Aleksei Andreevich Rzhevsky
Aleksei Andreevich Rzhevsky was an 18th-century Russian poet born in 1737, hailing from a notable family in the Smolensk region. He received a strong education and began writing poetry in his youth, receiving early encouragement from established poet Aleksandr Sumarokov, who recognized his talent. Rzhevsky's literary career was marked by a significant scandal involving a sonnet dedicated to an unpopular actress, which led to the removal of his poems from a St. Petersburg journal. Despite this setback, he continued to publish and expanded his writing style beyond classicism into more intricate forms, including riddles and wordplay. His contributions were vital to the development of Moscow's literary scene during a time when it was trying to catch up to St. Petersburg's. Rzhevsky also explored the theatrical world with two verse tragedies and engaged in Masonic activities. Although he stepped back from writing after his second marriage, his brief but impactful literary career left a lasting legacy. Rzhevsky passed away in 1804, and his work was largely rediscovered in the 1920s, highlighting his once-overlooked contributions to Russian literature.
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Aleksei Andreevich Rzhevsky
Poet
- Born: 1737
- Died: 1804
Biography
Poet Aleksei Andreevich Rzhevsky’s brief literary career was nearly forgotten, to the point that he was unknown except for a poem that writer Gavriil Derzhavin addressed to him. Only the work of scholar Grigorii A. Gukovsky in the early 1920’s rescued Rzhevsky from near total obscurity. Rzhevsky was born in 1737 and came from an ancient and distinguished family in the Smolensk region of Russia. He apparently was able to obtain an excellent education from tutors at home. He began writing poetry as a youth, and some of his juvenilia was found by the poet Aleksandr Sumarokov, who praised it as showing considerable promise. This praise left Rzhevsky permanently in debt to Sumarokov, whom he came to regard as a mentor and a teacher.
As a result of Sumarokov’s tutelage, Rzhevsky was able to publish his first elegy while he was twenty-two and a junior officer in the army. His work was published alongside three other elegies, part of Sumarokov’s theory that literature grew best through competition. Shortly thereafter, Rzhevsky became enmeshed in a scandal that nearly caused him to reconsider writing for publication. He had written eleven poems that were to be published together in a St. Petersburg journal. The last was a sonnet dedicated to an actress of the Italian Free Theater and created a stir among the ladies of the city, to the point that the entire set of poems was physically cut from every copy of the journal. Apparently the actress to whom he had dedicated the sonnet was hated by many of St. Petersburg’s society women, who considered it a major offense to suggest that she possessed any sort of superior beauty. In spite of this scandal, Rzhevsky was later able to publish the entire set of poems elsewhere, including the one that had caused all of the trouble.
He continued to write poetry, moving away from the classicist forms favored by Sumarokov into more baroque techniques such as poems written in peculiar shapes, riddles, plays on words, and other elaborate word games. He also was instrumental in developing Moscow’s literary scene, which was trying to catch up with that of St. Petersburg. In addition, he wrote a few odes, a form which at the time was considered the poet’s mainstay, although he continued to prefer lyric verse throughout his career. Rzhevsky began to explore the possibilities of the stage, writing two verse tragedies. In addition to his literary efforts, he was involved in Masonic lodges. After his second marriage, he left the literary scene altogether, although in the brief period in which he wrote, he left a lasting legacy. He died in 1804.