Whoever has never been to the top of Ivan the Great, who has never had the opportunity to take one look at our entire ancient capital from end to end, who has never admired this majestic, almost boundless panorama, has no idea about Moscow, for Moscow is not an ordinary big a city of which there are a thousand; Moscow is not a silent mass of cold stones arranged in a symmetrical order... no! she has her own soul, her own life. Like in an ancient Roman cemetery, each of its stones contains an inscription inscribed by time and fate, an inscription incomprehensible to the crowd, but rich, abundant with thoughts, feelings and inspiration for a scientist, patriot and poet!.. Like the ocean, it has its own language , a strong, sonorous, holy, prayerful language!.. As soon as the day wakes up, from all its golden-domed churches a consonant hymn of bells is heard, like a wonderful, fantastic Beethoven overture, in which the thick roar of the counter-bass, the crackling of timpani, with the singing of the violin and flutes form one great whole; - and it seems that disembodied sounds take on a visible form, that the spirits of heaven and hell are coiled under the clouds into one diverse, immeasurable, rapidly rotating round dance!..
Oh, what a bliss it is to listen to this unearthly music, climbing to the very top tier of Ivan the Great, leaning on the narrow mossy window to which a worn, slippery, twisted staircase led you, and thinking that this whole orchestra is thundering under your feet, and imagining that all this is for you alone, that you are the king of this immaterial world, and devouring with your eyes this huge anthill, where people are fussing, alien to you, where passions are boiling, forgotten by you for a moment! concerns of humanity, look at the world from above!
To the north in front of you, in the very distance at the edge of the blue sky, a little to the right of Peter's Castle, the romantic Maryina Grove blackens, and in front of it lies a layer of motley roofs, intersected here and there by the dusty greenery of boulevards built on the ancient city rampart; on a steep mountain, strewn with low houses, among which the wide white wall of some boyar’s house is only occasionally visible, rises a quadrangular, gray, fantastic bulk - the Sukharev Tower. She proudly looks at the surroundings, as if she knows that the name of Peter is inscribed on her mossy brow! Her gloomy physiognomy, her gigantic size, her decisive forms, everything bears the imprint of another century, the imprint of that formidable power that nothing could resist.
Closer to the city center, the buildings take on a slimmer, more European appearance; one can see rich colonnades, wide courtyards surrounded by cast-iron gratings, countless church heads, bell towers with rusty crosses and colorful painted cornices.
Even closer, on a wide square, rises the Petrovsky Theater, a work of modern art, a huge building, made according to all the rules of taste, with a flat roof and a majestic portico, on which stands an alabaster Apollo, standing on one leg in an alabaster chariot, motionless driving three alabaster horses and looking with annoyance at the Kremlin wall, which jealously separates him from the ancient shrines of Russia!..
To the east the picture is even richer and more varied: behind the wall itself, which descends to the right from the mountain and ends in a round corner tower, covered like scales with green tiles; - a little to the left of this tower are the countless domes of St. Basil's Church, the seventy aisles of which all foreigners marvel at and which not a single Russian has yet bothered to describe in detail.
It, like the ancient Babylonian pillar, consists of several ledges, which end in a huge, jagged, rainbow-colored head, extremely similar (if you will forgive me the comparison) to the crystal faceted stopper of an ancient decanter. Scattered around it on all the ledges of the tiers are many second-class chapters, completely different from one another; they are scattered throughout the building without symmetry, without order, like branches of an old tree creeping along its bare roots.
Twisted heavy columns support iron roofs that hang over the doors and outer galleries, from which small dark windows peer out, like the pupils of a hundred-eyed monster. Thousands of intricate hieroglyphic images are drawn around these windows; From time to time, a dim lamp glows through their glass, blocked by bars, just as a peaceful firefly shines at night through the ivy entwining a dilapidated tower. Each chapel is painted on the outside with a special paint, as if they were not all built at the same time, as if each ruler of Moscow added one over the course of many years, in honor of his angel.
Very few Moscow residents dared to walk around all the aisles of this temple. His gloomy appearance brings some kind of despondency to the soul; It seems that you see before you Ivan the Terrible himself - but as he was in the last years of his life!
And what? - next to this magnificent, gloomy building, right opposite its doors, a dirty crowd seethes, rows of shops glitter, peddlers shout, bakers bustle around the pedestal of the monument erected to Minin; Fashionable carriages rattle, fashionable ladies babble,... everything is so noisy, lively, restless!..
To the right of St. Basil's, under a steep slope, flows the shallow, wide, dirty Moscow River, exhausted under many heavy ships loaded with bread and firewood; their long masts, topped with striped weather vanes, rise from behind the Moskvoretsky Bridge, their creaky ropes, swayed by the wind like a cobweb, barely blacken against the blue sky. On the left bank of the river, looking into its smooth waters, there is a white educational building, whose wide bare walls, symmetrically located windows and pipes, and generally European posture are sharply separated from other neighboring buildings, dressed in oriental luxury or filled with the spirit of the Middle Ages. Further to the east, on three hills, between which the river meanders, there are broad masses of houses of all possible sizes and colors; a tired gaze can hardly reach the distant horizon, on which groups of several monasteries are depicted, between which Simonov is especially notable for his hanging platform, almost between heaven and earth, from where our ancestors watched the movements of the approaching Tatars.
