Konstantin Batyushkov
| Konstantin Nikolayevich Batyushkov | |
|---|---|
Portrait by unknown artist, 1810's
|
|
| Born |
29 May 1787 Vologda, Russian Empire |
| Died | 19 July 1855 (aged 68) Vologda, Russian Empire |
| Occupation | Poet, essayist, translator |
Konstantin Nikolayevich Batyushkov (Russian: Константи́н Никола́евич Ба́тюшков; IPA: [kənstɐnʲˈtʲin nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ ˈbatʲʊʂkəf]; 29 May [O.S. 18 May] 1787 – 19 July [O.S. 7 July] 1855) was a Russian poet, essayist and translator of the Romantic era. He also served in the diplomatic corps, spending an extended period in 1818 and 1819 as a secretary to the Russian diplomatic mission at Naples.
The early years of Konstantin Batyushkov's life are difficult to reconstruct. He probably spent the first four years of his life in Vologda; the exact place he lived from 1792 to 1796 is unknown: possibly with his father, possibly with his grandfather, Lev Andreyevich Batyushkov, on their family estate, the village of Danilovskoe, Bezhetski district, Tver province. However, it was Konstantin's youth spent in St. Petersburg which played the most important part in his development as a poet.
Batyushkov's earliest extant letter from St. Petersburg is dated 6 July 1797. His first years there were spent in Pensionnats (private boarding schools). Contact with his relatives was restricted to correspondence and rare meetings. From 1797 to 1800 he studied at the Pensionnat directed by O.P. Jacquinot; it was a rather expensive school for children of good families. The curriculum included Russian, French, German, divinity, geography, history, statistics, arithmetic, chemistry, botany, calligraphy, drawing and dancing. In 1801 Batyushkov entered a Pensionnat run by an Italian, I.A. Tripoli; he graduated in 1802. It was here that Batyushkov began to study Italian. His first literary offering, however, was a translation into French of Metropolitan Platon's Address on the occasion of the coronation of Alexander I of Russia.
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