Vladimir Sollogub

He hosted a well-known literary and musical salon where he brought to life the atmosphere of St. Petersburg of that era as related in his Memoirs (1887).

He increased his wealth to 80,000 souls by means of the marriage with Natalia Naryshkina, a daughter of the Russian Emperor's relative Lev Narishkin.

He held a civil rank of master of ceremonies (Russian: Церемониймейстер, from German "Zermonienmeister") at the court, however in public he was mainly known as a dandy.

The mother of the author, Sofia Ivanovna Sollogub (maiden name: Arharova; 1791–1854), was admired by emperor Alexander I, who loved having conversations with her.

The list of his teachers included Pyotr Pletnev (Russian language and literature) and protoiereus Ioakim Kochetov (law of God).

Vladimir's gouverneur was Ernest Charrière, a French playwright, historian, poet, and the future translator of Turgenev's "A Sportsman's Sketches."

Having received the perfect home studying and wishing to pursue a diplomatic career, Vladimir entered the philosophical department of the University of Dorpat.

Sollogub became a habitué of several musical-literary salons hosted by landrat Karl Gotthard von Liphart and Professors Vasiliy Perevoshikov and Ivan Moyer.

Here in Pavlovsk in 1831, Sollogub became acquainted with Nikolai Gogol, who was, at that, time a gouverneur of Vladimir's cousin, Count Vasilchikov, who was suffering from dementia.

However, he didn't demonstrate an inclination towards diplomatic duties, so he returned to Russia, and on 19 January 1835 he started his career in the Ministry of Internal Affairs as an official "for special missions" (attached to the governor of Tver).

On April 19, he was instructed to create a comprehensive statistical description of the Simbirsk governorate, which he successfully finished (with an interruption) in September 1839 and which is currently stored in the Russian State Historical Archive.

The public knew him as a witty young man with perfect dancing skills, though as Avdotya Panaeva and Dmitry Grigorovich noticed, his behavior "varied."

In 1842, Vladimir had already reached the rank of Collegiate Accessor and held the post of head clerk in the minister's chancellery, which he changed to a forwarder in the same year.

His stay in Baden-Baden (July - August 1843) and Nice (autumn 1843 - winter 1844) was marked by the companionship of Alexandra Smirnova and Nikolay Gogol, who, after having read Sollogub's unfinished novel "Tarantas", gave Vladimir some literary advice.

His most prominent work of that time, in Andrey Nemzer's opinion, was the romantic poem "Stan" (Russian: Стан, Camp).

Vladimir joined Nikolay Karamzin's saloon (which members at the time were Alexander Pushkin, Vyazemsky, Ivan Turgenev, and, later, Mikhail Lermontov), which streightened his literary social network.

In the first half of 1830th, before Sollogub's literary debut in "Sovremennik" with the tale “Tri Zheniha” (Russian: Три Жениха, Three Grooms, 1837), Vladimir's name had already been known in the circle of contemporary senior writers.

In addition, the author also attempted to write a libretto to "A Life for the Tsar", an opera by Mikhail Glinka, but the composer didn't like it.

Researchers suggest that in the middle of the 1830s the relationship between Sollogub and Pushkin developed beyond secular acquaintance, which explains Vladimir's participation in "Otechestvennye Zapiski."

Researchers note the influence of Odoyevsky's prose, both musical and secular, on Sollogub's narrative "The History of Two Shoes" (Russian: "История двух калош"), which was published in "Otechestvennye Zapiski" in 1839 and which was very popular among readers.

Vadim Vatsurov suggested that Sollogub's decision to move from the shallowing "Sovremennik" of Pletnyov to "Otechestvennye Zapiski" of Alexander Kraevsky, Odoyevskiy, and Belinsky was an act of self-determination.

The next year (1841) was remarkable for Sollogub, as the first part of the digest of his works, "For the Upcoming Dream" (Russian: "На сон грядущий"), was published in Saint Petersburg.

"It was a long time since we had read something, in Russian, that contained such a beautiful, deeply humanitarian content; delicate diplomacy, and the mastery of the shape..." he wrote.

In 1842, Sollogub publisheds the article "About conscious of a writer," in which he wrote, with a negative tone, about the commercial part of the literary life.

Generally, all prominent writers were awarded with nice comments in his memoirs (e.g., he wrote about Nekrasov's literary activity as a "brilliant one").

In autumn 1844, Sollogub wrote a libretto for "Undina," an opera of Alexey Lvov, whose plot was based on Zhukovsky's interpretation of Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's fairy tale.