- Vasily Kapnist
Count Vasily Vasilievich Kapnist (
23 February ,1758 —9 November ,1823 ) was a Ukrainian poet and playwright who wrote in somewhat roughRussian language .Kapnist was a scion of the Venetian Counts Capnissi, yet he spent all his life in the manor of Obukhovka near
Poltava . His lifelong friendship with PrinceNikolay Lvov andGavrila Derzhavin date from the early 1770s, when all three served in theLeub Guard . Derzhavin later married Kapnist's sister-in-law and visited the poet and his wife in Obukhovka more than once.The extension of
Russian serfdom to the Ukrainian lands dismayed Kapnist and occasioned his two most notable poems, "Ode on Slavery" (1783) and "Ode on the Elimination of Slavery in Russia" (1786), in which he chastised serfdom as the principal pest of contemporary Russian society. His later poems belong to the Horatian tradition, anticipating RussianRomanticism in their social pessimism and admiration of simple family joys.Kapnist revealed himself as a savage satirist in his most famous work, a satirical verse drama based on the poet's litigation against a neighbour and aptly entitled "Chicane" (1798). His victims are the judges and officers of law, whom he paints as an unredeemed lot of thieves and extortioners. The play is in rather harsh Alexandrines but produces a powerful effect by the force of its passionate
sarcasm .Although Kapnist dedicated his play to
Emperor Paul , it was denounced by the censorship as scurrilous and libertarian. Banned after only four performances, it was not revived in St. Petersburg until 1805. According toD.S. Mirsky , "the two greatest Russian comedies of the 19th century,Griboyedov 's "Woe from Wit " andGogol 's "Inspector General", owe not a little to the crude and primitive comedy of Kapnist". [D.S. Mirsky . "A History of Russian Literature". Northwestern University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8101-1679-0. Page 56.]References
External links
*ru icon [http://www.rulex.ru/01110562.htm Biography of Kapnist]
*ru icon [http://www.stihi-rus.ru/1/Kapnist/ Kapnist. Poems]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
