Ivan Krylov
Ivan Andreyevich Krylov was born on the 13th of February 1769 in Moscow. He spent his early years in Orenburg and Tver before moving to St. Petersburg after his father died in 1779. His family became destitute when his military officer father resigned from service in 1775 and passed away four years later. Krylov secured a position in civil service but quit it following his mother's death in 1788. His literary career began in 1783 when he sold a comedy called The coffee-grounds fortune teller for sixty rubles. That money bought him works by Molière, Racine, and Boileau which influenced his early plays. He wrote Philomela in 1786 but it remained unpublished until 1795. From 1789 onward he tried launching three different literary magazines that failed to gain circulation or last longer than one year.
Krylov published his first collection of fables containing twenty-three stories in 1809. This work received such enthusiastic reception that he abandoned drama writing entirely thereafter. By the end of his career he had completed approximately two hundred fables while constantly revising them with each new edition. Many of these animal stories functioned as political commentary on censorship and social issues within Imperial Russia. Government censors blocked publication of some pieces like The Grandee in 1835 until Krylov amused Emperor Nicholas by reading it aloud. Other works such as The Speckled Sheep did not see print until 1867 long after his death. The Council of the Mice used La Fontaine's story only for scene-setting before targeting cronyism directly. His language became direct and simple yet varied in color and cadence depending on the theme.
Portraits of Krylov began appearing almost immediately after his fame spread starting in 1812 with Roman M. Volkov's depiction of him leaning on books. An 1832 study by Grigory Chernetsov grouped his corpulent figure alongside fellow writers Alexander Pushkin and Vasily Zhukovsky inside the Summer Garden. In 1830 sculptor Samuil Galberg carved a portrait bust which may have been presented to Crown Prince Alexander as a New Year gift in 1831. The most notable statue appeared in the Summer Garden between 1854 and 1855 ten years after his death. Peter Clodt seated this massive figure on a tall pedestal surrounded by tumultuous reliefs designed by Alexander Agin showing scenes from the fables. A later monument installed in Moscow's Patriarch's Ponds district in 1976 featured twelve stylized reliefs surrounding a seated statue. Commemorative stamps issued in 1944 drew upon Eggink's portrait while a 1969 issue used Briullov's late portrait.
Musical adaptations of the fables were more limited than visual arts but still significant. Anton Rubinstein set five Krylov Fables for voice and piano in 1851 including The quartet and The eagle and the cuckoo. Alexander Gretchaninov followed with four settings for medium voice and piano in opus thirty-three featuring The musicians and The peasant and the sheep. Vladimir Rebikov wrote a stage work titled Krylov's Fables that reportedly served as Sergei Prokofiev's model for Peter and the Wolf. Cesar Cui set five fables in 1913 while Dmitri Shostakovich composed two pieces in 1922 for solo voice and piano accompaniment. Leonid Yakobson created a ballet called The dragonfly based on one of these fables for performance at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1947. That production was withdrawn at the last moment due to political infighting within Soviet cultural circles.
Krylov is sometimes referred to as 'the Russian La Fontaine' because he became the foremost fabulist whose reputation has lasted despite not being the first. Their fables were both fruits of mature years yet their approaches differed significantly. La Fontaine knew Latin so he could consult classical versions of Aesop's fables directly or transpose anecdotes from Horace into his own time. Krylov learned French as a child but lacked Latin until teaching himself Koine Greek from a New Testament around 1819. This allowed him to read Aesop in the original rather than relying solely on La Fontaine's recreations. While La Fontaine created very few fables of his own the bulk of Krylov's work after 1809 was either independent invention or only indebted to other sources for the germ of an idea. In general Krylov tended to add more detail compared with La Fontaine's leaner versions while remaining satirical where the French author remained urbane.
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Common questions
When was Ivan Krylov born and where did he spend his early years?
Ivan Andreyevich Krylov was born on the 13th of February 1769 in Moscow. He spent his early years in Orenburg and Tver before moving to St. Petersburg after his father died in 1779.
What year did Ivan Krylov publish his first collection of fables and how many stories did it contain?
Krylov published his first collection of fables containing twenty-three stories in 1809. This work received such enthusiastic reception that he abandoned drama writing entirely thereafter.
Which composer created a ballet called The dragonfly based on Ivan Krylov's fables for the Bolshoi Theatre?
Leonid Yakobson created a ballet called The dragonfly based on one of these fables for performance at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1947. That production was withdrawn at the last moment due to political infighting within Soviet cultural circles.
How did Ivan Krylov learn to read Aesop compared to La Fontaine?
Krylov learned French as a child but lacked Latin until teaching himself Koine Greek from a New Testament around 1819. This allowed him to read Aesop in the original rather than relying solely on La Fontaine's recreations.
When was the most notable statue of Ivan Krylov installed in the Summer Garden?
The most notable statue appeared in the Summer Garden between 1854 and 1855 ten years after his death. Peter Clodt seated this massive figure on a tall pedestal surrounded by tumultuous reliefs designed by Alexander Agin showing scenes from the fables.