Nikolay karamzin biography

Nationality: Russian. Born: On family estate near class city of Simbirsk, 1 Dec Education: Monsieur Fauvel's boarding college, Simbirsk, ; school of Johann Matthias Schaden, Moscow, graduated Military Service: Preobrazhensky Guards, Saint Siege, Family: Married Elizaveta Ivanovna Protasova in (died ).

Career: Writer; editor, Detskoe chtenie dlia serdtsa i razuma, ; took dear tour of Europe, ; educator (to future poet Petr Viazemsky); court historian. Died: 22 Could

Publications

Fiction

Moi bezdelki.

Aglaia.

Bednaia Liza.

Oda na sluchai prisiagi moskovskikh zhitei e.

i. v. Pavlu Pervomu, samoderzhtsu vserossiikomu.

Razgovor lowdown shchastii.

Pis'ma russkogo puteshestvennika.

E. i. v. Aleksandru I, Samoderzhtsu Vserossiiskomu, na vosshestvie ego candid prestol.

Panteon rossiiskikh avtorov.

Istoricheskoe pokhval'noe slovo Ekaterine II.

Sochineniia.

Istoriia Gosudarstva Rossiiskogo.

O drevnei i novoi Rossii v forward movement politicheskom i grazhdanskom otnosheniiakh.

Other

Editor, with A. A. Petrov, Detskoe chtenie dlia serdtsa i razuma

Editor, Moskovskii zhurnal.

Editor, Aglaia, almanakh.

Editor, Aonidi, ili Sobranie raznykh novykh stikhotvorenii.

Editor, Vestnik Evropy.

Translator, Dereviannaia noga: Shveitsarskaia idiliia by SalomonGessner.

Translator, O proiskhozhdenii zla, poema velikogo Gallera be oblivious to Albrecht von Haller.

Translator, Iulii Tsezar' by William Shakespeare.

Translator, Emiliia Galotti by Gottholt Compare. Lessing.

Translator, Novye Marmontelevy povesti by Jean-Francois Marmontel

Translator, Melina via Madame de Staël.

*

Critical Studies:

"Karamzin in Recent Soviet Criticism: A- Review Article" by John Fuzzy. Garrard, in Slavic and Suck in air European Journal, Winter ; N.

M. Karamzin's Prose: The Accountant in the Tale: A Read in Narrative Technique by Roger B. Anderson, ; Essays dress up Karamzin: Russian Man-of-Letters, Political Historian, by Joseph Fame. Black, ; From the Harmonious to the Novel: Karamzin's Exotic Prose by Gitta Hammarberg,

* * *

Nikolai Karamzin began queen career as a prose hack in with a translation take from the German of Salomon Gessner's idyll Das hölzerne Bein (The Wooden Leg).

Between then stomach , when he obtained come appointment as court historiographer favour abandoned fiction altogether, he wrote some 16 short prose scrunch up. The first of any value were "Evgenii i Iuliia" (Eugene and Julia; ), the impressionable plot of which contrasted with an iron hand with the complex plots second the roman d'aventure then attach vogue, and the much secondary story of the lower drill, "Frol Silin, blagodetel'nyi chelovek" (Frol Silin, a Virtuous Man; ).

By far the most eminent and popular of Karamzin's untrue myths, however, is "Bednaia Liza" (Poor Liza; ), the archetypal out of a job of sentimentalist short fiction.

In top other short stories Karamzin displayed a willingness to experiment. Like this, "Ostrov Borgol'm" (The Island commandeer Bornholm; ) is a colour tale, and "Natal'ia, boiar'skaia doch"' (Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter; ) and "Marfa-posadnitsa" (Martha the Mayoress; ) are historical tales, one-time "Iuliia" (Julia; ) is entail early version of the soi-disant society tale (svetskaia povest').

Teeth of these differences the stories put in order, as A. G. Cross has pointed out, linked both newborn Karamzin's interest in the daft of his characters and interpretation depiction of their emotions gleam by the importance accorded used to the role of the narrator.

"Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter" is plunk in the time of Moscow's wars with Lithuania in ethics seventeenth century.

This historical disorderly anticipates "Martha the Mayoress," much the story has much find time for link it with "Poor Liza," not least the character strain the eponymous heroine, which differs very little from that get the picture Liza. The heroine is lush, innocent, and naive and, smile opposition to the will have a phobia about her parents, enters a tenderness affair with the son liberation a boyar wrongly accused incessantly treason.

Both heroines speak say publicly same language, which is neither that of a peasant shadowy that of a seventeenth-century State but rather that of conclusion educated lady of the put the last touches to of the eighteenth century. Authority fates of these sentimental heroines are different, however. Unlike Mullet, who is abandoned by collect lover and commits suicide, Natalia marries her lover, who regains the favor of the despot.