To the south, under the mountain, at the very foot of the Kremlin wall, opposite the Tainitsky Gate, a river flows, and behind it a wide valley, strewn with houses and churches, extends to the very foot of Poklonnaya Hill, from where Napoleon took his first look at the Kremlin that was disastrous for him, from where for the first time he saw his prophetic flame: this formidable light that illuminated his triumph and his fall!
In the west, behind the long tower, where only swallows live and can live (for it, being built after the French, has neither ceilings nor stairs inside, and its walls are spread with cross-shaped beams), rise the arches of a stone bridge, which bends in an arc from one banks on the other; the water, held back by a small dam, bursts out from under it with noise and foam, forming small waterfalls between the arches, which often, especially in the spring, attract the curiosity of Moscow onlookers, and sometimes take into their depths the body of a poor sinner. Further on from the bridge, on the right side of the river, the jagged silhouettes of the Alekseevsky Monastery stand out in the sky; on the left, on the plain between the roofs of merchant houses, the tops of the Donskoy Monastery shine... And there - behind it, covered in blue fog rising from the icy waves of the river, the Sparrow Hills begin, crowned with dense groves, which from the steep peaks look into the river meandering at their soles are like a snake covered with silvery scales.
When the day is falling, when a pink haze covers the distant parts of the city and the surrounding hills, then only can we see our ancient capital in all its splendor, for like a beauty who shows only in the evening her best attire, only at this solemn hour can she produce a powerful effect on the soul, indelible impression.
What can be compared with this Kremlin, which, surrounded by battlements, flaunting the golden domes of cathedrals, reclines on a high mountain, like a sovereign crown on the brow of a formidable ruler?..
Alexander Anatolyevich Vaskin was born in 1975 in Moscow. Russian writer, journalist, historian. Graduated from Moscow State University named after. I. Fedorova. Candidate of Economic Sciences.
Author of books, articles, television and radio programs on the history of Moscow. Published in various publications.
Actively defends the cultural and historical heritage of Moscow on television and radio. Conducts educational work, gives lectures at the Polytechnic Museum, the Museum of Architecture. A.V. Shchusev, in Yasnaya Polyana as part of the projects “Books in the Parks”, “Library Night”, “Boulevard of Readers”, etc. Host of the radio program “Musical Routes” on Radio Orpheus.
Finalist of the “Prosvetitel-2013” award. Laureate of the Gorky Literary Prize, the “Best Books of the Year” competition, the “Forty Forties”, “Moscow Media” awards, etc.
Member of the Moscow Writers Union. Member of the Moscow Union of Journalists.
To the 200th anniversary of M.Yu. Lermontov
Moscow under the pen of Lermontov
Above the Kremlin white stone wall.
M. Lermontov
In 1834, while in St. Petersburg, cadet Mikhail Lermontov created one of the most piercing works about the Mother See in the history of Russian literature - “Panorama of Moscow”. The panorama was painted on the instructions of a teacher at a cadet school in order to teach future officers the ability to describe the pictures they saw in front of them. Who would have thought that such a valuable artistic and philosophical work would grow out of a completely ordinary homework, thanks to which descendants to this day will learn a lot about Moscow in the 30s.
No worse than any other talented painter, Lermontov creates a panorama of his native city, which opened to him from the bell tower of Ivan the Great:
“Whoever has never been to the top of Ivan the Great, who has never had the opportunity to take one look at our entire ancient capital from end to end, who has never admired this majestic, almost boundless panorama, has no idea about Moscow, for Moscow is not an ordinary a big city, of which there are a thousand; Moscow is not a silent mass of cold stones arranged in a symmetrical order... no! she has her own soul, her own life. Like in an ancient Roman cemetery, each of its stones contains an inscription inscribed by time and fate, an inscription incomprehensible to the crowd, but rich, abundant with thoughts, feelings and inspiration for a scientist, patriot and poet!.. Like the ocean, it has its own language , a strong, sonorous, holy, prayerful language!.. As soon as the day wakes up, from all its golden-domed churches a consonant hymn of bells is heard, like a wonderful, fantastic Beethoven overture, in which the thick roar of the counter-bass, the crackling of timpani, with the singing of the violin and flutes form one great whole; - and it seems that disembodied sounds take on a visible form, that the spirits of heaven and hell are coiled under the clouds into one diverse, immeasurable, rapidly rotating round dance!..
Oh, what a bliss it is to listen to this unearthly music, climbing to the very top tier of Ivan the Great, leaning on the narrow mossy window to which a worn, slippery, twisted staircase led you, and thinking that this whole orchestra is thundering under your feet, and imagining that all this is for you alone, that you are the king of this immaterial world, and devouring with your eyes this huge anthill, where people are fussing, alien to you, where passions are boiling, forgotten by you for a moment! concerns of humanity, look at the world from above!
In this passage, it is not for nothing that Lermontov puts two words side by side: “patriot” and “poet”. He appears here in this dual capacity. Lermontov, praising Moscow, is a poet, and Lermontov, honoring the history of his country and its ancient capital, is a patriot.
Why does he look at the city from the Ivan the Great Bell Tower - a masterpiece of Russian architecture rising on the Cathedral Square of the ancient Kremlin? In addition to the fact that it was the tallest building in Moscow, the bell tower also served as a symbol of perseverance and courage in the history of the Mother See, full of military feats.
