Apollon Nikolayevich Maykov (, , Moscow – , Saint Petersburg) was a Russian poet, best known for his lyric verse showcasing images of Russian villages, nature, and 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 modern Russian. He translated the folklore of Belarus, Greece, Serbia and Spain, as well as works by Heine, Adam Mickiewicz and Goethe, among others. Several of Maykov's poems were set to music by Russian composers, among them Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky.
Maykov was born into an artistic family and educated at home, by the writer Ivan Goncharov, among others. At the age of 15, he began writing his first poetry. After finishing his gymnasium course in just three years, he enrolled in Saint Petersburg University in 1837.
He began publishing his poems in 1840, and came out with his first collection in 1842. The collection was reviewed favorably by the influential critic Vissarion Belinsky. After this, he traveled throughout Europe, returning to Saint Petersburg in 1844, where he continued to publish poetry and branched out into literary criticism and essay writing.
He continued writing throughout his life, wavering several times between the conservative and liberal camps, but maintaining a steady output of quality poetical works. In his liberal days he was close to Belinsky, Nikolay Nekrasov, and Ivan Turgenev, while in his conservative periods he was close to Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He ended his life as a conservative. Maykov died in Saint Petersburg On 8 March 1897.
Biography
Apollon Maykov was born into an artistic family. His father, Nikolay Maykov, was a painter, and in his later years an academic of the Imperial Academy of Arts. His mother, Yevgeniya Petrovna Maykova (née Gusyatnikova, 1803–1880), loved literature and later in life had some of her own poetry published. The boy's childhood was spent at the family estate just outside Moscow, in a house often visited by writers and artists. Maykov's early memories and impressions formed the foundation for his much lauded landscape lyricism, marked by what biographer Igor Yampolsky calls "a touchingly naive love for the old patriarchal ways."
In 1834 the family moved to Saint Petersburg. Apollon and his brother Valerian were educated at home, under the guidance of their father's friend Vladimir Solonitsyn, a writer, philologist and translator, known also for Nikolay Maykov's 1839 portrait of him. Ivan Goncharov, then an unknown young author, taught Russian literature to the Maykov brothers. As he later remembered, the house "was full of life, and had many visitors, providing a never ceasing flow of information from all kinds of intellectual spheres, including science and the arts." At the age of 15 Apollon started to write poetry. With a group of friends (Vladimir Benediktov, Ivan Goncharov and Pavel Svinyin among others) the Maykov brothers edited two hand-written magazines, Podsnezhnik (Snow-drop) and Moonlit Nights, where Apollon's early poetry appeared for the first time. Vissarion Belinsky responded with a comprehensive essay, praising the book's first section called "Poems Written for an Anthology", a cycle of verses stylized after both ancient Greek epigrams and the traditional elegy. He was flattered by the famous critic's close attention. Maykov paid heed to his advice and years later, working on the re-issues, edited much of the text in direct accordance with Belinsky's views.
After graduating from the university, Maykov joined the Russian Ministry of Finance as a clerk. Having received a stipend for his first book from Tsar Nicholas I, he used the money to travel abroad, visiting Italy (where he spent most of his time writing poetry and painting), France, Saxony, and Austria. In Paris Apollon and Valerian attended lectures on literature and fine arts at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France. The critic also liked Two Fates (Saint Petersburg, 1845). A "natural school" piece, touched by Mikhail Lermontov's influence, it featured "a Pechorin-type character, an intelligent, thinking nobleman retrogressing into a low-brow philistine," according to Alexander Hertzen's review. In the late 1840s Maykov was also writing prose, in a Gogol-influenced style known as the "physiological sketch". Among the short stories he published at the time were "Uncle's Will" (1847) and "The Old Woman – Fragments from the Notes of a Virtuous Man" (1848). In the 1850s Maykov, now a Slavophile, began to champion 'firm' monarchy and strong Orthodox values. In 1852 Maykov moved into the office of the Russian Committee of Foreign censorship, where he continued working for the rest of his life, becoming its chairman in 1882. This was followed by the compilation Poems, 1854. Some of the poems, like those about the siege of Sevastopol ("To General-Lieutenant Khrulyov") were welcomed by the literary left (notably Nekrasov and Chernyshevsky). Others ("In Memory of Derzhavin" and "A Message to the Camp") were seen as glorifying the monarchy and were deemed 'reactionary'.
