Memorable Dates of Russia: Exhibition "Dostoevsky and Nekrasov. Brothers of the Quill. Closer Ties and Contradictions", devoted to the 200th anniversary of writers, presented in

The Dostoevsky Museum (Saint-Petersburg) opened the exhibition “Dostoevsky and Nekrasov. Brothers of the Quill. Closer Ties and Contradictions" devoted to the 200th anniversary of writers.

Nekrasov and Dostoevsky belonged to the same generation. Their names were regularly at the forefront of the literary life of the 1840s - 1870s. Nekrasov was the first who recognised Dostoevsky's great talent and published his debut novel "Poor Folk" in the publication "Peterburgsky Sbornik" in 1846. The early Nekrasov's poems were issued by the same magazine. The first friendly relations forever remained in the memory of both writers, although their future paths either diverged or crossed. Dostoevsky survived hard labour and exile and was out of literature for a whole decade. In the poem "The Unfortunate" (1856), Nekrasov portrayed Dostoevsky as a prisoner under the nickname "Mole".

In the 1860s, they were opponents in stormy social life. The Dostoevsky's patriotic magazine "Vremya" argued with the radical "Sovremennik" by Nekrasov.

However, they always had an interest in each other's work. And it is the main thing that connected the two writers. Nekrasov highly appreciated Dostoevsky's novel "Adolescent", which he published in 1874 in his magazine "Otechestvennye Zapiski". Dostoevsky called Nekrasov "one of the most passionate, melancholy and "suffering" of our poets". Passages from various Nekrasov's poems can be found in Dostoevsky's novels "Notes from Underground", "Crime and Punishment", "Adolescent", "The Brothers Karamazov". Dostoevsky regarded Nekrasov as a "common man", a Russian repenting nobleman, who keeps the memory of a people in his heart and understands its character and feels its pain. In the "A Writer's Diary" for 1873, Dostoevsky published an article dedicated to the poem "Vlas", in which Nekrasov created "a dignified image of the people".

The "A Writer's Diary" for 1877 includes the article "Death of Nekrasov". Dostoevsky wrote about love for his poetry and defined the main features in the poet's soul and oeuvre. In this article, Dostoevsky called Nekrasov one of the outstanding "Russian wanderers". Later he will describe fates of such people in the "Pushkin Speech"(1880).

The exposition will run until December 15, 2020.