Alexander Palm

Alexander Ivanovich Palm (Александр Иванович Пальм, – ) was a Russian poet, novelist and playwright, who also used the pseudonym P. Alminsky. A member of the Petrashevsky Circle, Palm in 1847 was arrested, spent 8 months in the Petropavlovsk Fortress, had his death sentence changed to deportation and served 7 years in the Russian Army. Among his best known works are Alexey Slobodin. The History of One Family (1874, novel) and Our Friend Neklyuzhev (1879, drama).

Biography Alexander Ivanovich Palm was born in Krasnoslobodsk, Penza region, son of a provincial state official and a serf peasant woman. As a teenager he enrolled into the Saint Petersburg military school and after graduation in 1842 joined the Russian Guards as a junior officer. In 1843 his debut poem published by Literaturnaya Gazeta received praise from critic and playwright Fyodor Koni. In the course of the next five years more than 30 poems by Palm appeared in different Russian magazines.

After three years spent in Samara Governorate, Palm returned to literary activities and published numerous novels and dramas. During the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) he worked as a war correspondent for Novoye Vremya, in 1883 edited the weekly newspaper Teatr, for a year was the head of the Pushkin literary circle, having succeeded Alexey Pleshcheyev.

Legacy Alexander Palm's poetry, "marked by clarity of vision, sonority and technical precision," bore all the marks of Mikhail Lermontov's influence, according to biographer Kravets. Palm's best known poetic drama, The Tale of Tsar, Tsarina and Guslyar with a Cat from the Overseas (1843) was similar to Lermontov's The Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov. Palm's 1849 novel Zhak Bichovkin featured a hero who, according to the author himself, "regarded himself as another Pechorin."

The centerpiece of Palm's vast prosaic legacy is the novel Alexey Slobodin. The Family History in 5 Parts which he published in Vestnik Evropy (1872, Nos. 10,12; 1873, Nos. 2, 3; 1874, Nos. 10, 11) under the moniker P.Alminsky. The novel attracted much interest because most of its heroes had real life prototypes, members of the Petrashevsky and Durov's circles (Rudkovsky as Durov, Slobodin as Fyodor Dostoyevsky).

Palm's dramas Old Landlord (1873) and Our Friend Neklyuzhev (1879), staged by the Aleksandrinsky and Maly Theaters respectively, proved to be very popular with the public. Contemporary critics dismissed them, but in retrospect Russian literary historians see Palm's plays as superior to his prose and poetry.

Select bibliography

Novels Zhak Bichovkin (Жак Бичовкин, 1849) Alexey Slobodin (Алексей Слободин, 1872- 1874) The End of the Old Romance (Конец старого романа, 1874) The Lost Years (Пропащие годы, 1880) The Petersburg Locust (Петербургская саранча, 1884)

Dramas Old Landlord (Старый барин, 1873) Our Friend Neklyuzhev (Наш друг Неклюжев, 1879)

Poetry The Tale of Tsar, Tsarina and Guslyar With a Cat from the Overseas (1843, drama in verse)