Ippolit Fedorovich Bogdanovich

Bogdanovich, Ippolit Fedorovich 

Born Dec. 23, 1743 (Jan. 3, 1744), in Perevolochnaia, Poltava Province; died Jan. 6 (18), 1803, in Kursk. Russian poet. Born into a Ukrainian family of the dvorianstvo (nobility or gentry).

Bogdanovich graduated from Moscow University in 1761. He is the author of a collection of verse entitled The Lyre (1773), the narrative poem A Special Bliss (1765), the collection Russian Proverbs (1785), the lyric comedy Sweetheart’s Joy (1786), the drama The Slavs (1788), and others. He published the journal Nevinnoe uprazhnenie (1763), the newspaper Sankt-Petersburgskie vedomosti (1775–82), and others. Bogdanovich’s best work—the narrative poem Sweetheart (1778; complete edition, 1783)—is a free, versified adaptation of J. de La Fontaine’s novel The Love of Psyche and Cupid (1669); this narrative poem, stylized like a Russian folktale and containing humorous and ironic motifs, was contrasted with the heroic narrative poems of classicism. Bogdanovich translated Voltaire, J. J. Rousseau, D. Diderot, and others.

WORKS

Stikhotvoreniia i poemy [Introductory article by I. Z. Serman.] Leningrad, 1957.
In the collection Pesni i romansy russkikh poetov. [Introductory article by V. E. Gusev.] Moscow-Leningrad, 1965.

REFERENCES

Blagoi, D. D. Istoriia russkoi literatury XVIII v., 3rd ed. Moscow, 1955.
Serman, I. Z. “I. F. Bogdanovich—zhurnalist i kritik.” In XVIII vek, collection 4. Moscow-Leningrad, 1959.