Nikolay Chernyshevsky
Nikolai Chernyshevsky Gawrilowitsch (Russian Николай Гаврилович Чернышевский, scientific transliteration Nikolai Chernyshevsky Gavrilovic; * 12 Julijul / July 24 1828greg in Saratov, Russia;. .. . † 17 Oktoberjul / October 29 1889greg ) was a Russian writer, publicist, literary critic and revolutionary.
Life
Born the son of a priest, he spent his school years in Saratov. After completing his studies at the University in Petersburg he taught literature at the high school in his hometown.
In the period 1853-1862 Chernyshevsky lived in Saint Petersburg. He was an employee of independent magazines and author. He criticized the oppression of the people in Tsarist Russia of the 19th century, just as the petty bourgeois attitude of his contemporaries.
1862 Chernyshevsky was arrested for political reasons. In prison he wrote the 1863 novel What to do? , In which he investigates the question of how idealistic people can change the world in miniature.
A minor character, the ascetic intellectuals Rakhmetov, was the model for countless nihilistic revolutionaries of Tsarist Russia: Rakhmetov submit to the drudgery of the lowest in the novel works such as the boatmen to earn the respect and love of the common people. He liquidated his assets and retains only a small part of it for their own use, with the rest, it supports needy students. At the same time he has devoted his life to the study of literature and mysterious activities at home and abroad. He dispensed with almost every enjoyment of life and onto a anbahnendes love affair in order to devote himself entirely to his unspecified vocation. In the Soviet ideology Rakhmetov was the prototype of the perfect socialist man; he was the ideal type of the professional revolutionary. Nevertheless, he is in the novel - not explicitly referred to as revolutionary - to circumvent the censorship.
1864 Chernyshevsky was sentenced initially to a mock execution and then to exile in Siberia (from 1872 in Wiljuisk ), which he was allowed until 1883 to leave. In 1889 he died in his native city of Saratov.
He advocated the revolutionary abolition of autocracy and represented the interests of the working class. He was convinced by the idea of being able to create socialism on the basis of the structures of the rural population of Russia.
His views were influenced mainly by that of Alexander Herzen, Vissarion Belinsky, and Ludwig Feuerbach.
Reception
Chernyshevsky's novel What to do? ( Что делать? ) Had great influence on the Russian intelligentsia, which discussed it lively and controversial. In particular, many works of Dostoevsky show clear traces of the discussion of this work.
Karl Marx was an avid reader of Chernyshevsky, admired him and had seven of his books in the original.
The book's title was at the beginning of the 20th century by Lenin in admiration of Chernyshevsky in his keynote font What to do? taken.
In Vladimir Nabokov's novel The Gift ( 1937 ), the fictitious hero wrote a critical biography of Chernyshevsky. Nabokov wrote this biography of 140 printed pages themselves and put them in a book in the book in the novel one.
Works
- Чернышевский в Сибир / Chernyshevsky w Siberia. Perepiska s drusjami. Statja E. A. Ljazkowo. Primetschanija M. N. Tschernyschewskowo. ( Chernyshevsky in Siberia. Correspondence with his relatives ). Ogni, St. Petersburg 1912
- Полное собрание сочинений. / Polnoje sobranije sotschineni. N. G. Chernyshevsky. Pod red. B. P. Kosmina ( Collected Works ). 15 vols, Moscow 1939-1953
- Selected philosophical writings. From the Russian translated by Alfred Kurella. Publisher of Foreign Literature, Moscow, 1953
- The aesthetic relationship between art and reality. Berlin 1954
- Advanced ideas in the aesthetics of Lessing. German by Walter Dietze. Progress Verlag, Dusseldorf 1957
- What to do? From stories of new people. 5th edition Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar in 1979
- Prolog. Novel from the early sixties. German by Irene Müller, 2nd ed Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar in 1982