Dmitry Khvostov
Encyclopedia
Count Dmitry Ivanovich Khvostov , was a Russian
poet, representing the late period of classicism
in Russian literature
. Count Khvostov, as he was widely known, was an exceedingly prolific author of poems, fables, epigrams, etc, invariably archaic and pompous, making him an easy target for humourists and fellow poets (Pushkin among them) who ridiculed him relentelessly. In modern times much has been done to separate the comical myth from Khvostov's real legacy (with some fake 'Khvostovism' exposed) and give credit to an extraordinary poetry enthusiast (who was also an avid literary researcher and archivist), but the stereotype prevails and the name of Count Khvostov remains synonymous in Russia with wanton graphomania
and self-important pomposity.
in Saint Petersburg, into a respected family of Russian aristocrats, the origins of which can be traced back to the 18th century. He received a fine education at home, studied in a private boarding-school, and then at Moscow University. In 1772 Khvostov joined the prestigious Preobrazhensky regiment
(where he, admittedly, "rarely mounted a horse, save Pegasus
"). After retirement in 1779 Khvostov served as an official in the Russian Senate 2nd department, where he later translated The Study on Finance
by the French Finance minister Jacques Necker
, for Prince Alexander Vyazemsky. In 1789 Khvostov married Princess A. I. Gorchakova, Alexander Suvorov
's niece, and it was Suvorov, first a mentor, then a close friend and confidante, who in 1799 asked the King of Sardinia to grant the title of Count to his relative who three years later received official permission to use it and became Count Khvostov. He worked as a secretary in the Senate, then (from 1799) in the Synod
. In 1807 he became a Senator, and in 1818 a State Councillor. In 1831 Count Khvostov retired, with the reputation of a perfectly honest, incorruptible bureaucrat and a very modest, good-humoured, likeable person. As many people who knew Khvostov attested, he had but one vice, his abnormal passion for writing (and, what was more serious, publishing) his own poetry which, in the end, proved to be his undoing. Suvorov himself, according to legend, on his deathbed implored his friend to stop writing, but this last wish of the great man remained unfulfilled.
, Vasily Maykov and Alexander Karin were often guests at his parents's home in Saint Petersburg. In 1777 Dmitry Khvostov debuted with a comedy play called A Credulous One; it was staged at the Court theater. From the very beginning till the end Khvostov was a strict follower and promoter of classicism. Jean Racine
's Andromaque
(1794) and Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
's L'Art poétique translated by Khvostov (the latter under the title of The Science of Verse-making, in 1808) went through several editions. In 1791 Khvostov was elected a member of the Russian Academy
. From the formation of the Colloquy of Lovers of the Russian Word in 1811 Khvostov became one of its most active members.
Khvostov was passionately in love with poetry which for sixty years remained his main interest in life. "I love to write verse and see it printed": this self-proclaimed credo he even used as an epigraph for the 2nd edition of the Complete Khvostov collection (1817–1818). Never doubting the enormity of his poetic gift, Khvostov produced vast amounts of poetry; ode
s, epitaph
s, elegies
, madrigal
s, epigram
s, etc., which were generally seen as banal, wordy, extravagantly pompous, rich with unnecessary allegories
and inversions
. Quintessential classicism with its full set of clichés, Khvostov's poems became an easy target for parodists.
Since publishers avoided Khvostov with his ever growing bulk of produce, he invested money in the business of self-publishing. The Complete Khvostov went through three editions. Before publishing the next edition, the author bought all the unsold copies of the previous one and spread them to all quarters. He sent thousands of books (along with statues and busts of his own) to Russian and European universities, academies, schools, cadet headquarters, scientists and statesmen. Each time, starting out in a coach from Saint Petersburg to his Novgorodskaya gubernia estate, he took bunches of his own books along with him, leaving copies at every postal station for anyone who'd care to read them.
In 1802 Select Fables from the Best of Russian Verse came out and administered the fatal blow to Khvostov's reputation. His characters did the most improbable things: a dove "gnawed himself out of the net" after being entangled in ("Two Doves"), an ass climbed a rowan-tree ("An Ass and a Rowan-tree") and a crow dropped a piece of cheese from its 'jaws' ("A Crow and a Cheese"). Equally bizarre were the author's footnotes and commentaries, of which there were many. The cheese incident has been explained thus: "Some criticized the use of the word 'jaws' for it can relate only to beasts, not birds. This author is well aware that a bird's mouth is called a 'beak', but he chose to find for it an allegoric substitute because a crow here is a symbol of a man, and of a man one might easily say: 'He gaped and his jaw dropped'; see the Russian Academy dictionary".
