View source for Pyotr Vyazemsky

{{Short description|Russian poet (1792–1878)}}
{{family name hatnote|Andreyevich|Vyazemsky|lang=Eastern Slavic}}{{Infobox nobility
| name = Pyotr Andreyevich Vyazemsky
| image = File:P.F. Sokolov 007.jpg
| caption = Pyotr Vyazemsky (1824) by [[Pyotr Sokolov (portraitist)|Pyotr Sokolov]]
| CoA = 
| tenure = 
| predecessor = 
| successor = 
| birth_date = 23 July 1792
| birth_place = Moscow, Russia
| death_date = 22 November 1878
| death_place = [[Baden-Baden]]
| burial_place = [[Tikhvin Cemetery]], [[St. Petersburg]], Russia
| noble family = Vyazemsky
| spouse = Princess Vera Gagarina
| issue = Pavel Vyasemsky<br/>Maria Vyazemskaya<br/>Praskoviya Vyazemskaya<br/>Nadejda Vyazemskaya
| father = Prince Andrey Vyazemsky
| mother = Jenny Quinn O'Reilly
| occupation = [[Poet]]
}}
Prince '''Pyotr Andreyevich Vyazemsky'''{{efn|Also [[Romanization of Russian|transliterated]] as '''Petr Andreevich Viazemsky'''}} ({{langx|ru|Пëтр Андре́евич Вя́земский}}, {{IPA|ru|ˈpʲɵtr ɐnˈdrʲejɪvʲɪt͡ɕ ˈvʲæzʲɪmskʲɪj|ipa}}; 23 July 1792 – 22 November 1878) was a Russian poet and a leading personality of the [[Golden Age of Russian poetry]].

== Biography ==

His parents were a Russian prince of [[Rurikid]] stock, Prince Andrey Vyazemsky (1754–1807), and an Irish lady, Jenny Quinn [[O'Reilly]] (1762–1802), in baptism Evgenia Ivanovna Vyazemskaya.<ref>Newerkla, Stefan Michael (2020). ''Das irische Geschlecht O'Reilly und seine Verbindungen zu Österreich und Russland [The Irish O'Reilly family and their connections to Austria and Russia]'', in: ''Diachronie – Ethnos – Tradition: Studien zur slawischen Sprachgeschichte [Diachrony – Ethnos – Tradition: Studies in Slavic Language History].'' Eds. Jasmina Grković-Major, Natalia B. Korina, Stefan M. Newerkla, Fedor B. Poljakov, Svetlana M. Tolstaja. Brno: Tribun EU, pp. 259–279 [https://uscholar.univie.ac.at/o:1405256 (open access)], here pp. 272–273.</ref> As a young man he took part in the [[Battle of Borodino]] and other engagements of the [[Napoleonic Wars]]. Many years later, [[Leo Tolstoy|Tolstoy]]'s description of the battle in ''[[War and Peace]]'' appeared inaccurate to him, and he engaged in a [[literary feud]] with the great novelist.
[[File:Vera Vyazemskya.jpg|left|thumb|Princess Vera, nee Gagarina, Pyotr's wife]]
In the 1820s Vyazemsky was the most combative and brilliant champion of what then went by the name of [[Romanticism]]. Both Prince Pyotr and his wife Princess Vera (née [[Gagarin family|Gagarina]]) were on intimate terms with [[Alexander Pushkin]], who often visited their family seat at [[Ostafievo]] near Moscow (now a literary museum). Unsurprisingly, Vyazemsky is quoted in Pushkin's works, including ''[[Eugene Onegin]]''. The two friends also exchanged several epistles in verse.

Vyazemsky and the other leading Russian liberals, such as Pushkin and [[Alexander Turgenev|Alexander]] and [[Nikolay Turgenev]], were all heavily shaped by the Kantian teachings of [[Alexander Kunitsyn]] and often discussed their attitudes on serfdom, the Russian administrative and legal system, civil society, and foreign policy through private correspondence, where Vyazemsky was highly critical of the administration's abuses in the western provinces.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Berest |first1=Julia |title=The Emergence of Russian Liberalism: Alexander Kunitsyn in Context, 1783-1840 |date=2011 |publisher=Springer |page=60}}</ref> He also published a prospectus declaring an "uncompromising war to all the prejudices, vices and absurdity that reign in our society."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Berest |first1=Julia |title=The Emergence of Russian Liberalism: Alexander Kunitsyn in Context, 1783-1840 |date=2011 |publisher=Springer |page=87}}</ref> 

At that time, the elderly poet gained admission to the Russian court, in part through his daughter's marriage to [[Pyotr Valuev]], the future Chairman of the Committee of Ministers. In the 1850s, Vyazemsky served as a deputy minister of education and was in charge of [[Media freedom in Russia|state censorship]]. In 1863, he settled abroad on account of bad health. Prince Vyazemsky died in [[Baden-Baden]], but his body was brought to [[Saint Petersburg]] and buried there.

