You appeared before me like a fleeting vision. "I remember a wonderful moment..."
Anna Kern: Life in the name of love Sysoev Vladimir Ivanovich
"GENIUS OF PURE BEAUTY"
"GENIUS OF PURE BEAUTY"
“The next day I had to leave for Riga with my sister Anna Nikolaevna Vulf. He came in the morning and in parting brought me a copy of the second chapter of Onegin (30), in uncut sheets, between which I found a four-fold postal sheet of paper with verses:
I remember a wonderful moment;
You appeared before me
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
In the languor of hopeless sadness,
In the anxieties of noisy bustle,
And dreamed of cute features.
Years passed. Storms gust rebellious
Scattered old dreams
Your heavenly features.
In the wilderness, in the darkness of confinement
My days passed quietly
Without a god, without inspiration,
No tears, no life, no love.
The soul has awakened:
And here you are again
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
And the heart beats in rapture
And for him they rose again
And deity, and inspiration,
And life, and tears, and love!
When I was about to hide the poetic gift in the box, he looked at me for a long time, then convulsively grabbed it and did not want to return it; I forcefully begged them again; What went through his mind then, I don't know.
What feelings did the poet have then? Embarrassment? Excitement? Maybe doubt or even remorse?
Was this poem the result of a momentary infatuation - or a poetic insight? The secret of genius is great ... Just a harmonious combination of several words, and when they sound in our imagination, a light female image, full of bewitching charms ... Poetic love message into eternity...
Many literary scholars have subjected this poem to the most careful analysis. Disputes about various versions of its interpretation, which began at the dawn of the 20th century, are still ongoing and will probably continue.
Some researchers of Pushkin's work consider this poem just a mischievous joke of the poet, who decided to create a masterpiece from the clichés of Russian romantic poetry of the first third of the 19th century. love lyrics. Indeed, out of one hundred and three of his words, more than sixty are worn out banalities (“tender voice”, “rebellious impulse”, “deity”, “heavenly features”, “inspiration”, “heart beats in rapture”, etc.). Let's not take this view of a masterpiece seriously.
According to the majority of Pushkinists, the expression "genius of pure beauty" is an open quote from V. A. Zhukovsky's poem "Lalla-Ruk":
Oh! Doesn't live with us
Genius of pure beauty;
Only occasionally does he visit
Us from heavenly heights;
He is hasty, like a dream,
Like an airy morning dream;
And in holy remembrance
He is not separated from his heart!
He is only in pure moments
Being happens to us
And brings revelation
Benevolent hearts.
For Zhukovsky, this phrase was associated with a number of symbolic images - a ghostly heavenly vision, "hurried like a dream", with symbols of hope and sleep, with the theme of "pure moments of being", tearing the heart away from the "dark region of the earth", with the theme of inspiration and revelations of the soul.
But Pushkin probably did not know this poem. Written for the holiday given in Berlin on January 15, 1821 Prussian king Friedrich on the occasion of the arrival from Russia of his daughter Alexandra Feodorovna, the wife of Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich, it appeared in print only in 1828. Zhukovsky did not send it to Pushkin.
However, all the images symbolically concentrated in the phrase “the genius of pure beauty” again appear in Zhukovsky’s poem “I used to be a young Muse” (1823), but in a different expressive atmosphere - the expectation of the “grantor of chants”, longing for the genius of pure beauty - in the twinkling of his star.
I used to be a young Muse
Met in the sublunar side,
And inspiration flew
From heaven, uninvited, to me;
On all earthly things
It is a life-giving ray -
And for me at that time it was
Life and poetry are one.
But the giver of hymns
I have not been visited for a long time;
his desired return
When can I wait again?
Or forever my loss
And forever the harp does not sound?
But everything from the beautiful times,
When he was available to me,
Anything from cute dark clear
I saved the past days -
Flowers of a solitary dream
And life's best flowers, -
I lay on your sacred altar,
O Genius of pure beauty!
Zhukovsky supplied the symbolism associated with the "genius of pure beauty" with his own commentary. It is based on the concept of beauty. “The beautiful… has neither name nor image; it visits us in the best moments of life”; “it appears to us only for minutes, for the sole purpose of expressing itself to us, reviving us, elevating our soul”; “only that which is not beautiful is beautiful”... The beautiful is associated with sadness, with the desire “for something better, secret, distant, that connects with it and that exists somewhere for you. And this striving is one of the most inexpressible proofs of the immortality of the soul.
