Vladimir Benediktov, a slightly younger contemporary of Aleksandr Pushkin, whom he outlived by thirty-six years, left an ambivalent legacy in the history of Russian letters. Benediktov's reception has ranged at one time or another from fashionable enthusiasm to neglect, critical dismissal, and somewhat less-than-affectionate parody. A turn-of-the-century biographer found that he displayed “both a feeling for beauty and a lack of good taste, the sincerest patriotism and total ignorance of the Russian people,” but his poetry, still read today, has an enduring quality best summed up by the late-nineteenth-century critic and poet Iakov Petrovich Polonsky: “For all his faults, Benediktov had a genuine lyrical quality that recalls Derzhavin, and that lyricism was his saving grace so often that even today some of his verses possess a striking ardor, freshness and beauty.”

Vladimir Grigor'evich Benediktov was born in St. Petersburg on 5 November 1807. His father, Grigorii Stepanovich Benediktov, was a...