Apollon Alexandrovich Grigoriev is one of the most famous Russian theater and literary critics of the 19th century. He is considered the founder of the so-called organic criticism. In addition, he studied versification and wrote autobiographical prose. We will talk about the life and work of this person in this article. We will also consider his works on the works of Pushkin and Ostrovsky.

Apollon Grigoriev: biography. Childhood

The future critic was born in 1822 in Moscow. This event was very dramatic. The fact is that Tatyana Andreevna, the daughter of a serf who served as a coachman for his father, became the mother of Apollon Alexandrovich. Alexander himself loved the girl very much, but they could only get married a year after the birth of their son. Thus, Apollo was not only illegitimate, but he could also be recorded as a serf. Fearing this, the parents sent the child to the Moscow Orphanage, all the pupils of which were enrolled in the bourgeois class.

Immediately after the wedding, the parents returned the child from the orphanage. Therefore, he stayed there for only a year. However, he was able to get rid of his petty-bourgeois title only in 1850. In addition, throughout his youth he was constantly reminded of his low birth.

University years

In 1838, Apollon Grigoriev, without graduating from the gymnasium, successfully passed the entrance exams to Moscow University, after which he was admitted to the Faculty of Law. Initially, he was going to enter the literary, but his father insisted that his son get a more lucrative profession.

Studying became for Grigoriev the only way to get rid of an inferiority complex and stand out from his peers not with his low origin, but with his knowledge. However, everything was not so simple. Some were more talented than him, for example, A.A. Fet and Ya.P. Polonsky. Others boasted of noble origin. All of them had a great advantage - they were full students, Apollo was a simple listener.

First love and graduation

In 1842, Apollon Grigoriev received an invitation to Dr. Korsh's house. There he met his daughter Antonina and immediately fell in love with the girl. She was 19 years old and very beautiful. It is to this girl that the first love poems of the writer are dedicated. In them, Grigoriev is frank to an extreme degree: he is either sure of reciprocity on the part of Antonina (for example, “I have a secret over you ...”), then he understands that she is a stranger to him. In the doctor's family, everyone annoyed him, except for his beloved. Nevertheless, he was there every day. However, his hopes were not destined to come true, the girl did not reciprocate.

In 1842, Apollon Alexandrovich Grigoriev graduated from the university and received a Ph.D. He is no longer a tradesman. Then he was in charge of the university library for a year, which was a very honorable position. And in 1843 he was elected secretary of the Council of Moscow University by competition.

However, he did not live up to expectations. In his work, he showed slovenliness and disregard for his paper-bureaucratic duties. He also managed to get a lot of debt.

Debut

The poet Apollon Grigoriev, one might say, was officially born in August 1843, when his poems were first published in the Moskvityanin magazine. True, he then published under the pseudonym A. Trismegistov.

In 1845, Grigoriev begins to collaborate with Otechestvennye Zapiski and Repertoire and Pantheon, where he publishes his poems and his first critical articles.

In 1846 the first collection of the poet's poems was published. However, criticism meets him rather coolly and does not take him seriously. After that, Grigoriev began not only to write himself, but to translate foreign poets, including Shakespeare, Byron, Molière, etc.

In 1847 he moved to Moscow from St. Petersburg and tried to settle down. Marries Lydia Korsh, Antonina's sister. In 1950 he began working at Moskvityanin.

The struggle of critical schools

Apollon Grigoriev, whose poems were not very popular at that time, became the main theorist of the Moskvityanin. At the same time, a fierce struggle began with the St. Petersburg magazines. Most often, it was Grigoriev who was attacked by opponents. The war was fought on an ideological level, but Petersburg criticism was rather weak, with the exception of Apollon Alexandrovich himself, and could not adequately defend himself. Grigoriev's chanting of Ostrovsky was subjected to special attacks. As the years passed, the critic himself recalled these articles with shame. And he realized how stupid he was.

In the 1960s, Grigoriev's unpopularity reached its peak. His articles were completely stopped reading, and Moskvityanin closed after a while.

