Anna Petrovna Kern
A.P. Kern Unknown artist. 1830s.
Kern Anna Petrovna (1800-1879), wife of General E.N. Kern, a close relative of Pushkin’s Trigorsk friends Osipov-Wulf. Her name became one of the most famous among those who entered the history of our culture, thanks to her meeting with Pushkin in St. Petersburg (1819), and then in Mikhailovsky (1825). A famous lyric poem is dedicated to her. It is difficult to imagine a Russian who would not know the immortal lines by heart:
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me...
In old age, Anna Kern wrote small but very meaningful memoirs, which Pushkin scholars recognize as the primary biographical material about the great poet.
Book materials used: Pushkin A.S. Works in 5 volumes. M., Synergy Publishing House, 1999.
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KERN Anna Petrovna (1800-1879). Anna Petrovna's personal life was unsuccessful. Her childhood was overshadowed by her eccentric and tyrannical father, Pyotr Markovich Poltoratsky. At his insistence, at the age of seventeen, she was married to fifty-two-year-old Brigadier General E.F. Kern, a rude, poorly educated martinet, in many ways similar to Griboyedov’s Skalozub. Soon she left her husband and only after his death (1841) did she cast in her lot with the man she loved. She was happy, although she lived in poverty.
In the early spring of 1819, Anna Petrovna arrived in St. Petersburg and at the house of her relatives, the Olenins, met nineteen-year-old Pushkin. The young beauty made an indelible impression on the poet. A poem dedicated to Kern reflected this short-term acquaintance and their later meetings:
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
In the languor of hopeless sadness,
In the worries of the noisy bustle
A gentle voice sounded to me for a long time
And I dreamed of cute features.
“For six years I did not see Pushkin,” Kern later said, “but I heard from many about him as a glorious poet and greedily read “The Prisoner of the Caucasus,” “The Bakhchisarai Fountain,” “The Robber Brothers” and the 1st chapter "Eugene Onegin".
In the summer of 1825, Anna Petrovna unexpectedly came to Trigorskoye to visit her aunt Praskovya Aleksandrovna Osipova. “Admired by Pushkin, I passionately wanted to see him...” At dinner, “Suddenly Pushkin came in with a large, thick stick in his hands. The aunt, next to whom I was sitting, introduced him to me; he bowed very low, but did not say a word: timidity was visible in his movements. I also couldn’t find anything to say to him, and it didn’t take long for us to get acquainted and start talking.”
Anna Petrovna stayed in Trigorskoye for about a month and met with Pushkin almost every day. The poet experienced a strong infatuation with Kern and described his feelings for her in the final lines of the poem:
In the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment
My days passed quietly
Without a deity, without inspiration,
No tears, no life, no love.
The soul has awakened:
And then you appeared again,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
And the heart beats in ecstasy,
And for him they rose again
And deity and inspiration,
And life, and tears, and love.
Pushkin remembered his meetings with Kern for a long time, and in July - August 1825 he wrote to her: “Your visit to Trigorskoye left an impression on me deeper and more painful than the one that our meeting at the Olenins once made on me... If you come “, I promise you to be extremely kind - on Monday I will be cheerful, on Tuesday I will be enthusiastic, on Wednesday I will be gentle, on Thursday I will be playful, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday I will be whatever you want, and all week - at your feet.”
They also communicated later in St. Petersburg - in the company of A. A. Delvig, Pushkin’s sister and his parents. The ideal image of Kern, born of the poet’s imagination, gradually becomes real, but the relationship between them continues to remain friendly. She is aware of his creative plans and literary pursuits and follows his life with constant interest.
Kern spoke about her fate, about her friendship with Pushkin and other writers of his circle in her “Memoirs,” meaningful and truthful, the most valuable memoir document of the Pushkin era. Anna Petrovna was buried ten miles from the city of Torzhok, Tver Region, in the picturesque churchyard of Prutnya. Her grave is always decorated with flowers.
L.A. Chereisky. Contemporaries of Pushkin. Documentary essays. M., 1999, p. 155-157.
Read further:
Kern A.P. Memories. Three meetings with Emperor Alexander Pavlovich. 1817-1820 // “Russian antiquity”. Monthly historical publication. 1870 Volume I. St. Petersburg, 1870, pp. 221-227.
Kern Ermolai Fedorovich(1765-1841), staff officer, Anna's husband.
1)" SLIM AND BRIGHT EYED..."
"When you are slim and fair-eyed
She's standing in front of me,
I think: Guria of the prophet
Brought from heaven to earth!
The braid and curls are dark blond,
The outfit is casual and simple,
And on the chest of a luxurious bead
They sway luxuriously at times.
Spring and summer combination
In the living fire of her eyes,
And the quiet sound of her speeches
Gives birth to bliss and desires
In my yearning chest."
This poem is dedicated to Anna Petrovna Kern, an extraordinary woman who inspired Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin in his immortal message “I remember a wonderful moment.”
A masterpiece that has been familiar to all of us since childhood thanks to the enchanting romance by Mikhail Glinka. The short and sonorous surname Kern also belonged to Anna Petrovna’s daughter Ekaterina Ermolaevna, to whom the composer, who was in love with her, dedicated this truly magical romance.
