Nikolai Nikolaev is a little-known poet of the late XIX-early XX centuries. However, he is one of those who became the harbinger of a new remarkable trend in Russian poetry. The end of the 19th century in Russian poetry was marked by many big names. Poems were written on different topics - about nature, love, homestead life. Nikolai Nikolaev in his poetry recreated the images of representatives of a simple rural intelligentsia, described the life of unremarkable workers, his contemporaries working in the hinterland of the country. Nikolaev was called a poet from the people.
From a poem dedicated to a rural teacher:
You are tired, tired, dear,
In this torturous, petty struggle
Where is stupidity, human malice
Feel free to hurt you.
The beginning of life
The poet Nikolai Nikolay was born in Moscow in 1866. His family belonged to the bourgeois class and led the simplest way of life, did nothing romantic or outstanding. Where did Nikolai show his love for poetry and literature? Maybe from the mother of an Englishwoman? Or due to some tragic beginning of life? What made him try to become one of the people who tried to express themselves through poetry?
The biography of Nikolai Nikolai - the poet - is stingy and laconic. The boy lost his father at the age of seven. Mother, having lost her husband, was forced to look for work. Unable to support her son, she attached him to a strange family, and then to the school. There, Nikolai received a teacher’s specialty, but after completing his studies he could not find work, for some time he taught for free in a rural school and soon returned to Moscow. The work of a rural teacher at that time was not paid much and was not considered prestigious.
First successes and disappointments
In Moscow, the poet Nikolai published his first work. In 1885, in the magazine "Wave" appeared a poem signed by "Widow" without attribution. The author publishes his next poem entitled “Shoemaker” already under his signature.
The biography of Nikolai Nikolai - the poet - after this first success goes in a different direction. Poems did not bring the author either widespread recognition, nor, moreover, money. Desperate, he leaves for the Smolensk province, works, tries himself as a worker, clerk, clerk. At one time he served on the Syzran-Vyazemsky railway.
Family and poetry
In the countryside, Nikolai has a new family life. Nikolay got married. His wife, a native of peasants, gave birth to him five children during their married life. Perhaps this led to the fact that the poet Nikolai Nikolay became a simple employee, leaving behind his beloved profession. The service could somehow help support a rather large family, which cannot be said about the earnings of the poet, who writes on worker-peasant topics.
Another attempt
The next stage in the life of Nikolai Nikolai, the poet, began in Kaluga. It was here that he met with the editor of a local newspaper, and he invited him to write for the Kaluga Herald.
In 1987, Nikolaev published in the newspaper the story "Baba share." But having tried to live in the province, Nikolaev nevertheless returned to a large city. This time he decided to try his luck in the capital, in St. Petersburg.
Here he manages to publish and even release several collections of poems, he writes essays, short stories. The main theme of the works is a difficult peasant and working life, the life of the rural intelligentsia, autobiographical stories. They are filled with experiences and a sense of fatalism of life.
One of the best works of Nikolaev was the poem "Miners". And after 1905, the author almost stopped publishing. He had to work hard to provide for his family, and there was no time left for poetry.
A brief biography of the poet Nikolai Nikolai was published by the poet and teacher Konstantin Alekseevich Khrenov in a collection that collected selected poems from poets from the people that came out in 1901.
The last collection of poems was published in 1907. There were almost no new works by the author.
So, one of the many talented poets went into oblivion before he died. The last years of Nikolayev’s life have not been covered by anyone, and even the exact date of death is missing in his biography, only about 1912.
The poet himself sadly mentioned that with age he increasingly doubts his destiny to be a poet. This hopelessness and the tragedy of the existence of the rural intelligentsia penetrated the author’s general mood.
The heirs of the peasant poet and the new peasant poetry
From a poem dedicated to teachers of public schools:
... many of you, many, dear friends,
Honest champions of glorious deeds!
Soon the light of truth and knowledge will penetrate
In our wretched, poor villages?
Is the song soon sorrow, misery
Loudly covered in a fun song?
However, such almost forgotten poets as Nikolaev, became the harbingers of a whole galaxy of poets. Since 1910, they have been united in a course called "New Peasant Poetry." These works told about the life of the village, but carried new life sensations and a premonition of change. Among the outstanding village poets are Nikolai Klyuyev, Sergey Yesenin, Petr Oreshin and many others.
In their works, the village appears in a different light. Poems are filled with pride in their class, they are distinguished by a colorful “simple” language, the presence of folk elements. But the fate of the poets of the new peasant movement ended much more tragically than a quiet life in the circle of a large family of Nikolai Nikolaev.