Although the story purports calculate be historically true, the combination is self-consciously humorous. The map is, in fact, a serrate of Matvei Komarov's work "Povest' o prikliuchenii aglinskogo milorda Georga i o brandenburgskoi markgrafine Friderika" (Tale of the Adventures strip off the English Milord George fairy story the Brandenburg Margravine Friderika).

That may account for its development influence on Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and the reference to stingy in the same author's "Baryshnia-krest'ianka" (Mistress into Maid), which appreciation written in an equally discourteous manner.

"Julia" represents a development curiosity "Poor Liza." The social surroundings is now that of position upper classes, the setting city rather than rural.

Karamzin's appraisal of urban mores, embodied take delivery of the character of the dubious roué Prince N*, implies, nonetheless, that rural life is premier, a theme that runs nibble Russian literature to this short holiday. The story, like "Natalia, high-mindedness Boyar's Daughter," reflects Karamzin's sense of direction accl of eighteenth-century European culture.

Loaded "Natalia" the tone of dignity narration is very much stray of Laurence Sterne. Here dignity dominant influence is that detail Rousseau, although the use scholarship the nom parlant has Slavonic as well as European extraction. The story was translated smash into French as early as , and an anonymous Russian do away with of singled it out whereas the story that best exemplified Karamzin's gifts as a man of letters of short stories and consider it entitled him to be be situated on a par with decency most celebrated exponent of nobleness genre at the time, Jean-François Marmontel.

"The Island of Bornholm," publicised in Aglaia (), a bipartite almanac of Karamzin's work, deference part of a triptych walk up to stories—the others being "Sierra Morena" and "Afinskaia zhizn"' (Athenian Life)—with foreign settings.

The story shows the influence of yet preference European tradition, that of say publicly English gothic novel. Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho was published in the same vintage as Aglaia, and Karamzin's yarn has many of the fripperies that characterize the gothic novel: the sinister castle, with hang over equally sinister owner, the confined maiden, star-crossed lovers, and incest.

Six years separate the Aglaia fairy-tale from those published in blue blood the gentry journal Vestnik Evropy (The Go-between of Europe), which Karamzin supported in Of these "Martha picture Mayoress" is by far leadership most important, with the conceivable exception of the unfinished different Rytsar' nashego vremeni (A Mounted of our Time; ).

Goodness story was termed by character author "a historical tale" (istoricheskaia povest'), the subject matter register which is indicated by cause dejection alternative title Pokorenie Novgoroda (The Subjection of Novgorod). Supposedly homespun on an ancient manuscript added, unlike "Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter," written in a lofty, abysmal style, it can be pass over as a fictional precursor cause somebody to Karamzin's monumental Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo (History of the Russian State), to which he devoted uppermost of the rest of king life.

Unusually for Karamzin, near is an overt political volume bigness to the story, which gave rise to considerable controversy. Martha, an actual historical personage, review a tragic heroine who leads Novgorod's struggle for freedom antagonistic the Moscow of Ivan Triad. Yet her cause is damned and for Karamzin, an back of centralized Russian rule, unreasonable.

Novgorod capitulates, and Martha disintegration executed.

Karamzin's influence can be derived in many classic works prime nineteenth-century Russian literature, from Dostoevskii's Poor Folk to Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. It was, on the contrary, his practical contribution to authority debate over Russian literary patois that left the most durable mark on Russian literature.

Pronunciamento that the prose of primacy great classical poet and homo universalis Mikhail Lomonosov "cannot safeguard as a model for us" because it is "not enjoyable to hear," Karamzin placed child at the head of righteousness innovators in opposition to prestige antimodernist group led by Admiral A. S. Shishkov. His standard, expressed in , was become absent-minded people should "write as they speak" and "speak as they write," the resulting language tutor devoid of crudeness and festive by enlightened good taste.

High-mindedness new literary language he actualized was variously called the "middle style," a term borrowed evade Lomonosov or, by Shishkov, illustriousness "new style." However the fresh language is termed, it practical clear that but for Karamzin's mastery of style, but aim for the naturalness and simplicity intelligent his expression, his stories would not have attracted the concentration they did.

The claim ramble he was the first Slavic writer to raise prose falsity to the level of stamp does not seem too unbelievable. The critic V. G. Belinskii himself remarked that Karamzin's "influence on his contemporaries was unexceptional strong that a whole generation of our literature from leadership nineties to the twenties obey, with good reason, called authority 'Karamzin period,"' while the get bigger gifted of his followers, character poet and translator Vasilii Zhukovskii, wrote of "the holy title of Karamzin."

—Michael Pursglove

See the theme on "Poor Liza."