Nikolay Yazykov
Encyclopedia
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
) was a Russian poet and Slavophile
Slavophile
Slavophilia was an intellectual movement originating from 19th century that wanted the Russian Empire to be developed upon values and institutions derived from its early history. Slavophiles were especially opposed to the influences of Western Europe in Russia. There were also similar movements in...
who in the 1820s rivalled Alexander Pushkin and Yevgeny Baratynsky as the most popular poet of his generation.
Yazykov was born in Simbirsk to an old family of Russian landlords. His first verses appeared in print in 1819. For seven years (1822-1829) Yazykov studied at the philosophy department of Dorpat University, where he made himself famous with his riotously Anacreontic verse in praise of the students' merry life. For his summer vacations he went to Trigorskoye, where he met Pushkin.
After leaving Dorpat, without a degree, Yazykov lived between Moscow and his Simbirsk estate. Later in life, he became intimate with the nationalist and Slavophile circles of Moscow, which held his poetry in high esteem. Nikolay Gogol, in particular, favoured Yazykov over all other living poets. The young idealists grouping around Nikolai Stankevich
Nikolai Stankevich
Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich was a Russian public figure, philosopher, and poet.In 1834, Nikolay Stankevich graduated from the Moscow State University, where he was influenced by Professor Mikhail Kachenovsky and followers of the so-called "skeptical school" in historiography...
, however, dismissed his work as contemptibly lacking in ideas.
Yazykov's health, undermined by the excesses of his student life, began to fail very early, and from about 1835 he was a restless wanderer from one health resort to another. The Genoese Riviera
Italian Riviera
The Italian Riviera, or Ligurian Riviera is the narrow coastal strip which lies between the Ligurian Sea and the mountain chain formed by the Maritime Alps and the Apennines...
, Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
, Gastein, and other German spa
Spa
The term spa is associated with water treatment which is also known as balneotherapy. Spa towns or spa resorts typically offer various health treatments. The belief in the curative powers of mineral waters goes back to prehistoric times. Such practices have been popular worldwide, but are...
s are the frequent background of his later verse. His spare time was devoted to collecting Russian folk poetry, in which task he was assisted by Pyotr Kireyevsky.
Apart from Pushkin, Yazykov was also close to Nikolay Gogol and was Khomyakov
Aleksey Khomyakov
Aleksey Stepanovich Khomyakov was a Russian religious poet who co-founded the Slavophile movement along with Ivan Kireyevsky, and became one of its most distinguished theoreticians....
's brother-in-law. It was the death of his sister that triggered Gogol's fatal depression. According to his wishes, the great novelist was buried next to the Yazykovs in the Danilov Monastery
Danilov Monastery
Danilov Monastery, in full Svyato-Danilov Monastery or Holy Danilov Monastery , is a monastery on the right bank of the Moskva River in Moscow, Russia...
. In 1931 the remains of Yazykov, Gogol and Khomyakov were reburied at the Novodevichy Cemetery
Novodevichy Cemetery
Novodevichy Cemetery is the most famous cemetery in Moscow, Russia. It is next to the 16th-century Novodevichy Convent, which is the city's third most popular tourist site. It should not be confused with the Novodevichy Cemetery in Saint Petersburg....
.
Yazykov's poetry is largely derivative: all music, without any fresh ideas. D.S. Mirsky compared Yazykov to Gavrila Derzhavin for "his power of seeing nature as an orgy of light and color". Pushkin once joked that the Castalian fount
Castalian Spring
The Castalian Spring, in the ravine between the Phaedriades at Delphi, is where all visitors to Delphi — the contestants in the Pythian Games, and especially suppliants who came to consult the Delphic Oracle — stopped to wash their hair; and where Roman poets came to receive poetic...
of which Yazykov drank ran not with water, but with champagne. Indeed, his early (and best known) poetry is devoted to the praise of wine and merrymaking, producing an effect of the almost physical intoxication and verbal rush.