Collaboration with Dostoevsky and death

In 1861, the Dostoevsky brothers created the Vremya magazine, with which Apollon Grigoriev began to collaborate. Soon a circle of writers, "soil" grouped here, who treated criticism with respect. Gradually, it began to seem to Grigoriev that his broadcasts were treated coolly, and he left for Orenburg to work as a teacher for a year. After returning, he again collaborated with Vremya, but not for long: the magazine was closed in 1863.

Grigoriev began to write reviews of productions at Yakor, which were an unexpected success. He analyzed the actors' play in detail, showing a delicate taste in his assessments.

In 1864, the project "Time" returned under a new name - "Epoch". Grigoriev again becomes the "first critic" of the magazine. But he could not stand the stress, became seriously ill and died on September 25, 1864. The critic and the poet were buried at the Mitrofanevsky cemetery.

Creation

In 1876, after the death of the critic, his articles were collected in one volume by N.N. Strakhov. However, this edition was not popular. Nevertheless, among the small circles of literary critics, the importance of critical notes has greatly increased, which was written by Apollon Grigoriev. True, even they did not take his poems seriously. We can say that poetry was just a hobby for the writer, and criticism became the main thing.

However, even they failed to holistically describe Grigoriev's worldview due to the fragmentation of articles and indiscipline of thought. Many of the critics noted that his wild life was reflected in an equally unorganized work. That is why so far no one has been able to clearly formulate the idea of ​​Grigoriev's worldview. Nevertheless, the critic himself called it "organic" and opposed it to all others that existed in the 19th century.

About Ostrovsky's play "Thunderstorm"

Apollon Grigoriev expressed a lot of enthusiasm in his articles about the play "Thunderstorm". The critic brought to the fore the poetry of folk life, which is most clearly reflected in Boris' meeting with Katerina (the end of Act 3). Grigoriev saw incredible imagery, closeness to nature and poetry in the description of the meeting. He even noted that this scene was created as if by the people themselves.

The critic also noted the evolution of Ostrovsky's work and the significant difference between The Thunderstorm and the author's previous plays. Nevertheless, in an article about this play, Grigoriev deviates from the main idea, discusses abstract topics, theorizes and argues more with other critics than speaks directly about the work.

Apollon Grigoriev about Pushkin's "Caucasian Cycle"

It is Apollon Grigoriev who authored the famous phrase "Pushkin is our everything." The critic called the great poet the one who was able to portray "a complete sketch of the type of the Russian soul." He calls the "Caucasian cycle" youthful, almost childish, in Pushkin's poetry. However, he notes that even then the poet's ability to synthesize foreign cultures and through their prism to show the truly Russian soul is manifested.

Apollon Grigoriev called the "Prisoner of the Caucasus" "brilliant baby talk." He also treated other works of this time with a degree of disdain. Nevertheless, in everything the critic saw precisely the exaltation of the Russian people. And Pushkin was able to get closer to this goal, according to Grigoriev.

Apollon Alexandrovich Grigoriev (1822-64) - Russian literary and theater critic, poet. The creator of the so-called. organic criticism: articles about N. V. Gogol, A. N. Ostrovsky, A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, I. S. Turgenev, N. A. Nekrasov, A. A. Fet and others. .

According to the worldview, Apollon Grigoriev is a soil worker. In the center of Grigoriev's lyrics are the thoughts and sufferings of a romantic person: the cycle "Struggle" (published in full in 1857), including the verse-romances "Oh, talk to me at least .." and "Gypsy Hungarian", the cycle "Improvisations of a wandering romantic » (1860). Poem-confession "Up the Volga" (1862). Autobiographical prose.

Pushkin is our everything.

Apollon Grigoriev is one of the most prominent Russian critics. Born in 1822 in Moscow, where his father was secretary of the city magistrate. Having received a good home education, he graduated from Moscow University as the first candidate of the Faculty of Law and immediately received the position of Secretary of the University Board. Not such, however, was the nature of Grigoriev, to firmly settle anywhere. Having failed in love, he suddenly left for St. Petersburg, tried to get a job both in the Deanery Council and in the Senate, but, due to his completely artistic attitude to the service, he quickly lost it.

