Anna Petrovna Kern portraits. “The genius of pure beauty” - the fate and love of Anna Kern

Biography

The life of Anna Petrovna Kern is a difficult life, full of vicissitudes and hardships, almost tragic. And at the same time, she is surprisingly full of significant events and experiences, vivid impressions, rich, varied spiritual interests - everything that many years of communication with remarkable people have given her.

A.P. Kern, as she said, “was born along with the century” - at the very beginning (February 11) of 1800. Her homeland is the city of Orel, where her maternal grandfather I.P. Wulf was the governor. But the girl was barely a few months old when her parents left the provincial Oryol, and all her early years were spent in the provincial town of Lubny in Ukraine and on the Tver estate of I.P. Wulf Bernove.

Her parents belonged to the circle of wealthy official nobility. His father, a Poltava landowner and court councilor P. M. Poltoratsky, was the son of the head of the court singing choir, Mark Fedorovich Poltoratsky, who was famous back in Elizabethan times, married to Agathoklea Aleksandrovna Shishkova, a rich and powerful woman who equally despotically ruled both her huge family and her numerous villages. Pyotr Markovich was an energetic, intelligent, well-read man, but tyranny and frivolity, bordering on adventurism, often led him to the most thoughtless actions, which caused a lot of trouble to himself and those around him. Mother - Ekaterina Ivanovna, born Wulf, a kind woman, tenderly attached to her children, but sickly and weak-willed, was entirely under the command of her husband.

Many different people surrounded the observant, impressionable girl and somehow influenced the formation of her character and her life concepts. In addition to her parents, this includes the benevolent high-ranking grandfather Ivan Petrovich, and the kind grandmother Anna Fedorovna, and the cruel, capricious Agathoclea Alexandrovna, countless uncles, aunts, cousins ​​and brothers, and the affectionate nanny Vasilyevna, and the patriarchal inhabitants of Lubno... Subsequently, Anna Petrovna was inclined was somewhat to idealize these people, but from her descriptions it is clearly visible how low the intellectual level of this landowner and district-philistine environment surrounding her was, how narrow the interests were, how insignificant the occupations were.

For four years (from 8 to 12 years old), the girl, together with her cousin and closest friend for life, Anna Wulf, was raised and taught foreign languages ​​and various sciences by Mlle Benoit. Invited to Bernovo from St. Petersburg, mlle Benoit, apparently, compared favorably with most foreign governesses of those times. An intelligent and knowledgeable teacher, she managed to win the respect and love of her pupil through strictly systematic work; she managed not only to teach the girl a lot, but, most importantly, to awaken in her curiosity and a taste for independent thinking. All classes were held in French; Russian was taught by a student who came from Moscow for several weeks during a vacation.

From her earliest years, as Anna Petrovna recalled, her passion for reading did not leave her. “I spent every free minute reading French and Russian books from my mother’s library.” This hobby, encouraged in every possible way by Mlle Benoit, eventually became a vital necessity. “We perceived from books only what was understandable to the heart, what inspired the imagination, what was consistent with our spiritual purity, corresponded to our daydreaming and created poetic images and ideas in our playful imagination.”

And one more teacher, according to Anna Petrovna herself, had a great and beneficial influence on the formation of her spiritual appearance - nature. Tver fields and groves, Poltava steppes... When eight-year-old cousins ​​Anna Poltoratskaya and Anna Wulf first met in Bernovo, they “embraced and started talking. She described the beauties of Trigorsky, and I described the delights of Luben...”

Until the age of sixteen, Anna Petrovna lived with her parents in Lubny. As she says, “she taught her brother and sisters, dreamed in the groves and behind books, danced at balls, listened to the praise of strangers and the censure of relatives, participated in home performances... and generally led a rather vulgar life, like most provincial young ladies.”

Some biographers of A.P. Kern, including the author of the book about her - B.L. Modzalevsky (See: Modzalevsky B.L. Anna Petrovna Kern (based on materials from the Pushkin House). - L., 1924.), claim , as if her memoirs contain evidence of some special inclination from an early age towards coquetry and flirtation, which later developed. One can hardly agree with this. All those minor grievances, griefs, embarrassments that Kern innocently talks about are typical for every teenage girl. An impartial reader of “Memories of My Childhood” sees for many pages the attractive features of a kind and sincere nature, lively and impressionable, modest and timid, although she shared the “vulgar life” of her environment, but in intelligence, development, and needs, she was noticeably different from "most provincial young ladies." This is, apparently, what she was like when she was 12-16 years old and wrote these pages.

The established, familiar life in the parental home ended unexpectedly and sadly.

On January 8, 1817, the girl, who was not yet seventeen years old, was married to fifty-two-year-old division general Ermolai Fedorovich Kern. The tyrant father was flattered that his daughter would become a general. E. F. Kern was an old campaigner who rose to the ranks of general from the lower ranks, a narrow-minded man who knew no other interests than show, exercises, and reviews. Not only due to his advanced age, but also due to his narrow-mindedness and rudeness, he was in no way suitable for his young bride, secularly educated, dreaming of a life illuminated by noble ideals and sublime feelings. Many “district young ladies” envied her: finding a groom-general was not easy. She submitted to the will of her parents with despair. Kern not only did not enjoy her favor, but disgusted her. She understood that all her dreams were crumbling and there was nothing ahead but everyday life, gray and joyless.

So, in essence, as soon as life began, it turned out to be broken, “nailed in bloom,” tragically distorted.

For almost ten years, Anna Petrovna was forced to follow her husband from one city to another, depending on where the unit commanded by General Kern was quartered. Elizavetgrad, Dorpat, Pskov, Old Bykhov, Riga... From a provincial-philistine, small-scale environment, she found herself in a provincial-military environment. What this environment of Arakcheev’s time was like is known. Even senior officers, as a rule, are rude and ignorant people. Interests are the most insignificant: exercises, reviews, career advancement...

Events that were significant or memorable were extremely rare. Anna Petrovna especially 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 met Pushkin for the first time, and visits to relatives in Lubny, sometimes quite lengthy.

Here, in 1824-1825, she met and became friendly with a neighbor on the estate - A. G. Rodzianko, in her words, “a sweet poet, smart, kind and very likeable person.” Rodzianko knew Pushkin. From him, Anna Petrovna found the recently published “Prisoner of the Caucasus” and “The Bakhchisarai Fountain” and even took part in the correspondence of the poets. She was in every possible way drawn to people who were smart, sincere, talented - unlike those who constantly surrounded her in her own home. In Kyiv, she meets 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.” In the summer of 1825, she made a trip to her aunt P.A. Wulf-Osipova in Trigorskoye to meet the exiled Pushkin: “Admired by Pushkin, I passionately wanted to see him.”

Life in an atmosphere of barracks rudeness and ignorance with a hated husband was unbearable for her. Even in her “Relaxation Diary” of 1820, she expressed in the most ardent terms her hatred of this atmosphere, feelings of deepest dissatisfaction, close to despair: “What melancholy! This is terrible! I just don’t know where to go. Imagine my situation - not a single souls, with whom I could talk, my head is already spinning from reading, I’ll finish the book - and again I’m alone in this world, my husband is either sleeping, or at training, or smoking. Oh God, have mercy on me!” Over time, the conflict between an honest, impressionable nature that cannot stand lies and falsehood and vulgar, dirty everyday life became more and more aggravated.

At the beginning of 1826, Anna Petrovna left her husband, went to St. Petersburg and settled there with her father and sister (her daughters Ekaterina and Anna, born in 1818 and 1821, were raised at the Smolny Institute).
The end of the 20s - the beginning of the 30s, although they were not easy for A.P. Kern (the need to arrange her own destiny, financial dependence on her husband), were at the same time the best years of her conscious life. She entered the circle of people she dreamed of, saw on their part understanding, friendly participation, and sometimes even enthusiastic worship.

Among her closest friends were the entire Pushkin family - Nadezhda Osipovna, Sergei Lvovich, Lev, whose head she “turned,” and especially Olga, whom she cordially helped at the difficult moment of her secret marriage and in whose honor she named her youngest daughter Olga. Anna Petrovna was her own person with the Delvigs (she met A.A. Delvig at the Pushkins), for some time she even rented an apartment in the same house with them, and Sofia Mikhailovna spent whole days in her company, sharing her most intimate things. She was aware of all the undertakings and concerns of the Pushkin-Delvig circle, she read “Northern Flowers” ​​and “Literary Gazette” in proof. I myself tried to translate French novels. She was an indispensable participant in friendly literary evenings, for which Pushkin and Vyazemsky, Krylov and Zhukovsky, Venevitinov and Mitskevich, Pletnev and Gnedich, Podolinsky, Somov, Illichevsky gathered in the Delvigs’ small apartment... (See: Gaevsky V. Delvig: Article Four / / Contemporary. - 1854.- No. 9. - pp. 7-8.) Never, neither before nor later, A.P. Kern lived such a rich spiritual life as at this time.

