[A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections by Isabel Florence Hapgood]@TWC D-Link book
A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections

CHAPTER VII
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But he wrote two comedies and a fairy-opera before, in 1808, he finally devoted himself to fables, to which branch of literature he remained faithful as long as he lived.

By 1811-1812 his fables were so popular that he was granted a government pension, and became a member of the Empress Marya Feodorovna's circle of court poets and literary men.
From 1812-1840, or later, Kryloff had an easy post in the Imperial Public Library, and in the course of forty years, wrote about two hundred fables.

He is known to have been extremely indolent and untidy; but all his admirers, and even his enemies, recognized in him a power which not one of his predecessors in the literary sphere had possessed--a power which was thoroughly national, bound in the closest manner to the Russian soil.

His fables bear an almost family likeness to the proverbs, aphorisms, adages, and tales produced by the wisdom of the masses, and are quite in their spirit.

All the Russian poets had tried their hand at that favorite form of poetic composition--the fable--ever since its introduction from western Europe, in the eighteenth century; and Kryloff's success called forth innumerable imitators.


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