Around 1845, Apollon Grigoriev established relations with the Notes of the Fatherland, where he placed several poems, and with the Repertoire and the Pantheon. In the last journal, he wrote a number of little-than-remarkable articles in all sorts of literary genres: poems, critical articles, theatrical reports, translations, etc. In 1846, Grigoriev published his poems in a separate book, which were met with no more than condescending criticism. Subsequently, A. Grigoriev wrote a little original poetry, but translated a lot: from Shakespeare ("A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Merchant of Venice", "Romeo and Juliet"), from Byron ("Parisina", excerpts from "Childe Harold" etc.), Molière, Delavigne.

Art alone brings something new, organic into the world.

Grigoriev Apollon Alexandrovich

The lifestyle of Apollon Grigoriev during his entire stay in St. Petersburg was the most stormy, and the unfortunate Russian “weakness”, instilled by student revelry, more and more captured him. In 1847, he moved back to Moscow, became a law teacher at the 1st Moscow Gymnasium, actively collaborated in the Moscow City Listk and tried to settle down. Marriage to L.F. Korsh, the sister of famous writers, briefly made him a man of the right way of life.

In 1850, Apollon Grigoriev settled in the "Moskvityanin" and became the head of a wonderful circle, known as the "young edition of the Moskvityanin." Without any effort on the part of the representatives of the "old editors" - Pogodin and Shevyrev, somehow by itself around their magazine gathered, in the words of Grigoriev, "a young, courageous, drunk, but honest and brilliant with talents" friendly circle, which included: Ostrovsky, Pisemsky, Boris Almazov, Alexei Potekhin, Pechersky-Melnikov, Edelson, Lev Alexandrovich May, Nick. Berg, Gorbunov, and others. None of them was a Slavophil of the orthodox persuasion, but Moskvityanin attracted all of them by the fact that here they could freely substantiate their socio-political worldview on the foundation of Russian reality.

The soil is the depth of people's life, the mysterious side of the historical movement.

Grigoriev Apollon Alexandrovich

Grigoriev was the chief theoretician and standard-bearer of the circle. In the ensuing struggle with the St. Petersburg magazines, the weapons of the opponents were most often directed against him. This struggle was waged by Grigoriev on a principled basis, but he was usually answered on the basis of ridicule, both because Petersburg criticism, in the interval between Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolai Chernyshevsky, could not expose people capable of an ideological dispute, and because Grigoriev, with his exaggerations and strangeness himself gave rise to ridicule. He was especially scoffed at by the incongruous delights of Ostrovsky, who was for him not just a talented writer, but a “herald of the new truth” and whom he commented not only on articles, but also on poems, and, moreover, very bad ones - for example, “elegy - ode - satire": "Art and Truth" (1854), caused by the presentation of the comedy "Poverty is not a vice."

Lyubim Tortsov was in earnestly proclaimed here as a representative of the “pure Russian soul” and was reproached with “old Europe” and “toothless-young America, sick with dog-like old age.” Ten years later, Apollo himself recalled his trick with horror and found the only justification for it in the "sincerity of feeling." Grigoriev's antics, tactless and extremely harmful to the prestige of the ideas he defended, were one of the characteristic phenomena of his entire literary activity and one of the reasons for his low popularity.

By Orthodoxy I mean the elemental-historical principle, which is destined to live and give new forms of life.

Grigoriev Apollon Alexandrovich

And the more Grigoriev wrote, the more his unpopularity grew. It reached its apogee in the 1860s. With his most vague and confused arguments about the "organic" method, he was so out of place in the era of "seductive clarity" of tasks and aspirations that they stopped laughing at him, even stopped reading him. A great admirer of Grigoriev's talent and the editor of Vremya, Dostoevsky, who indignantly remarked that Grigoriev's articles were not directly cut, friendly suggested that he once sign a pseudonym and, at least in such a contraband way, draw attention to his articles. A. Grigoriev wrote in the "Moskvityanin" until its termination in 1856, after which he worked in the "Russian Conversation", "Library for Reading", the original "Russian Word", where for some time he was one of the three editors, in the "Russian World ”, “Svetoche”, “Son of the Fatherland” by Starchevsky, “Russian Herald” by Katkov, but he did not manage to settle down anywhere.

