Home Vegetable garden on the windowsill Message about Ivan Savvich Nikitin. When was Nikitin born and died? Poet Nikitin Ivan Savvich. Poems and poems

Vegetable garden on the windowsill

Message about Ivan Savvich Nikitin. When was Nikitin born and died? Poet Nikitin Ivan Savvich. Poems and poems

In the history of Russian literature there are “quiet” names, names of writers and poets of the second rank, who are sometimes overshadowed by noisy “pop poetry”, sometimes by modernists with claims to genius. Time passes and puts everyone in their place. It turns out that in modernity there were, to put it in Yesenin’s language, a lot of “broken and deceitful gestures”, and behind the noise there was absolutely nothing worthwhile. But the power of true talent passes through decades and continues to be felt for a long time. Especially when the artist’s very talent comes from the earth, from the soil, from a deep awareness of his blood connection with the fate of the entire people. This was the case with our contemporary Nikolai Rubtsov, and also, even earlier, with Alexei Koltsov and Ivan Nikitin. We have been learning the last lines about winter since elementary school...

Biography of Ivan Nikitin (1824 - 1861)

Voronezh... The land that gave the world and Russia two great sons - Alexei Koltsov and Ivan Nikitin. However, he served his exile here in the 30s. of the last century, the poet O. Mandelstam, who left an eloquent confession about this: “I am near Koltsov, Like a falcon, looped ...” We are talking about external lack of freedom. Only Koltsov and Nikitin were hardly free to the end. Both were oppressed by the need to engage in hated trading, because there were simply no other sources of income. Living in Russia for a writer on royalties from his works is a luxury that falls to a very select few.

Until the end of his short life, Nikitin remained the son of the time, the century and a representative of the merchant class. The last one is worth special mention. In the Soviet years, they didn’t really like to advertise the fact that the first generation of Russian merchants came out of the Old Believers. And there were large families, loyalty to traditions, a love of work from a young age. And the first Russian merchants did not consider it shameful for themselves to plow, sow, mow, and drink vodka with the common people, for they always remembered from what lows they themselves had risen. Subsequently, the merchants turned into bourgeois, and ties with the past weakened.

The father of the future poet was a candle merchant who went bankrupt due to a tendency to drink and a violent temper. Nikitin did not receive a systematic education; he was forced to leave his studies at the seminary and become the owner of an inn, which brought a small but constant source of income. Nikitin tried to make up for the shortcomings of his education by intensive self-education, in which he succeeded a lot. Towards the end of his life, with a loan received from local philanthropist Kokorev, Nikitin was able to open a bookstore with a reading room in Voronezh. They quickly became the cultural center of the province.

Looking at Nikitin’s photograph and knowing that he passed away at the classic, fatal age for a Russian (and not only) poet - 37 years old, it is difficult to get rid of the thought that he looks much older than his years. It was not only his beard that aged him, but also the hardships he endured in childhood and the need to fight for every piece of bread. In those days, people generally grew up and aged, apparently much faster than now... Consumption (aka tuberculosis) was considered an incurable disease. She brought Nikitin to the grave. He is buried next to Koltsov, which has deep truth and symbolism. However, more on this below.

Works of Ivan Nikitin

Nikitin's early poems inevitably had an imitative character and are now of interest only to literary historians. In search of his voice, he turned to folklore and the experience of his predecessors. And among them was not only fellow countryman Alexey Koltsov. A.I. Neledinsky-Meletsky and A.F. Merzlyakov, then Pushkin’s lyceum friend Anton Delvig tried to root the genre of “Russian song” in Russian literature. So Koltsov already had whose experience to take into account. Not all of the poems that had the title “Russian Song” actually became songs and went to the people. The latter has a sensitive ear, it immediately and unmistakably picks up the slightest falsehood, deviation from authenticity, artlessness of folk versification.

During his lifetime, Nikitin managed to publish two collections of poetry. They evoked the most contradictory responses, which, however, is natural - there were those who accepted the poet’s work, and those who treated him as imitative and even weak. As noted above, Nikitin enters the reader’s consciousness primarily as a singer of his native nature and, secondly, as a writer of everyday life of the difficult peasant lot, hopeless poverty and exhausting labor.

Nature, as Nikitin perceives it, is an inexhaustible source of poetic inspiration, the very force that is capable of healing mental and even physical wounds, reconciling with deep social imperfection and stratification. Undoubtedly, the character of Nikitin's poetry was influenced by his own character. Unlike the much more emotional Koltsov, Nikitin was, to use the expression of the philosopher I. Kant, “a thing in itself.” Sparing means of expression, a minimum of metaphors and other verbal “decorations”, external simplicity and even artlessness. But they are the ones that have the most impact! For behind this external restraint it is not difficult to discern a passionate, rebellious, seeking, restless nature.

