Peter Borisovich Kozlovski
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Prince Peter Borisovich Kozlovski (Russian Пётр Борисович Козловский, born December 1783 in Moscow; died 26th October 1840 in Baden-Baden) was a Russian diplomat und man of letters.
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[edit] Biography
A member of one of Russia’s oldest families, Peter Borisovich Kozlovski had a short career as a diplomat, was a writer and translator, but is known mainly for his contacts with the numerous literary figures with whom he became acquainted during his extensive and protracted travels in Western Europe.
He received an education at home, though this was not taken seriously until the death of an elder brother, and his early intellectual development was promoted much by contact with the cultivated foreigners, mainly French emigrants, who were frequent visitors to his parental home. Kozlovski became a fluent speaker of French, English, German and Italian.
Enjoying the patronage of Prince Alexander Borisovich Kurakin, in 1801 he entered the Russian diplomatic service in St Petersburg and in 1802 was appointed interpreter to the Russian mission to the Kingdom of Sardinia. Initially in Rome, Kozlovski followed the Sardinian court to Cagliari, when it was forced to flee Rome in 1806. By 1810 he had been promoted to chargé d’affaires.
Recalled to Russia in 1811 and briefly dismissed from the service, in late 1812 he was appointed ambassador to Sardinia in Turin, where he remained until 1816. He was closely involved in the negotiations on the demarcation of the frontiers between Switzerland, France and the Kingdom of Sardinia and was also a minor member of the Russian delegation to the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815).
In 1818 he was appointed ambassador simultaneously to the Kingdom of Württemberg in Stuttgart and the Grand Duchy of Baden in Karlsruhe, but in 1820 a political dispute with the Russian government, caused by his public defence of the beginnings of democratic government in these states, led to his resignation and self-imposed exile. During this period he turns up for varying lengths of time in Vienna, Graz, Prague, Teplitz, Switzerland, Paris, Berlin, the Netherlands and London. Kozlovski only returned to Russia in 1835. In the summer of 1836 he returned to diplomatic life as a member of Paskevich’s Council for the Kingdom of Poland in Warsaw, so that during the last four years of his life he was travelling between Warsaw and St. Petersburg. He died in Baden-Baden where he had gone to take the waters for health reasons.
While in Italy Kozlovski had an love affair with a Milanese Madame Rebora who in 1817 bore him his only child, a daughter, Sophie (Sofka) Koslowska. She was in close contact with the French novellist Honoré de Balzac. He never married.
[edit] Literary Life
Even before his exile Kozlovski had become a well-known figure in polite society and literary circles in Western Europe. In Rome he had met and become a friend of François-René de Chateaubriand and met Madame de Staël, with whom he continued to correspond after his move to Cagliari. Here he met the future King of France, Louis-Philippe, with whom he is reputed to have discussed Shakespeare on long sea-side walks. While in Cagliari, Kozlovski also met the Scottish writer John Galt. Galt dedicated his Letters from the Levant to him and also provided him with introductions to Byron and Sir Walter Scott when in 1813 Kozlovski passed through London on his way to Turin.
Kozlovski appears to have made an immediate impression on English society. The novellist Maria Edgeworth wrote of him in a letter to her sister: “I know nothing of him but that he is short and fat and looks good-humoured and like two men bound in one. He says he has a great desire to pay me his homage. If he throws himself at my feet he will never be able to get up again.” Edgeworth is referring to Kozlovski’s prodigious obesity, captured in the caricature by George Cruikshank Longitude and Latitude of St Petersburgh. Kozlovski appears to have visited Byron on a number of occasions complaining of the English husband and the restrictions upon their wives, but Byron’s plan to return to the Mediterranean with him in the summer of 1813 came to nothing. In subsequent years Kozlovski had friendly relations with the British King George IV. The Times records on 15th June 1829 that he had been presented to the King at a ball and a year later (The Times, 2nd June 1830) he was in London again inquiring after health of the ailing King.
During his period as ambassador in Baden, Kozlovski had become a friend of Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, the German writer who was briefly Prussian ambassador in Karlsruhe, and during his 'exile' Kozlovski became a constant companion of the poet Heinrich Heine during his stay in August 1826 on the island of Norderney.
Back in Russia, Kozlovski became part of the literary circles including Vasily Zhukovsky, Pyotr Vyazemsky and Alexander Pushkin, for whom he contributed articles to the journal "Sovremennik".
[edit] References
- Honoré de Balzac: Correspondance, tom. IV (1840-1845), ed. Roger Pierrot, Paris 1966, p. 831
- Wilhelm Dorow: "Der russische Fürst Kosloffsky und seine nachgelassenen Denkwürdigkeiten", Krieg, Literatur und Theater. Mittheilungen zur neueren Geschichte, Leipzig 1845, 1-24
- Wilhelm Dorow: Fürst Kosloffsky, Leipzig 1846
- Maria Edgeworth, Letters from England, Oxford 1971, letter dated 18.5.1813.
- Ian A Gordon, John Galt: the Life of a Writer, Edinburgh 1972
- Heinrich Heine, Briefe, ed. Friedrich Hirth, vol. I, Mainz 1950
- Leslie A. Marchand (ed.), Byron’s Letters and Journals. vol. III: Alas! the love of women! London 1973
- A. A. Polowzow: Russki Biografitscheski Slowar («Русскій Біографическій Словарь»), St. Petersburg 1903
- Gleb Struve: "Un Russe européen: Le prince Pierre Kozlovski", Revue de Littérature Comparée 24 (1950) 521-546
- Gleb Struve: Who was Pushkin's "Polonophil"?, Slavonic and East European Review 29 (1950/51) 444-455
[edit] Works
- Verses to Prince Kurakin («Стихи князю Куракину»), St. Petersburg 1802; re-published in П. А. Дружинин, Неизвестные письма русских писателей князю Александру Борисовичу Куракину (1752–1818), Москва 2002 (P. A. Druzhinin, Unknown Letters of Russian Writers to Prince Alexander Borisovich Kurakin (1752-1818) Moscow 2002)
- Russian translation of Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther (unpublished)
- History of Genoese Power in the Crimea («Историю господства генуэзцев в Крыму»), unpublished
- Tableau de la cour de France, 1824
- Lettre d'un protestant d'Allemagne à Monseigneur l'évêque de Chester, sur le discours prononcé par Sa Grandeur le 17 mai, dans la Chambre des Pairs [sur les catholiques irlandais], Paris 1825
- Lettres au duc de Broglie sur les prisonniers de Vincennes, Ghent 1830
- Diorama social de Paris: par un étranger qui y a séjourné l'hiver de l'année 1823 et une partie de l'année 1824 (new edition by Véra Miltchina and Alexandre Ospovate), Paris 1997