However, Anna Petrovna herself, after her second marriage, signed only as “Anna Vinogradskaya”, i.e. by the name of her beloved second husband. She ran away from the glorious military general Kern at the age of 26, while pregnant.
What do we know about her? Quite a lot, and at the same time very little. The life of this woman did not freeze in one direction for a minute, it changed from year to year. Numerous moves to different cities of the country left little as a memory of her. It is especially unfortunate that very few of her images remain, and those that remain are questioned by numerous researchers.
But this bright woman left behind interesting memoirs and was acquainted with many famous people of her time.
Here is what is written about it in the encyclopedic reference book "Tver Region":
"KERN Anna Petrovna (1800-79), memoirist. Granddaughter of the owner of the village of Bernovo Staritsky U. P. Wulf, daughter of P. M. and E. I. Poltoratsky. Visited the family estate of the Poltoratsky Georgians of Novotorzhsky district (now Torzhoksky district), in 1808-12 she was raised and studied on the estate of I.P. Wulf Bernove. These years are reflected in the memoirs “From Memories of My Childhood” (1870). Later, K. (in her second marriage, Markova-Vinogradskaya) lived in. Petersburg, Moscow, the Bakunin estate of Pryamukhino, Novotorzhsky, Pushkin dedicated a message to her “I remember a wonderful moment...” (1825). K. is the author of diaries and memoirs: “Diary for Relaxation” (1820), “Memories of Pushkin.” , "Memories of Delvig and Glinka", "Delvig and Pushkin" (1859), which preserved the living features of their contemporaries, especially Pushkin and his entourage. Buried in the Prutnya cemetery near Torzhok.
In my opinion, it is interesting that Anna Petrovna, like the beautiful Natalya Goncharova, has Ukrainian roots. Mark Poltoratsky, the owner of an estate in the village of Sosnitsy, Chernigov region, where he was born, was her grandfather.
In this small estate, which was already in the possession of Alexander Vasilyevich Vinogradsky, her second cousin and second husband, Anna would subsequently spend eleven years of her life, but then the couple would be forced to sell it. The once brilliant general Anna Petrovna Kern was forced to live very modestly, to say the least, with her second husband Alexander Vasilyevich Vinogradsky. She published her memoirs in magazines for very little money. And she was even forced to sell Pushkin’s letters addressed to her because of the constant need for money...
Probably because of such a more than modest life and discord in her first marriage, so few portraits of Anna Petrovna have survived, and even those that have survived are called into question.
The reference book "Tver Region" contains a portrait of Anna Petrovna from 1829, or rather a photograph from a lithographed portrait by the French artist Achille Devery. The same portrait is given by Larisa Kertselli in her book “Tver Region in Pushkin’s Drawings.”
I wanted to know something about this artist and about the possibility of him painting a portrait of Anna Petrovna.
2) ARTIST ASHIL DEVERIA.
And this is the information I got about this artist:
"Achille Jacques-Jean-Marie Deveria; (February 6, 1800, Paris - December 23, 1857, ibid.) - French artist, watercolorist and lithographer. Brother of Eugene Deveria.
Student of Girodet-Triozon. In 1822 he began exhibiting at the Paris Salon.
By 1830, he became a successful book illustrator (his illustrations for Johann Goethe's Faust, Cervantes' Don Quixote, and Charles Perrault's fairy tales are known), while simultaneously gaining fame for his erotic miniatures. Deveria's work was dominated by light, sentimental or frivolous subjects.
Deveria was also a prominent portrait painter. In particular, he depicted Alexandre Dumas the father, Prosper Merimee, Walter Scott, Alfred de Musset, Balzac, Victor Hugo, Marie Dorval, Alphonse de Lamartine, Alfred de Vigny, Vidocq and others. Charles Baudelaire said of Deveria's portraits that they reflected “all the morals and aesthetics of the era.”
In 1849, Deveria was appointed head of the engraving department of the National Library and assistant curator of the Egyptian department of the Louvre.
In the last years of his life, Deveria taught drawing and lithography to his son Théodule, and they worked together on an album of portraits.
Deveria's works are exhibited at the Louvre, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Paul Getty Museum, the Norton Simon Museum, and the collection of the University of Liège."
This is a short biography of a French artist, the same age as Anna Petrovna.
If you believe the dating of the alleged portrait of Anna Petrovna, then it was painted in 1828-29. The artist Ashil Deveria himself did not visit St. Petersburg, where Anna Petrovna lived at that time.
What Anna Petrovna looked like in those years is given by her verbal description, which was given by Podolinsky, an admirer of Anna Petrovna, in his “Portrait”.
During these same years, Anna Petrovna, who left her general husband in 1826 and lived separately, maintained acquaintances with many famous people, including the Frenchman Bazin, who was her admirer at that time.
Brief information about this interesting person:
"Bazen Petr Petrovich (1783-1838) - a Frenchman, accepted into Russian service by Alexander I; in 1826 - lieutenant general engineer, director of the Institute of Railway Engineers."
