Alexei Vasilievich Koltsov (1809 - 1842) - an outstanding Russian poet of the Pushkin era. Among his works the most famous are: “Oh, don’t give me a passionate smile!”, “Betrayal of a betrothed”, “A.P. Srebryansky ”,“ The Second Song of Likhach Kudryavich ”and many others.
Biography of Alexei Vasilievich Koltsov
The life and career of a famous poet is interesting and informative.
A family
Alexey Vasilievich was born on October 15, 1809. The father of the future poet was a buyer and trader. He was known as a competent and strict housekeeper. Mother, on the contrary, was kind, but completely uneducated in character: she could neither read nor write. There were many children in the Koltsov family, but Alexey's peers were not: brothers and sisters were either significantly older or significantly younger.
A brief biography of Aleksei Vasilievich Koltsov practically does not contain information about his family: there is almost no information about this. It is only known that the father raised his children rather severely: he did not allow pranks and was demanding even in small things. He did not insist on studying children, but everyone had the basic reading and writing skills. Information, how many children were at the Koltsovs, how they lived, did not survive.
Training
We learn from the biography of Alexei Vasilievich Koltsov that the boy began to read and write (at home) from the age of nine. Studying was easy for him; he learned many sciences. In 1820, Alyosha entered the school and achieved great success in all subjects. But most of all he liked to read. The future poet began with the first that came to hand - from fairy tales, a little later he switched to novels. And in 1825 he became interested in reading poems by I. I. Dmitriev.
Alexei could not complete the training course: after the first year, his father decided to pick up his son from school. He motivated this by the fact that without the help of a boy he could not cope with affairs, and even one year of study is enough. For quite a long time, Alexey was engaged in cattle driving and selling.
Creative way
Poetry, which by that time was carried away by the boy, his father forbade to engage in: he demanded that he devote all his time and attention to trade. But regardless of this, Alexei, at the age of 16, nevertheless wrote his first poem - “Three Visions”. However, after a while he destroyed it, because he believed that he imitates the style of his beloved poet. And I wanted to find my own, unique style.
Around the same time, people appeared in the biography of Alexei Vasilievich Koltsov, who helped a talented poet express his personality.
The first person to begin the creative journey of a young poet was Dmitry Kashkin, a book seller in a store next door. He allowed Alexei to use books for free, of course, only on condition of careful attitude to them.
Koltsov showed his first works to him: Kashkin was very well-read and developed and also loved to write poetry. The seller saw himself in a young poet, so he treated him well and helped as he could. Thanks to this, for five years the young poet used books for free, studied and developed independently, without giving up helping his father.
Soon the poet began to change in his personal life: he falls in love with a girl who was a serf. But their relationship is so serious that they are going to get married. However, Mr. Case breaks the couple apart. This drama leaves a bitter mark in the creative biography of Alexei Vasilyevich Koltsov, a brief summary of the poems of 1827 suggests that they were all dedicated to unhappy love.
In the same year, the seminar Andrei Srebryansky appeared in his life, who later became a close friend and mentor on the creative path. Acquaintance with this man helped Alex to survive the break with his beloved. Thanks to the parting words and advice of Srebryansky, four poems were published in 1830, and the world learned that there was such a poet - Alexei Koltsov.
The main stage in the creative biography of Alexei Vasilievich Koltsov is an acquaintance with Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich. This happened in 1831. The publicist and thinker became interested in the works of the young poet and published his poems in the newspaper. Four years later, Stankevich published the first and only collection of “Poems by Alexei Koltsov” during the author’s life. After that, the author became popular even in literary circles.
Despite his creative breakthrough, Alexey did not cease to be engaged in his father’s business: he continued to travel to different cities on family matters. And fate also continued to bring him to prominent people. Plus, the poet began to collect local folklore, wrote a lot about the lives of ordinary people, peasants and their hard work.
Death of poet
In 1842, without surviving a terrible disease, the poet dies at the age of thirty-three. In the last years of his life, Alexei often quarrels with his father on the basis of his negative attitude to his work. Although in his short life he achieved rather great results: he became not only a successful cattle seller, but also a famous Russian poet, whose verses were known to absolutely everything.
Alexey Vasilyevich was buried in the Voronezh region in the Literary Necropolis.
A monument to the poet has been erected on Sovetskaya Square in the city of Voronezh, which has survived to this day.
But death did not complete the creative biography of Alexei Vasilievich Koltsov. In 1846, Pavel Stepanovich Mochalov, a Russian actor and friend of Koltsov, published his poems in the newspaper "Repertoire and Pantheon", thereby perpetuating the memory of a friend.
And in 1856, an article on the life and work of Koltsov, written by Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky, was published in the popular newspaper Sovremennik.