Count Khvostov's Fables became very popular, for all the wrong reasons. Members of the Arzamas Society
kept the book on their table to amuse themselves from time to time, as Pyotr Vyazemsky
remembered. Vasily Zhukovsky
devoted the whole of his Arzamas inception speech to Khvostov's Fables. Pyotr Vyazemsky, Vasily Zhukovsky, Anton Delvig, Ivan Dmitriev
, Alexander Voeykov, Nikolay Yazykov
and Alexander Izmaylov all wrote epigrams on Khvostov. In a satire called A Singer in a Colloquy Konstantin Batyushkov
presented Khvostov as the cossack
ataman
Platov
, "a reader's tyrant" whose poetry was "his drum, unbearable for the ears". Pushkin in his "Ode to His Highness Count Dm. Iv. Khvostov" made fun of the latter's tendency to produce countless footnotes (which made the commentary pages longer than the verses themselves), warning Wilhelm Küchelbecker
and Kondraty Ryleyev against falling into the same ode-ish stylistic trap.
Khvostov, being an extraordinarily mild and good-humoured man, endured this barrage of ridicule stoically. Giving credit to his love of literature, the sympathetic Nikolay Karamzin wrote to Dmitriev in 1824: "Count Khvostov with his unbroken passion for verse-making is very touching to me. Here is love that is worthy of a talent. He's got none, but he'd deserve having it". Konstantin Batyushkov wrote of Khvostov: "Generations will come and go, and simply for being so infamous, he will become quite famous."
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
poet, representing the late period of classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
in Russian literature
Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
. Count Khvostov, as he was widely known, was an exceedingly prolific author of poems, fables, epigrams, etc, invariably archaic and pompous, making him an easy target for humourists and fellow poets (Pushkin among them) who ridiculed him relentelessly. In modern times much has been done to separate the comical myth from Khvostov's real legacy (with some fake 'Khvostovism' exposed) and give credit to an extraordinary poetry enthusiast (who was also an avid literary researcher and archivist), but the stereotype prevails and the name of Count Khvostov remains synonymous in Russia with wanton graphomania
Graphomania
Graphomania , also known as scribomania, refers to an obsessive impulse to write....
and self-important pomposity.
Biography
Dmitry Ivanovich Khvostov was born on 17571757 in literature
See also: 1756 in literature, other events of 1757, 1758 in literature, list of years in literature.-Events:*May 6 - Christopher Smart is admitted to St...
in Saint Petersburg, into a respected family of Russian aristocrats, the origins of which can be traced back to the 18th century. He received a fine education at home, studied in a private boarding-school, and then at Moscow University. In 1772 Khvostov joined the prestigious Preobrazhensky regiment
Preobrazhensky regiment
The Preobrazhensky Regiment was one of the oldest and elite regiments of the Russian army. Along with the Semenovsky regiment also served as a gendarmie unit for the state Secret Chancellery in the 18th century, headed by the Prince Fyodor Romodanovsky.It was formed by Peter the Great in the late...
(where he, admittedly, "rarely mounted a horse, save Pegasus
Pegasus
Pegasus is one of the best known fantastical as well as mythological creatures in Greek mythology. He is a winged divine horse, usually white in color. He was sired by Poseidon, in his role as horse-god, and foaled by the Gorgon Medusa. He was the brother of Chrysaor, born at a single birthing...
"). After retirement in 1779 Khvostov served as an official in the Russian Senate 2nd department, where he later translated The Study on Finance
Compte rendu
The Compte rendu was a document published in February 1781 by Jacques Necker, finance minister to the King, in which he presented the state of France's finances....
by the French Finance minister Jacques Necker
Jacques Necker
Jacques Necker was a French statesman of Swiss birth and finance minister of Louis XVI, a post he held in the lead-up to the French Revolution in 1789.-Early life:...
, for Prince Alexander Vyazemsky. In 1789 Khvostov married Princess A. I. Gorchakova, Alexander Suvorov
Alexander Suvorov
Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov , Count Suvorov of Rymnik, Prince in Italy, Count of the Holy Roman Empire , was the fourth and last generalissimo of the Russian Empire.One of the few great generals in history who never lost a battle along with the likes of Alexander...
