Editing Vasily Zhukovsky

{{Short description|Russian poet (1783–1852)}}
{{Infobox royalty
| name         = Vasily Zhukovsky
| image        = Bryullov portrait of Zhukovsky.jpg
| caption      = Portrait by [[Karl Bryullov]], 1837–38
| birth_name   = Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky
| birth_date   = 9 February 1783
| birth_place  = Mishenskoe, [[Belyovsky Uyezd]], [[Tula Governorate]], [[Russian Empire]]
| death_date   = {{death date and age|df=y|1852|4|24|1783|2|9}}
| death_place  = [[Baden-Baden]], [[Grand Duchy of Baden]], [[German Confederation]]
| occupation   = [[Poet]]
| spouse       = {{marriage|Elizabeth von Reutern|1841}}
| issue        = two, including [[Alexandra Zhukovskaya]]}}{{Expand Russian|Жуковский, Василий Андреевич|date=October 2024|topic=bio}}{{Conservatism in Russia|Intellectuals}}
'''Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky''' ({{langx|ru|Васи́лий Андре́евич Жуко́вский}}; {{OldStyleDate|9 February|1783|29 January}} – {{OldStyleDate|24 April|1852|12 April}}) was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in [[Russian literature]] in the first half of the 19th century.  He held a high position at the [[Romanov]] court as tutor to the [[Alexandra Feodorovna (Charlotte of Prussia)|Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna]] and later to her son, the future tsar [[Alexander II of Russia|Alexander II]].

Zhukovsky is credited with introducing the [[Romanticism|Romantic movement]] into Russia. The main body of his literary output consists of free translations covering an impressively wide range of poets, from ancients like [[Ferdowsi]] and [[Homer]] to his contemporaries [[Goethe]], [[Schiller]], [[Byron]], and others. Many of his translations have become classics of Russian literature, regarded by some to be better written and more enduring in Russian than in their original languages.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/mdenner/Demo/poetpage/zhukovsky.html|title=Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky|website=max.mmlc.northwestern.edu|access-date=2016-08-12}}</ref>

==Life==
{{Moresources|section|date=August 2023}}
Zhukovsky was born on {{OldStyleDate|9 February|1783|29 January}} in the village of [[Belyovsky District|Mishenskoe]] in the [[Tula Governorate]] of the [[Russian Empire]]. He was the illegitimate son of a landowner named Afanasi Bunin and his [[Turkish people|Turkish]] housekeeper Salkha,<ref>{{citation|first1=Emmons|last1=Shirlee|last2=Lewis|first2=Wilbur Watkins|year=2006|title=Researching the Song: A Lexicon|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|quote=Zhukovsky, Vasily (1783-1852): Russian poet, the natural son of a wealthy landowner father and a captive Turkish girl.|isbn=9780199882304}}</ref><ref>{{citation|first1=Chandler|last1=Robert|last2=Mashinski|first2=Irina|last3=Dralyuk|first3=Boris|year=2015|title=The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry|publisher=[[Penguin Books]]|quote=Vasily Zhukovsky (1783-1852). The son of a small landowner and his Turkish housekeeper...|isbn=9780141972268}}</ref> who had been captured during the [[Siege of Bender (1770)|siege of Bender]] in 1770 and brought to Russia as a slave.{{Sfn|Semenko|1976|p=13}} 

The Bunin family had a literary bent and some 90 years later produced the [[Nobel Prize]]-winning modernist writer [[Ivan Bunin]]. Although raised in the Bunin family circle, the infant poet was formally adopted by a family friend for reasons of social propriety and kept his adopted surname and patronymic for the rest of his life. At the age of fourteen, he was sent to Moscow to be educated at the [[Moscow University|Moscow University's]] boarding school for noblemen. There, he was heavily influenced by [[Freemasonry]], as well as by the fashionable literary trends of English [[Sentimentalism (literature)|Sentimentalism]] and German ''[[Sturm und Drang]]''. He also met [[Nikolay Karamzin]], the preeminent Russian man of letters and the founding editor of the most important literary journal of the day, ''Vestnik Yevropy'' (The herald of Europe).

