His most important works were a romance, a dramatic poem, Don Juan,—and the dramatic trilogy, The Death of Ivan the Terrible, Tsar Fedor Ivanowitsch and Tsar Boris.
APOLLON NIKOLAJEWITSCH MAIKOW was born June 4, 1821, at Moscow. His father was a painter; his brothers had rendered important service to Russian literature in history and criticism. As a boy he was instructed in the literature of Russia by the afterward famous Gontscharow. At the age of fifteen he began to write verse. His original intention was to become a painter, but the weakness of his eyes and his increased devotion to poetry decided him otherwise.
He studied jurisprudence at the University of St. Petersburg for several years, and his final collection of poems was published in 1842, which was greeted with enthusiasm by the famous critic Belinsky. In the same year, using the gold he received from the Emperor Nicholas I, he went abroad. He spent nearly a year in Italy, heard lectures at the College de France and the Sorbonne during his stay in Paris, and spent some time in Prague. For a time he served in the Ministry of Finance and from 1852 in the Foreign Censorship office at Petersburg; being President of that office at the time of his death which occurred in March, 1897.
NIKOLAI ALEXAJEWITSCH NEKRASSOW was born in November, 1821, in a village of a Polish province. His father married the daughter of a Polish magnate against the opposition of her parents. The marriage turned out unhappily. There were fourteen children and the poet always thought of his mother as a saint and his father as a tyrant,—which appears in several of his lyric poems. His childhood was spent in Greschenewo where the family had inherited an estate. He was sent to the government school or gymnasium, only until the fifth class. At sixteen he went to Petersburg to pursue a military career by the will of his father. His desire for knowledge drove him toward the University, but his father refused his every request, and during his student years he went hungry very often. He wrote vaudevilles for the Alexander theatre under an assumed name, and not until 1840 published his first volume of verse. In his fortieth year he brought out an anthology of Russian poets that was sufficiently successful to give him a living. In his fiftieth year his health seemed failing, and he went abroad to Italy, where the disaster seemed happily averted. The journal with which he had been connected being now suppressed, he became connected with another for two years. In December, 1877, he died, widely mourned and called "the singer of Russian folk song."
IVAN SSAWITSCH NIKITIN was born October 3, 1824, at Woronesh. Though his life was poor in external circumstances, it was all the richer within. His best biography is his own work, "From the Diary of a Seminarist." His life opened under rather auspicious influences, for his father owned a candle factory and was so prosperous that his business amounted yearly to a hundred thousand roubles. A shoemaker taught the precocious boy to read, and he was put to school at first in the local school, but this was exchanged in 1841 for the Seminary. Both here and at home he was, however, more cudgelled than educated, and his soul was threatened with suffocation in scholastic confusion. Only one consolation was always his; literature and poetry. While here the first great misfortune befell. His father's business failed, the house was turned into an inn and Ivan, instead of attending the University, as he had expected, was obliged to sell candles, not only in his father's shop, but as that was soon taken from him, even in the market place. After a few months his mother died and his father sacrificed his last remaining possessions for drink. He insulted and even attacked his son, bidding him leave his house, and the poor boy was compelled to render the most menial service to all. For ten long years this condition lasted, yet Ivan remained a poet!
In 1853 at the opening of the Crimean war, his patriotic hymn, "To Russia," appeared in the Woronisher Times. This was received with applause and a circle of intelligent men gathered about him who were friendly and helpful in their disposition toward him. In 1856 Count Alexis Tolstoy, the great poet, prepared a volume of his poems for publication and the imperial family sent him costly gifts. His condition became improved and by 1859 he had amassed a capital of two thousand roubles, with which he opened a book-shop, hoping to enlighten the darkness of his country. To this ideal he gave all his strength and his money. In 1860 Nikitin went to Petersburg and Moscow to establish connections with the leading publishing houses; from which no small literary acquaintance arose. In the Spring of 1861 he suffered from a throat trouble which developed into bronchial tuberculosis of which he died on October 16, 1861. His trials with his father and those caused by his father's extreme intemperance were considered to have greatly hastened his lamented death.
CONSTANTINE MICHAILOWITSCH FOFANOW was born at Petersburg, May 30, 1862. He is not a highly educated man, and is now living, after a series of misfortunes, happily surmounted, at Gatschina.
SEMIJON JAKOLOWITSCH NADSON was born at Petersburg, December 26, 1862. On his father's side he was of Hebrew extraction. His grandfather had formerly embraced the orthodox faith, and his father, from whom he inherited his musical talent, died in an asylum, in the extreme youth of the poet. His mother, after contracting a second marriage, which ended unhappily, died at the age of thirty-one, of consumption. The boy learned to read and write at the age of four, from an old servant. At nine he had read widely. In 1875 he suffered from religious doubts, and even lost his faith in humanity, but his violin and Nature were still of unfailing support even in this crisis. Before her death his mother had placed him in the second Cadet Corps as a "pensionnaire." At first he did well, but soon he began to neglect his school work for poetry. A poem of his soon appeared in print, and that same year he fell in love with a girl of sixteen who died with rapid consumption; the M.D.B. of his poems. Smitten by this blow, he left the school and went to the Pawlonische Military School. Here he contracted a lung trouble and was sent to the Caucas. He remained there a year, but was always haunted by thought of the military career before him, for which he was morally and physically unfit. His dear dream of the University could not be realized, and on his return he went again to the military school for two years of camp life and maneuvres. In September, 1882, he was made second lieutenant of a Caspian regiment and stationed at Kronstadt. Already the young poet was making himself known through the journals, and in 1884 he left off his hated military service. For a short time he was connected with Die Woche, but already signs of tuberculosis had appeared and he found that a journey abroad was indispensable. On the funds raised by influential friends, and the prize awarded him by the Russian Literary Society, he was enabled to go abroad this same year, accompanied by a friend of his mother. He went to Wiesbaden, Nice, Mentonne, Berne, was operated upon three times for the trouble in his foot, but to no avail. His only desire became to return to his native land to die. In the summer of 1885, he went back to Kiew, where for a time he seemed to improve and was able to write some criticisms for the journals. When his left lung gave out, he moved to Yalta in the Crimea. Here he received the glad news that the Academy had given him the Pushkin award of five hundred roubles.
In November he bequeathed all he had written to the literary fund; whose Nadson capital now amounts to more than two hundred thousand roubles from the sale of his works. He died in January, 1889. His body was brought to Petersburg and interred with public honors. His grave, which is near other celebrated Russian writers, is adorned by a bust from the hand of the famous sculptor Antokolsky. His poetry enjoys a popularity beyond that of any one poet in Russian, and has been carried to the eighteenth edition of one hundred and twenty thousand volumes each.
Sketches of the lives of the poets here represented by a single poem are omitted as unnecessary to enjoyment of their work.