But, most likely, as the well-known philologist academician V. V. Vinogradov first noted in the 1930s, the image of the “genius of pure beauty” arose in Pushkin’s poetic imagination at that time not so much in direct connection with Zhukovsky’s poem “Lalla Ruk” or “I’m a young Muse, I used to”, as much as under the impression of his article “Raphael’s Madonna (From a letter about the Dresden Gallery)”, published in the “Polar Star for 1824” and reproducing the legend that was widespread at that time about the creation of the famous painting “Sistine Madonna”: “They say that Raphael, having stretched his canvas for this picture, did not know for a long time what would be on it: inspiration did not come. One day he fell asleep with the thought of the Madonna, and surely some angel woke him up. He jumped up: she's here, shouting, he pointed to the canvas and drew the first drawing. And in fact, this is not a picture, but a vision: the longer you look, the more vividly you are convinced that something unnatural is happening before you ... Here the soul of the painter ... with amazing simplicity and ease, conveyed to the canvas the miracle that happened in its insides ... I… clearly began to feel that the soul was spreading… It was where it could be only in the best moments of life.
The genius of pure beauty was with her:
He is only in pure moments
Genesis flies to us
And brings us visions
Inaccessible to dreams.
... And it definitely comes to mind that this picture was born in the moment of a miracle: the curtain unfolded, and the secret of heaven was revealed to the eyes of a person ... Everything, and the very air, turns into a pure angel in the presence of this heavenly, passing virgin.
The almanac "Polar Star" with an article by Zhukovsky was brought to Mikhailovskoye by A. A. Delvig in April 1825, shortly before Anna Kern arrived in Trigorskoye, and after reading this article, the image of the Madonna firmly settled in Pushkin's poetic imagination.
“But Pushkin was alien to the moral and mystical basis of this symbolism,” says Vinogradov. - In the poem "I remember a wonderful moment" Pushkin used the symbolism of Zhukovsky, lowering it from heaven to earth, depriving it of a religious and mystical basis ...
Pushkin, merging the image of a beloved woman with the image of poetry and retaining most of Zhukovsky's symbols, except for religious and mystical
Your heavenly features...
My days passed quietly
Without a god, without inspiration...
And for him they rose again
God and inspiration...
builds from this material not only a work of a new rhythmic and figurative composition, but also of a different semantic resolution, alien to the ideological and symbolic concept of Zhukovsky.
It should not be forgotten that Vinogradov made such a statement in 1934. It was a period of broad anti-religious propaganda and the triumph of the materialistic view of the development of human society. For another half a century, Soviet literary critics did not touch upon the religious theme in the work of A. S. Pushkin.
The lines “in the silence of hopeless sadness”, “in the distance, in the darkness of confinement” are very consonant with “Eda” by E. A. Baratynsky; Pushkin borrowed some rhymes from himself - from Tatyana's letter to Onegin:
And at this very moment
Aren't you, sweet vision...
And there is nothing surprising here - Pushkin's work is full of literary reminiscences and even direct quotations; however, using the lines he liked, the poet transformed them beyond recognition.
According to the outstanding Russian philologist and Pushkinist B. V. Tomashevsky, this poem, despite the fact that it draws an idealized female image, is undoubtedly connected with A. P. Kern. “It is not without reason that in the very heading“ K *** ”it is addressed to the beloved woman, even if depicted in a generalized image of an ideal woman.”
This is also indicated by Pushkin's own list of poems of 1816-1827 (it was preserved among his papers), which the poet did not include in the 1826 edition, but intended to include in his two-volume collection of poems (it was published in 1829). The poem “I remember a wonderful moment ...” here has the heading “To A.P. K[ern], directly indicating the one to whom it is dedicated.
Doctor of Philology N. L. Stepanov outlined the interpretation of this work, which was formed back in Pushkin’s times and became a textbook: “Pushkin, as always, is exceptionally accurate in his poems. But, conveying the actual side of the meetings with Kern, he creates a work that reveals the inner world of the poet himself. In the silence of Mikhailov's solitude, the meeting with A.P. Kern evoked in the exiled poet both memories of the recent storms of his life, and regret for the lost freedom, and the joy of the meeting, which transformed his monotonous everyday life, and, above all, the joy of poetic creativity.
