Chapter 2, “An Apology for Poetry: Aleksandr Sumarokov’s Two Epistles”, explores the Russian and European contexts of Sumarokov’s Two Epistles: The First on Russian Language, and the Second on Poetry (1748). Well known to scholars as an explicit imitation of Boileau’s L’Art poétique and “the manifesto of Russian classicism”, this work has attracted surprisingly little attention outside of cursory surveys. How could such a lengthy theoretical manifesto emerge in an era when public interest in poetry was minimal? If Sumarokov, an officer of the royal guards and a career-minded courtier, did not have a developed literary field to rely on, what was the social and ideological background that made his literary enterprise worthwhile? I approach these questions by first investigating the (admittedly rudimentary) place of poetry in the emerging educational canon of the Russian nobility (more specifically, of the Noble Cadet Corps where Sumarokov himself was schooled), and in the forming culture of high-society leisure, where Sumarokov first met success as an author of love songs. In this light, his First Epistle on Russian Language can be seen as mirroring official views on the necessity of proficiency in writing, clear style, and translation skills for service nobility. In turn, the much longer Second Epistle on Poetry extends the ideology of noble education and leisure into the realm of poetry. Quite possibly the first text to introduce into Russian the notion of taste as an aesthetic concept, the Second Epistle employs tropes derived from classical Western literary theory (Quintilian, Boileau, J. Ch. Gottsched) and literature of courtly conduct (Gracian) alongside normative discourses of state service, in order to fashion literature as a medium of both enlightened leisure and state ethics. This interpretation is supported by a reading of the early imitations of Sumarokov’s Epistles, that quickly emerged from circles of noble youth and were circulated in manuscript form. These texts clearly demonstrate the ways in which Sumarokovian poetic diction and notions of poetic work contributed to the collective self-fashioning of the emerging educated elite. Finally, I link the Epistles to the cultural practices of the imperial court, including court theater, which Sumarokov himself was closely involved with in his capacities as a dramatist and theater director. Mirroring official praise for the court as a space of tasteful consumption, Sumarokov derived the legitimacy of literature as a medium and as an occupation from the evolving practices and ideologies of court and state.