Few poets can compare with Nikitin in some physiological accuracy of descriptions, in the naturalism of sensations, as, for example, in the textbook lines of the poem “The stars fade and go out. There are clouds on fire...” And what a truly cosmic, universal scope there is in Nikitin’s first original poem “Rus”, where there is a “tent of blue skies”, and “the distance of the steppes”, and “chains of mountains”. Nikitin invariably moved toward awareness and comprehension of Russia through Voronezh, his “small Motherland,” whose borders he left only once, for a trip to the capital.

When, under Soviet rule, the Mitrofanyevskoe cemetery in Voronezh was razed and liquidated, only the burials of Koltsov and Nikitin were able to be defended - a kind of provincial “Literary Bridges”.
Many songs have been written based on Nikitin’s poems, bearing the name of the author. To this day they are perceived as Russian folk - the author managed to penetrate so much into the folk spirit. The most famous thing of this kind is “A rogue merchant was driving from the fair...”

Ivan Nikitin, whose biography arouses sincere interest among admirers of real deep poetry, is a distinctive Russian poet of the 19th century. His work vividly describes the spirit of that distant time.

Nikitin Ivan Savvich: biography for children

Ivan Savvich was born in the city of Voronezh on October 3, 1824 in the family of a wealthy tradesman who sold candles. He learned to read and write early thanks to a shoemaker neighbor, read a lot as a child and loved being in nature, with which he felt unity from birth. At the age of eight he entered a theological school, then continued his studies at the seminary. The sudden end of his studies led to the ruin of his father, his destructive passion for alcohol and the death of his mother, which forced the young man to take care of his loved ones. Ivan, expelled due to frequent absence from class and poor academic performance, began working in a candle shop instead of his father, which was then sold along with the candle factory for debts, and with this money a dilapidated inn was purchased.

Difficulties of life

The biography of Nikitin, who worked as a janitor at an inn, describes his difficult, monotonous life. But despite the difficult circumstances, the young man did not sink spiritually; in every free moment he tried to read books, write poems that asked to come out from his heart. Ivan began writing poetic lines while still in seminary; he decided to publish his works only in 1853. They were published in the Voronezh Provincial Gazette when the young man was 29 years old. The author's works were copied and passed from hand to hand, and began to be published in Otechestvennye Zapiski and Library for Reading. A poet-nugget who loved nature since childhood and sang its beauty is Nikitin Ivan Savvich. A short biography for children conveys his ability to subtly sense the world around him and to sing of subtle shades of colors. He was able to describe the world around him with inspiration and piercing sensitivity with just one stroke of the pen. Ivan Nikitin, whose biography describes his true nature, proved himself to be a talented landscape painter in his work.

Love for the people is one of the main themes in creativity

A short biography of Ivan Nikitin for children tells that a significant place in the work of the poet, who sincerely worried about his people and let their troubles pass through his own heart, is occupied by poems depicting the life of an ordinary commoner (“The Coachman’s Wife,” “The Plowman,” “Mother and daughter", "Beggar", "Street Meeting"). They clearly express deep feelings for their people, warm sympathy for their plight and a great desire to improve their situation. At the same time, Nikitin did not idealize the people, looking at them with sober eyes, he painted them truthfully, without hiding the dark sides and negative traits of the people’s character: family despotism, rudeness (“Damage”, “Stubborn Father”, “Divide”). Nikitin, in the full sense of the word, was a city dweller, although he visited the outskirts of Voronezh, he stayed on rich landowner estates, in a real village, in a peasant house he had never been and did not experience the life of an ordinary person. Nikitin received material for depicting the living conditions of ordinary people from cab drivers who stopped at his inn and peasants who came to Voronezh. However, Ivan Savvich, who had some limitations in observing people’s life, precisely for this reason was unable to fully paint a comprehensive, broad picture of the life of the people, but was able to provide only fragmentary information.

