“I have erected a wonderful, eternal monument to myself, It is harder than metals and taller than the pyramids;
Neither a whirlwind nor thunder will break the fleeting, And time flight will not crush him.
So! - all of me will not die, but part of me is large, Having escaped from decay, after death he will live, And my glory will grow without fading, As long as the Slavs will be honored by the Universe."
G. R. Derzhavin "Monument"
The Derzhavin family goes back to one of the noble Tatars, Murza Bagrim, who in the middle of the fifteenth century left for the service of the Moscow prince Vasily the Dark. One of his descendants received the nickname "Power", and it was from him that the Derzhavin family was formed. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, this clan had become poorer - the father of the future poet, Roman Nikolaevich, after the division of the inheritance, was left with only ten serfs. His wife - Fekla Andreevna - was not much "richer", which doomed the family to a very modest existence. Their first-born Gavrila was born on July 14, 1743 in a tiny estate near Kazan. A year later, the Derzhavins had a second son, Andrei, and a little later, a daughter, Anna, who died in infancy. It is curious that Gavrila Romanovich was born prematurely and, according to the customs of that time, was baked into bread. The baby was smeared with dough, put on a shovel and for a short time put into a hot oven several times. Fortunately, after such a barbaric "treatment" the baby survived, which, by the way, did not always happen.
Roman Nikolaevich was a military man, and therefore his family, together with the Orenburg infantry corps, constantly changed their place of residence. They had a chance to visit Yaransk, Stavropol Volzhsky, Orenburg, and Kazan. In 1754, Gavrila's father fell ill with consumption and retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He died in November of the same year. Roman Nikolaevich did not leave any state, and the situation of the Derzhavin family turned out to be desperate. Small Kazan estates did not bring income, and the received 200 hectares of land in the Orenburg region were in need of development. In addition, the neighbors, taking advantage of the neglect of land management in the Kazan province, appropriated a lot of Derzhavin's pastures. Fekla Andreevna tried to sue them, but her visits to the authorities with young children ended in nothing. To survive, she had to give one of the merchants part of the land in perpetual lease.
Despite this, Fekla Derzhavina managed to give the boys an elementary education, which allowed the ignorant noblemen to enter the military service. At first, the children were taught by local clerks - according to the memoirs of Gavrila Romanovich, he learned to read in the fourth year of his life. In Orenburg, he attended a school opened by a former convict, a German, Joseph Rose. There the future poet mastered the German language and learned calligraphy. The opening of a gymnasium in the city of Kazan was a great success for him. Classes began there in 1759, and Fekla Andreevna immediately assigned her sons to an educational institution. However, the quality of teaching this division of the Moscow University, created three years earlier, could not boast - teachers conducted classes at random, and the director was concerned only with throwing dust in the eyes of the authorities. Nevertheless, Gavrila managed to become one of the first students, and often the director took him to help himself in various matters. In particular, the young man took part in drawing up the Cheboksary plan, as well as in collecting antiquities at the Bulgar fortress.
However, Derzhavin was not allowed to finish his studies at the gymnasium. Back in 1760, he was enrolled in the St. Petersburg Engineering Corps. He had to go there after completing his studies, but there was confusion in the capital, and in February 1762 Gavrila received a passport from the Preobrazhensky regiment, obliging the young man to appear in the unit. There was nothing to be done, and mother, having hardly earned the necessary amount, sent her eldest son to St. Petersburg. The authorities refused to correct their mistake, and the eighteen-year-old Derzhavin was enlisted as a private in the musketeer company. Since Gavrila Romanovich was very poor, he could not rent an apartment and was settled in the barracks. Very soon the literate young man acquired considerable authority among the soldiers - he composed letters for them home, willingly lent small sums. Guard duty, reviews and parades took up all his time, and when he had a free minute, the young man read books and wrote poems. Nothing serious came out then, but such opuses, often obscene in content, had some success in the regiment. It is worth noting that the beginning of Gavrila Romanovich's service coincided with a fatal moment in the country's history - in the summer of 1762, the forces of the guards regiments carried out a coup, putting Ekaterina Alekseevna at the helm of power. In all these events, the "musketeer" Derzhavin took an active part in it.
