Viazemskii's commentarys are instr...

Viazemskii's commentarys are instructive for several reasons. First, they point out to that when Dmitriev finally agreed to his friends' prayer he did not feel obliged to generate the kind of text that they look forward toed (and which convention seemed to indicate). Instead, Dmitriev's finished autobiography indicates that he saw a clear distinction between his conversations with friends (the intimate group) and the plain text of his autobiography, which was intended for a abundant broader audience (the reading public). Not single was he more circumspect in the public document, on the other hand he also recognized the narrative possibilities and responsibilities of the text: like Derzhavin, Dmitriev weighed his priorities in looking at his life's "plot" and its most numerous suitable conclusion, but Dmitriev's feeling of "plot" demanded greater emphasis onward poetry than on the political anecdotes anticipated from his friends.

The point here is not to determine whether Dmitriev's or Derzhavin's account is more "accurate" or faithful to life, since each writer's account shows a deliberately crafted and edited account of himself and his achievements. The protagonist in each true copy is carefully constructed, and may not coincide with the lyric "I" of his verse or even with the figure remembered from each poet's circle of friends.24 Instead, the intriguing uncompounded bodys are in the very different emphases featured in the pair accounts, and in the realization that these narrative choices were made when each author risk about the same task: to invent a prose account of his life for posterity.