The
18th century
The 18th century was a period of codification,
imitation, and absorption of foreign models. The
century’s major contribution was the development of
a literary language. Under the pressure of new
subject matter and the influx of foreign
expressions, Church Slavonic proved inadequate, and
the resulting linguistic chaos required the
standardization of literary Russian. In 1758
Mikhail Lomonosov published “Predisloviye o
polze knig tserkovnykh v rossiyskom yazyke”
(“Preface on the Use of Church Books in the Russian
Language”) in which he classified Russian and Church
Slavonic words, assigning their use to three styles,
and correlated these styles with appropriate themes,
genres, and tones. Thus the Russian literary
language was to be established by a combination of
Russian and Church Slavonic.
Verse also changed decisively. The old syllabic
verse, based on qualities of the Polish language,
gave way to syllabotonic verse (i.e., verse in which
the number of stressed syllables in each line
becomes the dominant prosodic element), more
suitable to Russian. Theories of versification were
advanced by Vasily Trediakovsky in 1735 and
1752 and, especially, by Lomonosov in 1739
(the date
Belinsky chose as the beginning of Russian
literature). It is also noteworthy that the Petrine
assault on the church decisively ended the role of
the clergy in Russian literature.
Throughout the 18th century Russian writers
imitated, adapted, and experimented with a wide
variety of European genres, thus grafting them onto
the Russian tradition and making them available for
later, more original, use. Much classical and
western European literature was translated, read,
and assimilated, thus producing a kind of telescopic
effect, as works and movements that were centuries
apart were absorbed at the same time. Four writers
dominate the period from the death of Peter to the
ascension of Catherine II the Great in 1762.
Antiokh Kantemir is best known for his verse
satires. In addition to his treatises and poems in
various genres, Trediakovsky produced a
poetic psalter. Lomonosov, who was also a scientist
and played a key role in founding Moscow State
University (1755), achieved his greatest poetic
success in panegyric and spiritual odes, especially
“Oda na vzyatiye Khotina” (1739; “Ode on the Seizure
of Khotin”), “Vecherneye razmyshleniye o Bozhiyem
velichestve” (1743; “Evening Meditation on the
Majesty of God”), and “Utrenneye razmyshleniye o
Bozhiyem velichestve” (1743; “Morning Meditation on
the Majesty of God”). Whereas Baroque poetics
strongly influenced
Trediakovsky and Lomonosov, the
younger
Aleksandr Sumarokov, a poet and dramatist,
stood for a rigorous and lucid classicism.
Mikhail Lomonosov
born Nov. 19 [Nov. 8, old style],
1711, near Kholmogory, Russia
died April 15 [April 4, O.S.], 1765, St.
Petersburg
Russian poet, scientist, and grammarian
who is often considered the first great
Russian linguistic reformer. He also
made substantial contributions to the
natural sciences, reorganized the St.
Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences,
established in Moscow the university
that today bears his name, and created
the first coloured glass mosaics in
Russia.
Lomonosov was the son of a poor
fisherman. At the age of 10 he too took
up that line of work. When the few books
he was able to obtain could no longer
satisfy his growing thirst for
knowledge, in December 1730, he left his
native village, penniless and on foot,
for Moscow. His ambition was to educate
himself to join the learned men on whom
the tsar Peter I the Great was calling
to transform Russia into a modern
nation.
The clergy and the nobility, attached
to their privileges and fearing the
spread of education and science,
actively opposed the reforms of which
Lomonosov was a lifelong champion. His
bitter struggle began as soon as he
arrived in Moscow. In order to be
admitted to the Slavonic–Greek–Latin
Academy he had to conceal his humble
origin; the sons of nobles jeered at
him, and he had scarcely enough money
for food and clothes. But his robust
health and exceptional intelligence
enabled him in five years to assimilate
the eight-year course of study; during
this time he taught himself Greek and
read the philosophical works of
antiquity.
Noticed at last by his instructors,
in January 1736 Lomonosov became a
student at the St. Petersburg Academy.
Seven months later he left for Germany
to study at the University of Marburg,
where he led the turbulent life of the
German student. His work did not suffer,
however, for within three years he had
surveyed the main achievements of
Western philosophy and science. His
mind, freed from all preconception,
rebelled at the narrowness of the
empiricism in which the disciples of
Isaac Newton had bound the natural
sciences; in dissertations sent to St.
Petersburg, he attacked the problem of
the structure of matter.
In 1739, in Freiberg, Lomonosov
studied firsthand the technologies of
mining, metallurgy, and glassmaking.
Also friendly with the poets of the
time, he freely indulged the love of
verse that had arisen during his
childhood with the reading of Psalms.
The “Ode,” dedicated to the Empress, and
the Pismo o pravilakh rossiyskogo
stikhotvorstva (“Letter Concerning the
Rules of Russian Versification”) made a
considerable impression at court.
After breaking with one of his
masters, the chemist Johann Henckel, and
many other mishaps, among which his
marriage at Marburg must be included,
Lomonosov returned in July 1741 to St.
Petersburg. The Academy, which was
directed by foreigners and incompetent
nobles, gave the young scholar no
precise assignment, and the injustice
aroused him. His violent temper and
great strength sometimes led him to go
beyond the rules of propriety, and in
May 1743 he was placed under arrest. Two
odes sent to the empress Elizabeth won
him his liberation in January 1744, as
well as a certain poetic prestige at the
Academy.
While in prison he worked out the
plan of work that he had already
developed in Marburg. The 276 zametok po
fizike i korpuskulyarnoy filosofi (“276
Notes on Corpuscular Philosophy and
Physics”) set forth the dominant ideas
of his scientific work. Appointed a
professor by the Academy in 1745, he
translated Christian Wolff’s
Institutiones philosophiae
experimentalis (“Studies in Experimental
Philosophy”) into Russian and wrote, in
Latin, important works on the
Meditationes de Caloris et Frigoris
Causa (1747; “Cause of Heat and Cold”),
the Tentamen Theoriae de vi Aëris
Elastica (1748; “Elastic Force of Air”),
and the Theoria Electricitatis (1756;
“Theory of Electricity”). His friend,
the celebrated German mathematician
Leonhard Euler, recognized the creative
originality of his articles, which were,
on Euler’s advice, published by the
Russian Academy in the Novye kommentari.
