Dmitry Grigorovich

Dmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich (Russian: Дми́трий Васи́льевич Григоро́вич) (March 31 [O.S. March 19] 1822 – January 3 1900 [O.S. December 22, 1899]) was a Russian writer, artist, and art critic.

Biography

From 1832 to 1835 he studied in a German gymnasium and then the French Monighetty boarding school in Moscow. He then did coursework at the Nikolayevsky Engineering Institute, where he made friends with his fellow student Fyodor Dostoyevsky who's got him interested in literature. In 1840 Grigorovich quit the institute (which he hated, anyway) after the severe punishment he'd received for failing to formally greet the Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, as the latter was passing by. He joined then the Imperial Academy of Arts and here became close friends with Taras Shevchenko.

Career

Upon leaving school, Grigorovich took a small room from the warder of the Academy of Arts. It was in the neighboring studios that he made his first literary acquaintances including Nikolay Nekrasov. Later, working at the Academy's chancellery, Grigorovich stroke friendships with actors and script-writers and started writing himself, beginning with the translations of French vaudevilles (The Inheritance, Champaigne and Opium, both 1843) into Russian. His first published original short stories were "The Theatre Carriage" (1844) and "A Doggie" (1845), both bearing strong Gogol influence. Those were noticed by Nekrasov who invited him to take part in the almanac The Physiology of Saint Petersburg he was working upon. It was there that the St. Petersburg Organ Grinders (1845), a detailed study of the life of the travelling musicians of the city, was published, to be praised by influential critic Vissarion Belinsky, to whom the young author has been introduced, also by Nekrasov.