Trediakovsky V.K. (1703-1768), the Poet

Рубрикатор / Literature. Book Publishing/Personalia
TREDIAKOVSKY Vasily Kirillovich (1703-1768, St. Petersburg) poet, philologist. He graduated from the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1745). From 1723, he studied at the Slavonic-Greek-Latin Academy in Moscow; from 1725, he was in Holland and in France. He lived in St. Petersburg from 1730; in 1732-59, he worked at the Academy of Sciences. His reputation as a pedant and untalented poet does not reflect the all-important role that Trediakovsky played in the history of the Russian literature and philology. The main works of Trediakovsky are: the translation of the novel by P. Talman Travel to the Island of Love (1730) marked by a bright subject and innovation of language, the New and Short Way for Making Russian Verses (1735) which became the beginning of the tonal reform of the Russian verse, they are connected with the realization of the special model of the national poetic speech disputed in the 1740-50s in harsh polemics with M. V. Lomonosov and A. P. Sumarokov. In the 1760s Trediakovsky found himself in literary isolation in spite of the activity in the field of translation (Tilemakhida by F Fenelon, 1766), and died in poverty. Trediakovsky was almost the first Russian poet in whose poems St. Petersburg became an independent theme. The poetic formula "What if a hundred of years passed," later taken up by Alexander Pushkin in the Bronze Horseman, appeared for the first time in the verses by Trediakovsky. The Praise for Ingrian Land and the Regal City St. Petersburg (1752) similarly described the Russian capital. Trediakovsky lived on Kadetskaya Line (today Syezdovskaya Line), at the section of the house 11; on Tenth Line of Vasilievsky Island, at the section of the house 3; Twelfth Line of Vasilievsky Island, section of the houses 17 and 19. He was buried on Smolenskoe cemetery (his tomb stone has not been preserved).

References: Пекарский П. П. Материалы для биографии В. К. Тредиаковского // Зап. Имп. АН. 1866. Т. 9, кн. 2. С. 175-191; Пумпянский Л. В. Тредиаковский // История русской литературы: В 10 т. М.; Л., 1941. Т. 3, ч. 1. С. 215-263; Гринберг М. С., Успенский Б. А. Литературная война Тредиаковского и Сумарокова в 1740-х - начале 1750-х годов. М., 2001.

V. A. Kuznetsov, D. N. Cherdakov. Fenelon Francois
Lomonosov Mikhail Vasilievich
Pushkin Alexander Sergeevich
Sumarokov Alexander Petrovich
Trediakovsky Vasily Kirillovich
10th Line of Vasilievsky Island/Saint Petersburg, city, house 3
12th Line of Vasilievsky Island/Saint Petersburg, city, house 17
12th Line of Vasilievsky Island/Saint Petersburg, city, house 19
Siezdovskaya Line of Vasilievsky Island/Saint Petersburg, city, house 11
Пекарский П. П. Материалы для биографии В. К. Тредиаковского // Зап. Имп. АН, 1866
Гринберг М. С., Успенский Б. А. Литературная война Тредиаковского и Сумарокова в 1740-х - начале 1750-х годов. М., 2001
Пумпянский Л. В. Тредиаковский // История русской литературы: В 10 т., 1941 Russian Academy of Sciences