From Love Songs

The poetic creativity of Semen Nadson had a grand success among readers, the likes of which had never been seen in Russian literature. His only collection of poems sold out in three months and was then repeatedly reissued; the poet was awarded the Pushkin Prize by the Academy of Sciences. His voice turned out to be remarkably in tune with the time; Nadson's poems, his "songs of love", were memorized, and in the eyes of readers, they were pages of the poet's real biography, full of dramatic collisions such as the early death of his parents, and then the death of his beloved, the poet's own serious illness, his poetic triumph, and slanderous persecution from literary enemies. "How many tears were shed over his poems, with what enthusiasm they were read and with what reverence his name was pronounced!" — wrote Vladislav Khodasevich. Nadson passed away at the mere age of 24, at the peak of his fame, and became the master of feelings for an entire generation of the era of "timelessness" — an era that divided the Silver and Golden Ages in the history of Russian poetry.