Antiokh Kantemir
born Sept. 21 [Sept. 10, Old Style],
1708, Constantinople [now Istanbul],
Tur.
died April 11 [March 31], 1744, Paris,
Fr.
distinguished Russian statesman who
was his country’s first secular poet and
one of its leading writers of the
classical school.
The son of Dmitry Kantemir, he was
tutored at home and attended (1724–25)
the St. Petersburg Academy. Between 1729
and 1731 he wrote several poems, the
most important probably being two
satires, “To His Own Mind: On Those Who
Blame Education” and “On the Envy and
Pride of Evil-Minded Courtiers.” These
poems denounced the opposition to the
reforms of the emperor Peter the Great
and enjoyed great success when
circulated in manuscript (they were not
printed until 1762). As ambassador to
England (1732–36), he took to London the
manuscript of his father’s history of
the Ottoman Empire, furnishing a
biography of his father that appeared
with the English translation of the
history.
From 1736 until his death, Kantemir
was minister plenipotentiary in Paris,
where he formed friendships with
Voltaire and Montesquieu and continued
to write satires and fables. His Russian
translations of several classical and
contemporary authors include his 1740
translation of the French man of letters
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle’s
Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes
(1686; “Interviews on the Pluralitism of
the World”), which was suppressed as
heretical. He also wrote a philosophical
work, O prirode i cheloveke (1742;
“Letters on Nature and Man”), and a
tract on the old syllabic system of
Russian verse composition (1744).