thumb|right|180px|Maykov in the 1850s
In 1858 Maykov took part in the expedition to Greece on board the corvette Bayan. Prior to that he read numerous books about the country and learned the modern Greek language. Two books came out as a result of this trip: The Naples Album (which included "Tarantella", one of his best known poems) and Songs of Modern Greece. The former, focusing on contemporary Italian life, was coldly received by Russian critics who found it too eclectic. In retrospect it is regarded as a curious experiment in breaking genre barriers, with images and conversations from foreign life used to express things which in Russia could not be commented on publicly at the time. In the mid-1860s he once again drifted towards the conservative camp, and stayed there for the rest of his life. He condemned young radicals, and expressed solidarity with Mikhail Katkov's nationalistic remarks regarding the Polish Uprising and Russian national policy in general. In poems like "Fields" (which employed Gogol's metaphor of Russia as a troika, but also expressed horror at emerging capitalism), and Nikolay Dobrolyubov. The mission of art, according to the poet, was to develop the national self-consciousness and revive the 'historical memory' of Russians. The Slavic historic and moral basis on which it stood became the major theme of Maykov's poetry cycles "Of the Slavic World", "At Home", and "Callings of History". Well aware of the darker side of Russia's historic legacy, he still thought it necessary to highlight its 'shining moments' ("It's dear to me, before the icon...", 1868). Maykov was not a religious person himself but attributed great importance to the religious fervor of the common people, seeing it as the basis for 'moral wholesomeness' ("The spring, like an artist", 1859; "Ignored by all...", 1872). His religious poems of the late 1880s ("Let go, let go...", "The sunset’s quiet shine...", "Eternal night is near...") differed radically from his earlier odes to paganism. In them Maykov professed a belief in spiritual humility and expressed the conviction that this particular feature of the Russian national character would be its saving grace.
According to Yampolsky, Nekrasov's poem "Grandfather" (1870, telling the story of a nobleman supporting the revolutionary cause) might have been an indirect answer to Maykov's poem "Grandmother" (1861) which praised the high moral standards of the nobility and condemned the generation of nihilists. Maykov's poem Princess (1876) had its heroine Zhenya, a girl from an aristocratic family, join a gang of conspirators and lose all notions of normality, religious, social or moral. However, unlike Vsevolod Krestovsky or Viktor Klyushnikov, Maykov treated his 'nihilist' characters rather like victims of the post-Crimean war social depression rather than villains in their own right. In his later years he made numerous freestyle translations and stylized renditions of Belarusian and Serbian folk songs. He developed a strong interest in non-Slavic folklore too, exemplified by the epic poems Baldur (1870) and Bringilda (1888) based on the Scandinavian epos.
Christianity and paganism
thumb|right|200px|Maykov in his later years
Maykov's first foray into the history of early Christianity, "Olynthus and Esther" (1841) was criticized by Belinsky. He returned to this theme ten years later in the lyrical drama Three Deaths (1857), was dissatisfied with the result, and went on to produce part two, "The Death of Lucius" (1863). Three Deaths became the starting point of his next big poem, Two Worlds, written in 1872, then re-worked and finished in 1881. Following Belinsky's early advice, Maykov abandoned Lucius, a weak Epicurean, and made the new hero Decius, a patrician who, while hating Nero, still hopes for the state to rise up from its ashes. Later literary historians viewed Maykov's historical dramas favourably, crediting the author for neutrality and insight. Maykov's antiquity "lives and breathes, it is anything but dull," wrote critic F. Zelinsky in 1908. For the Two Worlds Maykov received The Russian Academy of Sciences' Pushkin Prize in 1882. Although this generalization was far from the truth, according to biographer F. Priyma, it certainly expressed the general public's perception of him.