Most of the noble children, entering the service, immediately became officers. Even the children of poor noblemen, who were identified as soldiers like Derzhavin, advanced fairly quickly in the service, receiving the coveted officer rank in a year or two. Everything happened differently with the future poet. He was in good standing with the commanders, but he had neither connections nor influential patrons. In the spring of 1763, realizing the secret springs of career growth, he, overcoming himself, sent a petition to Count Alexei Orlov to grant him another military rank. As a result, the future poet became a corporal and, overjoyed, got himself a year's leave at home. After staying in Kazan, he went to the Tambov province in the city of Shatsk in order to bring out the peasants, inherited by his mother, to the Orenburg estate. During the trip, Derzhavin almost died. While hunting, he came across a herd of wild boars, one of which rushed at the young man and almost tore off his eggs. Gavrila Romanovich, fortunately, managed to shoot the boar, and the Cossacks who were nearby provided first aid. For almost the entire vacation, Derzhavin healed a wound that healed completely only after a year.
In the summer of 1764, the young man returned to the regiment and settled with the non-commissioned officers. This - by Derzhavin's own admission - had a bad effect on his morality, addicted to drinking and cards. Nevertheless, Gavrila Romanovich's former inclination for poetry only intensified. The young man with passion began to comprehend the theory of versification, taking as a basis the works of Lomonosov and Trediakovsky. This hobby played a cruel joke on him. Once Derzhavin wrote rather obscene verses about a regimental secretary who was dragging along the wife of a corporal. The work was a great success in the regiment and reached its main character, who took offense and since that time has invariably deleted the name of Gavrila Romanovich from the lists for promotion. The poet served as a corporal until the position of the regimental secretary was taken by the future privy councilor Pyotr Neklyudov. Pyotr Vasilievich, on the contrary, treated Derzhavin with sympathy. In 1766, the future poet became first a furrier, then a capternamus, and the next year (in absentia) a sergeant.
The young man himself, unfortunately, did everything possible in order to slow down his career growth. In 1767, Gavrila Romanovich again received leave and went home to Kazan. After six months, devoted to the trouble of arranging poor estates, he and his younger brother left for St. Petersburg through Moscow. In the capital, the future poet had to issue a deed of purchase for one of the villages, and then attach his brother to his regiment. Since the bureaucratic machine was functioning slowly, Derzhavin sent Andrei Romanovich to Neklyudov, and he himself stayed in Moscow and … lost all mother's money at cards. As a result, he had to mortgage not only the purchased village, but also another one. In order to get out of the difficulty, the young man decided to continue the game. To this end, he contacted a company of cheaters who acted according to a well-oiled scheme - the newcomers were first involved in the game with feigned losses, and then “stripped” to the bone. However, Derzhavin soon felt ashamed, and, having quarreled with his companions, left this occupation. He did not have time to repay the debt and because of this he visited the gambling house again and again. Fortune was changeable, and when things went really bad, the gambler would shut himself in the house and sit alone in complete darkness. During one of such self-imprisonment, the poem "Repentance" was written, which became the first glimpse that showed the true strength of the poorly educated poet.
Six months after Derzhavin's spree, a real threat arose over him that he would be demoted to the rank of soldiers. However, Neklyudov came to the rescue again, attributing the poet to the Moscow team. Nevertheless, the young man's nightmare continued and lasted for another year and a half. At one point Derzhavin visited Kazan and repented to his mother, but then he returned to Moscow and took up the old. In the end, in the spring of 1770, he, in fact, fled the city, reaching St. Petersburg not only without money, but even without the poems written during this time - they had to be burned in quarantine. A terrible news awaited Gavril Romanovich in the regiment - his brother, like his father, caught consumption and went home to die. Derzhavin himself continued his service and in January 1772 (at the age of twenty-eight) received the lowest officer rank of ensign.