Another researcher, E. A. Maimin, especially noted the musicality of the poem: “It’s like musical composition, given simultaneously and real events in the life of Pushkin, and the ideal image of the "genius of pure beauty", borrowed from the poetry of Zhukovsky. The well-known ideality in solving the theme, however, does not negate the lively immediacy in the sound of the poem and in its perception. This feeling of living immediacy comes not so much from the plot, but from the captivating, one-of-a-kind music of words. There is a lot of music in the poem: melodious, lasting in time, drawn-out music of verse, music of feeling. And as in music, in a poem, it is not a direct, not tangible image of the beloved, but the image of love itself. The poem is based on musical variations of a limited range of images-motives: a wonderful moment - a genius of pure beauty - a deity - inspiration. By themselves, these images do not contain anything immediate, concrete. All this is from the world of abstract and lofty concepts. But in the general musical arrangement of the poem, they become living concepts, living images.
Professor B.P. Gorodetsky in his academic publication “Pushkin’s Lyrics” wrote: “The mystery of this poem is that everything we know about the personality of A.P. is able to evoke in the soul of the poet a feeling that has become the basis of an inexpressibly beautiful work of art, in no way and in no way brings us closer to comprehending the secret of art, which makes this poem typical of a great many similar situations and capable of ennobling and enveloping the beauty of feelings million people...
The sudden and short-term appearance of a “fleeting vision” in the form of a “genius of pure beauty”, flashed amid the darkness of imprisonment, when the poet’s days dragged on “without tears, without life, without love”, could resurrect in his soul “both a deity and inspiration, / And life, and tears, and love" only in the case when all this had already been experienced by him before. Such experiences took place during the first period of Pushkin's exile - they created that spiritual experience of his, without which the later appearance of "Farewell", and such amazing penetrations into the depths of the human spirit as "Spell" and "For the Shores of the Fatherland" was unthinkable. far." They also created that spiritual experience, without which the poem "I remember a wonderful moment" could not have appeared.
All this should not be understood too simply, in the sense that the real image of A.P. Kern and Pushkin's attitude towards her were of little importance for the creation of the poem. Without them, of course, there would be no poem. But the poem in its form in which it exists would not have existed even if the meeting with A.P. Kern had not been preceded by Pushkin's past and all the hard experience of his exile. The real image of A.P. Kern, as it were, resurrected the poet’s soul again, revealed to him the beauty of not only the irrevocably gone past, but also the present, which is directly and accurately stated in the poem:
The soul has awakened.
That is why the problem of the poem “I remember a wonderful moment” should be solved, as if turning it on the other side: not chance meeting with A.P. Kern awakened the soul of the poet and made the past come to life in a new beauty, but, on the contrary, the process of reviving and restoring the poet’s spiritual strength, which began a little earlier, completely determined all the main characteristics and the inner content of the poem, caused by a meeting with A. P. Kern.
Literary critic A. I. Beletsky more than 50 years ago for the first time timidly expressed the idea that main character of this poem is not a woman at all, but a poetic inspiration. “Absolutely secondary,” he wrote, “it seems to us the question of the name of a real woman, who is then elevated to the height of a poetic creation, where her real features disappeared, and she herself became a generalization, a rhythmically ordered verbal expression of some general aesthetic idea ... this poem is clearly subordinated to another, philosophical and psychological theme, and its main theme is the theme of different states inner world poet in the relationship of this world with reality.
Professor M. V. Stroganov went the furthest in identifying the image of the Madonna and the “genius of pure beauty” in this poem with the personality of Anna Kern: “The poem“ I remember a wonderful moment ... ”was written, obviously, in one night - from July 18 to July 19 1825, after a joint walk of Pushkin, Kern and Wulfov in Mikhailovsky and on the eve of Kern's departure for Riga. During the walk, Pushkin, according to Kern's memoirs, spoke of their "first meeting at the Olenins, expressed himself enthusiastically about it, and at the end of the conversation said:<…>. You looked like such an innocent girl…” All this is included in that memory of the “wonderful moment”, to which the first stanza of the poem is dedicated: the very first meeting, and the image of Kern - an “innocent girl” (virginal). But this word - virginal - means in French the Mother of God, the Immaculate Virgin. This is how an involuntary comparison takes place: "like a genius of pure beauty." And the next day, in the morning, Pushkin brought a poem to Kern ... The morning turned out to be wiser than the evening. Something confused Pushkin in Kern when he passed his poems to her. Apparently, he doubted: could she be this ideal model? Will she appear to them? - And I wanted to select poems. It was not possible to pick it up, and Kern (precisely because she was not such a woman) printed them in Delvig's almanac. All subsequent "obscene" correspondence between Pushkin and Kern can obviously be considered as psychological revenge on the addressee of the poem for his excessive haste and sublimity of the message.
