Derzhavin: A Biography

Note on the Translation

Throughout this translation I have striven to render Khodasevich’s prose in a readable yet faithful English version of the Russian.This effort has occasionally involved smoothing out syntax and shortening sentences. Russian writers generally —and Khodasevich in particular—are fond of long, complex sentences, sometimes strung together with semicolons, ellipses to indicate a trailing off of thought, and lots of dashes. In the interest of readability I’ve eliminated most of the semicolons and ellipses and almost all of the dashes. In his own writing Khodasevich mimicked the descriptive style of Pushkin, while maintaining a tone reminiscent of the eighteenth century through his choice of vocabulary and syntax, and, of course, his use of verbatim quotations from Derzhavin and others.Any passages in French,German,and Latin have been retained as they appear in the original, with English translations in the notes. Although Khodasevich did not provide sources for quotations,he did mark some of them (especially the ones from Derzhavin), and I have left those quotation marks in the text. I have retained his habit of italicizing a few words extracted from a document—usually Derzhavin’s autobiography or his own commentaries to his poetry—but I have rendered these with the addition of quotation marks since Russian and other foreign words treated as words are marked with italics in the text. Concerning transliteration,I’ve mostly uused a modified version of the Library of Congress system, substituting y for i or ii (as inVyazemsky) and dropping the soft and hard signs. I’ve used both masculine and feminine forms of Russian surnames. Only Peter, Catherine the Great, Paul, and Alexander have been given the names and spellings by which they are best known in English.Among other things, this helps clarify the women in Derzhavin’s life: Catherine was his Note on theTranslation xiii empress, while EkaterinaYakovlevna was his wife. Potemkin retains his usual English spelling, while Pugachov and pugachovshchina (the phenomenon of the Pugachov rebellion) are spelled this way to aid in pronunciation. Polish and other non-Russian personal names are mostly spelled according to accepted usage in their respective languages or based on traditional English equivalents. xiv Note on theTranslation ...