Despite the achievement of a long-standing goal, the young man understood well that the continuation of service in the regiment did not promise him any prospects. Something had to be changed, and Derzhavin's lifesaver was the Pugachev uprising, which broke out on the Yaik River in the fall of 1773 and quickly swept the places he knew well - the Volga region and the Orenburg region. Soon, Gavrila Romanovich asked to be enrolled in a specially created commission to investigate the Pugachev riot. However, its staff had already been formed, and the head of the commission, General-in-Chief Alexander Bibikov, after listening to the annoying ensign, instructed Derzhavin to accompany the troops sent to liberate the city of Samara from Pugachev. On the way, the ensign had to find out about the moods of the troops and the people, and in the city itself on the Volga find the instigators of its voluntary surrender to the rebels. Derzhavin not only successfully coped with these tasks, but also managed to find out the approximate whereabouts of Yemelyan Pugachev, who disappeared after the defeat at Orenburg. According to the data received, the instigator of the rebellion, who enjoyed tremendous authority among the Old Believers, went to the schismatics on the Irgiz River to the north of Saratov. In March 1774, Gavrila Romanovich went to the village of Malykovka (today the city of Volsk), located on the Irgiz, and there, with the help of local residents, began to organize, in today's language, agents in order to catch Pugachev. All efforts were in vain - in fact, Pugachev left Orenburg for Bashkiria, and then for the Urals. General Bibikov, having caught a cold, died, and none of the authorities knew about the secret mission of Derzhavin, who, in turn, was tired of being away from real affairs. He asked the new chiefs - Prince Fyodor Shcherbatov and Pavel Potemkin - for permission to return, but they, satisfied with his reports, ordered him to stay put and hold the defense in case Pugachev approached.
This danger, by the way, was quite real. The leader of the popular uprising in the summer of 1774 almost took Kazan - Ivan Mikhelson, who arrived in time with his corps, managed to save the townspeople who had settled in the Kremlin. After that, Pugachev went to the Don. Rumors about his approach agitated the Malykov population. Twice they tried to set fire to the house where Lieutenant Derzhavin lived (he earned a promotion during the war). In early August 1774, Pugachev's troops easily captured Saratov. Gavrila Romanovich, having learned about the fall of the city, went to Syzran, where General Mansurov's regiment was stationed. In the same month, the forces of Ivan Mikhelson inflicted a final defeat on the rebels. Pavel Panin, appointed commander, tried to do everything possible in order to get Pugachev into his own hands. Under his command, having received extraordinary powers, Suvorov himself arrived. However, the head of the Investigative Commission, Potemkin, also wanted to distinguish himself and gave Derzhavin an order to deliver the leader of the rebels to him. Pugachev, seized by his accomplices, was taken to Yaitsky town in mid-September and "got" to Suvorov, who was not going to give him up to anyone. Gavrila Romanovich found himself between two fires - Potemkin became disillusioned with him, Panin disliked him. The first, being his immediate superior, ordered him - as if to search and capture the surviving rebels - to return to Irgiz.
In these places in the spring of 1775 Derzhavin set up a guard post, from where, together with his subordinates, he watched the steppe. He had plenty of free time, and the aspiring poet wrote four odes - "On the nobility", "On the greatness", "On the birthday of her majesty" and "On the death of General-in-chief Bibikov." If the third of the odes was purely imitative, then the “poetic tombstone” for the general turned out to be very unusual - Gavrila Romanovich wrote the “epistle” in blank verse. However, the most significant were the first two works, which clearly indicated the motives of subsequent works, which earned him the fame of the first Russian poet of the eighteenth century.