In December 1802, the 19-year-old Zhukovsky published a free translation of [[Thomas Gray]]'s "[[Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard]]" in Karamzin's journal. The translation was the first sustained example of his trademark sentimental-melancholy style, which at the time was strikingly original in Russian. It made him so well known among Russian readers that in 1808 Karamzin asked him to take over the editorship of ''Vestnik Yevropy''. The young poet used this position to explore Romantic themes, motifs, and genres—largely by way of translation.

Zhukovsky was among the first Russian writers to cultivate the mystique of the Romantic poet. Much of his original work was inspired by his half-niece Maria "Masha" Protasova, the daughter of one of his several half-sisters, with whom he had a passionate but ultimately Platonic affair. He also came under the influence of Romanticism in the medieval [[Hanseatic League|Hansa]] cities of Dorpat and Revel, now called [[Tartu]] and [[Tallinn]], which were then part of the Russian Empire. The university at Dorpat (now [[Tartu University]]) had been reopened as the only German-speaking university in Imperial Russia.

Zhukovsky's rise at court began with [[French invasion of Russia|Napoleon's invasion of 1812]] and with the consequent revilement of French as the favored foreign language of the Russian aristocracy. Like thousands of others, Zhukovsky volunteered for the defense of Moscow and was present at the [[Battle of Borodino]]. There he joined the Russian general staff under [[Kutuzov|Field Marshal Kutuzov]], who drafted him to work on propaganda and morale. After the war, he settled down temporarily in the village of Dolbino, near Moscow, where in 1815 he experienced a burst of poetic creativity known as the Dolbino Autumn. His work in this period attracted the attention of [[Alexandra Feodorovna (Charlotte of Prussia)|Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna]], the German-born wife of Grand Duke Nicholas, the future [[Nicholas I of Russia|Tsar Nicholas I]]. Alexandra invited Zhukovsky to Saint Petersburg to be her personal Russian tutor. Many of Zhukovsky's best translations from German, including almost all of his translations of [[Goethe]], were made as practical language exercises for Alexandra.

Zhukovsky's pedagogical career removed him in some respects from the forefront of Russian literary life, while at the same time positioning him to become one of the most powerful intellectuals in Russia. Among his first acts on moving to Saint Petersburg was to establish the jocular [[Arzamas Society|Arzamas literary society]] in order to promote Karamzin's European-oriented, anti-[[classicism|classicist]] [[aesthetics]]. Members of the Arzamas included the teenage [[Alexander Pushkin]], who rapidly emerged as his poetic heir apparent. Indeed, by the early 1820s, Pushkin had upstaged Zhukovsky in terms of the originality and brilliance of his work—even in Zhukovsky's own estimation. Yet the two remained lifelong friends, with the older poet acting as a literary mentor and protector at court.

Much of Zhukovsky's subsequent influence can be attributed to this gift for friendship. His good personal relations with Nicholas spared him the fate of other liberal intellectuals following the ill-fated [[Decembrist Revolt|1825 Decembrist Revolt]]. Shortly after Nicholas ascended the throne, he appointed Zhukovsky tutor to the [[tsarevich]] Alexander, later to become the tsar [[Alexander II of Russia|Alexander II]]. Zhukovsky's progressive educational methods influenced the young Alexander so deeply that many historians attribute the liberal reforms of the 1860s at least partially to them. The poet also used his high station at court to take up the cudgels for such free-thinking writers as [[Mikhail Lermontov]], [[Alexander Herzen]], and [[Taras Shevchenko]] (Zhukovsky was instrumental in buying him out of serfdom), as well as many of the persecuted [[Decembrists]]. 

On Pushkin's early death in 1837, Zhukovsky stepped in as his literary executor, not only rescuing his work from a hostile censorship (including several unpublished masterpieces), but also diligently collecting and preparing it for publication. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, Zhukovsky also promoted the career of [[Nikolay Gogol]], another close personal friend. In this way, he acted as an impresario for the developing Russian Romantic movement.

[[File:Baden-Baden-Wassili Andrejewitsch Schukowski-02-2010-gje.jpg|thumb|Bust of Zhukovsky in Baden-Baden]]
Like his mentor Karamzin, Zhukovsky travelled widely in Europe, above all in the German-speaking world, where his connections with the [[Prussian court]] in Berlin gave him access to high society in spa-towns like [[Baden-Baden]] and [[Bad Ems]]. He also met and corresponded with world-class cultural figures like Goethe, the poet [[Ludwig Tieck]], and the landscape painter [[Caspar David Friedrich]]. In 1841, Zhukovsky retired from court and settled near [[Düsseldorf]], where he married Elisabeth von Reutern, the 18-year-old daughter of [[Gerhardt Wilhelm von Reutern]], an artist friend. The couple had two children, a girl named [[Alexandra Zhukovskaya|Alexandra]] and a boy named [[Paul von Joukowsky|Pavel]]. Alexandra later had a much talked-about affair with [[Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich]].

