Fables

The greatest satirist of the nineteenth century, Saltykov served as a government official until the mid-1860s, when he began to devote himself full time to literature. A liberal, interested in Western literature, he suffered the political ups and downs of changing times. While editor of the journal Notes of the Fatherland, he was an influential figure in Russian intellectual life, particularly in its radical wing; at the same time, he had sharp disagreements with other radicals over their social prescriptions for the future. Much of Saltykov's writing is journalism, too topical to be easily accessible today. His major works, however, continue to be read with great interest. Among these is his magnificent parody on Russian history, The History of a Town (1869--70), presented as the chronicle of the town of Foolov (Stupidville). His most important work, however, is a set of stories from the second half of the 1870s about the decline of a gentry family, published as a single text under the title The Golovlyov Family (1876). The novel, with its unforgettably materialistic, hypocritical, and fatally flawed hero Porfiry Petrovich, ranks among the great creations of Russian realist prose. 020