Ivan Nikitin: a short biography of the nugget poet

Captivated by Nikitin’s work, N.I. Vtorov (a local historian) introduced him to the circle of local intelligentsia, introduced him to Count D.N. Tolstoy, who published the poet’s poems in “Moskvityanin” and published his first collection in St. Petersburg as a separate edition (1856). Ivan Nikitin, whose biography for children tells about the growing popularity of the poet at that time, still lived hard. My father drank heavily, although family relations improved a little; The atmosphere of the inn was no longer so depressing for the young man, who moved in a circle of intelligent people who were sincerely disposed towards him. In addition, as the biography describes, Nikitin began to be overcome by illness. In the summer of 1855, he caught a cold while swimming, became very weak and did not get out of bed for a long time. In such difficult moments, faith came to his aid, prompting the appearance of poems with religious themes.

Religious motives in Nikitin's poetry

The theme of human faith runs like a red thread through all of Ivan Nikitin’s poetic work: “New Testament”, “Prayer”, “The Sweetness of Prayer”, “Prayer for the Cup”. Seeing holy grace in everything, Nikitin became the most soulful singer of nature (“Morning”, “Spring in the Steppe”, “Meeting of Winter”) and enriched Russian poetry with a large number of masterpieces of landscape lyricism. More than six dozen wonderful songs and romances have been written based on Ivan Nikitin’s poems. In 1854-1856, the poet worked on his own self-education, studied French and read a lot. After Vtorov, who had become his close friend, left Voronezh in 1857, as well as after the collapse of Vtorov’s circle, the poet felt with aching acuteness the severity of his family and life situation, a pessimistic mood took hold of him with greater force.

Ivan Nikitin's bookstore

In 1858, Nikitin’s long poem “The Fist” was published, vividly describing philistinism, sympathetically received by critics and a success with the public. The work sold out in less than a year, bringing the poet a good income. Despite his painful condition and depressed mood, Nikitin continued to closely follow Russian literature in 1857-1858, and read Shakespeare, Cooper, Goethe, Hugo, and Chenier from foreign literature. He also began to study German, translating Heine and Schiller. In 1857-1858 he worked in Otechestvennye zapiski and Russian Conversation. Royalties from the publication of poems, savings accumulated over several years, and a loan of 3,000 rubles from V. A. Kokorev allowed him to purchase a bookstore in 1859, which became a favorite meeting place for city residents, a kind of literary club. Next - new hopes and plans, creative upsurge, a new collection of poems, which was greeted somewhat coolly, but the vitality was already running out.

The last years of the poet's life

Nikitin's biography was very difficult: the poet was constantly ill, especially acutely in 1859. The state of his health constantly alternated, a short improvement followed by a long deterioration. In the second half of 1860, Nikitin worked a lot, and from his pen came the work “The Diary of a Seminarian,” written in prose. In 1861 he visited St. Petersburg and Moscow, took part in local cultural work, in the formation of a society for the spread of literacy in Voronezh, as well as in the establishment of Sunday schools.

In May 1861, the poet caught a severe cold, which caused an exacerbation of the tuberculosis process. On October 28, 1861, Nikitin Ivan Savvich died of consumption. The biography for children is interesting due to the fact that during his short life the poet wrote about two hundred beautiful poems, three poems and a story. He was 37 years old. He was buried at the Novo-Mitrofanyevskoye cemetery, next to Koltsov.

Ivan Nikitin's contribution to Russian literature

The life and biography of Ivan Nikitin are vividly conveyed in his work, where the poet strives to comprehend his existence, understands the feeling of dissatisfaction with his own existence and suffers greatly from the inconsistency of the existing reality of the idea; He found peace in nature and religion, which temporarily reconciled him with life. Nikitin’s work contains a lot of autobiographical elements with predominant sad tones, sadness and grief, also caused by a protracted illness. The source of such aching sadness was not only personal adversity, but also the surrounding life with human suffering, social contrasts, and constant drama. Nikitin’s biography is still of interest to the younger generation today, who want to feel the spirit of a bygone time and, at least through the poet’s word, touch it. The works of Ivan Savvich went through a large number of editions and were sold in a huge number of copies.

In the difficult pre-reform period, the biography of Nikitin Ivan Savvich as a poet began, so his work was filled with the suffering of a forced, enslaved people. Motifs of need, exhausting labor, hopeless grief, and eternal melancholy characterized each of his works.

Christian

The poet knew how to empathize, sympathize and help those suffering, which is why Nikitin’s biography contains many manifestations of a purely Christian attitude towards one’s neighbor. Most of his poems and poems have religious or philosophical content. These are the poems "Fist" and "Taras", the poems "Prayer for the Cup", "Child's Prayer", "Prayer". Modern readers are close to his landscape lyrics; many poems are known by heart, and this does not depend on age. Everything suggests that Nikitin’s biography was written forever by fate, since the motives of native nature, health, beautiful people and pure feelings are eternal and will be in demand in all centuries.

