"Amid the noisy ball, by chance..."

At the beginning of 1851, Alexei Tolstoy was already thirty-three years old. He believed that he lived them badly, but no one knew his painful thoughts. Mind and upbringing endowed him with a simple manner, but this aristocratic simplicity had its own complexity, which excluded any kind of frankness. He hid in wit as if in a shell - it was a visible part of his quest. Tolstoy knew to himself that he was an artist, but the feeling of his own talent only aggravated remorse - instead of creativity, he was given vanity, and he was not strong enough to reject the unnecessary and take on the main thing ...

However, like all true artists, he exaggerated his own vanity. Idlers do not notice wasted time. For workers, every day that is not given to the cause seems almost a disaster. They are tormented, they reproach themselves for laziness precisely on such days, forgetting about the months that have flashed by because there is no time to think about outsiders. Yes, and the artist's apparent idleness is the time for the maturation of fruitful thought.

Tolstoy was a worker.

Anna Alekseevna Tolstaya still jealously took care of her son. She thought with horror about his marriage, the very word "wife" was a challenge to Anna Alekseevna's selfish selflessness and foreshadowed, as she imagined, catastrophic changes in filial affection and love. She invented illnesses that required long-term treatment abroad and the indispensable presence and care of her son. She resorted to the help of her all-powerful brothers, who called Alexei to her for urgent family matters or sent him on business trips of national importance. And there ... he dissipated, and he was forgotten. So it was with the Countess Clary flashed in the memories and other hobbies of Tolstoy.

In the winter, in January, on that, perhaps, the very evening when Fantasia was going on in Alexandrinka, Alexei Tolstoy, on duty at court service, accompanied the heir to the throne to a masquerade ball, which was given at the Bolshoi Theater. The future emperor Alexander II loved such entertainment, he was burdened by his smart and quiet wife and openly dragged after women, not neglecting casual acquaintances in public places.

At the ball, Alexei Tolstoy met a stranger who had a juicy contralto, an intriguing manner of speaking, lush hair and a beautiful figure. She refused to take off her mask, but took his business card, promising to make herself known.

Returning home, Aleksey Konstantinovich, out of his deep-seated habit of working at night, tried to sit down at the table and continue the novel he had begun long ago or correct poetry, but he could not concentrate at all, he kept walking from corner to corner around the office and thought about the stranger. Tired of walking, he lay down on the sofa and continued to dream. No, far from youthful quivering feeling attracted him to the mask ... He, spoiled by female affection, it seemed that from the very first words he and this woman could speak freely, she would understand everything he said, and it would be interesting to her not because he, Alexei Tolstoy, tries it is interesting to talk, but because she is smart and with all her sad way of looking, smiling, talking, listening, makes him not relaxed in a secular way, but inspired in a human way. This, together with the sensuality that she could not help awakening, excited him deeply, promising not just pleasure ...

Maybe that night he found the words of a poem to describe his nascent feeling, which from now on will always inspire composers and lovers.

In the midst of a noisy ball, by chance,

In the turmoil of the world,

I saw you, but the mystery

Your veiled features;

Like the sound of a distant flute,

Like the waves of the sea.

I liked your slim figure

And all your thoughtful look

And your laughter, both sad and sonorous,

Since then it has been in my heart.

In the hours of lonely nights

I love, tired, lie down;

I see sad eyes

I hear a cheerful speech

And sadly I fall asleep so

And in the dreams of the unknown I sleep ...

Do I love you, I don't know

But I think I love it!

This time you won't escape me! - said Alexei Tolstoy a few days later, entering the drawing room of Sofya Andreevna Miller. She decided to continue the ballroom acquaintance and sent him an invitation.

Now he could see her face. Sofya Andreevna was not pretty and at first glance could attract attention only in a mask. Tall, slender, with a thin waist, with thick ashy hair, white teeth, she was very feminine, but her face was spoiled by a high forehead, wide cheekbones, fuzzy nose outlines, strong-willed chin. However, looking closer, the men admired the full fresh lips and narrow gray eyes that shone with intelligence.

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev spoke about her in the family of Leo Tolstoy and assured that he was with Alexei Konstantinovich at a masquerade and that together they got acquainted with “a graceful and interesting mask that spoke intelligently to them. They insisted that she take off her mask, but she revealed herself to them only a few days later, inviting them to her place.

What did I see then? Turgenev said. - The face of a Chukhonian soldier in a skirt.

“I later met Countess Sofya Andreevna, the widow of A.K. Tolstoy, - adds S.L., who heard this story. Tolstoy, - she was not at all ugly, and, moreover, she was undoubtedly an intelligent woman.

The story that Turgenev was with Tolstoy at the memorable masquerade ball is doubtful. Most likely, Alexei Tolstoy himself introduced Turgenev to Sofya Andreevna a little later, and this was accompanied by some very awkward circumstance that left Ivan Sergeevich with an unpleasant aftertaste that made him slander behind his back, and in letters to Sofya Andreevna make excuses ...

The opinions of contemporaries about Sofya Andreevna were the most controversial. To begin with, the same Turgenev always sent her one of the first of his new works and looked forward to her trial. The caricatured description of her appearance many years later could be the result of wounded pride. He, like Alexei Tolstoy, was under the spell of this woman, but their relationship remains unclear.

This time you won't escape me! - repeated Alexei Tolstoy, who again heard her unusual vibrating voice, which was said to be remembered forever. And they also spoke of her as a sweet, very developed, very well-read woman, distinguished by a certain conceit, which, however, had so many justifications that she was willingly forgiven.

She loved serious music. “Sofya Andreevna really sang like an angel,” recalled one of her contemporaries, “and I understand that after listening to her for several evenings in a row, one could fall in love with her crazy and put not only a count, but a royal crown on a lively head.”

No, a woman who was well versed in literature, capable of picking up a volume of Gogol and flawlessly translating the most difficult passages into French from a sheet, who knew, according to some sources, fourteen, and according to others, sixteen languages, including Sanskrit, could not but make a deep impression on count, whose knowledge was unusually wide and deep.

What they talked about at this meeting, one can only guess, but now not a day has passed that they did not meet, did not write letters to each other, relating mainly to literature, art, philosophy, mysticism.

Sofya Andreevna, nee Bakhmeteva, was the wife of a horse guard, captain Lev Fedorovich Miller. This owner of a luxurious wheat mustache and ordinary appearance Tolstoy met in music salons. Now he knew that Sofya Andreevna did not live with her husband, but he was careful not to ask what led them to break. He accepted this woman with a cheerful speech and sad eyes as she was, cherished every minute of intimacy with her, and they became close very quickly, because Sofya Andreevna wanted that. He was one of those strong but insecure men whom smart women choose themselves, leaving them in the dark about this choice, not letting uncertainty and doubts get the better of the first impulse.

Very soon she paid him a return visit, and already on January 15 Tolstoy sent poems to Sofya Andreevna:

Empty in my peace. Alone I sit by the fireplace

I extinguished the candles a long time ago, but I cannot sleep,

Pale shadows tremble on the wall, on the carpet, in the paintings,

Books lie on the floor, I see letters all around.

Books and letters! How long has a young hand touched you?

Have your gray eyes been joking over you for a long time? ..

But to the poetic declaration of love, he adds: “This is only to remind you of the Greek style to which you have an affection. However, what I tell you in verse, I could repeat to you in prose, as it is the pure truth.

He read to her "Yambas" and excerpts from the poem "Hermes" by Henri Chenier, idylls and elegies imbued with the spirit of the classics, and now he sent Sofya Andreevna a volume of his poems, rare edition, compiled by the poet Latush in 1819 and dear to those that he inherited from Alexei Perovsky. Tolstoy was also attracted by the very personality of the half-Greek, half-French Chenier, who was all in the freedom-loving ideas of the 18th century, but did not accept the Jacobin terror, declaring openly: “It’s good, honestly, sweetly, for the sake of strict truths, to be subjected to the hatred of shameless despots who tyrannize freedom in the name of freedom itself” and ending his life at thirty-two under the knife of the guillotine two days before the fall of Robespierre. The contradictions of the French Revolution forced Tolstoy to think hard about the fate of artists in an era of political upheaval. After all, Chenier, like Tolstoy, had "a ray of light ahead." The unfulfillment of his own intentions worried Tolstoy every time he remembered how Chenier, having climbed the scaffold, hit himself on the forehead and said: “Still, I had something there!”

From lofty thoughts he descended to an expression of the most ordinary jealousy, because the evening before Sofya Andreyevna had been taken away from the ball by a cavalier in the uniform of the police department. But this was the last letter in which Tolstoy addressed his beloved as "you." And soon it seems to him that “we were born at the same time and always knew each other, and therefore, not knowing you at all, I immediately rushed to you, because I heard something familiar in your voice ... Remember, You probably felt the same...

From now on, each of his letters to her will be filled with the greatest confidence, each of them will be a confession and a declaration of love.

Only Alexei Konstantinovich’s passionate monologue has come down to us (Sofya Andreevna’s letters have not been preserved), speaking of their spiritual closeness, in which literature, art, philosophy, mysticism played a secondary role, making it possible to pour out what was long accumulated, suffered and hidden for the time being. A person is talented, but without a reason, without a response, without understanding, he may not speak out, remain to the end in the power of vague sensations, carry in himself fragments of thoughts, undeveloped and unfinished.

Tolstoy considered himself ugly, unmusical, inelegant ... There were many of them, all sorts of "not". Sofya Andreevna loved German music, but Tolstoy did not understand it and was upset that his beloved was slipping away from him at the door of Beethoven.

In Tolstoy, the aversion to the service grew more and more. He tried by all means to evade duty in the palace. Sofya Andreevna was sympathetic to his desire to break with court life and plunge headlong into creativity. And yet powerful relatives promoted him. In February, he becomes a collegiate councilor, and in May he is made "Master of Ceremonies of His Majesty's Court." The heir to the throne, the future Emperor Alexander II, considers him an indispensable companion on hunting trips, he often visits Pustynka, in a house that was furnished with all possible luxury - Boolean furniture, many works of art, precious porcelain belonging to the Perovskys were brought there. All this was tastefully arranged, pleasing to the eye, and Tolstoy enjoyed spending time in Pustynka. He wanted to draw, sculpt, and more to walk through the forests and fields or ride a horse.