Battle of Poltava. M. Lomonosov's
mosaic. Academy of Sciences.
S.-Petersburg. 1762–1764
In 1748 the laboratory that Lomonosov
had been requesting since 1745 was
granted him; it then began a prodigious
amount of activity. He passionately
undertook many tasks and, courageously
facing ill will and hostility, recorded
in three years more than 4,000
experiments in his Zhurnal laboratori,
the results of which enabled him to set
up a coloured glass works and to make
mosaics with these glasses. Slovo o
polze khimi (1751; “Discourse on the
Usefulness of Chemistry”), the Pismo k
I.I. Shuvalovu o polze stekla (1752;
“Letter to I.I. Shuvalov Concerning the
Usefulness of Glass”), and the “Ode” to
Elizabeth celebrated his fruitful union
of abstract and applied science. Anxious
to train students, he wrote in 1752 an
introduction to the physical chemistry
course that he was to set up in his
laboratory. The theories on the unity of
natural phenomena and the structure of
matter that he set forth in the
discussion on the Slovo o proiskhozhdeni
sveta (1756; “Origin of Light and
Colours”) and in his theoretical works
on electricity in 1753 and 1756 also
matured in this laboratory.
Encouraged by the success of his
experiments in 1760, Lomonosov inserted
in the Meditationes de Solido et Fluido
(“Reflections on the Solidity and
Fluidity of Bodies”) the “universal law
of nature”—that is, the law of
conservation of matter and energy,
which, with the corpuscular theory,
constitutes the dominant thread in all
his research.
To these achievements were added the
composition of Rossiyskaya grammatika
and of Kratkoy rossiyskoy letopisets
(“Short Russian Chronicle”), ordered by
the Empress, and all the work of
reorganizing education, to which
Lomonosov accorded much importance.
From 1755 he followed very closely
the development of Moscow State
University (now Moscow M.V. Lomonosov
State University), for which he had
drawn up the plans. Appointed a
councillor by the Academy in 1757, he
undertook reforms to make the university
an intellectual centre closely linked
with the life of the country. To that
end, he wrote several scholarly works
including Rassuzhdeniye o bolshoy
tochnosti morskogo puti (1759;
“Discussion of the Great Accuracy of the
Maritime Route”); Rassuzhdeniye o
proiskhozhdenii ledyanykh gor v
severnykh moryakh (1760; “Discussion of
the Formation of Icebergs in the
Northern Seas”); Kratkoye opisaniye
raznykh puteshestviy po severnym moryam
. . . (1762–63; “A Short Account of the
Various Voyages in the Northern Seas”);
and O sloyakh zemnykh (1763; “Of the
Terrestrial Strata”), which constituted
an important contribution both to
science and to the development of
commerce and the exploitation of mineral
wealth.
Despite the honours that came to him,
he continued to lead a simple and
industrious life, surrounded by his
family and a few friends. He left his
house and the laboratory erected in his
garden only to go to the Academy. His
prestige was considerable in Russia, and
his scientific works and his role in the
Academy were known abroad. He was a
member of the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences and of that of Bologna. His
theories concerning heat and the
constitution of matter were opposed by
the empiricist scientists of Germany,
although they were analyzed with
interest in European scientific
journals.
The persecutions he suffered,
particularly after the empress
Elizabeth’s death in 1762 (1761, Old
Style) exhausted him physically, and he
died in 1765. The empress Catherine II
the Great had the patriotic scholar
buried with great ceremony, but she
confiscated all the notes in which were
outlined the great humanitarian ideas he
had developed. Publications of his works
were purged of the material that
constituted a menace to the system of
serfdom, particularly that concerned
with materialist and humanist ideas.
Efforts were made to view him as a court
poet and an upholder of monarchy and
religion rather than as an enemy of
superstition and a champion of popular
education. The authorities did not
succeed in quenching the influence of
his work, however. The publication of
his Polnoye sobraniye sochineny
(“Complete Works”) in 1950–83 by Soviet
scholars has revealed the full
contributions of Lomonosov, who has long
been misunderstood by historians of
science.
Luce-Andrée Langevin
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Vasily Trediakovsky
born February 22 (March 5, New
Style), 1703, Astrakhan, Russia
died August 6 [August 17], 1768, St.
Petersburg
Russian literary theoretician and
poet whose writings contributed to the
classical foundations of Russian
literature.
The son of a poor priest,
Trediakovsky became the first Russian
not of the nobility to receive a
humanistic education abroad, at the
Sorbonne in Paris (1727–30). Soon after
his return to Russia he became acting
secretary of the Academy of Sciences and
de facto court poet. In 1735
Trediakovsky published Novy i kratky
sposob k slozheniyu rossiyskikh stikhov
(“A New and Concise Method for the
Composition of Russian Verses”), which
discussed for the first time in Russian
literature such poetic genres as the
sonnet, the rondeau, the madrigal, and
the ode. In 1748 appeared his Razgovor
ob ortografii (“A Conversation on
Orthography”), the first study of the
phonetic structure of the Russian
language. He continued his advocacy of
poetic reform in O drevnem, srednem i
novom stikhotvorenii rossiyskom (1752;
“On Ancient, Middle, and New Russian
Poetry”). Trediakovsky was also a
prolific translator of classical
authors, medieval philosophers, and
French literature. His translations
frequently aroused the ire of the
censors, and he fell into disfavour with
his Academy superiors and conservative
court circles. In 1759 he was dismissed
from the Academy. His last major work
was a translation of Fénelon’s Les
aventures de Télémaque (1766;
Tilemakhida), which he rendered in
Russian hexameters.
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Antiokh Kantemir
born Sept. 21 [Sept. 10, Old Style],
1708, Constantinople [now Istanbul],
Tur.
died April 11 [March 31], 1744, Paris,
Fr.
distinguished Russian statesman who
was his country’s first secular poet and
one of its leading writers of the
classical school.
The son of Dmitry Kantemir, he was
tutored at home and attended (1724–25)
the St. Petersburg Academy. Between 1729
and 1731 he wrote several poems, the
most important probably being two
satires, “To His Own Mind: On Those Who
Blame Education” and “On the Envy and
Pride of Evil-Minded Courtiers.” These
poems denounced the opposition to the
reforms of the emperor Peter the Great
and enjoyed great success when
circulated in manuscript (they were not
printed until 1762). As ambassador to
England (1732–36), he took to London the
manuscript of his father’s history of
the Ottoman Empire, furnishing a
biography of his father that appeared
with the English translation of the
history.
