Pyotr Dmitrievich Buturlin was a poet. In his poems, he specialized in the sonnet genre.
Background
Pyotr Dmitrievich Buturlin was born on April 10, 1859, in Florence, Kingdom of Italy (now Florence, Toscana, Italy), where one of the branches of the count family of Buturlin lived. Pyotr was a great-grandson of the nobleman of Catherine’s times, Dmitry Buturlin, who moved to Italy in 1817. Buturlin's native language was Italian. At the age of 11, he was sent to England for studying.
Education
Since 1870 Pyotr Dmitrievich studied in Saint Mary's College in Oskot (near Birmingham) in England. During the years of studying at Saint Mary's College in England, Pyotr Dmitrievich was published in periodicals in London, including the journal Academy (under the pseudonym Francis Early). He wrote his first poems in English in 1878. It then was a separate collection of poems First trials which waw published in Florence. After graduating from college in 1874 he moved to Russia and settled in the family estate of Taganche.
He studied Russian literature, history, and culture, and in 1878 he graduated from the first Kiev Gymnasium.
Career
After moving to Saint Petersburg in 1880, Pyotr Dmitrievich served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since the mid-eighties, he wrote poetry only in Russian, publishing it in the journals Nablyudatel, Russkoye obozreniye, Russkiy vestnik, Zhivopisnoye obozreniye. Since 1883 he served as an adviser to the Russian embassy in Rome, then in Paris. In 1893 he returned to Russia and settled in Taganche, where he opened a two-year public school.
Pyotr Dmitrievich published collections of poems Sibylla and Other Poems and Twenty Sonnets. The posthumous collection of Sonnets and Poems by Count Pyotr Buturlin, collected and published after his death by Countess Buturlina, appeared. The latter also includes excerpts from Buturlin's diary, containing, in particular, comments on the sonnet, which he considered the most perfect form of verification. He dreamed of implanting a sonnet form in Russian poetry, cultivating it in his own work. Contemporaries noted that some of Buturlin’s sonnets "can become along with the best examples of this kind of anthological poems in Russian poetry due to the freshness of feeling, the beauty of form, a deep understanding of ancient art and southern Greek nature...".
Pyotr Dmitrievich combined aesthetics and a desire for the sophistication of form with an interest in mythology and folklore, including Russian folklore, which remained exotic for him. The traditions of Russian classical poetry are more organic for Buturlin. His poetry was influenced by Fyodor Tyutchev, Eugene Baratynsky, Mikhail Lermontov. Under the influence of interest in Russian history, Pyotr Dmitrievich wrote poems on historical topics (Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich in Naples and others). The lyrical mood in Buturlin’s poems is sometimes muffled by some rationality, a genuine feeling is replaced by his imitation, which was also noted in Baturlin’s criticism.