Grigory Danilevsky | |
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| Born | Grigory Petrovich Danilevsky (1829-04-26)26 April 1829 |
| Died | 18 December 1890(1890-12-18) (aged 61) |
| Nationality | Ukrainian |
| Period | 1850s-1880s |
Grigory Petrovich Danilevsky (Russian:Григо́рий Петро́вич Даниле́вский; 26 April [O.S. 14 April] 1829 – 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1890) was a Russian historicalnovelist, andPrivy Councillor of Russia. Danilevsky is well known as the author of the novelBeglye v Novorossii (Fugitives in New Russia, 1862).
Born into the family of an impoverished landowner, Petr Ivanovich Danilevsky, in the Izyumsky district ofKharkov Governorate, Grigory was educated in the MoscowDvoryansky institut (Institute of the Nobility) from 1841 to 1846, then studied law atSaint Petersburg University. In 1849 he was mistakenly arrested in connection with thePetrashevsky case and spent several months in the prison of thePeter and Paul Fortress, but he was released and received his certification askandidat in 1850. From 1850 to 1857 he served in the Ministry of Education, where he was sent a number of times to examine the archives of monasteries in the south. In 1856 he was one of the writers sent byGrand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich to study the borderlands of Russia.
In 1857 he retired to his estates in theKharkov Governorate, serving in various local offices, but in 1869 he became an assistant editor of the newPravitelstvenny vestnik (Government Herald) and in 1881 was named the chief editor, thus becoming part of the council supervising the Russian press. He died in December 1890 inSaint Petersburg and was buried in the village of Prishib in theKharkov (present-day Kharkiv,Ukraine).
Aside from some minor verses and translations, Danilevsky's first literary work was a series of stories of Ukrainian life and traditions, collected in 1854 in the bookSlobozhane (Sloboda dwellers). His first novel,Beglye v Novorossii (Fugitives inNovorossiya, 1862), published under the pseudonym D. Skavronsky, brought him wide success; it was followed byBeglye vorotilis (The return of the fugitives, 1863) andNovye mesta (New places, 1867), the whole trilogy describing the settlement of the Ukrainian steppe by runaway serfs.[1] His 1868 story "Zhizn cherez sto let" (Life a hundred years from now, 1868) was a work ofscience fiction imagining the year 1968.
Better known are his novels of the following decades, published inVestnik Evropy andRusskaya Mysl (Russian Thought). In 1874 appearedDevyaty val (The ninth wave), about the struggle between conservatives and reformers in the 1860s. The following year he wroteMirovich, which "deals with the tragic fate of the deposed child-emperorIoann Antonovich and the foiled attempt by LieutenantMirovich to free him fromShlisselburg," but it was banned by the censor and did not appear until 1879;[2]Isabel Florence Hapgood called it his best novel, "though it takes unwarrantable liberties with the personages of the epoch depicted."[3] It was followed byNa Indiyu pri Petre (To India inPeter's day, 1880);Knyazhna Tarakanova (Princess Tarakanova, 1883), about the self-proclaimed daughter of EmpressElizabeth;Sozhzhennaya Moskva (Moscow destroyed by fire, 1886), aboutNapoleon'sinvasion in 1812;Cherny god (The black year, 1888), aboutPugachev's Rebellion; and a series of short stories.
Though Danilevsky was popular in his day,Prince Mirsky says he was "looked down by the advanced and the literate," and calls his novels "derivative and second-rate."[4] However, Dan Ungurianu writes, "Despite their lack of conceptual and artistic integrity, Danilevsky's novels remain among the best works of historical fiction of the period."[5]