From 1736 until his death, Kantemir
was minister plenipotentiary in Paris,
where he formed friendships with
Voltaire and Montesquieu and continued
to write satires and fables. His Russian
translations of several classical and
contemporary authors include his 1740
translation of the French man of letters
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle’s
Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes
(1686; “Interviews on the Pluralitism of
the World”), which was suppressed as
heretical. He also wrote a philosophical
work, O prirode i cheloveke (1742;
“Letters on Nature and Man”), and a
tract on the old syllabic system of
Russian verse composition (1744).
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Aleksandr Sumarokov
Aleksandr Petrovich Sumarokov (Russian:
Александр Петрович Сумароков) (November
25, 1717 – October 12, 1777) was a
Russian poet and playwright who
single-handedly created classical
theatre in Russia, thus assisting
Mikhail Lomonosov to inaugurate the
reign of classicism in Russian
literature.
Life and works
Born of a good family of Muscovite
gentry, Sumarokov was educated at the
Cadet School in Petersburg, where he
acquired an intimate familiarity with
French polite learning. Neither an
aristocratic dilettante like Antiokh
Kantemir nor a learned professor like
Vasily Trediakovsky, he was the first
gentleman in Russia to choose the
profession of letters. He consequently
may be called the father of the Russian
literary profession. His pursuits did
not undermine his position in the
family; indeed, his grandson was made a
count and, when the Sumarokov family
became extinct a century later, the
title eventually passed to Prince Felix
Yusupov, who also styled himself Count
Sumarokov-Elston in memory of his
illustrious ancestor.
Sumarokov wrote much and regularly,
chiefly in those literary kinds
neglected by Lomonosov. His principal
importance rests in his plays, among
which Khorev (1749) is regarded as the
first regular Russian drama. He ran the
first permanent public theatre in the
Russian capital, where he worked with
the likes of Fyodor Volkov and Ivan
Dmitrievsky. His plays were based on the
subjects taken from Russian history
(Dmitry Samozvanets), proto-Russian
legends (Khorev) or on Shakespearean
plots (Makbet, Hamlet).
D.S. Mirsky believed that there could
be no doubt "the good acting made the
reputation of Sumarokov, as the literary
value of his plays is small. His
tragedies are a stultification of the
classical method; their Alexandrine
couplets are exceedingly harsh; their
characters are marionettes. His comedies
are adaptations of French plays, with a
feeble sprinkling of Russian traits.
Their dialogue is a stilted prose that
had never been spoken by anyone and
reeked of translation".
Sumarokov's non-dramatic work is by
no means negligible. His fables are the
first attempt in a genre that was
destined to flourish in Russia with
particular vigor. His satires, in which
he occasionally imitates the manner of
popular poetry, are racy and witty
attacks against the government clerks
and officers of law. His songs, of all
his writings, still attract readers of
poetry. They are remarkable for a
prodigious metrical inventiveness and a
genuine gift of melody. In subject
matter they are entirely within the pale
of classical, conventional love poetry.
Sumarokov's literary criticism is
usually carping and superficial, but it
did much to inculcate on the Russian
public the canons of classical taste. He
was a loyal follower of Voltaire, with
whom he prided himself on having
exchanged several letters. Vain and
self-conscious, Sumarokov considered
himself a Russian Racine and Voltaire in
one. In personal relations he was
irritable, touchy, and often petty. But
his exacting touchiness contributed,
almost as much as did Lomonosov's calm
dignity, to raise the profession of the
pen and to give it a definite place in
society.
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Catherine II the Great
Catherine began her reign as an enlightened despot.
She corresponded with
Voltaire
and
Denis Diderot
and sponsored the arts. Although her native language
was German, she has to her credit a number of plays
in Russian as well as a statement of legal
principles, Nakaz (Instruction). In 1769 she
established a satiric journal, Vsyakaya vsyachina
(“All Sorts and Sundries”), which was soon followed
by others, including the Truten (“Drone”), founded
by
Nikolay Novikov. In a curious exchange
between journals,
Novikov and Catherine disagreed with each
other about the nature of satire—like the
Kurbsky-Ivan correspondence in the 16th century, it
was a case of a sovereign deigning to argue with a
subject. Shocked by an uprising of Cossacks and
peasants (1773–75), known from the name of its
leader as the Pugachov Rebellion, and later by the
French Revolution, Catherine turned increasingly
conservative. Generally speaking, these events
marked a turning point as the Russian autocracy
switched from being a modernizing to a restraining
force. When Aleksandr Radishchev published
Puteshestviye iz Peterburga v Moskvu
(1790;
A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow), a
work that was sharply critical of Russian society
and serfdom, Catherine had him condemned to death, a
sentence she commuted to Siberian exile. Offended by
a posthumously published play by Yakov Knyazhnin
(1742–91), Vadim Novgorodsky (“Vadim of Novgorod”),
she had copies of the manuscript burned and the
published text torn from the offending volume.
Nikolay Novikov
born April 27 [May 8, New Style],
1744, Bronnitsky, near Moscow, Russia
died July 31 [Aug. 12], 1818, Bronnitsky
Russian writer, philanthropist, and
Freemason whose activities were intended
to raise the educational and cultural
level of the Russian people and included
the production of social satires as well
as the founding of schools and
libraries. Influenced by Freemasonry,
Novikov converted his journals and his
ambitious publishing enterprise into
vehicles of freethinking and even
criticized Empress Catherine II the
Great. She suspended publication of his
journals and had him arrested in 1792.
He was released by Emperor Paul in 1796
but was forbidden to resume his
journalistic activities.
Nikolay Ivanovich Novikov
(Russian: Никола́й Ива́нович Новико́в)
(8 May [O.S. 27 April] 1744 - 12 August
[O.S. 31 July] 1818) was a Russian
writer and philanthropist most
representative of his country's
Enlightenment. Frequently considered to
be the first Russian journalist, he
aimed at advancing the cultural and
educational level of the Russian public.
Together with Johann Georg Schwartz,
Ivan Vladimirovich Lopukhin, and Semion
Ivanovich Gamaleya he brought martinism
and rosicrucianism to Russia.