The "confinement", fortunately, did not last long - in the summer of 1775, a decree was issued to all guards officers to return to the location of the regiments. However, this brought only disappointments to the poet - he did not receive any awards or ranks. Gavrila Romanovich found himself in a difficult situation - the status of a guard officer required significant funds, and the poet did not have them. During the war, the estates belonging to my mother were completely ruined and did not give income. In addition, Derzhavin several years ago, out of stupidity, vouched for one of his friends, who turned out to be an insolvent debtor and went on the run. Thus, a foreign debt of thirty thousand rubles hung over the poet, which he could not pay in any way. When Gavrila Romanovich had fifty rubles left, he decided to resort to the old means - and suddenly won forty thousand at cards. Having paid off the debts, the perked up poet sent a petition to transfer him to the army with a promotion in rank. But instead in February 1777 he was dismissed.
Derzhavin benefited only from this - pretty soon he made connections in the bureaucratic world and made friends with Prince Alexander Vyazemsky, the former Prosecutor General of the Senate. He arranged for the poet to be the executor of the Senate Department of State Revenues. Material affairs of Gavrila Romanovich significantly improved - in addition to a considerable salary, he received six thousand dessiatines in the Kherson province, and also took the estate of a "friend", because of which he almost "burned out". In time these events coincided with Derzhavin's marriage. In April 1778 he married Catherine Bastidon. Derzhavin fell in love at first sight with seventeen-year-old Katya, the daughter of a Portuguese who, by the will of fate, was in the Russian service. Making sure that he was "not disgusting" to his chosen one, Gavrila Romanovich wooed and received a positive answer. Ekaterina Yakovlevna turned out to be "a poor girl, but well-behaved."A modest and hardworking woman, she did not try to influence her husband in any way, but at the same time she was very receptive and had good taste. Among Derzhavin's comrades, she enjoyed universal respect and love. In general, the period from 1778 to 1783 was one of the best in the poet's life. Lacking the necessary knowledge, Derzhavin began to study the intricacies of financial affairs with extraordinary seriousness. He also made new good friends, among whom stood out the poet Vasily Kapnist, fabulist Ivan Khemnitser, poet and architect Nikolai Lvov. Being more educated than Derzhavin, they rendered the beginning poet great help in polishing his works.
In 1783 Gavrila Romanovich composed an ode "To the wise Kirghiz princess Felitsa", in which he presented the image of an intelligent and just ruler opposing the greedy and selfish court nobles. The ode was written in a playful tone and had many sarcastic allusions to influential persons. In this regard, it was not intended for printing, however, shown to a couple of friends, it began to diverge in handwritten lists and soon reached Catherine II. Gavrila Romanovich, who learned about this, was seriously afraid of punishment, but, as it turned out, the tsarina liked the ode very much - the author correctly captured the impressions she wanted to make on her subjects. As a token of gratitude, Catherine II sent Derzhavin a gold snuff-box, strewn with jewels and filled with gold coins. Despite this, when in the same year Gavrila Romanovich, who learned that the Prosecutor General of the Senate was withholding part of his income, spoke out against him, he was dismissed. The Empress knew perfectly well that the poet was right, but she understood even better that it was not safe for her to fight corruption, which was eating away at the state apparatus.
However, Derzhavin did not lose heart and began to bother about the place of the governor of Kazan. In the spring of 1784, Gavrila Romanovich suddenly announced his desire to explore the lands near Bobruisk, obtained after leaving military service. When he got to Narva, he rented a room in the city and wrote there for several days without going outside. This is how the ode "God" appeared - one of the outstanding works of Russian literature. As one critic said: "If from all of Derzhavin's works only this ode came down to us, then it alone would be sufficient reason to consider its author a great poet."
