Born on 14 July 1743, Gavrila Derzhavin is described by D.S. Mirsky in his History of Russian Literature as “one of the greatest and most original of all Russian poets.” Mirsky adds that “what makes Derzhavin unique is his extraordinary power of conveying impressions of light and color.” One example Mirsky cites of this power is the opening to Derzhavin’s poem “The Waterfall, which is also the acme of his rhythmical power”. Here is a stanza from Alexander Levitsky and Martha Kitchen’s translation of a portion of it from the Penguin Book of Russian Verse:

In dark, dense thickets by the verge
deep mounds of greyish spume are foaming,
the wind bears hammer-blows, the whirr
of saws, the bellows’ hollow groaning:
O Waterfall! Your dread abyss
devours all in deathless mist! …

Derzhavin spent large portions of his life on Russia’s Tartar frontier, and was born in the former Khanate city of Kazan. He came from a small family of relatively unimportant nobles and went to St. Petersburg to perform military service. From 1773 to 1777 he served in the forces under General Bibikov who were tasked with putting down the famous rebellion of Yemelyan Pugachev (who is depicted so dramatically in Alexander Pushkin’s novella The Captain’s Daughter and his unfinished History of Pugachev’s Rebellion.)

It was only in 1780 that Derzhavin became famous for Ode he wrote on behalf of a general to the Empress Catherine, and from there produced numerous poems. Mirsky describes rather humorously how for the rest of his life Derzhavin was handed around the nobility to be an administrator in various positions, though he tended to quarrel with his superiors and did not last long. (Evidently, he was born a poet, not a government administrator.)

Mirsky’s whole section on Derzhavin is tantalizing, which makes it somewhat annoying that Derzhavin has only been sparsely translated. According to Mirsky, Derzhavin had a wide range in his poetry, encompassing “sacred and panegyrical odes, Anacreontic and Horation lyrics, dithyrambs and cantatas, and even, in his later years ballads. … He loved the sublime in all its forms: the metaphysical majesty of a deistic God, the physical grandness of a waterfall, the political greatness of the Empire, of its builders and warriors.” Mirsky concludes that “Derzhavin’s poetry is a universe of amazing richness,” but he did not really advance the taste of his time or experiment with language (certainly not in the way Alexander Pushkin was soon to do.)

There is actually a painting which shows a high-school age Pushkin reading one of his poems in front of an audience which includes an elderly Derzhavin; a picture of the end of one age of Russian literature, and the beginning of an entirely new one.