Ieronim Yasinsky
Ieronim Yasinsky | |
---|---|
Leningrad, USSR | |
Nationality | Polish, Ukrainian |
Genre | fiction, memoirs, criticism |
Ieronim Ieronimovich Yasinsky (
Biography
Yasinsky was born in Kharkiv, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to the lawyer and landlord Ieronim Yasinsky, a nobleman of Polish origins, and Olga Maksimovna Belinskaya, the daughter of a 1812 Borodino hero Colonel Maxim Belinsky (whose name he later used as a literary pseudonym). From the age of eleven, Yasinsky began to write verses and recite them at family literary and musical parties.[1]
Yasinsky, who received a good home education, continued studying in the
Yasinsky's first short novels (Natashka, 1881; The Sleeping Beauty, 1883) were lauded by the Russian leftist literary elite (Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin in particular) who hailed their author as "the new Garshin."[1] Several years later his major novels (Irinarkh Plutarkhov, 1886; The Old Friend, 1887; The Great Man, 1888, and later Under Satan's Cloak, 1909), fell under sharp criticism for allegedly ridiculing the "revolutionary movement." Yasinsky saw his mission in "compiling an encyclopedia of the Russian intelligentsia types, as observed in all possible aspects of life." Anton Chekhov, who once characterized him as "either an honest garbage collector or a sly crook," was unconvinced. Similarly Maxim Gorky, who treated Yasinsky's books as cheap anti-revolutionary pamphlets, once described their author as "dirty and spiteful old man".[1]
Ieronim Yasinsky accepted the
Selected works
- Natashka (1881)
- The Sleeping Beauty (1883)
- The Kiev Stories (1885)
- Irinarkh Plutarkhov (1886)
- The Old Friend (1887)
- The Great Man (1888)
- Under Satan's Cloak (1909)
- The Novel of My Life (1926)