The young poet D.V. Venevitinov, who loved her company, had conversations with her, “full of that high purity and morality for which he was distinguished,” wanted to paint her portrait, saying that “he admires her like Iphigenia in Taurida...” (Pyatkovsky A.N. Prince V.F. Odoevsky and D.V. Venevitinov. - St. Petersburg, 1901. - P. 129.). A. V. Nikitenko, later a famous critic, professor at St. Petersburg University, and at that time still a student and aspiring writer, who experienced a short but strong passion for Kern, was interested in her opinion about his novel and, having received a review containing serious critical remarks, entered into her into a lengthy debate “on equal terms” (See: Nikitenko A.V. Diary: In 3 volumes. T. 1.- M., 1955.- P. 46 et seq.). Anna Petrovna's remarks show the maturity of her literary tastes, which were formed, of course, not without the influence of Pushkin and Delvig.

Kern met with M.I. Glinka at the Delvigs. Here those friendly relations were established between them that lasted for many years (See: Glinka M.I. Literary Heritage. - T. 1. - L.; M., 1952.).
In 1831, with the death of Delvig and the marriage of Pushkin, A.P. Kern’s connection with this circle of people especially close and dear to her was severed. She was still close to O. S. Pushkina (Pavlishcheva), visited N. O. and S. L. Pushkin, where she met Alexander Sergeevich. But there was no longer that close circle of friends, that atmosphere of relaxed creative communication that made life full and interesting and made it possible to forget the everyday hardships of everyday life.

The following years brought A.P. Kern many sorrows. She buried her mother. Her husband demanded her return and refused financial support. Deprived of all means, robbed by her father and relatives, she, according to N. O. Pushkina, “suffered from day to day.” After the death of her mother, in 1832, she tried to seek the return of her estate, sold by P. M. Poltoratsky to Count Sheremetev. Pushkin and E.M. Khitrovo took part in the efforts. But nothing was achieved. I tried to do translations, again turned to Pushkin for help, but I lacked experience and skills, and nothing came of that either. However, even in such circumstances, she remained steadfast and independent.

At the beginning of 1841, E. F. Kern died, and a year and a half later, on July 25, 1842, Anna Petrovna remarried - to her second cousin A. V. Markov-Vinogradsky. Her husband was much younger than her, but they were connected by a feeling of great strength and sincerity. Alexander Vasilyevich, while still a student of the First St. Petersburg Cadet Corps, fell madly in love with his cousin, who was youthful and still attractive at 36-37 years old. Released into the army, he served for only two years and retired with the rank of second lieutenant in order to get married. Everything was sacrificed - career, material security, location of relatives. Anna Petrovna renounced the title of “Excellency,” the substantial pension assigned to her for Kern, her father’s support, and was not afraid of instability, insecurity, and a foggy, uncertain future. It was a bold step that not every woman in her circle would have dared to take.

The Markov-Vinogradskys lived for almost forty years, almost without being separated. We raised a son. Material insecurity, which at times reached the point of extreme need, and all sorts of everyday adversities haunted them relentlessly. In order to somehow make ends meet, they were forced to live for many years in a small village near the district town of Sosnitsa, Chernigov province - the only ancestral “patrimony” of Alexander Vasilyevich. A place as an assessor, providing funds for a comfortable existence, or the opportunity to move to live in the city of Torzhok, or even half a pound of coffee were the subject of dreams. However, no life difficulties and adversities could disturb the touchingly tender agreement of these two people, based on a commonality of spiritual needs and interests. They, in their own expression, which they liked to repeat, “developed happiness for themselves.” This is convincingly evidenced by the letters of A.P. and A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky from Sosnitsa to Alexander Vasilyevich’s sister, Elizaveta Vasilievna, Bakunina’s husband. So, for example, in September 1851, Anna Petrovna wrote: “Poverty has its joys, and we always feel good, because we have a lot of love... Maybe under better circumstances we would be less happy.” And a year later, on August 17, 1852: “Today my husband went on his duty for a week, and maybe longer. You cannot imagine how sad I am when he leaves! Imagine and scold me for what I have become unusually suspicious and superstitious! I’m afraid - what were you thinking? You’ll never guess! - I’m afraid that we both have never been so tender towards each other, so happy, so in agreement!” (Manuscript department of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 27259/CXCVb54.)

It is a rare letter that does not contain a list or even a critical analysis of books read together. Among them are novels by Dickens and Thackeray, Balzac and George Sand, stories by Panaev and Baron Brambeus (Senkovsky), almost all thick Russian magazines: Sovremennik, Otechestvennye Zapiski, Library for Reading... The spiritual life of these abandoned people into the rural wilderness, was amazingly full and varied.

At the end of 1855, the Markov-Vinogradskys moved to St. Petersburg, where Alexander Vasilyevich first managed to get a job as a home teacher in the prince’s family. S.A. Dolgorukov, and then the head of the department of appanages. The ten years they spent in St. Petersburg were perhaps the most prosperous in their life together: relatively secure financially and extremely rich in mental and social activity. The people now surrounding Anna Petrovna, although not as brilliant as they once were, are far from ordinary. She found her closest friends in the family of N. N. Tyutchev, a writer, a man of liberal views, and a former friend of Belinsky. She spent a lot of time in the company of his wife Alexandra Petrovna and sister-in-law Constance Petrovna de Dodt. Here she met with F.I. Tyutchev, P.V. Annenkov, I.S. Turgenev. Turgenev, together with Annenkov, visited Anna Petrovna on her name day, February 3, 1864. This is noted in the diary of A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky (This extensive diary is kept in the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences), and Turgenev talks about this in a letter to P. Viardot. His review as a whole is more than restrained. But it also contains the following words: “In her youth, she must have been very pretty... She keeps the letters that Pushkin wrote to her like a shrine... A pleasant family, even a little touching...” (Turgenev I . S. Complete collection of works and letters: Letters. - M., 1963. - P. 222-223.) In the St. Petersburg years, Anna Petrovna again turned to translations and asked for help in publishing them. M.I. Glinka, with whom she renewed her acquaintance. Friendly ties with O.S. were also renewed. Pavlishcheva.

At the same time, almost all of her memoirs were written.

In November 1865, Alexander Vasilyevich retired with the rank of collegiate assessor and a small pension, and the Markov-Vinogradskys left St. Petersburg.

All subsequent years they led a wandering life - they lived either with relatives in the Tver province, then in Lubny, Kyiv, Moscow, or in Bakunin's Pryamukhin. They were still haunted by appalling poverty. Anna Petrovna even had to part with her only treasure - Pushkin's letters, and sell them for five rubles apiece. It is impossible to indifferently read the lines of Alexander Vasilyevich’s letter to A.N. Wulf, who sent help at a critical moment - a hundred rubles: “My poor old lady shed a tear and kissed the rainbow piece of paper, so it came in handy...” (Manuscript Department of the Institute of Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 22922/S2Hb36 .) And as before, they endured all the blows of fate with amazing fortitude, without becoming embittered, without becoming disillusioned with life, without losing their former interest in it.

On January twenty-eighth, 1879, A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky died in Pryamukhin. A week later, his son reported to A.N. Wulf: “Dear Alexey Nikolaevich! With sadness, I hasten to inform you that on January 28, my father died of cancer in the stomach with terrible suffering in the village of Bakunin in the village of Pryamukhin. After the funeral, I transported my unfortunate old mother to me to Moscow - where I hope to somehow accommodate her and where she will live out her short, but painfully sad life. Any participation will bring joy to the poor orphan mother, for whom the loss of her father is irreplaceable" (Manuscript Department of the Institute of Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 22921/ S2Hb35.).

In Moscow, in modest furnished rooms on the corner of Tverskaya and Gruzinskaya, Anna Petrovna lived for about four months, until her death on May 27 of the same year, 1879.

There is a well-known story that has become a legend that “her coffin met a monument to Pushkin, which was being imported to Moscow” (Russian Archive. - 1884. - No. 6. - P. 349.). According to another version, shortly before her death, she heard noise from her room caused by the transportation of a huge granite pedestal for the monument to Pushkin, and, having learned what was going on, said: “Ah, finally! Well, thank God, it’s high time!” "(Modzalevsky B.L. Anna Petrovna Kern. - pp. 124-125.) Whichever of these two versions is closer to reality, the very fact of the existence of such a legend is significant.

Talking about her visit to the Olenins’ house in the winter of 1819, A.P. Kern recalled I.A. Krylov’s expressive reading of one of his fables. “In the child of such charm,” she wrote, “it was difficult to see anyone other than the culprit of poetic pleasure, and that’s why I didn’t notice Pushkin.”

