1. Nikolai Pomyalovsky's father was a deacon in the Eastern Orthodox Church in Malaya Okhta, a village on the bank of the Neva River, across from Saint Petersburg.
12 Facts About Nikolai Pomyalovsky
1. 2.
Nikolai Pomyalovsky's work Seminary Sketches is a harrowing description of his years in these schools.
3.
Nikolai Pomyalovsky had high expectations for the usefulness and influence of the Sunday schools, but when these expectations went unrealized he turned to drinking again.
4.
Nikolai Pomyalovsky published his first novel Bourgeois Happiness in Sovremennik.
5.
Nikolai Pomyalovsky became friends with the editor of Sovremennik, Nikolay Nekrasov, and with its guiding spirit Nikolai Chernyshevsky.
6.
Nikolai Pomyalovsky had hoped to find solidarity and fellowship in the Saint Petersburg literary circles, but found only backbiting, petty ambitions, and what he saw as condescension from the established gentry writers.
7.
Nikolai Pomyalovsky rebelled by getting drunk often and acting in a way that alienated his friends and literary connections.
8.
Nikolai Pomyalovsky began disappearing for weeks at a time, living in the Saint Petersburg slums among prostitutes and criminals, and continuing to feed his addiction to alcohol.
9.
Seminary Sketches gives a fictionalized but accurate account of the 14 years that Nikolai Pomyalovsky spent in the seminaries.
10.
Nikolai Pomyalovsky tells of the drudgery and mindless rote learning that Russia's future spiritual leaders were subjected to.
11.
Nikolai Pomyalovsky goes on to describe teacher-student favoritism, suppression of independent thinking, and an endless repetition of brutal floggings.
12.
Nikolai Pomyalovsky had a considerable influence on Maxim Gorky and others, and is ranked high among Russian realist writers.