Nikitin

NIKITIN (1824–1861) was another poet of a similar type. He was born in a poor artisan’s family, also in South Russia. His life in this family, of which the head was continually under the influence of drink, and which the young man had to maintain, was terrible. He also died young, but he left some very fine and most touching pieces of poetry, in which, with a simplicity that we shall find only with the later folk novelists, he described scenes from popular life, coloured with the deep sadness impressed upon him by his own unhappy life.