Konstantin Mikhailovich Fofanov was a Russian poet.

Early life

Konstantin was born into a family of St. Petersburg merchants. His father had been born a peasant, but had risen to the merchant class through the selling of firewood. Konstantin was one of ten children. At the age of six he began attending a primary school. He later attended the cheap private Aimee and Kestner pensions, as well as the St. Petersburg city school, but left before completing the second form after his father went bankrupt and became a mystic. As a result, Konstantine didn't receive a formal education. He made up for his lack of education by the constant reading of magazines and books, sometimes messy, but extremely diverse. His reading was clearly on an ad hoc basis, but he was fascinated by books, becoming addicted to poetry at the age of thirteen, and beginning to write his own verses.

Career

He made ​​his debut in print in 1881. He published poems in the illustrated weeklies, and in the newspaper New Times, ran by Aleksey Suvorin

Aleksey Suvorin

Aleksei Sergeevich Suvorin was an immensely rich newspaper and book publisher and journalist whose publishing empire wielded considerable influence during the last decades of the Russian Empire.He set out as a liberal journalist but, as many of his...

. After the success of his first collection Poems (1887), Suvorin issued a second edition in 1889. After this Fofanov published Shadows and Mystery (1892), a novella in verse The Baron Clasco (1892) and Poems (in five parts, 1896).

In general, the period from the mid 1880s to the mid 1890s in the history of Russian poetry, is often called "Fofanovism" because the poetry of Fofanov had the support of popular sentiment, found a wide response from readers and provoked much imitation. His talent was praised by fellow poets Yakov Polonsky

Yakov Polonsky

Yakov Petrovich Polonsky was a leading Pushkinist poet who tried to uphold the waning traditions of Russian Romantic poetry during the heyday of realistic prose....

 and Apollon Maykov

Apollon Maykov

Apollon Nikolayevich Maykov was a Russian poet.He was born into the artistic family of Nikolay Apollonovich Maykov, a painter and an academic. In 1834 the family moved to Petersburg. In 1837-1841 Maykov studied law at Saint Petersburg University. At first he was attracted to painting, but he soon...

 and writers such as Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

 and Nikolai Leskov

Nikolai Leskov

Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov was a Russian journalist, novelist and short story writer, who also wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. Praised for his unique writing style and innovative experiments in form, held in high esteem by Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky among others, Leskov is...

.

Fofanov is considered to be a precursor of the Symbolists.

Later life

Fofanov was an alcoholic, and in the early 1890s suffered from a severe mental illness. The last ten years of his life were spent in poverty and drunkenness. He continued to write, but published only a collection of poems Illusions (1900), a poem in octaves Uncommon Romance and the poem After Calvary (1910).

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