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Gavriil Romanovich Derzhavin (1743–1816)
Anakreonticheskiia pesni [Anacreontic Songs]
St. Petersburg: [Shnor], 1804
NYPL, Slavic and Baltic Division
Gavriil Derzhavin not only transfigured the Russian
panegyric ode, eventually causing its demise, but also
transformed the Anacreontic ode – a light poem
about love and the enjoyment of life named for Anacreon,
a semi-legendary lyric poet of fifth-century B.C.E. Greece.
Odes had acquired a somewhat moralistic tone in Russian
mid-18th-century practice, but Derzhavin restored their
original eroticism and Epicurean character.
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