most popular plays on the Russian stages until the 1960s. From 1840–1845 Kukolnik published numerous novels, short stories, dramas and poems. 1836–1842 he published “Die Künstlerische Zeitung”, and 1845–1847 - “Dagerrotyp” and “Illustratia”. In 1841 his collection of fairy tales was born, in 1842 - "The paintings of Russian painting". Kukolnik took himself as the founder of the romantic school in Russia and only accepted three geniuses: Karl Brjullow , Mikhail Glinka and himself. Nonetheless, his contemporaries from the literary elite treated him coolly: Pushkin considered his dramatic works to be bumbling , Belinsky only recognized some of the significance of his Narratives. In 1852 his historical drama "Officer Boy" was published. It was performed during the Crimean War , and the patriotic attunement of the audience ensured its success. Most of Kukolnik's works were published in the “Library for Reading” publishing house, but many were also published separately. In 1857 Kukolnik moved to Taganrog, where he died in oblivion in 1868.

Commemorative plaque on Nestor Kukolnik's residence in Taganrog

After his death, his work “The Tale of a Blue and a Green Cloth” and his novel “John III, Collector of Russian Territories” were published. In the 1880s, the majority of his stories about the epoch of Peter the Great were published in the "cheap library" of Suvorin . Some of Kukolnik's works have been translated into Swedish and Finnish. Kukolnik for himself was not a great and original person. But the huge success that accompanied his melodramas everywhere, as well as his art criticism, secure him a firm place among Russian personalities.

Kukolnik wrote the libretto for the opera of the same name by Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka , based on Pushkin's verse epic Ruslan and Lyudmila .

Works

• Prince Skopin Shuisky or Russia at the time of the false Demetrius . [Cabinet of fiction reading the latest and greatest novels of all nations. By Hermann Meynert]. Pest, Hartleben, 1852.