Background
Evgraf Alekseevich Verderevsky was born on February 13, 1825, in Saratov, Russian Federation in a family of hereditary nobles of the Ryazan province. He was the nephew of Vasily Yevgrafovich Verderevsky, a Russian poet and writer.
The yard of the Imperial Lyceum
Evgraf Alekseevich Verderevsky was born on February 13, 1825, in Saratov, Russian Federation in a family of hereditary nobles of the Ryazan province. He was the nephew of Vasily Yevgrafovich Verderevsky, a Russian poet and writer.
In 1846, Evgraf Alekseevich graduated from the Imperial Lyceum, after which in 1846-1848 he served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In 1847, Verderevsky’s poems began to appear in the Illustratsiya magazine, later that year in Saint Petersburg his first book The Octaves (Stories in Poems) was published. It consisted of two poems, The Sick and Second Life: A Story in Verses from the Life of the Healthy, a narrative oversaturated with everyday details about the adventures of the provincial in Saint Petersburg. B.N. Maykov reproached Evgraf Alekseevich in imitation of M.Yu. Lermontov.
In 1847, at the invitation of his uncle, Chairman of the Perm Treasury Chamber V.E. Verderevsky, he arrived in Perm. Here, in 1847-1850, Evgraf Alekseevich was an official of special assignments under the Perm Governor. Since 1850, he served in the Perm Conscientious Court. He took part in the public life of the city, in literary and musical evenings.
Then Evgraf Alekseevich moved to the Caucasus, where his father served, and from the summer of 1853, he was under the office of the Caucasian governor Count M.S. Vorontsov. From February 1854 to January 1856, he was the literary editor of the Kavkaz, in which he wrote articles on Caucasian poetry, the Tiflis Theater, and other things. For cooperation in the newspaper, he attracted prominent Georgian scholars and writers N.G. Berzenov, R.D. Eristavi, as well as V.A. Sollogub, with whom Verderevsky had friendly relations. Evgraf Alekseevich also promoted the work of Mirza Fatali Akhundov.
In 1855, the only issue of the Zurna almanac published by Evgraf Alekseevich was released, which became a notable event in the literary life of Georgia and Russia. Approving reviews appeared in many magazines, such as Otechestvennyye Zapiski, Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya, Sovremennik, and Moskvityanin.
In 1856, in Moscow, and a year later, in Saint Petersburg, his book Caucasian captives, or Captivity from Shamil was published. It was a documentary and memoir material about two sisters being held captive by Shamil in the village of Vedeno. These sisters were Princesses A.I. Chavchavadze and V.I. Orbeliani with children and servants. The work received numerous positive reviews. The author’s appeal to the "testimonies from individuals involved" gave a particular effect to the picturesque description of the life and customs of the Chechen settlements, Shamil’s home environment, and colorful portraits of people from his inner circle. The book recreates the atmosphere of mountaineers’ rejection of the policy of Russification of the Caucasus. L. Tolstoy used it as one of the sources when working on the story Haji Murat.
Verderevsky’s pamphlet entitled On National Holidays and Holiday Practices of the Christian Population Mainly in Tiflis (1854) was devoted to questions of Georgian ethnography. Summarizing in the form of letters with the impressions of a trip from Perm to the Caucasus, he published the book From Trans-Urals to Transcaucasia. Humorous, sentimental, and practical road letters (Moscow, 1857). In 1857, he also published an essay on the Irbit Fair in the Otechestvennyye Zapiski magazine.
Verderevsky’s second poetic collection was Poems of the First Youth (Moscow, 1857). The official patriotic motives of individual verses determined N.A. Dobrolyubov’s negative attitude towards it.
Since 1858, Evgraf Alekseevich lived in Moscow and served in the rank of a collegiate assessor. In 1861, he became the chief conciliator of the Podolsky district of the Moscow Governorate. From the beginning of the 1860s, he began to suffer from mental illness. In 1867 he was in Nizhny Novgorod for healing.
Among other works of the author are Duets. Quasi-fantastic Novel (1848), Bialowieza Forest (1850), Memoirs. A conversation in scenes (1852), brochure Autobiography of a Remarkable Person (about the Georgian writer M. Badridze; 1855), the poem Unsuccessful masquerade. True Story (1858), the story Four-Month Vacation (1853), and many more.
Today, Evgraf Alekseevich is recalled almost exclusively as the author of a large documentary short story, Caucasian captives, or Captivity from Shamil, which told about the dramatic events that took place in the Caucasus in the middle of the 19th century. This is partly true, and the book, being one of the most important historical and human documents of the era of the Caucasian war, is worthy not to be forgotten. Nevertheless, there are many other dramatic works and poems on his account, for example, Bialowieza Forest, Four-Month Vacation, and others.
(Russian edition)
(Russian Edition)