Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
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For other members of the nobile family, see Saltykov
Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov (Russian: Михаил Евграфович Салтыков; 27 January 1826 [O.S. 15 January] in Spas-Ugol village, Tver guverniya – - 10 May 1889 [O.S. 28 April] in Saint Petersburg), better known under his penname Shchedrin (Щедрин), was a leading Russian satirist of the 19th century. At one time, after the death of the poet Nikolai Nekrasov, he acted as editor of the leading Russian magazine, the Contemporary.
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[edit] Early life
A scion of the ancient Saltykov family, Mikhail Saltykov was born on his father’s estate in the province of Tula. His early education was completely neglected, and his youth, owing to the severity and the domestic quarrels of his parents, was full of the most melancholy experiences. Left entirely to himself, he developed a love for reading; but the only book in his father’s house was the Bible, which he studied with deep attention.
At ten years of age he entered the Moscow Institute for the sons of the nobility, and subsequently the Lyceum at St Petersburg, where Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky, afterwards minister for foreign affairs, was one of his schoolfellows. While there he published poetry, and translations of some of the works of Lord Byron and Heinrich Heine, and on leaving the Lyceum he obtained employment as a clerk in the Ministry of War.
In 1854 he published A Complicated Affair, which, in view of the revolutionary movements at that time in France and Germany, was the cause of his banishment to Vyatka, where he spent eight years as a minor government official. This experience enabled him to study the life and habits of civil servants in the interior, and to give a clever picture of Russian provincial officials in his Provincial Sketches.
[edit] Later life
On his return to St Petersburg he was quickly promoted to administrative posts of considerable importance. After making a report on the condition of the Russian police, he was appointed deputy governor, first of Ryazan and then of Tver. His predilection for literary work induced him to leave the government service, but pecuniary difficulties soon compelled him to re-enter it, and in 1864 he was appointed president of the local boards of taxation successively at Penza, Tula and Ryazan.
In 1868 he finally quit the civil service. Subsequently he wrote his principal works, namely, The Old Times of Poshekhonye, which possesses a certain autobiographical interest, The History of One Town, a satirical allegory of Russian history, Messieurs et Mesdames Pompadours; and his only novel, The Golovlyov Family (also translated as House of Greed). The latter book, often considered Saltykov's masterpiece, is a penetrating study of overpowering greed.
In his eighties, Saltykov remained a last remnant of the heroic age of reform and progress, universally venerated by all the advanced intelligentsia. His last publication was an applauded collection of satirical fables and tales. He died in St Petersburg and was interred in the Literary Cemetery. "The sole object of my literary work," wrote Saltykov-Shchedrin, "was unfailingly to protest against greed, hypocrisy, falsehood, theft, treachery, stupidity of modern Russians".
[edit] Works
The greater part of Saltykov's work is a rather nondescript kind of satirical journalism, for the most part with no narrative skeleton, and intermediate in form between the classical "character" and the contemporary feuilleton. Enormously and universally popular though it was in its own time, it has since lost much of its attraction simply because it satirizes social conditions that have long ceased to exist and much of it has become unintelligible without comment.
In 1869-70 appeared The History of a Town, which sums up the achievement of Saltykov's first period. It is a sort of parody of Russian history, concentrated in the microcosm of a provincial town, whose successive governors are transparent caricatures of Russian sovereigns and ministers, and whose very name is representative of its qualities — Glupov (literally, Sillytown).
Most works of Saltykov's later period are written in a language that the satirist himself called Aesopic. It is one continuous circumlocution in view of the censorship and demands a constant reading commentary. The style, moreover, is deeply rooted in the bad journalese of the period, which goes back to Osip Senkovsky and which today invariably produces an impression of painfully elaborate vulgarity.[1]
The Golovlyov Family was decried by D.S. Mirsky as the gloomiest book in all Russian literature — all the more gloomy because the effect is attained by the simplest means without any theatrical, melodramatic, or atmospheric effects. The most remarkable figure in this novel is Porfiry Golovlev, nicknamed Little Judas, the empty and mechanical hypocrite who cannot stop talking unctuous and meaningless humbug, not for any inner need or outer profit, but because his tongue is in need of constant exercise. It is one of the most terrible visions of ultimately dehumanized humanity ever conceived by an imaginative writer.[2]
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- This article incorporates text from D.S. Mirsky's "A History of Russian Literature" (1926-27), a publication now in the public domain.
[edit] Notes
- ^ D.S. Mirsky. A History of Russian Literature. Northwestern University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8101-1679-0. Page 294.
- ^ Ibidem. Page 294.