Anna Petrovna calls him in her memoirs: “Memories of Pushkin, Delvig, Glinka” - “my good friend.” Pyotr Petrovich Bazin was not only an outstanding engineer, but also knew several foreign languages. In 1834, he published one of his works on linguistics in Paris.
While in Russian service, he maintained relations with his native country, visited Paris many times and may well have known the artist Achille Devery as an outstanding portrait painter and lithographer. It is quite possible that he commissioned a lithograph from a watercolor portrait of Anna Petrovna from those years.
At that time, Anna Petrovna had not been abroad, but much later, in 1861, with her second husband Markov-Vinogradsky, she went for treatment to Baden in 1861 and to Switzerland in 1865. She was already over sixty...
Ashil Deveria died in 1857 in Paris, that is, much earlier than Anna Kern’s visit to Europe. We can only assume that in 1829 he created a lithograph with a portrait of her brought by one of Anna’s friends. It could well have been Pyotr Petrovich Bazin, who had an ambiguous relationship with Anna.
3) MINIATURE ON IVORY.
“The only reliable pictorial portrait of her (Anna Petrovna) is considered to be a miniature by an unknown artist, transferred in 1904 to the Pushkin House by Anna Petrovna’s granddaughter A.A. Kulzhinskaya and now on display at the All-Russian Pushkin Museum in St. Petersburg. However, this portrait, painted at the end 1820s - early 1830s, by an unskilled master, not only does not convey the beauty of the model, but even disappoints. There is nothing dazzling and enchanting in the woman depicted; the artist failed to convey either the “touching languor in the expression of the eyes” or her liveliness. intelligence, nor poetic nature."
This is what Vladimir Sysoev writes in his book “Life in the Name of Love”.
But I don't agree with him. It is precisely this portrait that conveys the pretty appearance of Anna, which was mentioned by all the people who knew her. “Lovely features” and “tender voice” are recalled by Pushkin in his immortal poem.
When it was written, Anna was twenty-six years old. At that moment, as we know, she visited Trigorskoye and won the poet’s heart, performing Kozlovsky’s romance.
“Lovely features” Alexander Sergeevich depicted in her profile image, which he made on October 20, 1829, on the day of memory of St. Anna Kashinskaya, on a draft of an article containing a protest against the unauthorized publication of his poems by M. A. Bestuzhev-Ryumin in the almanac “Northern Star” .
This silhouette is considered a portrait of Anna Petrovna Kern.
The famous art critic and researcher of the poet’s drawings A. M. Efros, who attributed this portrait, wrote: “The sheet depicts the bowed head of a young lady, with a smooth hairstyle covering her temples and a high chignon on the top of her head. In the ears there are long earrings with pendants. The drawing is made in a sparse and strict outline. He conveys the rounded features of a pretty, almost beautiful woman, in the prime of life and therefore somewhat plump. She has large, disproportionately wide eyes, as if closely drawn onto a thin, straight nose, slightly short, but elegantly contoured; on the lower part of the face there are large soft lips and a slightly heavy, but gently rounded chin.”
Mikhail Glinka, the author of the famous romance and an admirer of Anna Petrovna’s daughter Ekaterina Ermolaevna Kern, in his “Notes” remembers her as “a kind and pretty lady.”
Apparently, Anna Petrovna was like that, as another image of her proves: a drawing by Ivan Zherin, made in 1838, when Anna Petrovna was expecting her son Alexander.
At this time, she had already become close to her second husband, second cousin Alexander Markov-Vinogradsky. General Kern died only in 1841, and in 1842 Anna married a second time. In 1838, that is, at the time of painting the portrait, she was pregnant; she gave birth to her son Alexander in 1839.
During these years, Anna Petrovna lived in St. Petersburg, as did the artist Ivan Zheren.
But the dates of his life indicate that the portrait, or rather the pencil drawing, was made by his son, also an artist and draftsman Ivan Zherin.
4) ARTIST IVAN ZHEREN.
Here is the scant information about this artist that I could find:
"Jean (Ivan Mikhailovich) Zherin (Second half of the 18th century -1827)
Gerin's parents are from France. He himself was born in Moscow. In 1809 he received the title of academician of painting. By order of the Military Society at the Main Guards Headquarters, he created a series of drawings depicting the events of the Patriotic War of 1812. He was an art teacher in Moscow. Died in St. Petersburg."
The artist’s son Ivan Ivanovich Zheren, also an artist, died in 1850.
This is the brief information we have about these artists, father and son. If you follow the dates, then in 1838 only the son could make a pencil portrait of Anna Petrovna.
It’s interesting, but it is in this drawing that, it seems to me, Anna most closely resembles the Prussian Queen Louise, whose similarity she mentions in her memoirs “Three Meetings with the Emperor.”
This is what Granovskaya writes in the book “Friends of Pushkin in Portraits of the Serf Artist Arefov-Bagaev”:
"In his memoirs, “Three Meetings about Emperor Alexander Pavlovich,” A.P. Kern, recalling the first meeting with him in 1817, writes: “It was widely interpreted that he (Alexander I - N.G.) said that I look like a Prussian queen<...>There really was a resemblance to the queen, because in St. Petersburg one officer, who was a chamber-page in the palace when the queen arrived, said this to my aunt when he saw me.”