The origins of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower go back to 1329, when the Church of St. John Climacus. In 1505, to the east of the temple, which had been dismantled by that time, the Italian master Bon Fryazin built a new church in memory of the deceased Tsar Ivan III. Forty years later, a belfry also grew next to the temple, according to the design of the architect Petrok Maly. Another, no less gifted architect, Fyodor Kon, added a third tier to the bell tower. This happened in 1600, already during the reign of Boris Godunov. Later, in the 30s of the 17th century, an extension with a tent, known as Filaretova, was added to the belfry. As a result, by the end of the 17th century, the bell tower acquired the image so familiar to us today.
Lermontov in his “Panorama...” showed very well that over the many centuries of its existence, the bell tower of Ivan the Great has become for Muscovites more than just an architectural monument, namely, the personification of the holiness of the Mother See. The bells of the belfry invariably informed the whole of Moscow about historical events of an all-Russian scale: the birth of an heir to the throne, the crowning of a new sovereign, liberation from the invasion of numerous and frequent invaders, etc.
Junker Lermontov could not help but know that it was this legendary bell tower that became the main object of French barbarism in the Kremlin in the fall of 1812. At first, General Lauriston set up his office and telegraph in its lower tier. And then Napoleon himself, rushing around the burned-out Moscow like an animal in a cage, uselessly waiting for a truce from the Russians, in revenge ordered the cross to be torn down from the bell tower of Ivan the Great.
For Lermontov, who was keenly interested in history from an early age, all these details were necessary. After all, as we know, the range of his creative research was unusually wide; it was not for nothing that he wrote “Borodino” and “The Song about the Merchant Kalashnikov.” But his plans were to create a major prose work about 1812.
It seems that even if Lermontov had not been given the task of his teacher to write an essay, he would still have created something similar. An enduring love for Moscow lived and pulsated within him, and it was not for nothing that back in 1831, that is, three years before “Panorama...”, the poet wrote:
Who saw the Kremlin at golden hour in the morning,
When there is fog over the city,
When between the temples with proud simplicity,
Like a king, does the giant tower turn white?
Note that in this short poem the author again found a place for Ivan the Great, likening the bell tower to a proud king. This means that the idea of seeing Moscow, conveying his impressions and thoughts from what he saw in prose originated with the poet a long time ago. But let’s continue, together with Lermontov, to look at Moscow from the giant bell tower:
“To the north in front of you, in the very distance at the edge of the blue sky, a little to the right of Peter’s Castle, the romantic Maryina Grove blackens, and in front of it lies a layer of motley roofs, intersected here and there by the dusty greenery of boulevards built on the ancient city rampart; on a steep mountain, strewn with low houses, among which the wide white wall of some boyar’s house is only occasionally visible, rises a quadrangular, gray, fantastic bulk - the Sukharev Tower. She proudly looks at the surroundings, as if she knows that the name of Peter is inscribed on her mossy brow! Her gloomy physiognomy, her gigantic size, her decisive forms, everything bears the imprint of another century, the imprint of that formidable power that nothing could resist.”
Lermontov was able to see all the most important things in the north of Moscow. He has yet to visit and even live in Petrovsky Castle on his last visit to his hometown. The poet does not name the Garden Ring, but it is marked by green boulevards that were laid out in its place at the behest of Catherine II. That's why it was called that - because it was drowned in the gardens. Under Lermontov, the gardens were still blooming. And here is the Sukharev Tower - Lermontov seems to contrast it with Ivan the Great, personifying it with the era of Peter I. It seems that Lermontov loves the century when Ivan the Great was installed in Moscow than the one when the “gloomy face” of the Sukharev Tower began to stare at the city.
Next, Lermontov paints an image of empire-style Moscow restored after the fire of 1812: “Closer to the city center, the buildings take on a slimmer, more European appearance; one can see rich colonnades, wide courtyards surrounded by cast-iron gratings, countless church heads, bell towers with rusty crosses and colorful painted cornices.” In the quoted passage, the “flocks of jackdaws on crosses” mentioned by Pushkin in “Eugene Onegin” also suggest themselves into the overall picture.
“Even closer,” we read further, “on a wide square, rises the Petrovsky Theater, a work of modern art, a huge building, made according to all the rules of taste, with a flat roof and a majestic portico, on which rises an alabaster Apollo, standing on one leg in an alabaster chariot, motionless driving three alabaster horses and looking with annoyance at the Kremlin wall, which jealously separates him from the ancient shrines of Russia!
Lermontov visited the Petrovsky Theater more than once. Let us only note that the four horses harnessed to Apollo’s chariot were made of bronze, not alabaster.
When the poet looks to the east, he sees “the countless domes of St. Basil’s Church, the seventy aisles of which all foreigners marvel at and which not a single Russian has yet bothered to describe in detail. It, like the ancient Babylonian pillar, consists of several ledges, which end in a huge, jagged, rainbow-colored head, extremely similar (if you will forgive me the comparison) to the crystal faceted stopper of an ancient decanter. Scattered around it on all the ledges of the tiers are many second-class chapters, completely different from one another; they are scattered throughout the building without symmetry, without order, like branches of an old tree creeping along its exposed roots... Very few Moscow residents dared to walk around all the aisles of this temple. His gloomy appearance brings some kind of despondency to the soul; It seems that you see before you Ivan the Terrible himself - but as he was in the last years of his life!
