Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin(1799~1837)
Pushkin is usually credited with developing Russian literature. He is seen as having originated the highly nuanced level of language which characterizes Russian literature after him, and he is also credited with substantially augmenting the Russian lexicon. Whenever he found gaps in the Russian vocabulary, he devised calques. His rich vocabulary and highly-sensitive style are the foundation for modern Russian literature. His accomplishments set new records for development of the Russian language and culture. He became the father of Russian literature in the 19th century, marking the highest achievements of the 18th century and the beginning of literary process of the 19th century. He introduced Russia to all the European literary genres as well as a great number of West European writers. He brought natural speech and foreign influences to create modern poetic Russian. Though his life was brief, he left examples of nearly every literary genre of his day: lyric poetry, narrative poetry, the novel, the short story, the drama, the critical essay and even the personal letter.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov(1860~1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics.Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress."
Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemblef as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text." The plays that Chekhov wrote were not complex, and created a somewhat haunting atmosphere for the audience.
Chekhov began writing stories to earn money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations that influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.
In May 1903, Chekhov visited Moscow; the prominent lawyer Vasily Maklakov visited him almost every day. Maklakov signed Chekhov's will. By May 1904, Chekhov was terminally ill with tuberculosis. Mikhail Chekhov recalled that "everyone who saw him secretly thought the end was not far off, but the nearer [he] was to the end, the less he seemed to realise it". On 3 June, he set off with Olga for the German spa town of Badenweiler in the Black Forest in Germany, from where he wrote outwardly jovial letters to his sister Masha, describing the food and surroundings, and assuring her and his mother that he was getting better. In his last letter, he complained about the way German women dressed. Chekhov died on 15 July 1904 at the age of 44 after a long fight with tuberculosis, the same disease that killed his brother.
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy(1828~ 1910), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential authors of all time.
Born to an aristocratic family, Tolstoy achieved acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood and Youth (1852–1856), and with Sevastopol Sketches (1855), based on his experiences in the Crimean War. His War and Peace (1869), Anna Karenina (1878), and Resurrection (1899), which is based on his youthful sins, are often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction and three of the greatest novels ever written. His oeuvre includes short stories such as "Alyosha the Pot" (1911) and "After the Ball" (1911) and novellas such as Family Happiness (1859), The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), The Kreutzer Sonata (1889), The Devil (1911), and Hadji Murat (1912). He also wrote plays and essays concerning philosophical, moral and religious themes.
In the 1870s, Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work Confession (1882). His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), had a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mahatma Gandhi, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Luther King Jr., and James Bevel. He also became a dedicated advocate of Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George, which he incorporated into his writing, particularly in his novel Resurrection (1899).
Tolstoy received praise from countless authors and critics, both during his lifetime and after. Virginia Woolf called Tolstoy "the greatest of all novelists", and Gary Saul Morson referred to War and Peace as the greatest of all novels. He received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909. Tolstoy never being awarded a Nobel Prize remains a major Nobel Prize controversy.
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev(1818~1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West.
His first major publication, a short story collection titled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian realism. His novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction.
Fyodor Sologub(1863~1927) was a Russian Symbolist poet, novelist, translator, playwright and essayist. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of European fin de siècle literature and philosophy into Russian prose.
Sergey Terentyevich Semyonov(1868 ~1922) was a Russian writer and a member of the Moscow literary group Sreda.
Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin(1826~1889), born Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov and known during his lifetime by the pen name Nikolai Shchedrin, was a major Russian writer and satirist of the 19th century. He spent most of his life working as a civil servant in various capacities. After the death of poet Nikolay Nekrasov, he acted as editor of a Russian literary magazine Otechestvenniye Zapiski until the Tsarist government banned it in 1884. In his works Saltykov mastered both stark realism and satirical grotesque merged with fantasy. His most famous works, the family chronicle novel The Golovlyov Family (1880) and the novel The History of a Town (1870), also translated as Foolsburg, became important works of 19th-century fiction, and Saltykov is regarded as a major figure of Russian literary Realism.
Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak (1852~1912) was a Russian writer. He is most well known for his novels and short stories about life in the Ural Mountains.
Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin(1870~1938) was a Russian writer best known for his novels The Duel (1905) and Yama: The Pit (1915), as well as Moloch (1896), Olesya (1898), "Captain Ribnikov" (1906), "Emerald" (1907), and The Garnet Bracelet (1911) – the latter made into a 1965 movie.
Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko(1853~1921) was a Russian writer, journalist and humanitarian of Ukrainian origin. His best-known work includes the short novel The Blind Musician (1886), as well as numerous short stories based upon his experience of exile in Siberia. Korolenko was a strong critic of the Tsarist regime and in his final years of the Bolsheviks.
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov(1868~1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky, was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism.He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an author, he travelled widely across the Russian Empire, changing jobs frequently; these experiences would later influence his writing. He associated with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, both mentioned by Gorky in his memoirs.
Gorky was active in the emerging Marxist socialist movement and later supported the Bolsheviks. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. During World War I, Gorky supported pacifism and internationalism and anti-war protests. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union, being critical both of Tsarism and of the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War and the 1920s, condemning the latter for political repressions. In 1928 he returned to the USSR on Joseph Stalin's personal invitation and lived there from 1932 until his death in June 1936. After his return he was officially declared the "founder of Socialist Realism". Despite this, Gorky's relations with the Soviet regime were rather difficult: while being Stalin's public supporter, he maintained friendships with Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin, the leaders of the anti-Stalin opposition executed after Gorky's death; he also hoped to ease the Soviet cultural policies and made some efforts to defend the writers who disobeyed them, which resulted in him spending his last days under unannounced house arrest.
