Apollon Nikolayevich Maykov

Apollon Nikolayevich Maykov Poems

Apollon Nikolayevich Maykov Biography

Apollon Nikolayevich Maykov (or Maikov) (June 4 1821, Moscow – March 20 1897, Saint Petersburg) was a Russian poet, best known for his lyric verse, showcasing images of Russian villages, nature, and Russian history. His love for ancient Greece and Rome, which he studied for much of his life, is also reflected in his works. Maykov spent four years translating the epic The Tale of Igor's Campaign (1870) into the modern Russian, translated the folklore of Belarus, Greece, Serbia, Spain, as well as the works of Heine, Adam Mickiewicz and Goethe among others. Many of Maykov's poems were put to music by N. Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky. Apollon Maykov was born into the artistic family. His father, Nikolai Apollonovich Maykov (1796-1873), was a painter, an academic of the Imperial Academy of Arts in his later years. His mother Yevgeniya Petrovna Maykova (née Gusyatnikova, 1803-1880) loved literature and later in her life had some of her own verses published. The boy's childhood was spent in the family estate just outside Moscow, in the house often visited by writers and artists. Maykov's early memories and impressions formed the foundation for his later much lauded landscape lyricism, marked with what biographer I.Yampolsky calls "touchingly naive craving for the old patriarchal ways." In 1834 the family moved to Saint Petersburg. Both Apollon and his brother Valerian were being educated at home, under the guidance of their father's friend, a writer, philologist and translator Vladimir Solonitsyn. Ivan Goncharov, a virtually unknown young author at the time, taught Russian literature to the Maykov brothers. As he later remembered, the house "was full of life, and had many visitors, providing the never ceasing flow of information from all kinds of intellectual spheres, including science and arts." At the age of 15 Apollon started to write poetry. Along with the group of friends who formed their domestic circle (V.G.Benediktov, I.A.Goncharov, P.P.Svinyin and others) brothers Apollon and Valerian were editing two hand-written magazines, Podsnezhnik (Snow-drop) and Moonlit Nights. It was there that young Apollon's earliest poetic exercises have been 'published'. After finishing his whole gymnasium course in just three years, in 1837 Apollon Maykov enrolled into the Saint Petersburg University's law faculty. As a student he learnt Latin which enabled him to read Ancient Roman authors' originals. Later he learnt Ancient Greek too but until then had to content himself with French translations of the Greek classics. It was in the University that Maykov developed his passionate love of the Ancient Greece and Rome, something which influenced him immensely.)

The Best Poem Of Apollon Nikolayevich Maykov

In Memory Of My Daughter

Clear on the night of my spirit,
To me shines the glance of a star,
It is she! My heart's little maiden!
From her glance gleams something afar,
Of victory, deathless, eternal-
Something that musing, misgiving,
Pierces the essence of being!

It cannot be! It cannot be!
She lives- soon she will waken; straightway
Will ope her pretty eyes,- glad she
Will prattle merry, laughing gay!
And when in tears beholding me-
Will smiling, kissing, cry consoling,
'Papa- it is but playing- See!
I live,- yes! Leave off mourning!'
But cold and mute she lies, alas!
And motionless.

Now in her coffin she lies,
Silent amid scented flowers-
Ah what mute spirits in white
O'er her corpse circle and hover?
Are they the visions of bliss?
Are they all spirits of hope?
That during life lured her on-

Those to whom secretly oft
She had entrusted her soul?
They that accompanied her e'er,
Faithful in forest and field?
Silent they circle my child,
In tearful anguish embraced-
Yet little actress she lies,
Smiling, closed lashes beneath;
See, she is laughing in truth-
thou most merciless Death!

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