Several years have passed. It was precisely what so captivated the nineteen-year-old provincial girl at the Olenins’ evening—the “poetic pleasure,” the “charm” of poetry—that became the reason for her keen interest in the personality of the ugly, curly-haired young man whom she had not noticed at the time. The “southern poems” that thundered throughout Russia brought the name of Pushkin to distant Lubny. Anna Petrovna wrote to her cousin Anna Nikolaevna Wulf about her admiration for Pushkin’s poems in Trigorskoye, knowing that her words would reach the exiled poet. Anna Nikolaevna, in turn, told her “his various phrases” about the meeting at the Olenins’. “Explain to me, dear, what is A.P. Kern, who wrote a lot of tenderness about me to her cousin? They say she is a lovely thing - but the glorious Lubny are just beyond the mountains,” Pushkin turns to A.G. Rodzianko at the end of 1824, and in response he receives a message from Rodzianko and A.P. Kern. Thus began their correspondence.

It is interrupted by Anna Petrovna's arrival in Trigorskoye in the summer of 1825.

For a month (from mid-June to mid-July) Kern stayed with Aunt P.A. Wulf-Osipova on the picturesque banks of Soroti, and throughout this month Pushkin came to Trigorskoye almost every day. He read his “Gypsies” to her, told her “the fairy tale about the Devil, who drove a cab to Vasilyevsky Island,” listened to her sing a barcarolle to the verses of the blind poet I. I. Kozlov “Venice Night,” and wrote about this singing to P. A. Pletnev: “Tell Kozlov from me that recently a beauty visited our region, who heavenly sings his Venetian night to the voice of a gondolier recitative - I promised to inform the sweet, inspired blind man about this. It’s a pity that he won’t see her - but let him imagine himself beauty and sincerity - at least God forbid he hears it! On the night before A.P. Kern’s departure from Trigorskoye, the poet showed her his Mikhailovsky Park, and on the day of departure he presented the 1st chapter of “Eugene Onegin”, in uncut sheets, between which she found a four-fold sheet of notepaper with the verses: “I I remember a wonderful moment..."

“Every night I walk through the garden and repeat to myself: she was here - the stone on which she tripped lies on my table, next to a branch of withered heliotrope, I write a lot of poetry - all this, if you like, is very similar to love, but I swear to you that this is not at all the same,” Pushkin confesses half-jokingly, half-seriously to Anna Nikolaevna Wulf, who left with Anna Petrovna, mother and younger sister for Riga.

Following Anna Petrovna, Pushkin sends five letters one after another; she answers and becomes the poet’s partner in a kind of literary game, his co-author in creating a kind of “novel in letters.” The poet's letters are witty, brilliant and always playful in Pushkin's style. "...If you come, I promise to be extremely kind to you - 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 - your feet..." Pushkin achieves truly high comedy by supplementing letters addressed directly to Kern with a letter written about her to a third party - supposedly to Aunt Praskovya Alexandrovna, but in fact intended for the same Anna Petrovna.

We do not know the letters of A.P. Kern to Pushkin. But one must think that they were written in the tone of his messages.

The irony of Pushkin's tone does not allow us to determine the degree of seriousness of the poet's love confessions. It can be assumed that his passion was not particularly deep. However, regardless of this, it is absolutely certain that for both Pushkin and his correspondent it was pleasant, interesting, and fun to maintain this correspondence.

Pushkin's humorous letters were immediately preceded by an address to the same woman in verses of a high lyrical structure.

If in the letters to A.P. Kern we see the external, everyday side of human relationships, then in the poem “I remember a wonderful moment...” the poet’s hidden spiritual life is revealed.

A few days after Pushkin in Trigorskoye gave Anna Petrovna a piece of paper with poems addressed to her, he ended his letter to one of his friends with these significant words: “I feel that my spiritual powers have reached full development, I can create.” This was said in connection with “Boris Godunov,” work on which was then in full swing. It was a moment of special upsurge of creative and spiritual strength, a moment of joyful “awakening” of the soul. And at that time, “in the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment,” a beautiful, bright image from distant years appeared to Pushkin again - as a joyful memory of a stormy, free youth and as hope for imminent liberation, in which the exiled poet never ceased to believe... Already not just a few hours, as once with the Olenins, but many days, Pushkin spent in Trigorskoye near Anna Petrovna, but because of this, the vivid impression of that first, fleeting meeting with her was not erased, did not fade; on the contrary, the image of a beautiful woman acquired in the eyes of the poet new charm. If their meeting at the Olenins was accidental, then in the summer of 1825 Anna Petrovna was heading to Trigorskoye, knowing well that she would meet there the author of “The Prisoner of the Caucasus”, “The Bakhchisarai Fountain”, “The Robber Brothers”, the first chapter of “Eugene Onegin”, and passionately wished meeting the first Russian poet.

Many years later, in a letter to their relatives (the Bakunins), Anna Petrovna and Alexander Vasilyevich Markov-Vinogradsky wrote about themselves: “We, despairing of ever acquiring material contentment, value every moral impression and chase the pleasures of the soul and catch every smile of the world around us, in order to enrich themselves with spiritual happiness. Rich people are never poets... Poetry is the wealth of poverty..." (Manuscript Department of the Institute of Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 27259/CXCVb54.) The ability and desire to live an intense spiritual life, a thirst for "poetic pleasure" and vivid impressions. for the mind were always characteristic of A.P. Kern.
In the fall of 1825, Anna Petrovna again visited Trigorskoye with E.F. Kern, and Pushkin, in her words, “didn’t get along very well with her husband,” but with her “he was still and even more tender...”.
By the end of the 1820s, there are scattered but undoubted evidence of the friendly closeness that then established between Kern and Pushkin. These are comic poems written by the poet in her album, and a copy of “Gypsies” with the inscription: “To Her Excellency A.P. Kern from Mr. Pushkin, her zealous admirer...”, the poem “Signs” dedicated to her, and, finally, several lines in Pushkin's letters.
Pushkin's sincerely friendly communication with A.P. Kern, of course, was not an accident; it was preconditioned by the originality and originality of her personality.
Later, when changing life circumstances distance Kern from Pushkin's circle, from Pushkin, her admiration for Pushkin's poetry and her ardent sympathy for the poet himself remain unchanged, and Pushkin's friendly disposition towards her remains unchanged - until the end of his life.
This is not contradicted by several harsh and mocking words spoken by the poet in a letter to his wife on September 29, 1835 regarding Kern’s note in which she asked to petition Smirdin for the publication of her translation of George Sand’s novel. First of all, we should not forget that Pushkin received the note through Natalya Nikolaevna, who was jealous of her husband for all his former friends, and also that it was difficult for Pushkin to help Anna Petrovna in this case - by 1835 he broke off all business relations with Smirdin. But Anna Petrovna remembers with what sincere sympathy Pushkin consoled her and tried to encourage her after the death of her mother - in one of the most difficult moments of her life: “Pushkin came to me and, looking for my apartment, ran, with his characteristic liveliness, through all the neighboring courtyards until he finally found me. On this visit he used all his eloquence to console me, and I saw him the same as he was before.” We know that Pushkin, together with E.M. Khitrovo, helped A.P. Kern in her business efforts to buy out the estate...
And on February 1, 1837, she “cryed and prayed” in the twilight of the Stable Church, where Pushkin’s funeral service was held.
After Pushkin's death, Anna Petrovna jealously kept everything that was at least to some extent connected with the memory of the poet - from his poems and letters to her to the small footstool on which he happened to sit in her house. And the further into the past the time of their acquaintance went, the more Anna Petrovna felt how generously she was gifted by fate, which brought her together on the path of life with Pushkin.

Memories of Pushkin, naturally, occupy a central place in the literary heritage of A.P. Kern. The success of this first work of hers, which appeared in print in 1859 and was greeted very sympathetically by numerous readers, brought to life memories of Delvig, Glinka (most often again in connection with Pushkin) and the latest autobiographical notes, aroused interest in the personality of the memoirist herself and opened the path of publication after many years, even decades, of those of her works that were not intended for publication - diaries, letters.

Anna Petrovna, as she herself says, loved writing letters since childhood. As a girl, she began to keep a diary, which, however, was used by her father as wrapping material in his mustard factory. Confiding her thoughts, feelings, observations on paper was a need for A.P. Kern, and this need remained with her throughout her life, becoming more urgent and definite over the years. And when in 1857 or 1858 one of her St. Petersburg acquaintances, the poetess E. N. Puchkova, approached Anna Petrovna with a proposal to talk about her meetings with Pushkin, she did it willingly and quickly.
It has long been recognized that “Memories of Pushkin” by A.P. Kern (Markova-Vinogradskaya) occupies “one of the first places in the series of biographical materials about the great poet” (Maikov L. Pushkin: Biographical materials and historical and literary essays. - St. Petersburg. , 1899.- P. 234.).
Thanks to them, many essential facts of Pushkin’s life, which we are now accustomed to seeing on the pages of each of his biography, became known for the first time or received the necessary specificity. How young Pushkin scatters witticisms in the St. Petersburg salon of the Olenins or rides bareback on horseback from the postal station to the estate of his old friend Rodzianko; how a poet, exiled to a Pskov village, comes every day from his Mikhailovsky to the hospitable Trigorsk house of the Wulf-Osipovs to be among friends, have fun and relax, or how, having returned to the capital after six years of exile, he touchingly and tenderly meets his beloved Delvig, on At his literary meetings or at Kern’s apartment, he conducts “poetic conversations.” We learned about all this and much more from the story of A.P. Kern - artless, sincere, fascinating. Pushkin of different years, very different, but always Pushkin.

