Ricerc@Sapienza

Gavrila Derzhavin’s Praise to the Mosquito
One of the less known works in Derzhavin's literary heritage, the Praise to
the Mosquito, written in 1807 and published only after the death of its
author, deserves our attention as an example of a brilliant mock ode with
didactic intentions. Conceived while retired in his country estate at Zvanka,
during a particularly hot summer, the 21 stanza poem – here translated for the
first time into Italian – was thematically echoed in the work of Pushkin and
Tiutchev. The modest insect is celebrated recurring to a high genre and a
dense linguistic texture, in which classic and biblical reminiscences are interwoven
with folklore images and motifs, while the noise of the mosquito is
reproduced with buzzing consonants. The panegyric to the komar is also an
occasion to touch serious issues (tyranny and the bloody conquerors, social
unequality and the function of poetry). Moroever, this work of the late Derzhavin
shows curious textual affinities with the Treatise on Mosquitos inserted
by the thinker and writer Vasili Malinovskii (the first Director of the Tsarskoe
selo Lycee) in his travelogue Rossiianin v Anglii (published in 1796).