Novikov belonged to the first
generation of Russians that benefited
from the creation of the Moscow
University in 1755. He took an active
part in the Legislative Assembly of
1767, which sought to produce a new code
of laws. Inspired by this kind of
freethinking activity, he took over
editing the Moscow Gazette and launched
satirical journals, patterned after The
Tatler and The Spectator. His attacks on
the existing social customs prompted
jocund retorts from Catherine the Great,
who even set her own journal called
Vsyakaya vsyachina to comment on
Novikov's articles.
By the 1780s, Novikov rose to the
highest positions in Russian
Freemasonry, which liberally funded his
ambitious book-publishing ventures.
Novikov's press produced a third part of
contemporary Russian books and several
newspapers. Novikov used his influence
for various noble purposes, such as a
large-scale project of promoting
Shakespeare to Russian public.
When the French Revolution started,
Catherine changed her attitude towards
the likes of Novikov. His printing-house
was confiscated. Three years later,
without a formal trial, he was
incarcerated in the Shlisselburg
Fortress for 15 years. Much of his
printed material was pulped, including
1,000 copies of Edward Young's The Last
Day (1713). Emperor Paul set Novikov
free, but the latter was too scared and
broken-hearted to resume his
journalistic activities.
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Aleksandr Radishchev
born Aug. 20 [Aug. 31, New Style],
1749, Moscow, Russia
died Sept. 12 [Sept. 24], 1802, St.
Petersburg
writer who founded the revolutionary
tradition in Russian literature and
thought.
Radishchev, a nobleman, was educated
in Moscow (1757–62), at the St.
Petersburg Corps of Pages (1763–66), and
at Leipzig, where he studied law
(1766–71). His career as a civil servant
brought him into contact with people
from all social strata. Under the
influence of the cult of sentiment
developed by such writers as
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he wrote his most
important work, Puteshestvie iz
Peterburga v Moskvu (1790; A Journey
from St. Petersburg to Moscow), in which
he collected, within the framework of an
imaginary journey, all the examples of
social injustice, wretchedness, and
brutality he had seen. Though the book
was an indictment of serfdom, autocracy,
and censorship, Radishchev intended it
for the enlightenment of Catherine the
Great, who he assumed was unaware of
such conditions. Its unfortunate timing
(the year after the French Revolution)
led to his immediate arrest and sentence
to death. The sentence was commuted to
10 years’ exile in Siberia, where he
remained until 1797.
Radishchev’s harsh treatment chilled
liberal hopes for reform. In 1801 he was
pardoned by Alexander I and employed by
the government to draft legal reforms,
but he committed suicide a year later.
Though his work has slight claim to
literary quality, his fame was great and
his thought inspired later generations,
especially the Decembrists, an elite
group of intellectuals and noblemen who
staged an abortive rebellion against
autocracy in 1825.
Alexander Nikolayevich Radishchev
(Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич
Ради́щев; 31 August [O.S. 20 August]
1749 – 24 September [O.S. 12 September]
1802) was a Russian author and social
critic who was arrested and exiled under
Catherine the Great. He brought the
tradition of radicalism in Russian
literature to prominence with the
publication in 1790 of his Journey from
St. Petersburg to Moscow. His depiction
of socio-economic conditions in Russia
earned him exile to Siberia until 1797.
Radishchev was born into a minor
noble family on an estate just outside
of Moscow. His youth was spent with a
relative in Moscow, where he was allowed
to spend time at the newly established
Moscow University. His family
connections provided him with an
opportunity to serve as a page in
Catherine's court, where his exceptional
service and intellectual capabilities
set him apart. Because of his
exceptional academic promise, Radishchev
was chosen of one of a dozen young
students to be sent abroad to acquire
Western learning. For several years he
studied at the University of Leipzig.
His foreign education influenced his
approach to Russian society, and upon
his return he hoped to incorporate
Enlightenment philosophies such as
natural law and the social contract to
Russian conditions. He lauded
revolutionaries like George Washington
and praised the early stages of the
French Revolution. His most famous work
- A Journey from St. Petersburg to
Moscow - is a critique of Russian
society. He was especially critical of
serfdom and the limits to personal
freedom imposed by the autocracy.
Catherine the Great read the work,
viewed Radishchev's calls for reform as
evidence of Jacobin-style radicalism,
and ordered copies of the text
confiscated and destroyed. He was
arrested and condemned to death. This
sentence was later commuted to exile to
Ilimsk in Siberia, though before his
exile he underwent both physical and
psychological torture.
Radishchev was freed by Catherine's
successor Tsar Paul, and attempted again
to push for reforms in Russia's
government. Under the reign of Alexander
I, Radishchev was briefly employed to
help revise Russian law, a realization
of his lifelong dream. Unfortunately,
his tenure in this administrative body
was short and unsuccessful. In 1802 a
despondent Radishchev - possibly
threatened with another Siberian exile -
committed suicide by drinking poison.
The Journey From St. Petersburg to
Moscow (in Russian: Путешествие из
Петербурга в Москву), published in 1790,
was the most famous work by the Russian
writer Aleksandr Nikolayevich
Radishchev.
The work, often described as a
Russian Uncle Tom's Cabin, is a
polemical study of the problems in the
Russia of Catherine the Great - serfdom,
the powers of the nobility, the issues
in government and governance, social
structure and personal freedom and
liberty.
The book was immediately banned and
Radishchev sentenced, first to death,
then to banishment in eastern Siberia.
It was not freely published in Russia
until 1905.
In the book Radishchev takes an
imaginary journey between Russia's two
principal cities; each stop along the
way reveals particular problems for the
traveller through the medium of story
telling.
The book itself represented a
challenge to Catherine in Russia,
despite the fact that Radishchev was no
revolutionary - merely an observer of
the ills he saw within Russian society
and government at the time.
Published during the period of the
French Revolution, the book borrows
ideas and principles from the great
philosophes of the day relating to an
enlightened outlook and the concept of
Natural Law.
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Poetry
Catherine’s reign saw real accomplishment in Russian
poetry. Excellent verse was produced, and the canon
as it is known today began to take shape. It is
worth stressing the important role of tradition and
the canon in Russian poetry. To a much greater
extent than in many other traditions, including the
English and American, Russian poetry typically
relies on the reader’s detailed knowledge of earlier
poems. The poems of the past constitute a sort of
literary bible, a common culture known in detail by
the literate public. Poets count on their readers
being sufficiently familiar with the tradition to
detect even faint allusions to earlier poems.