Kern also introduces hitherto unknown poems and letters of Pushkin, his thoughts, statements in friendly conversations, and some features of his creative process.

The memoirist subtly notes many of the poet’s character traits, manners, and habits. “...He was very uneven in his manner: sometimes noisily cheerful, sometimes sad, sometimes timid, sometimes impudent, sometimes endlessly kind, sometimes painfully boring - and it was impossible to guess in what mood he would be in a minute.” “...He did not know how to hide his feelings, he always expressed them sincerely and was indescribably good when something pleasant excited him... When he decided to be amiable, nothing could compare with the brilliance, sharpness and captivation of his speech ". Here we have before us the real, living Pushkin, as only a smart, observant contemporary who knew him well could have portrayed him. In many episodes scattered through memories, seemingly small and random, but essentially very significant, we see this living Pushkin, always presented with warm sympathy and subtle understanding. And then, when he is timid at the first acquaintance with a young lady; and when, pleased with his brother’s poems, he says “very naively”: “Il aussi beaucoup d”esprit” (“And he is also very smart”); and when, “like a genius of goodness,” he appears to Kern in a difficult hour to console and help (a lot is said about Pushkin’s extraordinary kindness, generosity, his love for children); and when, “sitting on a small bench” in her apartment, he writes the poem “I was coming to you. Living dreams...", and then "sings them in his sonorous voice." Pushkin's voice - "singing, melodic" - we hear when A.P. Kern talks about the poet's reading "Gypsy" in Trigorskoye or about how he “in moments of absent-mindedness” he sings incessantly, “Inexorable, you didn’t want to live...” We also hear his infectious “childish laughter.”
Some of Kern’s judgments are extremely interesting and important - about Pushkin’s state of mind in post-December St. Petersburg (“He was cheerful then, but he lacked something...”, “...was often gloomy, absent-minded and apathetic”), about the meaning of life in Mikhailovsky for his creative development (“There, in the quiet of solitude, his poetry matured, his thoughts were concentrated, his soul became stronger and more meaningful... He came to St. Petersburg with a rich stock of developed thoughts”). Kern’s testimony about Pushkin’s good relationship with his mother has been questioned more than once, but, probably, she does not deviate from the truth here either - the poet’s relationship with his mother, especially in his mature years, was different than with his father.
The “true tact” with which Kern presents his relationship with Pushkin especially deserves to be noted. “...Only one smart female hand,” wrote P. V. Annenkov, “is capable of so subtly and excellently sketching the history of relationships, where the feeling of one’s dignity, together with the desire to please and even heartfelt affection, are cast in different and always graceful features, neither never offended anyone’s eyes or anyone’s feelings, despite the fact that they are sometimes composed into images that are less than monastic or puritanical in nature.”

Pushkin appears to us in Kern’s memoirs so reliably also because he is surrounded here by no less reliably presented contemporaries.

Laconically, sometimes in a few phrases, Kern paints extremely accurate and vivid portraits of people in that circle, the spiritual leader of which was Pushkin. Such, for example, in her portrayal are the charming Mickiewicz or the amazing Krylov, whose witticisms Pushkin eagerly repeats and who defines in one word “what Pushkin is”: “Genius.”
A direct continuation of the memories of Pushkin were the memories of Delvig and Glinka, where these two remarkable figures of the Pushkin era were characterized as fully and expressively as in no other memoir document. Anton Antonovich Delvig - “the soul of this entire happy family of poets” who gathered in his house, a “little republic”, where he managed to create an atmosphere of “family simplicity and sympathy”; a man of calm, even character, infinitely kind, hospitable, good-natured and witty, knowing the value of a funny joke and a recognized authority in matters of art, “a principled and impartial connoisseur.” And Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka - sickly, timidly modest and delicate, but at the same time always the most welcome guest thanks to his intelligence and kindness, possessing great creative power, the gift of shaking the souls of people with his art. Reading Kern’s memoirs, you are surprised to see, for example, that in her story about a trip to Imatra in the summer of 1829, written many years after the event, all participants in the trip, and the circumstances of the journey itself, pictures of the majestic northern nature are captured more accurately, more colorfully than in an essay by the professional writer O. M. Somov, published in 1830-1831.
Kern reports for the first time many facts from the biography of Delvig and Glinka. Thanks to her messages, Delvig’s humorous poems became known: “Friend Pushkin, would you like to try...”, “The tail pile was lying here...”, “I’m in Kursk, dear friends...”, “Where is the Semenovsky regiment. ..". A parody of the ballad by V. A. Zhukovsky (translation from V. Scott) “The Baron of Smalholm”, very close to the author’s text, was given by A. P. Kern long before Delvig’s autograph became known. It is unlikely that anyone else who heard Glinka’s brilliant improvisations, his special performances of his own and other people’s works, spoke about them with such clarity and deepest sympathy as A.P. Kern. How true and accurate are the characteristics of Glinka’s music, for example, three lines about Lyudmila’s aria from the opera “Ruslan and Lyudmila”: “Oh, what wonderful music! What a soul in this music, what a harmonious combination of feeling with the mind and what a subtle understanding of folk color... "

Working on her memoirs about Delvig, about Glinka (they were then united and saw the light in 1864), returning again to Delvig (published only in 1907), A.P. Kern seemed to be fulfilling the promise made at the beginning of her first memories, - “to nominate... besides Pushkin, several persons... well-known to everyone.” But she naturally continued to think about Pushkin all the time. She published here several notes to her by Pushkin and E.M. Khitrovo. She remembered and told about her meetings with the poet, when he and her blessed Olga Sergeevna, who had married against the will of her parents, and later, when he and his wife visited the terminally ill Nadezhda Osipovna. She conveyed the opinions she heard from him about Delvig’s poems and some books - Pavlov’s stories, novels by Bulwer, Manzoni. She supplemented the previous description of Pushkin’s state of mind in the late 20s and early 30s, emphasizing the “deep, dramatic change” that took place in him. "... Pushkin often showed a restless mood... His joke often turned into sarcasm, which probably had a basis in the spirit of the poet, deeply outraged by reality." Defining Delvig's character, she does this by comparing him with the character of Pushkin.
Of great value is the information that Kern reported in letters to P.V. Annenkov, especially the detailed description of Pushkin’s long-time friend P.A. Osipova.
In some cases, Kern's story suffers from a certain subjectivism, an idealization of the "good old days." Is it possible to agree, for example, with the following statement: “The entire circle of gifted writers and friends who grouped around Pushkin bore the character of a carefree Russian gentleman who loved to splurge...”? Were Pushkin, Delvig, Venevitinov, Mitskevich such carefree, “avoiding the burden of work” merry fellows and revelers at that time?.. And about Delvig’s life in recent years it is hardly possible to say: “He, in the silence of family life, delighted with friends, poetry and music, could be called the happiest of mortals." Here the sobriety and objectivity of the view betray the memoirist. But there are very few such cases, and the story of A.P. Kern as a whole recreates a completely reliable, objective picture of the life of that circle of the Russian artistic intelligentsia of the 20-30s, the recognized head of which was Pushkin.

Kern's autobiographical notes, which complete the cycle of her memoirs and were published after her death, in 1884, have the value of a genuine historical document, combining vivid imagery, lively description with factual accuracy, in general and in detail. A long series of typical images representing various layers of Russian society at the beginning of the last century, pictures of the life of a noble estate and a county town are drawn frankly and very convincingly. Sometimes the story about people and events of the past is interrupted by the author’s reflections, some conclusions from her life experience - about upbringing and the role of work in it, blind obedience and independence, willpower, about marriage and relationships between people in general. And these pages of notes are also of undoubted interest .

It has been pointed out more than once to the exceptional accuracy with which A.P. Kern, in his memoirs, sets out facts that were half a century old. Errors are extremely rare. She herself emphasizes her desire for maximum accuracy - either with a reservation in the text (“I don’t remember further, but I don’t want to quote it incorrectly”), or with an epigraph (“The mirror is only good if it reflects correctly”). The amazing memory of A.P. Kern has preserved so many names, surnames, names of places, various sayings and even lines of poetry that one might wonder if she was using some of her old diary entries. But, apparently, if such records once existed, they were not preserved by the time the memories were created.

The “Relaxation Diary” of 1820 is not directly related to the content of the memories of Pushkin and his friends, but is of great interest as a document of the era and self-expression of the generation to which both Pushkin and Kern belonged. It was not intended for printing and was first published only a hundred years later, in 1929.