In 1861, the Dostoevsky brothers' Vremya appeared, and Grigoriev seemed to once again enter a solid literary marina. As in "Moskvityanin", a whole circle of "pochvennik" writers - Nikolai Strakhov, Dmitry Averkiev, Fyodor Dostoevsky and others - were grouped here, connected with each other both by common sympathies and antipathies, and by personal friendship. They all treated Grigoriev with sincere respect. Soon, however, he felt in this environment some kind of cold attitude towards his mystical broadcasts, and in the same year he left for Orenburg as a teacher of Russian language and literature in the cadet corps. Not without enthusiasm, Grigoriev set to work, but quickly cooled off, and a year later he returned to St. Petersburg and again began to live a hectic life of literary bohemia, up to and including sitting in a debtor's prison.

One art embodies in its creations what is unknown in the air of the era.

Grigoriev Apollon Alexandrovich

In 1863 "Time" was banned. Apollon Grigoriev migrated to the weekly "Anchor". He edited the newspaper and wrote theatrical reviews, which unexpectedly had great success, thanks to the extraordinary animation that Grigoriev brought to the reporter's routine and the dryness of theatrical marks. He analyzed the acting of actors with the same thoroughness and with the same passionate pathos with which he treated the phenomena of other arts. At the same time, in addition to his delicate taste, he showed great acquaintance with German and French theorists of stage art. In 1864 Vremya was resurrected in the form of the Epoch. Grigoriev again takes on the role of the "first critic", but not for long. The binge, which turned directly into a physical, painful illness, broke Grigoriev's mighty body: on September 25, 1864, he died and was buried at the Mitrofanevsky cemetery, next to the same victim of wine - the poet Mei.

Scattered in various and mostly unreadable journals, Grigoriev's articles were collected in 1876 by N.N. Insurance in one volume. If the publication was successful, it was supposed to release further volumes, but this intention has not yet been realized. Grigoriev's unpopularity among the general public thus continues. But in a close circle of people who are especially interested in literature, the importance of Grigoriev has increased significantly, in comparison with his downtroddenness during his lifetime. It is not easy to give any precise formulation of Grigoriev's critical views for many reasons. Clarity has never been part of Grigoriev's critical talent, and the extreme confusion and obscurity of his exposition did not scare the public away from his articles for nothing.

A certain idea of ​​the main features of Grigoriev's worldview is also hindered by the complete indiscipline of thought in his articles. With the same carelessness with which he burned through his physical strength, he squandered his mental wealth, not giving himself the trouble to draw up an exact outline of the article, not having the strength to refrain from the temptation to talk at once about the questions encountered in passing. Due to the fact that a significant part of his articles are placed in Moskvityanin, Vremya and Epoch, where either he himself or his friends were at the head of the business, these articles are directly striking in their disorder and carelessness. He himself was well aware of the lyrical disorder of his writings, he himself once described them as "careless articles, written wide open", but he liked this as a guarantee of their complete "sincerity".

In all his literary life, Apollon Grigoriev did not intend to clarify his worldview in any definite way. It was so obscure even to his closest friends and admirers that his last article, The Paradoxes of Organic Criticism (1864), as usual, unfinished and dealing with a thousand things besides the main subject, is a response to Dostoevsky’s invitation to set out, finally, a critical profession de foi his.

Grigoriev himself more and more willingly called his criticism "organic", in contrast to both the camp of "theoreticians" - Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Pisarev, and "aesthetic" criticism, which defends the principle of "art for art's sake", and from criticism "historical" , by which he meant Belinsky. Belinsky Grigoriev put unusually high. He called him "an immortal fighter of ideas", "with a great and powerful spirit", "with a truly brilliant nature." But Belinsky saw in art only a reflection of life, and the very concept of life for him was too direct and "holological." According to Grigoriev, “life is something mysterious and inexhaustible, an abyss that absorbs every finite mind, an immense expanse in which the logical conclusion of any smart head often disappears, like a wave in the ocean - something even ironic and at the same time full of love. which produces from itself worlds after worlds”... Accordingly, “the organic view recognizes creative, direct, natural, vital forces as its starting point. In other words: not one mind, with its logical requirements and the theories generated by them, but the mind plus life and its organic manifestations.

