The work of the prominent poet and playwright V.V. Kapnist (1758-1823) fed on the ideas of combating despotism and serfdom, and sensitively responded to the needs of national cultural life. This edition includes the famous comedy "Yabeda" (1798), which with unsurpassed courage exposed the venality of the bureaucratic and bureaucratic apparatus of autocratic Russia. Along with Kapnist's civic poetry, the collection presents his anacreontic lyrics and the so-called elegiac and Horatian odes - poems that captivate the sincerity of the author's voice, the richness of semantic and emotional shades, and the melody of the verse.