He relentlessly thinks of Sofya Andreevna. She does not say something, and sometimes avoids him. Tolstoy blames myself for this. It was he who was not sensitive enough ... Or maybe he had already lost interest in her? A woman is able to predict what a man is not yet aware of. Doubt feeds the muse.

With a gun over his shoulders, alone, by the moon,

I ride across the field on the right horse.

I dropped the reins, I think of her

Go, my horse, more fun on the grass! ..

And with him is a mocking double, as if guessing the true state of Tolstoy, predicting the trivial end of his love:

“I laugh, comrade, at your dreams,

I laugh that you ruin the future;

Do you think that you really love her?

Do you really love her yourself?

It's funny to me, it's funny that, loving so passionately,

You don't love her, but you love yourself.

Come to your senses, your impulses are not the same!

She is no longer a secret to you.

You accidentally came together in worldly fuss,

You will break up with her by accident.

I laugh bitterly, I laugh evilly

The fact that you sigh so hard.

But in Tolstoy it is not always possible to understand where he is deadly serious and where he is just as deadly ironic. It's a prickly trait...

There is no longer any irony in the few surviving fragments of Tolstoy's letters to Sofya Andreevna. Apparently, she wrote to him that his feeling was only an enthusiastic excitement. It will pass, and Tolstoy will no longer love her. He sensed an understatement in her words that troubled him. She hinted at circumstances unknown to him. She was scared ... But he did not understand what she was afraid of, did not understand her “concerns, forebodings, fears”, he said that the flower disappears, but the fruit remains, the plant itself. Yes, he knows that love is not an eternal feeling. But is it worth it to be afraid? Well, love will pass, but blessed friendship will remain, when people can no longer do without each other, when one becomes, as it were, a natural continuation of the other. Even now he feels that he is to a greater extent she, that Sofya Andreevna is more for him than the second "I".

“I swear to you, as I would swear before the judgment seat of the Lord, that I love you with all my abilities, all thoughts, all movements, all the sufferings and joys of my soul. Accept this love as it is, do not look for reasons for it, do not look for names for it, as a doctor looks for names for a disease, do not assign a place to it, do not analyze it. Take her as she is, take it without delving into it, I can’t give you anything better, I gave you everything that I had precious, I don’t have anything better ... "

Once she showed him her diary, and he was struck by the phrase:

“To achieve the truth, one must once in a lifetime free oneself from all learned views and rebuild the entire system of one’s knowledge.”

He himself always thought so, but he could not express exactly how the clever Sofya Andreevna did it. “I am like some shed or a vast room full of all sorts of things, very useful, sometimes very precious, but somehow heaped one on top of the other; I would like to deal with you and put everything in order.

He is visited by thoughts that are common to any outstanding, creative person. How did it happen that he lived half his life fruitlessly? He has so many contradictory features that come into conflict, so many desires, so many needs of the heart that he tries to reconcile ... But reconciliation, harmony does not work. Any attempt to express oneself creatively leads to such a struggle of contradictions in oneself that the whole being comes out of this struggle torn to pieces. He does not live in his environment, does not follow his vocation, there is complete discord in his soul, and it turns out that he is an ordinary lazy person, although, in essence, he is active by nature ...

This means that everything must be changed, everything in oneself must be put in its place, and only one person can help him in this - Sofya Andreevna.

The summer of 1851 was hot. Returning from the forest, Tolstoy sat down to write letters to Sofya Andreevna, telling her how forest smells attracted him. They are reminiscent of childhood spent in the Red Horn, so rich in forests. Ryzhiki, every kind of mushroom awakens in him a lot of pictures from the past. He loves the smell of moss, old trees, young, freshly cut pines... The smell of the forest on a hot afternoon, the smell of the forest after rain, the smell of flowers...

Anna Alekseevna had already found out about her son’s connection with Sofya Andreevna, but she looked calmly at relations with a married woman, because she considered them a frivolous, short-term hobby, did not see anything in her son’s feelings for Sofya Andreevna that threatened egoistic maternal love.

Sofya Andreevna went to her brother in the Penza province, to the family estate of the Bakhmetevs, the village of Smalkovo. Tolstoy yearns and writes a lengthy letter to her from Pustynka, in which the motive of the eternity of love, its predestination and fatality sounds again. And perhaps this main the letter, his creed, which he held unswervingly all his life.

"... There are moments when my soul, at the thought of you, seems to remember the distant, distant times, when we knew each other even better and were even closer than now, and then it seems to me that a promise that we will become again as close as they once were, and at such moments I experience a happiness so great and so different from everything available to our ideas here that it is like a foretaste or premonition future life. Do not be afraid to lose your individuality, and even if you lose it, it does not mean anything, since our individuality is something acquired by us, while our natural and original state is good, which is one, homogeneous and undivided. Falsehood, evil has thousands of forms and types, and truth (or good) can only be one ... So, if several personalities return to their natural state, they inevitably merge with each other, and in this state there is nothing either lamentable or upsetting..."

And since “our original state is good,” then his deep respect arises for people who are able to live naturally, not subjecting themselves to the conventions of the world and the requirements of “the so-called service.” It seems to Tolstoy that such are people of art, that they have different thoughts and kind faces. He tells what pleasure it gives him to see people who have devoted themselves to some kind of art, not knowledgeable service, who are not engaged under the pretext of official need "intrigues one is dirtier than the other." He is an idealist, our hero, who believes that intrigue is unusual for people of art. In their world, he sees an opportunity to “rest” from the eternal stay in official uniform, from observing the rules of a bureaucratic hostel, from bureaucratic slavery, which none of the employees is able to avoid, no matter how high the hierarchical ladder he is.

“I don’t feel like talking about myself now, but someday I’ll tell you how little I was born for service life and how little I can be of use to it ...

But if you want me to tell you what my real calling is - be a writer.

I have not done anything yet - I have never been supported and always discouraged, I am very lazy, it is true, but I feel that I could do something good, just to be sure that I will find an artistic echo, and now I found... it's you.

If I know that you are interested in my writing, I will be more diligent and work better.

So know that I am not an official, but an artist.

And here we are approaching the ordeal of Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy's love for Sofya Andreevna Miller. This letter was sent from Pustynka to Smalkovo on October 14, 1851, and a few days later Tolstoy himself rushes there to hear the confession of his beloved woman ...

And already on October 21, he writes a poem addressed to Sofya Andreevna, full of love and hints at their painful explanations:

Listening to your story, I fell in love with you, my joy!

I lived your life and I cried with your tears ...

I was hurt by many things, I reproached you in many ways;

But I don't want to forget your mistakes or your suffering...

What happened during those seven days? Why does Tolstoy, who has just written a long epistle and without mentioning in it a single word about Sofya Andreyevna's "mistakes and sufferings," suddenly take off and, armed with the most formidable road-carrier, goading the coachmen, driving the horses, rushes to Smalkovo?

Anna Alekseevna Tolstaya finally realized that her son was not having a simple love affair, and became interested in his chosen one. She made inquiries, and helpful gossipers told her such things about Sofya Andreyevna that she was horrified. The countess was even shown in the theater to a certain person, mistaking her for Sofya Andreevna by the consonance of names. The vulgar appearance of the person extremely shocked Anna Alekseevna, who, almost on the same evening, bluntly asked her son what his relationship was with Sofya Andreevna, whether he loved her ...

Not able to prevaricate, Alexei Konstantinovich said that he loved, that he did not know a more wonderful and smart woman than Sofya Andreevna Miller, and if she managed to divorce her husband, he would consider her consent to become a friend of life to happiness ... Anna Alekseevna angrily interrupted him and expressed everything that she heard and herself thinks about Sofya Andreevna.

Firmly convinced that Sofya Andreyevna was not in St. Petersburg, he smiled when his mother painted the lady she saw in the theater, but as soon as the mother's story flashed the names of the Bakhmetevs and various familiar details that were closely linked with what he did not yet know, but could guess, if he wanted to, how the smile slipped from his face. He was shocked. He wanted to see Sofya Andreyevna at once, to explain himself to her, to hear from her lips that all this was not true...

Tolstoy needed to urgently visit his uncle Vasily Alekseevich Perovsky in Orenburg, and the way there ran through the Penza province. Saransk flashed by, and now Smalkovo - a church with a high bell tower, a two-story house of the Bakhmetevs, half-hidden by overgrown willows, village huts. Entering the house, he heard the sounds of the piano and a voice, "from which he immediately started up," a wondrous voice that captivated him forever ...

Sofya Andreyevna was so delighted at his arrival that it was embarrassing for him to begin unpleasant conversation. When he began to reproach her for secrecy, she burst into tears, said that she loved him and therefore did not want to upset him. She will tell him everything, and he is free to believe or not believe her...

We can only speculate about their explanation. There were Tolstoy's reproaches, but there was also compassion, forgiveness, boundless generosity. Soon he will write to her: “Poor child, since you were thrown into life, you have known only storms and thunderstorms. Even in the best moments, those when we were together, you were worried about some kind of persistent concern, some kind of premonition, some kind of fear ... "

The past of Sofya Andreevna was vague and dysfunctional.

Only a few of Tolstoy's letters to Miller have survived, in which hints of his suffering and her past accidentally survived - after his death, she mercilessly destroyed her own letters, and even cut out individual lines from the left letters of Alexei Konstantinovich ...

But in “Journey Abroad M.N. Pokhvisnev, 1847" there is a mention of a carefully concealed drama:

“With us in the stagecoach rides Count Tolstoy, the father of the Moscow beauty Polina (reputed to be so in Moscow), who recently married Prince. Vyazemsky, who killed the Preobrazhensky Bakhmetev in a duel ... The count proudly tells us about his son-in-law, who made a lot of noise with his story with Bakhmetev; the case was for Bakhmetev's sister, whom Vyazemsky promised to marry and whom, they say, he seduced; brother stood up for his sister and was killed by Vyazemsky. The trial over him ended, and the sentence was announced to him, together with the son of Count. Tolstoy (who was his second), at the door of the Criminal Chamber. Thanks to the petition of the old woman Razumovskaya, Vyazemsky's aunt, the latter was sentenced to a two-year arrest ... "

How many of them, Tolstoy and Razumovsky, connected by family ties by that time with almost all eminent noble families! Even the husband of Sofya Andreevna, horse guard Lev Fedorovich Miller, has a mother Tatyana Lvovna - nee Tolstaya.

