Ozerov, Vladislav Aleksandrovich

Ozerov, Vladislav Aleksandrovich 

Born Sept. 30 (Oct. 11), 1769, in the village of Borki, now in Zubtsov Raion, Kalinin Oblast; died there Sept. 5 (17), 1816. Russian playwright.

The son of a nobleman, Ozerov graduated from the Military School for the Nobility in 1787. From 1804 to 1808 he worked in the Forestry Department. Ozerov’s first play was the tragedy Iaropolk and Oleg (1798). His verse tragedies Oedipus in Athens (1804), Fingal (1805), Dimitrii Donskoi (staged 1807), and Polyxena (1809) adhered to classical dramatic form. However, the traditional conflict between duty and passion is given a sentimental treatment. The monologues of his protagonists, whose right to love and happiness is suppressed by cruel traditions and by the despotism of the older generation, are permeated with elegiac effusions.

Ozerov’s plays are also noted for their elements of early Russian romanticism. In Dimitrii Donskoi he glorified the struggle for the fatherland’s freedom. His tragedies, whose success was great though short-lived, fostered the development of a national Russian school of acting, as exemplified in the work of such performers as E. S. Semenova, A. S. Iakovlev, and V. A. Karatygin.

WORKS

Soch., 5th ed., vols. 1–3. [Introductory article by P. S. Viazemskii.] St. Petersburg, 1828.
Tragedii, Stikhotvoreniia, 2nd ed. [Introductory article by I. N. Med-
vedeva.] Leningrad, 1960.

REFERENCES

Belinskii, V. G. Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 5. Moscow, 1954. Pages 542–43. Vol. 7: Moscow, 1955. Page 140.
Potapov, P. O. Iz istorii russkogo teatra: Zhizn’ i deiatel’nost’ V. A. Ozerova. Odessa, 1915. Bochkarev, V. A. “Russkaia istoricheskaia dramaturgiia nachala XIX v.” Uch. zap. Kuibyshevskogo ped. in-ta, 1959, issue 25, pp. 129–250.

V. A. BOCHKAREV