Nikolai Wagner

Wagner, a Slavophile (through the influence of Sergey and Konstantin Aksakovs), remained an atheist and a Darwinist up until 1874 when he started to attend the spiritualist séances. Along with professor Alexander Butlerov and Aksakov he organised a series of scientifically based examinations of the phenomenon. In the course of his psychic research while having come across numerous frauds, he still came to the conclusion that the phenomenon was genuine. He became a staunch Spiritualist and got himself involved in heated correspondence defending his views, polemicizing with Dmitry Mendeleyev and criticising Leo Tolstoy for having ridiculed what he had little information about in The Fruits of Enlightenment, a broad swipe at Spiritualism.[1] His spiritualistic beliefs have put an end to his friendship with Fyodor Dostoyevsky.[3]

Cat Murlyka's title page. 1895

As a fiction writer Wagner made his mark as an author of popular books for children, the most successful of which, Skazki kota Murlyki (Cat Purr's Fairytales), a collection of twenty five finely written mystical and philosophical fables and stories, came out in 1872. Wagner's fairytales, a peculiar mix of hazy mysticism and harsh realism centered around the theme of good against evil, elicited lively debate in the pedagogical spheres in Russia, the majority of critics agreeing that they had nothing to do with children's literature whatsoever. The fact that Skazki have been re-issued a dozen of times in the pre-1917 Russia (since 1918 Wagner's work stopped being published altogether) attests for their popularity, although apparently mostly with the adult readership.[1]

K svetu (To the Light), his early 'serious' novel (written originally in 1869) was published by Russkaya Mysl in 1883 to little response. It was followed in 1890 by his highly controversial and much discussed epic Tyomny put (Тёмный путь, Dark Path). Driven by the notion of there being widespread Jewish conspiracy for the world domination and, more worryingly, the destruction of Russia, it led to Wagner's being accused of obscurantism and antisemitism. Even the right-wing reviewers, though, who might have hailed it for the subject matter itself, responded mutely, having found it, apparently, of little artistic merit. In retrospect more sympathetic literary historians found in the novel as well in some other later works by Wagner elements of prescience; the latter had to do, though, not with conspiracy theories, but rather with science, psychology and parapsychology, some precipitating Freudian ideas.[4]

Up until now the critics are divided about Wagner's literary legacy. The biographer Viktor Shirokov hails him as "Our Russian Andersen",[2] Savely Dudakov called his essay on Wagner Evil Fairy-teller, while A. Goryashko combined both attitudes in a biography called The Bad Good Man[1] Some of the critics (Dudakov among them) tended to explain the uneasy fact that the author, who became quite famous for his humanistic fables, preaching universal love and kindness, later in his life all of a sudden shifted dramatically to the right, owning up to the ideas that several years later would lead to pogroms, in terms of Wagner's progressing mental illness.[5]

Nikolai Wagner died in 1907 of paralytic dementia. He is interred in the Smolensky Cemetery in Saint Petersburg.[6]