View source for Vissarion Belinsky

{{Short description|Russian literary critic (1811–1848)}}
{{Family name hatnote|Grigoryevich|[[Belinsky (surname){{!}}Belinsky]]|lang=Eastern Slavic}}
{{More citations needed|date=August 2021}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2020}}
{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->
| name             = Vissarion Belinsky
| image            = Vissarion Belinsky by K Gorbunov 1843.jpg
| imagesize        = 
| caption          = V. Belinsky, lithograph by [[Kirill Gorbunov]]
| pseudonym        = 
| birth_name       = Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky
| birth_date       = {{Birth date|1811|6|11|df=y}}
| birth_place      = [[Sveaborg]], [[Grand Duchy of Finland]], [[Russian Empire]]
| death_date       = {{Death date and age|1848|6|7|1811|6|11|df=y}}
| death_place      = [[Saint Petersburg]], [[Russian Empire]]
| resting_place    = {{ill|Literatorskiye Mostki|ru|Литераторские мостки}}, Saint Petersburg
| occupation       = Editor of ''[[Sovremennik]]'', and ''[[Otechestvennye Zapiski]]''

| period           = 1830s–1840s
| genre            = Criticism
| subject          = Literature
| movement         = [[Westernizer]]s<br>[[Russian Schellingianism]]<ref>''[[Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]'' (1998): [https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/schellingianism-russian/v-1/sections/schellingian-philosophies-of-history "Schellingianism, Russian"].</ref>
}}
[[File:Vissarion Belinsky Bust.jpg|thumb|A bust of Belinsky]]
[[File:The Soviet Union 1957 CPA 1973 stamp (Vissarion Belinsky (after Kirill Gorbunov) and Titles of Literary Works).jpg|thumb|A 1957 Vissarion Belinsky Soviet postage stamp]]

'''Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky''' ({{langx|ru|Виссарио́н Григо́рьевич Бели́нский}};<ref group=note>[[Reforms of Russian orthography#Post-revolution reform|Pre-reform spelling]]: Виссаріонъ Григорьевичъ Бѣлинскій.</ref> {{OldStyleDate|June 11|1811|May 30}} – {{OldStyleDate|June 7|1848|May 26}}) was a Russian literary critic of [[Westernizer|Westernizing]] tendency.<ref>{{cite book |last=Leier |first=Mark |author-link=Mark Leier |year=2006 |page=68 |title=Bakunin: The Creative Passion |publisher=[[Seven Stories Press]] |isbn=978-1-58322-894-4}}</ref> Belinsky played one of the key roles in the career of poet and publisher [[Nikolay Nekrasov]] and his popular magazine ''[[Sovremennik]]''. He was the most influential of the Westernizers, especially among the younger generation. He worked primarily as a [[literary critic]], because that area was less heavily censored than political pamphlets. He agreed with Slavophiles that society had precedence over [[individualism]], but he insisted the society had to allow the expression of individual ideas and [[individual rights|rights]]. He strongly opposed Slavophiles on the role of [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Orthodoxy]], which he considered a retrograde force. He emphasized reason and knowledge, and attacked [[autocracy]] and [[theocracy]].<ref>Neil Cornwell, "Belinsky and V.F. Odoyevsky." ''Slavonic and East European Review'' 62.1 (1984): 6–24. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/4208792 online]</ref>

==Biography==
Born in [[Sveaborg]], part of [[Helsinki]], Vissarion Belinsky lived in the town of Chembar (now [[Belinsky, Penza Oblast|Belinsky]] in [[Belinsky District]] of [[Penza Oblast]]) and in [[Penza]], where he studied in [[Gymnasium (school)|gymnasia]] (1825–1829). In 1829–1832 he was a student of [[Moscow University]]. In Moscow he published his first famous articles.<ref>[[Thomas Garrigue Masaryk]], ''The Spirit of Russia'', [[Eden Paul|Eden]] and [[Cedar Paul]], transl., [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_Spirit_of_Russia_by_T_G_Masaryk,_volume_1.pdf/376 Vol.1, p.350, n.1] (London: [[Allen & Unwin|George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.]], 1919).</ref>

In 1839 Belinsky went to [[Saint Petersburg|St.&nbsp;Petersburg]], Russia, where he became a respected critic and editor of two major [[literary magazine]]s: ''[[Otechestvennye Zapiski]]'' ("Notes of the Fatherland"), and ''Sovremennik'' ("The Contemporary"). In both magazines Belinsky worked with younger [[Nikolay Nekrasov]].

