Contemporaries
Gavrila Derzhavin
Literature · poetry
Show on the timeline- Period of activity shown
- 1773–1816
Derzhavin renewed the Russian ode by combining its elevated style with personal feeling, everyday detail and satire. Felitsa, addressed to Catherine II, made his reputation. He combined poetry with public service as a governor, the empress’s cabinet secretary and minister of justice. This track presents him chiefly as a poet whose philosophical and civic verse helped shape Russian literary life at the turn of the nineteenth century.
- Lifetime
- 1743–1816
- Period shown
- 1773–1816: from his first published poems to the end of his life
- Works
- Felitsa; God; The Grandee