's niece, and it was Suvorov, first a mentor, then a close friend and confidante, who in 1799 asked the King of Sardinia to grant the title of Count to his relative who three years later received official permission to use it and became Count Khvostov. He worked as a secretary in the Senate, then (from 1799) in the Synod
Most Holy Synod
The Most Holy Governing Synod was the highest governing body of the Russian Orthodox Church between 1721 and 1918, when the Patriarchate was restored. The jurisdiction of the Most Holy Synod extended over every kind of ecclesiastical question and over some that are partly secular.The Synod was...
. In 1807 he became a Senator, and in 1818 a State Councillor. In 1831 Count Khvostov retired, with the reputation of a perfectly honest, incorruptible bureaucrat and a very modest, good-humoured, likeable person. As many people who knew Khvostov attested, he had but one vice, his abnormal passion for writing (and, what was more serious, publishing) his own poetry which, in the end, proved to be his undoing. Suvorov himself, according to legend, on his deathbed implored his friend to stop writing, but this last wish of the great man remained unfulfilled.
Literary career
Young Dmitry Khvostov grew up in a literary environment: relatives such as Alexander SumarokovAlexander Sumarokov
Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov was a Russian poet and playwright who single-handedly created classical theatre in Russia, thus assisting Mikhail Lomonosov to inaugurate the reign of classicism in Russian literature....
, Vasily Maykov and Alexander Karin were often guests at his parents's home in Saint Petersburg. In 1777 Dmitry Khvostov debuted with a comedy play called A Credulous One; it was staged at the Court theater. From the very beginning till the end Khvostov was a strict follower and promoter of classicism. Jean Racine
Jean Racine
Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...
's Andromaque
Andromaque
Andromaque is a tragedy in five acts by the French playwright Jean Racine written in alexandrine verse. It was first performed on 17 November 1667 before the court of Louis XIV in the Louvre in the private chambers of the Queen, Marie Thérèse, by the royal company of actors, called "les Grands...
(1794) and Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux was a French poet and critic.-Biography:Boileau was born in the rue de Jérusalem, in Paris, France. He was brought up to the law, but devoted to letters, associating himself with La Fontaine, Racine, and Molière...
's L'Art poétique translated by Khvostov (the latter under the title of The Science of Verse-making, in 1808) went through several editions. In 1791 Khvostov was elected a member of the Russian Academy
Russian Academy
The Russian Academy or Imperial Russian Academy was established in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1783 by Empress Catherine II of Russia and princess Dashkova as a research center for Russian language and Russian literature, following the example of the Académie française...
. From the formation of the Colloquy of Lovers of the Russian Word in 1811 Khvostov became one of its most active members.
Khvostov was passionately in love with poetry which for sixty years remained his main interest in life. "I love to write verse and see it printed": this self-proclaimed credo he even used as an epigraph for the 2nd edition of the Complete Khvostov collection (1817–1818). Never doubting the enormity of his poetic gift, Khvostov produced vast amounts of poetry; ode
Ode
Ode is a type of lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist...
s, epitaph
Epitaph
An epitaph is a short text honoring a deceased person, strictly speaking that is inscribed on their tombstone or plaque, but also used figuratively. Some are specified by the dead person beforehand, others chosen by those responsible for the burial...
s, elegies
Elegies
is the Hello! Project 2005 shuffle group consisting of Ai Takahashi and Reina Tanaka of Morning Musume, along with Melon Kinenbi's Ayumi Shibata and Country Musume's Mai Satoda. The name comes from the word elegy. They released the single "" on June 22, 2005....
, madrigal
Madrigal
-Music:* Madrigal , a European musical form of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries** Madrigal dinner, a form of dinner theater incorporating comedy, madrigals, and a feast...
s, epigram
Epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....
s, etc., which were generally seen as banal, wordy, extravagantly pompous, rich with unnecessary allegories
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
and inversions
Inversion (linguistics)
In linguistics, grammatical inversion is any of a number of different distinct grammatical constructions in the languages of the world. There are three main uses in the literature which, unfortunately, have little if any overlap either formally or typologically: syntactic inversion, thematic...