Moreover, Russian poets also rely on readers to
appreciate the semantic associations that specific
verse forms have acquired, which is perhaps one
reason why free (unrhymed and unmetered) verse has
played a relatively small role in Russian poetry.
Three poets—Ivan Khemnitser, Ivan Dmitriyev,
and
Ivan Krylov—are known for their fables.
Krylov’s fables rapidly became classics and
some of his lines proverbial. Rossiyada (written
1771–79; “The Rossiad”), an epic by Mikhail
Kheraskov, is a rather stilted effort that
proved a literary dead end. It was the ode, rather
than the epic, that was the successful high poetic
genre of the age. But Vasily Maykov and Ippolit
Bogdanovich wrote amusing mock epics. Maykov’s
Elisey; ili, razdrazhenny Vakkh (1769; “Elisei; or,
Bacchus Enraged”) cleverly parodies a Russian
translation of the Aeneid with a narrative in which
the Greek pantheon directs whores, drunks, and other
low-lifes. In Dushenka: drevnyaya povest v volnykh
stikhakh (1783; “Dushenka: An Ancient Tale in Free
Verse”),
Bogdanovich produced a light and witty
updating of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche.
Gavrila Derzhavin is generally considered to be
Russia’s greatest 18th-century poet. He is best
known for his odes, including his chatty panegyric
“Oda k Felitse” (1782; “Ode to Felitsa”), in which
praise for the prosaic virtues of Empress Catherine
alternates with depictions of the low amusements of
courtiers. His poems “Bog” (1784; “God”) and
“Vodopad” (1791–94; “The Waterfall”) daringly make
the metaphysical concrete and the specific poetic.
Derzhavin, who also served as a governor and
as Catherine’s personal secretary, exemplifies the
tendency of 18th-century writers to pursue
government careers, a practice that was almost
unthinkable a century later.
Ivan Khemnitser
Ivan Ivanovitch Chemnitzer or
Khemnitzer (1745-84) was a Russian
fabulist, born at Yenotayevsk,
Astrakhan, the son of a German physician
of Chemnitz, who had served in the
Russian army under Peter the Great. He
participated in the campaigns of the
Seven Years' War and afterward devoted
himself to mining engineering and
subsequently visited Germany, Holland,
and France. Upon his return he accepted
a position as Consul to Smyrna, where an
attack of melancholia hastened his
death.
In contradistinction to Sumarokov and
others among the earlier fabulists of
Russia, whose works are essentially
satires, Chemnitzer was the first to
introduce the genuine fable into Russian
literature. He was thus one of the
predecessors of Krylov, having brought
the Russian fable to its greatest
perfection. Although to some extent
translations or imitations of La
Fontaine and Gellert, his works show
considerable originality. Their good
humor, vivacity of dialogue, simplicity,
and distinctively national character
have greatly endeared him to the Russian
people. Among his best original fables
are The Metaphysician, The Tree, The
Peasant and his Load, and The Rich Man
and the Poor Man. Grot produced the best
edition of his works (St. Petersburg,
1873).
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Ivan Krylov
Ivan Andreyevich Krylov (Russian:
Ива́н Андре́евич Крыло́в) (February 13,
1769 – November 21, 1844) is Russia's
best known fabulist. While many of his
earlier fables were loosely based on
Aesop and Jean de La Fontaine, later
fables were original work.
Ivan Krylov was born in Moscow, but
spent his early years in Orenburg and
Tver. His father, a distinguished
military officer, died in 1779, leaving
the family destitute. A few years later
Krylov and his mother moved to
St.Petersburg in the hope of securing a
government pension. There, Krylov
obtained a position in the civil
service, but gave it up after his
mother's death in 1788. His literary
career began already in 1783, when he
sold a comedy he had written to a
publisher. He used the proceeds to
obtain the works of Molière, Racine, and
Boileau. It was probably under the
influence of these writers that he
produced Philomela, which gave him
access to the dramatic circle of
Knyazhnin.
Krylov made several attempts to start
a literary magazine. All met with little
success, but, together with his plays,
these magazine upstarts helped Krylov
make a name for himself and gain
recognition in literary circles. For
about four years (1797-1801) Krylov
lived at the country estate of Prince
Sergey Galitzine, and when the prince
was appointed military governor of
Livonia, he accompanied him as a
secretary. Little is known of the years
immediately after Krylov resigned from
this position, other than the commonly
accepted myth that he wandered from town
to town in pursuit of card games. His
first collection of fables, 23 in
number, appeared in 1809. From 1812 to
1841 he was employed by the Imperial
Public Library, first as an assistant,
and then as head of the Russian Books
Department.
Honors were showered on Krylov even
during his lifetime: the Russian Academy
of Sciences admitted him as a member in
1811, and bestowed on him its gold
medal; in 1838 a great festival was held
under imperial sanction to celebrate the
jubilee of his first publication, and
the Tzar granted him a generous pension.
By the time he died in 1844, 77,000
copies of his fables had been sold in
Russia, and his unique brand of wisdom
and humor gained popularity. His fables
were often rooted in historic events,
and are easily recognizable by their
style of language and engaging story.
Though he began as a translator and
imitator of existing fables, Krylov soon
showed himself an imaginative, prolific
writer, who found abundant original
material in his native land. In Russia
his language is considered of high
quality: his words and phrases are
direct, simple and idiomatic, with color
and cadence varying with the theme; many
of them became actual idioms. "Krylov
spent almost thirty years adding to this
collection. The last edition, which he
compiled shortly before his death and
which appeared in print in December
1843, contained 197 fables."
Krylov's statue in the Summer Garden
(1854-55) is one of the most notable
monuments in St.Petersburg. It is also
the first monument to a poet erected in
Eastern Europe.[citation needed] All
four sides of the pedestal represent
scenes from Krylov's archetypal fables.
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Mikhail Kheraskov
born Nov. 5 [Oct. 25, Old Style],
1733, Pereyaslav, Poltava province,
Ukraine, Russian Empire [now
Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky, Ukraine]
died Oct. 9 [Sept. 27], 1807, Moscow,
Russia
epic poet, playwright, and
influential representative of Russian
classicism who was known in his own day
as the Russian Homer.
The son of a Walachian noble who had
settled in Russia, Kheraskov became
director of Moscow University in 1763.
