Gavriil Romanovich Derzhavin was probably the greatest Russian poet of the eighteenth century. His poetic achievement was seen by contemporaries as the crowning jewel of an entire epoch, one that stretched from the reforms of Peter I to the Napoleonic era. Translations of his work into many languages ensured him an international recognition never before achieved by a Russian poet. Just before his death, Derzhavin sat in on the final exam of a rising young star, Aleksandr Pushkin, barely in his teens at the time. Upon hearing Pushkin's verses dedicated to the lycée at Tsarskoe Selo, from which he was graduating, the old bard, overcome by emotion, is reported to have shed tears of approval. This incident is usually treated in the history of Russian literature as a sign of the transition between two literary epochs in Russia--between the eighteenth century and the so-called golden age...