Dmitry Khvostov
Dmitry Ivanovich Khvostov | |
---|---|
Dramatist | |
Nationality | Russian |
Count Dmitry Ivanovich Khvostov (
Biography
Dmitry Ivanovich Khvostov was born in
Literary career
Young Dmitry Khvostov grew up in a literary environment: relatives such as
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 his poetic gift, Khvostov produced vast amounts of poetry;
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
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".[2]
Count Khvostov's Fables became very popular, for all the wrong reasons. Members of the
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."[7] Konstantin Batyushkov wrote of Khvostov: "Generations will come and go, and simply for being so infamous, he will become quite famous."[8]
References
- ^ "The Works by Dmitry Ivanovich Khvostov". Lib.Ru / The Moshkov Library. Retrieved 2011-10-10.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Korneyev, A. V. (1990). "Khvostov, Dmitry Ivanovich". Russian Writers. Biobibliographical Dictionary. Vol 2. Retrieved 2011-10-10.
- ^ "Khvostov, D. I. Biography". Russian Biographical Dictionary. Retrieved 2011-10-10.
- ^ Russkaya Starina, No. 6, 1892, p. 573
- ^ The Russian Archive. No. 3, 1866, p. 484
- ^ Arzamas and the Arzamas Protokols, Leningrad, 1933, Pp. 107–109.
- ^ Nikolai Karamzin. Letters to I. I. Dmitriev. Saint Petersburg, 1865, p. 379
- ^ The Works of K. N. Batyushkov. Saint Petersburg, 1887. Vol. 3, p. 215