Derzhavin was a Tatar. "His genious", said Pushkin, "thought in Tatar, and knew no Russian grammar for want of time." Prince Mirsky describes his style as such: "His style is a continuous violence to the Russian tongue, an uncreasing, vigorous, personal, virile, but often cruel, deformation of it." (Overall, the word virile/manful appears no less than three times in the 3 1/2 pages concerning Derzhavin in Mirsky's work.)

Thus spake Prince Dmitry Sviatopolk Mirsky in his general work "A History of Russian Literature".

The poet he is praising was born in 1743 of a family of small squires of the province of Kazan. In Kazan high school, he learned German, but not Latin and French, as most other people did at the time. After his education, Derzhavin left for Petersburg and became a private in the footguards, where he rose only slowly to the rank of officer, since he had no powerful protectors.
When he wrote expressions of loyalty to the Empress Catherine the Great on behalf of the nobility, he attracted the attention of certain persons of power. He became A.D.C. to General Bibikov, and was quickly promoted and given land when showing his talents in oppressing the Pugachev rebellion that so vehemently shook the foundations of Catherine's "enlightened dictatorship". It was only then that he began seriously devoting himself to poetry.

Derzhavin was greatly favoured by Catherine, to whom he wrote several (rather humouristic) odes. However, he had continuous trouble in the posts assigned to him, and quarrelled with his superiors (which also included the Empress). Derzhavin was an outspoken reactionary, with an obstinate and contrary character, and the smallest whiff of liberal spirits was opposed by him.
  

Throughout his abundant production, Derzhavin experimented with and perverted the Russian tongue. One of these experiments concerns avoiding the letter 'r' in a number of poems from his later collection "Anacreontic Songs". Derzhavin explains it thus: "Out of love for the native tongue, I wished to show its abundance, versatility, lightness ... as evidence for its versatility and softness are to be judged the songs, in which the letter 'r' is entirely not used."

This is also the only reason for why a revolutionary as myself might at all be interested in a reactionary as Derzhavin (besides the fact that we're 1/4 kinsfolk). Having suffered all my life from the 'verbal challenge' of not being able to pronounce the Russian/Finnish rolling 'r', it was highly fascinating to hear of a Russian poet who has, albeit unconsciously, written poetry that even I could perform without making a fool of myself.

It is, however, not extremely easy to find Derzhavin's poetry in Russian outside of Russia, and the internet doesn't help much, either. I was only able to find one, rather silly, poem of this kind, which follows here, along with a word list for whomever would want to improve their command of the Russian language.

1802

Back to Main Page