Sophia Andreevna's life home became unbearable. To escape from sidelong glances (the family considered her to be the culprit of her brother's death), she married Captain Miller, who was passionately in love with her. But the marriage was unsuccessful, she was disgusted with her husband and soon left him.

Sofya Andreevna confessed to Tolstoy, but whether her confession was complete, whether her feeling was as deep and strong as his, will never be known. If not, then she was unhappy with her "concerns, forebodings, fears." He was extremely happy...

The compassion and generosity of a strong man are clearly visible in the end of that poem in which he said that he did not want to forget Sofya Andreevna's mistakes.

Your tears are dear to me and every word is dear!

I see the poor in you as a child, without a father, without support;

Early you knew grief, deceit and human slander,

Sooner, under the weight of troubles, your strength was refracted!

You poor tree, drooping head down!

You lean against me, little tree, against the green elm:

You lean against me, I stand securely and firmly!

Ten days later, another poem is formed, which later, in its own way, bewitched the composers Lyadov and Arensky.

Don't ask, don't question

Mind-reason do not scatter:

How I love you, why I love you

And why do I love, and for how long?

You do not ask, do not scatter:

Are you my sister, young wife

Or are you a small child to me?

And I don't know, and I don't know

How to call you, how to call.

Many flowers in the open field,

Many stars are burning in the sky

And there is no ability to name them,

There is no way to recognize them.

Having fallen in love with you, I did not ask;

Didn't figure it out, didn't experience it

Loving you, I waved my hand,

Outlined his wild head!

From Smalkovo Tolstoy went to his uncle Vasily Alekseevich Perovsky in Orenburg, and on the way he had time to think about Sofya Andreevna and her family ...

It was a pleasant surprise to learn that Sofya Andreevna, like him, loves hunting, rides like a man, in a Cossack saddle, rushes at full speed through the fields with a whip and a gun over her shoulders, and her habits are like those of a real traveler .. .

He also met numerous Bakhmetevs - the head of the family, Pyotr Andreevich, his wife, children Yuri, Sofya, Nina, Sofya Andreevna's sisters, another of her brothers, Nikolai Andreevich, who was said to be the "soul and nerve" of the entire local society. “He is a terrible vanity, restless like a demon, but on the other hand he brings life with him wherever he enters.” Everyone called him Kolyasha. He adored Sofya Andreevna, considered the height of perfection. Relations between all the Bakhmetevs were very complicated.

One of the Bakhmetevs was married to Varvara Aleksandrovna, Varenka, nee Lopukhina, with whom Lermontov was in love. Varvara Alexandrovna's husband poisoned her life - in every story or drama of the poet, where a foolish husband was displayed, whose wife loves another, he seemed to be mockery, mockery. Sofya Andreevna knew all about these family quarrels, because at one time, quite young, she lived with Varvara Alexandrovna, was brought up by her, owes her her development.

In Orenburg, a small fortress surrounded by earthen ramparts and ditches, Tolstoy was joyfully greeted by Perovsky and Alexander Zhemchuzhnikov.

After the unsuccessful Khiva campaign, as we remember, Perovsky returned to St. Petersburg, treated his wounds abroad, moping around idle, because the duties of a member of the State Council seemed boring to him. He experienced the death of the soldiers of his detachment.

In the capital, the Benkendorfs, Nesselrode, and Kleinmichels, who closely surrounded the tsar, did everything to prevent him from justifying his actions. After waiting two months for an audience, he decided on a desperate act. At the review, he was breathing out of line and crossed his arms over his chest. The emperor frowned, but, hearing that it was Perovsky, he came up and hugged him.

Perovsky ensured that all the surviving participants in the unsuccessful campaign were awarded. But he was not allowed to make a new campaign. He was ill for a long time. When he completely fell ill, Nicholas I visited him.

What can I do for you? the emperor asked.

I would like, Your Majesty, to be buried by the Ural Cossacks, - answered Perovsky.

When decisive action was needed on the border, Perovsky was again assigned to the Orenburg Territory and given him enormous powers.

He arrived in Orenburg, taking with him his nephew Alexander Zhemchuzhnikov as an official in his office. Sentinels stood on the ramparts of Orenburg and at night they shouted out: “Listen-ay!”, Which is why they were called royal roosters.

Only twelve thousand inhabitants, counting the troops, were in the town, which ruled over an infinitely large region. And in Orenburg itself, General Obruchev ruled, a fan of scolding his subordinates and saving government money. He saved a million rubles, sent them to St. Petersburg, but received no reward for this. But by 1851, Orenburg remained a bunch of bad and dilapidated buildings.

But here the outback is awakened. Appointed Governor-General of Orenburg and Samara, Perovsky brought with him a huge staff of officials special assignments and adjutants, started many new institutions and lived so magnificently that flatterers began to compare him with Louis XIV.

The regions subject to him extended from the Volga to the spurs of the Urals. He was entrusted with diplomatic relations with Khiva and Bukhara, for some receptions the treasury released him half a million rubles a year.

Perovsky's plans were enormous, and he subsequently carried them out.

Under him, many fortifications were built in the Kazakh steppe that laid the foundation for the current cities, the Aral Sea was explored, the Kokand fortress Ak-Mechet, later renamed Perovsky Fort, was taken by storm, an agreement was concluded with Khiva, which undermined the foundations of this tyrannical slave state. Perovsky's actions predetermined the annexation of vast Central Asian territories to Russia.

A contemporary wrote about him:

“Energy, speed, onslaught - these were the main features of Perovsky's activity.

Handsome, stately, taller than average, well-mannered, he made a charming impression in society. The ladies were especially delighted with him, who, it seems, considered it a sacred duty to fall in love with him and almost ran after him - where he is, there they are. Sometimes he was so able to charm them that, as they say, it will fit into the soul. But another time, from one of his angry looks, these same ladies fainted.

Perovsky was very proud of the fact that in his position he was also the ataman of the Orenburg Cossack army with twelve regiments. One of the regiments was located in the village adjoining the city. The Cossacks lived freely, trading at the Exchange Yard, a huge market that stretched across the Ural River.

Who has not seen this market! Camel and horse caravans flocked here from Bukhara, Khiva, Kokand, Tashkent, Akmolinsk...

Shouts, neighing, stomping... In dozens of languages, people bargained, argued, came to an agreement. The majority were illiterate, unable to count money and recognized only barter.

Vasily Alekseevich Perovsky, who did not have his own family, considered it his duty to take care of the sons of his sisters Alexei Tolstoy and the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers. When he got to Orenburg, Tolstoy turned out to be pleasant in society, hunted a lot, participated in Alexander Zhemchuzhnikov's funny tricks ...

During his trips to Orenburg, the poet often overtook the strings of convicts who wandered east across the steppe. Gloomy, with shaved foreheads, rattling chains, they looked askance at the passing carriage and sometimes sang their mournful songs. Impressed by such meetings, Tolstoy wrote the poem "Kolodniki", which was published many years later and, set to music by A. T. Grechaninov, became one of the most popular revolutionary songs. V. I. Lenin loved her very much and political prisoners often sang.

The sun descends over the steppes,

In the distance the feather grass is golden, -

Kolodnikov ringing chains

Kicking up road dust...

Tolstoy and Zhemchuzhnikovs, using family ties, often stood up for artists and writers who were subjected to repression. Back in 1850, they asked Vasily Alekseevich Perovsky to intercede for Shevchenko. In the affairs of the III Branch, a letter from the general to Dubelt was preserved:

“Knowing how little free time you have, I do not intend to bore you with personal explanations, and therefore, enclosing a note on one matter, I humbly ask Your Excellency to read it in a free moment, and then notify me: is it possible to in your opinion, to take steps to alleviate the fate of Shevchenko?”

The note contained a summary of the case of a Ukrainian artist and poet, “sent to serve as a private for writing libelous poems in the Little Russian language ... Since then, Private Shevchenko behaved perfectly ... Last year ... the commander of a separate Orenburg corps (Obruchev. - D. J.), making sure he excellent behavior and way of thinking, asked him for permission to draw, but this performance was refused ... Private Shevchenko is about forty years old; he is of a very weak and unreliable build...”

Dubelt replied: “As a result of your Excellency’s note dated February 14, I considered it my duty to report to Mr. Adjutant General Count Orlov ... His Excellency ... deigned to respond that, with all sincere desire to do what pleases your Excellency in this case, I consider it early to enter with the most humble report ... "

And two months later, Shevchenko, who lived in Orenburg relatively freely and, contrary to the prohibition, painted and wrote, was arrested again.

By the time V. A. Perovsky was appointed head Orenburg region Through the efforts of the III Branch, Shevchenko had already been transferred from the city to the Orsk fortress, and then to Mangyshlak.

Lev Zhemchuzhnikov subsequently wrote to Shevchenko's biographer, A. Ya. Konissky:

“Perovsky knew about Shevchenko from K. P. Bryullov, you. Andr. Zhukovsky, etc. He asked for Shevchenko from Perovsky, when he was passing through Moscow, and Count Andr. Iv. Gudovich (brother of the wife of Ilya Iv. Lizogub); asked for him in St. Petersburg and Orenburg, my cousin, now a well-known public poet, Count A. K. Tolstoy. But Perovsky, although he was an omnipotent satrap, as Shevchenko put it, could do nothing for Shevchenko: Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich was so angry with the poet. Perovsky told Lizogubs, Tolstoy and Gudovich that it would be better to remain silent now so that Shevchenko would be forgotten, since intercession on his behalf could harm him. This fact is an undoubted and serious fact, since it illuminates the personality of V. A. Perovsky differently than Shevchenko thought about him. Perovsky, stern in appearance, was kind, extremely noble and chivalrously honest: he always made the fate of the exiled easier, as these exiled Poles and Russians repeatedly stated, but he was powerless to do anything in favor of Shevchenko. Emperor Nikolai considered Shevchenko ungrateful and was offended and embittered for presenting his wife in a caricature form in the poem "Dream" ... "

The king could not forgive the poet of such lines:

Shevchenko pulled a soldier's strap in the Novopetrovsky fortification, on the deserted and hot shore of the Caspian Sea. “But good people, no doubt, continued to think and care about Shevchenko, and among these belonged, as I well know, Alexei Tolstoy, the Lizogubs and the same V. A. Perovsky,” Lev Zhemchuzhnikov wrote in his memoirs.