In the 1980s, the literary critic S. A. Fomichev, who considered this poem from a religious and philosophical point of view, saw in it the reflection of episodes not so much of the poet’s real biography as of the inner biography, “three successive states of the soul”. Since that time, there has been a pronounced philosophical view for this work. Doctor of Philology V. P. Grekh-nev, based on the metaphysical ideas of the Pushkin era, which interpreted man as a “small universe”, arranged according to the law of the entire universe: a three-hypostatic, God-like being in unity earth's shell(“body”), “soul” and “divine spirit”, saw in Pushkin’s “wonderful moment” a “comprehensive concept of being” and, in general, “the whole of Pushkin”. Nevertheless, both researchers recognized the “living conditionality of the lyrical beginning of the poem as a real source of inspiration” in the person of A.P. Kern.
Professor Yu. N. Chumakov turned not to the content of the poem, but to its form, specifically, to the spatio-temporal development of the plot. He argued that "the meaning of a poem is inseparable from the form of its expression ..." and that "form" as such "itself ... acts as content ...". According to L. A. Perfilieva, the author of the latest commentary on this poem, Chumakov “saw in the poem the timeless and endless cosmic rotation of the independent Pushkin Universe, created by the inspiration and creative will of the poet.”
Another researcher of Pushkin's poetic heritage, S. N. Broitman, revealed in this poem "the linear infinity of semantic perspective." The same L. A. Perfilieva, having carefully studied his article, stated: “Having singled out “two systems of meanings, two plot-figurative series”, he also admits their “probable plurality”; as an important component of the plot, the researcher assumes "providentiality" (31)."
Now let's get acquainted with a rather original point of view of L. A. Perfilieva herself, which is also based on a metaphysical approach to the consideration of this and many other works of Pushkin.
Abstracting from the personality of A.P. Kern as the inspirer of the poet and addressee of this poem and from biographical realities in general, and proceeding from the fact that the main quotations of Pushkin's poem are borrowed from the poetry of V.A. like other images of his romantic works) appears as an unearthly and intangible substance: "ghost", "vision", "dream", "sweet dream", the researcher claims that Pushkin's "genius of pure beauty" appears in its metaphysical reality as a “messenger of Heaven” as a mysterious intermediary between the author’s “I” of the poet and some otherworldly, higher entity – “deity”. She believes that the author's "I" in the poem means the Soul of the poet. A "a fleeting vision" The soul of a poet "genius of pure beauty"- this is the “moment of Truth”, the divine Revelation, illuminating and penetrating the Soul with the grace of the divine Spirit with an instant flash. V "languishing hopeless sadness" Perfilyeva sees the torment of the soul's presence in a bodily shell, in the phrase “a gentle voice sounded to me for a long time”- the archetypal, primary memory of the soul about Heaven. The next two stanzas "picture Being as such, marked by soul-wearing duration." Between the fourth and fifth stanzas, providentiality or the “Divine verb” is invisibly revealed, as a result of which "The soul has awakened." It is here, in the interval of these stanzas, that “an invisible point is placed, creating an internal symmetry of the cyclically closed composition of the poem. At the same time, it is a turning point – a return point, from which the “space-time” of the small Pushkin Universe suddenly turns, starting to flow towards itself, returning from the earthly reality to the heavenly ideal. The awakened soul regains the ability to perceive deities. And this is an act of her second birth - a return to the divine fundamental principle - "Resurrection".<…>This is the acquisition of the Truth and the return to Paradise ...
The amplification of the sound of the last stanza of the poem marks the fullness of Being, the triumph of the restored harmony of the "small universe" - the body, soul and spirit of a person in general or personally of the poet-author himself, that is, "the whole of Pushkin."
Summing up her analysis of Pushkin's work, Perfilieva suggests that, "regardless of the role that A.P. Kern played in its creation, it can be considered in the context of Pushkin's philosophical lyrics, along with such poems as "The Poet" (which, according to the author of the article, is dedicated to the nature of inspiration), “Prophet” (dedicated to the providential nature of poetic creativity) and “I erected a monument to myself not made by hands…” (dedicated to the incorruptibility of spiritual heritage). In their series “I remember a wonderful moment…” indeed, as already noted, there is a poem about “the entire fullness of Being” and about the dialectics of the human soul; and about "man in general", as about the Small Universe arranged according to the laws of the universe.