However, Apollon Grigoriev strongly condemned the “serpentine position: what is - it is reasonable”. He recognized the mystical admiration of the Slavophils for the Russian folk spirit as “narrow” and only put Khomyakov high, and that because he “one of the Slavophiles combined the thirst for the ideal in an amazing way with faith in the limitlessness of life and therefore did not settle down on ideals” Konstantin Aksakov and others. In Victor Hugo's book on Shakespeare, Grigoriev saw one of the most complete formulations of the "organic" theory, whose followers he also considered Joseph Renin, Emerson and Carlyle. And the "original, huge ore" of organic theory, according to Grigoriev, is "Schelling's works in all phases of his development." Grigoriev proudly called himself a student of this "great teacher." From the admiration for the organic power of life in its various manifestations, Grigoriev’s conviction follows that the abstract, naked truth, in its pure form, is inaccessible to us, that we can only assimilate the colored truth, the expression of which can only be national art. Pushkin is by no means great because of the size of his artistic talent: he is great because he has transformed in himself a whole range of foreign influences into something completely independent. In Pushkin, for the first time, "our Russian physiognomy, the true measure of all our social, moral and artistic sympathies, a complete outline of the type of the Russian soul" was isolated and clearly identified. That is why Grigoriev dwelled with special love on Belkin's personality, which Belinsky hardly commented on, on The Captain's Daughter and Dubrovsky. With the same love he dwelled on Maxim Maksimych from "A Hero of Our Time" and with particular hatred - on Pechorin as one of those "predatory" types that are completely alien to the Russian spirit.

Art, by its very essence, is not only national - it is even local. Every talented writer is inevitably "the voice of a well-known soil, locality, which has a right in the life of the whole people, as a type, as a color, as an ebb, a shade." Reducing art in this way to almost unconscious creativity, Apollon Grigoriev did not even like to use the words: influence, as something too abstract and not very spontaneous, but introduced a new term "ventilation". Together with Tyutchev, Grigoriev exclaimed that nature “is not a cast, not a soulless face”, that directly and directly it has a soul, it has freedom, it has love, it has a language. True talents are embraced by these organic "trends" and echo them consonantly in their works. But since a truly talented writer is an elemental echo of organic forces, he must certainly reflect some still unknown side of the national-organic life of a given people, he must say a "new word." Therefore, Grigoriev considered each writer primarily in relation to whether he said "a new word." The most powerful "new word" in the latest Russian literature was said by Ostrovsky; he discovered a new, unknown world, to which he treated not negatively, but with deep love.

The true meaning of Grigoriev is in the beauty of his own spiritual personality, in a deeply sincere striving for a boundless and bright ideal. Stronger than all the confused and vague reasoning of Apollon Grigoriev is the charm of his moral being, which is a truly "organic" penetration by the best principles of the high and sublime.

Apollon Alexandrovich Grigoriev - quotes

Art alone brings something new, organic into the world.

Ostrovsky, alone in the present literary era, has his own firm, new and at the same time ideal worldview, with a special shade, conditioned both by the data of the era, and, perhaps, by the data of the nature of the poet himself. We will call this shade, without any hesitation, the fundamental Russian world outlook, healthy and calm, humorous without morbidity, direct without infatuation to one extreme or another, ideal, finally, in the just sense of idealism, without false grandiosity or just as false sentimentality.

The soil is the depth of people's life, the mysterious side of the historical movement.

By Orthodoxy I mean the elemental-historical principle, which is destined to live and give new forms of life.

One art embodies in its creations what is unknown in the air of the era.

This collection includes beautiful lines about love addressed by A. Pushkin, F. Tyutchev, Y. Polonsky, Af. Fetom, Ap. Grigoriev to his beloved. Many of these poems sounded later in songs and romances.

    The music of love, multiplied by the music of the verse, is the best music that has ever been carried over the expanses of Russia. This collection includes beautiful lines about love addressed by Pushkin, Tyutchev, Polonsky, Fet, Apollon Grigoriev to their beloved. Many of these poems sounded later in songs and romances. We sing them today, enjoying the brilliant creations of our favorite poets.

