Artist Vladimir Borovikovsky, Portrait of Gabriel Derzhavin, 1811, fragment.
Of course, mentioning the name of Derzhavin, we first of all remember that he, the “old man”, noticed the students of the lyceum and, “going down to the coffin, blessed.” Who did Gabriel Romanovich see when he arrived in 1815 for an exam at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum? The boy Sasha Pushkin, who, after reading his poem, burst into tears from the avalanche of emotions and fled to where his eyes looked (“they looked for me, but they did not find me”, he would write later). Who did the boy see, why was he so nervous? Before him was a patriarch of the Golden Age, the author of poems famous throughout Russia, who fought, ruled the provinces, buried Suvorov, compiled the first dictionary of the Russian language. Suddenly. In the eighteenth century there were successive coups, and the birth of Russian literature, and wars; now everything seems to be arranged on different shelves, without intersections, but in the fate of Gavriil Derzhavin all this intersected.
The son of an impoverished illiterate landowner from the vicinity of Kazan, himself poorly literate, turned out to be practically a “universal person” and the hero of an adventure novel. Still a soldier of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, not even twenty years old, Derzhavin takes part in a palace coup, after which Catherine II rushes to the throne. Next photo: Uprising of Emelyan Pugachev. Somewhere in the steppe, a man is sitting “from the queen” and preparing … spies. Secret agents who would infiltrate Pugachev and obtain the necessary information. This person was Gavrila Romanovich, after whom there were many materials about the rebellion used by Pushkin when creating The Captain’s Daughter.
Another episode: a smoky room, a table with a green tablecloth, a player whose cards are beaten and debts become unbearable. All he has is a distant Tatar village, where there are a little more than forty “souls” of male serfs. And so the player writes a poem (it has not been preserved), sells it, and pays off the debt.
Another scene: the poet meets Suvorov, who is already dying. The commander asks the poet what he would write on his grave.
“Here lies Suvorov,” the poet answers very simply.
“God have mercy, how nice,” Suvorov replies. These words will be engraved on the stone of the tomb.
After Suvorov’s death, Derzhavin wrote the famous poem “Bullfinch”. The bird was real, the day he left the commander, he sat in a cage in the poet’s office and whistled the march. Simple, like those under which ordinary soldiers went into battle.
What are you starting a war song?
Like a flute, dear Snigir?
With whom will we go to war against the Hyena?
Who is our leader now? Who is the rich man?
Where is Suvorov strong, brave and fast?
Severn thunders lies in a coffin.
Derzhavin writes the unthinkable: about how Suvorov rode “on a horse”, how he ate cookies, how he slept on straw. This was not accepted: about a national hero and with such simplicity! Perhaps, thanks to the unpretentiousness of the “Bullfinch” he has already remained alive, flying through the centuries. In the 1970s, this very text would become the model for the poem “On the death of Zhukov”, in which another great poet, Joseph Brodsky, says goodbye to another great commander.
It is curious that Derzhavin did not even mention his poetic work in his memoirs. But others spoke of his poems as painting with words. The modern Russian language was just born in his time, Derzhavin was present during these births and helped as best he could. It just seems that it is no longer interesting for today’s reader. For example, does everyone remember that the phrase “Motherland and smoke is sweet and pleasant to us” was written by Derzhavin, although it was captured in a slightly altered form in Griboyedov’s “Woe from Wit”? And another famous phrase: “Thunder of victory, resound!” And many lines, not so famous, but equally beautiful.
From his provincial poverty, Derzhavin rose to the rank of governor (first of Karelia, then of the Tambov province). He founded the city of Kem, founded a printing house in Tambov, and made the first maps of the region there. Founded theater, schools. He fought with con artists and embezzlers. And he paid the price for his indifference. He was removed from all state under Catherine II, who once gave him a gold snuffbox for an ode.
A little more than a year has passed since Pushkin was “seen”, and Gavriil Romanovich died. Not at all such a deep old man, in today’s view, he is only 73 years old. It happened near Novgorod, in the Zvanka estate, on the eve of a trip to St. Petersburg to see a doctor. The nearby birds were singing in the aviaries. Perhaps Bullfinch was supposed to be whistling there too.
