Apollon Maykov

Apollon Nikolayevich Maykov
Portrait of Maykov by Vasily Perov
Born	June 4 [O.S. May 23] 1821 Moscow, Imperial Russia
Died	March 20 [O.S. March 8] 1897 Saint Petersburg, Imperial Russia
Occupation	Poet, critic, essayist, translator
Nationality	Russian
Notable awards	Pushkin Prize

Apollon Nikolayevich Maykov (Russian: Аполло́н Никола́евич Ма́йков, June 4 [O.S. May 23] 1821, Moscow – March 20 [O.S. March 8] 1897, Saint Petersburg) was a Russian poet, best known for his lyric verse showcasing images of Russian villages, nature, and history. His love for ancient Greece and Rome, which he studied for much of his life, is also reflected in his works. Maykov spent four years translating the epic The Tale of Igor's Campaign (1870) into modern Russian. He translated folklore of Belarus, Greece, Serbia and Spain, as well as works by Heine, Adam Mickiewicz and Goethe, among others. Several Maykov's poems were set to music by several Russian composers, among them Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky.

Apollon Maykov was born into an artistic family. His father, Nikolay Maykov, was a painter, and in his later years an academic of the Imperial Academy of Arts. His mother, Yevgeniya Petrovna Maykova (née Gusyatnikova, 1803-1880), loved literature and later in her life had some of her own poetry published. The boy's childhood was spent at the family estate just outside Moscow, in a house often visited by writers and artists. Maykov's early memories and impressions formed the foundation for his later much lauded landscape lyricism, marked with what biographer Igor Yampolsky calls "touchingly naive craving for the old patriarchal ways."