Zhukovski, Vasili Andreevich (1783–1852)

Russian writer and translator. He was the leading poet of pre-Romanticism in Russia, and wrote the ballad Svetlana 1811. Zhukovski was tutor to Tsar Alexander II and often used his influence at the court to intercede for opponents of the regime. He introduced the genres of the elegy and the ballad into Russian literature, and made excellent translations of Schiller, Byron, Thomas Gray, Walter Scott, Goethe, and Homer.