Vil'gel'm Karlovich Kiukhel'beker
Vil'gel'm Karlovich Kiukhel'beker was a Russian poet and writer born on June 10, 1797, in St. Petersburg. He came from a noble German family and was educated at the Imperial Lyceum, where he developed his literary skills and befriended prominent poets like Alexander Pushkin. His political activism during the Decembrist uprising of 1825 led to his imprisonment, significantly limiting the recognition of his literary contributions. While in solitary confinement from 1826 to 1835, he produced notable works, including an epic titled "David" and the historical drama "Prokofi Liapunov," which reflects on themes of anarchy and patriotism.
Kiukhel'beker’s writing style was characterized by a blend of conservative aesthetics influenced by classical authors and a preference for Slavic and biblical language. After his release and subsequent exile to Siberia, he attempted farming while continuing to write, though he faced challenges in publishing his work. Some of his writings gained posthumous recognition in the twentieth century, largely due to efforts by scholars who valued his contributions to Russian literature. His life and works illustrate the complexities of a literary figure shaped by political turmoil and personal struggles.
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Vil'gel'm Karlovich Kiukhel'beker
Poet
- Born: June 10, 1797
- Birthplace: St. Petersburg, Russia
- Died: August 11, 1846
- Place of death: Russia
Biography
If Vil’gel’m Karlovich Kiukhel’beker had not been imprisoned and exiled for his involvement in the Decembrist uprising of 1825, his name and impressive works might be better known today. Kiukhel’beker was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on June 10, 1797, to Karl Heinrich von Küchelbecker, a German nobleman who owned land in Estonia, and Iustina Iakovlevna, née von Lohmen. In 1811, following three years of boarding school in Verro, Kiukhel’beker entered the newly instituted Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoe Selo, where he began to write poetry—primarily lyrics on friendship—and made the acquaintance of poets Baron Anton Antonovich Del’vig and Alexander Pushkin. Kiukhel’beker’s political beliefs were no doubt shaped by the liberal-minded teachers and officers he came to know at Tsarskoe Selo.
After graduation, Kiukhel’beker lectured on Russian literature at the St. Petersburg Gentry Pension and became an active member of the literary community. He wrote for the journals of two literary associations, Vol’noe obshchestvo liubitelei slovesnosti, nauk i khudozhestv (Free Society of Lovers of Letters, Sciences and the Arts), and Vol’noe obshchestvo liubitelei rossiiskoi slovesnosti (Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature). In the midst of an official crackdown on liberal activities, Kiukhel’beker traveled throughout Europe for a year, until he was sent back to Russia by French authorities for a politically radical lecture in Paris. Prior to his arrest and imprisonment in 1826, he and Prince Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky published four issues of Mnemozina, an almanac in which Kiukhel’beker’s own critical writing appeared.
Although Kiukhel’beker’s politics were liberal, his aesthetics tended towards the conservative; such influences as Dante, John Milton, and Pindar elucidate his serious, but unaffected, rhetorical style. Kiukhel’beker also favored words with Slavic and biblical origins. From 1826 to 1835, while living in solitary confinement at Peter-Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, Kiukhel’beker read ardently, memorized poems (including Homer’s Iliad), translated William Shakespeare’s tragedies into Russian, and wrote his most important works. He shifted his focus from lyric to epic and dramatic forms, composing David, an unpublished ten-canto epic poem, of which only fragments remain. In his patriotic historical drama Prokofi Liapunov, written in 1834, Kiukhel’beker explores the limitations of anarchy through the character of Prokofii Petrovich Liapunov, a liberation movement instigator, murdered by his subordinates during Russia’s Time of Troubles (1598-1613). At the same time Kiukhel’beker was working on his epistolary novel, Poslednii Kolonna, written from 1832 to 1845.
Following his 1835 liberation from prison and deportation to Siberia, Kiukhel’beker wed an illiterate woman and attempted to make his living as a farmer. He continued to write but was not successful in getting his work published. Some of his works were published in the twentieth century, during the Soviet regime, at the prompting of the scholar Iurii Nikolaevich Tynianov.