He was unlike most of the other Russian intellectuals of the 1830s and 1840s. The son of a rural medical doctor, he was not a wealthy aristocrat. The fact that Belinsky was relatively underprivileged meant, among other effects, that he was mainly self-educated; this was partly due to being expelled from Moscow University for political activity. But it was less for his philosophical skill that Belinsky was admired and more for emotional commitment and fervor. "For me, to think, to feel, to understand and to suffer are one and the same thing," he liked to say. This was, of course, true to the [[Romanticism|Romantic]] ideal, to the beliefs that real understanding comes not only from mere thinking ([[reason]]), but also from intuitive insight. This combination of thinking and feeling pervaded Belinsky's life.

Ideologically, Belinsky shared, but with exceptional intellectual and moral passion, the central value of most of [[Westernizer]] [[intelligentsia]]: the notion of the individual self, a person (''lichnost''), that which makes people human, and gives them [[dignity]] and rights. With this idea in hand (achieved through a complex intellectual struggle), he faced the world around him armed to do battle. He took on much conventional philosophical thinking among educated Russians, including the dry and [[abstraction|abstract philosophizing]] of the German [[idealists]] and their Russian followers although maintaining the perspective of literary realism in his critical writings. In his words, "What is it to me that the Universal exists when the individual personality [''lichnost''] is suffering."  Or: "The fate of the individual, of the person, is more important than the fate of the whole world." Also upon this principle, Belinsky constructed an extensive critique of the world around him (especially the Russian one). He bitterly criticized [[autocracy]] and [[serfdom]] (as "trampling upon everything that is even remotely human and noble") but also [[poverty]], [[prostitution]], drunkenness, [[bureaucracy|bureaucratic]] coldness, and cruelty toward the less powerful (including women). 
 	
Belinsky worked most of his short life as a literary critic. His writings on literature were inseparable from these moral judgments. Belinsky believed that the only realm of freedom in the repressive reign of [[Nicholas I of Russia|Nicholas I]] was through the written word. What Belinsky required most of a work of literature was "truth." This meant not only a probing portrayal of real life (he hated works of mere fantasy, or escape, or [[aestheticism]]), but also commitment to "true" ideas — the correct moral stance (above all this meant a concern for the dignity of individual people):  As he told [[Nikolai Gogol]] (in a famous letter<ref>{{cite web |title=V. G. Belinsky 1847, Letter to N. V. Gogol |url=https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/lit_crit/works/belinsky/gogol.htm |website=Marxists Internet Archive |access-date=2 September 2022}}</ref>) the public "is always ready to forgive a writer for a bad book [i.e. aesthetically bad], but never for a pernicious one [ideologically and morally bad]."  Belinsky viewed Gogol's recent book, ''Correspondence with Friends'', as pernicious because it renounced the need to "awaken in the people a sense of their human dignity, trampled down in the mud and the filth for so many centuries."

[[Fyodor Dostoevsky]] read aloud at several public events Belinsky's letter, which called for the end of serfdom. A secret press was assembled to print and distribute Belinsky's letter. For these offenses Dostoevsky was arrested, convicted and condemned to death in 1849, a sentence later commuted to 4 years incarceration in the [[katorga|prison camps of Siberia]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Frank |first=Joseph |author-link=Joseph Frank (writer) |date=1976 |title=Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt, 1821–1849, Volume 1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=K3ppAQAACAAJ&q=0691062609 |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |pages=157–73 |isbn=0691062609}}</ref>

In his role as perhaps the most influential liberal critic and ideologist of his day, Belinsky advocated literature that was socially conscious. He hailed [[Fyodor Dostoyevsky]]'s first novel, ''[[Poor Folk]]'' (1845); however, Dostoevsky soon thereafter broke with Belinsky.<ref name="demons">{{Citation
  | title = Commentaries on Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  | journal = Soviet Academy of Sciences
  | publication-place = New York
  | place = Leningrad
  | publisher = Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
  | publication-date = 1994
  | editor-last = Pevear
  | editor-first = Richard
  | editor2-last = Volokhonsky
  | editor2-first = Larissa
  | year = 1975
  | volume = 12
  | page = [https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780679423140/page/715 715]
  | url = https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780679423140/page/715
  | isbn = 0-679-42314-1
  | author = Fyodor Dostoevsky; translated and annotated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
  }}</ref>

Inspired by these ideas, which led to thinking about radical [[social change|changes]] in society's organization, Belinsky began to call himself a [[socialist]] starting in 1841.	
Among his last great efforts were his move to join [[Nikolay Nekrasov]] in the popular magazine ''The Contemporary'' (''Sovremennik''), where the two critics established the new literary center of [[St. Petersburg]] and Russia. At that time Belinsky published his ''Literary Review for the Year 1847''.

In 1848, shortly before his death, Belinsky granted full rights to Nikolay Nekrasov and his magazine, ''The Contemporary'' (''Sovremennik''), to publish various articles and other material originally planned for an almanac, to be called the Leviathan.

