Pletnev, Petr

Born Aug. 10 (21), 1792, in Tver’, now Kalinin; died Dec. 29, 1865 (Jan. 10, 1866), in Paris; buried in St. Petersburg. Russian poet and critic. Academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1841).

Pletnev graduated from the Main Pedagogical Institute in St. Petersburg. From 1832 to 1849 he was a professor of Russian literature at the University of St. Petersburg, and from 1840 to 1861 the university’s rector. Between 1838 and 1846 he was the publisher of Sovremennik (The Contemporary).

Pletnev’s poetry developed mainly along elegiac lines, in the tradition of V. A. Zhukovskii and K. N. Batiushkov. His many literary critiques were noted for their depth and perception, as can be seen in the articles “A Note About the Works of Zhukovskii and Batiushkov” (1822), “Shakespeare” (1837), and “Chi-chikov, or Dead Souls by Gogol” (1842). Pletnev was a friend of Zhukovskii and N. V. Gogol and of A. S. Pushkin, who dedicated the novel Eugene Onegin to him.