    The textbook describes industrial types of deposits of ferrous, nonferrous, rare, precious and radioactive metals. For each metal, historical and economic data, information on geochemistry and mineralogy, industrial types of deposits and metallogeny are given. The most representative deposits of Russia and foreign countries are characterized. The textbook consists of six sections. Section 1. Ferrous metals compiled by V. M. Grigoriev; section II. Non-ferrous metals - V. M. Grigoriev (aluminum and magnesium) and V. V. Avdonin (nickel, cobalt, copper, lead and zinc, tin, tungsten, molybdenum, bismuth, mercury and antimony); section III. Rare metals - N. A. Solodov; section IV. Noble metals - Zh. V. Seminsky; section V. Radioactive metals - V. E. Boytsov, section VI. Metallogeny - V. I. Starostin. For students of geological specialties of universities and geologists involved in the study, prospecting and exploration of ore-bearing territories, ore deposits and geological maintenance of mines. 2nd edition, revised and enlarged.

    One thing is good - today he will part with Grigoriev. He will say: he cannot provide any evidence of his wife's infidelity, all her movements and meetings were of a completely innocent nature ... Drawing a picture of parting with a client, Shibaev understood that unforeseen complications could happen. Suppose they were seen together with Irina and reported to the banker. Then… Shibaev vaguely imagined the consequences. Too bad he didn't tell her that her husband had hired him to keep an eye on her! He tried, but she interrupted: Shut up, come here! And then it got too busy… Shibaev entered the familiar, dimly lit hall. He resolutely went into the room, driven by one desire - to explain himself to Grigoriev as soon as possible. He lay on the couch with his head thrown back and arms outstretched in a circle of red light. Shibaev realized with horror: there was a corpse in front of him ...

    Dance on smoldering coals One thing is good - today he will part with Grigoriev. He will say: he cannot provide any evidence of his wife's infidelity ... What if they were seen together with Irina and reported to the banker? Then… Shibaev vaguely imagined the consequences. It's a pity he didn't tell her that her husband hired him to follow her!.. Shibaev entered the dimly lit hall. He resolutely went into the room, driven by one desire - to explain himself to Grigoriev as soon as possible. He lay on the couch with his head thrown back and his arms outstretched. Shibaev realized with horror: there was a corpse in front of him ... Dima, the killer of dummies, fell in love with Lydia. For life, passionately, sacrificially ... Lydia was going to leave her husband, but she was stopped by the thought of money ... Before the New Year, she and Dima broke up: they thought - for a few days, it turned out - forever ... swing. The guests enjoyed themselves selflessly, and only businessman Yuri Rogov was worried - he could not find his wife in any way ... She was lying on the floor under the stairs. Lydia's neck was cinched by a long shiny scarf, red to match the dress. The dead woman was beautiful...

. Mason. Master of Pathological Speech.

biography

Having received a good home education, Grigoriev graduated from Moscow University as the first candidate of the Faculty of Law ().

There were provincial actors, and merchants, and petty officials with swollen faces - and all this petty rabble, along with writers, indulged in colossal, monstrous drunkenness ... Drunkenness united everyone, they flaunted drunkenness and were proud.

Grigoriev was the chief theorist of the circle. During these years, Grigoriev put forward the theory of “organic criticism”, according to which art, including literary art, should grow organically from the national soil. Such are Ostrovsky and his predecessor Pushkin with his "meek people" depicted in The Captain's Daughter. Completely alien to the Russian character, according to Grigoriev, the Byronic "predatory type", most clearly represented in Russian literature by Pechorin.

Grigoriev commented on Ostrovsky not only with articles, but also with poems: for example, with the “elegy-ode-satire” “Art and Truth” (), caused by the presentation of the comedy “Poverty is not a vice”. Lyubim Tortsov was proclaimed here as a representative of the “pure Russian soul” and was reproached with “old Europe” and “toothless-young America, sick with dog-like old age.” Ten years later, Grigoriev himself recalled his trick with horror and found the only justification for it in the "sincerity of feeling."