Further, Anna Petrovna Kern writes that the resemblance to the Prussian queen even influenced Emperor Alexander’s disposition towards her. And, by the way, it helped in her husband’s affairs...
In his article “Anna Petrovna Kern,” B. L. Modzalevsky also wrote: “That there really was a resemblance to Queen Louise is proven by both the portrait of A. P. Kern and the words of the famous Vera Ivanovna Annenkova, who in 1903, telling Yu. M. Shokalsky about his grandmother, recalled this, conveying that the emperor then expressed himself about Anna Petrovna that she was “a completely Prussian queen.”
5) BEAUTY QUEEN.
Such persistent mention of resemblance to Queen Louise undoubtedly flattered Anna Petrovna both in her youth and during the period of writing her memoirs.
But there was something to be proud of! The Prussian Queen Louise, who won many hearts, was a beauty. Moreover, this beauty was sweet, gentle, truly “angelic”, judging by her portraits.
Here's a little information about the beautiful Queen Louise:
"Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of Frederick William III and Queen Consort of Prussia. Grandmother of the Russian Emperor Alexander II. In the descriptions of contemporaries, Queen Louise appears as a beauty with a relaxed manner of communication, more characteristic of representatives of the third estate than of a prim aristocracy.
Born March 10, 1776, Hanover, Brunswick-Lüneburg, Holy Roman Empire
Died 19 July 1810 (age 34), Hohenzieritz, Prussia
Married to Frederick William III (from 1793)
Parents: Charles II, Frederick of Hesse-Darmstadt
Children: Charles of Prussia, Alexandrina of Prussia, Alexandra Feodorovna, Louise of Prussia, Frederick William IV, Wilhelm I."
It is worth adding that both the French Emperor Napoleon and the Russian Emperor Alexander I were admirers of Louise’s beauty. Comparison with such a beauty could simply stun a young woman! After all, she was only seventeen years old at the time of her meeting with the emperor. Anna Petrovna danced with the emperor at a ball in Poltava in 1817, and at the birth of Anna Petrovna’s first daughter Ekaterina Ermolaevna, Alexander I (in absentia) became the child’s godfather. In 1818, Anna Petrovna was given a beautiful diamond clasp as a christening gift by the Emperor. The last meeting with Alexander I took place in 1819. By the way, she helped in the professional activities of General Kern, who at that moment was having troubles in his service...
But did Anna really resemble the Prussian queen? Many portraits of the queen have survived, and the most beautiful of them, in my opinion, is a portrait by the artist Joseph Maria Grassi.
But what seems most similar to me is not the image of Anna by Gerin, the portrait by the French artist Vigée-Lebrun, who at one time worked in Russia. This portrait dates from 1801, the queen was twenty-five years old at that time.
But it looks, it seems to me, like a drawing-portrait of Anna Petrovna by Ivan Zherin, made in 1838. Anna was thirty-eight years old at that time, but she looked very cute and youthful...
6) ALLEGED PORTRAIT OF ANNA.
And about one more portrait of Anna Petrovna, the most controversial, in my opinion...
Granovskaya, in the already mentioned book “Friends of Pushkin in Portraits of the Serf Artist Arefov-Bagaev,” suggests that the portrait of an unknown woman, located in the Russian Museum and dating from 1840, may be a portrait of Anna Petrovna Kern. Could this happen? Theoretically, yes.
In 1840, Anna Petrovna, with her pregnant daughter Ekaterina and one-year-old son, went to Lubny, intending to look at Trigorskoye along the way and visit her relative Praskovya Osipovna Wulf.
In 1841, the serf artist Bagaev painted portraits of Eupraxia and Alexei Wulf.
But according to another attribution, this portrait belongs to Begicheva, a relative of the Wulfs and the mistress of the artist’s serf at that time. It was bought out of serfdom with the assistance of the famous architect Stackenschneider only in 1850.
Who is Begicheva and what is known about her?
Here's some brief information:
"Ivan Matveevich Begichev (1766 - December 23, 1816) - Major General of the Russian Imperial Army from the Begichev family.
The eldest of the two generals of 1812 - the sons of Matvey Semenovich Begichev.
Participated in the Russian-Turkish War of 1787-1791, Polish events, the Russian-Turkish War of 1806-1812, the Patriotic War of 1812 and the War of the Sixth Coalition.
On January 3, 1813, Begichev was awarded the Order of St. George, 3rd class.
Married to Ekaterina Nikolaevna Vyndomskaya (died in 1840), cousin of P. A. Osipova. The couple had two daughters:
Anna Ivanovna (1807-1879), since 1844 married to Admiral Pavel Andreevich Kolzakov (1779-1864).
Pavel Ivanovna (1817-1887), married to diplomat Yakov Andreevich Dashkov (1803-1872)."
We are talking here and further about Anna Ivanovna, a relative of the Wulfs and the owner of a serf artist. It was from her that he was redeemed from captivity.
The artist’s further fate was unsuccessful; the portraits of his work were not recognized.
But he became famous for his portrayal of people close to Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin!
In my opinion, this is the image of Bibikova. As a distant relative, she could have some resemblance to Anna, but the shape of the eyes in the portrait is completely different...