He determined to give Russia a national
epic, then the sine qua non of an
independently important literature.
Rossiyada (1771–79; “Russian Epic”) is
based on the capture of Kazan (1552) by
Ivan the Terrible, and Vladimir
vozrozhdyonny (1785; “Vladimir Reborn”)
is concerned with St. Vladimir’s
introduction of Christianity to Russia.
Kheraskov composed 20 plays, including
tragedies and comedies, embodying
classical principles of dramaturgy. He
also edited literary magazines. His
didactic poem Plody nauk (1761; “The
Fruits of the Sciences”) was a polemic
against Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s attack
on scientific progress. Though they were
highly respected during the 18th
century, Kheraskov’s works were rejected
by the 19th century and now are read
only by specialists.
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Ippolit Bogdanovich
Ippolit Fyodorovich Bogdanovich
(December 23, 1743, Perevolochna –
January 18, 1803, Kursk) was a Russian
classicist author of light poetry, best
known for his long poem Dushenka (1778).
Biography
Coming from a noble Ukrainian family,
Bogdanovich studied in the Moscow
University until 1761. His literary
career started two years later with
editing a literary journal. In 1766, he
joined the Russian embassy in Dresden as
a secretary. Three years later, he was
back in Saint Petersburg, where he
edited the only regular official
newspaper, the Vedomosti, between 1775
and 1782. In 1788, Bogdanovich was
appointed Director of State Archives, a
post which he treated as a sinecure,
translating Voltaire, Diderot, and
Rousseau at loose hours.
It was in 1778 that Bogdanovich
brought out his only work of lasting
fame, Dushenka. This long poem,
resembling a mock epic, was a reworking
of La Fontaine's Psyche, a subject
originating from Apuleius but
ingeniously stylized by Bogdanovich as a
Russian folk tale. The definitive
edition followed in 1783 and instantly
became popular for its mildly scurrilous
passages. La Fontaine's conventional
heroine was presented by Bogdanovich as
"a living, modern girl from a gentry
family of the middling sort". Following
the publication, Bogdanovich was
recognized as the foremost Russian
practitioner of light poetry and gained
admission into the literary circle of
Princess Dashkova, while Catherine II of
Russia engaged him to write several
comedies for her Hermitage Theatre.
Assessment
One of Tolstoy's Neoclassical
illustrations to Dushenka (1820-33).By
1841, Bogdanovich's chef d'oeuvre went
though 15 editions. Today, it is
remembered primarily for Fyodor
Tolstoy's Neoclassical illustrations and
citations in Pushkin's works such as
Eugene Onegin. Indeed, Dushenka was a
major influence on young Pushkin, who
avidly read the poem during his Lyceum
years but later discarded Bogdanovich's
verse as immature.
Nabokov summed up contemporary
opinion about Dushenka in the following
dictum: "The airiness of its tetrametric
passages and its glancing
mother-of-pearl wit are foregleams of
young Pushkin's art; it is a significant
stage in the development of Russian
poetry; its naive colloquial melodies
also influenced Pushkin's direct
predecessors, Karamzin, Batyushkov, and
Zhukovski.
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Gavrila Derzhavin
born July 3 [July 14, New Style],
1743, Kazan province, Russia
died July 8 [July 20], 1816, Zvanka,
Novgorod province, Russia
Russia’s greatest and most original
18th-century poet, whose finest
achievements lie in his lyrics and odes.
Born of impoverished nobility,
Derzhavin joined the army as a common
soldier in 1762 and was made an officer
in 1772. In 1777 he entered the civil
service in St. Petersburg, and during
the next 26 years his posts included
those of provincial governor at Olonets
and Tambov, senator, and minister of
justice. His Oda k Felitse (1782; “Ode
to Felicia”), addressed to Catherine the
Great, gained her favour, and he was
briefly her private secretary. His
liberal political inclinations put an
end to his career in 1803, at which time
he retired to his estate at Zvanka.
Derzhavin preserved the grandeur and
solemnity of the classical ode as
practiced in Russia but made it less
restrictive and more lyrical and
personal in its tone and subject matter.
His odes are notable for passages of
magnificent imagery. Derzhavin worked in
many other poetic genres, and his poems
express both lofty and idealistic
moralism and his strongly sensual
appreciation of life. His work helped to
break down the strictures of the
classical poetic genres. His lyrics and
odes include “Na smert knyazya
Meshcherskogo” (1779; “On the Death of
Prince Meshchersky”), Bog (1784; Ode to
the Deity), and Vodopad (1794; “The
Waterfall”).
16-year-old Pushkin reciting his
poem before old Derzhavin in the
Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum (1911 painting by
Ilya Repin).
Gavriil (Gavrila) Romanovich
Derzhavin (Russian: Гаврии́л
(Гаври́ла) Рома́нович Держа́вин, July
14, 1743 – July 20, 1816) was arguably
one of the greatest Russian poets before
Alexander Pushkin, as well as a
statesman. Although his works are
traditionally considered literary
classicism, his best verse is rich with
antitheses and conflicting sounds in a
way reminiscent of John Donne and other
metaphysical poets.
Life
Derzhavin was born in Kazan. His distant
ancestor Morza Bagrim, who relocated
from the Great Horde in the 15th century
to Moscow, was baptized and became a
vassal of the Russian Grand Prince
Vasily II. Nevertheless, by the 18th
century Derzhavin's father was just a
poor country squire who died when
Gavrila was still young. He received a
little formal education at the gymnasium
there but left for Petersburg as a
private in the guards. There he rose
from the ranks as a common soldier to
the highest offices of state under
Catherine the Great. He first impressed
his commanders during Pugachev's
Rebellion. Politically astute, his
career advanced when he left the
military service for civil service. He
rose to the position of governor of
Olonets (1784) and Tambov (1785),
personal secretary to the Empress
(1791), President of the College of
Commerce (1794), and finally the
Minister of Justice (1802). He was
dismissed from his post in 1803 and
spent the rest of his life in the
country estate at Zvanka near Novgorod,
writing idylls and anacreontic verse. He
died in 1816 and was buried in the
Khutyn Monastery near Zvanka, reburied
by the Soviets in the Novgorod Kremlin,
and then reinterred at Khutyn.
