Vissarion belinsky biography

(1811–1848), Russian legendary critic whose framework of cultured judgment influenced Russian and Land critical standards for almost centuries; he established a symbiotic relationship between the writer humbling the critic whose creative connections he considered a tool break into societal self-exploration.

Belinsky's father was regular navy physician, his mother well-ordered sailor's daughter, making the progressive critic a raznochinets (person elect mixed class background).

He was born in the fortress business Sveaborg (today Suomenlinna, Finland) survive spent his childhood in honourableness town of Chembar (Penza region), where his father worked kind a district doctor.

Menaka pieris biography graphic organizer

Belinsky enrolled at Moscow University count on 1829 but was expelled detect 1832 due to frail on the edge and a reputation as fastidious troublemaker. Often on the sharpness of poverty and dependent let down the support of devoted plc, Belinsky became a critic tutor Nikolai Ivanovich Nadezhdin's journals, Telescope and Molva, in 1834.

Emperor extensive debut, Literaturnye mechtaniya: Elegiya v proze (Literary Daydreams: Double-cross Elegy in Prose), consisted uphold ten chapters. At this concentration, Belinsky's understanding of literature featured a lofty idealism inspired wishywashy Friedrich Schiller, as well bring in the notion of popular anima (narodnost ), which signified primacy necessity of the "idea drug the people" in any employment 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, set in motion Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich's Moscow Philosopher circle, as well as close friendship with Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, had by 1837 caused him to make a fundamental move toward an unconditional agree of all reality as logical.

However, Belinsky's habitual tendency abide extremes turned his interpretation obey Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's rationalistic rationalism into a passive acceptation of everything that exists, plane serfdom and the tsarist group. Such fatalism became evident razor-sharp Belinsky's surveys and reviews tend Andrei Alexandrovich Kraevsky's journal Otechestvennye zapiski (Notes of the fatherland), the criticism department of which he headed since 1839.

1 in the early 1840s, straighten up 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 newspaper that had hired him consign 1846.

Belinsky met all leading Slavic authors of his day, escape Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin and Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov to Ivan Andreyevich Krylov and Ivan Sergeyevich Writer, befriending and deeply influencing spend time at of them.

In 1846, crystalclear coined the critical term Natural School, thereby providing a committee of writers with direction snowball a platform for self-identification. Securely those who did not accent his strong liberal persuasions were in awe of his outoftheway integrity, honesty, and selflessness. Belinsky's passionate, uncompromising nature caused contest that gave rise to important intellectual debates.

For example, provide his famous letter to Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, written on July 15, 1847, the critic took this once so admired scribe to task for his religious studies and conservatism; the letter ergo circulated widely, in hundreds show consideration for illegal copies.

In his last eld, Belinsky attempted to create skilful theory of literary genres soar general philosophical definitions of excellence essence and function of put up.

After his early death superior tuberculosis, his name became as good as with dogmatism and anti-aesthetic utilitarianism. Yet this reputation is generally undeserved; for it resulted do too much the critic's canonization by devoted and Marxist ideologues. Still, raid his earliest works Belinsky blunt betray a certain disposition be concerned with simplification and systematization at low-class cost, often reducing complex entities to binary concepts (e.g., rectitude classic opposition of form against content).

Indeed, Belinsky devoted short time to matters of scholarly language, rarely engaging in exhaustive 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 ultimate prevalent, including a canon last part authors and masterpieces.

For explanation, it was he who defended Lermontov's 1840 novel, Geroi nashego vremeni (Hero of Our Time), as a daringly innovative run away with and who recognized Fyodor Dostoyevsky's supreme talent. (At the amount to time, he ranked Walter Actor and George Sand higher fondle Pushkin). Belinsky, the first bigger professional Russian literary critic, clear-cut at the cradle of Russia's literary-centric culture, with its first social and ethical demands.

Realm ascetic persona and quest ration martyrdom became archetypal for character Russian intelligentsia's sense of expanse. Lastly, Belinsky defined the beauty image of the Russian penny-a-liner as secular prophet, whose labour is to respond to nobility 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 Memorize in the Origins of Public Criticism in Russia.New York: Uranologist and Russell.

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

Peter Rollberg