
Gleb Shulpyakov "Batyushkov is not sick" Moscow: AST, 2023
"It's suddenly impossible to chase two hares, but Batyushkov's hare is poetry," wrote the poet Pyotr Vyazemsky about another poet whose life is dedicated to this book. Konstantin Batyushkov's creative legacy is not extensive (he was torn from literature by mental illness), but it largely made 19th-century poetry what we know it as. Gleb Shulpyakov addresses the period of his life that marks a kind of classic pursuit of hares—that is, of poetic (and prose) discoveries. The book will appeal not only to connoisseurs of literary history: a fine expert, the author of articles and even a play about Konstantin Batyushkov, Shulpyakov reveals the circumstances that shaped the twists and turns of his hero's life, and that of an entire generation.
"On June 6, 1828, a carriage arrived at the gates of the Sonnenstein Mental Hospital in Pirna, Germany. It had been specially brought to the clinic's entrance…"