Ivan Savvich Nikitin was born in September 1824 into the family of a poor Voronezh merchant, the owner of a small, almost artisanal factory. For eight years he was sent to a theological school, after which he set out to become a priest and entered the Voronezh Theological Seminary. Already at a young age, Ivan Savvich Nikitin felt a burning interest in literature, read many poetry books and tried to compose himself. Koltsov, Zhukovsky and Pushkin became his favorite poets.

Dreams and reality

In his dreams, Ivan Nikitin, a poet, saw himself as a student at the capital’s university, where he had the opportunity to see legendary writers. However, his father went bankrupt, he had to sell the factory in order to buy a crumbling inn and pay off the accumulated debts for a long, long time. The future poet had to manage this hotel to help his family. Therefore, not only did the university remain a distant dream, but I also had to leave the seminary.

He left many letters to his descendants about these years, filled with work and worries. It soulfully describes the love that Ivan Nikitin had for poetry. His poems are filled with heartache for the people forced to live in hopeless poverty, but at the same time the nightingale’s Russian speech sings in every letter, admiring the world around them, the free spaces. The poet's soul remained pure, attached to the beautiful, comforted by the word of freedom.

First poems

Ivan Nikitin began writing poetry very early, as soon as he learned to form letters, which he himself mentions in his letters. But, unfortunately, not all of them have survived. The earliest dates back to 1849. The very first publication immediately showed others that a real poet had come into the world. This poem by Ivan Nikitin - "Rus" - has become a textbook. It is from that galaxy of few masterpieces that schoolchildren still happily learn by heart to this day. Nikitin Ivan Savvich always wrote poems for children; he has quite a few works that would not be understandable to them.

And the first published poem was instantly reprinted by almost all newspapers published in Russia, and the poet became famous. However, the first collection of poems appeared only in 1856. Three years later, a bookstore opened in Voronezh - a stronghold of youth education, and Ivan Savvich Nikitin became its owner. Interesting facts from the poet's life were collected by those people who constituted the color of the social life of Voronezh, and who were brought together by this cultural center of the provincial city - the bookstore. Unfortunately, this happiness did not last long. “In the dark thicket the nightingale fell silent...” - Nikitin’s biography turned out to be very short.

Consumption

The poet lived a short, extremely difficult life, full of never-ending troubles with many sorrows, since his father, after ruin, fell into an incessant binge. But he devoted every free minute to poetry - reading or writing. However, the forces were running out. The life and work of Ivan Savvich Nikitin was cut short by consumption, which he contracted from overwork and the inability to pay attention to his own health. He died in the year when serfdom collapsed (in 1861).

He had been waiting for the liberation of the peasants all his life, and with every line he hastened this event. Being the owner of an inn, he saw many of the dirtiest scenes, communicated with a variety of people belonging to a variety of classes. His poems were passed on from mouth to mouth even by those who could not read, and the Voronezh intelligentsia called him “the second Koltsov.” In fact, he was never second, and Nikitin’s poetics are quite different from Koltsov’s poetics even in his earliest poems, although Chernyshevsky once reproached him for imitation.

Poems and poems

Nikolai Dobrolyubov highly appreciated Nikitin’s poem “Fist” for its originality, noting the creative growth that the poet has received since previous publications. In 1855, the poems “Street Meeting” and “The Coachman’s Wife” were published, after which the poet began to think about introducing something new into his style of presentation.

And therefore, after two years, poems came that were significantly different from the previous ones: “The Plowman,” “Overnight in the Village,” “The Spinner,” “The Beggar,” then “Mother and Daughter” and the famous “Wake.” Social motives appeared in the lines. This is especially true for the poems “Dead Body”, “Old Servant” and others created in his last years. In 1860, Nikitin, already terminally ill, wrote his only prose work, “The Diary of a Seminarian,” where memories of his youth were found.

Music

All his poems are so melodious that they themselves ask for song. The poet wrote about the bright moments of life: “A clear world will dawn on the soul...” More than sixty songs and romances were written at different times by Russian composers based on Nikitin’s poems. And composers are still interested in the poetry of Ivan Savvich. For example, in 2009, Alexander Sharafutdinov recorded an entire album called “Joy and Sorrow.”

Nikitin's poems are always saturated with music, they have absorbed that folk life, like a groan, which forced the poet, who cried all night over a poetic line, to destroy it at dawn, because it did not truthfully convey the state that made the night sleepless. The poet painstakingly searched for the truth - albeit not in life, but in poetry. The main thing is that he found her.