It seems that he foresaw the possibility of the appearance of such a purely philosophical interpretation of Pushkin's lines, the already mentioned N. L. Stepanov wrote: “In such an interpretation, Pushkin's poem loses its vital concreteness, that sensual-emotional beginning that so enriches Pushkin's images, gives them an earthly, realistic character. . After all, if we abandon these specific biographical associations, the biographical subtext of the poem, then Pushkin's images will lose their vital content, turn into conventionally romantic symbols, meaning only the theme of the poet's creative inspiration. We can then replace Pushkin with Zhukovsky with his abstract symbol of the “genius of pure beauty”. This will impoverish the realism of the poet's poem, it will lose those colors and shades that are so important for Pushkin's lyrics. The strength and pathos of Pushkin's creativity is in the fusion, in the unity of the abstract and the real.
But even using the most complex literary and philosophical constructions, it is difficult to dispute the statement of N. I. Chernyaev, made 75 years after the creation of this masterpiece: “With his message“ K *** ”Pushkin immortalized her (A. P. Kern. - V. S.) just as Petrarch immortalized Laura, and Dante immortalized Beatrice. Centuries will pass, and when many historical events and historical figures will be forgotten, the personality and fate of Kern, as the inspirer of Pushkin's muse, will arouse great interest, cause controversy, speculation and be reproduced by novelists, playwrights, and painters.
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"I remember a wonderful moment..." Alexander Pushkin
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.In the languor of hopeless sadness
In the anxieties of noisy bustle,
A gentle voice sounded to me for a long time
And dreamed of cute features.Years passed. Storms gust rebellious
Scattered old dreams
And I forgot your gentle voice
Your heavenly features.In the wilderness, in the darkness of confinement
My days passed quietly
Without a god, without inspiration,
No tears, no life, no love.The soul has awakened:
And here you are again
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.And the heart beats in rapture
And for him they rose again
And deity, and inspiration,
And life, and tears, and love.
Analysis of Pushkin's poem "I remember a wonderful moment ..."
One of the most famous lyrical poems by Alexander Pushkin "I remember a wonderful moment ..." was created in 1925, and has a romantic background. It is dedicated to the first beauty of St. Petersburg, Anna Kern (nee Poltoratskaya), whom the poet first saw in 1819 at a reception at the house of her aunt, Princess Elizabeth Olenina. Being by nature a passionate and temperamental person, Pushkin immediately fell in love with Anna, who by that time was married to General Yermolai Kern and raised her daughter. Therefore, the laws of decency of secular society did not allow the poet to openly express his feelings to the woman to whom he was introduced only a few hours ago. In his memory, Kern remained "a fleeting vision" and "a genius of pure beauty."
In 1825, fate again brought Alexander Pushkin and Anna Kern together. This time - in the Trigorsk estate, not far from which was the village of Mikhailovskoye, where the poet was exiled for anti-government poetry. Pushkin not only recognized the one that 6 years ago captivated his imagination, but also opened up to her in his feelings. By that time, Anna Kern had broken up with her "soldafon husband" and led a rather free lifestyle, which caused condemnation in secular society. Her endless romances were legendary. However, Pushkin, knowing this, was nevertheless convinced that this woman was a model of purity and piety. After the second meeting, which made an indelible impression on the poet, Pushkin wrote his famous poem.
The work is a hymn to female beauty, which, according to the poet, can inspire a man to the most reckless exploits. In six short quatrains, Pushkin managed to fit the whole story of his acquaintance with Anna Kern and convey the feelings that he experienced at the sight of a woman who captivated his imagination for many years. In his poem, the poet admits that after the first meeting, “a gentle voice sounded to me for a long time and I dreamed of cute features.” However, by the will of fate, youthful dreams remained in the past, and "a rebellious storm dispelled former dreams." For six years of separation, Alexander Pushkin became famous, but at the same time, he lost the taste of life, noting that he had lost the sharpness of feelings and inspiration, which has always been inherent in the poet. The last straw in the sea of disappointment was the exile to Mikhailovskoye, where Pushkin was deprived of the opportunity to shine in front of grateful listeners - the owners of neighboring landowners' estates had little interest in literature, preferring hunting and drinking.
Therefore, it is not surprising that when, in 1825, General Kern with her elderly mother and daughters came to the Trigorskoye estate, Pushkin immediately went to the neighbors on a courtesy call. And he was rewarded not only with a meeting with the "genius of pure beauty", but also awarded her favor. Therefore, it is not surprising that the last stanza of the poem is filled with genuine delight. He notes that "the deity, and inspiration, and life, and a tear, and love, have risen again."