In "Moskvityanin" Grigoriev wrote until his termination in, after which he worked in "Russian conversation", "Library for reading", the original "Russian Word", where for some time he was one of the three editors, in "Russian World", "Light" , "Son of the Fatherland" by A. V. Starchevsky, "Russian Bulletin" by M. N. Katkov.

S wrote in the magazine "Vremya" of the Dostoevsky brothers. A whole circle of writers of "soil" was grouped here - Nikolai Strakhov, Dmitry Averkiev, Dostoevsky. In the magazines "Time" and "Epoch" Grigoriev published literary-critical articles and reviews, memoirs, led the column "Russian Theater".

V went to Orenburg as a teacher of the Russian language and literature in the cadet corps. A year later he returned to St. Petersburg. Grigoriev edited the magazine "Anchor".

Apollon Alexandrovich Grigoriev (1822 - 1864) is a very controversial phenomenon in Russian literature. A poet and translator, in his time he was known as a talented theater critic. From his pen came a number of romances that are still popular today.

early years

The future poet was born in 1822 in Moscow. He was the illegitimate son of a titular councilor who fell in love with the daughter of a simple serf coachman. The boy spent the first months of his life in the Orphanage. However, after some time, his parents still managed to marry and pick up their son.

The boy grew up in an atmosphere of love. He received an excellent education at home and easily entered Moscow University. Here he worked with Fet, Solovyov, Polonsky. Joint hobbies for literature brought them together.

After graduating from the Faculty of Law in 1942, the future writer remained to work in his native educational institution. First he was the head of the library, and then the secretary of the University Council.

Being an impulsive person, Grigoriev once abruptly broke and left for St. Petersburg. It is believed that the impetus for this was unsuccessful love and the desire to escape from the care of parents.

First creative steps

His first poem "Good night!" Grigoriev published in 1843. But he decided to devote himself seriously to writing only two years later.

The first collection of his poems, on which the author had high hopes, was not to the taste of either the audience or the public. This incredibly offended Grigoriev, but he still found the strength to admit the imperfection of his work. In the future, he preferred to engage in translations and succeeded in this.

Meanwhile, the wild life in St. Petersburg did not at all contribute to his self-improvement. Therefore, Grigoriev decided to return to Moscow. Here he married, began working as a teacher and theater critic in the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski.

"Moskvityanin"

In the early 1950s, a circle of young authors and people of various strata and professions formed around the Moskvityanin magazine, headed by Grigoriev. Despite the beautiful words that the circle exists to discuss and express common ideas, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, it was only a cover for unrestrained drunkenness.

Meanwhile, Grigoriev's own work did not attract readers. And his discussions about national culture against the backdrop of drunken antics were so boring that even friends, in the end, preferred to bypass their former comrade.

Dostoevsky, who believed that Grigoriev's writings were quite interesting, even recommended that he use a pseudonym. It was the only way to bring them to the public.

In 1856 "Moskvityanin" was closed.

Later life and work

After the closure of the magazine, Grigoriev worked for a number of other publications. He found a permanent home in Vremya, edited by his friend Dostoyevsky.

There also existed a certain circle of like-minded people. And they even accepted Grigorovich into their ranks. However, it soon began to seem to him that his ideas did not resonate in their hearts. He even imagined that he was kept with him only out of condescension.

Not wanting to put up with this, Grigoriev dropped everything and moved to Orenburg. Here he enthusiastically began to teach in the cadet corps, but he did not last long. The writer decided to return to St. Petersburg, where bohemian life again sucked him into its funnel.

In the following years, his notes on theatrical performances gained great popularity among readers. Criticism Grigoriev was fresh, well-aimed and filled with humor. Thanks to his close acquaintance with world literature, he analyzed the productions and the acting of the actors with skill. The audience felt a professional in him and trusted his judgment. Perhaps for the first time Grigoriev felt himself on a horse.

Death

Unfortunately, his triumph did not last long. The body of the writer, broken by many years of unrestrained drunkenness, still gave up. In September 1864, Grigoriev died and was buried first at the Mitrofanevsky cemetery, and then his ashes were transferred to Volkovo.

After the death of the writer, his friends collected numerous articles written by him into one collection and published it. It was a kind of tribute to the memory of a man who so mediocrely squandered the talent given to him.


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