Belinsky died of [[tuberculosis|consumption]] on the eve of his arrest by the [[Tsar]]'s police on account of his political views. In 1910, Russia celebrated the centenary of his birth with enthusiasm and appreciation.

His surname has variously been spelled ''Belinsky'' or ''Byelinski''. His works, in twelve volumes, were first published in 1859–1862.  Following the expiration of the copyright in 1898, several new editions appeared.  The best of these is by S. Vengerov; it is supplied with profuse notes.

Belinsky early supported the work of [[Ivan Turgenev]]. The two became close friends and Turgenev fondly recalls Belinsky in his book ''Literary Reminiscences and Autobiographical Fragments''. The British writer [[Isaiah Berlin]] has a chapter on Belinsky on his 1978 book ''Russian Thinkers''. Here he points out some deficiencies of Belinsky's critical insight:

<blockquote>He was wildly erratic, and all his enthusiasm and seriousness and integrity do not make up for lapses of insight or intellectual power. He declared that Dante was not a poet; that [[Fenimore Cooper]] was the equal of Shakespeare; that ''[[Othello]]'' was the product of a barbarous age...</blockquote>

But further on in the same essay, Berlin remarks:

<blockquote>Because he was naturally responsive to everything that was living and genuine, he transformed the concept of the critic's calling in his native country.  The lasting effect of his work was in altering and altering crucially and irretrievably, the moral and social outlook of the leading younger writers and thinkers of his time.  He altered the quality and the tone both of the experience and of the expression of so much Russian thought and feeling that his role as a dominant social influence overshadows his attainments as a literary critic.
</blockquote>

Berlin's book introduced Belinsky to playwright [[Tom Stoppard]], who included Belinsky as one of the principal characters in his trilogy of plays about Russian writers and activists: ''[[The Coast of Utopia]]'' (2002)

==Legacy==
Belinsky Street and Belinsky Lane, close to Red Square in Moscow, were named after Belinsky from 1920–1994.

==English translations==
*''Selected Philosophical Works'', Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1956.
*''Belinsky, Chernyshevsky & Dobrolyubov: Selected Criticism'', Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1976.

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
* {{cite book|first=Isaiah |last=Berlin |author-link=Isaiah Berlin |title=Russian Thinkers |location=London |year=1978 |publisher=Penguin}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Cornwell |first=Neil |date=1984 |title=Belinsky and V. F. Odoyevsky |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4208792 |journal=The Slavonic and East European Review |volume=62 |issue=1 |pages=6–24 |jstor=4208792 |issn=0037-6795}}
* {{Cite book |last=Herzen |first=Alexander |url=https://archive.org/details/mypastthoughtsme00herz |title=My Past and Thoughts: The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen |publisher=University of California Press |others=Translated by Constance Garnett; introduction by Isaiah Berlin; abridged, with a preface and notes by Dwight Macdonald |year=1982 |isbn=0-520-04210-7 |location=Berkeley |url-access=registration}}
* {{Cite book |last=Pypin |first=A. N. |title=Belinskii, ego zhizn{{softsign}} i perepiska |publisher=Tipografiia M. M. Stasiulevicha |year=1876 |location=Saint Petersburg |language=ru |script-title=ru:Белинский, его жизнь и переписка |trans-title=''Belinsky: his life and correspondence''}} 2 vols.
* {{cite book|first=Ivan |last=Turgenev |author-link=Ivan Turgenev |title=Literary Reminiscences and Autobiographical Fragments |location=New York |year=1958}}
* {{citation|last=Wahba|first=Magdi|title=Vissarion Belinsky and the Dilemma of Nationality|year=1978|author-link=Magdi Wahba|publisher=Cairo Studies in English, vol. XXXII|location=Cairo}}.

==External links==
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky}}
* {{Books and Writers |id=belinsk |name=Vissarion Belinsky}}
* [http://academic.shu.edu/russianhistory/index.php/Vissarion_Belinsky%2C_Letter_to_Gogol Letter to Gogol]
* [http://www.coastofutopia.com/ The Coast of Utopia at Lincoln Center]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070209192503/http://www.lctreview.org/cover.cfm?&id_issue=36549392 Lincoln Center Theater Review, Fall 2006]

{{Romanticism}}
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[[Category:1811 births]]
[[Category:1848 deaths]]
[[Category:Writers from Helsinki]]
[[Category:People from the Grand Duchy of Finland]]
[[Category:19th-century writers from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:19th-century deaths from tuberculosis]]
[[Category:Tuberculosis deaths in the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Literary critics from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Atheists from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:19th-century journalists from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Russian male journalists]]
[[Category:19th-century male writers from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Russian atheists]]
[[Category:19th-century atheists]]
[[Category:Westernizers]]
[[Category:Tuberculosis deaths in Russia]]
[[Category:Philosophers of art]]