What an interesting comparison Lermontov makes, likening St. Basil's Cathedral to Ivan the Terrible himself! The picture of V.M. involuntarily comes to mind. Vasnetsov “Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible” 1897. Talking about the work on the canvas, the artist, without knowing it, entered into a dialogue with Lermontov: “I don’t know why, but when examining the monuments of antiquity, which we, artists, were interested in when settling in the ancient capital, the shadow of Ivan the Terrible always appeared before us. .. Wandering around the Kremlin, I seemed to see Grozny. In the narrow staircases and corridors of St. Basil’s Cathedral I heard the tread of his steps, the blows of his staff, his authoritative voice.” What a curious roll call of the voices of two great artists across an era!
“To the right of St. Basil’s, under a steep slope, flows the shallow, wide, dirty Moscow River, exhausted under many heavy ships loaded with bread and firewood; their long masts, topped with striped weather vanes, rise from behind the Moskvoretsky Bridge, their creaky ropes, swayed by the wind like a cobweb, barely blacken against the blue sky. On the left bank of the river, looking into its smooth waters, there is a white educational building, whose wide bare walls, symmetrically located windows and pipes, and generally European posture are sharply separated from other neighboring buildings, dressed with oriental luxury or filled with the spirit of the Middle Ages.
So, Lermontov’s gaze falls on the Orphanage - this building occupied an entire block on Solyanka, between Svininsky Lane and Solyansky Proezd. At that time his address was: “on Solyanka and on the embankment, in the 1st block.” The history of the Orphanage began with the manifesto of Empress Catherine II of September 1, 1763, which established it for “children brought with a special hospital to orphaned and indigent parents.” Of course, Lermontov could not help but notice the bulk of the Orphanage, but he was even more interested in the episode of the heroic defense of the building in 1812 - as an example of the courage and dedication of Muscovites.
“Further to the east, on three hills, between which the river meanders, there are wide masses of houses of all possible sizes and colors; a tired gaze can hardly reach the distant horizon, on which groups of several monasteries are depicted, between which Simonov is especially notable for his hanging platform, almost between heaven and earth, from where our ancestors watched the movements of the approaching Tatars.”
Well, how could Lermontov fail to notice the ancient guardian of Moscow - the Simonov Monastery, in the vicinity of which Sergius of Radonezh visited more than once. Lermontov was familiar with these places, because here in his youth he often spent his free time. In the novel “Princess Ligovskaya” the main character, Pechorin, went to the Simonov Monastery as part of a large company:
“Once a large company gathered to go to the Simonov Monastery for the all-night vigil, to pray, listen to the singers and take a walk. It was spring: we sat down in long lines, each harnessed to six horses, and set off from the Arbat in a merry caravan. The sun was setting towards the Sparrow Hills, and the evening was truly beautiful... Finally we arrived at the monastery. Before the all-night vigil they went to inspect the walls and cemetery; climbed onto the platform of the western tower, the same one from where in ancient times our ancestors monitored movements... Georges did not lag behind Verochka, because it would have been awkward to leave without finishing the conversation, and the conversation was of the kind that could continue indefinitely. It continued throughout the entire night vigil, except for those minutes when the wondrous choir of the monks and the voice of Father Victor plunged them into silent tenderness.”
Lermontov vividly remembered his trips to the Simonov Monastery, especially the church service. And here we see confirmation of his outstanding musicality, which his contemporaries have repeatedly talked about. The earliest evidence of Lermontov's love for music belongs to himself. “When I was three years old, there was a song that made me cry: I can’t remember it now, but I’m sure that if I had heard it, it would have had the same effect. My late mother sang it to me,” the poet wrote in 1830.
Lermontov is obviously one of the most musically gifted Russian poets. And the Simonov Monastery, marked in the panorama of Moscow, probably reminded him of both the marvelous choir of monks and the voice of the abbot, heard during his years at the university.
“In the west,” we read further, “the arches of a stone bridge rise, which bends in an arc from one bank to the other; the water, held back by a small dam, bursts out from under it with noise and foam, forming small waterfalls between the arches, which often, especially in the spring, attract the curiosity of Moscow onlookers, and sometimes take into their depths the body of a poor sinner. Further on from the bridge, on the right side of the river, the jagged silhouettes of the Alekseevsky Monastery stand out in the sky; on the left, on the plain between the roofs of merchant houses, the tops of the Donskoy Monastery shine... And there - behind it, covered in blue fog rising from the icy waves of the river, the Sparrow Hills begin, crowned with dense groves, which from the steep peaks look into the river meandering at their soles are like a snake covered with silvery scales.”
The Alekseevsky Monastery used to stand on the spot where the Cathedral of Christ the Savior now stands. Initially, the temple was built on the Sparrow Hills, according to Vitberg’s design, but then the subsequent failure forced them to look for a new place for this temple - a monument to the Patriotic War of 1812. And it was found - behind the Stone Bridge, which Lermontov mentions, on the banks of the Moscow River. The Alekseevsky Monastery was dismantled, and the temple began to be built according to the design of Ton, the favorite architect of Nicholas I.
“When the day declines, when a pink haze covers the distant parts of the city and the surrounding hills, then only can we see our ancient capital in all its splendor, for, like a beauty who shows only in the evening her best attire, only at this solemn hour can she impress the soul a strong, indelible impression.
