Ippolit Bogdanovich
Ippolit Fyodorovich Bogdanovich
(December 23, 1743, Perevolochna –
January 18, 1803, Kursk) was a Russian
classicist author of light poetry, best
known for his long poem Dushenka (1778).
Biography
Coming from a noble Ukrainian family,
Bogdanovich studied in the Moscow
University until 1761. His literary
career started two years later with
editing a literary journal. In 1766, he
joined the Russian embassy in Dresden as
a secretary. Three years later, he was
back in Saint Petersburg, where he
edited the only regular official
newspaper, the Vedomosti, between 1775
and 1782. In 1788, Bogdanovich was
appointed Director of State Archives, a
post which he treated as a sinecure,
translating Voltaire, Diderot, and
Rousseau at loose hours.
It was in 1778 that Bogdanovich
brought out his only work of lasting
fame, Dushenka. This long poem,
resembling a mock epic, was a reworking
of La Fontaine's Psyche, a subject
originating from Apuleius but
ingeniously stylized by Bogdanovich as a
Russian folk tale. The definitive
edition followed in 1783 and instantly
became popular for its mildly scurrilous
passages. La Fontaine's conventional
heroine was presented by Bogdanovich as
"a living, modern girl from a gentry
family of the middling sort". Following
the publication, Bogdanovich was
recognized as the foremost Russian
practitioner of light poetry and gained
admission into the literary circle of
Princess Dashkova, while Catherine II of
Russia engaged him to write several
comedies for her Hermitage Theatre.
Assessment
One of Tolstoy's Neoclassical
illustrations to Dushenka (1820-33).By
1841, Bogdanovich's chef d'oeuvre went
though 15 editions. Today, it is
remembered primarily for Fyodor
Tolstoy's Neoclassical illustrations and
citations in Pushkin's works such as
Eugene Onegin. Indeed, Dushenka was a
major influence on young Pushkin, who
avidly read the poem during his Lyceum
years but later discarded Bogdanovich's
verse as immature.
Nabokov summed up contemporary
opinion about Dushenka in the following
dictum: "The airiness of its tetrametric
passages and its glancing
mother-of-pearl wit are foregleams of
young Pushkin's art; it is a significant
stage in the development of Russian
poetry; its naive colloquial melodies
also influenced Pushkin's direct
predecessors, Karamzin, Batyushkov, and
Zhukovski.