Nevertheless, according to historians, Alexander Pushkin interested Anna Kern only as a fashionable poet, fanned by the glory of rebelliousness, the price of which this freedom-loving woman knew very well. Pushkin himself misinterpreted the signs of attention from the one that turned his head. As a result, a rather unpleasant explanation took place between them, which dotted the "i" in the relationship. But even despite this, Pushkin dedicated many more delightful poems to Anna Kern, for many years considering this woman, who dared to challenge the moral foundations of high society, her muse and deity, before whom she bowed and admired, despite gossip and gossip.
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
In the languor of hopeless sadness,
In the anxieties of noisy bustle,
A gentle voice sounded to me for a long time,
And dreamed of cute features.
Years passed. Storms gust rebellious
Scattered old dreams
And I forgot your gentle voice
Your heavenly features.
In the wilderness, in the darkness of confinement
My days passed quietly
Without a god, without inspiration,
No tears, no life, no love.
The soul has awakened:
And here you are again
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
And the heart beats in rapture
And for him they rose again
And deity, and inspiration,
And life, and tears, and love.
Pushkin, 1825
Kern, Anna Petrovna(1800-1879) - niece of Pushkin's neighbor P. A. Osipova. Stayed in the summer of 1825 in Trigorskoye.
In the first stanza, the poet recalls the first meeting with her, in 1819, in St. Petersburg, in the Olenins' house.
Kern wrote about how Pushkin gave her these poems on the day of her departure from Trigorskoye:
« He came in the morning and in parting brought me a copy of the 2nd chapter of Onegin, in uncut sheets, between which I found a four-fold postal sheet of paper with verses: “I remember a wonderful moment” and so on. When I was about to hide the poetic gift in the box, he looked at me for a long time, then convulsively grabbed it and did not want to return it; I forcefully begged them again; what flashed through his head then - I don’t know».
I remember a wonderful moment, You appeared before me, Like a fleeting vision, Like a genius of pure beauty A.S. Pushkin. K A. Kern ... Michelson's Big Explanatory Phraseological Dictionary
genius- I, m. génie f., German. Genius, pol. geniusz lat. genius. 1. According to the religious beliefs of the ancient Romans, God is the patron of a person, city, country; spirit of good and evil. Sl. 18. The Romans brought incense, flowers and honey to their Angel or according to their Genius. ... ... Historical dictionary gallicisms of the Russian language
- (1799 1837) Russian poet, writer. Aphorisms, quotes Pushkin Alexander Sergeevich. Biography It is not difficult to despise the court of people, it is impossible to despise one's own court. Backbiting, even without evidence, leaves eternal traces. Critics... ... Consolidated encyclopedia of aphorisms
I, m. 1. Highest Degree creativity, talent. The artistic genius of Pushkin is so great and beautiful that we still cannot but be carried away by the marvelous artistic beauty of his creations. Chernyshevsky, Pushkin's Works. Suvorov is not ... ... Small Academic Dictionary
Aya, oh; ten, tna, tno. 1. outdated. Flying, quickly passing by, not stopping. The sudden buzz of a fleeting beetle, the slight smacking of small fish in the planter: all these faint sounds, these rustlings, only aggravated the silence. Turgenev, Three meetings. ... ... Small Academic Dictionary
show up- I will appear / be, I / you see, I / you see, past. appeared / was, owl .; be / be (to 1, 3, 5, 7 values), nsv. 1) Come, arrive somewhere. of good will, by invitation, by official necessity, etc. To appear unexpectedly out of the blue. Show up uninvited. Appeared only to ... ... Popular dictionary of the Russian language
proclitic- PROCLI´TIKA [from Greek. προκλιτικός leaning forward (to the next word)] linguistic term, an unstressed word that transfers its stress to the stressed one behind it, as a result of which both of these words are pronounced together, like one word. P.… … Poetic dictionary
quatrain- (from French quatrain four) type of stanza (see stanza): quatrain, stanza of four lines: I remember a wonderful moment: You appeared before me, Like a fleeting vision, Like a genius of pure beauty. A.S. Pushkin ... Dictionary of literary terms
To the 215th anniversary of the birth of Anna Kern and the 190th anniversary of the creation of Pushkin's masterpiece
“A genius of pure beauty” Alexander Pushkin will call her, - he will dedicate immortal poems to her ... And write lines full of sarcasm. “How is your husband's gout doing?.. Divine, for God's sake, try to make him play cards and have an attack of gout, gout! This is my only hope!.. How can I be your husband? I just can’t imagine this, just as I can’t imagine paradise,” the enamored Pushkin wrote in August 1825 from his Mikhailovsky to Riga to the beautiful Anna Kern.