Anna Petrovna kept this “diary” when she was twenty years old and lived in Pskov, where General Kern commanded a brigade (four years later Pushkin got there). I wrote for “relaxation”, in order to forget for a while the bitterness of everyday life. She wrote in French, only occasionally using her native language (on the one hand, it was probably more familiar and convenient, on the other hand, it was easier to protect the notes from the eyes of her husband, who did not read French). For the most part, the diary consists of complaints about an unbearably painful existence with a hated husband - a rude martinet in general's epaulettes, outpourings of bitter feelings and experiences, memories of her former life with her family, which now seems ideal to her. But it also contains many colorful sketches from the life of officers and provincial society, apt characteristics and portraits. There are even references, albeit rather naive ones, to the revolutionary events in Europe, which were so rich in 1820. A special place in the diary is occupied by numerous extracts from books read - not only sensitive French novels, but also such serious works as J. de Stael's book "On Germany", which the young general's wife read with interest and understanding rare for that time (See: Zaborov P.R. Germaine de Stael and Russian literature of the first third of the 19th century Early romantic trends. - L., 1972. - P. 195.). She read “Sentimental Journey” by L. Stern more than once in Russian and French (It should be noted that interest in Stern was characteristic of advanced Russian youth of the 1810-1820s (see: Azadovsky M.K. Stern in the perception Decembrists Decembrist revolt. - L., 1926. - P. 383-392).).

Not without the influence of writers of a sentimental trend, a style has developed that distinguishes A.P. Kern’s entries in “Diary for Relaxation,” especially those where we are talking about the hero of her half-fictional “novel” - a young officer called either Eglantine - Rosehip, or Immortelle - Immortelle. Kern often uses the fashionable “language of flowers” ​​to allegorically express his feelings. Sometimes she clearly takes on the role of the heroine of one or another of the novels she has read. But behind this naive-sentimental way of expression one can discern the true tragedy of a woman with extraordinary demands and ideals, capable of a reasonable, useful life, deep and pure feelings, but instead doomed to a vulgar existence in an alien, even hostile environment - a rather ordinary tragedy of an extraordinary people in Russia of the last century.
A “diary for relaxation” in its form is a diary-letter addressed to a specific person with whom the author of the entries shares his thoughts, experiences, and observations. This form was not chosen by chance: the epistolary style was close to Anna Petrovna from an early age. However, we know very little from her correspondence. But what we have is of undoubted value, especially, of course, the letters of Pushkin that she so carefully preserved, which were discussed above, the letters of P.V. Annenkov to her and hers to Annenkov. They add new touches to the portrait of Anna Petrovna herself that we know, complement her memories and diary entries with new essential facts, and our ideas about the range of phenomena in Russian social life of the last century that she told us about.

P. V. Annenkov, in a letter to A. P. Kern (Markova-Vinogradskaya), written shortly after the publication of “Memoirs of Pushkin,” gave a fair assessment of the merits and significance of her work, and declared the memoirist herself a contender for the title of “chronicler of a famous era and well-known society,” whose name “has already been associated with the history of literature, that is, with the history of our social development.”

In close connection with the history of our social development, with the poetry of Pushkin, the music of Glinka, this remarkable woman lives in the grateful memory of generations - an extraordinary daughter of her era, stately and its chronicler.

Bibliography

• Kern A.P. “Memories of Pushkin” (“Library for Reading”, 1859, No. 4, reprinted in the collection of L.N. Maykov; “Pushkin”, St. Petersburg, 1899);
• Kern A.P. “Memories of Pushkin, Delvig and Glinka” (“Family Evenings”, 1864, No. 10; reprinted with additions in the collection “Pushkin and his contemporaries”, issue V, 1908);
• Kern A.P. Memoirs of Anna Petrovna Kern. Three meetings with Emperor Alexander Pavlovich. 1817-1820 // Russian antiquity, 1870. - T. 1. - Ed. 3rd. – St. Petersburg, 1875 – P. 230-243.;
• Kern A.P. “One hundred years ago” (magazine “Rainbow”, 1884, No. 18 - 19, 22, 24 and 25; reprinted under the title: “From the memories of my childhood”, in the “Russian Archive” 1884, No. 6);
• Kern A.P. “Diary” (1861; in “Past Years”, 1908, No. 10). - See the article by B. L. Modzalevsky in the collected works of Pushkin, edited by S. A. Vengerov (volume III, 1909).

Anna Petrovna Kern (11 (22) February 1800, Orel - 16 (27) May 1879, Torzhok; née Poltoratskaya, by her second husband - Markova-Vinogradskaya) - Russian noblewoman, best known in history for the role she played in Pushkin's life. Author of memoirs.

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 that also belonged to I.P. Wulf.

Her parents belonged to the circle of wealthy official nobility. The father is a Poltava landowner and court councilor, the son of the head of the court singing choir, M.F. Poltoratsky, known 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 the father himself brought the groom to the house - not only the 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 on January 8, 1817, 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 will say frankly - 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 brought up at the Smolny Institute). Anna Petrovna had to lead the life of the wife of an army servant from Arakcheev’s times with a change of garrisons “according to assignment”: 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 become 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, in 1819, a certain man flashed into her life - from the diary you can find out that she called him “rosehip.” Then she began an affair with the local landowner Arkady Gavrilovich Rodzianko, who introduced Anna to the works of Pushkin, whom Anna had encountered briefly earlier. He didn’t make an “impression” on her (then!), he even seemed rude. Now she was completely delighted with his poetry. biography of a. Kern Pushkin

In June 1825, having already left her husband, on the way to Riga, she looked into Trigorskoye, the estate of her aunt, Praskovya Aleksandrovna Osipova, where she again met Pushkin (the Mikhailovskoye estate is located nearby). At this time, Pushkin wrote Kern’s famous madrigal poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment...”. At that moment, Anna was flirting with the poet’s friend (and Osipova’s son, her cousin) Alexei Wulf, and in Riga a passionate romance happened between them (Wulf also courted her sister Lisa Poltoratskaya).

Pushkin's letters to Kern are preserved in French; they are at least no less parodic and playful than they are marked by a serious feeling, corresponding to the nature of the game that reigned in Mikhailovsky and Trigorsky. Anna Petrovna only two years later, already in St. Petersburg, entered into a fleeting relationship with the poet; Pushkin treated this event ironically and in a rather rude tone mentioned what happened in a letter to his friend S. A. Sobolevsky. In another letter, Pushkin calls Kern “our Babylonian harlot Anna Petrovna.”

In her later life, Kern was close to the family of Baron A.A. Delviga, to D.V. Venevitinov, S.A. Sobolevsky, A.D. Illichevsky, A.V. Nikitenko, M.I. Glinka (Mikhail Ivanovich wrote beautiful music for the poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment”), but dedicated it to Ekaterina Kern, the daughter of Anna Petrovna), F.I. Tyutchev, I.S. Turgenev.

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 same, with Olga Sergeevna Pushkina (Pavlishcheva), “confidante in matters of the heart,” (in her honor Anna will name her youngest daughter Olga).

Anna continued to love and fall in love, although in “secular society” she acquired the status of an outcast. Already at the age of 36, 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 place in St. Petersburg, first in the family of Prince S.A. Dolgorukov, and then the 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 Tverskoy (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.

She was buried in a graveyard near an old stone church in the village of Prutnya, 6 kilometers from Torzhok - the rains washed out the road and did not allow the coffin to be delivered to the cemetery, “to her husband.” And 100 years later in Riga, near the former church, a modest monument to Anna Petrovna was erected with an inscription in a language unfamiliar to her.

Russian noblewoman, best known in history for the role she played in the life of Pushkin.

Father - Poltoratsky, Pyotr Markovich. Together with her parents she lived in the estate of her maternal grandfather I.P. Wulf, the Oryol governor. 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 that also belonged to 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, known 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 the wedding took place on January 8, 1817. 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 Arakcheev’s times with the change of garrisons “according to assignment”: Eli

Zavetgrad, 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, in 1819, a certain man flashed into her life - from the diary you can find out that she called him “rosehip.” Then she began an affair with the local landowner Arkady Gavrilovich Rodzianko, who introduced Anna to the works of Pushkin, whom Anna had encountered briefly earlier. He didn’t make an “impression” on her (then!), he even seemed rude. Now she was completely delighted with his poetry.