At the time of painting the portrait, Anna Ivanovna was thirty-three years old, which is more consistent with the age of the model depicted than the age of Anna Petrovna, who turned forty in 1840.
Vladimir Sysoev in his book “Life in the Name of Love” cites the opinion of the Pushkin scholar Stark, although he disagrees with him:
“However, the prominent modern Pushkin scholar Academician V.P. Stark, based on the fact that the woman in the portrait of Arefov-Bagaev is depicted in mourning attire - a black silk dress (in color reproduction the dress looks brown) and a crepe cap with black ribbons, suggested that here depicts the owner of the serf artist, landowner A. I. Begicheva (1807-1879) in mourning for her mother, who died on January 19, 1840." It seems that this insufficiently reasoned assumption cannot be the basis for reattributing the portrait..."
But I would like to agree with Stark, if only because it is difficult to imagine Anna Petrovna Kern in a cap. She was too proud of her beautiful blond (or light brown) hair to hide it under a cap...
This is confirmed by the wonderful verbal portrait of her second husband, Alexander Markov-Vinogradsky, who was in love with her, which he left in his “Diaries”.
7) "SOUL".
This is how he writes about his beloved wife (from the book by Vladimir Sysoev):
“In 1841, Anna Petrovna’s second husband A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky created her incomparable verbal portrait:
“Camp near Lubny. May 24, 1841 Evening illuminated by the moon. Saturday. “She will rise, a star of captivating happiness...” And these sparkling eyes - these tender stars - will be reflected in my soul with joy. Their bright beauty will sparkle with delight in me, so warm from them! Their gentle color, their gentle light kisses my heart with their rays! From them it is so clear in the soul, with them everything lives with joy.
My darling has brown eyes. They look luxurious in their wonderful beauty on a round face with freckles. The hair, this chestnut silk, gently outlines it and shades it with special love. The cheeks are hidden behind small, pretty ears, for which expensive earrings are an unnecessary adornment: they are so rich in grace that you will fall in love. And the nose is so wonderful, such a beauty; with exquisite regularity, it gracefully spreads out between the plump cheeks and mysteriously shades the lips, those pink leaves... But then they began to move. Melodic sounds, sadly leaving their luxurious altar, fly straight into my enchanted heart and spill pleasure. The lips are still trembling with sweet speech, and already the eyes want to admire the teeth... And all this, full of feelings and refined harmony, makes up the face of my beautiful one.”
How best can one say about the woman he loved, taking into account that Anna was twenty years older than her husband!
I will only add that, unfortunately, I could not find a photograph of the granddaughter of Anna Petrovna and Alexander Vasilyevich Aglaya Alexandrovna Vinogradskaya, after Kulzhinskaya’s husband. The same one who donated to the museum the only reliable portrait of her grandmother: a miniature on ivory.
Aglaya Alexandrovna was an actress with the pseudonym Daragan. Her portrait was painted by the famous artist Vasily Vasilyevich Gundobin and it is kept in the Samara Art Museum.
ON THE COLLAGE: PORTRAIT OF ANNA PETROVNA-MINIATURE ON IVORY-LEFT
RIGHT: TOP ROW PORTRAIT OF ANNA KERN BY IVAN ZHERENA
NEXT IS A PORTRAIT OF LOUISE OF PRUSSIAN BY VIGENE-LEBRUN.
BOTTOM ROW PORTRAIT OF ANNA KERN BY ASHIL DEVERY (ALLEGED)
NEXT IS AN ALLEGED PORTRAIT OF ANNA?(BIBICHEVA) BY AREFOV-BAGAEV.
T.1 – XV-XVIII centuries. – M.: Book, 1976.
T.2. Part 1 – 1801-1856 – M.: Book, 1977.
T.2. Part 2 – 1801-1856 – M.: Book, 1978.
T.3. Part 1 – 1857-1894 – M.: Book, 1979.
T.3. Part 2 – 1857-1894 – M.: Book, 1980.
T.3. Part 3 – 1857-1894 – M.: Book, 1981.
T.3. Part 4 – 1857-1894 – M.: Book, 1982.
T.4. Part 1 – 1895-1917 – M.: Book, 1983.
T.4. Part 2 – 1895-1917 – M.: Book, 1984.
T.4. Part 3 – 1895-1917 – M.: Book, 1985.
True, there are only links to publications, but not the publications themselves. But there are a lot of links, to everything imaginable and inconceivable. And it will take a couple of days to dig out the necessary sources in these deposits. But, having accurate target indications at hand, it is much easier to find and download from historical sources, such as the electronic library Old Books or Runiverse. Are you interested in such things? Anyway take a look at the link
http://uni-persona.srcc.msu.ru/site/ind_res.htm
Here is just a resource on the works of Zayonchkovsky. To be honest, I don’t use it; my work is stored in 12 volumes of PDF format. If you are interested, I can send it via file sharing.
I'll ask other questions later.
Sincerely,
Thank you, Nikolay! First of all, I had in mind the memories of the heroines of my works: Anna Kern, Doli Fikelmon, Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova Rosset, Olga Nikolaevna Romanova, and also translated something from German.