Family

Ivan Savvich was more like his mother - a meek woman, compassionate, deeply religious, even religious. She, like the poet himself, patiently waited all her life for a better fate, suffering immensely from the harsh character of her husband. The whole of Voronezh knew my father. The merchant is enterprising, but a heavy drinker, the first fist fighter in the city, which his family knew better than others. Ivan Nikitin loved his father very much for his strength, for his seriousness, for his practical acumen, for his efficiency.

But as a poet, his mother gave him much more. This is an exceptional, immeasurable sensitivity of the soul, a subtle poetic ear, dreaminess and deep faith. From birth, he communicated with wanderers, pilgrims, and pilgrims who visited the Mitrofanievsky monastery in Voronezh. They all came to the shop at the factory to buy candles.

People

People flocked here from all over the country; Nikitin heard and noted the folk dialect of different regions while still a little boy. He loved the stories of pilgrims and eagerly read the lives of saints and other spiritual books. This is precisely why the poet’s attitude towards Russian nature turned out to be so reverent, almost religious.

Subsequently, meeting and seeing off coachmen and cab drivers, merchants and wanderers, peasants and traveling artists, being the manager of an inn, Nikitin just as willingly communicated with passing people of all the variegated classes of Russian society. People were always extremely frank with him, because the poet is sensitive and kind. Although their stories for the most part were very bitter and weighed heavily on the heart. The only relaxation was poetry. In those days it was bad form to publish poems under your own name, and anonymous manuscripts were not accepted in the Voronezh newspaper. That is why the first publication of the poet’s poems took place so late.

Friends

Members of the Voronezh reading circle, among whom was the editor of the local newspaper Vtorov, immediately fell in love with both Nikitin’s poems and himself. Some liked the social protest and democratic overtones in his poems, while others reveled in the religious motifs and harmony in the poetic landscapes.

In 1854, Nikitin was recognized in the capital - his poems were published in Otechestvennye zapiski, and Kukolnik wrote an article about Nikitin in the Reading Library. Then a literature lover and high-ranking official, Count Tolstoy, became interested in the poet, after which a separate book by Nikitin was published with verses personally selected by Tolstoy and a preface written by him.

About borrowings and imitations

Nikitin’s early work really went through a certain literary school, since in his poems of the first period one can hear Pushkin (“Forest”), and Koltsov (“Rus”, “Spring in the Steppe”), and Lermontov (“In the West is the Sun”, “The Key”) "), and Maykova ("Evening"), and Nekrasova ("Street Meeting", "The Coachman's Story").

However, this is more like a single aesthetic support, since all of the above poets relied on folklore sources. There is always a common prototype. For Nikitin, this is not apprenticeship, but the folkloric nature of poetic thinking, the simplicity of folk ways, habits and attitudes towards creativity, which even at that time was largely oral. Nikitin is not even a poet, he is a storyteller who must live through collective creativity.

Nikitin Ivan Savvich (1824-1861), Russian poet, prose writer.

Born September 21 (October 3), 1824 in Voronezh. The son of the owner of a candle factory, who went bankrupt by the 1830s, he was educated at the Voronezh parish (1833) and district (1834-1839) theological schools and theological seminary (1839-1843; expelled for poor academic performance), in the literary life of which A. had participated somewhat earlier. V. Koltsov. He was engaged in housekeeping (up to the point of performing the duties of a janitor at the inn purchased by the family), accordingly changing his recent appearance of a freedom-loving “Westerner” to the appearance of a simple Russian peasant (hair “in a circle”, boots with high tops, a sheepskin coat on a naked body, etc. .P.).

Joy has swift wings.

Nikitin Ivan Savvich

After the first publication (verse. Rus - “Under the big tent / Blue skies...”, 1853) he became close to the circle of local historian N.I. Vtorov, who studied the history, ethnography and folklore of the Voronezh region, among whose participants were the future executor, biographer and editor poet M.F. De Poulet and publisher of his works A.R. Mikhailov.

Influence of A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov, F.I. Tyutchev (Slanderers, 1849; When the sunset with farewell rays, 1850; When alone, in moments of reflection, 1851) and especially Koltsov (The Sadness of an Old Man, Duma, both 1849 ; Song, 1853) with its characteristic folk vocabulary and rhythm is replaced in Nikitin’s lyrics by his own intonations, recognizable “ethnographic” themes, attention to everyday life, religious motives (Old Friend, Winter Night in the Village, both 1853; Merchant at the Mill, 1854).

