God gavrila derzhavin biography
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Gavrila Derzhavin was a renowned Russian poet, soldier and civil servant who rose to prominence during the reign of Catherine the Great. His work has been compared with that of the great Alexander Pushkin. While some of his poetry was of a classical nature, other elements had metaphysical qualities reminiscent of the Englishman John Donne. Other elements of his work were heavily politicised.
He was born Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin on the 14th July in Kazan, a large city in European Russia. An ancestor of his was a Tatar and displaced member of the 15th century Great Horde who had become a wealthy landowner, courtesy of the Russian Grand Prince Vasily II. However, by the time Gavrila was born, the lands were long gone and family circumstances were very modest. He received some education at the local gymnasium and then, when old enough, he enlisted into the army, serving first as a private guardsman in St Petersburg.
Having given distinctive military service his considerable
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&#;Derzhavin, Gavril Romanovich, , born into the lower gentry, was early acquainted with poverty. Though practically a self-taught man, he had a fairly good grounding in the humanities. Despite his contrariness and independence of spirit, he made a brilliant career in an age of favoritism, rising from the lowest rank in the army to the highest post in the bureaucratic hierarchy under Catherine the Great and her successors. He believed it to be the poet&#;s duty to promote the common good by telling the truth &#; with a smile &#; to those in power. His numerous writings, most of them in verse, were the by-product of the busy life of a courtier and high-ranking administrator. Only during his last years, when as a retired statesman he moved out of his sixty-room house in the capital and lived in Horatian ease on his estate, was he able to devote himself wholly to literature.&#;
Brief Derzhavin bio included in Two Centuries of Russian Verse: An Anthology from Lomonosov to Vozenesenky, •Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin
Born near Kazan to poor landowner parents
Enters Kazan High School where he receives a substandard education and does not even receive his degree
Called to serve in the Preobrazhensky Guards; he remains in the regiment until , when he receives officer's commission
Writes first substantive poetry, the "Chitalagai Odes," which were published two years after; the solemn and lyrical poem "Ode on the Death of General Bibikov" was included in this cycle
Receives his discharge, with the rank of liutenant colonel, with a large estate granted by Catherine II
Marries one of the Dyakov sisters, who grants him the patronage of the 18th-century luminaries Kapnist and Lvov and entry into certain literary circles who formed their intellectual attitude in reaction to the solemnity of Lomonosov; their style resulted in a kind of "pre-romanticism
Journal Saint Petersburg Messenger publishes numerous poems, &quo