Reading them is interesting from both an educational and an artistic point of view.
If you do not cite generally accepted points, you can find something new.
I also find a lot of interesting things in materials about the artists who painted portraits of my heroines. Sometimes it is these materials that reveal an unusual side to them.
Sincerely,
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
I look at such a familiar portrait, it is considered the only reliable one, and I try to imagine this woman as the muse of our Genius, who inspired him to write an immortal poem, which later, on another occasion, by coincidence, another Genius made a romance.
The idea of beauty, its canons, and unwritten criteria were different in different eras. Now, having become accustomed to other examples of beauty, I don’t see the “genius of pure beauty” in this portrait, but the poet did, although by that time he had already seen many of the world’s first beauties and knew how to appreciate beauty, of course.
Most likely, the poet saw something more interesting and deep in this very young, but already very unhappy woman. It was not beauty and secular manners, which were so valued then, that Pushkin sang about.
In "Eugene Onegin" the poet writes about that practically first meeting:
"She was not in a hurry,
Not cold, not talkative,
Without a look, insolent for everyone,
Without pretensions to success,
Without these little antics,
No imitative undertakings;
Everything was quiet, it was just there."
I think, as often happens, the circumstances of that meeting, after which immortal poems were born, explain a lot. In Mikhailovsky, “in the wilderness, in the darkness of confinement,” despite all the ease of that local existence, the poet was bored after the cozy patriarchal Moscow and especially after the brilliant sovereign Petersburg.
Regarding the “darkness of imprisonment,” the poet, of course, went too far; after all, the family estate is not the Peter and Paul Ravelin, but I’m sure it was very boring, it was the wilderness.
Mikhailovskoye and around it are dazzlingly beautiful places in Central Russia. But it’s one thing to come here to visit good friends, and quite another to live here for a long time, and even in the very peculiar position of an exile. Boring...
In the summer there is still some variety in walks to neighboring estates, but in Russia there is still a long autumn-winter period when it is not boring, but very boring.
Anna Petrovna wrote about her life in the garrisons - there was nothing to do, “my head is already spinning from reading.”...
The Woolf sisters no longer inspire, the “wonderful moments” are behind them, and the poet needs inspiration like air.
And here She appears. Once upon a time, 6 years ago, their paths had already crossed in the northern capital, but then they, twenty years old, did not notice each other.
Now He is a famous poet, exiled to his estate for freethinking. She is the one who escaped to the estate next to Mikhailovsky to visit her sisters from her martinet husband, a general 35 years older than her, married at the age of 16, who not only did not love him, but felt physical disgust towards him. According to a good friend of the family, “thick epaulets constituted his only right to be called a man.” After several years of wandering around the garrisons with their specific environment, after “he, evil and unbridled, exhausted all kinds of insults on her,” in the summer of 1825 she meets in the cozy estate of her relatives a poet already famous in Russia with a difficult character, with frequently changing mood.
At such a moment that meeting took place. Anna Petrovna herself said about herself that she looked “a little down in bloom,” I think, rather, she felt like one, which is very understandable.
That meeting was preceded by a humorous, ironic correspondence through a mutual good friend who said:
“Even then she emanated the exquisite aroma of scandal.”
A month in the village flew by unnoticed; before leaving, Anna Petrovna received a piece of paper inserted into the first chapter of Eugene Onegin with the very dedication that immortalized her name. The poet, as this happens with poets, could see more than others saw; the imagination of the Genius of poetry completed for him the Genius of beauty.
Neither Kern herself nor any of her contemporaries-memorists testified that any of the parties lost their heads from that love. In Kern's memoirs, the idea appears that Pushkin loved no one except his nanny and his sister. Everything was in the spirit of that time, that era when it was considered normal to live easily and cheerfully for one’s own pleasure, which did not always work out for various reasons. It was a flirtation, such a game, easy, non-binding, not always so innocent, one of the participants in that game turned out to be the Genius of Russian Poetry.
This is the solution...
After leaving the general with her children, and after his death marrying her second cousin, who was much younger than her, the attitude towards the poet’s muse in the world was ambiguous. Some contemporary memoirists, describing well-known episodes of that time in which Kern definitely took place, considered it inappropriate to mention her name.
Pushkin’s attitude towards her did not change subsequently:
"When your younger years
The noisy rumor is a disgrace,
And you, by the sentence of the world
I lost my rights to honor,
Alone, among the cold crowd,
I share your suffering..."
Anna Petrovna, one might say, having run away with her daughters from her general, loses all her means of livelihood.
She even had to write the following to the Tsar: “The complete ruin of the father of my court councilor Poltoratsky, which involved all my property, as well as the refusal of my husband, Lieutenant General Kern, to give me legal maintenance, deprived me of all means of subsistence, ... the disease has depleted the remaining means ..."
Later, having got married, she loses the right to a general's pension, her husband loses his career due to the reprehensibility of his marriage."
From this letter to her brother (1871) one can judge the situation of Anna Petrovna in her advanced years:
“Help me once again, probably for the last time, because I’m on very thin strands: I almost went twice this winter. Please don’t refuse me this last time, please send 100 to St. Petersburg in the name of... .; I owe her part, and for the rest she will renew my wardrobe, because the mice ate my wardrobe.”
