Fedor Nikolaevich Glinka

Born June 8 (19), 1786, on the estate of Sutoki, present-day Smolensk Oblast; died Feb. 11 (23), 1880, in Tver’. Russian poet and publicist. Brother of S. N. Glinka.

Glinka graduated from the First Cadet School in 1802. He fought in the Patriotic War of 1812, which he described in Letters of a Russian Officer (1815-16). He was an active member of the secret Decembrist organizations Union of Salvation and Union of Prosperity. From 1819 to 1825 he was head of the Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. After the defeat of the Decembrists he was exiled to Petrozavodsk (until 1830), where he studied Karelian ethnography and folklore. He was the author of the narrative poems Maiden of the Karelian Woods and Karelia (1828-30). Glinka’s civic poetry, which was Decembrist in nature, was imbued with sentimental and biblical themes. The poems “Troika” (“The bold troika speeds along,” 1824) and “The Prisoner” (“The noise of the city is not heard,” 1831) became popular songs. Sketches of the Battle of Borodino (1839) was critically acclaimed by V. G. Belinskii. In the late 1830’s, Glinka began to work for the journal Moskvitianin. His Spiritual Poems (1839) and the narrative poems Jove (1859) and The Mysterious Drop (1861) are full of mysticism.