Derzhavin: A Biography

Author’s Preface

    Yakov Grot published the results of his colossal research fifty years ago,virtually no new evidence about the life of Derzhavin has appeared. The author of the work before you has not set himself the unrealizable task of revealing new, previously unpublished facts. My goal has been only to tell about Derzhavin in a new way and to try to bring the image of the great Russian poet—an image that has been in part forgotten and in part obscured by widespread untruths—closer to the consciousness of the contemporary reader. A biographer is not a novelist. He may explain and clarify, but by no means may he invent. In portraying Derzhavin’s life and art (inasmuch as it is connected with his life), I remain entirely faithful—as far as events and situations go—to the information that I have found in Grot and in many other sources. However, I have not used footnotes since I would have had to footnote virtually every line. As far as verbatim quotes go, I quote only from Derzhavin’s own memoirs, his correspondence, and the testimony of his contemporaries. Such quotes are set off by quotation marks.The dialogue that I have sometimes woven into the narrative always reproduces words that were actually spoken, in the exact form in which Derzhavin or his contemporaries recorded them. V K Paris,  Author’s Preface ...