Vladimir Grigorevich Benediktov

Born Nov. 5 (17), 1807, in St. Petersburg; died there, Apr. 14 (26), 1873. Russian writer.

The son of a bureaucratic official, Benediktov graduated from the Olonets Gymnasium. He served in the army from 1827 to 1832, then became an official in the Ministry of Finance. His first collection, entitled Poems (1835), was met with tremendous but short-lived success. His poetry was often noted for its artificiality and imitative use of forms common to romantic poetry. V. G. Belinskii denounced benediktovshchina. The most important translations of Benediktov (unpublished) are kept in the M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library in Leningrad. After 1855, Benediktov published verses in the spirit of “liberal exposure.”