Jakow Borissowitsch Knjaschnin

Jakow Borissowitsch Knjaschnin

Jakow Borissowitsch Knjaschnin ( Russian Яков Борисович Княжнин ; * 3rd October ^July / 14th October  1742 ^greg. In Pskow ; † 14 January ^July / 25 January  1791 ^greg. In Saint Petersburg ) was a Russian poet, dramaturge and translator .

Life

Yakov Knjaschnin was born the son of the Pskov lieutenant governor and received his education at the grammar school of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg . Already there he made himself known by name to French, German and Italian literature.

After that he first worked as a translator in the office of construction from 1757 . In 1762 he entered the military. Sentenced to death in 1773 for embezzling state funds, the verdict was initially converted into a loss of military rank and title after opposition from influential friends. In 1777 Knjaschnin was completely pardoned by Tsarina Catherine the Great and soon afterwards took his leave of the army as a major.

As a result, he worked as the secretary of the important pedagogue and education politician of this era, Iwan Bezki . In 1783 he was elected a full member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences and took part in the drafting of the dictionary published by it. At the same time he became a teacher of Russian literature in the upper classes of the cadet corps.

He died January 14th ^jul. / January 25, 1791 ^greg. as councilor in Saint Petersburg.

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After Knjaschnin had been literary since the 1760s - his tragedy Didona was staged with enormous success in 1769 - he developed into one of the most important representatives of Russian classicism in the 1780s . His works were often closely based on Western European models, but also dealt with Slavic mythology and Russian patriotism and often had a pronounced educational and didactic character.

Knjaschnin wrote, among other things, the tragedies :

• Didona ( Дидона , 1769)
• Rosslaw ( Росслав , 1784)
• Sophonisbe ( Софонизба , 1786)
• Vladissan ( Владисан , 1786)

the comedies :

• The boastful ( Хвастун / Chwastun , 1784–85)
• The eccentrics ( Чудаки / Tschudaki , 1790)

Libretti for several comic operas , a melodrama . He also composed odes, fables, songs and other small poems, translated works by Voltaire , Giambattista Marino , Carlo Goldoni and others. a., whereby he used the blank verse for the first time in Russian poetry .

One of his last works was the tragedy Vadim von Novgorod ( Вадим Новгородский / Vadim Novgorodski ), written in 1789 and influenced by the ideas of the French Revolution . Although the work takes place in the early days of Russian history, many of the formulations were understood as a criticism of autocracy and thus a call for revolution. It could only be published after Knjaschnin's death in 1793 and later influenced various works of Decabrist literature. This work gave rise to speculation that Knjaschnin did not die of a fever , according to the official version, but of the consequences of torture by the tsarist secret police.

In 1792 Yevstignei Fomin's melodrama Orpheus and Eurydice ( Орфей и Евридика / Orfei i Jewridika ) based on a text by Knjaschnin was premiered and was played until 1811, probably his greatest success.