On the possible A.N. Maikov's publications in Grazhdanin of F.M. Dostoevsky

The article considers the possibility of attributing paragraphs about pictorial art published in Grazhdanin [The Citizen] in 1872-73 to A.N. Maikov. The poet's critical heritage remains poorly explored in modern research works on the history of Russian literature and Russian culture of the mid-19th century, despite the fact that the set of questions it touches describes significant tendencies of the Russian cultural life of the 1850s-1870s, reflecting the problems that attracted both criticism and educational journalism. The necessity to determine the corpus of A.N. Maikov's articles and reviews was specified by I.G. Yampolsky. The timeliness of this issue is also brought about by the necessity to determine the circle of authors writing for Grazhdanin edited by F.M. Dostoevsky. Making a relatively full list of Maikov's publications in the periodicals of the 1840s-1890s seems rather difficult. The poet published the majority of the texts anonymously because he treated them as a way of making his living and did not attach importance to them. Herewith, the reviews of art exhibitions he published in 1847-53 became an important moment in the process of Russian art criticism professionalization and attracted attention of his contemporaries. It is known that F.M. Dostoevsky prized him as an artist and critic with a deep feeling for the cultural situation of the time. In this regard the suggestion of the poet's participation in his friend's editing campaigns looks logical. It is justified by Maikov's presence among the authors of Vremya [Time], Epokha [Epoch] and Grazhdanin. The analysis encompassed four reviews thematically connected with the pictorial art. Two of them were signed with the cryptonym "A.M.". Having no documentary basis to ascribe any of the reviews considered to Maikov, the author can only speak of hypothetical argumentation. It has been determined that the poet is likely to have written the review "Photographic prints of the pictures in the Imperial Hermitage" and one of the paragraphs about the projects of the Pushkin memorial. There is a high chance of Maikov's authorship of the paragraph about a statuary found in the storage of the Hermitage and attributed to Rafael, but due to the small size of the article and specificity of its topic there is no opportunity to build a system of evidence for comprehensive argumentation.

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