Semyon Nadson

Semyon Yakovlevich Nadson (; 14 December 1862 – 19 January 1887) was a Russian poet and essayist. He is noted for being the first Jewish poet to achieve national fame in the Russian Empire.

Biography Nadson's father was a Jew who converted to Greek Orthodoxy, and was a civil servant in St. Petersburg. When Nadson was two years old, his father died in a lunatic asylum. His mother, Antonina Stepanovna Mamontova, was the offspring of an old noble Russian Orthodox family, the Mamontovs. She supported her family by working as a housekeeper and teacher. She later remarried and settled in Kiev . When she died of tuberculosis in 1873, Nadson became the ward of his uncle, I.S. Mamontov, an anti-Semite. According to his account, he suffered living under his household. When he retired in 1884, he traveled to Europe with a female companion, Maria Vatson. A collection of his essays called Literary Sketches was published in 1887. Nadson's works, which focused on decay, depression, sickness, and death resonated with their sympathizers and students with antimonarchistic convictions. He was considered Russia's most popular poet in the three decades that preceded the Russian Revolution and was the first Jew to have achieved such national renown.

Nadson. Bas-relief-medallion by S. A. Umanskij (Geneva). The cover of "Neva"(journal) No.48-1916). 1916