Having become the Governor-General of Orenburg, Perovsky, through his close associates, more than once hinted to Shevchenko's commanders that the poet should not be oppressed, and in a letter from the wife of the commandant of the Novopetrovsky fortification, Uskova, to the same A. Ya. (Uskov), when leaving Orenburg, went to the fort to say goodbye to Perovsky, then he was the first to talk about Shevchenko and asked her husband to somehow alleviate his situation ... ".

A. A. Kondratiev assures that Tolstoy returned from Orenburg to St. Petersburg almost in the spring of 1852, stopping on the way again to Smalkovo. However, this statement is contradicted by a letter sent to Sofya Andreevna from St. Petersburg. In it, Alexei Konstantinovich "regrets" his stay in Smalkovo, since "in the midst of aristocratic hobbies" he wished for himself village life. The letter is dated 1851 according to Lirondel's book.

And in St. Petersburg, Alexei Konstantinovich regretted that he did not have enough words to convey his condition away from Smalkov. Here he returned from a masquerade ball, where he was serving his official service - he accompanied the heir to the throne.

“How sad I was there! Don't ever go to those nasty masquerade balls! - he exclaims, although he owes his acquaintance with Sofya Andreevna to them. “I would so like to refresh your poor heart, I would so like to give you a rest from your whole life!”

Yes, Smalkovo, a village, a beloved woman ... There, in Smalkovo's house, it was blissful and calm. What is there? "All the hustle and bustle of the world, ambition, vanity, etc." It's unnatural, it's an unkind mist. Through it and now her voice seems to be heard:

I'm giving it up forever for the love of you!

They are overcome by a feeling of undivided happiness. The words she said in Smalkov again and again sound in my soul as an assurance that from now on nothing will harm either her or him.

“It is your heart that sings with happiness, and mine listens to it, and since all this is in ourselves, it cannot be taken away from us, and even in the midst of worldly vanity we can be alone and be happy. My character is with anguish, but there is no pettiness in it - I give you my word.

Russian literature is inconceivable without love lyrics created great feeling Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy.

Everywhere there is sound, and everywhere there is light,

And all the worlds have one beginning,

And there is nothing in nature

No matter how love breathes.

Everything was not easy in this love.

It was not easy to get consent to a divorce from Miller.

It was not easy with Anna Alekseevna. There is a mention of Tolstoy's letter to his mother, in which he talks again and again about his feelings, asks to forgive him, begs not to believe bad rumors about Sofya Andreevna ...

For the next two years, Tolstoy rushes between Pustynka, his St. Petersburg apartment in the Vielgorsky house on Mikhailovskaya Square, and Smalkovo.

It is known that Tolstoy wrote to his beloved almost every day. Here are the lines from the letter dated June 23, 1852, published for the first time in Russian:

Occasionally Tolstoy travels abroad and to the waters at the insistence of his mother. She suffers, sends him desperate letters, "with all her fervor rises" against his independence, and he suffers because of her grief. “My love grows because of your sadness,” he writes to Anna Alekseevna.

Sometimes the correspondence with the mother is fierce. Then Tolstoy repents: “I don’t remember what I wrote to you, being under a bad impression ...” Sometimes an offended mother stops responding to his letters altogether.

From the spring and almost the whole of 1851, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev was in Spasskoye-Lutovinovo. But he was often mentioned in letters.

Sofya Andreevna praised Turgenev. Tolstoy took these praises jealously.

"... But now let's talk about Turgenev. I believe he is very noble and worthy person but I don’t see anything Jupiterian in his face!..”

Alexei Konstantinovich recalled the Russian masculine face, the French-style silk muffler around his neck, the soft voice, so out of keeping with Turgenev's great stature and heroic build, and added:

“Just a good face, rather weak and not even very pretty. The mouth in particular is very weak. The shape of the forehead is good, but the skull is covered with fatty bodily layers. He's all soft."

Something between Turgenev and Sofia Andreevna was at the very beginning of their acquaintance. But what? Turgenev wrote to her later:

“There is no need for me to repeat to you what I wrote to you in my first letter, namely: from among the happy cases that I let go of my hands dozens, I especially remember the one that brought you together and which I so badly took advantage of .. We met and parted so strangely that we hardly had any idea about each other, but it seems to me that you really must be very kind, that you have a lot of taste and grace ... "

At the beginning of 1852, Turgenev arrived in St. Petersburg.

He settled on Malaya Morskaya, received numerous acquaintances. Alexandrinka staged his comedy Lack of Money for Martynov's benefit performance. And then soon the news came that Gogol had died in Moscow.

“Gogol is dead! .. What Russian soul will not be shaken by these words? .. - Turgenev wrote in the article. - Yes, he died, this man, whom we now have the right, the bitter right given to us by death, to call great; a man who, with his name, marked an era in the history of our literature; a man we are proud of as one of our glory!”

The censorship did not allow this article to be printed in Petersburg Vedomosti.

Moscow buried Gogol solemnly, its governor-general Zakrevsky himself, wearing the St. Andrew's ribbon, saw off the writer ... From St. Petersburg they made it clear to Zakrevsky that such solemnity was inappropriate.

The author of "Correspondence with Friends", which, it would seem, should have reconciled the powers that be with him, died. Belinsky attacked him in his famous letter, which was considered a state crime to keep and read. By the way, Turgenev spent the summer when it was written together with Belinsky in Salzbrunn... But Gogol was proclaimed by Belinsky the father of the "natural school" and became the banner of the unintentional.

Pushkin was buried quietly to avoid "an indecent picture of the triumph of the liberals," as the report on the actions of the gendarme corps said.

The same considerations accompanied Gogol's death.

Turgenev sent his article to Moscow, where it appeared through the efforts of Botkin and Feoktistov in Moskovskie Vedomosti under the guise of Letters from Petersburg.

Followed by the "most subservient report" of the III Department about Turgenev and "his accomplices", who published the article in circumvention of censorship.

"... For obvious disobedience, put him under arrest for a month and send him to live in his homeland under supervision, and let Mr. Zakrevsky deal with others as they are guilty."

Having imposed a resolution, Nicholas I asked about Turgenev:

Is he an official?

No, your Majesty, he does not serve anywhere.

Well, this is not allowed in the guardhouse, put him in the police.

So Turgenev ended up in the congress of the 2nd Admiralty unit.

According to the memoirs of Olga Nikolaevna Smirnova, Turgenev's arrest took place almost at their home. “He dined with us. A. K. Tolstoy (after the death of Gogol in 1852). In my diary, I found details and even conversations on the occasion of Gogol's death, about his stay in our village in the summer, in his father's suburban area, etc. The writers were received by Alexandra Osipovna Rosset-Smirnova, suddenly aged. Olga Nikolaevna recorded an interesting conversation between her mother and Tolstoy and Turgenev, who asked her about Pushkin, Lermontov and Gogol.

Either Turgenev or Tolstoy asked what the tsar liked most about Boris Godunov. And she replied that the tsar himself had told her about the beautiful scene where Boris gives advice to his son. She cited Pushkin's words about the need for the liberation of the peasants, without which the country cannot develop properly. She also talked about how Gogol reverently entered everything he heard from Pushkin into his pocket book...

After the arrest, Alexei Tolstoy immediately went to Turgenev at the police station and advised him to write a letter to the heir to the throne. He speaks more than once or twice with the future king.

On April 21, he writes to Sofya Andreevna: “I have just returned from the Grand Duke, with whom I again spoke about Turgenev. It seems that there are other claims against him, besides the case with the article about Gogol. It is forbidden to visit him, but I was allowed to send him books.”

Chief among the "other claims" was the book "Notes of a Hunter".

This book made an indelible impression on Tolstoy. He wrote from Pustynka to his beloved:

“I read to my mother the entire second volume of A Hunter's Notes, which she listened to with great pleasure. In fact, it is very good - without a final form ... it somehow passes from one to another and takes on all kinds of forms, depending on the mood of the spirit in which you are ... It reminds me of some kind of Beethoven sonata ... that rustic and simple...

When I meet something like this, I feel that enthusiasm rises up the spine to the head in the same way as when I read wonderful poems. Many of his characters gems but not trimmed.

My mind is slow and influenced by my passions, but it is fair.

Do you think anything will ever come out of me?

And what can someday come out of me?

If it were only a matter of picking up a torch and setting fire to a powder mine and blowing myself up with it, I could do it; but so many people would also be able to do it ... I feel in my heart, mind - and a big heart, but what is it to me?

In these almost youthful thoughts one cannot in any way recognize an influential courtier. But what is the measure of maturity? Worldly success, connections in society? For Tolstoy, this was not life. The artist in him had already matured, but Tolstoy wanted to throw off the burden of previous doubts by sharing with Sofya Andreevna.

"... Think that until the age of 36 I had no one to confide my sorrows to, no one to pour out my soul."

“You are talking to me about Count T (Tolstoy). This is a man of the heart, who aroused in me a great feeling of respect and gratitude. He hardly knew me when my unpleasant incident happened, and despite this, no one showed me as much sympathy as he did, and today he is still perhaps the only person in Petersburg who has not forgotten me, the only one who at least which proves it. Some wretched individual took it into his head to say that gratitude is a heavy burden; for me - I am happy that I am grateful to T (Tolstoy) - I will keep this feeling for him all my life.

Tolstoy prompted Turgenev who to write what to be allowed to return to St. Petersburg. But it was all in vain. Then Alexei Tolstoy took a very risky step.

He turned to the chief of the gendarmes, Count Orlov, on behalf of the heir to the throne. Orlov could not refuse, and on November 14, 1853, he made a report to the tsar about allowing Turgenev to live in the capital.

The king decreed:

"Agreed, but keep under strict supervision here."

Orlov had already written to the heir that his request had been fulfilled, and handed over the letter to General Dubelt for sending.

Tolstoy was on the brink of an abyss. The point was that the heir did not ask for Turgenev. Tolstoy deceived Orlov.

Pretending to know nothing about the tsar's resolution, Tolstoy went to the III Section.

