The paper analyses the poetic technique used by V.V. Kapnist in the cycle of odes on the death of G.R. Derzhavin; it is shown how Kapnist uses the combination of addresses in the second and third person as a device to depict the struggle of the poet’s thoughts, where, as if in a stream of consciousness turned to the image of the deceased Derzhavin, the objective alternates with the subjective, the personal with the universal.