A. F. Pisemsky – editor, fiction and historical writer (to the 200th anniversary of his birth)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47475/2070-0695-2021-10111Keywords:
Pisemsky, journalism, fiction, polemics, natural school, conservatism, liberalismAbstract
The article is devoted to the public activity of A. Pisemsky – a prominent Russian writer of the mid-XIX century. The author first of all pays attention to Pisemsky as the subject and object of public criticism and polemics of his time, explores some of the reasons for his creative success. The article covers the periods of the writer's cooperation with mid-century magazines and the editorship of the "Biblioteka dlya Chteniya", the successes and "failures" of his feuilletons, novels and novels are tracked. In his best years, he was characterized as a well-known fiction writer and competed in popularity with the public with Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Turgenev.
Pisemsky's work was appreciated by representatives of democratic critics, in particular, Pisarev and Saltykov-Shchedrin, but over time, "Sovremennik" and "Otechestvennye Zapiski" somewhat "cooled" to his literary works. The article deals separately with the change in the genre-thematic preferences of the writer at the end of his life and his appeal to historical themes, as a result of which the writer gave his own assessment of such phenomena as Decembrism and Freemasonry. This partly characterizes the civil position of Pisemsky, who switched from liberal to conservative views at the end of his life.
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