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.
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