Aleksey Pisemsky

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Aleksey Pisemsky : biography

23 March 1821 – 2 February 1881

Other contemporaries praised Pisemsky’s gift as a recital artist: Ivan Gorbunov, describing the author’s stage reading of his own play Carpernters’ Cartel, noted that it was "so much more than a mere reading; rather a high quality theater act, each character presented as a living being, boasting their own tone of voice, manner of gesture and individuality." Pavel Annenkov remembered: "He performed his own works masterfully, and was able to find exceptionally expressive intonations for every character he was bringing to the stage, which gave a strong effect in his dramatic plays. Equally brilliant was Pisemsky’s rendering of his collection of anecdotes concerning his earlier life experiences. He had loads of such anecdotes and each contained a more or less complete character type. Many found their way into his books in a revised form." Annenkov disagreed with Almazov, though, in his assessment of Pisemsky as a fine Gogol actor and considered his 1860 playing of Gorodnichy (The Mayor) in Revizor ‘lackluster’. "The problem is that Pisemsky has always succeeded in finding one definitive note for each role and following it through, ignoring undertones," Annenkov explained. He also cited a discussion Pisemsky had with the then famous actor Alexander Martynov, explaining his reason for altering some of his performances with the argument that since Gogol had never intended his masterpiece for the stage, he for this reason felt free to add to the Gorodnichy role, letting him go off on tangents which, Annenkov thought, thwarted the actor in presenting his character in a harmonious fashion. Martynov, for his own part, gave much significance to these seemingly off-the-cuff details, feeling that they served to create a whole, unique picture.

State official career

After graduating from the University in 1844, Pisemsky joined the Office of State Properties in Kostroma and was soon transferred to the corresponding department in Moscow. In 1846 he retired and spent two years living in Moscow Province. In 1848 he married Ekaterina Svinyina and returned to the state office, again in Kostroma, as a special envoy for Prince Suvorov, then the Kostroma governor. After a stint as an assessor in the local government (1849–1853) Pisemsky joined the Ministry of Imperial Lands in Saint Petersburg where he stayed until 1859. In 1866 he joined the Moscow government as a councilor, soon becoming Chief councilor. He finally quit the civil service (as Court Councilor) in 1872. Pisemsky’s state official career in the provinces had a profound effect upon him and his major works.

Later Boris Almazov made an important observation in a speech: "Most of our writers who describe the lives of Russian state officials and people from governmental spheres have only fleeting experiences of this kind… More often than not they’ve served only formally, hardly noticing the faces of their chiefs, let alone those of their colleagues. Pisemsky treated working for the State differently. He gave himself to serving the Russian state wholeheartedly and, whatever post he occupied, had one single objective in mind: fighting the dark forces which our government and the best part of our society try to fight…" This, according to the speaker, enabled the author not only to fathom the depths of Russian life but to delve down "to the very core of the Russian soul".

Biographer and critic Alexander Skabichevsky, having found similarities in the development of Pisemsky and Saltykov-Schedrin, another author who examined the provincial bureaucracy in the times of "total corruption, embezzlement, no laws for landowners, wild atrocities, and a total lack of real state power"; times when "provincial life was mostly uncultured and lacked even basic morality", and "the life of the intelligent classes had the character of one wanton, never ending orgy", concluded: "Both writers lost all motivation not just for the idealization of Russian life, but also of highlighting its lighter, positive sides". Skabichevsky went on, though, to define one profound difference between the mindsets of the two authors. While Saltykov-Schedrin, a forward-looking stalwart of the Saint Petersburg circles, had every opportunity to be imbued with the high ideals which were making their way into Russian cities from Europe, and to make these ideals the foundation to build his outward negativity upon, Pisemsky, once he found himself in the Russian provinces, became disillusioned in whatever ideas he’d gotten at the University, seeing them as idealistic with no roots in Russian reality. Skabichevsky wrote: "Thus, adopting a ‘rejection for rejection’s sake’ attitude, he entered tunnels of utter pessimism without any light at the end of them, with pictures of outrage, dirt and amorality working to convince the reader: no other, better life here would be possible anyway, for man – a scoundrel by nature, worshipping only the needs of his own flesh – is always ready to betray all things sacred for his egotistic schemes and lowly instincts," Skabichevsky wrote.