Vasilii Kirillovich Trediakovsky
Vasilii Kirillovich Trediakovsky was a significant figure in 18th-century Russian literature and a pioneer in the adaptation of Western literary forms to the Russian language. Born in 1703 in Astrakhan, he pursued an education in rhetoric at Moscow's Slavonic-Latin Academy before studying in Europe, including a notable period at the Sorbonne. Trediakovsky's work included poetry, translations of French literature, and theoretical writings on syllabotonic verse, a form that combines strict syllable count with stress patterns. Despite his efforts to modernize Russian poetry, his own poetic output has often been described as derivative and lacking grace. Throughout his career, he held a professorship at the Slavonic-Latin Academy and contributed substantially to literary theory, although he eventually fell into obscurity. His later years were marked by a decline in recognition, culminating in his death in 1769, largely forgotten and in poverty. Trediakovsky's legacy lies in his attempts to bridge Russian literature with Western influences during a transformative period in Russian cultural history.
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Vasilii Kirillovich Trediakovsky
Poet
- Born: February 22, 1703
- Birthplace: Astrakhan, Russia
- Died: August 6, 1769
- Place of death: St. Petersburg, Russia
Biography
Vasilii Kirillovich Trediakovsky, the son of a village priest, was born in 1703 in Astrakhan, Russia, where the Volga River enters the Caspian Sea. At the age of twenty, he left home to attend Moscow’s Slavonic-Latin Academy, where he immediately chose rhetoric as his primary specialty. While there he learned how to write syllabic verse. In 1726, he traveled to the Netherlands and subsequently to Paris, where the Russian ambassador to the French court made it possible for him to attend the Sorbonne. In 1730, he received his diploma and returned to Russia as an erudite humanist, heavily Westernized.
Although his poetry was largely derivative and unmemorable, he was able to write correctly versified lines in Latin, French, and Russian. He also did a number of translations of French poets, but they were stiff and graceless attempts to bend the Russian language into the mode of Western belles lettres. By 1735, he was experimenting with the syllabotonic verse forms used in English and German, which combine a constant number of syllables with a system of rules for determining the stressed and unstressed syllables of a line. He wrote a treatise on the use of syllabotonic verse in Russian, but it was so poorly organized and cautiously written that the message became lost in the verbiage.
In 1745, Trediakovsky became professor of eloquence at the Slavonic-Latin Academy, and in this position he produced a large volume of analytical work. However, by 1750 he had been surpassed by poet Mikhail Lomonosov, and in 1759 he was dismissed from the academy. He died forgotten and in poverty in 1769.