Russian poet Ivan Dmitriev: a brief biography, creativity and life story

The Minister of Justice, a prominent statesman and a great poet was born in the Simbirsk province, in a landowner family. His name was Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev. A brief biography tells of a rather difficult beginning in life and career. The condition of his parents was upset by the Pugachev riot, so at the age of fourteen Ivan became an ordinary Private Semyonovsky regiment.

Childhood

A boy grew up in a village near Syzran, studied a little in Kazan and Simbirsk, where he lived in boarding houses, but the family did not pull out his son’s education, and Ivan returned to the village, where he completed his studies. For example, he mastered the French language, only reading and translating all sorts of novels that were in the parent library. Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev, a brief biography of which could not accommodate parts of the virtues of the growing poet, was a very purposeful person.

In particular, he liked the fables of Lafontaine, which he translated not only interlinearly, but also designed artistically, with rhymes. His fables were so carried away that he tried to compose them himself. In 1774, Ivan was requested to serve in the Semenovsky regiment, where he was recorded two years ago, and he went to Petersburg.

The co-workers were very fond of a cheerful, but very disciplined young man, an excellent storyteller, and even a poet. He could tell the longest stories in a meaningful way, but at the same time very briefly. Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev, whose brief biography is known even to schoolchildren, is hardly properly appreciated by our contemporaries, because just at that time, the modern Russian language grew out of what we now call archaic.

Discipleship and the beginning of the creative path

In 1783, N. M. Karamzin returned to Petersburg. Ivan Ivanovich met a writer who was almost reverent, they met quite often, talked about books they had read, visited the theater together, and considered publishing their magazine. After a while, Karamzin really founded the Moscow Journal, where Dmitriev’s poems were published.

Dmitriev Ivan Ivanovich (1760-1837) a short biography indicates that he was a student of N. M. Karamzin. Judging by the writings, he was in many ways his follower. In 1777, his poetic road began, when the St. Petersburg Scientific Bulletin published his first poem. However, the poet himself did not at all consider this a beginning: everything that he wrote before 1791 was called empty rhyming.

Literary fame

But with the song "The Blue Dove Moans," he gained such popularity in 1792 that he began to be modest. Also, the satirical tale "Fashionable Wife" was also very widely discussed in literary circles. Dmitriev became a recognized master of sensitive poetry, all kinds of landscape poetry - epigrams, madrigals, just inscriptions. He also wrote satires and fables, which the Russian public listened with pleasure and recited.

Our contemporaries should be reminded that, although Dmitriev used the old Derzhavinsky syllable of the eighteenth century, he brought a lot of his own and completely new to Russian literature, for example, poetic dialogue, irony, elements of everyday life (previously unacceptable in the "high calm"), and generally not I avoided the fullness of life, which was also not characteristic of the poetry of that time. But the language, yes, is old-fashioned, with allegories that need to be unhurriedly solved, with sensual secrecy, although with all this, the syllable was honed and brilliant.

Folklore Studies

As mentioned above, Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev was used to reaching everything with his mind. A brief biography tells us that there is only one school in which he spent his whole life, and this school is folk art. From childhood, he was attracted to the Russian song, he even tried to compile collections himself. He studied the texts, remembered their features, composition, system, vocabulary.

Probably, this helped Dmitriev write the songs that were sung in every living room: "The Blue Dove", "Hush, swallow ...", "Ah, when I used to know ...". All of them are very similar to imitations of old songs. Their literary version was executed in a novel fashion, that is, narratively, with a softened drama, in the element of a quiet, soft feeling, slightly colored with sadness. This was also liked by contemporaries because the roughness and harshness of Russian folk expressions disappeared from Dmitriev’s poems. Famous composers such as Verstovsky, Dubyansky, Zhuchkovsky readily and almost immediately wrote music to his texts.

First Songbook

Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev, whose brief biography tells of his kind and soft humor, published his collection in 1796 and called it “And My Trinkets” after the publication of Karamzin's collection “My Trinkets”. So beautiful, as if in jest, he emphasized that he still considers himself a student of the great master.