Gorky's most famous works are his early short stories written in the 1890s (such as "Chelkash", "Old Izergil", and "Twenty-six Men and a Girl"), the play The Lower Depths, his fictional autobiographical trilogy, My Childhood, In the World, My Universities (1913–1923), and the novel Mother (1906). Gorky himself judged some of these works as failures, and Mother has been frequently criticized; Gorky thought of Mother as one of his biggest failures. However, there have been warmer appraisals of some of his lesser-known post-revolutionary works such as the novels The Artamonov Business (1925) and The Life of Klim Samgin (1925–1936); the latter is considered by some as Gorky's masterpiece and has been viewed by some critics as a modernist work. Unlike his pre-revolutionary writings (known for their "anti-psychologism") Gorky's later works differ, with an ambivalent portrayal of the Russian Revolution and interest in human psychology. Despite the opinions of the critics and scholars, it has been noted that his image and his literary legacy have been greatly compromised by his political career; many of his major works, including the post-revolutionary novels mentioned above, have remained largely unknown in the West.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol(1809~1852) was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin.
Gogol used the grotesque in his writings, for example in his works "The Nose", "Viy", "The Overcoat", and "Nevsky Prospekt". These stories, and others such as "Diary of a Madman", have also been noted for their proto-surrealist qualities. According to Viktor Shklovsky, Gogol used the technique of defamiliarization, whereby a writer presents common things in an unfamiliar or strange way so that the reader can gain new perspectives and see the world differently. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore. His later writing satirised political corruption in contemporary Russia (The Government Inspector, Dead Souls), although Gogol also enjoyed the patronage of Tsar Nicholas I, who liked his work. The novel Taras Bulba (1835), the play Marriage (1842), and the short stories "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich", "The Portrait", and "The Carriage" are also among his best-known works.
Many writers and critics have recognized Gogol's deep influence on Russian, Ukrainian and world literature. Gogol's influence was acknowledged by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Franz Kafka, Mikhail Bulgakov, Vladimir Nabokov, Flannery O'Connor and others. Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé said: "We all came out from under Gogol's Overcoat."
Arseny Ivanovich Vvedensky(1844~1909) was a Russian literary critic and historian, essayist and author of feuilletons, which he published in Golos, using the pseudonym Aristarkhov.
Vvedensky debuted as a literary critic in 1876 and, contributing mostly to Slovo, Severny Vestnik, Vestnik Evropy, Delo, Niva and Istorichesky Vestnik, published numerous reviews and analytical surveys on Nikolai Leskov, Nikolai Leykin, Evgeny Salias De Tournemire, Vsevolod Krestovsky, Vladimir Korolenko, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Vsevolod Garshin, among others.
In 1891—1893 he compiled and edited the works of Alexander Griboyedov, Ivan Kozlov, Alexey Koltsov, Alexander Polezhayev, Mikhail Lomonosov, Denis Fonvizin and Catherine the Great, all of which came out as Niva literary supplements. In 1891 he edited the first academic-type edition of the Complete M.Y. Lermontov in 4 volumes.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky(1821~1881) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces. Dostoevsky's literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), The Adolescent (1875) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His Notes from Underground, a novella published in 1864, is considered one of the first works of existentialist literature.
Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends and through books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died of tuberculosis on 27 February 1837, when he was 15, and around the same time, he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute (later renamed the Military Engineering-Technical University). After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, translating books to earn extra money. In the mid-1840s, he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which gained him entry into Saint Petersburg's literary circles. However, he was arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group, the Petrashevsky Circle, that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia. Dostoevsky was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted at the last moment. He spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, followed by six years of compulsory military service in exile. In the following years, Dostoevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writer's Diary, a collection of his writings. He began to travel around Western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, which led to financial hardship. For a time, he had to beg for money, but he eventually became one of the most widely read and highly regarded Russian writers.
Dostoevsky's body of work consists of thirteen novels, three novellas, seventeen short stories, and numerous other works. His writings were widely read both within and beyond his native Russia, influencing an equally great number of later writers, including Russians such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anton Chekhov, the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and the emergence of Existentialism and Freudianism. His books have been translated into more than 170 languages, and served as the inspiration for many films.
Mikhail Petrovich Artsybashev(1878~1927) was a Russian writer and playwright, and a major proponent of the literary style known as naturalism. He was the great-grandson of Tadeusz Kościuszko and father of Boris Artzybasheff, who emigrated to the United States and became famous as an illustrator. Following the Russian Revolution, in 1923 Artsybashev emigrated to Poland, where he died in 1927.
Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev(1871~1919) was a Russian playwright, novelist and short-story writer, who is considered to be a father of Expressionism in Russian literature. He is regarded as one of the most talented and prolific representatives of the Silver Age literary period. Andreyev's style combines the elements of realist, naturalist, and symbolist schools in literature. Of his 25 plays, his 1915 play He Who Gets Slapped is regarded as his finest achievement.
