Yazykov N.M. (1803-1846/47), poet

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YAZYKOV Nikolay Mikhailovich (1803-1846) was a poet. He came to St. Petersburg in 1814. In 1814-19, he studied at the Mining Cadet Corps (he graduated from the classes of the gymnasia), in 1820, he studied at the Institute of the Corps for Engineers of Railways but did not graduate. After spending some time at home he returned to St. Petersburg with the purpose of entering the university but left for Derpt in 1822 to receive a more liberal education and later came to St. Petersburg only occasionally. In 1823-27, he was a student of the Derpt University which he left without finals. The initial literary activity of Yazykov was connected with St. Petersburg, it was here that he made his debut in 1819 in the journal Sorevnovatel Prosvescheniya i Blagotvoreniya; later he contributed to the anthologies Polyarnaya Zvezda, Severnye Tsvety, and to Pushkin's journal Sovremennik etc. He was a member of the Free Society for Lovers of the Russian Philology in 1824. The first collected poems by Yazykov were published in St. Petersburg in 1833. Yazykov acquired wide literary fame in the 1820s by writing students' songs, epistles, romantic and national-historical lyrics. Poems connected with the theme of creativity, anti-West polemic epistles of the 1840s etc. are notable among late compositions written by him. The theme of Petersburg in poems by Yazykov is relatively explicating only in the cycle My Apocalypse (1825) where St. Petersburg is treated as a famous but anti-poetic city. He lived on 68 Nevsky Prospect and on 24 Bolshoy Avenue of Vasilievsky Island.

References: Свербеев Д. Н. Записки: В 2 т. М., 1899; Письма Н. М. Языкова к родным за дерптский период его жизни (1822-1829). СПб., 1913. (Языковский архив; Вып. 1); Литературный Петербург пушкинской эпохи: Адрес. указ. / Сост. В. Ф. Шубин // Дома у Пушкина: [Сб. ст.]. СПб., 1994. С. 100-111. (Арс; №1).

A. A. Karpov. Yazykov Nikolay Mikhailovich
Bolshoy Ave of Vasilievsky Island/Saint Petersburg, city, house 24
Nevsky prospect/Saint Petersburg, city, house 68
Свербеев Д. Н. Записки: В 2 т. М., 1899
Письма Н. М. Языкова к родным за дерптский период его жизни (1822-1829). СПб., 1913
Литературный Петербург пушкинской эпохи: Адрес. указ. / Сост. В. Ф. Шубин // Дома у Пушкина: [Сб. ст.]. СПб., 1994 Polyarnaya Zvezda (The Polar Star), almanac
Severnye Tsvety (Northern Flowers), almanac
Sovremennik (Contemporary), journal
Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, Literary and Social Organization