Leonty Vasilievich Dubelt was not averse to philosophizing about the beneficence of the existing order, about the obedience of the Russian peasant. He used to say: “Russia can be compared to a harlequin dress, the shreds of which are sewn with one thread, and it holds up nicely and beautifully. This thread is autocracy. Pull it out and the dress will fall apart.

He received Tolstoy immediately and was extremely kind to him. Alexei Konstantinovich, having listened to Dubelt's thoughts with exaggerated attention, seemed to say by the way that the heir to the throne, of course, was disposed towards Turgenev, about which he, Tolstoy, spoke to Count Orlov. But he, apparently, considered this conversation a direct petition of the heir, and now this misunderstanding may be misunderstood by his imperial highness ...

In his book about the Nikolaev gendarmes, M. Lemke wrote:

“No matter how cunning Dubelt was, he did not understand Tolstoy's tricks and asked Orlov to change the wording of the paper to the heir. Orlov wrote: “If you think that my paper to the Tsarevich can harm Count. Tolstoy, then you can not send it, especially since Turgenev himself asked.

Thus, Tolstoy was saved.

A letter from Tolstoy flew to Spasskoye-Lutovinovo with congratulations and a wish that Turgenev immediately leave for St. Petersburg and not be delayed while passing Moscow, so that in St. Petersburg he would immediately go to Tolstoy, and before that he had not met with anyone. Tolstoy needed to warn Turgenev about how things had turned out and how to behave in St. Petersburg. And in case of a perusal, the letter praised the heir, "who contributed a lot to the pardon."

Tolstoy and his cousins ​​Zhemchuzhnikovs tried to spread this version around St. Petersburg. Grigory Gennadi wrote in his diary on November 28, 1853: “Today Zh (emchuzhnikov) brought me news of the forgiveness of Yves. Turgenev. Count Alexei Tolstoy fussed for him at the Heir's.

In December, Turgenev was in Petersburg, and soon Sofya Andreevna also arrived there. The artist Lev Zhemchuzhnikov later recalled:

“I spent the whole winter of 1853 in St. Petersburg and rented myself a special apartment in a wooden house, in the garden, where only the owner and his wife lived; I had a special move, and no one knew this apartment, except for A. Tolstoy, Beideman, Kulish and Turgenev. I indulged in writing sketches and reading... A. Tolstoy often came here; he will go to his place, and I to my father, where I always spent the night ... This winter I often spent evenings at A. Tolstoy and Sofya Andreevna, where Turgenev often visited and read Pushkin, Shakespeare and some of his works to us. Turgenev was always interesting, and the conversation dragged on without fatigue, sometimes until midnight or more. Sofya Andreevna, the future wife of A. Tolstoy, was a good musician, she played pieces by Pergolez, Bach, Gluck, Glinka, etc. and added variety to our evenings by singing.

Alexei Konstantinovich will never part with Sofya Andreevna now. They still have a lot of tests to do. Tolstoy knew how to forgive and love. This is characteristic of heroes, people of tremendous strength.

Soon, in the spring of 1854, several poems by Alexei Tolstoy appeared in Sovremennik. Finally, he found it possible to publish a little of what he wrote. And you don’t have to be especially understanding to understand what the verses are inspired by:

If you love, so without reason,

If you threaten, it's not a joke,

If you scold, so rashly,

If you chop, it's so sloppy!

If you argue, it's so bold

Kohl to punish, so for the cause,

Kohl forgive, so with all my heart.

If there is a feast, then a feast is a mountain!

In this poem, many saw the best features of the Russian character.

The "Gloomy Seven Years" continued. Nekrasov and Panaev did everything to save the Sovremennik magazine. They succeeded. They attracted the Westerner Botkin and the liberal Druzhinin to cooperate, published the works of Turgenev, Grigorovich, Pisemsky, Tyutchev, Fet. At that time, Goncharov, Leo Tolstoy and Alexei Tolstoy made their debuts in Sovremennik. The year 1854 was marked by the appearance on the pages of the magazine of the lyrics of Alexei Konstantinovich and one of his incarnations - the multifaceted work of Kozma Prutkov.

The Sovremennik circle (before Chernyshevsky appeared in it) was a noble one. The exception was Botkin, but this merchant's son did not differ from the bar-writers either in education or in manners. The circle met in Nekrasov's apartment on the corner of Kolokolnaya Street and Povarsky Lane or in the editorial office on the Fontanka embankment.

On other days, these dinners were dominated by Avdotya Yakovlevna Panaeva, small in stature, slender, black-haired, swarthy and ruddy. Large diamonds sparkled in her ears, and her voice was capricious, like that of a spoiled child. Her husband Ivan Ivanovich Panaev looked affectionately at the guests, always fashionably dressed, with a perfumed mustache, frivolous, equally excellent in high-society living rooms and at hussar feasts.

“Will you come tomorrow (Friday) to have dinner with me. There will be Turgenev, Tolstoy (A.K.) and some others. Please".

Tall, fair-haired and skinny Druzhinin, with small eyes, according to Nekrasov, "like a pig's," was certainly there, behaving, however, an English gentleman. Endowed with a great sense of humor, he responded with a hilarious article to the appearance in the feuilleton of the "New Poet" (Panaev) of the fable "The Conductor and the Tarantula", which foreshadowed the birth of Kozma Prutkov.

A big dinner was given on December 13, 1853, on the occasion of Turgenev's return from exile, and Nekrasov then delivered an impromptu speech, which included this:

He was once much worse

But I can't stand reproaches

And in this timid husband I

absolutely love everything...

And his great praise

Everything you write

And this head is gray

With a youthful soul.

Grigorovich recalled that they met in the editorial office almost every day. “... Something happened that I had never seen at any literary meeting, in any meeting; irregularities of character and minor temporary disagreements, as it were, were left at the entrance with fur coats. Serious literary debates were joined by sharp remarks, humorous poems and parodies were read, funny anecdotes were told; the laughter went on unceasingly." Curious, however, is something else - almost all memoirists, without saying a word, explain this fun ... by censorship.

Mikhail Longinov at that time was very liberal. He excelled everyone in his ridicule of censorial absurdities, but this did not prevent him later from becoming the most formidable head of the press department for writers. He still recalled the "dark hour", the danger of journalism, the despondency of those who write and the distraction of the soul in jokes, because everyone was then young ...

A. N. Pypin appeared in Sovremennik already with the consolidation of his relative Chernyshevsky in the editorial office and the predominance of a serious atmosphere, but he still found something from previous years and wrote about it in his memoirs about Nekrasov:

“The mood of the literary circle that I saw here ... (at Nekrasov’s lunches and dinners. - D. J.) it was rather strange; first of all it was, of course, a depressed mood; it was difficult to say in literature even what was said recently, at the end of the forties. By order of a secret committee, some books of the past were even selected, for example, “Notes of the Fatherland” of the forties; Slavophiles were simply forbidden to write or submit their articles for censorship; only dark hints and silence remained possible. In the Sovremennik circle, current news of various kinds was broadcast, censored anecdotes, sometimes supernatural, or there was unpretentious friendly chatter, which had long dominated the bachelor company of the then lordly class - and this company was both bachelor and lordly. Often she attacked very slippery topics ... "

When Turgenev was later asked how people could have fun in such a gloomy time In a similar way, he was reminiscent of Boccaccio's Decameron, where, at the height of the plague, gentlemen and ladies entertain each other with stories of obscene content.

Wasn’t Nicholas’ oppression a kind of plague for an educated society, Turgenev concluded?

Such activities Druzhinin called "black book". Grigorovich recalled that, having worked thoroughly, Druzhinin rested in the company of friends in a specially rented apartment on Vasilyevsky Island, where they danced around the plaster Venus of Mediceus, singing fast songs.

But, despite the censorship persecution and the fun that they allegedly generated, literature was enriched very vigorously, and much of what was published then in Sovremennik outlived its age. The comic creativity of the circle of “friends of Kozma Prutkov” fell in love with the entire company of writers and was published for almost the entire 1854 year in Yeralash, a specially started department of the magazine. Nekrasov even prefaced the first publication with a playful verse parting word.

The success of Kozma Prutkov's work largely determined the talent of Alexei Tolstoy, his subtle humor, which immediately pulled the fictional poet out of the ranks of ordinary scoffers, giving the whole emerging image an indescribable complexity and versatility.

From Vladimir Zhemchuzhnikov's notes on copies of magazine texts, it is known that Tolstoy wrote "Epigram No. 1".

"Do you like cheese?" - once asked a hypocrite,

“I love,” he answered, “I find taste in it.”

He also wrote "Letter from Corinth", "Ancient Plastic Greek" and the famous "Junker Schmidt".

The leaf withers, the summer passes,

Frost is silver.

Junker Schmidt with a pistol

Wants to shoot.

Wait, crazy! again

The greenery will revive...

Juncker Schmidt! honestly,

Summer will return.

But, really, it’s not worth finding out what Tolstoy wrote on his own, and what Prutkov things were written together with Zhemchuzhnikov. In any case, the best works - "The Desire to Be a Spaniard", "The Siege of Pamba", so beloved by Dostoevsky and other Russian classics, bear the stamp of Alexei Konstantinovich's talent. Later, he also painted "My Portrait", giving free rein to further fantasies in shaping the image of Kozma Petrovich Prutkov.

When you meet someone in the crowd

Whose forehead is darker than misty Kazbek,

Uneven step;

Whom the hair is raised in disarray,

Who is crying

Always trembling in a nervous fit, -

Know it's me!

Whom they sting with anger, forever new

From generation to generation;

From whom the crowd his laurel crown

Crazy vomiting;

Who does not bow his back to anyone flexible, -

Know it's me!

A calm smile on my lips

In the chest - a snake! ..

The image of Kozma Prutkov is inseparable, although his works are the fruit of collective creativity. It is difficult to find out which of Prutkov's famous aphorisms were invented by Tolstoy and which by Zhemchuzhnikovs.

Kozma Prutkov said: “I don’t quite understand why many people call fate a turkey, and not some other bird more like fate.” creative destiny Kozma Prutkov himself cannot be called anything other than happy. And in our time, jokingly and seriously using the sayings of a bureaucratic sage, others do not even know who gave birth to these well-aimed words, because they are already inseparable from our everyday speech. The authorship of the sayings is known: “No one will embrace the immensity”, “Look at the root!”, “Click the mare in the nose - she will wave her tail”, “If you want to be happy, be it”, “Watch out!” and others. But who remembers that such commonplace phrases as: “What we have, we do not store; having lost - crying”, “Stay alert!”, “Everyone, they say that health is the most precious thing; but no one observes this ”- also invented by Kozma Prutkov. Even when complaining that there is "a sediment in the heart", we repeat Prutkov's aphorism.

