Chief Secretary Schilt: A prosopographic study

Abstract

Unremarkable details of a past life often remain a set of curious facts that have no place in a scientific picture of the past. All the more valuable are those rare cases when disparate events can be linked together, revealing their place in the series of phenomena. The article is dedicated to Ivan Ivanovich Schilt (1757– 1796), Chief Secretary of the Senate, who had not previously come to the attention of researchers. Schilt’s contribution to Russian literature is insignificant. He wrote one rather mediocre poem on the occasion of the marriage anniversary of the Procurator-General of the Senate, A. A. Viazemskii (1782), printed and preserved probably in a single copy, and probably two translations: a poem from French and a poem into German. However, Schilt’s influence on the literary process in Russia at the end of the eighteenth century is much more significant, thanks to his critical remarks regarding the poet and senator Ivan Dmitriev, recorded in the latter’s memoirs. The article establishes the facts of the unremarkable biography of Schilt the official and shows that in the history of literature it is necessary to take into account, if possible, those subtle and elusive interactions of the reading and writing public that shaped the space of literature and literary tastes at the end of the 18^th century.