In 1854, N.V. Kukolnik published two collections of Nikitin’s poems in his “Library for Reading”; several poems were published in the magazine “Moskvityanin”. Quick fame inspired Nikitin, he persistently engages in self-education (including studying French and German, translations from Fr. Schiller and G. Heine), again dresses “in fashion” and becomes, in the words of his tireless trustee Vtorov, “a secular human." At the same time, a sharp deterioration in health, a consequence of heavy physical labor, contributed to the strengthening of the mournful tonality of Nikitin’s poetry.

In 1856, his first collection of Poems was published, which evoked both approving and harsh (for “lack of independence” - N.G. Chernyshevsky in the Sovremennik magazine) reviews from critics.

In an effort to poeticize the “non-poetic” material of the real life of common people, Nikitin begins to focus on the lyrics of N.A. Nekrasov with a pronounced narrative beginning, colloquial everyday vocabulary, a diversity of characters from the village “bottom” - the peasants, the poor, the dispossessed (The Story of a Peasant Woman, 1854; Burlak , both 1854; Street Meeting, 1855; The Story of a Friend, 1856), focusing on the dramas of everyday life - betrayals, murders, selfish deceptions, etc. (often in the song genre - Quarrel, Treason, both 1854; Get rid of melancholy..., 1855).

According to the critic A.M. Skabichevsky, the autobiographical basis of many of Nikitin’s poems, who was in a difficult relationship with his father, a man of tough character, was the “eternal Russian plot of family tyranny,” which grew under Nikitin’s pen into the problem of the discrepancy between the high spiritual impulses of a creative personality and his rough egoistic environment, into the problem of the inescapable loneliness of a talented loser, characteristic of romanticism and specifically refracted in Nikitin’s “folk” lyrics.

The work of Ivan Nikitin arouses sincere interest among admirers of real deep poetry.

Nikitin Ivan Savvich is a poet-nugget who loved nature since childhood and sang its beauty. The works of Ivan Savvich went through a large number of editions and were sold in a huge number of copies.

The original poet vividly describes the spirit of that distant time. In poetic creativity, the poet strives to comprehend his existence, expresses a feeling of dissatisfaction with his own existence and suffers greatly from the discrepancy with the existing reality. The poet found peace in nature and religion, which temporarily reconciled him with life.

From the biography of Nikitin Ivan Savvich:

Ivan Savvich Nikitin was born on October 3 (September 21), 1824 in the city of Voronezh. His father, Savva Evstikhievich Nikitin, came from a clergy background, was a wealthy tradesman, traded in a candle shop and ran a candle factory.

Ivan Nikitin spent his childhood and youth surrounded by pilgrims who bought candles in the shop.

Little Ivan mastered reading and writing early. A neighbor who was a shoemaker helped him with this. Only after learning to add letters did Ivan begin to compose his first poems. He never found support and approval for his creativity from his father, who was an adherent of bourgeois views. As a child, Vanya read a lot and loved being in nature, with which he felt unity from birth.

House in Voronezh, where I. S. Nikitin lived with his father

When Ivan was eight years old, his father sent him to the Voronezh Theological School. After graduating from college (1839), he expressed a desire to be a priest and entered the theological seminary. (1839), from which he was expelled for absenteeism (1843). Nikitin, as the son of wealthy parents, was a free student at the seminary and retained his independence and broad-mindedness. The seminary played a big role in the development of the poet, but he was not satisfied with the existing education system and the practices adopted there. Later he would write about this in “The Diaries of a Seminary” (1861), where he reflected the unhappy impressions of his stay at the seminary. Ivan Nikitin dreamed of studying at the university.

Ivan Nikitin never managed to finish the seminary. His father's difficult character and drunkenness ultimately ended in ruin. Then his mother Praskovya Ivanovna died, his means of livelihood dried up, his dreams of entering the university turned out to be unrealistic, and Nikitin was forced first to trade in a candle shop, then to maintain an inn (since 1844), which was purchased in place of the sold candle factory.

Ivan also had to do menial work, including sweeping the yard. Then I had to pay off the accumulated debts for a long time. But despite everything, the aspiring poet did not abandon his passion for literature and continued to write poetry.

He constantly spends more than ten years communicating with visiting people who represented different social groups and classes.

The difficulties of Nikitin’s life, who worked at an inn as a janitor, his difficult, monotonous life, its difficult circumstances did not break the young man, he did not sink spiritually, in every free moment he tried to read books, write poems that asked to come out of his heart.

