Mikhaíl Matvyéevich Kheráskov. (1733-1807.)
The son of a Wallachian emigrant, Kheráskov served in succession in the army, the Kommerz-Kolleg (Ministry of Finances) and the Moscow University, where he was first Director and later Curator. He began to write early, and for half a century produced a very large number of poems in every imaginable field of the pseudo-classic school. They now appall us with their inane voluminousness, but in his day he was regarded as a great poet, a veritable Russian Homer. His best heroic epics are his Rossiad and Vladímir Regenerated. The first, containing some ten thousand verses, celebrates the conquest of Kazán by Iván the Terrible; the second, of even more imposing length, tells of the introduction of Christianity into Russia. Though containing some fine passages, these epics reveal too much the influence of Vergil and Tasso, and make rather dreary reading.
FROM THE “ROSSIAD”
I sing Russia delivered from the barbarians, the trampled power of the Tartars, and their pride subdued, the stir of ancient mights, their labours, bloody strife, Russia’s victory, Kazán destroyed! How from the circle of those times, the beginning of peaceful years, a bright dawn has shone forth in Russia!
Oh, thou gleamest above the radiant stars, spirit of poetry! Come from thy heights, and shed over my weak and dim creation thy light, thy art and illumination! Open, O eternity, to me the gates of those habitations where all earthly care is cast away, where the souls of the righteous receive their rewards, where fame and crowns are deemed a vanity, where before the star-sprinkled altar the lowest slave stands in a row with a king, where the poor man forgets his misery, the unfortunate his grief, where every man will be equal to every other. Eternity, reveal thyself to me, that with my lyre I may attract the attention of the nations and their kings!
In the grottoes within the Caucasian icy mountains, which the bold glance of mortal has never spied, where the frost creates an eternal translucent vault and dulls the fall of the sun’s rays, where lightning is dead, where thunder is fettered, there stands, cut into ice, a mighty mansion. There are the storms, there are the cold, blizzards, tempests; there Winter reigns, devouring years. This austere sister of other days, though hoary, is swift and agile. Rival of Spring, Autumn and Summer, she is clad in the purple woven of snow; stark-frozen steam serves her as veil. Her throne has the form of a diamond mountain. Great pillars, of ice constructed, cast a silvery sheen, illumined by the sun; over the heavenly vault glides the solar splendour, and then it seems a mass of ice is on fire.
The elements have no motion: the air dares not move, nor the fire glow. There are no coloured fields; among the fields of ice gleam only frozen flowery vapours; the waters in the heavens, melted by the rays, hang, petrified, in wavy layers; there in the air you may discern the words of prophecy, but all is stark, and nature dead. Only tremor, chill and frost have life; hoar frosts move about, while zephyrs grow dumb; snowstorms whirl about in flight, frosts reign in the place of summer luxury. There the ice represents the ruins of cities, one look at which congeals your blood. Pressed by the frosts, the snows there form silvery mounds and fields of diamonds. From there Winter spreads her dominion over us, devouring the grass in the fields, the flowers in the vales, and sucking up the living sap of trees, and on cold pinions bears frosts to us, driving day away, prolonging gloomy nights, and compelling the sun to turn aside his beaming eyes: with trembling, forests and rivers await her, and chills weave her shrouds from the white billows.