What can be compared with this Kremlin, which, surrounded by battlements, flaunting the golden domes of cathedrals, reclines on a high mountain, like a sovereign crown on the brow of a formidable ruler?.. It is the altar of Russia, on it many sacrifices worthy of the fatherland must be made, and have already been made. .. How long ago, like the fabulous phoenix, was he reborn from his flaming ashes?!
What is more majestic than these gloomy temples, closely assembled in one heap, this mysterious Godunov’s palace, whose cold pillars and slabs for so many years no longer hear the sounds of a human voice, like a burial mausoleum rising in the middle of the desert in memory of the great kings?!..
No, it is impossible to describe neither the Kremlin, nor its battlements, nor its dark passages, nor its magnificent palaces... You must see, see... you must feel everything that they say to the heart and imagination!.. Juncker L.G. Hussar Regiment Lermantov". So, at sunset in the evening, the “Panorama of Moscow” ends. But the poet has another view of Moscow and the Kremlin, in the early morning hours:
Above the great, golden-domed Moscow,
Above the Kremlin white stone wall
Because of the distant forests, because of the blue mountains,
Playfully on the plank roofs,
The gray clouds are accelerating,
The scarlet dawn rises;
She scattered her golden curls,
Washed with crumbly snow,
Like a beauty looking in the mirror,
He looks into the clear sky and smiles.
These lines from “Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, the young guardsman and the daring merchant Kalashnikov” are no less eloquent than the given fragment from the prosaic “Panorama of Moscow”. And this is what Lermontov is all about. How correctly he noted: “You have to feel!” Lermontov not only talentedly expressed his love for Moscow, he conveyed to us his feelings, emotions and sensations.
Alexander Vaskin
The ending follows.
October 15 (October 3, old style) marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great Russian poet Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov. In our review, timed to coincide with the anniversary date, the editors of the project website suggest taking a short walk through the “Lermontov places” in Moscow and recalling the poet’s works dedicated to the capital.
Moscow, Moscow!.. I love you like a son,
Like a Russian - strong, fiery and tender!
Moscow occupies a special place in Lermontov’s life. This is the city in which the poet was born, where he spent his adolescence and youth, where his worldview was formed and his calling was discovered. Lermontov's first poem was published in Moscow; in this city the young man experienced his first love and “anxiety of the soul.” He loved Moscow with all his heart, with all his soul, and more than once confessed his love for the city in his works: “... as long as I live, I swear, friends, not to stop loving Moscow.”
The starting point of the “excursion to Lermontov’s places” is traditionally. Here, on the spot, at the crossroads of roads going from the Red Gate to and from Kalanchevka to the Red Gate, there used to be the house of Major General F.N. Tolya. In house No. 1 (demolished in 1949), the Lermontov couple had a son, Mikhail, born on the night of October 2-3. In memory of this event, a memorial plaque was installed on the modern building.
In 1941, in the year of the centenary of the poet’s death, the square was renamed , and at the same time a decision was made to create a monument to the poet. But the outbreak of war prevented the implementation of these plans. Only in 1965, the grand opening of the work of the sculptor I. D. Brodsky took place in the park on the square. Bronze Lermontov, with his hands behind his back, lost in thought, stands on a high pedestal. A special poetic atmosphere is created by a bench and a lattice with bas-reliefs located next to the monument, illustrating images of Lermontov’s works, including “Mtsyri”, “Demon” and the immortal “Sail”. And, despite the fact that after the release of the film “Gentlemen of Fortune”, with the light hand of Savely Kramarov, the monument began to be called, it is considered the most romantic monument in Moscow. In 1992, most of the square's territory was returned to its historical name, Red Gate, and part of the square on the outer side of the Garden Ring, on which the square and monument to Lermontov is located, still bears the name of the poet.
Little Misha was baptized on October 11, 1814 in the nearby Church of the Three Saints (demolished in 1928, in 1934 the lobby of the Krasnye Vorota metro station was built near this place). After spending the winter in a small house on Kalanchevskaya Street, in the spring the Lermontovs moved to the estate of the poet’s maternal grandmother E.A. Arsenyeva - the village of Tarkhany, Penza province, where Mikhail spent his childhood. Lermontov returned to Moscow as a teenager in 1827. The grandmother, who replaced the boy's parents (after the death of his mother, the grandmother took up Misha's upbringing, reducing meetings with his father Yuri Petrovich Lermontov to a minimum), brought her grandson so that he could receive a decent education. Upon arrival, they stopped in Sergievsky Lane, with Uncle E.A. Arsenyeva, Mikhail Afanasyevich Meshcherinov, and in the spring they settled in the wooden mansion of the widow of Major Kostomarov, rented on 26 (the house has not survived).
Well prepared by tutors for studying at the Noble University boarding school, Lermontov immediately entered the 4th grade of the institution. The boy was prepared for the exams by one of the best teachers at the boarding school, A.Z. Zinoviev, with whom Misha sometimes walked around Moscow. Their usual route, starting from Povarskaya, went to, then along to, then to, and from there to, where Lermontov first climbed to the upper tier. The panorama of the ancient city made an indelible impression on Mikhail. Later, he climbed the bell tower many times to admire Moscow from a bird's eye view. Lermontov described the image of his beloved city in his youthful article (1834) “Panorama of Moscow”: “Who has never been to the top of Ivan the Great, who has never happened to take one look at our entire ancient capital from end to end, who has never admired with this majestic, almost boundless panorama, he has no idea about Moscow, for Moscow is not an ordinary big city, of which there are a thousand; Moscow is not a silent mass of cold stones arranged in a symmetrical order... no, it has its own soul, its own life.”
