Derzhavin had the good-fortune to live to a ripe old age, and in court life through several reigns; thus having the best of opportunities to utilize all striking events. Each new accession to the throne, victories, anniversaries, all contributed to inflate his national pride and inspire his muse.
But his high-flown rhetoric is open to severe criticism, and his works will be chiefly valued as illustrative of a glorious period of Russian history, and as a memorial of the illustrious Catherine. Pushkin says of him:—
“He is far inferior to Lomonosof.—He neither understood the grammar nor the spirit of our language; and in time, when his works will have been translated, we shall blush for him. We should reserve only a few of his odes and sketches, and burn all the rest.”
Krylof, the writer of fables in imitation of La Fontaine, deserves mention. He had talent enough to show some originality in a style of literature in which it is most difficult to be original; and wrote with a rude simplicity characteristically Russian, and in a vein much more vigorous than that of his model.
Karamzin inaugurated a somewhat novel deviation in the way of imitation. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Rousseau. He was poet, critic, political economist, novelist, and historian; and bore a leading part in the literature of the latter part of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth; a time including the end of Catherine’s reign and the early part of Alexander’s. It was a transition period between the classic and romantic schools of literature. Karamzin might be called the Rousseau and the Chateaubriand of his country. His voluminous history of Russia is of great merit, although he is sufficiently blinded by his patriotism to cause him to present a too flattering picture of a most cruel despotism; so that his assertions are often challenged by later writers. But the work is of great value as a most conscientious compilation of events and quotations, and the only one written up to the last twenty years; and in this respect Karamzin has no rival.
He owed his renown, before writing his history, to a few little romances of a sentimental turn. The romantic story of “La pauvre Lise” especially was received with a furor quite out of proportion to its merit. Its popularity was such that it became the inspiration of artists and of decorators of porcelain. Lakes and ponds innumerable were baptized with the name of Lise, in memory of her sad fate. Such enthusiasm seems incredible; but we can never tell what literary effort may be borne on to undying fame by the wheel of fashion!
The successive efforts of these secondary writers have contributed much to form the language of Russian literature as it now exists; Karamzin for its prose, Derzhavin for its poetry. In less than one hundred years the change was accomplished, and the way prepared for Pushkin, who was destined to supply an important place in Russian literature.
Karamzin’s part in politics was quite at variance with his position in the world of letters. Although an imitator of Rousseau, he set himself against the liberal ideas of Alexander. He was opposed to the emancipation of the serfs, and became the champion of the so-called Muscovitism, which, forty years later, became Slavophilism. He lived in Moscow, where the conservative element was strongest, acting in opposition to Speranski, the prime minister.
In 1811, Karamzin wrote a famous paper, addressed to his sovereign, called, “Old and New Russia,” which so influenced Alexander’s vacillating mind that it gave the death-blow to Speranski. In this paper he says: “We are anticipating matters in Russia, where there are hardly one hundred persons who know how to spell correctly. We must return to our national traditions, and do away with all ideas imported from the Occident. No Russian can comprehend any limitation of the autocratic power. The autocrat draws his wisdom from a fountain within himself, and from the love of his people,” etc.
This paper contained the germ of every future demand of the Muscovite party.