Derzhavin never became governor of Kazan - at the behest of the tsarina, he inherited the recently established Olonets province. Having visited the Orenburg possessions, the poet hurried to the capital and after an audience with Catherine in the fall of 1784 went to the capital of the newly-made province, the city of Petrozavodsk. Here, at his own expense, he began to build the governor's house. To do this, Gavrila Romanovich had to get into debt, pawn his wife's jewelry and even a gold snuffbox given to him. The poet was filled with the brightest hopes, having decided to carry out the provincial reform of Catherine II on the territory entrusted to him, designed to limit the arbitrariness of officials at the local level and streamline the management system. However, unfortunately, Derzhavin was supervised by his Arkhangelsk and Olonets governor Timofey Tutolmin, who settled in the same Petrozavodsk. This very arrogant and extremely wasteful man previously served as governor in Yekaterinoslav and in Tver. Having found himself in the capacity of a governor, this man, who had tasted the delights of practically unlimited power, did not at all want to yield it to the inferior governor.
The war between Derzhavin and Tutolmin broke out shortly after the official opening of the province in early December 1784. At first, Gavrila Romanovich tried to come to terms with Timofei Ivanovich in an amicable way, and then directly referred to the order of Catherine II of 1780, which forbade the governors to make their own decisions. With complaints against each other, both Olonets chiefs turned to St. Petersburg. As a result, Prince Vyazemsky - the Prosecutor General of the Senate, against whom Derzhavin had spoken out in the recent past - sent an order giving the conduct of affairs in all provincial institutions under the full control of the governor. By the summer of 1785, Derzhavin's position had become unbearable - almost all officials took the side of Tutolmin and, openly laughing at the governor, sabotaged his orders. In July, the poet went on a trip to the Olonets province and on the way received a provocative order from the governor - to move to the far north and found the city of Kem there. By the way, in summer it was impossible to get there by land, and by sea it was extremely dangerous. Nevertheless, the governor carried out the instructions of Tutolmin. In September he returned to Petrozavodsk, and in October, taking his wife, left for St. Petersburg. At the same time, the poet gave the final look to the work "Sovereigns and Judges" - an arrangement of the 81st psalm, in which he "commented" on the Petrozavodsk defeat.
Avoiding extremes, Catherine did not punish either Derzhavin for unauthorized departure, or Tutolmin for violating the laws. Moreover, Gavrila Romanovich was given another chance - he was appointed governor of Tambov. The poet arrived in Tambov in March 1786 and immediately got down to business. At the same time, the governor Ivan Gudovich lived in Ryazan, and therefore at first did not interfere with Derzhavin. During the first year and a half, the governor achieved great success - a tax collection system was established, a four-year school was established, provided with visual aids and textbooks, and the construction of new roads and stone houses was organized. In Tambov, under Derzhavin, a printing house and a hospital, an orphanage and an almshouse appeared, and a theater was opened. And then the Petrozavodsk story repeated itself - Gavrila Romanovich decided to stop the machinations committed by the influential local merchant Borodin, and found out that the secretary of the governor and the vice-governor were behind him. Feeling that he was right, Derzhavin somewhat exceeded his powers, thereby giving large trump cards into the hands of the enemies. In the conflict that arose, Gudovich opposed the poet, and in December 1788 the governor was put on trial.
The case of Gavrila Romanovich was to be decided in Moscow, and therefore he went there, leaving his wife at the house of the Golitsyns who lived near Tambov. The court decision in such cases no longer depended on the true sins of the defendants, but on the presence of influential patrons. This time, Derzhavin, with the support of Sergei Golitsyn, managed to enlist the help of Potemkin himself. As a result, the court - by the way, quite rightly - issued an acquittal on all counts. Of course, the persecutors of Gavrila Romanovich were not punished either. Delighted Derzhavin went to the capital in the hope of getting a new position, but Catherine II this time did not offer him anything. For a whole year, the poet was burdened by forced idleness, until, finally, he decided to remind himself of himself by writing a wonderful ode "The Image of Felitsa". However, instead of work, he got access to Catherine's new favorite, Platon Zubov - the empress in this way intended to broaden the horizons of her close-minded lover. Most courtiers could only dream of such luck, but the poet was upset. In the spring of 1791, Potemkin arrived in St. Petersburg from the south with the intention of getting rid of Zubov, and Gavrila Romanovich agreed to write several odes for the grandiose holiday conceived by the empress's husband. The unique performance, which took place at the end of April, cost the prince (and in fact, the Russian treasury) half a million rubles, but did not achieve its goal. The confrontation between Zubov and Potemkin ended with the sudden death of the latter in October 1791. Derzhavin, who learned about this, composed an ode "Waterfall" dedicated to this bright man.
