Denis Fonvizin

Speaking of Fonvizin’s work, Belinsky wrote: “In general, for me Knyazhnin and Fonvizin, especially the latter, are the most interesting writers of the first periods of our literature: they speak to me not of celestial heights on the occasion of paper lantern illuminations, but of living reality, historically existent, of the rights of society.” Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin came from an old noble family. He studied at the same noble gymnasium at Moscow University in which his contemporary Novikov also studied, and then at the university’s Faculty of Philosophy. In 1760, among the ten best gymnasium students, Fonvizin and his brother Pavel came to St. Petersburg. Here he met Lomonosov, the founder of the Russian theater, F. G. Volkov, and saw a theatrical performance for the first time; the first play he saw was the Danish writer Holberg’s Henry and Pernilla. In 1761, at the request of one of the Moscow booksellers, Fonvizin translated from German the fables of the founder of Danish literature, Ludwig Holberg. A bearer of the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment, a rationalist and moralist, Holberg, who sought to subordinate all his artistic work to educational aims—the creation of a “new breed of people”—remained close to Fonvizin thereafter as well. In all, Fonvizin translated 226 fables. Then, in 1762, he translated the political-didactic novel by the French writer Abbé Terrasson, Heroic Virtue, or The Life of Seth, King of Egypt, written in the manner of Fenelon’s famous Telemachus, Voltaire’s tragedy Alzire, or the Americans, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and in 1769 the sentimental tale by Gresset Sydney and Silly, or Beneficence and Gratitude, which Fonvizin entitled Corion. His favorite writer was Rousseau. At the same time as his translations, Fonvizin began to publish original works, marked by sharply satirical tones. Fonvizin was under the strongest influence of French Enlightenment thought, from Voltaire to Helvétius. He became a regular participant in the circle of Russian freethinkers who gathered in Prince Kozlovsky’s house. Fonvizin’s literary pursuits also helped him in his official career. His