While still studying at the seminary, Nikitin became seriously interested in poetry and composed a lot himself. His passion for literature opened up new horizons for him; he managed to break out of the philistine worldview and gain inner freedom. Nikitin communicated closely with the people, grew up in the atmosphere of folk dialects from different places in Russia, listened to the stories and tales of wanderers, the lives of saints and spiritual poems. In his youth, he was fond of Pushkin, Zhukovsky and other classics. From the church walls he brought out a reverent attitude towards nature. Despite the fact that by that time the seminary no longer had wonderful teachers - A.V. Koltsova and A.P. Serebryansky—the seminarians were nourished by the memories of their circle. Nikitin wrote his first poems precisely in imitation of Koltsov.

Since 1853, Nikitin's rapprochement with the historian, ethnographer and public figure N.I. Vtorov and his circle, which united representatives of the Voronezh intelligentsia, began. It was Vtorov who inspired Ivan Nikitin for the first publication in the Voronezh Provincial Gazette on November 21, 1853 of the poem “Rus”, written during the beginning of the Crimean War and its patriotic content was very topical.

Captivated by Nikitin’s work, N.I. Vtorov introduced him to the circle of local intelligentsia, introduced him to Count D.N. Tolstoy, who published the poet’s poems in “Moskvityanin” and published his first collection as a separate edition in St. Petersburg (1856).

The poet's popularity at that time was growing, but he still lived hard. My father drank heavily, although family relations improved a little; The atmosphere of the inn was no longer so depressing for the young man, who moved in a circle of intelligent people who were sincerely disposed towards him.

But Nikitin began to be overcome by illness. In 1855, Ivan Nikitin became very ill, catching a cold while swimming. The illness dragged on and developed into consumption.

In 1856, Nikitin became interested in the governess of the Plotnikov landowners. The girl's name was M.I. Junot. The feelings were mutual, the girl had an ebullient nature, developed and sensitive to poetry. They did not advertise their feelings.

Bookstore of I. S. Nikitin

In 1859, the poet, thanks to the assistance of friends, took out a loan in the amount of three thousand rubles, since his own fees were not enough to realize his plan. Being a man of action, I. Nikitin in February 1859, with this money, he opened a bookstore in Voronezh, and with it a shop and a library. Soon the store turned from an ordinary retail outlet into a noticeable center of culture, the likes of which had never been seen in the city. This allowed it to become one of the main cultural centers in Voronezh. +In 1861, Nikitin visited St. Petersburg and Moscow, took part in local cultural work, in the formation of a literacy society in Voronezh, as well as in the establishment of Sunday schools.

In the early 60s, N. A. Nekrasov invited the poet to collaborate in the Sovremennik magazine. This was a real recognition, but I. Nikitin could no longer take advantage of the invitation. A serious illness undermined the poet’s strength.

In May 1861, the poet again caught a bad cold, which caused an exacerbation of the tuberculosis process and a sharp deterioration in his general health. The tuberculosis process has accelerated significantly. The level of medicine in those years left virtually no hope for recovery.

The poet died on October 16 of the same year at the age of only 37 years. He was buried in Voronezh, at the Novo-Mitrofanyevskoye cemetery, where the poet lived his entire short life.

The creative heritage of I. S. Nikitin and his contribution to Russian literature:

A wonderful Russian poet lived during the time of Tsarist Russia in the nineteenth century in the difficult pre-reform period. This circumstance had a huge impact on the development of his talent and on all his work.

Ivan began writing poetic lines while still in the seminary, and decided to publish his creations only in 1853. They were published in the Voronezh Provincial Gazette when the young man was 29 years old. Patriotic pathetic poems were reprinted in other newspapers and magazines; they were very useful, since the Crimean War was going on. The author's works were copied and passed from hand to hand, and began to be published in Otechestvennye Zapiski and Library for Reading.

In the summer of 1855, Nikitin fell ill, catching a cold while swimming. Faith saved him, and many poems with religious themes appeared. The theme of human faith runs like a red thread through all of Ivan Nikitin’s poetic work: “New Testament”, “Prayer”, “The Sweetness of Prayer”, “Prayer for the Cup”. Seeing holy grace in everything, Nikitin became the most soulful singer of nature (“Morning”, “Spring in the Steppe”, “Meeting of Winter”) and enriched Russian poetry with a large number of masterpieces of landscape lyricism.

Soon the first collection of poems was published (1856) and Nikitin began to be compared with Koltsov.