Legacy
Maykov's initial rise to fame, according to the Soviet scholar Fyodor Pryima, had a lot to do with Pushkin and Lermontov's untimely deaths, and the feeling of desolation shared by many Russian intellectuals of the time. Vissarion Belinsky, who discovered this new talent, believed it was up to Maykov to fill this vacuum. "The emergence of this new talent is especially important in our times, when in the devastated Church of Art... we see but grimacing jesters entertaining dumb obscurants, egotistic mediocrities, merchants and speculators," Belinsky wrote, reviewing Maykov's debut collection.
thumb|left|150px|The sleeve of Poems by Apollon Maykov in 2 volumes, 1858.
Hailing the emergence of a new powerful talent, Belinsky unreservedly supported the young author's 'anthological' stylizations based upon the poetry of Ancient Greece, praising "the plasticity and gracefulness of the imagery," the virtuosity in the art of the decorative, the "poetic, lively language" but also the simplicity and lack of pretentiousness. "Even in Pushkin's legacy this poem would have rated among his best anthological pieces," Belinsky wrote about the poem called "The Dream". Still, he advised the author to leave the 'anthological' realm behind as soon as possible and expressed dissatisfaction with poems on Russia's recent history. While admitting "Who's He" (a piece on Peter the Great, which some years later found its way into textbooks) was "not bad", Belinsky lambasted "Two Coffins", a hymn to Russia's victories over Karl XII and Napoleon.
Maykov's debut collection made him one of the leading Russian poets. In the 1840s "his lexical and rhythmic patterns became more diverse but the style remained the same, still relying upon the basics of classical elegy," according to the biographer Mayorova, who noted a strange dichotomy between the flamboyant wording and static imagery, and pointed to the "insurmountable distance between the poet and the world he pictured." by Nikolay Nekrasov. His later works, expressing conservative, monarchist and anti-'nihilist' views, were supported by Dostoyevsky, who on more than one occasion pronounced Maykov Russia's major poet.
In his 1895 article for the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, the philosopher and critic Vladimir Solovyov argued that Maykov's dominant characteristics were "a serene, contemplating tone, elaborate patterns, a distinct and individual style (in form, although not in colors) with a relatively lackluster lyric side, the latter suffering obviously from too much attention to details, often at the expense of the original inspiration." Maykov's best works were, the critic opined, "powerful and expressive, even if not exceptionally sonorous."<blockquote>He was a scholar of antiquity and his gift, self-admittedly "has been strengthened by being tempered in the fire of science." As a purveyor of classicism, his very soul was not deep or naive enough to fully let this spirit in or embrace the antique idea of intellectual freedom. Poems, inhabited by naiads, nymphs, muses and dryads, are very pretty, and you can't help being enchanted by these ancient fables. But he gives you no chance to forget for a moment that – what for his ancient heroes was life itself, for him is only a myth, a 'clever lie' he could never believe himself.
Putting Maykov into the "masters of meditation" category alongside Ivan Krylov and Ivan Goncharov, Annensky continued: "He was one of those rare harmonic characters for whom seeking beauty and working upon its embodiments was something natural and easy, nature itself filling their souls with its beauty. Such people, rational and contemplative, have no need for stimulus, praise, strife, even fresh impressions... their artistic imagery growing as if from soil. Such contemplative poets produce ideas that are clear-cut and 'coined', their images are sculpture-like," the critic argued.
By the mid-1850s Maykov had acquired the reputation of a typical proponent of the "pure poetry" doctrine, although his position was special. Yet, according to Pryima, "Maykov was devoid of snobbishness and never saw himself occupying some loftier position even when mentioning 'crowds'. His need in communicating with people is always obvious ("Summer Rain", "Haymaking", "Nights of Mowing", The Naples Album). It's just that he failed to realize his potential as a 'people's poet' to the full." "Maykov couldn't be seen as equal to giants like Pushkin, Lermontov, Koltsov, or Nekrasov," but still "occupies a highly important place in the history of Russian poetry" which he greatly enriched, the critic insisted.