In June 1825, having already left her husband, on the way to Riga, she looked into Trigorskoye, the estate of her aunt, Praskovya Aleksandrovna Osipova, where she again met Pushkin (the Mikhailovskoye estate is located nearby). Pushkin flared up with the passion that was given to him by God and was reflected in the famous “I remember a wonderful moment...”. But Anna at that moment was flirting with the poet’s friend (and Osipova’s son?) Alexei Wulf, and in Riga a passionate romance took place between Anet and Wulf. Pushkin continued to suffer, and only two years later Anna condescended to become a brilliant admirer. But, having achieved his goal, Pushkin discovered that from that moment the Poet’s feelings quickly disappeared

and their connection ended. In her later life, Kern was close to the family of Baron A. A. Delvig, to D. V. Venevitinov, S. A. Sobolevsky, A. D. Illichevsky, A.V. Nikitenko, M.I. Glinka (Mikhail Ivanovich wrote beautiful music for the poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment”), but dedicated it to Ekaterina Kern, Anna Petrovna’s daughter), F.I. Tyutchev, I.S. Turgenev.

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,” (Anna will name her youngest daughter Olga in her honor).

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 receive

I want 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 Tverskoy (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.

She was buried in a graveyard near an old stone church in the village of Prutnya, 6 kilometers from Torzhok - the rains washed out the road and did not allow the coffin to be delivered to the cemetery, “to her husband.” And 100 years later in Riga, near the former church, a modest monument to Anna Petrovna was erected with an inscription in a language unfamiliar to her.

...1819. Saint Petersburg. The living room in the Olenins’ house, where the elite of Russian writers gathered - from Ivan Andreevich Krylov to the very young but already famous Sasha Pushkin. Traditional readings - Krylov reads his fable "Donkey". The Olenins' traditional "charades". The role of Cleopatra fell to the niece of the mistress of the house - a young general's wife. Pushkin glances absentmindedly at the “actress.” Above the basket of flowers, just like a flower, is a gentle female face of amazing beauty...
A.P. Kern: “After that, we sat down to dinner. At the Olenins’, we dined on small tables, without ceremony and, of course, without ranks. And what ranks could there be where the enlightened owner valued and treasured only the sciences and arts? At dinner, Pushkin sat down with my brother behind me and tried to attract my attention with flattering exclamations, such as: “Est-il permis d”etre aussi jolie!” (Is it possible to be so pretty! (French)). Then a humorous conversation ensued between them about who is a sinner and who is not, who will be in hell and who will go to heaven. Pushkin told his brother: “In any case, there will be a lot of pretty people in hell, you can play charades there. Ask m-me Kern if she would like to go to hell?” I answered very seriously and somewhat dryly that I didn’t want to go to hell. “Well, how are you now, Pushkin?” - asked the brother. “Je me ravise (I changed my mind (French)”), the poet replied, “I don’t want to go to hell, although there will be pretty women there...”

A. Fedoseenko. Anna Petrovna Kern

...Anna Petrovna Kern was born on February 11, 1800 in Orel, into a wealthy noble family of court councilor P.M. Poltoratsky. Both her father and grandmother - Agathoklea Alexandrovna, from a very rich family of the Shishkovs - were powerful, despotic people, real tyrants. The sickly and quiet mother - Ekaterina Ivanovna Wulf - was completely under the thumb of her husband and mother-in-law. The impressionable girl retained throughout her life memories of the rather primitive environment in which she grew up - and this same environment had the most direct influence on her character and destiny.

Anna received a very good education at home for those times, she read a lot, which, combined with her natural liveliness of mind and curiosity, gave her a sensitive, romantic and quite, as they would say now, intellectual nature, at the same time sincere and in terms of mental needs, very different from many young ladies of their circle...

...But, barely having begun, her life turned out to be broken, “nailed in bloom.” On January 8, 1817, a lovely seventeen-year-old girl, at the insistence of her relatives, married General Ermolai Kern, who was 35 years older than her. The tyrant father was flattered that his daughter would be a general - and Anna obeys with despair. A refined girl dreaming of ideal romantic love was in no way suited to a rude martinet, poorly educated, who had become a general from the lower ranks. Her peers envied her - and the beautiful general's wife shed tears, looking with disgust at her husband - a pure Arakcheevsky military man - the provincial garrison environment and society were unbearable for her.
Later she would write: “I have always been indignant against such marriages, that is, marriages of convenience. It seemed to me that when entering into a marriage for benefits, a criminal sale of a person is committed as a thing, human dignity is trampled upon, and there is deep depravity, entailing misfortune...”
...In 1817, during a celebration on the occasion of big maneuvers, Emperor Alexander drew attention to Anna - “... I was not in love... I was in awe, I worshiped him!.. I would not exchange this feeling for any other, because it was completely spiritual and aesthetic. There was not a second thought in it about obtaining mercy through the favorable attention of the king - nothing, nothing like that... All love is pure, unselfish, content with itself... If someone had told me: “This man, before whom you pray and revere, loved you like a mere mortal,” I would have bitterly rejected such a thought and would only have wanted to look at him, to be surprised by him, to worship him as a higher, adored being!..” For Alexander - a light flirtation with a pretty, very similar to the famous beauty, the Prussian Queen Louise, general. For Anna - the beginning of realizing her attractiveness and charm, awakening female ambitions and - an opportunity to escape from the gray and terrible melancholy of garrison life with a husband unloved to the point of suffering. The children were not happy either - in 1818, a daughter, Katya, was born, then two more girls. She wrote in her diary, which she addressed to her relative and friend Feodosia Poltoratskaya. with brutal honesty:
“You know that this is not frivolity or whim; I told you before that I don’t want to have children, the thought of not loving them was terrible for me and is even more terrible now. You also know that at first I really wanted to have a child, and therefore I have some tenderness for Katenka, although I sometimes reproach myself that she is not quite great. Unfortunately, I feel such hatred for this whole family, it is such an irresistible feeling in me that I am not able to get rid of it by any effort. . This is a confession! Forgive me, my angel!. Fate did not give these unwanted children - except Katya - a long life.
...She was 20 years old when she first fell seriously in love - the name of her chosen one is unknown, she calls him in the Diary Immortel or Rosehip - and Kern seems even more disgusting to her.

"You're right: what could be more important
Is there a beautiful woman in the world?
Smile, the look of her eyes
More precious than gold and honor,
More precious than discordant glory...
Let's talk about her again.

I praise, my friend, her hunt,
Having rested, give birth to children,
Like your mother;
And happy is whoever shares with her
This pleasant care..."

The relationship between Anna and Rodzianko was easy and frivolous - she was resting...

...And finally - Trigorskoe. Arriving at the house of his friends, Pushkin meets Anna Kern there - and for the entire month that Kern spent with her aunt, Pushkin often, almost daily, appeared there, listened to her sing, and read his poems to her. The day before departure, Kern, together with her aunt and cousin, visited Pushkin in Mikhailovskoye, where they traveled from Trigorskoye in two carriages, the aunt and her son rode in one carriage, and the cousin, Kern and Pushkin chastely in the other. But in Mikhailovskoye, the two of them wandered around the neglected garden for a long time at night, but, as Kern states in his memoirs, “I didn’t remember the details of the conversation.”

And the poet’s outburst when he snatched the gift was most likely associated with an outburst of jealousy - his happy rival turned out to be his friend and Anna’s cousin, Alexei Wulf, and much of his behavior was caused by this rivalry. And Anna had no special illusions about him: “Lively perceiving goodness, Pushkin, however, it seems to me, was not carried away by it in women; he was much more fascinated by their wit, brilliance and external beauty. The flirtatious desire to please him more than once attracted the poet’s attention more than the true and deep feeling that he inspired... The reason that Pushkin was more fascinated by the brilliance than by the dignity and simplicity of the character of women was, of course, his low opinion of them, which was completely in the spirit of that time."

At that time, young student Alexander Nikitenko, a future censor and professor at St. Petersburg University, who rented an apartment in the same building as her, met Anna Petrovna Kern. He almost fell into the snare of an irresistible seductress. Kern amazed him at the first meeting. In May 1827, he gave a wonderful portrait of her in his Diary:

“A few days ago, Mrs. Shterich celebrated her name day. She had many guests, including a new face, which, I must confess, made quite a strong impression on me. When I went down to the living room in the evening, it instantly captivated my attention. attention. It was the face of a young woman of amazing beauty. But what attracted me most was the touching languor in the expression of her eyes, her smile, and the sounds of her voice... This woman is very vain and willful. The first is the fruit of the flattery that was constantly lavished on her beauty. something divine, inexplicably beautiful in her, - and the second is the fruit of the first, combined with careless upbringing and disorderly reading." In the end, Nikitenko fled from the beauty, writing down: “She would like to make me her panegyrist. To do this, she attracted me to her and kept me enthusiastic about her person. And then, when she had squeezed all the juice out of the lemon, she would have thrown the peel out the window...”
...And at the same time, Pushkin finally has the opportunity to take “gallant revenge.” In February 1828, a year and a half after writing the lines “I remember a wonderful moment,” Pushkin boasted in a letter to his friend Sobolevsky, without hesitation in expressions and also using the vocabulary of janitors and cab drivers (sorry for the unseemly quotation - but it is what it is): “You don’t write to me anything about the 2,100 rubles I owe you, but you write to me about m-me Kern, whom, with the help of God, I just the other day...” Pushkin apparently wrote such a frank and rude message about intimacy with a once passionately beloved woman because he experienced a strong complex due to the fact that he was unable to obtain this intimacy earlier, out of a feeling of rivalry with the same Wulf - and he certainly needed to convey to friends that this fact happened, even belatedly. In no other letter in relation to other women did Pushkin allow such brutal frankness.
Subsequently, Pushkin would write to Alexei Wulf with sarcasm: “What is the Babylonian harlot Anna Petrovna doing?” And Anna Petrovna enjoyed freedom.