The girl, named Anna and born in February 1800 in the house of her grandfather, the Oryol governor Ivan Petrovich Wolf, “under a green damask canopy with white and green ostrich feathers in the corners,” was destined for an unusual fate.
A month before her seventeenth birthday, Anna became the wife of division general Yermolai Fedorovich Kern. My husband was in his 53rd year. Marriage without love did not bring happiness. “It is impossible to love him (her husband), I have not even been given the consolation to respect him; I’ll tell you frankly – I almost hate him,” only young Anna could believe the bitterness of her heart in the diary.
At the beginning of 1819, General Kern (in fairness, one cannot fail to mention his military merits: more than once he showed his soldiers examples of military prowess both on the Borodino field and in the famous “Battle of the Nations” near Leipzig) arrived in St. Petersburg on business. Anna also came with him. At the same time, in the house of her own aunt Elizaveta Markovna, nee Poltoratskaya, and her husband Alexei Nikolaevich Olenin, president of the Academy of Arts, she first met the poet.
It was a noisy and merry evening, the youth had fun playing charades, and in one of them Queen Cleopatra was represented by Anna. Nineteen-year-old Pushkin could not resist compliments in her honor: "Is it permissible to be so charming!" A few playful phrases addressed to her, the young beauty considered impudent ...
They were destined to meet only after six long years. In 1823, Anna, leaving her husband, went to her parents in the Poltava province, in Lubny. And soon she became the mistress of the wealthy Poltava landowner Arkady Rodzianko, poet and friend of Pushkin in St. Petersburg.
With greed, as Anna Kern later recalled, she read all the then known Pushkin's poems and poems and, "admired by Pushkin", dreamed of meeting him.
In June 1825, on her way to Riga (Anna decided to reconcile with her husband), she unexpectedly stopped at Trigorskoye to visit her aunt Praskovya Alexandrovna Osipova, whose frequent and welcome guest was her neighbor Alexander Pushkin.
At her aunt's, Anna first heard Pushkin read "his Gypsies", and literally "melted with pleasure" from both the marvelous poem and the very voice of the poet. She kept her amazing memories of that wonderful time: “... I will never forget the delight that seized my soul. I was in awe…”
A few days later, the entire Osipov-Wulf family, in two carriages, set off on a return visit to neighboring Mikhailovskoye. Together with Anna, Pushkin wandered through the alleys of the old overgrown garden, and this unforgettable night walk became one of the poet's favorite memories.
“Every night I walk in my garden and I say to myself: here she was ... the stone she stumbled on lies on my table near a branch of withered heliotrope. Finally, I write a lot of poetry. All this, if you like, strongly resembles love. How painful it was to read these lines to poor Anna Wulf, addressed to another Anna, because she loved Pushkin so ardently and hopelessly! Pushkin wrote from Mikhailovsky to Riga to Anna Wulff in the hope that she would pass these lines on to her married cousin.
“Your arrival at Trigorskoye left an impression in me deeper and more painful than the one that our meeting at the Olenins once made on me,” the poet admits to the beautiful woman, “the best thing I can do in my sad rural wilderness is to try not to think more about you. If there was even a drop of pity for me in your soul, you would also have to wish me this ... ".
And Anna Petrovna will never forget that moonlit July night when she walked with the poet along the alleys of the Mikhailovsky Garden...
And the next morning Anna was leaving, and Pushkin came to see her off. “He came in the morning and in parting brought me a copy of Chapter II of Onegin, in uncut sheets, between which I found a four-fold postal sheet of paper with verses ...”.
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
In the languor of hopeless sadness,
In the anxieties of noisy bustle,
A gentle voice sounded to me for a long time
And dreamed of cute features.
Years passed. Storms gust rebellious
Scattered old dreams
And I forgot your gentle voice
Your heavenly features.
In the wilderness, in the darkness of confinement
My days passed quietly
Without a god, without inspiration,
No tears, no life, no love.
The soul has awakened:
And here you are again
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
And the heart beats in rapture
And for him they rose again
And deity, and inspiration,
And life, and tears, and love.
Then, as Kern recalled, the poet grabbed her “poetic gift” from her, and she managed to return the poems by force.
Much later, Mikhail Glinka would set Pushkin's poems to music and dedicate the romance to his beloved, Ekaterina Kern, Anna Petrovna's daughter. But Catherine is not destined to bear the name of a brilliant composer. She will prefer another husband - Shokalsky. And the son who was born in that marriage, the oceanographer and traveler Julius Shokalsky, will glorify his surname.