Even "during his lifetime" Kozma Prutkov was extremely popular. Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov and many other critics wrote about him. Dostoevsky repeatedly mentioned his name with admiration in his works. Saltykov-Shchedrin liked to quote Prutkov and create aphorisms in his spirit. It is indispensable in the letters of Herzen, Turgenev, Goncharov...

Kozma Prutkov is not an ordinary parodist. He "combined" in himself many poets, including the most famous, entire literary movements. He was famous for his ability to bring everything to the point of absurdity, and then in one fell swoop put everything in its place, calling on common sense to help. But Prutkov did not appear out of nowhere.

Pushkin was a brilliant polemicist. He loved a sharp word. He taught in a dispute to stylize, to parody the style of a literary rival. He once remarked: “This kind of joke requires a rare flexibility of style; a good parodist has all the syllables."

Even under Pushkin, Osip Senkovsky was ornate in his "Library for Reading". The then reading public tended to perceive his Baron Brambeus as a living, real-life writer. Then Nadezhdin published his feuilletons in Vestnik Evropy, wearing the mask of an “ex-student” Nikodim Aristarkhovich Nadumko, criticizing romanticism, which was already being replaced by the “natural school”.

About the time preceding the appearance of Kozma Prutkov, Turgenev recalled:

“... A whole phalanx of people appeared, undeniably gifted, but on whose talent lay the imprint of rhetoric, an appearance corresponding to that great, but purely external force, to which they served as an echo. These people appeared in poetry, and in painting, and in journalism, even on the theater stage ... What was the noise and thunder!

He names the names of this "falsely majestic school" - Marlinsky, Kukolnik, Zagoskin, Karatygin, Benediktov ...

On cold people I will die like a volcano,

Boiling lava will flood ...

These Benedict verses are perceived as a watershed between the romanticism of Pushkin and the absurdities of Kozma Prutkov.

When reading Kozma Prutkov, you often get into a mess - in form it seems to be one thing, in content another, but if you think it over with your mind, you will get to know all the circumstances of his era, and there will be a third, and a fourth, and a fifth ... Here, it would seem, has reached to the bottom, but no - the work of the most venerable Kozma Petrovich has more than one bottom, but so much that you lose count, and you no longer know whether to laugh or cry over the imperfection of being and human nature, you begin to think that stupidity is wise, and wisdom is stupid, that banal truths are indeed full of common sense, and literary delights, for all their employment, turn into thoughtlessness. Literary vanity gives rise to paradoxes and loftiness, behind which lies the same banality, and even any literary absurdity and madness has its own logic.

It is natural for a person to deceive himself, and especially for a writer. But in moments of insight, he sees brighter than others own shortcomings and laughs bitterly at them. It’s easy to tell the truth to yourself, it’s more difficult for others ... Because no one likes the bitter truth in the mouth of others, and then there is a need for Kozma Prutkov, for his ornate truth, for a sage who put on the guise of a simpleton ...

How Prutkov was perceived by the reading public can be judged at least from the letter of S. V. Engelhardt (writer Olga N.) to Druzhinin in November 1854: “As for Yeralash, I must tell you that I I constantly come running in moments of boredom, and such moments, of course, often happen when you have been in the country since September. Kuzma Prutkov positively amuses me, he often makes me stay awake until midnight, and like a fool, I laugh to myself. I confess this, despite the opinion of Muscovites that a serious person never laughs.

Kozma Prutkov was once called "genius in stupidity", but such a definition has long been doubted. The famous poem about Junker Schmidt, who wanted to shoot himself, was considered a parody. But to whom? Then they saw the captivating touchingness and insecurity of the poem, imagined a county paramedic or postman dreaming of beautiful life. They noticed that it was written by a great poet, they noticed the masterful chasing of rhythm, excellent rhyme. The Soviet literary critic V. Skvoznikov wrote about the good intonation of the work: “If a person who has lost his taste for life, who is in a state of depression, is told: “Junker Schmidt, honestly, summer will return!” - it will be a joke, but an encouraging joke!

If we recall that the poem was written in 1851, when Alexei Tolstoy suffered from the ambiguity of Sofya Andreevna's reciprocal feelings, from his mother's reproaches when he wrote poems full of love and pain, then one can think about irony over oneself, about touching in a joke on a big feeling. Isn't that why the poem stands out so much in all the work of Kozma Prutkov? The feeling of deep, suffered remains even in what Tolstoy himself considered a trifle ...

Aleksey Zhemchuzhnikov wrote to his brother Vladimir: “Prutkov’s relationship with Sovremennik arose from your and mine connections. I published my poems and comedies in Sovremennik, and you were familiar with the editors.”

The name of A. K. Tolstoy has already flashed in Nekrasov's invitation note. In Gennadi's unpublished diary under 1855, we read the following entry:

“Yesterday, February 17, Dusseau had a dinner in honor of P. V. Annenkov, the publisher of Pushkin’s works ... Participated: Panaev, Nekrasov, Druzhinin, Avdeev, Mikhailov, Arapetov, Maikov, Pisemsky, Zhemchuzhnikov, Count A. Tolstoy, Gerbel, Botkin, Gaevsky, Yazykov.

Pypin completed his impressions of the dinners at Nekrasov and Panaev's with an attempt to explain the meaning of the birth of Kozma Prutkov in a somewhat extended way:

“At this time, Druzhinin wrote in Sovremennik whole buffoonish feuilletons under the title “Ivan Chernoknizhnikov’s Journey through St. Petersburg Dachas” - for the reader’s entertainment, and his own. At this time, the works of the famous Kuzma Prutkov were created, which were also published in Sovremennik in a special section of the magazine, and in the editorial office of Sovremennik I first met one of the main representatives of this collective symbolic pseudonym, Vladimir Zhemchuzhnikov. At the time when the works of Kuzma Prutkov were being written, the friendly company that he represented, partly aristocratic, was doing various practical buffoonery in St. Petersburg, which, if I am not mistaken, were mentioned in the literature about Kuzma Prutkov. It was not only the simple pranks of carefree and spoiled young people; at the same time, there was partly an instinctive, partly a conscious desire to laugh in the suffocating atmosphere of time. The very creations of Kuzma Prutkov, as it were, would like to be an example of serious, even thoughtful, as well as modest and well-meaning literature, which would in no way violate the strict requirements of the “secret committee”.

This is how the circle of “friends of Kozma Prutkov” unites with a large circle of writers grouped around Sovremennik. Did Alexei Tolstoy participate in the sometimes indiscreet amusements of some of them? Hardly. He is not a prude, but in the manifestations of his sense of humor, he never crossed the line separating irony from cynicism. Chaste by nature, he even considers Musset immoral and threatens that if he finds a copy of his works on the table of Sofya Andreevna, then “he will no longer be doused with turpentine, but with tar.”

Without interrupting the story about the love of Alexei Konstantinovich, about his literary connections, let us recall that terrible events have already approached, that the thoughts of our hero were increasingly occupied by a phenomenon whose name is war!

Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy Vladimir Novikov

"Amid the Noisy Ball..."

"Amid the Noisy Ball..."

Sometimes a person's life dramatically changes its course - a single minute is enough. And most often it can be about love at first sight. A similar thing happened with Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy. To his " beautiful moment» he dedicated one of the most famous poems in an anthology of Russian lyrics.

In the midst of a noisy ball, by chance,

In the turmoil of the world,

I saw you, but the mystery

Your features are covered.

Like the sound of a distant flute,

Like the waves of the sea.

I liked your slim figure

And all your thoughtful look

And your laughter, both sad and sonorous,

Since then it has been in my heart.

In the hours of lonely nights

I love, tired, lie down -

I see sad eyes

I hear a cheerful speech.

And sadly I fall asleep so

And in the dreams of the unknown I sleep ...

Do I love you - I don't know

But I think I love it!

(“In the midst of a noisy ball, by chance ...”. 1851)

Set to music by Tchaikovsky, this poem has already gained unprecedented popularity as a romance. It does not seem too "literary" to the modern reader, he is unlikely to correlate Tolstoy's lines with Lermontov's poems:

From under the mysterious cold half-mask

Your captivating eyes shone on me

And the sly lips smiled.

………………………………………………….

And then I created in my imagination

By easy signs, my beauty:

And since then, a disembodied vision

I wear in my soul, caress and love.

Few people notice that the line "In the anxiety of worldly vanity" repeats Pushkin's "In the anxiety of noisy vanity" (from a message to Anna Kern). In the 19th century, the picture was somewhat different. The roll call of poets and even in some ways the secondary nature of Alexei Tolstoy were obvious. For example, Leo Tolstoy, who liked the poem of his distant relative, still preferred Lermontov's to him. However, over time, A.K. Tolstoy emerged victorious in a poetic dispute. His poem is heard by every lover of Russian poetry; in popularity, it left far behind the poem of its brilliant colleague and predecessor.

It all happened at a masquerade ball at the Bolshoi Theater in St. Petersburg on a January evening in 1851. The young poet, on duty, accompanied the heir to the festival. His attention was attracted by a tall, slender and lush-haired stranger, who is fluent in the art of intrigue. She skillfully evaded insistent requests to take off her mask, but took Alexei Tolstoy's business card, promising to make herself known in the near future. Indeed, a few days later he received an invitation to visit the mysterious lady. Her name was Sofya Andreevna Miller.

Apparently, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev was also present at this masquerade ball. The son of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy Sergei Lvovich recalls:

“... he (Turgenev. - V. N.) told how, at a masquerade, together with the poet A. K. Tolstoy, he met a graceful and interesting mask that spoke intelligently to them. They insisted that she take off her mask at the same time, but she revealed herself to them only a few days later, inviting them to her place.

What did I see then? - said Turgenev, - the face of a Chukhonian soldier in a skirt.

Sergei Lvovich, who knew the heroine of this episode, assured that Turgenev was exaggerating.