Works
Monument of Gavrila Derzhavin in
KazanDerzhavin is best remembered for
his odes, dedicated to the Empress and
other courtiers. He paid little
attention to the prevailing system of
genres, and many a time would fill an
ode with elegiac, humorous, or satiric
contents. In his grand ode to the
Empress, for instance, he mentions
searching for fleas in his wife's hair
and compares his own poetry with
lemonade.
Unlike other Classicist poets,
Derzhavin found delight in carefully
chosen details, such as a colour of
wallpaper in his bedroom or a poetic
inventory of his daily meal. He believed
that French was a language of harmony
but that Russian was a language of
conflict. Although he relished
harmonious alliterations, sometimes he
deliberately instrumented his verse with
cacophonous effect.
Derzhavin's major odes were the
impeccable "On the Death of Prince
Meschersky" (1779); the playful "Ode to
Felica" (1782); the lofty "God" (1785),
which was translated into many European
languages; "Waterfall" (1794),
occasioned by the death of Prince
Potemkin; and "Bullfinch" (1800), a
poignant elegy on the death of his
friend Suvorov. He also provided lyrics
for the first Russian national anthem,
Let the sound of victory sound!
Influence
According to D.S. Mirsky,
"Derzhavin's poetry is a universe of
amazing richness; its only drawback was
that the great poet was of no use either
as a master or as an example. He did
nothing to raise the level of literary
taste or to improve the literary
language, and as for his poetical
flights, it was obviously impossible to
follow him into those giddy spheres." Nevertheless,
Nikolai Nekrasov professed to follow
Derzhavin rather than Pushkin, and
Derzhavin's line of broken rhythms was
continued by Marina Tsvetaeva in the
20th century.
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Drama
and prose fiction
Although the theatrical repertoire in the late 18th
and early 19th centuries continued to be dominated
by translations and adaptations, numerous, if not
very distinguished, tragedies were written by
Sumarokov, Kheraskov, Vladislav Ozerov,
and others. Of greater merit were two comedies by
Denis Fonvizin, Brigadir (1769; The Brigadier),
a satire on Gallomania, and Nedorosl (1783; “The
Minor”). Prose fiction began to appear in print only
in the mid-18th century. Mikhail Chulkov’s
picaresque Prigozhaya povarikha (1770; “The Comely
Cook”) is addressed to a popular audience. At the
end of the 18th century, the dominant figure of
Russian sentimentalism was Nikolay Karamzin,
author of Pisma russkogo puteshestvennika (1792;
Letters of a Russian Traveler, 1789–1790),
describing a journey to western Europe in 1789–90,
and of the very popular story “Bednaya Liza” (1792;
“Poor Liza”), a tale of lovers separated because
they belong to different social classes, which seems
cloying to the modern reader. Appointed imperial
historiographer,
Karamzin later wrote the 12-volume Istoriya
gosudarstva rossiyskogo (1818–26; “History of the
Russian State”), which is a landmark of Russian
literature. Karamzin’s importance also lies
in his contribution to the Russian literary
language. His writing reflected the language of high
society, using a Gallicized vocabulary and syntax at
the expense of Church Slavonic.
Vladislav Ozerov
Vladislav Aleksandrovich Ozerov
(Russian: Владисла́в Алекса́ндрович
О́зеров) (11 October 1769 – 17 September
1816) was the most popular Russian
dramatist in the first decades of the
19th century.
Ozerov wrote five tragedies "in the
stilted and sentimental manner of the
Frenchified era". Their success was
tremendous, largely owing to the
remarkable acting of one of the greatest
Russian tragediennes, Ekaterina
Semyonova. What the public liked in
these tragedies was the atmosphere of
sensibility and the polished,
Karamzinian sweetness that Ozerov
infused into the classical forms.
Ozerov's first success was Oedipus in
Athens (1804), a wry comment on
Alexander I's rumoured privity to the
murder of his father Paul. The public
was ecstatic about his next tragedy,
Fingal (1805), staged with effective
sets representing sombre Scottish
scenery. Dmitry Donskoy (1807) was
staged within days after the Battle of
Eylau, when its patriotic ethos was
particularly apposite. His last play was
Polyxena (1809), variously assessed as
the finest sentimental tragedy in the
language and the best Russian tragedy on
the French classical model.
The production of Polyxena turned out
to be a flop, largely due to intrigues
of Ozerov's literary woes. He was forced
to leave St. Petersburg for his country
estate near Zubtsov, where he reportedly
went mad and burnt all his papers.
Ozerov's last years were spent in
poverty, and his posthumous reputation
was damaged by Pushkin's dismissal of
his plays as "very mediocre".
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Denis Fonvizin
Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin (Russian:
Дени́с Ива́нович Фонви́зин, from German: von Wiesen;
14 April 1744 or 1745 – 1 December 1792) is a
playwright of the Russian Enlightenment whose plays
are still staged today. His main works are two
satirical comedies which mock contemporary Russian
gentry.
Life
Born in Moscow, of a family of gentry of
Livonian descent, he received a good
education at the University of Moscow
and very early began writing and
translating. He entered the civil
service, becoming secretary to Count
Nikita Panin, one of the great noblemen
of Catherine the Great's reign. Because
of Panin's protection, Fonvizin was able
to write critical plays without fear of
being arrested, and, in the late 1760s,
he brought out the first of his two
famous comedies, The Brigadier-General.
A man of means, he was always a
dilettante rather than a professional
author, though he became prominent in
literary and intellectual circles. In
1777-78 he traveled abroad, the
principal aim of his journey being the
medical faculty of Montpellier. He
described his voyage in his Letters from
France — one of the most elegant
specimens of the prose of the period,
and the most striking document of that
anti-French nationalism which in the
Russian elite of the time of Catherine
went hand in hand with a complete
dependence on French literary taste.
In 1782 appeared Fonvizin's second
and best comedy The Minor, which
definitely classed him as the foremost
of Russian playwrights. His last years
were passed in constant suffering and
traveling abroad for his health. He died
in Saint Petersburg in 1792.
Works and influence
Fonvizin's reputation rests almost
entirely on his two comedies, which are
beyond doubt the most popular Russian
plays before Alexander Griboyedov's Woe
from Wit. They are both in prose and
adhere to the canons of classical
comedy. Fonvizin's principal model,
however, was not Molière, but the great
Danish playwright Holberg, whom he read
in German, and some of whose plays he
had translated.
