Wilhelm Ludwig von Küchelbecker (; in St. Petersburg – in Tobolsk) was a Russian Romantic poet and Decembrist revolutionary of German descent.

Life

Born into a Baltic German noble family, he spent his childhood in what is now

Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...

and later attended the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum near

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

together with

Alexander Pushkin Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin () was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era.Basker, Michael. Pushkin and Romanticism. In Ferber, Michael, ed., ''A Companion to European Romanticism''. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. He is consid ...

and Anton Delvig,For his Küchelbecker made a poem ''O Del'vig, Del'vig!'' which is cited by 9th movement of the Symphony No. 14 of

Dmitri Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded as a major composer. Shostak ...

. with whom he became friends. In 1821, he went to

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

to deliver courses in

Russian literature Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia, its Russian diaspora, émigrés, and to Russian language, Russian-language literature. Major contributors to Russian literature, as well as English for instance, are authors of different e ...

, but his activity was deemed too liberal by the Russian administration and Küchelbecker had to return to Russia. He served in the Caucasian War under General Yermolov (with whose nephew he fought a duel) before launching the miscellany '' Mnemozina'' along with Vladimir Odoevsky in 1824. Despite his German name, Küchelbecker was considered an ardent Russian patriot by his contemporaries, and though closely allied with the romanticists, he insisted on calling himself a literary conservative and a classicist. D.S. Mirsky characterizes him as "a quixotic figure, ridiculous in appearance and behaviour", but his personal friends had a warm affection for him. Pushkin, who was one of his principal teasers, dedicated to him one of the most heartfelt stanzas of the ''Lyceum Anniversary'' of 1825. As a poet, Küchelbecker had a

pantheist Pantheism can refer to a number of philosophical and religious beliefs, such as the belief that the universe is God, or panentheism, the belief in a non-corporeal divine intelligence or God out of which the universe arisesAnn Thomson; Bodies ...

ic vision of the world but did not succeed in giving it a definite expression — his poetry is an inchoate world awaiting a builder. His best-known poem is the noble elegy on the death of Pushkin, a poem closing the Golden Age of Russian Poetry. In his short prose piece "European Letters" (1820), a 26th-century American travels in Europe, which has fallen back into barbarism. In the satiric fragment "Land of the Headless" (Земля безглавцев, 1824), the protagonist travels to the Moon and finds a

dystopia A dystopia (lit. "bad place") is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. It is an imagined place (possibly state) in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmen ...

n state there. During the doomed Decembrist Uprising, he made an attempt on the life of the tsar's brother

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. Küchelbecker was sentenced to corporal punishment which was commuted to

imprisonment Imprisonment or incarceration is the restraint of a person's liberty for any cause whatsoever, whether by authority of the government, or by a person acting without such authority. In the latter case it is considered " false imprisonment". Impri ...

in Sveaborg, Kexholm, and other fortresses for ten years. After that he was exiled to

Kurgan A kurgan is a type of tumulus (burial mound) constructed over a grave, often characterized by containing a single human body along with grave vessels, weapons, and horses. Originally in use on the Pontic–Caspian steppe, kurgans spread into mu ...

. He died blind in Tobolsk from

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...

. His most famous biography, ''Kyukhlya'', was written by Yury Tynyanov; its publication in 1925 marked a resurgence of interest in Küchelbecker and his art.

References

Sources

* *

External links

Vilgelm Kyukhelbeker. Poems

Kuchelbecker on www.imwerden.de
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuchelbecker, Wilhelm 1797 births 1846 deaths Writers from Saint Petersburg People from Sankt-Peterburgsky Uyezd People from Kreis Wierland Baltic-German people from the Russian Empire Decembrists Russian male poets 19th-century poets from the Russian Empire 19th-century male writers from the Russian Empire Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum alumni 19th-century deaths from tuberculosis Tuberculosis deaths in the Russian Empire Russian people who died in prison custody Pantheists Prisoners who died in Russian detention Prisoners of Shlisselburg fortress Prisoners of the Peter and Paul Fortress