Zhukovsky died in Baden-Baden in 1852, aged 69. His body was returned to Saint Petersburg and buried in the [[Alexander Nevsky Lavra]]. His crypt can be found directly behind the monument to [[Dostoevsky]].

==Works==
[[File:Stamp of USSR 1690.jpg|thumb|Zhukovsky on a 1952 stamp]]
In the opinion of [[Vladimir Nabokov]], Zhukovsky was "a wonderful translator, who surpassed both Seidlitz and Schiller in his versions of their poems, and one of the greatest minor poets that ever was."{{Sfn|Nabokov|1961|p=28}} His main contribution was as a stylistic and formal innovator who borrowed freely from European literature in order to provide high-quality models for "original" works in Russian. His translation of Gray's "Elegy" is still cited by scholars as the conventional starting point for the Russian Romantic Movement. He also wrote some prose, the best-known example of which is the 1809 short story "Marina roshcha" ("Mary's grove"), about the ancient past of Moscow; it was inspired by [[Nikolay Karamzin]]'s famous story "[[Poor Liza]]" (1792).<ref>John Garrard and Carol Garrard, ''Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New Russia'' (Princeton University Press, 2009; {{ISBN|0-691-12573-2}}), p. 269, n. 8.</ref>

Zhukovsky translated from a staggeringly wide range of sources, often without attribution, given that modern ideas of intellectual property did not exist in his day. In his choice of original, however, he was consistently motivated by formal principles, above all generic. Following his initial success with the "Elegy", he was especially admired for his first-rate melodious translations of German and English [[ballad]]s. Among these, the ballad "Ludmila" (1808) and its companion piece "[[Svetlana (ballad)|Svetlana]]" (1813) are considered landmarks in the Russian poetic tradition. Both are free translations of [[Gottfried August Burger]]'s well-known German ballad "[[Lenore (ballad)|Lenore]]", although each renders the original in a completely different way. Characteristically, Zhukovsky later translated "Lenore" yet a third time as part of his lifelong effort to develop a natural-sounding Russian [[dactylic hexameter]]. His many translations of [[Schiller]]—including both Classical and Romantic [[ballad]]s, [[lyrics]], and the verse drama ''[[The Maid of Orleans (play)|Die Jungfrau von Orléans]]'' (about [[Joan of Arc]])—became classic works in Russian that many consider to be of equal if not higher quality than their originals. They were remarkable for their psychological depth, strongly influencing the younger generation of Russian [[Literary realism|realists]], among them [[Dostoevsky]], who famously called them "nash Schiller" ("our Schiller").

Zhukovsky also wrote original verse. His love lyrics to Masha Protasova, such as "Moi drug, khranitel'-angel moi" ("My friend, my guardian angel&nbsp;..."), are minor classics of the genre. Probably his best-known original poem is the patriotic ode "A Bard in the Camp of the Russian Warriors", which he wrote to boost the morale of Russian troops during his service on Kutuzov's general staff. He also composed the lyrics for the national anthem of Imperial Russia, "[[God Save the Tsar!]]"

In the late 1830s, after a period of partial withdrawal from the literary scene, Zhukovsky staged a comeback with a highly original verse translation of his German friend [[Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué]]'s prose novella [[Undine (novella)|''Undine'']]. Written in a waltzing hexameter, Zhukovsky's version later inspired the libretto for an [[Undina (Tchaikovsky)|opera]] by [[Tchaikovsky]].

On retiring from court, Zhukovsky devoted his remaining years to hexameter translations of Eastern poetry, including long excerpts from the [[Persian language|Persian]] [[epic (genre)|epic]] ''[[Shahnameh]]''. His greatest achievement in this period, however, was his translation of [[Homer]]'s ''[[Odyssey]]'', which he finally published in 1849. Although the translation has been strongly criticized for its distortions of the original, it became a classic in its own right and occupies a notable place in the history of [[Russian poetry]]. Some scholars argue that both his ''Undina'' and his ''Odyssey''—as long narrative works in verse—made a significant, albeit oblique contribution to the development of the 19th-century Russian novel.