Her beauty became more and more attractive

This is how she writes about herself in her diary: “Imagine, I just glanced in the mirror, and it seemed somehow offensive to me that now I am so beautiful, so good-looking. I will not continue to describe to you my victories. I did not notice them and listened to the coolly ambiguous, unfinished evidence of surprise - admiration."

Pushkin about Kern: “Do you want to know what Mrs. K... is? - she is graceful; she understands everything; she is easily upset and just as easily consoled; she has timid manners and bold actions, - but at the same time she is miraculously attractive.”
The poet’s brother, Lev Sergeevich, is also captivated by the beauty and dedicates a madrigal to her:

"How can you not go crazy?

Listening to you, admiring you;

Venus is an ancient sweetheart,
Showing off with a wonderful belt,
Alcmene, mother of Hercules,
Of course, it can be in line with her,
But to pray and love
They are as diligent as you are
They need to hide you from you,
You took over their shop!"

...General Kern continued to bombard all sorts of authorities with letters, demanding assistance in returning his errant wife to the bosom of the family. The girls - three daughters - were with him before they entered Smolny... Her Excellency the general's wife, who ran away from her husband-general, still used his name... and, apparently, the money on which she lived.
In 1831, Pushkin married. Delvig soon dies. Sofya Delvig gets married very quickly and unsuccessfully. All this radically changes Anna Kern’s usual life in St. Petersburg. “Her Excellency” was no longer invited, or not invited at all, to literary evenings, where talented people known to her first-hand gathered, she was deprived of communication with those talented people with whom, thanks to Pushkin and Delvig, her life brought her together... Before the beautiful general the specter of poverty was palpably rising. Her husband refused her financial allowance, apparently in this way trying to bring her home. One after another, her two youngest daughters and mother die. Deprived of any means of subsistence, robbed by her father and relatives, she tried to sue her mother’s estate, in which Pushkin unsuccessfully tried to help her, tried to earn extra money by translating - and in this she was also helped, albeit grumbling, by Alexander Sergeevich.
In 1836, Kern's family circumstances again took a dramatic turn. She was in complete despair, because by the time her daughter Ekaterina graduated from the Smolny Institute, General Kern showed up, intending to take her daughter with him. The matter was settled with difficulty.
...On February 1, 1837, in the Stable Church, where Pushkin’s funeral service was held, Anna Kern, along with everyone who came under the arches of the church, “cryed and prayed” for his unfortunate soul. And at this time she was already overtaken by all-consuming mutual love...
...“I remember the haven of love where my queen dreamed of me..., where the air was saturated with kisses, where every breath she took was a thought about me. I see her smiling from the depths of the sofa, where she was waiting for me...
I have never been so completely happy as in that apartment!!... She came out of that apartment and slowly walked past the windows of the building, where I, leaning against the window, devoured her with my gaze, catching in my imagination every movement of hers, so that after, when the vision will disappear, indulge yourself with an intoxicating dream!... And this gazebo in Peterhof, among the fragrant flowers and greenery in the mirrors, when her gaze, burning through me, ignited..."

And the years of true happiness flowed by. A. Markov-Vinogradsky was, as they say, a loser, having no talents other than a pure and sensitive heart. He did not know how to earn their daily bread, so the family had to live in poverty and even live with different friends out of mercy. But he couldn’t get enough of his Aneta and filled his diary with touching confessions: “Thank you, Lord, that I am married! Without her, my darling, I would be exhausted, bored. Everything is boring except my wife, and I’m so used to her alone that she has become my necessity! What a joy it is to return home! How warm and good it is in her arms. There is no one better than my wife.".And she wrote to her relative E.V. Markova-Vinogradskaya after more than ten years of their life together: “Poverty has its joys, and we always feel good because we have a lot of love. For everything, for everything, I thank the Lord! Maybe under better circumstances we would be less happy.”

They lived together for almost forty years in love and in terrible poverty, often turning into want. After 1865, Anna Kern and her husband, who retired with the rank of collegiate assessor with a meager pension, lived in terrible poverty and wandered around in different corners with relatives in Tver province, in Lubny, in Kyiv, in Moscow, in the village of Pryamukhino. Anna wrote memoirs and religiously preserved Pushkin's relics - letters. And yet they had to be sold - at a meager price. By the way, earlier composer Mikhail Glinka simply lost the original poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” when he composed his music for it (“ he took Pushkin’s poems from me, written by his hand, to set them to music, and he lost them, God forgive him!"); music dedicated, by the way, to Anna Kern's daughter Ekaterina, with whom Glinka was madly in love. By the time of the sale, Ekaterina had married the architect Shokalsky, and she hardly remembered Glinka's passion for her.
In 1864, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev visited the Markov-Vinogradsky family: “I spent the evening with a certain Madame Vinogradskaya, with whom Pushkin was once in love. He wrote many poems in honor of her, recognized as some of the best in our literature. In her youth, she must have been very pretty, and now, despite all her good nature (she is not smart), she has retained the habits of a woman accustomed to being liked. She keeps the letters that Pushkin wrote to her like a shrine. She showed me a half-faded pastel depicting her at 28 years old - white, blond, with a meek face, with naive grace, with amazing innocence in her eyes, smile... she looks a little like a Russian maid a la Parasha. If I were Pushkin, I would not write poetry to her.
She, apparently, really wanted to meet me, and since yesterday was her angel’s day, my friends presented me to her instead of a bouquet. She has a husband twenty years younger than her: a pleasant family, even a little touching and at the same time comical.” (Excerpt from Turgenev’s letter to Pauline Viardot, February 3 (15), 1864, letter No. 1567)."

In January 1879, in the village of Pryamukhin, “from cancer in the stomach with terrible suffering,” as his son writes, A.V. died. Markov-Vinogradsky, the husband of Anna Kern, and four months later, on May 27, 1879, in inexpensive furnished rooms on the corner of Tverskaya and Gruzinskaya in Moscow (her son moved her to Moscow), at the age of seventy-nine, Anna Petrovna Markova-Vinogradskaya ( Kern).
...She was supposed to be buried next to her husband, but heavy torrential rains, unusual for this time of year, washed out the road and it was impossible to deliver the coffin to her husband at the cemetery. She was buried in a graveyard near an old stone church in the village of Prutnya, located six kilometers from Torzhok. The mystical story about how “her coffin met the monument to Pushkin, which was being imported to Moscow,” is well known.
The son of the Markov-Vinogradskys, who had poor health since childhood, committed suicide shortly after the death of his parents. He was about 40 years old, and, like his parents, he was not at all adapted to life. Katenka Shokalskaya-Kern lived a long and quiet life and died in 1904.

Anna Petrovna's stormy and difficult earthly life was over. To this day, people bring fresh flowers to her modest grave, and newlyweds from all over the area come here to swear eternal love to each other in the name of the one who, albeit for a short time, was so dear to the great lover of life, Pushkin.
At the grave of A.P. A large granite stone-boulder was installed in the core; a white marble board with carved four lines of the famous Pushkin poem was mounted on it...

I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
K*** A.S. Pushkin

Anna Petrovna Kern (née Poltoratskaya, by her second husband Markova-Vinogradskaya; February 11 (22), 1800, Orel - May 16 (27), 1879, Torzhok) - Russian noblewoman, best known in history for the role she played in the life of Pushkin . Author of memoirs.

“I was born in Orel, in the house of my grandfather Ivan Petrovich Wulf, who was the governor there..., February 11, 1800.” (Kern A.P. “Memories”). On the facade of the Rus Hotel building in May 1990. a memorial plaque was installed indicating that the house in which A.P. was born stood on this site. Kern.

Anna Petrovna received her education at home. From 8 to 12 years old, she was taught by a governess called from St. Petersburg. She knew a little French and foreign literature (mainly based on novels). Together with her parents she lived in the estate of her maternal grandfather Ivan Petrovich Wulf, the Oryol governor, whose descendant Dmitry Alekseevich Wulf is her great-nephew.

Portrait of Ivan Petrovich Wulf. 1811 Kiprensky Orest Adamovich.

Later, her parents and Anna moved to the district town of Lubny, Poltava province, where her father, Pyotr Markovich Poltoratsky, was the district leader of the nobility. Anna spent her entire childhood in this city and in Bernovo, an estate that also belonged to I.P. Wulf.

Bernovo. Wulf Manor.

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, known 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.