Contrary to expectations, the poet did not find himself in disgrace, and in December 1791 he was even appointed personal secretary of the empress. Catherine II, intending to limit the powers of the Senate, entrusted Gavrila Romanovich to check his affairs. The poet, as always, took the commission with all responsibility and soon completely tortured the queen. He brought her heaps of papers and spent hours talking about corruption in the highest nobility, including her inner circle. Catherine II knew this very well and was not going to seriously fight abuse and embezzlement. Frankly bored, she directly and indirectly let Derzhavin understand that she was not interested. However, the poet did not want to complete the investigation, they often fiercely argued, and Gavrila Romanovich, it happened, shouted at the queen. This strange secretary lasted for two years, until the empress appointed Derzhavin as senator. But even in the new place, the poet did not calm down, constantly disrupting the half-asleep flow of the Senate meetings. Then the empress in 1794 put him at the head of the board of commerce, scheduled for abolition, while demanding that he "not get in the way of anything." The outraged poet responded by writing a harsh letter in which he asked to fire him. Catherine never dismissed the poet, and Gavrila Romanovich continued to be a member of the Senate.
It should be noted that such a breakdown of Derzhavin was explained not only by his bitter disappointment in the empress. There was another, more serious reason. His wife, with whom the poet lived in perfect harmony for more than fifteen years, fell seriously ill and died in July 1794 at the age of thirty-four. Her death was a terrible shock for Derzhavin. They had no children, and the emptiness that arose in the house seemed unbearable to Gavril Romanovich. In order to avoid the worst - "so as not to shy away from boredom in what debauchery" - he preferred to marry again six months later. The poet recalled how he had once unintentionally overheard a conversation between his wife and the then very young Daria Dyakova, the daughter of the Senate Chief Prosecutor Alexei Dyakov. At that time, Ekaterina Yakovlevna wanted to marry her for Ivan Dmitriev, to which the girl replied: "No, find me a groom, like Gabriel Romanovich, then I will go for him and, I hope, I will be happy." Derzhavin's matchmaking to twenty-seven-year-old Daria Alekseevna was accepted favorably. The bride, however, turned out to be very picky - before agreeing, she carefully studied Derzhavin's receipts and expenditures and, only after making sure that the groom's household was in good condition, agreed to marry. Daria Alekseevna immediately took all of Derzhavin's economic affairs into her own hands. Turning out to be a skilful entrepreneur, she ran a serf economy that was advanced at that time, bought villages, and set up factories. At the same time, Daria Alekseevna was not a stingy woman, for example, every year she included several thousand rubles in the expense item in advance - in case her husband lost at cards.
In the last decade of the century, Derzhavin, who by that time already had the title of the first poet of Russia, became known as a freethinker. In 1795, he presented the Empress with poisonous poems "The Nobleman" and "To the Sovereigns and Judges." Catherine took them very coldly, and the courtiers almost shied away from the poet because of this. And in May 1800, after the death of Suvorov, Derzhavin composed the famous "Snigir" dedicated to his memory. The accession of Paul I in the fall of 1796 brought him both new hopes and new disappointments. The emperor, who set out to change the style of government, was in dire need of honest and open people, but even less than his mother he recognized the right of his subjects to their own opinion. In this regard, the service career of Gavrila Romanovich under the new ruler turned out to be very amusing. At first he was appointed head of the Chancellery of the Supreme Council, but expressed his displeasure about this and was sent back to the Senate with the order to sit quiet. There the poet “sat quietly” until the end of the eighteenth century, when Paul unexpectedly made him a member of the Supreme Council, placing him at the head of the treasury.
