Apollon Apollonovich Korinfsky (; 29 August 1868 – 12 January 1937) was a Russian poet, journalist, writer, translator and memoirist.

Biography

Korinfsky was born in

Simbirsk Ulyanovsk,, , known as Simbirsk until 1924, is a city and the administrative center of Ulyanovsk Oblast, Russia, located on the Volga River east of Moscow. Ulyanovsk has been the only Russian UNESCO City of Literature since 2015. The city wa ...

to a local judge, his extraordinary name tracing back no further than his eccentric grandfather on father's side, a self-educated

Mordovian Mordvins (also Mordvinians, Mordovians; ; no equivalents in Moksha and Erzya) is an official term used in Russia and the Soviet Union to refer both to Erzyas and Mokshas since 1928. Names While Robert G. Latham had identified ''Mordva'' as ...

peasant.Apollon Korinsky
at the ''Poets of the 1800s-1890s'' collection // ''Николаева Л. А.'' А. А. Коринфский // Поэты 1880—1890 годов / Вступ. статья и общая редакция Г. А. Бялого. Л., 1972. С. 414—420 Having debuted as a published author in 1886 (under the pseudonym Boris Kolyupanov) with several poems and stories, Korinfsky in 1889 moved to Moscow (where he wrote for ''Rossiya'' and ''

Russkoye Bogatstvo ''Russkoye Bogatstvo'' (, Russian Wealth) was a monthly literary and political magazine published in St. Petersburg, Russia, from 1876 to mid-1918. In the early 1890s it served as an organ of the liberal Narodniks. From 1906 it became an organ o ...

''), then further to

Saint Peterburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

in 1891. There he contributed to the magazines ''Nashe Vremya'' (Our Time) and '' Vsemirnaya Illyustratsiya'' and edited the short-lived magazine ''Sever'' (which opened and closed in 1888). In 1895—1904 he worked as an assistant editor for ''Pravitelstvenny Vestnik'' (Government's Herald) under Konstantin Sluchevsky, his friend, writing mostly essays on history and ethnography which in 1901 were collected in the compilation ''Narodnaya Rus'' (Folklore of Russia). Among the authors whose work he translated were

Heinrich Heine Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; ; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was an outstanding poet, writer, and literary criticism, literary critic of 19th-century German Romanticism. He is best known outside Germany for his ...

Samuel Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( ; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets with his friend William Wordswort ...

Adam Mickiewicz Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (24 December 179826 November 1855) was a Polish poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator and political activist. He is regarded as national poet in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. He also largely influenced Ukra ...

and

Taras Shevchenko Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko (; ; 9 March 1814 – 10 March 1861) was a Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, folklorist, and ethnographer. He was a fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts and a member of the Brotherhood o ...

, as well as

Yanka Kupala Ivan Daminikavich Lutsevich (; – 28 June 1942), better known by his pen name Yanka Kupala (Янка Купала), was a Belarusian poet and writer. Biography Early life Kupala was born on July 7, 1882, in Viazynka, a folwark settlement n ...

, with whom he was on friendly terms. As a poet Korinfsky concentrated on the life of Russian peasantry, made full use of the folklore tradition, and considered himself an heir to Alexey K. Tolstoy. His books of poetry, ''Pesni Serdtsa'' (Songs of the Heart, 1894), ''Chyornye Rozy'' (Black Roses, 1896), ''Na Rannei Zorke'' (At Early Dawn, 1896, the collection of the verse for children), as well as several others, were popular and re-issued several times. Korinfsky greeted the February 1917 Revolution and was horrified with the October Bolshevik coup. He stayed in the country, but stopped writing altogether. In 1928, he was arrested for being a member of literary circle, then charged with 'anti-Soviet agitation'. Deported from Leningrad in 1929, he found himself a job as a proofreader in Kalinin and lived there till his death in 1937. Ironically, his last published work happened to be the memoirs on

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

whom he had been, as it turned out, a classmate of for seven years in Simbirsk. Later the evidence was published that the future Soviet leader often visited the Korinfskys' home and made full use of their library, although the poet himself realized the Bolshevik chief and his former school friend were one and the same person, only in 1917, when Lenin came to power.Apollon Korinfsky at the Russian Writers Biographical Dictionary // ''Иванова Л. Н.'' Коринфский Аполлон Аполлонович // Русские писатели 1800—1917. Биографический словарь. Т. 3: К-М / Глав. ред. П. А. Николаев. М., 1994. С. 70-71.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Korinfsky, Apollon Soviet writers Poets from the Russian Empire Translators from the Russian Empire Memoirists from the Russian Empire People from Ulyanovsk 1868 births 1937 deaths