Pyotr Vyazemsky

Prince Pyotr Andreyevich Vyazemsky (; 23 July 1792 – 22 November 1878) was a Russian Imperial poet, a leading personality of the Golden Age of Russian poetry. Biography His parents were a Russian prince of Rurikid stock, Prince Andrey Vyazemsky (1754–1807), and an Irish lady, Jenny Quinn O'Reilly (1762–1802), in baptism Evgenia Ivanovna Vyazemskaya. As a young man he took part in the Battle of Borodino and other engagements of the Napoleonic Wars. Many years later, Tolstoy's description of the battle in War and Peace would appear inaccurate to him and he would engage in a literary feud with the great novelist. In the 1820s Vyazemsky was the most combative and brilliant champion of what then went by the name of Romanticism. Both Prince Pyotr and his wife Princess Vera, née Gagarina were on intimate terms with Pushkin, who often visited their family seat at Ostafievo near Moscow (now a literary museum). Unsurprisingly, Vyazemsky is quoted in Pushkin's works, including Eugene Onegin. The two friends also exchanged several epistles in verse.