Nestor Kukolnik

The year 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Russian writer Nestor Vasilievich Kukolnik. Eclipsed by the great Gogol’s anniversary, Kukolnik’s will most likely go unnoticed. The writer once seriously viewed as Pushkin’s literary rival is forgotten today - as undeservedly as he was once extravagantly extolled. Nestor Kukolnik, who was not only Gogol’s contemporary but also his classmate at the Nezhinsky school, today is probably remembered only as a friend of Karl Briullov and Mikhail Glinka. We owe to this friendship above all two masterpieces of Russian art: Karl Briullov made a superb portrait of Kukolnik, while the composer Glinka composed a series of romances to his poems “A Farewell to St. Petersburg”.