== Literary output ==

Vyazemsky is probably best remembered as the closest friend of [[Alexander Pushkin]]. Their correspondence is a treasure house of wit, fine criticism, and good Russian. In the early 1820s, Pushkin proclaimed Vyazemsky the finest prose writer in the country. His prose is sometimes exaggeratedly witty, but vigor and raciness are ubiquitous. His best is contained in the admirable anecdotes of his ''Old Notebook'', an inexhaustible mine of sparkling information on the great and small men of the early nineteenth century. A major prose work of his declining years was his biography of [[Denis Fonvizin]], the eighteenth-century Russian dramatist.

Though Vyazemsky was the journalistic leader of Russian Romanticism, there can be nothing less romantic than his early poetry: it consists either of very elegant, polished, and cold exercises on the set commonplaces of poetry, or of brilliant essays in word play, where pun begets pun, and conceit begets conceit, heaping up mountains of verbal wit. His later poetry became more universal and essentially classical.

==Bibliography==
* [[Stefan Michael Newerkla|Newerkla, Stefan Michael]]. ''Das irische Geschlecht O'Reilly und seine Verbindungen zu Österreich und Russland [The Irish O'Reilly family and their connections to Austria and Russia]'', in: ''Diachronie – Ethnos – Tradition: Studien zur slawischen Sprachgeschichte [Diachrony – Ethnos – Tradition: Studies in Slavic Language History].'' Eds. Jasmina Grković-Major, Natalia B. Korina, [[Stefan Michael Newerkla|Stefan M. Newerkla]], Fedor B. Poljakov, Svetlana M. Tolstaja. Brno: Tribun EU 2020; {{ISBN|978-80-263-1581-0}}, pp. 259–279 [https://uscholar.univie.ac.at/o:1405256 (open access)], here pp. 272–273.

* Венгеров С. А. Источники словаря русских писателей, т. I, СПб. 1900.
* Бондаренко В.В. Вяземский. М., 2004 (серия "Жизнь замечательных людей")
* Гинзбург А. Вяземский литератор, Сборник «Русская проза», под ред. Б. Эйхенбаума и Ю. Тынянова, Л., 1926.
* Грот Я., Сухомлинов М., Пономарев С., в Сборнике 2 отделения Академии наук, т. XX, 1880.
* Кульман H. Вяземский как критик. Известия Академии наук. книга 1. 1904.
* Собрание сочинений Вяземского в 12 тт. СПб. 1878—1886, его переписка, «Остафьевский архив», т. I—V.
* Спасович В. Вяземский и его польские отношения и знакомства. Сочинения Спасовича, т. VIII, 1896.
* Трубачев С. С. Вяземский как писатель 20-х гг., «Исторический вестник», Ї 8, 1892.
* Языков Д. П. Вяземский. — М. 1904.

==Notes==
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==References==
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{{Reflist|30em}}
*{{Mirsky}}

==External links==
* [http://imwerden.de/cat/modules.php?name=books&pa=last_update&cid=241 Petr Vyazemsky. Complete Works in Russian]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20061008235205/http://www.litera.ru/stixiya/authors/vyazemskij.html Petr Vyazemsky. Poems]
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Petr Andreevich Vi︠a︡zemskīĭ}}
* {{Librivox author |id=9556}}

{{Alexander Pushkin}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vyazemsky, Pyotr}}
[[Category:Male poets from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Russian male poets]]
[[Category:Journalists from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Russian male journalists]]
[[Category:Male writers from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Members of the Russian Academy]]
[[Category:Full members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences]]
[[Category:Members of the State Council (Russian Empire)]]
[[Category:1792 births]]
[[Category:1878 deaths]]
[[Category:People from the Russian Empire of Irish descent]]
[[Category:19th-century writers from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Russian military personnel of the Napoleonic Wars]]
[[Category:19th-century poets from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Privy Councillor (Russian Empire)]]
[[Category:Burials at Tikhvin Cemetery]]