1. Gavrila Derzhavin's family descended from a 15th-century Tatar nobleman named Morza Bagrim, who converted to Christianity and became a vassal of Grand Prince Vasily II.
18 Facts About Gavrila Derzhavin
1. 2.
Gavrila Derzhavin was from a similar background and possessed a few scattered estates.
3.
Gavrila Derzhavin was born nearly nine months after his parents were wed, but the location of his birth remains a point of dispute.
4.
When Gavrila was 10, the Derzhavins moved back to their estates in Kazan after two years in Orenburg.
5.
Roman Gavrila Derzhavin, who was suffering from consumption, needed to formally apply for retirement in Moscow, and then planned to continue to Saint Petersburg to register his son for future enlistment as required.
6.
Gavrila Derzhavin's father owned half the land in Sokury, which Gavrila inherited along with other estates in Laishevsky.
7.
Gavrila Derzhavin eventually excelled in geometry and was informed he would be joining the corps of engineers in Saint Petersburg.
8.
In Saint Petersburg, Gavrila Derzhavin rose from the ranks as a common soldier to the highest offices of state under Catherine the Great.
9.
Gavrila Derzhavin rose to the position of governor of Olonets and Tambov, personal secretary to the Empress, President of the College of Commerce, and finally the Minister of Justice.
10.
In 1800, Gavrila Derzhavin wrote the political work Opinion in response to a request by Emperor Paul I to investigate recent famines in Mogilev Governorate.
11.
The Opinion became an influential source of information during the early reign of Alexander I, who eventually implemented several of Gavrila Derzhavin's suggested reforms in the 1804 Statute Concerning the Organization of the Jews.
12.
Gavrila Derzhavin was dismissed from his post in 1803 and spent much of the rest of his life in the country estate at Zvanka near Novgorod, writing idylls and anacreontic verse.
13.
Gavrila Derzhavin 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.
14.
Gavrila Derzhavin is best remembered for his odes, dedicated to the Empress and other courtiers.
15.
Gavrila Derzhavin paid little attention to the prevailing system of genres, and many a time would fill an ode with elegiac, humorous, or satiric contents.
16.
Unlike other Classicist poets, Gavrila Derzhavin found delight in carefully chosen details, such as a colour of wallpaper in his bedroom or a poetic inventory of his daily meal.
17.
Gavrila Derzhavin believed that French was a language of harmony but that Russian was a language of conflict.
18.
Gavrila Derzhavin 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.