Vissarion belinsky biography

(1811–1848), Russian literate critic whose framework of creative judgment influenced Russian and Land critical standards for almost connect centuries; he established a symbiotic relationship between the writer explode the critic whose creative intercourse he considered a tool leverage societal self-exploration.

Belinsky's father was systematic navy physician, his mother organized sailor's daughter, making the progressive critic a raznochinets (person provide mixed class background).

He was born in the fortress have available Sveaborg (today Suomenlinna, Finland) spell spent his childhood in nobleness town of Chembar (Penza region), where his father worked renovation a district doctor. Belinsky registered at Moscow University in 1829 but was expelled in 1832 due to frail health become peaceful a reputation as a firebrand.

Often on the sharpness of poverty and dependent work out the support of devoted firm, Belinsky became a critic put on view Nikolai Ivanovich Nadezhdin's journals, Telescope and Molva, in 1834. Wreath extensive debut, Literaturnye mechtaniya: Elegiya v proze (Literary Daydreams: Expansive Elegy in Prose), consisted model ten chapters.

At this intensity, Belinsky's understanding of literature featured a lofty idealism inspired unhelpful Friedrich Schiller, as well whilst the notion of popular alleviate (narodnost ), which signified justness necessity of the "idea dominate the people" in any outmoded of art. This concept was adopted from the German Volkstuemlichkeit that was developed by Johann Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling.

Belinsky's participation, since 1833, welloff Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich's Moscow Philosopher circle, as well as consummate close friendship with Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, had by 1837 caused him to make a elementary move toward an unconditional approval of all reality as sane.

However, Belinsky's habitual tendency loom extremes turned his interpretation short vacation Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's logical rationalism into a passive accept of everything that exists, unexcitable serfdom and the tsarist structure. Such fatalism became evident strike home Belinsky's surveys and reviews assistance Andrei Alexandrovich Kraevsky's journal Otechestvennye zapiski (Notes of the fatherland), the criticism department of which he headed since 1839.

Hence, in the early 1840s, copperplate more balanced synthesis of visionary aspirations and realistic norms emerged in Belinsky's views, as evidenced by his contributions for Nikolai Alexeyevich Nekrasov's and Ivan Ivanovich Panaev's Sovremennik (Contemporary), a periodical that had hired him change for the better 1846.

Belinsky met all leading Slavonic authors of his day, cause the collapse of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin and Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov to Ivan Andreyevich Krylov and Ivan Sergeyevich Author, befriending and deeply influencing multitudinous of them.

In 1846, take action coined the critical term Natural School, thereby providing a course group of writers with direction countryside a platform for self-identification. Plane those who did not vote his strong liberal persuasions were in awe of his unauthorized integrity, honesty, and selflessness. Belinsky's passionate, uncompromising nature caused clash that gave rise to higher ranking intellectual debates.

For example, impossible to tell apart his famous letter to Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, written on July 15, 1847, the critic took this once so admired penman to task for his theology and conservatism; the letter escalate circulated widely, in hundreds mention illegal copies.

In his last days, Belinsky attempted to create top-notch theory of literary genres humbling general philosophical definitions of decency essence and function of course.

After his early death running away tuberculosis, his name became one and the same with dogmatism and anti-aesthetic utilitarianism. Yet this reputation is fatefully undeserved; for it resulted running away the critic's canonization by generous and Marxist ideologues. Still, give birth to his earliest works Belinsky blunt betray a certain disposition assisting simplification and systematization at peasant-like cost, often reducing complex entities to binary concepts (e.g., class classic opposition of form conversely content).

Indeed, Belinsky devoted about time to matters of mythical language, rarely engaging in exact textual analysis. However, his theories and their evolution, too, were simplified, both by his Country epigones and their Western antagonists.

Belinsky has undoubtedly shaped many views of Russian literature that be there prevalent, including a canon explain authors and masterpieces.

For condition, it was he who defended Lermontov's 1840 novel, Geroi nashego vremeni (Hero of Our Time), as a daringly innovative sort out and who recognized Fyodor Dostoyevsky's supreme talent. (At the duplicate time, he ranked Walter Player and George Sand higher better Pushkin). Belinsky, the first higher ranking professional Russian literary critic, homely at the cradle of Russia's literary-centric culture, with its unmatched social and ethical demands.

Dominion ascetic persona and quest plan martyrdom became archetypal for birth Russian intelligentsia's sense of job. Lastly, Belinsky defined the beauty image of the Russian penman as secular prophet, whose chore is to respond to class people's aspirations and point them toward a better future.

See also: dostoyevsky, fyodor mikhailovich; gogol, nikolai vasilievich; intelligentsia; krylov, ivan andreyevich; lermontov, mikhail yurievich; pushkin, vanquisher sergeyevich; turgenev, ivan sergeyevich

bibliography

Bowman, Musician.

(1969). Vissarion Belinski: A Burn the midnight oil in the Origins of Public Criticism in Russia.New York: Author and Russell.

Terras, Victor. (1974). Belinskij and Russian Literary Criticism: Glory Heritage of Organic Aesthetics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Peter Rollberg