Konstantin Derzhavin

Born Feb. 5 (18), 1903, in Batumi; died Nov. 2, 1956, in Leningrad. Soviet literary and theater scholar and translator. Son of the famous historian N. S. Derzhavin.

In 1924, Derzhavin graduated from Leningrad University. He was the author of works on Spanish literature, including Cervantes: His Life and Work (1958), and he also wrote works on French literature and theater, such as The Theater of the French Revolution (1932; 2nd ed., 1937) and Voltaire (1946). After 1945 he turned to the study of Slavic culture with the monograph The Bulgarian Theater (1950), a book on I. Vazov (1951), and a book on Kh. Botev (published in 1962). Derzhavin wrote a number of works on the history of Russian and Soviet theater, including the books The Epochs of the Alexandrine Stage (1932) and Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovskii, 1823-1886 (1950), monographs on E. P. Korchagina-Aleksandrovskaia and V. A. Michurina-Samoilova, and articles on Iu. M. lur’ev and B. A. Gorin-Goriainov. He translated into Russian the Spanish novella La Vida de Lasarillo de Tormes (1931; 2nd ed., 1955) and F. Quevedo y Villegas’ novel Historia y Vida del Buscón (1950). From 1946, Derzhavin was a corresponding member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.