Nikolai Nekrasov

Reading notes

• Untitled Play (Bezottsovshchina / "Platonov") §3274 That's Nekrasov

  Shcherbuk misattributes Petrin's overheard line about a rich man being served first (paraphrasing a social grievance) to the poet Nikolai Nekrasov, then reports the rumor -- false at the time of the play's composition (Nekrasov died in 1877/78) -- that Nekrasov has died; a small, telling touch of provincial characters garbling literary reputation into gossip.

• Pancakes §9 Nekrasov

  Nikolai Nekrasov (1821-1878), poet famous for socially conscious verse on the suffering of Russian peasants and, especially, peasant women (as in his long poem "Who Is Happy in Russia?"); Chekhov's joke borrows Nekrasov's solemn theme of the suffering Russian woman and applies it, absurdly, to pancake-baking.

• Poems and Dubia (school-age and disputed juvenilia) §3542 Nekrasov

  Marov silently recalls a half-line of Nekrasov's verse on a pauper's burial ("without the church's singing, without incense... without all that makes a grave secure") while brooding over his sectarian assistant's likely lonely death and burial.

• The Liberal Sweetheart §61 Nekrasov

  Nikolai Nekrasov (1821-1878), poet of the peasantry and serf suffering; his socially charged verse -- unlike sentimental recitation fare -- was considered too politically pointed for a genteel provincial soiree, hence Kaskadov's alarm.

• The Sheet §19 Nekrasov

  Russian poet (1821-1877/78) known for socially conscious verse; the old man half-recalls a line of Nekrasov's as fitting his own bleak situation.

• A Setback §6 Некрасов

  Nikolai Nekrasov (1821-1877/78), the celebrated Russian poet, invoked by Shchupkin as an authority figure whose famously illegible handwriting excuses his own -- a small piece of self-serving cultural name-dropping.

• O Women, Women! §9 Nekrasov

  Nikolai Nekrasov (1821-1877/78), the major Russian poet of civic, socially conscious verse; Prochukhantsev invokes his name to excuse the self-indulgent "subjectivity" of his own bad poetry.

• To Ye. M. Shavrova, 16 September 1891. Moscow. §3 Nekrasov's Russian woman

  A reference to Nikolai Nekrasov's recurring idealized figure of the strong, suffering, morally serious Russian peasant or gentry woman (as in "Russian Women"/"Russkie zhenshchiny" and elsewhere in his verse) -- the type of wife Chekhov imagines Shavrova's fictional gynecologist dreaming of.

• A Fishy Business §16 Nekrasov

  Nikolai Nekrasov (1821-1877/78), poet of the peasantry and the radical intelligentsia's favorite; the chub's performative reading of him "with feeling" marks him as a fashionable liberal who preaches compassion while continuing to devour the weak.

• Visiting Friends §80 Nekrasov

  Nikolai Nekrasov (1821-1878), Russian poet known for socially conscious verse on the suffering of the peasantry; a byword for the kind of poetry earnest students of Varya's generation once knew by heart.

• In the Railway Carriage §27 my collega Nekrasov

  The self-proclaimed 'writer' invokes the real, revered poet Nikolai Nekrasov as a professional colleague ('collega', a mock-learned Latinism) to inflate his own literary standing, immediately before the deflating detail that he actually writes filler articles for a minor paper.