Both comedies are plays of social
satire with definite axes to grind. The
Brigadier-General is a satire against
the fashionable French semi-education of
the petits-maîtres. It is full of
excellent fun, and though less serious
than The Minor, it is better
constructed. But The Minor, though
imperfect in dramatic construction, is a
more remarkable work and justly
considered Fonvizin's masterpiece.
The point of the satire in The Minor
is directed against the brutish and
selfish crudeness and barbarity of the
uneducated country gentry. The central
character, Mitrofanushka, is the
accomplished type of vulgar and brutal
selfishness, unredeemed by a single
human feature — even his fondly doting
mother gets nothing from him for her
pains. The dialogue of these vicious
characters (in contrast to the stilted
language of the lovers and their
virtuous uncles) is true to life and
finely individualized; and they are all
masterpieces of characterization — a
worthy introduction to the great
portrait gallery of Russian fiction.
As a measure of its popularity,
several expressions from The Minor have
been turned into proverbs, and many
authors (amongst whom Alexandr Pushkin)
regularly cite from this play, or at
least hint to it by mentioning the
character's names.
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Nikolay Karamzin
Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin
(Russian: Никола́й Миха́йлович Карамзи́н) (December
1, 1766 – June 3, 1826) a Russian author credited
with reforming the Russian literary language. He is
best remembered for his History of the Russian
State, a 12-volume national history modelled after
the works of Gibbon.
Early life
Karamzin was born in the village of
Mikhailovka, in the government of Orenburg on the
1st of December (old style) 1766. His father was an
officer in the Russian army. He was sent to Moscow
to study under Swiss-German Teacher Johann Matthias
Schaden; he later moved to St Petersburg, where he
made the acquaintance of Dmitriev, a Russian poet of
some merit, and occupied himself with translating
essays by foreign writers into his native language.
After residing for some time in St Petersburg he
went to Simbirsk, where he lived in retirement until
induced to revisit Moscow. There, finding himself in
the midst of the society of learned men, he again
took to literary work.
In 1789 he resolved to travel, and
visited Germany, France, Switzerland and
England. On his return he published his
Letters of a Russian Traveller, which
met with great success. These letters,
modelled after Irish-born Poet, Laurence
Sterne´s , (1713 – 1768), Sentimental
Journey, were first printed in the
Moscow Journal, which he edited, but
were later collected and issued in six
volumes (1797-1801).
In the same periodical Karamzin also
published translations from French and
some original stories, including Poor
Liza and Natalia the Boyar's Daughter
(both 1792). These stories introduced
Russian readers to sentimentalism, and
Karamzin was hailed as "a Russian
Sterne".
Karamzin as a writer
In 1794 Karamzin abandoned his literary
journal and published a miscellany in
two volumes entitled Aglaia, in which
appeared, among other stories, The
Island of Bornholm and Ilya Muromets,
the latter a story based on the
adventures of the well-known hero of
many a Russian legend. From 1797 to 1799
he issued another miscellany or poetical
almanac, The Aonides, in conjunction
with Derzhavin and Dmitriev. In 1798 he
compiled The Pantheon, a collection of
pieces from the works of the most
celebrated authors ancient and modern,
translated into Russian. Many of his
lighter productions were subsequently
printed by him in a volume entitled My
Trifles. Admired by Alexander Pushkin
and Vladimir Nabokov, the style of his
writings is elegant and flowing,
modelled on the easy sentences of the
French prose writers rather than the
long periodical paragraphs of the old
Slavonic school.
In 1802 and 1803 Karamzin edited the
journal the European Messenger (Vestnik
Evropy). It was not until after the
publication of this work that he
realized where his strength lay, and
commenced his 12 volume History of the
Russian State. In order to accomplish
the task, he secluded himself for two
years at Simbirsk, the Volga river town
where Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov, a.k.a.
Lenin, (1870 - 1924), was born. This
town was known then, after Lenin, for
some 60 years as Ulianovsk, while Saint
Petersburg became Leningrad till around
1990.
When emperor Alexander learned the
cause of his retirement, Karamzin was
invited to Tver, where he read to the
emperor the first eight volumes of his
history. He was a strong supporter of
the anti-Polish policies of the Russian
Empire, and expressed hope that there
would be no Poland under any shape or
name In 1816 he removed to St
Petersburg, where he spent the happiest
days of his life, enjoying the favour of
Alexander I and submitting to him the
sheets of his great work, which the
emperor read over with him in the
gardens of the palace of Tsarskoye Selo.
He did not, however, live to carry
his work further than the eleventh
volume, terminating it at the accession
of Michael Romanov in 1613. He died on
the 22nd of May (old style) 1826, in the
Tauride Palace. A monument was erected
to his memory at Simbirsk in 1845.
Karamzin as a historian
Karamzin is well regarded as a
historian[citation needed]. Until the
appearance of his work little had been
done in this direction in Russia. The
preceding attempt of Tatishchev was
merely a rough sketch, inelegant in
style, and without the true spirit of
criticism. Karamzin was most industrious
in accumulating materials, and the notes
to his volumes are mines of interesting
information. Perhaps Karamzin may justly
be criticized for the false gloss and
romantic air thrown over the early
Russian annals; in this respect his work
is reminiscent of that of Sir Walter
Scott, whose writings were at that time
creating a great sensation throughout
Europe and probably influenced upon him.
Karamzin wrote openly as the
panegyrist of the autocracy; indeed, his
work has been styled the Epic of
Despotism, and considered Ivan III as
the architect of Russian greatness, a
glory that he had earlier (perhaps while
more under the influence of Western
ideas) assigned to Peter the Great. (The
deeds of Ivan the Terrible are described
with disgust, though.)
In the battle pieces he demonstrates
considerable powers of description, and
the characters of many of the chief
personages in the Russian annals are
drawn in firm and bold lines. As a
critic Karamzin was of great service to
his country; in fact he may be regarded
as the founder of the review and essay
(in the Western style) among the
Russians.
Also, Karamzin is sometimes
considered a founding father of Russian
conservatism. Upon appointing him a
state historian, Alexander I greatly
valued Karamzin's advice on political
matters. His conservative views were
clearly expounded in The Memoir on Old
and New Russia, written for Alexander I
in 1812. This scathing attack on reforms
proposed by Mikhail Speransky was to
become a cornerstone of official
ideology of imperial Russia for years to
come.
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