A Modernist Before His Time: The Formal Innovations of Gavrila Derzhavin

Abstract

After briefly discussing Derzhavin's sometimes irregular use of language and the numerous approximate rhymes that appear in his verse, this article examines the complex stanzaic structures that he devised and his striking metrical anomalies. Other eighteenth-century poets often experimented in one or more of these regards; however, Derzhavin was unique in the range and frequency of his deviations from what was generally regarded as correct form. If poets in the nineteenth century generally paid little attention to Derzhavin's poetics, he turned out to anticipate many of the techniques employed by Modernist poets and their successors, who found in him a kindred spirit.