And another amazing connection can be traced in the fate of the grandson of Anna Kern: he will become a friend of the son of the poet Grigory Pushkin. And all his life he will be proud of his unforgettable grandmother - Anna Kern.
Well, what was the fate of Anna herself? Reconciliation with her husband was short-lived, and soon she finally breaks with him. Her life is replete with many love adventures, among her admirers are Alexei Wulf and Lev Pushkin, Sergei Sobolevsky and Baron Vrevsky ... Yes, and Alexander Sergeevich himself did not poetically announce the victory over an accessible beauty in a famous letter to his friend Sobolevsky. The "divine" was incomprehensibly transformed into a "whore of Babylon"!
But even the numerous novels of Anna Kern never ceased to amaze former lovers with her quivering reverence "for the shrine of love." “Here are enviable feelings that never grow old! Alexei Wolf sincerely exclaimed. “After so many experiences, I did not imagine that it was still possible for her to deceive herself ...”.
And yet, fate was merciful to this amazing woman, gifted at birth with considerable talents and experienced more than just pleasure in life.
At the age of forty, at the time of mature beauty, Anna Petrovna met her true love. Her chosen one was a graduate cadet corps, twenty-year-old artillery officer Alexander Vasilievich Markov-Vinogradsky.
Anna Petrovna married him, having committed, according to her father, a reckless act: she married a poor young officer and lost a large pension, which was due to her as the widow of a general (Anna's husband died in February 1841).
The young husband (and he was his wife's second cousin) loved his Anna tenderly and selflessly. Here is an example of enthusiastic admiration for the beloved woman, sweet in its artlessness and sincerity.
From the diary of A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky (1840): “My darling has brown eyes. They, in their wonderful beauty, luxuriate on a round face with freckles. This silk chestnut hair, tenderly outlines it and sets it off with special love ... Small ears, for which expensive earrings are an extra decoration, they are so rich in grace that you will admire. And the nose is so wonderful, what a charm! .. And all this, full of feelings and refined harmony, makes up the face of my beautiful.
In that happy union, the son Alexander was born. (Much later, Aglaya Aleksandrovna, nee Markova-Vinogradskaya, would give the Pushkin House a priceless relic - a miniature depicting the sweet face of Anna Kern, her own grandmother).
The couple lived together for many years, enduring hardship and distress, but without ceasing to love each other dearly. And they died almost overnight, in 1879, an unkind year ...
Anna Petrovna was destined to outlive her adored husband by only four months. And as if in order to hear a loud noise one morning in May, just a few days before his death, under the window of his Moscow house on Tverskaya-Yamskaya: sixteen horses harnessed by a train, four in a row, were dragging a huge platform with a granite block - the pedestal of the future monument to Pushkin.
Having learned the reason for the unusual street noise, Anna Petrovna sighed with relief: “Ah, finally! Well, thank God, it’s long overdue!”
The legend remained alive: as if the funeral procession with the body of Anna Kern met on its mournful path with a bronze monument to Pushkin, which was being taken to Tverskoy Boulevard, to the Strastnoy Monastery.
So in last time they met
Remembering nothing, worrying about nothing.
So the blizzard with its reckless wing
It overshadowed them in a wonderful moment.
So the blizzard married gently and menacingly
The deadly dust of an old woman with immortal bronze,
Two passionate lovers, sailing apart,
That they said goodbye early and met late.
A rare phenomenon: even after her death, Anna Kern inspired poets! And the proof of this is these lines of Pavel Antokolsky.
... A year has passed since Anna's death.
“Now the sadness and tears have already ceased, and the loving heart has ceased to suffer,” Prince N.I. complained. Golitsyn. - Let's remember the deceased with a heartfelt word, as inspiring the genius poet, as giving him so many "wonderful moments." She loved much, and our best talents were at her feet. Let us keep this “genius of pure beauty” a grateful memory outside of his earthly life.”
The biographical details of life are no longer so important for an earthly woman who has turned to the Muse.
Anna Petrovna found her last shelter in the graveyard of the village of Prutnya, Tver province. On the bronze "page" soldered into the gravestone, the immortal lines are engraved:
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me...
A moment - and eternity. How close are these seemingly incommensurable concepts!..
"Farewell! It is now night, and your image rises before me, so sad and voluptuous: it seems to me that I see your look, your half-open lips.
Farewell - it seems to me that I am at your feet ... - I would give my whole life for a moment of reality. Farewell…".
Strange Pushkin - either recognition, or farewell.
Special for the Centenary
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