The only priceless wealth of that time were several letters from Pushkin to her, which (except for the very first) were sold in a completely hopeless situation for next to nothing, one might say, given into good hands.
And despite all the hardships, she and her husband, who had lived together for 36 years, wrote to their relatives:
“We, despairing of ever acquiring material contentment, value every moral impression and chase the pleasure of the soul and catch every smile of the world around us in order to enrich ourselves with spiritual happiness. Rich people are never poets... Poetry is the wealth of poverty.”
Her letters have not survived. But her memories remained, which are considered a very accurate and sincere touch to the portrait of that era.
The same age as the century, she died in 1879, outliving her husband by 4 months.
“The coffin with A.P.’s body was taken to Pryamukhino, Tver province, where her husband was buried,
but they didn’t deliver it due to muddy roads and were buried in the village of Prutnya.”
We have paved the road to Space; we have not yet reached the country roads.
***
The poem that was once given to Glinka was then lost by him.
The poems resonated with music much later, when meeting with Anna Petrovna’s daughter Ekaterina.
So in one romance three Russian Geniuses met...
*****
Used Memoirs of A.P. Kern and her contemporaries.
Reviews
Anna Petrovna met Pushkin again only 2 years later, already in St. Petersburg. There she entered into a fleeting relationship with the poet; Pushkin treated this event ironically and mentioned what happened in a rather rude tone in a letter to his friend Sergei Sobolevsky.
Careless!
You don’t write to me anything about the 2100 rubles I owe you, but you write to me about M-me Kern,
which, with the help of God, I fucked the other day.
Even earlier, in a letter to Alexei Wulf dated May 7, 1826, Pushkin calls Anna Kern “our Babylonian harlot Anna Petrovna.”
She went down in history as the woman who inspired Pushkin to write magnificent works. But the seductress left her mark not only in his soul, captivating many other men’s hearts.
Anna Petrovna Poltoratskaya was born on February 22, 1800 in the city of Orel into a noble family. Mother - Ekaterina Ivanovna - daughter of the Oryol governor Wulf, father - Pyotr Markovich - court councilor. The girl grew up in the circle of numerous noble and friendly relatives. Thanks to hired teachers and a governess, she received a good education.
Like many provincial young ladies, she had few temptations and opportunities for entertainment. Timid attempts at flirtation and coquetry were strictly suppressed by her parents (at the age of 13, the girl even lost her long braid - her mother cut off her daughter’s hair so that she would have nothing with which to seduce the male sex). But there was plenty of time and prerequisites for naive girlish dreams. Imagine the disappointment of sixteen-year-old Anna when one day Poltoratsky agreed on his daughter’s marriage to Ermolai Kern. The 52-year-old general was an enviable match for any local girl of marriageable age. However, the girl submitted to her father’s will only out of fear, which she felt for her parent throughout her childhood.
On January 8, 1817, Anna Poltoratskaya began to bear the surname Kern. She got a tyrannical, rude and narrow-minded husband. He could not achieve not only the love, but even the respect of his young wife. Anna quietly hated and despised him. She treated the daughters born from the hateful general coldly. And her own life, with constant travel following her military spouse, seemed dull and joyless to her.
Anna Kern and Alexander Pushkin
The young woman’s existence was brightened only by infrequent trips to relatives and friends, where parties were held with games and dancing. She enjoyed them with rapture, basking in universal love and admiration. It was at one of these dinners in 1819 that something happened to Alexander Pushkin. At first, Kern didn’t even notice the unattractive poet among the more eminent guests. But Alexander Sergeevich immediately noticed this cute coquette, both shy and modest, and tried with all his might to attract Anna’s attention. Which caused some irritation in the well-bred beauty - the poet’s remarks seemed painfully inappropriate and provocative to her.
Their next meeting took place in 1825 at the Trigorskoye estate. By this time, Kern appreciated Pushkin’s talent, becoming a fan of his work, and therefore treated the poet more favorably than the first time. With age and the blows of fate she experienced, Anna herself changed. The young woman was no longer as timid as before. Seductive, self-confident, mastered to perfection. And only a certain shyness that slipped through from time to time added a special charm to Anna. Pushkin was inflamed with passion, reflecting the whole whirlwind of his experiences in the famous poem “I remember a wonderful moment” (later he dedicated many more delightful lines to her), which, of course, flattered Kern, but did not give rise to mutual feelings. Before leaving the estate, the beauty graciously allowed the poet to write letters to her.
For the next two years, an entertaining correspondence was conducted between Pushkin and Anna Kern, in which Alexander Sergeevich confessed his mad love for Kern. In exquisite expressions, he deified his muse and endowed her with unimaginable virtues. And then suddenly, in another attack of jealousy, he would begin to rage and scold her, addressing her almost insultingly. His confidence in Anna’s favor towards her cousin and friend of the poet, Wulf (who, by the way, retained ardent feelings for this woman throughout his life) drove Pushkin into a rage. Alexander never wrote anything like this to any previous or subsequent lady.
