Katenin, Pavel

Katenin, Pavel Aleksandrovich 

Born Dec. 11 (22), 1792, in the village of Shaevo, Kostroma Province; died there May 23 (June 4), 1853. Russian writer and theatrical figure.

Katenin served in the Patriotic War of 1812. One of the leaders of the Military Society, a secret Decembrist organization, he was dismissed from service in 1820 for political reasons. He spent many years living in the countryside. He began publishing before the Patriotic War of 1812 and was a leading figure of one of the branches of Decembrist romanticism. He was the author of the ballad Ol’ga (1816), a work vastly different in artistic principles from V. A. Zhukovskii’s poetry and one that gave rise to polemics. The ballad’s focus on Russian everyday life and the extensive use of forms from popular speech brought him close to A. S. Shishkov, yet at the same time the ballad reflected the Decembrist idea of the folk nature of literature. Katenin was also a playwright, translator, and drama teacher (V. A. Karatygin was one of his students).

WORKS

Izbr. proiz. [Introductory article by G. V. Ermakova-Bitner.] Moscow-Leningrad, 1965.

REFERENCE

Istoriia russkoi literatury XIX v. Bibliograficheskii ukazatel’. Moscow-Leningrad, 1962.

IU. M. LOTMAN