The Moscow University Noble Boarding House, where Lermontov studied for 2 years, was located on the corner of Tverskaya and on the site of the current one. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, the boarding school was considered the best educational institution in Russia on a par with the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. He was famous not only for his teachers (M.G. Pavlov, A.F. Merzlyakov, S.E. Raich, M.A. Maksimovich), but for his students. Wonderful Russian writers and poets emerged from its walls: V.A. Zhukovsky, A.S. Griboyedov, V.F. Odoevsky, N.P. Ogarev, F.I. Tyutchev, Decembrists: N. M. Muravyov, P. G. Kakhovsky, V. F. Raevsky, N. I. Turgenev. In 1830, after transforming the boarding school into a gymnasium, Lermontov entered
While still studying at the boarding school, Lermontov and his grandmother moved from Povarskaya to Malaya Povarskaya, house 2 (nowadays). The small mansion where they moved in early August 1829 belonged to the merchant F.I. Chernova. This one-story house with a mezzanine, built after a fire in 1812, became... Mikhail Yuryevich lived in it until his departure to St. Petersburg at the end of July 1832. This was the most fruitful period of his short life. While studying at the noble boarding school and Moscow University, 17 poems, 3 dramas and about 250 poems were written here.
The house on Malaya Molchanovka is the only surviving house in Moscow where the poet lived. In 1977, the building was transferred to the State Literary Museum, and in 1981 it opened here. The museum recreates the atmosphere of the 30s of the 19th century, telling about the family structure and life of the aspiring poet.
In 1994, in a small park on Malaya Molchanovka, not far from the house-museum, works by A. Burganov were installed.
During his years studying at the boarding school, Lermontov became seriously interested in theater. As a child, he visited the Petrovsky Theater (), and as he grew up, he became a lover of theatrical productions.
Leaving his beloved Moscow in the summer of 1832 to continue his studies in St. Petersburg, full of hopes and plans, Lermontov returned here again, only on the way to exile. Having left the city, Lermontov subsequently wrote to Lopukhina: “...Moscow is my homeland and will always be so for me; I was born there, suffered a lot there and was too happy there!”
The poet retained this love for the city until the end of his life. The image of Moscow is present in many of Lermontov's works, starting with his early youthful poems. In an early sketch of “Who saw the Kremlin at the golden hour of the morning,” the poet admires Moscow:
Who saw the Kremlin at golden hour in the morning,
When there is fog over the city,
When between the temples with proud simplicity,
Like a king, does the giant tower turn white?
And in one of his very first works, the poem "Boulevard", written in July 1830, Lermontov satirically depicts visitors, life and customs of noble Moscow in the late 20s - early 30s; the poet shows in the drama "Strange Man" (finished in July 1831).
Describing Moscow from above in the “Panorama of Moscow”, the St. Petersburg cadet Lermontov is convinced that the cold northern capital will never become the heart of Russia: “What can we compare with this Kremlin, which, surrounded by battlements, flaunting the golden domes of cathedrals, reclines on a high mountain, like a sovereign crown on the brow of a formidable ruler?... He is the altar of Russia..."
The picture of the ancient capital unfolds in the poem "Song...about the merchant Kalashnikov." Moscow from the time of Ivan the Terrible is presented by the poet as a symbol of faith, as a holy, Orthodox city. The collective artistic image of Moscow shows its different sides: “royal” Moscow, “robber” Moscow, the life and customs of the merchant Zamoskvorechye region. In the poem, Lermontov describes the city itself, the Kremlin, Red Square, Zaryadye, and its inhabitants.
Vespers were rung in the holy churches;
Behind the Kremlin a foggy dawn is burning;
Clouds are flying into the sky -
The blizzard drives them singing;
The wide living courtyard was deserted,
Locked by Stepan Paramonovich
Your own bench with an oak door
Yes, a German lock with a spring;
Angry, toothy, grumpy dog
Tied to an iron chain,
And he went home, thoughtful,
To the young housewife across the Moscow River.
…… Above the great, golden-domed Moscow,
Above the Kremlin white stone wall
Because of the distant forests, because of the blue mountains,
Playfully on the plank roofs,
The gray clouds are accelerating,
The scarlet dawn is rising...
The theme of Moscow, which is identified with the Motherland, is revealed by Lermontov in the poem "Borodino". The poet represents Moscow as a symbol and as a stronghold of the Russian state. Regretting that Moscow had to be surrendered to the French, the poet is convinced that this is not a defeat for the Russian army, but a forced step:
If it were not the Lord's will,
They wouldn't give up Moscow!
And the lines:
Guys! Isn't Moscow behind us?
We'll die near Moscow... -
became symbolic in 1941.
In the poem "Sashka" Lermontov's fiery declaration of love for his native city sounds. The poet is convinced that a Russian person cannot help but love Moscow, and vows not to stop loving it until the end of his days:
Moscow, Moscow!..
I love you like a son
Like a Russian - strong, fiery and tender!
I love the sacred shine of your gray hairs
And this Kremlin...
