The singer of the people’s sorrows – as Nekrasov called the fans of his work. The poems of the great Russian poet are imbued with love and compassion for ordinary people – the life of the poet left its mark on the poems that came out from under his talented pen. At the same time, the life of Nekrasov himself was very peculiar, and at the same time not always easy and simple.
In his youth, the future great poet led a very dissolute way of life – he drank a lot, played cards and sometimes even arranged fights. The first poems published by Nekrasov were met very coldly by both readers and literary critics. As a child, Nekrasov adored his mother, but did not love his father, a very cruel and despotic man. Young Nekrasov studied badly in the gymnasium. Problems arose from him because of absenteeism and because of the passion for writing mocking satirical poems. Contrary to the will of his father, who wanted a future poet of a military career, he fled to St. Petersburg, where he enrolled in the faculty of philology as a free listener. His father in return deprived him of family money. For a long time Nekrasov balanced on the verge of starvation, but did not retreat. The poet published his first poems for his own savings. After a devastating review of the famous critic Belinsky, Nekrasov in desperation bought up almost all the unsold circulation of his first book and burned it. In Gogol, by the way, the first published work also came across the coldness and lack of understanding of readers.
Together with I. Panaev, Nekrasov bought the literary magazine Sovremennik, which was unprofitable at that time, and breathed new life into it. On the pages of this magazine were printed Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev and other famous writers. Playing cards for money was the poet’s passion throughout his life. It was with the money he won that he bought back the family estate once sold by his father. The second most important hobby for Nekrasov was hunting. For a long time the poet lived with his friend I. Panayev and his wife, who was also the poet’s mistress.
The poet believed in omens. In particular, he adhered to the rule never to lend money to anyone before the card game. Turgenev, who was a close friend of Nekrasov, stopped all communication with him after he began to cohabit with Avdotya Panaeva and her husband, despite the fact that the relations between the Panayevs were friendly, not family, for a long time. Dostoevsky put Nekrasov in third place among all Russian poets – he gave the first two to Pushkin and Lermontov.
