On the literary experience of G. Potemkin

Doctor of Philology, a Senior Research Fellow

at the Lomonosov Moscow State University

Center for Computational Research

His Highness Prince Grigorii Aleksandrovich Potemkin was one of the most colorful Russian statesmen of the eighteenth century. Among his many talents was his skill as a writer. The present essay concerns the one substantive literary work by Potemkin that has survived, his “Canon to Lord Jesus, the Savior,” composed at the end of his life. It is this work, written in liturgical verse, that allows one to speak of Potemkin as a poet. The religious philosopher N.S. Arsen’ev characterizes the work in the following words: “It is more than an expression of mundane, traditional religiosity, but a cry of the soul thirsting for salvation, seeking а place of security in the transience of life’s vanities, praying for mercy and forgiveness, a voice that expresses a strong and ardent faith. Jesus Christ crucified, the merciful Lord, is the focus of his spiritual faith.” At the end of the twentieth century a work entitled “Canon to Our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” was found among the papers of Prince Potemkin’s comrade-in-arms, Count Aleksandr Vasil’evich Suvorov; believed to be an original composition by Suvorov, it was ultimately published under his name. A comparison of this work with that of Potemkin clearly reveals, however, that Suvorov did not compose the canon attributed to him, but simply made several stylistic changes (around 170 in all) in the text he clearly knew to be Potemkin’s. An appendix to the present essay reproduces Potemkin’s canon in full, based on a copy published in 1791 and currently housed in the Library of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.

Keywords: Grigorii Potemkin, Moscow University Gymnasium for the Nobility, liturgical verse, canon, hiermos, troparion, authorship, paraphrase, Aleksandr Suvorov, Nikolai Arsen’ev.

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