Ivan Savvich Nikitin (russian: Ива́н Са́ввич Ники́тин) (,

Voronezh Voronezh ( rus, links=no, Воро́неж, p=vɐˈronʲɪʂ}) is a city and the administrative centre of Voronezh Oblast in southwestern Russia straddling the Voronezh River, located from where it flows into the Don River. The city sits on ...

– , Voronezh) was a Russian poet. Born in

into a merchant family, Nikitin was educated in a seminary until 1843. His father's violence and alcoholism brought the family to ruin and forced young Ivan to provide for the household by becoming an innkeeper. After his first publications, he joined a circle of local intelligentsia that included his future biographer (and the editor of his collected works) Mikhail De-Poulet. He taught himself French and German and read widely in world literature, and in 1859 he opened a bookstore and library that became an important center of literary and social life in Voronezh. His first poems appeared in 1849 and his first collection in 1856; his 1858 poem "Kulak" was his most successful with both critics and the public. A second collection came out in 1859, and a prose "Seminarist's Diary" was published in 1861. Some of his poems became the basis for popular songs, set to music by such composers as

Vasily Kalinnikov Vasily Sergeyevich Kalinnikov (russian: Васи́лий Серге́евич Кали́нников; 13 January 1866 – 11 January 1901 ) was a Russian composer. His body of work consists of two symphonies, several additional orchestral wor ...

Eduard Nápravník Eduard Francevič Nápravník (Russian: Эдуа́рд Фра́нцевич Напра́вник; 24 August 1839 – 10 November 1916) was a Czech conductor and composer. Nápravník settled in Russia and is best known for his leading role in Rus ...

, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. D. S. Mirsky wrote that his "principal claim to attention" was in "his realistic poems of the life of the poor":

He was inclined sometimes to idealize and sentimentalize them, but his best things are free from this sin. There is an almost epic calm in the long, uneventful, and powerful ''Night Rest of the Drivers'', and an unsweetened realism in such poems of tragic misery as ''The Tailor''. In ''Kulák'', his opus magnum, Nikitin introduced into poetry the methods of realistic prose. He succeeds in evoking pity and terror by the simple account of sordid and trivial misery. But he was not strong enough to create a really new art or a really new attitude to poetry.

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...

was extremely fond of Nikitin's verse.William Taubman, ''Nikita Khrushchev'' (Yale University Press, 2000: ), p. 170.

References

External links

Texts set to musicIvan Savvich Nikitin. Poems
(in Russian)
Ivan Savvich Nikitin poetry
a
Stihipoeta.ru
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nikitin, Ivan Savvich Russian male poets 1824 births 1861 deaths Writers from Voronezh 19th-century poets 19th-century male writers from the Russian Empire