This "pocket songbook" was divided into three parts: the first section - original songs, original (G. R. Derzhavin, V. V. Kapnist, M. M. Kheraskov, I. I. Dmitriev, I. F. Bogdanovich and others ); the second section - imitations of folk taste; the third is purely folk songs.

This combination of folk, literary processed and purely literary songs in one vessel marks the biography of Dmitriev Ivan Ivanovich. A summary of the songs belonging to the pen of the author - compiler of this collection can be conveyed as follows: they emphasize the inexhaustibility of the springs of folk songwriting. They sound like a continuation of the song richness of Russia: the plots, vocabulary, images of his songs will be needed for a long time as evidence of a turning point, a passing language.

Sentimentalism

At the turn of the century, a new literary trend came to Russia - sentimentalism. Classicism gradually lost ground in Europe, literature, music, painting of that time conveyed disappointment in the cramped urban life and civilization in general. And our poet was much closer to natural naturalness, as the biography of Dmitriev Ivan Ivanovich repeatedly mentions.

Summary of sentimentalism: feeling, not reason, should be chanted, pure and uncomplicated. So Russian writers turned to face nature, while Karamzin and Dmitriev, who were closely following all European changes, managed to lead this new direction. True, they quickly became disillusioned with him and departed.

From songs to odes

Imitations of folk songs brought the poet popularity, but did not really satisfy him, the genre was too independent, and the sad melancholy inherent in a folk song was not peculiar to this cheerful person.

Dmitriev was a cheerful man, but without the slightest unbridledness, chaste and hardworking in a peasant way. This is evidenced by such a highly moral person as Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev, a brief biography. Creativity speaks for itself, although sometimes it leads the reader astray. For example, when he reads Dmitriev’s poems about pleasures, wine and a storm of pastime, this is not about the author. This is a tribute to the fashion of the time. In the author, bohemianism did not “sleep”.

Then Dmitriev became addicted to odes, creating a completely different type of her, completely unlike Lomonosov’s, which everyone has imitated to this day. In odes of Dmitriev, cliches disappear, but high pathos remains. Such are the odes to the Volga, Ermak, and Liberation of Moscow. Poetic speech becomes more natural, subtle lyricism appears, it is here that a seed of future elegies, or maybe all of Russian romanticism, will grow over time.

Fabulist and storyteller

Dmitriev is a very versatile poet. Having fallen in love with Lafontaine since childhood, he nonetheless “recreated” the classic fable; with him a model type of the Russian fable appeared, where instead of ordinary moralism the author’s position sounds from his personal point of view. Witty by nature, in this genre he enriched the comic game with an exquisite subtlety. Such a fable, for example, is "Bee, Bumblebee and Me." The fabulist Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev, whose brief biography also mentions this, managed to become an innovator in all the genres he undertook.

And the tales of Dmitriev without fairy tales, what kind of fairy tales are these? These are very witty poetic short stories taken from his present day. "Tale", "Picture", "Fashionable wife" - they are all written that way. The poet called these works fairy tales because he did not want to offend anyone, he covered the satire in order to soften it, renaming it a fairy tale.

Afterword

Dmitriev’s stories were used by many other poets and writers. So, for example, A. S. Pushkin portrayed Ivan Ivanovich in his “Captain's Daughter”. The image of Grinev seemed to have grown out of the personality of the poet, the fraternity recorded in the regiment. Dmitriev also told the great poet about the execution of Pugachev, which he himself saw. And even the “uncle of the most honest rules” is also Dmitrievsky, and he had a foster daughter, as well as a pupil. Dmitriev was also in great friendship with Vasily Lvovich, the uncle of Alexander Sergeyevich.

V. G. Belinsky wrote about Dmitriev as a reformer, considering him to be a language installer along with Karamzin, only Karamzin did this in prose, and Dmitriev began Pushkin’s work in verse. Zhukovsky wrote that Russian poetic taste was established by Dmitriev Ivan Ivanovich. A short biography for children also talks about this. His fate was happy, official affairs went excellently, and the promotions took place without the slightest push from him. True, decency, honesty, nobility, justice, industriousness and the constant search for new paths were applied to a happy fate.