Indeed, Sofya Andreevna Miller could not be called a beauty. As can be judged from the photographs, she has fuzzy facial features, wide cheekbones, a strong-willed male chin, and a too high forehead of a person who thinks a lot. But the initial unfavorable impression was quickly forgotten. She was surprisingly feminine, and in a few minutes the enchanted interlocutor saw only her gray eyes sparkling with intelligence.

It is incredibly difficult to write about a woman who, although she has been in full view of prominent contemporaries all her life, endowed with a powerful gift of speech, but who has not left her own memoirs, or even letters and other materials, is incredibly difficult. Sometimes information about her youth is fished out bit by bit and one has to be content with a tongue twister.

Her maiden name is Bakhmetyeva. She was born in 1825 in the family of a retired lieutenant of the Livonian Dragoon Regiment, who died early and left a widow with three sons and two daughters. Sophia was the youngest of the children.

He spent his childhood in his father's estate Smalkovo, Penza province. Little Sophie was distinguished by her extraordinary talent; Developed beyond her years, she was ahead of her peers in everything. But in the rural wilderness, the girl grew up as a real tomboy. “She went hunting like a man, on a Cossack saddle, and hunted like the most seasoned and experienced traveler. Everyone in the district remembered her with a whip in her hands, with a gun over her shoulders, rushing at full speed through the fields, ”recalls the writer Anna Sokolova.

An interesting family legend was told by the niece of this Amazon Sofya Khitrovo. When Sophie was five years old, her mother took all her children to the Sarov Hermitage for a blessing to Father Seraphim. He crossed them all and blessed them, and in front of little Sophie he knelt down, kissed her feet and predicted an amazing future. Whether the prediction of the holy elder came true is for the reader to judge. But at first, fate was unlikely to be favorable to her.

The neighboring Akshino estate belonged to a paternal relative, retired staff captain Nikolai Bakhmetiev. Little can be said about him. Much more interesting is his young wife. This is the same Varenka (Varvara Alexandrovna) Lopukhin, which many researchers consider Lermontov's only love. The stern husband, who could not bear even the name of the poet to be spoken in his presence, forced his wife to destroy his letters, but nevertheless she secretly continued to keep in touch with Lermontov. So she received from him the manuscript of The Demon, which had not yet been printed; the poem could not overcome censorship for more than twenty years.

Sophie, in fact, was Varvara Alexandrovna's niece and even lived with her for some time in her adolescence. Subsequently, Sofya Andreevna told the first biographer of Lermontov, Pavel Aleksandrovich Viskovaty, that she owed a lot to her in her spiritual development. In general, Viskovaty was the first to pay attention to Varenka Lopukhina, whose very name by that time had been thoroughly forgotten. He had a special meeting with Sofya Andreevna, and her testimony only strengthened his guesses; it was thanks to her that the memory of Varenka Lopukhina was resurrected and she became one of the main characters in Lermontov's biography.

The middle of Sophie's brothers, Yuri Bakhmetiev, served in the privileged Life Guards Preobrazhensky Regiment. In 1838 Sophie was placed in the Catherine Institute for Noble Maidens; this institution was considered the second most prestigious after the famous Smolny Institute. It took quite a bit of time, and smart charming girl completely accustomed to the environment of guards officers - friends of her brother.

She was extremely musical and sang beautifully. The already mentioned Anna Sokolova writes: “I understand that after listening to it for several evenings, one could fall crazy in love with her.” The memoirist found only one flaw in Sophie: a certain amount of self-conceit, but "this self-conceit had so many justifications that it was willingly forgiven to her." Is it any wonder that soon there were contenders for her hand and heart. The first was his brother's colleague, ensign Prince Grigory Vyazemsky, the second was the Horse Guardsman Lev Miller, who bombarded the girl with passionate letters. However, they remained unanswered. Sophie was passionately in love with Vyazemsky. They shared a mutual passion for music. Young people were not afraid to violate the then moral norms and ended up in each other's arms.

In early May 1843, Vyazemsky made a formal offer. The mother of his beloved accepted this favorably, but the engagement was not made public until the consent of the groom's parents, who lived in Moscow, was obtained. Vyazemsky was sure that there would be no objections from their side, but he was bitterly mistaken. They could not approve of the marriage of their son to a notorious dowry. The rich bride Polina Tolstaya, the first Moscow beauty, was already in mind. The planned union was supposed to improve the precarious financial situation of the Vyazemsky family.

Father diplomatically replied to Vyazemsky: “Mother and I, having carefully considered your letter, do not dare to resolutely oppose your supposed well-being, but you are young, you are in love, and consequently passions command you. Not having the slightest idea about the girl that you like, as well as about her family, I should rightly stop in my soon consent to your marriage. This was followed by complaints about the impoverishment of the estate and lack of money. The letter ends with the following summary: “Take patience, on this initiative I am writing to my sister Countess Razumovskaya, I will tell her your intention, and if she does not agree for any reason to your marriage, then my consent cannot also follow, and even more so, that I have not the slightest idea about the family of Mrs. Bakhmetyev, and therefore it would be imprudent on my part to decide your fate too hastily and imprudently. Caution commands me to first investigate what I must certainly see, and only then will you know my decisive parental will, and you, like a good son, will have to obey it with humility.

The parental inhibition was obvious. The situation was complicated by the fact that Sophie was pregnant. From the side of the groom were required decisive steps, but he behaved far from in the best way. At first, Vyazemsky hesitated and insisted that he would not give up his love, but then he wrote to the mother of the bride that he could not go against the will of his parents and took back his offer.

Sophie was in despair; she even went to Moscow to explain herself to Princess Vyazemskaya. She was greeted favorably, appreciating the outstanding merits of the young woman, but at the same time, no one was going to change her mind. In the end, Sophie nobly wanted to take all the blame for the cancellation of the engagement (which was already widely known in St. Petersburg) and go to the monastery. She reassured her failed father-in-law and mother-in-law with the assurance that she would never marry Vyazemsky without their parental blessing. However, Sophie's mother felt insulted and bit the bit in anger. She began to send complaints to all instances: the head of educational institutions for noble maidens, Prince Peter Georgievich of Oldenburg, the head of the Life Guards, Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, and even Nicholas I. It was no longer possible to extinguish the scandal. As expected, the Petersburg world was not at all on the side of the disgraced girl. Mother's letters lay on the table to the head of the Third Department, Count Alexei Fedorovich Orlov. After weighing all the pros and cons (primarily the connections and influence of the parties), he decided the matter by no means in favor of the impoverished Penza landowner. The resolution of A. F. Orlov stated that "Prince Vyazemsky was not obliged to marry the maiden Bakhmetyeva." True, he had to resign "due to domestic circumstances." In addition, Yuri Bakhmetiev stood up for the honor of his beloved sister and challenged him to a duel.

The duel took place only two years later. Lieutenant Yuri Bakhmetiev served in St. Petersburg, Vyazemsky lived in Moscow. However, Bakhmetiev soon transferred to the Caucasus. Passing through the Mother See, he sent a note to Vyazemsky: “Dear sir, I must certainly see you. I am waiting for you at the gate of your house in a sleigh. I hope you will not refuse to come with me. If you do not come out, then I will be forced to refuse you the slightest respect. I will always consider you and everywhere call you a scoundrel without a measure of honor, without a shadow of nobility, and I assure you that at the first meeting I will publicly greet you with this name - I decided on everything ... ”This time the opponents did not meet, but Vyazemsky vowed to come to Dagestan next summer. He did not keep his promise.

The elder brother Nikolai Bakhmetiev went to Moscow in January 1845 in order to resolve the situation and go to the duel instead of Yuri. But Vyazemsky again evaded, referring to the fact that he had already given the floor to Yuri Bakhmetyev. The latter managed to get to Moscow only in May of the same year, when he received a vacation. Both brothers came to the Mother See from Smalkovo. The duel took place in the early morning of May 15 in Petrovsky Park. With the first shots, the opponents only slightly scratched each other. The seconds insisted that the case be over, but Yuri Bakhmetiev was inexorable. The enemies again retreated ten paces from the barrier and began to approach. Before reaching the barrier, Vyazemsky fired. The bullet hit Yuri Bakhmetyev in the chest, and he immediately fell down dead. As agreed in advance, the dead man was carried into the bushes. Nikolai Bakhmetiev immediately announced the disappearance of his brother. The search began; only two days later the body was found.

In Smalkovo they knew nothing, and what happened was a thunderbolt from clear sky. The whole family was in mourning. Perhaps not a word of reproach was uttered, but Sophie caught sidelong glances on herself, eloquently indicating that it was she who was considered the culprit of her brother's death. Gradually, the atmosphere became unbearable, and then Sophie, in order to defuse the situation, hastily married the already mentioned horse guards captain Lev Miller, who was passionately in love with her.

Contemporaries, first of all, were struck by his luxurious wheaten mustache. However, he was not without merit. Outwardly, the marriage looked even more profitable than the union with Vyazemsky. The groom's father rose to the rank of major general and was the Moscow police chief; mother was the sister of the mother of Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev. The poet was not only his close relative, but also his godfather. Miller himself, in awe of his cousin, also wrote poetry; at one time, some of them became popular romances. But Sophie was already internally broken. As expected, the marriage turned out to be unhappy. Soon they parted by mutual agreement and healed on their own. In the St. Petersburg "big world", the intelligence, education and charm of Sofya Andreevna Miller quickly earned her fame.

The further fate of Vyazemsky can hardly be called prosperous. Dueling was strictly forbidden, and he had to spend two years in prison. Upon his release, he returned to military service and soon became adjutant to the chief of the Third Division, Count A.F. Orlov. In marriage, Vyazemsky (the hand of fate?) Was not lucky; after the birth of his daughter, he was widowed. Throughout his life, Vyazemsky harbored musical ambitions, but even here he turned out to be a failure. He composed music and even encroached on the opera. His first two-act opera, The Enchantress, was staged in 1855 on the St. Petersburg stage, but ran for only eight performances. The premiere took place at the benefit performance of the famous singer Osip Petrov, but due to the failure of his opus, Vyazemsky was forced to pay the beneficiary the “full fee”, as well as reimburse the theater for the production costs.

