The famous Russian poet Ivan Savvich Nikitin lived a short but very fruitful and eventful life. On the verses of this writer, a true master of the lyric and landscape genre, in different years composers have written more than 60 romances. Many works belonging to the poet's pen reveal the difficult theme of the hard life of serfs in the middle of the 19th century.
Contemporaries characterized Ivan Nikitin as a simple, kind and very sensitive person. The poet could freely and willingly communicate both with the mighty of this world and with people of the lowest estates.
Biography
Ivan Savvich Nikitin was born on September 21, 1824 in a well-to-do family of a Voronezh bourgeoisie. His mother, whom he anxiously loved all his life, was a quiet and meek, pious woman who devoted herself to family and children.
Ivan Nikitin's father owned a small candle factory, which brought in a good income. Savva Nikitin, unlike the poet's mother, was a man of tough disposition, the first fist fighter in Voronezh. At home, he behaved like a real despot, making both his wife and children suffer.
At the age of 8, Ivan Nikitin was assigned to study at a theological school. Then the future poet entered the seminary. As a child, Ivan experienced a great craving for new knowledge. However, the official approach to the work of the seminary teachers was not to his liking. In the subsequent disclosure of this topic, the writer dedicated his only prosaic work.
Savva Nikitin's violent temper and his penchant for drunkenness ultimately ruined the family. To cover the debts, the father of the future poet was forced to sell his candle factory. With the remaining money, the family bought an old seedy inn.
The Nikitins had almost no money left, and therefore Ivan had to interrupt his studies at the seminary. Almost all his subsequent life, the poet was forced to manage an inn.
Such a matter has always been a burden to him. However, as they say, there is no silver lining. The violent morals of the motley public of the inn later became valuable literary material for the poet, on the basis of which he wrote many good poems.
Creation
Poetry Ivan Nikitin began to write, by his own admission, immediately after he mastered the literacy. However, unfortunately, no early works of the young writer have survived. Officially, the first poems written by the poet are considered to be published by him in 1949.
The best work by Ivan Nikitin, according to critics of that time, was the poem "Rus", published in 1853, later recognized as a textbook. The audience highly appreciated the poet's pretentious style. In literary circles, Ivan Nikitin began to be called "the new Koltsov".
Later, some colleagues in the pen, including Chernyshevsky, sometimes accused Ivan Nikitin of imitation. The poet really wrote, being under some influence of Koltsov, Pushkin, Nekrasov and Lermontov. However, it is a stretch to call his work an imitation. Many contemporaries believed that the poet simply relied on the same aesthetic base and folklore sources as his famous predecessors.
In 1956 Ivan Nikitin published his first collection of poems. After another 3 years, the poet borrowed money from the merchant Kokorev and opened a large bookstore in Voronezh. Subsequently, this store became a meeting place for the city's intelligentsia and the center of its literary life.
In 1959, the second collection of the poet's poems was published. The public received Nikitin's new works very well. But the writers themselves reacted ambiguously to some of Nikitin's works.
Many of the collection's poems were dedicated to the suffering of ordinary people. However, many writers of that time did not consider Nikitin to be truly folk poets. Brothers in the pen believed that the poet writes on such topics only as an observer from the outside, not particularly imbued with the aspirations of the peasants and the poor.
Taking an active part in the cultural life of the city, Ivan Nikitin never stopped writing poetry almost never. His most famous works, in addition to "Russia", are:
- "Plowman";
- "Taras";
- "Fist";
- "Mother and daughter";
- "Starosta".
Belongs to the pen of the writer and several radical poems saturated with a revolutionary spirit: "Despicable tyranny will fall …", "Our time is shamefully dying …". Some of these works of the poet were originally published only in illegal lists. The general public was able to get acquainted with them for the first time only in 1906.
The poet wrote quite a few poems for children. He penned several works, including those included in the course of a modern elementary school:
- "The evening is clear and quiet";
- "In the dark thicket the nightingale has fallen silent";
- "Live speech, live sounds."
Personal life
Ivan Nikitin has never been married. But he, like many other poets of that time, started romances with women quite often. His most ardent hobby was Natalya Matveeva, the daughter of one of the Voronezh generals.
The poet dedicated two of his poems to this woman: "I dare not irritate you …" and "I could not take my eyes off you …". Part of the correspondence between Ivan Nikitin and Natalia Matveeva has also survived to this day.
Sickness and death
In 1860, Ivan Nikitin's only prose work, The Seminary's Diary, was published. The main topic of the book was the criticism of the order that existed at that time in theological educational institutions.
The Diary, published by Voronezh Conversation, was very well received by the public. Subsequently, this work, like the poem "Rus", became a textbook.
In May 1861, Ivan Nikitin, who had never been in good health, caught a bad cold. The disease became fatal for the writer. After a while, the cold started consumptive processes.
Ivan Nikitin's illness was very difficult. To the physical sufferings of the poet, who was being treated at home, the moral was also added. Despite the difficult situation of his son, his father did not stop his riotous life and gave the family a lot of trouble. Ivan Nikitin died of consumption on October 16, 1961, at the age of only 37 years.