In 1827, Kern finally separated from her husband. The unloved husband no longer just aroused disgust, but also hatred: he tried to set his own wife up with his nephew, he deprived her of maintenance, he was fiercely jealous... However, Anna paid for her independence with her own reputation, henceforth becoming “fallen” in the eyes of society.
The same Pushkin, not seeing the object of adoration in front of him, but at the same time, regularly receiving news about Anna’s incredible popularity with other men (even Alexander’s brother Leo was among her fans), became increasingly disappointed in her. And when he met his beloved in St. Petersburg, and Kern, intoxicated by the freedom he had finally gained, surrendered to him, he suddenly lost interest in the beauty.
, Torzhok; nee Poltoratskaya, by second husband - Markova-Vinogradskaya listen)) - Russian noblewoman, best known in history for the role she played in the life of Pushkin. Author of memoirs.
Biography
Father - Poltoratsky, Pyotr Markovich. Together with her parents she lived in the estate of her maternal grandfather I. P. Wulf, the Oryol governor, whose descendant D. A. Wulf is her great-nephew.
Later, the parents and Anna moved to the district town of Lubny, Poltava province. Anna spent her entire childhood in this city and in Bernovo, an estate also owned by I. P. Wulf
Her parents belonged to the circle of wealthy official nobility. His father is a Poltava landowner and court councilor, the son of the head of the court singing choir, M.F. Poltoratsky, famous back in Elizabethan times, married to the rich and powerful Agathoclea Alexandrovna Shishkova. Mother - Ekaterina Ivanovna, nee Wulf, a kind woman, but sickly and weak-willed, was under the command of her husband. Anna herself read a lot.
The young beauty began to “go out into the world”, looking at the “brilliant” officers, but her father himself brought the groom to the house - not only an officer, but also General E.F. Kern. At this time, Anna was 17 years old, Yermolay Fedorovich was 52. The girl had to come to terms and in January, on the 8th of the year, the wedding took place. In her diary she wrote: “It is impossible to love him - I am not even given the consolation of respecting him; I’ll tell you straight - I almost hate him.” Later, this was expressed in her attitude towards the children from her marriage with the general - Anna was quite cool towards them (her daughters Ekaterina and Anna, born in 1818 and 1821, respectively, were raised at the Smolny Institute). Anna Petrovna had to lead the life of the wife of an army servant of the Arakcheev era with the change of garrisons "as intended": Elizavetgrad, Dorpat, Pskov, Old Bykhov, Riga...
In Kyiv, she becomes close to the Raevsky family and speaks about them with a feeling of admiration. In Dorpat, her best friends are the Moyers, a professor of surgery at the local university, and his wife, “Zhukovsky’s first love and his muse.” Anna Petrovna also remembered her trip to St. Petersburg at the beginning of 1819, where in the house of her aunt, E.M. Olenina, she heard I.A. Krylov and where she first met Pushkin.
However, after Pushkin’s marriage and Delvig’s death, the connection with this social circle was severed, although Anna remained on good terms with the Pushkin family - she still visited Nadezhda Osipovna and Sergei Lvovich Pushkin, “The Lion whose head I turned”, and of course, with Olga Sergeevna Pushkina (Pavlishcheva), "confidante in matters of the heart", (in her honor Anna will name her youngest daughter Olga).
Bust of Anna Kern near the Ave Sol hall, Riga
Anna continued to love and fall in love, although in “secular society” she acquired the status of an outcast. Already at 36 years old, she fell in love again - and it turned out to be true love. The chosen one was a sixteen-year-old cadet of the First St. Petersburg Cadet Corps, her second cousin Sasha Markov-Vinogradsky. She completely stopped appearing in society and began to lead a quiet family life. Three years later she gave birth to a son, whom she named Alexander. All this happened outside of marriage. A little later (at the beginning of 1841), old Kern dies. Anna, as the general's widow, was entitled to a decent pension, but on July 25, 1842, she officially married Alexander and now her last name is Markova-Vinogradskaya. From this moment on, she can no longer claim a pension, and they have to live very modestly. In order to somehow make ends meet, they have to live for many years in a village near Sosnovitsy, Chernigov province - the only family estate of their husband. In 1855, Alexander Vasilyevich managed to get a position in St. Petersburg, first in the family of Prince S.A. Dolgorukov, and then as a head of the department of appanages. It was hard, Anna Petrovna earned money by translating, but their union remained unbreakable until her death. In November 1865, Alexander Vasilyevich retired with the rank of collegiate assessor and a small pension, and the Markov-Vinogradskys left St. Petersburg. They lived here and there, and were haunted by terrible poverty. Out of necessity, Anna Petrovna sold her treasures - Pushkin's letters, for five rubles apiece. On January twenty-eighth, 1879, A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky died in Pryamukhin ( “from stomach cancer in terrible pain”), and four months later (May 27) Anna Petrovna herself died, in "furnished rooms", on the corner of Gruzinskaya and Tverskaya (her son moved her to Moscow). They say that when the funeral procession with the coffin passed along Tverskoy Boulevard, the famous monument to the famous poet was just being erected on it. This is how Genius met his “genius of pure beauty” for the last time.
Anna Kern's grave
She was buried in a graveyard near an old stone church in the village of Prutnya, 6 kilometers from