A. Arefiev-Bogaev. Portrait of Anna Petrovna Kern (1840)

The young beauty began to “go out into the world”, looking at the “brilliant” officers, but the father himself brought the groom to the house - not only an officer, but also General Yermolai Fedorovich Kern from the noble Kern family of English origin. At this time, Anna was 17 years old, Yermolay Fedorovich was 52. The girl had to come to terms and the wedding took place on January 8, 1817.

Dow, George - Portrait of Ermolai Fedorovich Kern.

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 Alexandra, born in 1818 and 1821, respectively, were brought up at the Smolny Institute). Alexandra died around 1835. In 1826, Anna Petrovna gave birth to another daughter, Olga, who died in 1833. By the way, the son of Ekaterina Ermolaevna Kern, Yuli Shokalsky, is a Soviet oceanographer, geographer and cartographer, honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (since 1939; corresponding member since 1923).

Unknown artist.
Portrait of Anna Kern's daughter, Ekaterina Ermolaevna (1818-1904)

Anna Petrovna had to lead the life of the wife of an army servant of the Arakcheevsky times with the change of garrisons “according to assignment”: 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.”

In winter 1819 in St. Petersburg, in the house of her aunt E.M. Olenina, she enthusiastically listened to I.A. Krylov, and here fate for the first time accidentally confronted her with Pushkin, whom she simply did not notice. “At one of the evenings at the Olenins’, I met Pushkin and did not notice him: my attention was absorbed in the charades that were then being played out and in which Krylov, Pleshcheev and others participated,” she writes in her memoirs, and then, as if making excuses: “In a daze ... with such charm (Krylov) it was difficult to see anyone other than the culprit of poetic pleasure, and that’s why I didn’t notice Pushkin" ... Although Pushkin tried his best to attract her attention with "flattering exclamations such as, for example: Is it possible to be so pretty!" and conversations in which she “found something... insolent, did not answer anything and left.”

Anechka Kern and Alexander Pushkin. Author?

He had not yet become the Pushkin whom all of Russia admired, and perhaps that is why the ugly, curly-haired young man did not make any impression on her... “When I was leaving and my brother got into the carriage with me, Pushkin stood on the porch and followed me with his eyes,” - writes Anna Kern in her memoirs (the brother with whom she got into the carriage is Alexey Vulf, Anna Kern’s cousin). Later, cousin A.N. Wulf wrote to her: “You made a strong impression on Pushkin during your meeting at the Olenins; he says everywhere: “She was dazzling.” She was nineteen years old, Pushkin twenty. However, in 1819 a certain man flashed into her life - from the diary you can find out that she called him “rosehip.”

P.F. Sokolov. Portrait of A.S. Pushkin. 1836

Six years passed, and the poems and verses of the poet, exiled by the emperor to the village of Mikhailovskoye, thundered throughout Russia. “For 6 years I did not see Pushkin, but from many I heard about him as a glorious poet, and I read greedily: The Prisoner of the Caucasus, the Bakhchisarai Fountain, The Robbers and the 1st chapter of Onegin...” And she is already delighted with him... This is the magical power of art. An ugly, curly-haired young man with African features turned into a desired idol. As she writes: “Admired by Pushkin, I passionately wanted to see him...”

N. Rusheva Pushkin and Anna Kern.

Pushkin learned about the admiring fan, whom he himself admired, in 1824 from her relatives, the Wulfs, who lived in Trigorskoye, which was located next to Mikhailovsk. True, the nature of these admirations was different, which determined the drama of the further history of their relationship... Their acquaintance continued... though at first in absentia. And again, Mr. Case played his role here. Pushkin’s friend Arkady Rodzianko lived next to the Kern estate; Pushkin writes a letter to Rodzianko in which he inquires about the fate of Kern. Rodzianko, naturally, shows the letter to Anna Petrovna, and the two of them write a response to Pushkin (Anna Petrovna inserts her own remarks into the letter, and very sweetly and relaxedly, but at the same time one gets the feeling that Rodzianko and Kern have more than just friendly relations).

S. Gulyaev. I remember a wonderful moment.

In June 1825, having already left her husband, on the way to Riga, she looked into Trigorskoye, the estate of her aunt, Praskovya Aleksandrovna Osipova, where she again met Pushkin (the Mikhailovskoye estate is located nearby). The poet's genius had a huge influence on women. However, women at any time liked men who were talented, famous, strong in spirit and body.

Pushkin in Mikhailovsky. Konchalovsky Petr Petrovich.

But men also often like women who like them... For the entire month that Kern spent with her aunt, Pushkin often, almost daily, appeared in Trigorskoye, listened to her sing, and read his poems to her. The day before departure, Kern, together with her aunt and cousin, visited Pushkin in Mikhailovskoye, where they traveled from Trigorskoye in two carriages, the aunt and her son rode in one carriage, and the cousin, Kern and Pushkin chastely in the other. But in Mikhailovskoye, the two of them wandered around the neglected garden for a long time at night, but, as Kern states in his memoirs, “I didn’t remember the details of the conversation.”

Anna Kern Alley in the park of the Mikhailovskoye estate.

The next day, saying goodbye, Pushkin brought her a copy of the first chapter of Eugene Onegin, in the pages of which she found a sheet of paper folded in four with the verses “I remember a wonderful moment.” “When I was getting ready to hide the poetic gift in the box, he looked at me for a long time, then convulsively snatched it away and did not want to return it; I forcibly begged for them again; I don’t know what flashed through his head then,” she writes. Why Pushkin wanted to take the poems back is a mystery... There are many versions about this, but this only adds spice to the poet’s love-passion story...

This is how Pushkin saw Anna Kern
(drawing in the margin of the manuscript; presumably it depicts Anna Kern), 1829.

Pushkin's letters to Kern are preserved in French; they are at least no less parodic and playful than they are marked by a serious feeling, corresponding to the nature of the game that reigned in Mikhailovsky and Trigorsky. Anna Petrovna only two years later, already in St. Petersburg, entered into a fleeting relationship with the poet; Pushkin treated this event ironically and in a rather rude tone mentioned what happened in a letter to his friend S. A. Sobolevsky. In another letter, Pushkin calls Kern “our Babylonian harlot Anna Petrovna.”

In her later life, Kern was close to the family of Baron A. A. Delvig, to D. V. Venevitinov, S. A. Sobolevsky, A. D. Illichevsky, A. V. Nikitenko, M. I. Glinka (Mikhail Ivanovich wrote beautiful music for the poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment,” but dedicated it to Ekaterina Kern, the daughter of Anna Petrovna), F. I. Tyutchev, I. S. Turgenev.

However, after Pushkin’s marriage and Delvig’s death, the connection with this circle of friends 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,” (Anna will name her youngest daughter Olga in her honor).

Anna Petrovna Kern. Reproduction of a portrait by Ivan Zherin.

After the death of Nadezhda Osipovna and the death of Pushkin, Kern’s relationship with the poet’s family did not break. Sergei Lvovich Pushkin, invariably amorous, and after the death of his wife acutely felt loneliness, wrote heartfelt, almost love letters to Anna Petrovna: “... I am not yet in love with you, but it is with you that I would like to live the last sad ones that remain for me.” years."

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.

Silhouette of Anna Kern (presumably), here she is 25 years old.

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.

Here is what Turgenev wrote: “I spent the evening with a certain Madame Vinogradskaya, with whom Pushkin was once in love. He wrote many poems in honor of her, recognized as some of the best in our literature. In her youth, she must have been very pretty, and now, despite all her good nature (she is not smart), she has retained the habits of a woman accustomed to being liked. She keeps the letters that Pushkin wrote to her like a shrine. She showed me a half-faded pastel depicting her at 28 years old - white, blond, with a meek face, with naive grace, with amazing innocence in her eyes and smile... she looks a little like a Russian maid a la Parasha. If I were Pushkin, I wouldn’t write poetry to her..."

At this time, Anna was suspected of tuberculosis and in order to cure her and somehow make ends meet, they had to live for many years in the village of Sosnitsa, Chernigov province - the home of Anna Petrovna's grandfather. 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 Tverskoy (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.

A memorial stone with Pushkin’s line: “I remember a wonderful moment...” near the Church of Peter and Paul in Riga (now the Ave Sol concert hall).

Before her death, she ordered to be buried next to her husband, but her will was not carried out due to the very slushy weather of the spring of 1879, which washed away the road, which became soggy from moisture to such an extent that it became completely impassable. Anna Petrovna was not taken to her husband’s grave and was buried halfway in an old rural cemetery, near an old stone church in the village of Prutnya, which is 6 kilometers from Torzhok. The fate of her fourth child, her son, Alexander, was also tragic; he committed suicide as an adult at the age of forty, shortly after the death of his parents, apparently due to inability to adapt to life.

And 100 years later in Riga, near the former church, a modest monument to Anna Petrovna was erected with an inscription in Latvian.

They bring and bring
Flowers here from Pushkin...