In 1840 he spent three months with Byelinsky in St.
Petersburg, and after that he remained in Voronezh, had another unhappy love affair, and dreamed continually of the possibility of quitting the place for good.

But his father would not give him a kopek for such a purpose.

His health gave way, and he died in 1842, aged thirty-three.
His poems are few in number, and the best of them belong to an entirely peculiar style, which he alone in Russian literature possesses, to which he alone imparted significance--the ballad, the national ballad compact, powerful, rich in expression, and highly artistic.

The charm of nationality is so great, as expressed in Koltzoff's songs, that it is almost impossible to read them; one wants to sing them as the author sang the verses of others in his boyhood.

Even his peculiar measures, which are not at all adapted to popular songs, do not destroy the harmonious impression made by them, and such pieces as "The Forest," "The Ballads of Cabman Kudryavitch," "The Perfidy of the Affianced Bride," and others, not only belong to the most notable productions of Russian lyric poetry, but are also representatives of an important historical phenomenon, as the first attempt to combine in one organic whole Russian artistic literature and the inexhaustible vast inartistic poetry of the people.