Vasily Zhukovsky

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Vasily Zhukovsky

Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky (; – ) was the foremost Russia

Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
n poet of the 1810s.

He is credited with introducing the Romantic Movement

Romanticism

Romanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution....
to Russian literature

Russian literature

This article is about literature from Russia. For the song by Max?mo Park, see Our Earthly Pleasures. Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its ?migr?s, and to the Russian language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union....
. The main body of his literary output consists of free translations covering an impressively wide range of poets from Ferdowsi

Ferdowsi

Hakim Abu'l-Qasim Firdawsi Tusi , more commonly transliterated as Ferdowsi , was a highly revered Persian people poet. He was the author of the Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran as well as other Persian communities in other countries....
to Schiller.

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Vasily Zhukovsky'

Start a new discussion about 'Vasily Zhukovsky'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky (; – ) was the foremost Russia

Russia

Romanticism

Russian literature

Ferdowsi

Translation

Translation is the hermeneutics of the Meaning of a text and the subsequent production of an Dynamic and formal equivalence text, likewise called a "translation," that communicates the same message in another language....
s proved to be more competently-written and enduring works than their originals.

Life

Zhukovsky was born in Mishenskoe, near Tula Oblast, Russia

Tula, Russia

Tula is an industrial types of inhabited localities in Russia in the European part of Russia, located 193 km south of Moscow, on the river Upa River....
, the illegitimate son of a Russian landowner named Nikolai Bunin and a Turkish slave. He was given his father's surname. In his youth, he lived and studied at Moscow University's Noblemen's Pension, where he was heavily influenced by Freemasonry

Freemasonry

Freemasonry is a fraternal and service organizations that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around 5 million ....
, English Sentimentalism

Sentimentalism

Sentimentalism is used in different ways:* Sentimentalism - a theory in moral epistemology concerning how one knows moral truths * Sentimentalism - a form of literary discourse...
, and the German Sturm und Drang

Sturm und Drang

Sturm und Drang is the name of a movement in German literature and music taking place from the late 1760s through the early 1780s in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression in response to the confines of rationalism imposed by the Enlightenment and associated aesthetic movements....
. 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

Thomas Gray

Thomas Gray , was an England poet, classical scholar and professor at University of Cambridge....
's "" in The Messenger. The translation introduced Russian readers to his trademark sentimental-melancholy style and instantly made him a household name. Today it is 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 Masha Protasova.

In later life, Zhukovsky made a second great contribution to Russian culture as an educator and a patron of the arts. In 1826, he was appointed tutor to the tsarevich

Tsarevich

Tsarevich is a Slavic term for the Tsar's son. Under the Pauline house law, the term was discontinued. The tsar's eldest son , came to be called Tsesarevich....
, the future Tsar Alexander II

Alexander II of Russia

Alexander II Nikolaevich , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the List of Russian rulers of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881....
. His progressive program of education had such a powerful influence on Alexander that the liberal reforms of the 1860s are sometimes 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

Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov , , a Russian language Romanticism writer and poet, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", was the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death....
, Alexander Herzen

Alexander Herzen

Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen was a major Russian pro-Western writer and thinker known as the "father of Russian socialism", and he was one of the main fathers of modern agrarian populism ....
, Taras Shevchenko

Taras Shevchenko

Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko was a Ukrainians poet, artist and Humanism. His literary heritage is regarded to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature and, to a large extent, the modern Ukrainian language....
, and the Decembrists.

On Pushkin's death in 1837, Zhukovsky stepped in as his literary executor, not only rescuing his work (including several unpublished masterpieces) from a hostile censorship

Censorship

Censorship is the suppression of freedom of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful or sensitive, as determined by a censor....
, but also diligently collecting and preparing it 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 Romantic Movement that he founded. Zhukovsky died in Baden-Baden

Baden-Baden

Baden-Baden is a town in Baden-W?rttemberg, Germany. It is located on the western foothills of the Black Forest, on the banks of the Oos River, in the region of Karlsruhe ....
, Germany, in 1852, aged 69, and is buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra

Alexander Nevsky Lavra

Alexander Nevsky Lavra or Alexander Nevsky Monastery was founded by Peter I of Russia in 1710 at the eastern end of the Nevsky Prospekt in St Petersburg to house the relics of Alexander Nevsky, patron saint of the newly-founded Russian capital....
cemetery in St. Petersburg.

Career

As Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a Multilingualism Russian-American novelist and short story writer.Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian language, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist....
put it, 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 ballad

Ballad

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative story and set to music. Ballads were characteristic of particularly British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the nineteenth century and used extensively across Europe and later north America, Australia and north Africa....
s.

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

Hexameter

Hexameter is a literature and poetry form, a Line consisting of six metrical foot, as in the Iliad. It was the standard epic metre in Greek and became standard for Latin too....
. His many translations of Schiller -- including lyrics

Lyrics

Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song, either by speaking or singing. The word 'lyric' comes from the Greek word ,lyricos, meaning "singing to the lyre"....
, ballad

Ballad

Drama

Drama is the specific Mode of fiction Mimesis in performance. The term comes from a Ancient Greek word meaning "Action " , which is derived from "to do" ....
Jungfrau von Orleans (about Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc

Saint Joan of Arc also known as the Maid of Orleans, is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, claiming divine guidance, and was indirectly responsible for the coronation of Charles VII of Franc...
) -- became classic works in Russian 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 many others. Zhukovsky's life's work as an interpreter of European literature probably constitutes the most important body of literary hermeneutics

Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation theory. Traditional hermeneutics - which includes Biblical hermeneutics - refers to the study of the interpretation of written texts, especially texts in the areas of literature, religion and law....
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

Anthem

The term anthem means either a specific form of Anglican church music , or more generally, a song of celebration, usually acting as a symbol for a distinct group of people, as in the term "national anthem" or "sports anthem"....
of Imperial Russia

Russian Empire

File:Russian Emperor Flag.jpgFile:Romanov Flag.svgThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917....
, "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

Classicism

File:Nicolas Poussin 055.jpgClassicism, in the The Arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seeks to emulate....
aesthetics

Aesthetics

Aesthetics or esthetics is commonly known as the study of senses or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste ....
.

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

Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich was a 19th-century German Romanticism Landscape art painter, generally considered the most important of the movement....
. One of his early acquaintances was the popular German writer Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué

Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué

Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte, Baron Fouqu? , was a Germany writer of the romanticism movement....
, whose prose novella Undine

Undine (novella)

Undine is a novel by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqu? concerning Undine, a water spirit who marries a Knight named Huldebrand in order to gain a soul....
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

Ballet

Ballet is a formalized type of performative dance, the origins of which date lay in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France courts, and which was further developed in England, Italy, and Russia as a concert dance form....
.

In 1841, Zhukovsky retired from court and settled in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
, where he married Elizabeth Reitern, the 18-year-old daughter of an artist friend. The couple had two children, including Alexandra

Alexandra Zhukovskaya

Born Alexandra Vasilievna Zhukovskaya , to Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky and Elizabeth Reitern....
, who had an affair with Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich. The aged poet devoted much of his remaining life to a hexameter translation of Homer

Homer

Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek language epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as of the Homeric Hymns....
's Odyssey

Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Hellenic civilization epic poetrys attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work traditionally ascribed to Homer....
, 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

Novel

File:2009 stapelweise Neuerscheinungen im Buchladen.JPGA novel is today a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern Romance and in the tradition of the novella....
.