. Quintessential classicism with its full set of clichés, Khvostov's poems became an easy target for parodists.
Since publishers avoided Khvostov with his ever growing bulk of produce, he invested money in the business of self-publishing. The Complete Khvostov went through three editions. Before publishing the next edition, the author bought all the unsold copies of the previous one and spread them to all quarters. He sent thousands of books (along with statues and busts of his own) to Russian and European universities, academies, schools, cadet headquarters, scientists and statesmen. Each time, starting out in a coach from Saint Petersburg to his Novgorodskaya gubernia estate, he took bunches of his own books along with him, leaving copies at every postal station for anyone who'd care to read them.
In 1802 Select Fables from the Best of Russian Verse came out and administered the fatal blow to Khvostov's reputation. His characters did the most improbable things: a dove "gnawed himself out of the net" after being entangled in ("Two Doves"), an ass climbed a rowan-tree ("An Ass and a Rowan-tree") and a crow dropped a piece of cheese from its 'jaws' ("A Crow and a Cheese"). Equally bizarre were the author's footnotes and commentaries, of which there were many. The cheese incident has been explained thus: "Some criticized the use of the word 'jaws' for it can relate only to beasts, not birds. This author is well aware that a bird's mouth is called a 'beak', but he chose to find for it an allegoric substitute because a crow here is a symbol of a man, and of a man one might easily say: 'He gaped and his jaw dropped'; see the Russian Academy dictionary".
Count Khvostov's Fables became very popular, for all the wrong reasons. Members of the Arzamas Society
Arzamas Society
The Arzamas Society was a literary society in Saint Petersburg in 1815-1818. The society received its name after a humorous work by a Russian statesman Dmitry Bludov called A Vision at the Inn at Arzamas, Published by the Society of Scholars...
kept the book on their table to amuse themselves from time to time, as Pyotr Vyazemsky
Pyotr Vyazemsky
Prince Pyotr Andreyevich Vyazemsky or Petr Andreevich Viazemsky was a leading personality of the Golden Age of Russian poetry.- Biography :...
remembered. Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century...
devoted the whole of his Arzamas inception speech to Khvostov's Fables. Pyotr Vyazemsky, Vasily Zhukovsky, Anton Delvig, Ivan Dmitriev
Ivan Dmitriev
Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev was a Russian statesman and poet associated with the sentamentalist movement in Russian literature.Dmitriev was born at his father's estate in the government of Simbirsk...
, Alexander Voeykov, Nikolay Yazykov
Nikolay Yazykov
Nikolay Mikhailovich Yazykov was a Russian poet and Slavophile who in the 1820s rivalled Alexander Pushkin and Yevgeny Baratynsky as the most popular poet of his generation....
and Alexander Izmaylov all wrote epigrams on Khvostov. In a satire called A Singer in a Colloquy Konstantin Batyushkov
Konstantin Batyushkov
Konstantin Nikolayevich Batyushkov was a Russian poet, essayist and translator of the Romantic era.-Biography:The early years of Konstantin Batyushkov's life are difficult to reconstruct...
presented Khvostov as the cossack
Cossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
ataman
Ataman
Ataman was a commander title of the Ukrainian People's Army, Cossack, and haidamak leaders, who were in essence the Cossacks...
Platov
Matvei Platov
Count Matvei Ivanovich Platov was a Russian general who commanded the Don Cossacks in the Napoleonic wars....
, "a reader's tyrant" whose poetry was "his drum, unbearable for the ears". Pushkin in his "Ode to His Highness Count Dm. Iv. Khvostov" made fun of the latter's tendency to produce countless footnotes (which made the commentary pages longer than the verses themselves), warning Wilhelm Küchelbecker
Wilhelm Küchelbecker
Wilhelm Küchelbecker was a Russian Romantic poet and Decembrist....
and Kondraty Ryleyev against falling into the same ode-ish stylistic trap.
Khvostov, being an extraordinarily mild and good-humoured man, endured this barrage of ridicule stoically. Giving credit to his love of literature, the sympathetic Nikolay Karamzin wrote to Dmitriev in 1824: "Count Khvostov with his unbroken passion for verse-making is very touching to me. Here is love that is worthy of a talent. He's got none, but he'd deserve having it". Konstantin Batyushkov wrote of Khvostov: "Generations will come and go, and simply for being so infamous, he will become quite famous."