Kukolnik N. V.

Kukolnik N. V. «General-Lieutenant Patkul: A Tragedy in Five Acts, in Verse.» — St. Petersburg: Printing House of K. Zhernakov, 1846.

A historical tragedy in verse devoted to the fate of General-Lieutenant Johann Reinhold von Patkul (1660–1707), a Livonian nobleman, diplomat and associate of Peter the Great. The edition was published in St. Petersburg at the printing house of K. Zhernakov.

Nestor Kukolnik is one of the most complex and contradictory figures of Russian literary life in the 1830s–1840s. He was not only a playwright but also a poet, prose writer, publisher and official, and his work provoked polarizing assessments: some critics called him the "new Byron" and the "Russian Goethe," while others (in particular V. G. Belinsky) saw in him merely a "gifted" author. The tragedy "General-Lieutenant Patkul" belongs to the late period of his dramatic work and is of interest as an example of the historical play of the Nicholas era.

Nestor Vasilievich Kukolnik (1809, St. Petersburg — 1868, Taganrog) was a Russian writer, playwright, poet and publisher. He was the son of the scholar and educator V. G. Kukolnik, a native of Subcarpathian Rus. He studied at the Nezhin Gymnasium of Higher Sciences together with N. V. Gogol, and was graduated without a certificate because of the "freethinking case."