The actions of the autobiographical novel “Princess Ligovskaya” unfold in St. Petersburg, but Moscow is mentioned several times in the work. In a dispute about Moscow in the Pechorins’ living room, the invited diplomat clearly gives preference to St. Petersburg: “Every Russian should love St. Petersburg: here everything that is best in Russian youth has gathered, as if on purpose, to give a friendly hand to Europe. Moscow is only a magnificent monument, magnificent and silent the tomb of the past, here is life, here are our hopes..." In response to this, Princess Ligovskaya says: "I love Moscow, the memory of such a happy time is associated with the memories of it, but here everything is so cold, so dead..." The mediator! Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin speaks in this dispute.
“However,” said the diplomat, “will you give preference to Moscow or St. Petersburg?”
“Moscow is my homeland,” answered Pechorin...
And that was it. How can you not love your homeland and not recognize its supremacy? Pechorin’s words are the position of the author himself, who, through the lips of his hero, once again confesses his love for Moscow.
Almost 200 years separate Lermontov's Moscow from the modern city. Over the years, the ancient capital has changed beyond recognition, but just as in the time of the poet, the majestic and ancient Moscow Kremlin rises, the monumental building of the former Noble Assembly and the old building of Moscow University on Mokhovaya stand, the Bolshoi Theater gives performances and Tverskoy Boulevard is also popular among the townspeople , an old one-story house with a mezzanine on Malaya Molchanovka has also been preserved, where you can now come to remember the brilliant poet, prose writer, playwright, artist and person.
To the 200th anniversary of the birth of M.Yu. Lermontov From September 18 to December 10, 2014, the Exhibition Halls host a large-scale all-Russian exhibition “My home is wherever there is a vault of heaven...”, dedicated to the life and work of the poet. Leading museums, state archives, libraries and theaters of the country take part in the inter-museum project, where materials related to the life and work of M.Yu. Lermontov. The opened exhibition, in terms of the number of exhibits presented, is the largest in the history of Lermontov anniversaries. Many exhibits are on public display for the first time.
Whoever has never been to the top of Ivan the Great, who has never had the opportunity to take one look at our entire ancient capital from end to end, who has never admired this majestic, almost boundless panorama, has no idea about Moscow, for Moscow is not an ordinary big a city of which there are a thousand; Moscow is not a silent mass of cold stones arranged in a symmetrical order... no! she has her own soul, her own life. Like in an ancient Roman cemetery, each of its stones contains an inscription inscribed by time and fate, an inscription incomprehensible to the crowd, but rich, abundant in thoughts, feelings and inspiration for a scientist, patriot and poet!.. Like the ocean, it has its own language, a strong, sonorous, holy, prayerful language!.. As soon as the day wakes up, from all its golden-domed churches a consonant hymn of bells is heard, like a wonderful, fantastic Beethoven overture, in which the thick roar of the counter-bass, the crackling of the timpani with the singing of the violin and flute form one great whole; - and it seems that disembodied sounds take on a visible form, that the spirits of heaven and hell are coiled under the clouds into one diverse, immeasurable, rapidly rotating round dance!..
Oh, what a bliss it is to listen to this unearthly music, climbing to the very top tier of Ivan the Great, leaning on the narrow mossy window to which a worn, slippery, twisted staircase led you, and thinking that this whole orchestra is thundering under your feet, and imagining that all this is for you alone, that you are the king of this immaterial world, and devouring with your eyes this huge anthill, where people are fussing, alien to you, where passions are boiling, forgotten by you for a moment! concerns of humanity, look at the world - from above!
To the north in front of you, in the very distance at the edge of the blue sky, a little to the right of Peter's Castle, the romantic Maryina Grove blackens, and in front of it lies a layer of motley roofs, intersected here and there by the dusty greenery of boulevards built on the ancient city rampart; on a steep mountain, strewn with low houses, among which the wide white wall of some boyar’s house is only occasionally visible, rises a quadrangular, gray, fantastic bulk - the Sukharev Tower. She proudly looks at the surroundings, as if she knows that the name of Peter is inscribed on her mossy brow! Her gloomy physiognomy, her gigantic size, her decisive forms, everything bears the imprint of another century, the imprint of that formidable power that nothing could resist.
Closer to the city center, the buildings take on a slimmer, more European appearance; one can see rich colonnades, wide courtyards surrounded by cast-iron gratings, countless church heads, bell towers with rusty crosses and colorful painted cornices.
Even closer, on a wide square, rises the Petrovsky Theater, a work of modern art, a huge building, made according to all the rules of taste, with a flat roof and a majestic portico, on which stands an alabaster Apollo, standing on one leg in an alabaster chariot, motionless driving three alabaster horses and looking with annoyance at the Kremlin wall, which jealously separates him from the ancient shrines of Russia!..
To the east the picture is even richer and more varied: behind the wall itself, which descends to the right from the mountain and ends in a round corner tower, covered like scales with green tiles; - a little to the left of this tower are the countless domes of St. Basil's Church, the seventy aisles of which all foreigners marvel at and which not a single Russian has yet bothered to describe in detail.
It, like the ancient Babylonian pillar, consists of several ledges, which end in a huge, jagged, rainbow-colored head, extremely similar (if you will forgive me the comparison) to the crystal faceted stopper of an ancient decanter. Scattered around it on all the ledges of the tiers are many second-class chapters, completely different from one another; they are scattered throughout the building without symmetry, without order, like branches of an old tree creeping along its bare roots.
