Ballads. Poems

Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky (1783-1852), Russian poet, prose writer, critic, was born on January 29, 1783 in the village of Mishensky Beloyovsky district of the Tula province. The illegitimate son of the landowner Athanasius Bunin. The surname Zhukovsky got from the poor Belarusian nobleman Andrei Zhukovsky, who adopted the boy.
Vasily received primary education at a private school, then graduated from the Tula People’s School.
In 1797, when he was 14 years old, he entered the Moscow University noble boarding house, where he studied for four years.
He began literary activity with the work of "thoughts under the tomb" (1797), dedicated to the death of V. Yushkova. Carried away by sentimentalism, Zhukovsky published in 1802 in the Vestnik Europe, where he worked as an editor, a poem "Rural cemetery". Under the influence of N. Karamzin, he wrote the historical story "Vadim Novgorod."
Vasily Zhukovsky is considered one of the creators of Russian romanticism - in 1808, the Ballad of Lyudmila appeared in the press, then - "Svetlana" (1808-1812).
In1819, Zhukovsky became one of the most active members of the Arzamas literary society, where he meets the poet K. Batyushkov and other famous poets and writers.
Zhukovsky translated the Odyssey Homer, as well as works, F. Schiller, J. Byron, became the author of the first official anthem of Russia.
The poet died in 1852 in Germany, where he lived for 12 years. He was buried in Russia, in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg.
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