The Beginnings of Literary Biography: Bolkhovitinov

We had a talk Tuesday evening on women writers and translators, and the speaker mentioned a problem with biography in his research — some of these women wrote under pseudonyms, or anonymously, and even the ones whose names we know don’t necessarily have biographies. Our speaker’s project is to “recover” some of the names, but without knowing anything about the women themselves, it is difficult to make judgments about their work, their motivations, their influences, etc.

In other words, to become known, someone must already know that they want to know you. In order to ascend to the rank of Writer, someone must write your Biography.

Something the speaker said reminded me of Evgeny Bolkhovitinov and his project: a dictionary of Russian writers.

Evgenii when he became
Metropolitan of Kiev and
Galicia

Son of a Voronezh priest, Evgeny had studied in Moscow at the Slavic Greek Latin Academy and at Moscow University. Interestingly for my purposes — and perhaps for Tuesday’s speaker — he also worked as a translator, for Nikolai Novikov’s printing house (more on Novikov in a later post). After his wife died in 1800, Evgeny became a monk and moved to Novgorod, which is how he became interesting to me: a man who had lived a full-fledged secular life, in the first part of the 19th century he was learning how to live in the religious world, and during that time he became very friendly with the poet Gavriil Derzhavin who lived nearby.

Bolkhovitinov was a scholar as well as a monk, and he eventually compiled the first secular dictionary of Russian writers. Called A dictionary of secular writers both fellow-countrymen and foreigners, who wrote in Russia, the book was printed in two volumes by the Moscow University typography in 1845, though it seems it may have had earlier editions as well. 

When he died in 1816, Derzhavin was buried in the Khutyn’ Monastery where he used to visit Bolkhovitinov. Their relationship — which yielded the beautiful poem “To Evgenii. Life at Zvanka” — was born of these biographical researches. I quote the first three stanzas below.

Blest is that man who least depends on other men,
Whose life is free from debt and from capricious striving,
Who goeth not to court for praise, or gold to lend,
And shuns all vanities conniving!

Why venture to Petropolis, if uncompelled,
Change space for closeness, liberty for locks and latches,
Live weighed with luxury and wealth, their siren spell,
Endure the gentry’s quizzing glances?

Can such a life compare with golden freedom here,
With Zvanka’s solitude, with Zvanka’s rest and quiet?
Abundance, health, sweet concord with my wife–and peace
To round my days–these I require.

Khutyn' Monastery near Novgorod