MIKOŁAJ NADIEŻDIN - KRYTYK A. S. PUSZKINA
NIKOLAI NADEZHDIN - THE CRITIC OF A. S. PUSHKIN

Summary/Abstract: In the article there was presented the system and the mode of evaluation of one of the most controversive literary critics of Russia of the first half of 19th century — Nikolai Nadezhdin. The opponent of romanticism and conservative in his political views he tended to give philosophical foundations to his literary and esthetic ideas. He created the theory of the poetry of future based on the greatest achievements of classicism and romanticism (understood as poetry of Middle Ages). From this position he rejected contemporary romanticism together with its main representatives Byron and Pushkin. In the article there are discussed the most interesting of Nadezhdin’s statements on Pushkin being the evidence of author’s extensive knowledge and at the same time his inability to understand this type of poetry. He thought that the condition to achieve objectivity in art is the presentation of problems meaningful from the point of view of history and philosophy. So the gradation is necessary — important problems should be specially exposed. Literature in order to fulfil its important tasks should reflect historic­ al moment of the development of ideas on the one hand and the reality on the other. With his assumptions such as presented above he had to attack Pushkin’s poetry because he did not find in it the values which he considered most valuable. The framework of the system of Russian critic appeared to be too narrow to include the richness and variety of the works of Alexander Pushkin, but Nadezhdin’s esthetic theory was a starting point to the further considerations and conceptions of other literary critics of 19th century Russia.

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