Ivan Krylov
Ivan Andreyevich Krylov (Russian:
Ива́н Андре́евич Крыло́в) (February 13,
1769 – November 21, 1844) is Russia's
best known fabulist. While many of his
earlier fables were loosely based on
Aesop and Jean de La Fontaine, later
fables were original work.
Ivan Krylov was born in Moscow, but
spent his early years in Orenburg and
Tver. His father, a distinguished
military officer, died in 1779, leaving
the family destitute. A few years later
Krylov and his mother moved to
St.Petersburg in the hope of securing a
government pension. There, Krylov
obtained a position in the civil
service, but gave it up after his
mother's death in 1788. His literary
career began already in 1783, when he
sold a comedy he had written to a
publisher. He used the proceeds to
obtain the works of Molière, Racine, and
Boileau. It was probably under the
influence of these writers that he
produced Philomela, which gave him
access to the dramatic circle of
Knyazhnin.
Krylov made several attempts to start
a literary magazine. All met with little
success, but, together with his plays,
these magazine upstarts helped Krylov
make a name for himself and gain
recognition in literary circles. For
about four years (1797-1801) Krylov
lived at the country estate of Prince
Sergey Galitzine, and when the prince
was appointed military governor of
Livonia, he accompanied him as a
secretary. Little is known of the years
immediately after Krylov resigned from
this position, other than the commonly
accepted myth that he wandered from town
to town in pursuit of card games. His
first collection of fables, 23 in
number, appeared in 1809. From 1812 to
1841 he was employed by the Imperial
Public Library, first as an assistant,
and then as head of the Russian Books
Department.
Honors were showered on Krylov even
during his lifetime: the Russian Academy
of Sciences admitted him as a member in
1811, and bestowed on him its gold
medal; in 1838 a great festival was held
under imperial sanction to celebrate the
jubilee of his first publication, and
the Tzar granted him a generous pension.
By the time he died in 1844, 77,000
copies of his fables had been sold in
Russia, and his unique brand of wisdom
and humor gained popularity. His fables
were often rooted in historic events,
and are easily recognizable by their
style of language and engaging story.
Though he began as a translator and
imitator of existing fables, Krylov soon
showed himself an imaginative, prolific
writer, who found abundant original
material in his native land. In Russia
his language is considered of high
quality: his words and phrases are
direct, simple and idiomatic, with color
and cadence varying with the theme; many
of them became actual idioms. "Krylov
spent almost thirty years adding to this
collection. The last edition, which he
compiled shortly before his death and
which appeared in print in December
1843, contained 197 fables."
Krylov's statue in the Summer Garden
(1854-55) is one of the most notable
monuments in St.Petersburg. It is also
the first monument to a poet erected in
Eastern Europe.[citation needed] All
four sides of the pedestal represent
scenes from Krylov's archetypal fables.