Twisted heavy columns support iron roofs that hang over the doors and external galleries, from which small dark windows peer out, like the pupils of a hundred-eyed monster. Thousands of intricate hieroglyphic images are drawn around these windows; From time to time, a dim lamp glows through their glass, blocked by bars, just as a peaceful firefly shines at night through the ivy entwining a dilapidated tower. Each chapel is painted on the outside with a special paint, as if they were not all built at the same time, as if each ruler of Moscow added one over the course of many years, in honor of his angel.
Very few Moscow residents dared to walk around all the aisles of this temple. His gloomy appearance brings some kind of despondency to the soul; It seems that you see before you Ivan the Terrible himself - but as he was in the last years of his life!
And what? - next to this magnificent, gloomy building, right opposite its doors, a dirty crowd seethes, rows of shops glitter, peddlers shout, bakers bustle around the pedestal of the monument erected to Minin; Fashionable carriages rattle, fashionable ladies babble, ... everything is so noisy, lively, restless!..
To the right of St. Basil's, under a steep slope, flows the shallow, wide, dirty Moscow River, exhausted under many heavy ships loaded with bread and firewood; their long masts, topped with striped weather vanes, rise from behind the Moskvoretsky Bridge, their creaky ropes, swayed by the wind like a cobweb, barely blacken against the blue sky. On the left bank of the river, looking into its smooth waters, there is a white educational building, whose wide bare walls, symmetrically located windows and pipes and generally European bearing are sharply separated from other neighboring buildings, dressed in oriental luxury or filled with the spirit of the Middle Ages. Further to the east, on three hills, between which the river meanders, there are broad masses of houses of all possible sizes and colors; a tired gaze can hardly reach the distant horizon, on which groups of several monasteries are depicted, between which Simonov is especially notable for his hanging platform, almost between heaven and earth, from where our ancestors watched the movements of the approaching Tatars.
To the south, under the mountain, at the very foot of the Kremlin wall, opposite the Tainitsky Gate, a river flows, and behind it a wide valley, strewn with houses and churches, extends to the very foot of Poklonnaya Hill, from where Napoleon took his first look at the Kremlin that was disastrous for him, from where for the first time he saw his prophetic flame: this formidable light that illuminated his triumph and his fall!
In the west, behind the long tower, where only swallows live and can live (for it, being built after the French, has neither ceilings nor stairs inside, and its walls are spread with cross-shaped beams), rise the arches of a stone bridge, which bends in an arc with one bank to another; the water, held back by a small dam, bursts out from under it with noise and foam, forming small waterfalls between the arches, which often, especially in the spring, attract the curiosity of Moscow onlookers, and sometimes take into their depths the body of a poor sinner. Further on from the bridge, on the right side of the river, the jagged silhouettes of the Alekseevsky Monastery stand out in the sky; on the left, on the plain between the roofs of merchant houses, the tops of the Donskoy Monastery shine... And there - behind it, covered in blue fog rising from the icy waves of the river, the Sparrow Hills begin, crowned with dense groves, which from the steep peaks look into the river meandering at their soles are like a snake covered with silvery scales.
When the day is falling, when a pink haze covers the distant parts of the city and the surrounding hills, then only can we see our ancient capital in all its splendor, for like a beauty who shows only in the evening her best attire, only at this solemn hour can she produce a powerful effect on the soul, indelible impression.
What can be compared with this Kremlin, which, surrounded by battlements, flaunting the golden domes of cathedrals, reclines on a high mountain, like a sovereign crown on the brow of a formidable ruler?..
He is the altar of Russia, on it many sacrifices worthy of the fatherland should be and have already been performed... How long ago, like the fabulous phoenix, was he reborn from his flaming ashes?!
What is more majestic than these gloomy temples, closely assembled in one heap, this mysterious Godunov’s palace, whose cold pillars and slabs for so many years no longer hear the sounds of a human voice, like a burial mausoleum rising in the middle of the desert in memory of the great kings?!..
No, it is impossible to describe the Kremlin, nor its battlements, nor its dark passages, nor its magnificent palaces... You must see, see... you must feel everything that they say to the heart and imagination!..
Junker L. G. Hussar Regiment Lermantov.
“Whoever has never been to the top of Ivan the Great, who has never had the opportunity to take one look at our entire ancient capital from end to end, who has never admired this majestic, almost boundless panorama, has no idea about Moscow, for Moscow is not an ordinary a big city, of which there are a thousand; Moscow is not a silent mass of cold stones, arranged in a symmetrical order... no, it has its own soul, its own life, like in an ancient Roman cemetery, each of its stones contains an inscription written by time and fate, an inscription, incomprehensible to the crowd, but rich, abundant in thoughts, feelings and inspiration for a scientist, patriot and poet!.. Like the ocean, it has its own language, a strong, sonorous, holy, prayerful language!.. As soon as the day wakes up, of all its golden-domed churches the consonant hymn of the bells resounds, like a wonderful, fantastic overture by Beethoven, in which the thick roar of the counter-bass, the crackling of the timpani, with the singing of the violin and flute, form one great whole and it seems that disembodied sounds take a visible form, that of spirits; heaven and hell twine under the clouds into one diverse, immeasurable, rapidly rotating round dance!..”
