Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky (Russian:
Васи́лий Андре́евич Жуко́вский; February
9 [O.S. January 29] 1783 – April 24 [O.S.
April 12] 1852) was the foremost Russian
poet of the 1810s.
He is credited with introducing the
Romantic Movement to Russian literature.
The main body of his literary output
consists of free translations covering
an impressively wide range of poets from
Ferdowsi to Schiller. Quite a few of his
translations proved to be better-written
and more enduring works than their
originals.
Life
Zhukovsky was born in Mishenskoe,
near Tula Oblast, Russia, the
illegitimate son of a Russian landowner
named Afanasi Bunin (related to the
Modernist writer Ivan Bunin) and his
Turkish housekeeper Salha, who had been
brought to Tula as a prisoner of the
Russo-Turkish war. She was later
christened as Elizaveta Demyanovna
Turchaninova. The infant Zhukovsky was
given the surname and patronymic of a
poor family friend named Andrey
Zhukovsky, who formally adopted him, but
he was raised by Bunin's wife and her
sisters and later ennobled in his own
right. In his youth, he lived and
studied at the Moscow University's
Noblemen's Pension, where he was heavily
influenced by Freemasonry, English
Sentimentalism, and the German Sturm und
Drang. He also frequented the house of
Nikolay Karamzin, the preeminent Russian
man of letters and the founding editor
of The European Messenger (also known in
English as The Herald of Europe).
In 1802, Zhukovsky published a free
translation of Thomas Gray's "Elegy
Written in a Country Churchyard" in The
Messenger. The translation introduced
Russian readers to his trademark
sentimental-melancholy style and
instantly made him a household name.
Today it is conventionally cited as the
starting point of Russian Romanticism.
In 1808, Karamzin asked Zhukovsky to
take over the editorship of the
Messenger. The young poet used this
position to explore Romantic themes,
motifs, and genres. He was also among
the first Russian writers to cultivate
the mystique of the Romantic poet. He
dedicated much of his best poetic work
to his half-niece Maria (Masha)
Protasova, the daughter of his
half-sister, with whom he had a
passionate but Platonic affair. His
efforts to get permission to marry Masha
never succeeded. In 1812 Zhukovsky was
present at the Battle of Borodino
outside Moscow, after which he served
with Kutuzov's general staff. After the
war he took up a position as Russian
tutor to the Grand Duchess Alexandra
Fedorovna, the German wife of the future
tsar Nicholas I. Many of Zhukovsky's
best translations from German were made
as exercises for Alexandra.
In later life, Zhukovsky made a second
great contribution to Russian culture as
an educator and patron of the arts. In
1826, he was appointed tutor to the
tsarevich, the son of Alexandra
Fedorovna and Nicholas I, later to
become Tsar Alexander II. Zhukvosky's
progressive program of education so
deeply influenced Alexander that the
liberal reforms of the 1860s can be
partially attributed to it. The poet
also used his high station at court to
take up the cudgels for such
free-thinking writers as Mikhail
Lermontov, Alexander Herzen, Taras
Shevchenko (Zhukovsky was instrumental
in buying him out of serfdom), and the
Decembrists. On Pushkin's death in 1837,
Zhukovsky stepped in as his literary
executor, not only rescuing his work
from a hostile censorship, including
several unpublished masterpieces, but
also diligently collecting and preparing
Pushkin's legacy for publication.
Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, he
nurtured the genius and promoted the
career of Nikolay Gogol, another close
personal friend. In this sense, he acted
behind-the-scenes as a kind of
impresario for the Russian Romantic
Movement that he set in motion. During
his later years he lived mostly in
Germany where he married a local girl
and fathered two children, Pavel and
Alexandra. Zhukovsky died in
Baden-Baden, Germany, in 1852, aged 69.
His body was returned to Russia and
buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra
cemetery in St. Petersburg.
Career
According to Nabokov, Zhukovsky
belonged to the class of poets who
incidentally verge on greatness but
never quite attain to that glory. His
main contribution was as a stylistic and
formal innovator who borrowed liberally
from European literature in order to
provide models in Russian that could
inspire "original" works. Zhukovsky was
particularly admired for his first-rate
melodious translations of German and
English ballads.
Among these, Ludmila (1808) and its
companion piece, Svetlana (1813), are
considered landmarks in the Russian
poetic tradition. Both were free
translations of Gottfried August
Burger's well-known German ballad Lenore
-- although each interpreted the
original in a different way. Zhukovsky
characteristically translated Lenore yet
a third time as part of his efforts to
develop a natural-sounding Russian
dactylic hexameter. His many
translations of Schiller -- including
lyrics, ballads, and the drama Jungfrau
von Orleans (about Joan of Arc) --
became classic Russian works that many
consider to be of equal if not higher
quality than their originals. They were
remarkable for their psychological depth
and greatly impressed and influenced
Dostoevsky, among others. Zhukovsky's
life's work as an interpreter of
European literature probably constitutes
the most important body of literary
hermeneutics in the Russian language.
When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812,
Zhukovsky joined the Russian general
staff under Field Marshal Kutuzov. There
he wrote much patriotic verse, including
the original poem, A Bard in the Camp of
the Russian Warriors, which helped to
establish his reputation at the imperial
court. He also composed the lyrics for
the national anthem of Imperial Russia,
"God Save the Tsar!" After the war, he
became a courtier in St. Petersburg,
where he founded the jocular Arzamas
literary society in order to promote
Karamzin's European-oriented,
anti-classicist aesthetics. Members of
the Arzamas included the teenage
Alexander Pushkin, who was rapidly
emerging as Zhukovsky's heir apparent.
The two became lifelong friends, and
although Pushkin eventually outgrew the
older poet's literary influence, he
increasingly relied on his protection
and patronage. Following the example of
his mentor Karamzin, Zhukovsky travelled
extensively in Europe throughout his
life, meeting and corresponding with
world-class cultural figures like Goethe
or the landscape painter Caspar David
Friedrich. One of his early
acquaintances was the popular German
writer Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué,
whose prose novella Undine was a
European best-seller. In the late 1830s,
Zhukovsky published a highly-original
verse translation of Undine that
reestablished his place in the poetic
avant-garde. Written in a waltzing
hexameter, the work became the basis for
a classic Russian ballet.
In 1841, Zhukovsky retired from court
and settled in Germany, where he married
Baltic German Elisabeth von Reutern, the
18-year-old daughter of an artist friend
Gerhardt Wilhelm von Reutern. The couple
had two children, including Alexandra,
who had an affair with Grand Duke Alexei
Alexandrovich. The aged poet devoted
much of his remaining life to a
hexameter translation of Homer's
Odyssey, which he finally published in
1849. Although the translation was far
from accurate, it became a classic in
its own right and occupies a notable
place in the history of Russian poetry.
Some scholars argue that both his
Odyssey and Undina -- as long narrative
works -- made an important, though
oblique contribution to the development
of the Russian novel.
