KRYLOV, IVAN ANDREEVICH the great national fabulist of Russia, was born on Feb. 14, 2768, at Moscow, the son of an army officer. When he was nine he worked as an office boy, but after his father's death in 1779 his mother moved to St. Petersburg (Leningrad) ; and until she died in 1788 Krylov held a post in the civil service there. Already in 1783 he was writing, but his early work showed no distinction : Kofrenitsa ("The Coffeestall keeper"), an opera, written in 1784, was not published till 1868; of two tragedies, Cleopatra (1785) and Philo mela (2786), the former is not even preserved. From 1789 to 1790 Krylov, assisted by Radistchev, edited a monthly satirical journal, Pochta Dukhov ("The Ghosts' Mail") ; in 1792 he bought a printing press with which he printed another satirical journal, Zritel (the Observer) which in became the St. Petersburg Mercury. Nothing is known of Krylov's movements from 1794 till 179 7 when he turned up in Moscow as a tutor and secretary in the family of Prince Golitzyn, whom he accompanied when the latter was made governor-general of Riga. In 1801 he wrote a comedy, Pirog ("the Pie"), which was performed in St. Petersburg in 2802. From 1803, when he resigned his post, to 1805 he appears to have wandered from place to place, gratifying a passion for playing cards, and visiting country fairs, which had always attracted him from his early childhood. It was not until 1805, when he was 37, that he produced any of the work for which he is famous. In that year he showed his translations of
two of La Fontaine's fables to Dmitriev, from whom he received great encouragement. In 1808 he printed 17 fables, most of them original, and in 1809 he published the first edition of his Fables (23 in number) in which he satirized, especially, the slavish imita tion of things French by the Russian intelligentsia.
Meanwhile he had obtained the patronage of the imperial family, and was appointed to a post in the Mint in 1808, and in 1810 to an assistant librarianship in the Imperial public library. His unfinished comedy, The Sluggard, had a great success in Moscow in 1807. In 1811 he became a member of the Russian academy, and won its gold medal in 1823, besides receiving many other honours. He died on Nov. 9, 1844 (OS.).
The Russians are appreciative of fabulists, and Krylov is by far the greatest that they have. Even when he is translating La Fontaine his translations have an individual style of their own. Throughout the Napoleonic wars the tone of his work was patri otic, but he was afterwards affected by the wave of reaction. Although he held a Government post he maintained an independent attitude, and the official classes were a favourite butt of his wit. Krylov's fables are written for the most part in the colloquial language of the peasants, satirizing in homely anecdotes the sloth fulness, greed, untidiness, etc., in everyday life.