Dmitriev, Ivan

Born Sept. 10(21), 1760, in the village of Gogorodskoe in Kazan’ Province, later Simbirsk Province; died Oct. 3 (15), 1837, in Moscow. Russian poet. Son of a landlord.

Between 1796 and 1814, Dmitriev occupied the posts of chief procurator of the Senate and minister of justice, among others. He was first published in 1777. Dmitriev’s poetry is representative of the sentimentalism of the Russian nobility. As a satirist, he treated secular and moralistic themes in his light satirical fairy tales The Modish Wife and The Whimsical Woman (1792; 1794). The satire Another’s Opinion, which ridiculed the rhetorical ode, became a standby of the Karamzin school. His many fables are poetic and elegant. Dmitriev’s songs, such as “A Little Dove Is Wailing,” have been set to music. The dramatic epic poem Ermak (1794) was the first attempt at a romantic interpretation of a national or historical subject in Russian poetry. Dmitriev is also the author of the memoirs A Glance at My Life, published in 1866.