After the accession of Alexander I, Derzhavin, once again, lost his posts. However, soon the emperor started a reorganization of state administration, and the poet showed his draft reform of the Senate, proposing to make it the highest administrative and judicial body to which the newly formed cabinet of ministers was subordinate. The tsar liked the plan, and Gavrila Romanovich was asked to take the place of the Minister of Justice and the Prosecutor General of the Senate. However, Derzhavin's stay at the heights of power was short-lived - from September 1802 to October 1803. The reason remained the same - Gavrila Romanovich was too demanding, inflexible and uncompromising. The highest criterion for him was the requirements of the law, and he did not want to compromise. Soon, most of the senators and members of the cabinet of ministers rebelled against the poet. For the emperor, accustomed not to openly express his opinion, Derzhavin's "firmness" also limited his "maneuver", and soon Alexander I parted with him.
At the age of sixty, Gavrila Romanovich retired. At first, he still hoped that he would be remembered and again called to the service. But in vain - the members of the imperial family invited the famous poet only to dinners and balls. Derzhavin, accustomed to being in business, began to get bored - it was unusual for him to engage only in literary activity. In addition, the mental strength for lyric poetry, as it turned out, was no longer enough. Gavrila Romanovich composed a number of poetic tragedies that have become the weakest part of literary creativity. In the end, the poet sat down for his memoirs, and frank and interesting "Notes" were born. Along with this, in 1811 Derzhavin's St. Petersburg house on the Fontanka began to hold meetings "Conversations of lovers of the Russian word", organized by Alexander Shishkov and opposed the dominance of the French language among the Russian nobility. Derzhavin did not attach great importance to this polemic; he in itself liked the idea of holding literary evenings with him. Later, this gave literary scholars a reason to classify him as a "shishkovist" without due reason.
The last years of his life, Gavrila Romanovich lived in Zvanka, his estate located near Novgorod. Through the efforts of Daria Alekseevna, a solid two-story house was built on the bank of the Volkhov and a garden was laid out - in a word, there was everything you need for a measured, calm life. Derzhavin lived like that - measuredly, calmly, with pleasure. He said to himself: "The old man loves everything noisier, fatter and more luxurious." By the way, there was enough noise in the house - after the death of his friend Nikolai Lvov, the poet in 1807 took up his three daughters - Praskovya, Vera and Liza. And even earlier, the cousins of Daria Alekseevna Praskovya and Varvara Bakunina, who remained orphans, also settled in his house.
A special place in the history of Russian culture was taken by an exam at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum in 1815. It was there that young Pushkin read out his poems in the presence of the elderly Derzhavin. It should be noted that the attitude of Alexander Sergeevich to his predecessor, to put it mildly, was ambiguous. And the point here was not at all in the peculiarities of the poetic style of Gavrila Romanovich. The meeting with the formerly adored luminary of poetry Pushkin and his friends terribly disappointed - they could not “forgive” Derzhavin for his senile weakness. In addition, he seemed to them "bumpy", which means the enemy of Karamzin, beloved by young people …
Enjoying life and contemplating the world around him, the poet increasingly began to think about the inevitable. Not far from Zvanka was the Khutynsky monastery founded at the end of the twelfth century. It was in this place that Derzhavin bequeathed to bury himself. A few days before his death, he began to write - powerfully, as in the best time - the ode "Corruption": "The river of times in its striving / Carries away all the affairs of people / And drowns in the abyss of oblivion / Nations, kingdoms and kings …". His time has come - the poet died on July 20, 1816, and his body rested in one of the chapels of the Transfiguration Cathedral of the Khutynsky monastery, later rededicated at the request of his wife in the name of the archangel Gabriel. During the Great Patriotic War, the Khutynsky monastery was completely destroyed, and the grave of the great poet was also damaged. In 1959, Derzhavin's ashes were reburied in the Novgorod Kremlin near the St. Sophia Cathedral. During the years of perestroika, the Khutynsky monastery was revived, and in 1993 the remains of Gavrila Romanovich were returned to their original place.
