Nikita Ivanovich Butyrsky

Background

Nikita Ivanovich Butyrsky was born on September 15, 1783 in Tula Governorate, Russian Empire (now Tula region, Russian Federation). He was of clerical status.

Education

Nikita Ivanovich studied at the Kolomna and Tula Theological Seminaries, and then at the Main Pedagogical Institute (1803-1807). In 1808 he was sent abroad, where he studied "aesthetics and the theory of literature in general".

As a student, Nikita Ivanovich made experiments in aesthetic criticism by analyzing Virgil’s Aeneids, Ovid’s elegy, Ozerov’s tragedies Fingal and Oedipus in Athens, as well as translations of ancient Greek epigrams. Later a translation of Nikita Ivanovich Course of Philosophy by Ludwig Jacob, The History of the Thirty Years War by Friedrich Schiller, his official speech, appeared in the press. He was in correspondence with Alexander Shishkov. Upon leaving the university he published the collection My fate. In sonnets, composed of sonnets of "historical, descriptive, philosophical and poetic content, remarkable for happy thoughts and rapport".

Career

In 1812, Nikita Ivanovich became an associate professor of aesthetics, and in 1817, when the institute was transformed into a university, he was appointed an extraordinary professor at Saint Petersburg University. In 1814-1825 he taught Russian literature in the Page Corps. From 1822 to 1826, Nikita Ivanovich also began to give lectures on political economics and the science of finance after a number of leading professors left the university. In 1826 he was approved as an ordinary professor of political economy at Saint Petersburg University. In 1825 and 1829 Nikita Ivanovich gave public lectures on literature, especially in Russian literature. In March 1830 he received the post of censor and retired in 1833. Since January 1831 Nikita Ivanovich was the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Law. In December 1835, he was dismissed from the university but continued to teach Russian literature at the Military Academy of the General Staff (1832 - February 1848). In his teaching, Nikita Ivanovich generally kept the "midway between strict classicism and the new requirements of the century".

In poetic and critical activity he remained an adherent of pure classicism; even in 1842, when classicism was a thing of the distant past, he composed odes (The Lighthouse). He succumbed to cholera on July 8, 1848.

References

• Russian writers. 1800-1917. Biographical Dictionary. Volume 1
  1989