Pleschéeff

A. PLESCHÉEFF (1825–1893) has been for the last thirty years of his life one of the favourite Russian poets. Like so many other gifted men of his generation, he was arrested in 1849 in connection with the affair of the “Petrashévskiy circles,” for which Dostoyévskiy was sent to hard labour. He was found even less “guilty” than the great novelist, and was marched as a soldier to the Orenbúrg region, where he probably would have died a soldier, if Nicholas I. had not himself died in 1856. He was pardoned by Alexander II., and permitted to settle at Moscow.

Unlike so many of his contemporaries, Pleschéeff never let himself be crushed by persecution, or by the dark years which Russia has lately lived through. On the contrary, he always retained that same note of vigour, freshness, and faith in his humanitarian though perhaps too abstract ideals, which characterised his first poetical productions in the forties. Only towards his very latest years, under the influence of ill-health, did a pessimistic note begin to creep into his verses. Besides writing original poetry he translated very much, and admirably well, from the German, English, French and Italian poets.