Then Nikitin wrote the poem “Fist”, which was completed in 1857. He showed in the poem the type of person who strongly resembled his own father. Voronezh tradesman Karp Lukich, the hero of the poem, lived by petty deception, calculation and measurement. He is a reseller, a penniless and ruined merchant himself, who cannot get out of severe poverty. As a result of this life, he became a drunkard and tyrannized everyone in the house. The poem was received favorably by critics and the book sold out in less than a year, bringing the poet a good income. Despite his painful condition and depressed mood, Nikitin continued to closely follow Russian literature in 1857-1858. From abroad I read Shakespeare, Cooper, Goethe, Hugo, Chenier. He also began to study German, translating Heine and Schiller. In 1857-1858 he worked in Otechestvennye zapiski and Russian Conversation. At this time, the inn began to generate income, and the family came out of poverty. The father did not stop drinking, but relations in the family improved, work was no longer so burdensome for Nikitin.

Nikitin received an excellent review from Dobrolyubov for his poem. The poet was introduced to Count D.N. Tolstoy, who helped him get published.

The second collection appeared in 1859. Nikitin became a master of Russian landscape and successor to Koltsov, a glorifier of hard peasant labor, the life of the urban poor and the injustice of the world. Nikitin's name thundered, but life was still hard.

In the second half of 1860 Nikitin worked a lot. Soon, in 1861, his prose “Diary of a Seminarian” was published.

The original and most essential feature of Nikitin’s poetry is truthfulness and simplicity, reaching the most strict direct reproduction of everyday prose. Almost all of Nikitin’s poems fall into two large blocks: some are dedicated to nature (“South and North” (1851) “Morning” (1854)), others are dedicated to human need, people’s suffering (“Plowman” (1856), “The Coachman’s Wife” ( 1854)). In both, the poet is completely free from any effects and idle eloquence.

From early childhood, he was familiar with the life of the common people and serfs, filled with hardships and suffering. All his creations fully reflect the lack of rights, hopelessness, need and hard work of people from the lower classes, to which the vast majority of the Russian population belonged. The poet sincerely sympathized with representatives of these classes and treated them in accordance with Christian traditions, supporting those in need not only with a kind word, but also providing them with real help. The main part of the writer’s work is poetic landscape lyrics, which, among other things, contains a religious slant and has a philosophical orientation. In its creative style it is a successor to the traditions laid down by Koltsov.

His ability to subtly sense the world around him and sing the refined shades of colors is amazing. He was able to describe the world around him with inspiration and piercing sensitivity with just one stroke of the pen. In his poems there is a true love for nature; in his work the poet showed himself to be a talented landscape painter. Love for the people is one of the main themes in Nikitin’s work.

A significant place in the work of the poet, who sincerely worried about his people and passed their troubles through his own heart, is occupied by poems depicting the life of an ordinary commoner (“The Coachman’s Wife,” “The Plowman,” “Mother and Daughter,” “Beggar,” “Street Meeting” ). They clearly express deep, sincere love for their people, warm sympathy for their plight and a great desire to improve their situation.

At the same time, Nikitin did not idealize the people, looking at them with sober eyes, he painted them truthfully, without hiding the dark sides and negative traits of the people’s character: family despotism, rudeness (“Damage”, “Stubborn Father”, “Divide”).

Nikitin's panoramic vision covered all aspects of Russian life.

Nikitin’s work contains a lot of autobiographical elements with predominant sad tones, sadness and grief, also caused by a protracted illness. The source of such aching sadness was not only personal adversity, but also the surrounding life with human suffering, social contrasts, and constant drama. Nikitin was a member of the circle of local Voronezh intelligentsia, it was the circle of Nikolai Ivanovich Vtorov. But Vtorov soon left Voronezh. Nikitin's second friend was Mikhail Fedorovich De-Pule. It was he who, after Nikitin’s death, became his executor; he published his legacy, wrote a biography and edited Nikitin’s works.

During his short life, Nikitin wrote about two hundred beautiful poems, three poems and a story.

Nikitin's works are superbly set to music and have served as a source of inspiration for many Russian composers. Over 60 wonderful songs and romances were composed based on Nikitin’s poems, many of which became popular. There are songs that have turned into folk songs. Perhaps the most famous of them is “Uhar-merchant”. Here, however, it should be noted that the text of the folk version of the song has undergone significant changes that influenced the original semantic content.

Nikitin was and remains an unsurpassed singer of Russian nature. The name of Ivan Nikitin entered the musical culture of Russia; his name has outlived many, larger, but forgotten poets.