All in all, Zhukovsky's work probably constitutes the most important body of literary [[hermeneutics]] in the modern Russian language. He is often considered the founder of a "German school" of Russian poets and as such has influenced figures as far afield as [[Fyodor Tyutchev]] and [[Marina Tsvetaeva]].

== Notes ==
{{Reflist}}

== Sources ==
*{{cite book |last=Nabokov |first=Vladimir |author-link=Vladimir Nabokov |url=https://archive.org/details/nikolaigogol0000nabo_w3t1 |title=Nikolai Gogol |year=1961 |isbn=0-8112-0120-1 |publisher=New Directions |edition=Corrected |location=New York |orig-date=First published in 1959 |url-access=registration}}
*{{cite book|last=Pein|first=Annette|title=Schiller and Zhukovsky: Aesthetic Theory in Poetic Translation|year=1991|publisher=Liber|location=Mainz}}
*{{cite thesis|last=Rueckert|first=George|title=Zhukovsky and the Germans: A Study in Romantic Hermeneutics|year=2003|publisher=University of Washington|degree=PhD|location=Seattle}}
*{{cite book |last=Semenko |first=I. M. |title=Zhizn' i poeziia Zhukovskogo |year=1975 |publisher=Khudozhestvennaia literatura |location=Moscow |language=ru |trans-title=''Zhukovsky's life and poetry''}}
*{{cite book |last=Semenko |first=I. M. |url=https://archive.org/details/vasilyzhukovsky00seme |title=Vasily Zhukovsky |year=1976 |isbn=0-8057-2995-X |publisher=Twayne Publishers |location=Boston |url-access=registration}}
*{{cite book |last=Veselovsky |first=A. N. |title=V. A. Zhukovskii: Poeziia chuvstva i "serdechnogo voobrazheniia" |year=1999 |publisher=Intrada |location=Moscow |language=ru |trans-title=''V. A. Zhukovsky: the poetry of feeling and 'heartfelt imagination'''}}
*{{cite book |last=Yanushkevich |first=A. S. |title=Etapy i problemy tvorcheskoi evolutsii V.A. Zhukovskogo |year=1985 |publisher=Izd. Tomskogo Universiteta |location=Tomsk |language=ru |trans-title=''Phases and problems of Zhukovsky's creative development''}}
*{{cite book |last=Yesuitova |first=R.V. |title=Zhukovskii i ego vremia |year=1989 |publisher=Nauka |location=Leningrad |language=ru |trans-title=''Zhukovsky and his time''}}

==External links==
*{{Commonscat-inline}}
*{{Wikisource author-inline}}
*[http://www.russianlegacy.com/en/go_to/culture/poetry/zhukovsky.htm Vasily Zhukovsky's verses (translated in English)]
*[http://web.mmlc.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Demo/poetpage/zhukovsky.html Russian Poets Page]
*[https://www.academia.edu/37078419/Translation_of_Vasily_Zhukovskys_Singer_in_the_Kremlin_in_Four_Centuries_18/ Vasily Zhukovsky's long poem "Singer in the Kremlin," 1816]
*[http://stihipoeta.ru/poety-zolotogo-veka/vasiliy-zhukovskiy/ Vasily Zhukovsky poetry] at [http://stihipoeta.ru/ Stihipoeta]
* {{Librivox author |id=11450}}

{{Romanticism}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zhukovsky, Vasily}}
[[Category:1780s births]]
[[Category:1852 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century writers from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Full members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences]]
[[Category:Honorary members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences]]
[[Category:Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)]]
[[Category:Male writers from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Male poets from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Translators from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Literary translators]]
[[Category:Members of the Russian Academy]]
[[Category:People from Belyovsky District]]
[[Category:People from Belyovsky Uyezd]]
[[Category:Romantic poets]]
[[Category:Bunin family]]
[[Category:Russian military personnel of the Napoleonic Wars]]
[[Category:Opera librettists from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:People from the Russian Empire of Turkish descent]]
[[Category:Burials at Tikhvin Cemetery]]
[[Category:Translators of Homer]]
[[Category:Translators of The Tale of Igor's Campaign]]
[[Category:Privy Councillor (Russian Empire)]]