Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

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Lomonosov was a genial host. He received guests in the garden of his house in St. Petersburg, wearing a Chinese robe and seated at an oak table set with an abundance of food and drink, including salted pickles and fish brought by countrymen from Archangel. Perhaps the most curious of Lomonosov’s drinking friends was his faithful collaborator Ivan Barkov.

Nothing is clear or reliable in Barkov’s brief biography: his father’s name, exact year of birth, and circumstances of his death (it is supposed that he committed suicide when he was thirty-six or thirty-seven).⁵ For ten years Barkov worked for Lomonosov as clerk and editor. He was also highly regarded as an excellent translator from French, German, and Latin. His edition of the first Russian publication of Kantemir’s satires, mentioned earlier, was well received.

But that is not what made Barkov famous in Russia. He is known (for some, just by reputation) as the author of the most indecent poems in the history of Russian poetry. The genre itself—pornographic poetry—is still described as “Barkovism.” Barkov’s poems were considered unfit to print for more than two hundred years, but were circulated in Russia in numerous handwritten copies and memorized by dozens of generations of students, evidence of their indisputable poetic expressiveness and power.

Some of the greatest Russian poets—Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Nekrasov—were his admirers and imitators; each tried his hand at Barkovism.

Pushkin compared Barkov to François Villon, the notorious medieval French poet and reveler. Pushkin was clearly drawn to the figure of Barkov, who was described by people who had known him in his youth as merry and insouciant—a description that fits Pushkin as well.

For Pushkin, who was constantly searching for the parameters of the place of the poet in Russian society, Lomonosov and Barkov clearly represented the two poles of a possible behavioral model: one proud, even arrogant, overly concerned about his honor and overreacting to criticism from the mighty; the other, liberated and carefree. Pushkin maintained, paradoxically, that “poetry, God forgive me, must be foolish.” This claim was later interpreted by Mikhail Bakhtin in his groundbreaking book on François Rabelais: “Barrels of wine will burst if from time to time vents are not opened and air let in. We humans are all poorly made barrels that will burst from the wine of wisdom, if that wine is constantly fermenting in awe and fear of God. They need air to keep from spoiling. That is why we permit ourselves certain days of foolishness (stupidity) in order to return with greater ardor to the service of the Lord.”

Barkov’s parody verses are Rabelaisian in character, and, curiously, he parodied his mentor Lomonosov (who apparently and surprisingly did not take offense). For example, Lomonosov’s “Psalm 145” begins thus:

Praise for the All-High Lord

Try, my spirit, to send …

Barkov’s version is almost the same:

Praise for the almighty hero

Try, my spirit, to send …

However, Barkov’s ode is “To the Cock.”

In Barkov’s funny parody of a typical classical tragedy, Prince Limprick and his brother Fuckalot are rivals for the beauty Pussymila. She complains about Limprick: “He may be a prince in his reason, but in his cock he is a slave.” The poem has juicy descriptions of violent sexual acts both hetero- and homosexual, still astonishing in their unrestrained language. At the end, the powerful Fuckalot triumphs.

Ironically, Pushkin predicted that the first book to come out in Russia after the repeal of censorship would be the complete works of Barkov. In that prediction, as in many other things, Pushkin was a true prophet: soon after the fall of the Soviet Union, not just one, but three editions of Barkov’s obscene poems appeared.

In fact, 224 years after his death, Barkov became a best-selling author and a timely one, originating the ocean of obscene literature that flooded the Russian book market in the uncensored post-Soviet period.

Thus, in the late twentieth century Barkov turned out to be more interesting for readers and writers than his mentor Lomonosov, whose poetry had become the domain of specialists.

CHAPTER 3

Catherine the Great and the Culture of Her Era

An engraved portrait of Ivan Barkov has survived: a round, youthful face, plump lips, and an open, dreamy gaze—the textbook image of a young poet, brow unmarred by the years of drunkenness, debauchery, humiliation, and punishments that led to his sad end. But there were moments of triumph in Barkov’s tragic life.