Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak
| Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
October 25, 1852 Visim, Perm Governorate, Russian Empire |
| Died | November 2, 1912 (aged 60) St. Petersburg, Russia |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Period | 1880s–1910s |
| Genre | Fiction, drama, children's stories, travel writing |
| Subject | Rural Life |
| Literary movement | Realism |
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Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak (Russian: Дми́трий Нарки́сович Ма́мин-Сибиря́к) (October 25, 1852 – November 2, 1912) was a Russian author most famous for his novels and short stories about life in the Ural Mountains.
Mamin-Sibiryak was born in Visim, Perm Governorate in the Urals (in present-day Sverdlovsk Oblast), into the family of a factory priest. He was first educated at home, and then studied in the Visim school for worker's children. He later attended the Yekaterinburg Theological Seminary (1866–1868) and the Perm Theological Seminary (until 1872). In 1872 he entered the veterinary section of the Saint Petersburg Medical Academy. In 1876, not having finished the academy, he transferred to the Law Faculty of St Petersburg University. He studied there for one year and then left, due to health (the beginning of tuberculosis) and financial difficulties.
In the summer of 1877 he returned to his family in the Urals. His father died the following year and all the difficulties of the family fell on Mamin-Sibiryak. In order to find work and educate his brothers and sister the family moved to the large cultural center of Yekaterinburg. There he married Maria Alekseeva who became his literary advisor as well as his spouse and friend. During these years he made numerous trips around the Ural region and studied its history, economics, ethnography and daily life.
From the beginning of the 1880s he was occupied with literary work.
In 1890 he divorced his first wife and married the actress M. Abramova from the Yekaterinburg Dramatic Theatre and moved to St Petersburg. Abramova died a year later, leaving a sick daughter, Alyonushka, in the arms of a distraught father.
A series of travel sketches From the Urals to Moscow (1881–1882) were published in the Moscow newspaper Russkie Vedemosti (Russian News). Then his sketches In the Mountains and stories At the Border of Asia and In Bad Souls were published in the journal Delo. Many were signed with the pseudonym D. Sibiryak.
Sibiryak means "Siberian" in Russian. Dmitry later explained how his friends gave him the name:
"I first tried out the names 'Rasskazov' (from the word rasskazy, meaning story) and 'Tomsky' (from the word tom, meaning volume), but they weren't right! My name was an object of fun to my fellow ordinands. Why were we 'Mamin' (momma's boys) and not 'Tyatin' (daddy's boys)? They decided the best pseudonym was Sibiryak. After all, Yekaterinburg is the other side of the Urals, and Russians regard everything beyond the Urals, including Siberia, as all one!"
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