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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HEG-HIG |
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HERTZEN, ALEXANDER (1812-1870) , Russian author, was born atMoscow, a very short time before the occupation of that city by the French. His father, Ivan Yakovlef, after a personal interview with Napoleon
letter from the French to the Russian emperor. His family attended him to the Russian lines. Then the mother of the infant Alexander (a young German Protestant of Jewish extraction from Stuttgart, according to A. von Wurzbach), only seventeen years old, and quite unable to speak Russian, was forced to seek shelter for some time in a peasant's hut.. A year later the family returned to Moscow, where Hertzen passed his youthremaining there, after completing his studies at the university, till 1834, when he was arrested and tried on acharge of having assisted, with some other youths, at a festival during which verses by Sokolovsky, of a nature uncomplimentary to the emperor, were sung. The special
gazette
Petersburg
His literary career began in 1842 with the publication of an essay, in Russian, on Dilettantism in Science, under the pseudonym of " Iskander," the Turkish form of his Christian nameconvicts, even when pardoned, not being allowed in those days to publish under their own names. His second work, also in Russian, was his Letters on the Study of Nature (1845-1846). In 1847 appeared his novel Kto Vinovat? (Whose Fault?), and about the same time were published in Russian periodicals
Exile to Siberia (2 vols., 1855). From a literary point of view his most important work is Kto Vinovat? a story describing how the domestic happiness of a young tutor, who marries the unacknowledged daughter of a Russian sensualist of the old type, dull, ignorant and genial, is troubled by a Russian sensualist of the new school, intelligent, accomplished and callous, without there being any possibility of saying who is most to be blamed for the tragic termination. But it was as a political writer that Hertzen gained the vast reputation which he at one time enjoyed. Having founded in London his " Free Russian Press," of the fortunes of which, during ten years, he gave an interesting account in a book published (in Russian) in 1863, he issued from it a great number of Russian works, all levelled against the system of government prevailing in Russia. Some of these were essays, such as his Baptized Property, an attack on serfdom; others were periodical publications, the Polyarnaya Zvyezda (or Polar Star
special
pursued. Stories tell how on one occasion a merchant, who had bought several cases of sardines at Nijni-Novgorod, found that they contained forbidden print instead of fish, and at another time a supposititious copy of the Kolokol was printed for the emperor's special use, in which a telling attack upon a leading statesman, which had appeared in the genuine number, was omitted. At length the sweeping changes introduced by Alexander II. greatly diminished the need for and appreciation of Hertzen's assistance in the work of reform. The freedom he had demanded for the serfs was granted, the law-courts he had so long denounced were remodelled, trial by jury was established, liberty was to a great extent conceded to the press. It became clear that Hertzen's occupation was gone. When the Polish insurrection of 1863 broke out, and he pleaded the insurgents' cause, his reputation in Russia received its death-blow. From that time it was only with the revolutionary party that he was in full accord. In 1873 a collection of his works in French *was commenced in Paris. A volume of posthumous works, in Russian, was published at Geneva in 1870. His Memoirs supply the principal information about his life, a sketch of which appears also in A. von Wurzbach's Zeitgenossen, pt. 7 (Vienna, 1871). See also the Revue des deux rhondes for July 15 and Sept. 1, 1854. Kto Vinovat? has been translated into German under the title of Wer 1st schuld ? in Wolffsohn's Russlands Novellendichter, vol. iii. The title of My Exile in Siberia is misleading; he was never in that country. (W. R. S.-R.)End of Article: HERTZEN, ALEXANDER (1812-1870) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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