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THE SPIRIT OF RUSSIA
II
§ 73.
VlSSARION GRIGOR'EVIČ BĚLINSKII was leader of the progressive westernist intelligentsia owing to his indefatigable and many-sided literary labours. He was a really hard worker, whereas Stankevič, Botkin, and Granovskii, and even Čaadaev and Kirěevskii, must be spoken of rather as improvisers than as workers in the literary field.[1]
Bělinskii's works were published a long time back in twelve large volumes which ran through several editions. Of late
- ↑ Vissarion Grigor'evič Bělinskii was born on May 30, 1811, in Sveaborg, where his father was stationed as army surgeon. In 1816 his family removed to the town of Chembar in the administrative district of Penza. Home-life was a martyrdom for this vivacious and gifted boy, for neither father nor mother could or would give their son an education. Bělinskii had to leave the third class of the gymnazija prematurely, for he preferred working at home to being bored at school. In 1829 he began to attend the philological faculty of the university of Moscow. Here he was introduced to German philosophy and literature by the professors Nadeždin and Pavlov. In the year 1832, having in the previous year written a drama, Dmitri Kalinin, submitted in manuscript to the university censorship, he was compelled to leave the university. The drama, a fierce protest against serfdom, was declared immoral and a scandal to the university, but his rustication was ostensibly attributed to incapacity and weak health. Thenceforward Bělinskii spent his days in the circle of literary and philosophic friends to which we have previously alluded (Stankevič, Herzen), remaining always the omnivorous reader he had been since childhood. He secured a scanty livelihood by private tuition, translations (translating for example, works of Paul de Kock), and minor literary labours. His first important literary work, and the first to attract attention, appeared in Nadeždin's review (1839) and was entitled Literary Fantasies, A Prose Elegy. German philosophy in its chronological and logical development, and notably Schelling (1832–1836), Fichte (1837), and Hegel (1837), exercised decisive influence upon Bělinskii. Among German poets to affect his mental development should be mentioned Goethe, Schiller, and Hoffmann. The celebrated essay on the battle of Borodino was written in St. Petersburg, whither Bělinskii had removed in October 1839 to make a living as collaborator on the liberal newspaper "Otečestvennyja Zapiski." In St. Petersburg Bělinskii moved onward from the Hegelian position to that of the Hegelian left (Feuerbach), and in 1842 to that of French socialism. His most comprehensive work was his analysis of Puškin (1844). He kept up close literary and philosophical associations with Bakunin, Herzen, Nekrasov, Turgenev, Kavelin, Annenkov. etc. He was on intimate terms with Gončarov, Grigorovič, and Dostoevskii. Botkin was his friend and helper from the time when they first met in Moscow. Bělinskii married in 1843, and, characteristically, took a very serious view of marriage. In 1845 illness compelled him to begin a long stay in the south, and in 1841 he visited Salzbrunn spa, whence he fulminated his fierce protest against Gogol. He died on May 18, 1848.