Almost thirty years later, Vyazemsky achieved the staging of his next opera, Princess Ostrovskaya, on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. The only performance took place on January 17, 1882. The play was a complete failure. The reviews were devastating. Vyazemsky's new opus was perceived as an example of the most vulgar dilettantism. Russkiye Vedomosti wrote: “... There was nothing that could in the slightest degree satisfy a listener who is not devoid of musical understanding and taste ... Of all the numbers scattered around the opera, there is positively not a single one where talent would have affected. The poverty of melodic thought is at every step... Such an unconditionally bad opera, in all respects, hardly anyone will even remember on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater... The appearance of "Princess Ostrovskaya" on the same stage where Rubinstein's "The Demon", Serov's "Enemy Force" and "Judith" border on the absurd." By this time, Vyazemsky had long been a retired colonel. He could not survive the collapse of his composer's claims, and a few days after the fatal premiere he died.

Unlike Vyazemsky, Sofya Andreevna never considered herself a creative person; but her uncommonness constantly attracted people of art to her. Even before meeting with A. K. Tolstoy, she entered the circle of writers. The above strange words of Turgenev may be explained by the fact that he fell victim to this Circe and tried to forget her. It is known that for a long time he sent her, one of the first, his new works and insistently demanded a trial. However, their relationship did not work out, which Turgenev sincerely regretted. On the threshold of old age, he wrote to her: “... Of the number of happy occasions that I let out of my hands in dozens, I especially remember the one that brought me together with you and which I took advantage of so badly ... We got along and parted so strangely that we hardly had some understanding of each other, but it seems to me that you really must be very kind, that you have a lot of taste and grace ... ”Again, everything is dull and unclear, and a wide field opens up for various kinds of assumptions. Who knows - wasn't Turgenev for some time the unfortunate rival of A. K. Tolstoy? However, if this is so, then the infatuation was only fleeting.

Shortly before meeting with Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Sofya Andreevna experienced a short but stormy romance with Dmitry Grigorovich. However, when the latter arrived from his estate in St. Petersburg, he found her sick, lying on the sofa, and Tolstoy, in love, was sitting at her feet. Grigorovich decided not to interfere and left.

By the January evening, which turned his whole life upside down, Alexei Tolstoy was inwardly ready. He felt that he was standing at a fatal point. Over the years, Tolstoy felt more and more acutely that he was an alien element in the palace halls, that his true vocation was art. Meanwhile, the young poet was firmly attached to the service, everyday duties did not give him the opportunity to focus on the main thing in life: poems poured out only from time to time, a historical novel from the era of Ivan the Terrible (eventually called "Prince Silver") did not move further than the first sketches. The surging love for a woman who was ready to understand his creative needs and connect her fate with him was, as it were, a cleansing. He, like Pushkin's Prophet, acquires the gift of all-knowledge.

Me, in darkness and dust

hitherto dragging shackles,

Lifted wings of love

To the homeland of flame and words.

And brightened my dark eyes,

And the invisible world became visible to me,

And hears the ear from now on,

What is elusive for others.

And I descended from the heights

Penetrated by all its rays,

And on the wavering valley

I look with new eyes.

And I hear a conversation

Everywhere the silent is heard,

Like the heart of a fiery mountain

Beats with love in the dark bowels.

With love in the blue firmament

Slow clouds roll in

And under the tree bark

Fresh and fragrant in spring,

With love in the leaves juice alive

The jet rises melodiously.

And with a prophetic heart I understood

That everything born of the Word

Rays of love are all around,

He longs to return to him again;

And every stream of life

Love obedient to the law.

Strives with the power of being

Irresistibly to God's bosom;

Everywhere there is sound, and everywhere there is light,

And all the worlds have one beginning,

And there is nothing in nature.

No matter how love breathes.

(“Me, in the dark and in the dust…”. 1851 or 1852)

In his beloved, the poet found a kindred spirit. aesthetic taste Sofya Andreevna was impeccable. Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy immediately put her on the pedestal of the supreme judge of his creations - and he never repented of this. Sometimes he allowed himself to subject her to a light test. So, during his passion for the poetry of André Chenier, he wrote to her on November 25, 1856: “... I am sending you several poems in translation and I won’t tell you who the author of the originals is ... I want to see if you can guess? I have never felt such ease in writing ... ”Sofya Andreevna attracted with her extraordinary talent, being fluent, according to one version - fourteen languages, according to another - sixteen (including Sanskrit). There is a known case (although this was already in the 1870s) when in a German house, at the request of the owners, Sofya Andreevna translated Gogol's "Old World Landowners" directly "from the sheet" into German.

At the beginning of their love, Alexei Tolstoy sent Sophie long confessional letters every day. True, they came to us with banknotes. Sofya Andreevna, taught bitter life experience, crossed out every phrase, any expression that might seem to her inappropriate or inconvenient for publication; sometimes, when she found it necessary, she mercilessly cut letters and even burned them. Apparently, there were more than enough reasons, since the poet revealed to his beloved all the secrets of his soul. Here are some characteristic passages:

«… I was born an artist, but all the circumstances and my whole life have so far resisted my becoming quite artist.

In general, our entire administration and general formation- a clear enemy of everything that is art - from poetry to the organization of the streets ...

I could never be a minister, or a director of a department, or a governor... I don't see why it wouldn't be the same with people as with materials.

One material is suitable for building houses, the other for making bottles, the third for making clothes, the fourth for bells ... but we have stone or glass, fabric or metal - everything fit into one form, into a service one! .. Another will fit, while the other has either long legs or a large head - and I would like to, but you won’t fit it in! ..

Those who do not serve and live in their villages and are engaged in the fate of those who are entrusted to them by God, are called idlers or freethinkers. They are given as an example those useful people who dance in Petersburg, go to school, or come every morning to some office and write terrible nonsense there.

As for me, I do not think that I could be a good farmer - I doubt that I could raise the value of the estate, but it seems to me that I could have a good moral influence on my peasants - to be fair towards them and to avert all harmful excitations, instilling in them respect for the same government, which looks so badly on people who do not serve.

But if you want me to tell you what my true calling is, be a writer.

I have not done anything yet - I have never been supported and always discouraged, I am very lazy, it is true, but I feel that I could do something good - just to be sure that I will find an artistic echo - and now I have found it... it's you.

A. K. Tolstoy became more and more unbearable to constantly hear the same words: service, uniform, bosses; he wanted something completely different. In the same letter we read:

“I saw Ulybyshev. There were two more gentlemen ... from the "world art", and they began to discuss the question of counterpoint, in which I, of course, understood nothing - but you cannot imagine with what pleasure I see people who have devoted themselves to some kind of art.

It always gives me great pleasure to see people who are over 50 years old, who have lived and are living in the name of art and who take it seriously, because it is so sharply separated from the so-called services and from all the people who, under the pretext that they serve, live in intrigues, one dirtier than the other.

And these kind people, outside the service circle, have different faces. It’s clear that completely different thoughts live in them, and looking at them, you can relax.”

Sometimes it seems that Tolstoy placed an exorbitant burden on his beloved: “... I have so many conflicting features that come into conflict, so many desires, so many needs of the heart that I try to reconcile, but as soon as I touch it a little, it all starts to move, joins the fight; from you I expect harmony and reconciliation of all these needs. I feel that no one but you can heal me, because my whole being is torn to pieces. I sewed up and corrected all this as best I could, but a lot still needs to be redone, changed, healed. I don’t live in my environment, I don’t follow my calling, I don’t do what I want, there is complete discord in me, and this, perhaps, is the secret of my laziness, because I am, in essence, active by nature ... Those elements of which my being was composed are themselves good, but they were taken at random and the proportions were not respected. There is no ballast in my soul or in my mind. You must restore my balance…”

Even in his family, A.K. Tolstoy did not find complete understanding - not only from his mother, but even from his late uncle, a writer. It is not surprising that he considered it his duty to be completely frank before Sofya Andreevna: “... Think that until the age of 36 I had no one to confide my grief to, no one to pour out my soul. Everything that saddened me - and this happened often, although imperceptibly to prying eyes - everything that I would like to find a response in the mind, in the heart of a friend, I suppressed in myself, but while my uncle was alive, the trust that I had in him was fettered by the fear of upsetting him, sometimes irritating him, and by the certainty that he would rebel with all his ardor against certain ideas and certain aspirations that constituted the essence of my mental and mental life. I remember how I hid from him the reading of some of the books from which I drew my Puritan principles, for in the same source were those principles of love of freedom and the Protestant spirit, with which he would never reconcile and from which I did not want and could not refuse. It was a constant embarrassment, despite the great trust I had in him."

It is not known what Sofya Andreevna answered the poet. She destroyed her letters. In general, it seems that she avoided “conversations with paper” in every possible way, and this is surprising: after all, in that epistolary era, many letters were written and they were carefully stored. In addition, most educated people considered it their duty to keep diaries. She never tried to resort to a pen.

In the fall, Alexei Konstantinovich, unable to bear the first separation, rushed after Sofya Andreevna to Smalkovo, asking for another business trip to his uncle Vasily Perovsky. Here he discovered her other qualities, which brought them even closer together. As already mentioned, Sofya Andreevna was a tireless rider. She spent many hours in the saddle, galloping through the surrounding fields and copses. Returning to St. Petersburg, Tolstoy, again forced to plunge into the bustle of the capital, wrote to her:

“... I came from a masquerade ball, where I was not of my own accord, but ... for the sake of the Grand Duke ... How sad I was there! ..

... I see a house half-hidden by trees, I see a village, I hear the sounds of your piano and this voice, from which I immediately started up. And everything that opposes this life, calm and blissful, all the hustle and bustle of light, ambition, vanity etc., all the artificial means necessary to maintain this unnatural existence to the detriment of conscience, all this appears before me in the distance, as if in an unkind fog, and I seem to hear your voice penetrating my soul: I'm giving it up forever for the love of you." And then a feeling of undivided happiness seizes me, and the words spoken by you sound and echo in my soul, as an assurance that from now on nothing can harm you, and then I understand that all this happiness created by a dream, this house, this blessed and quiet life All of this is within us...

... I returned from the evening; it's half past three in the morning. If this is often repeated, I will only regret life in Smalkovo even more strongly, for which, in essence, I seem to have been created. In this sense, I have never experienced discord with myself, because, although I considered etiquette a thing necessary for many cases, I always wanted it to exist, but outside my life. Even in the midst of my aristocratic passions, I always wished for myself a simple village life ... "

It's not just words here. A passionate hunter, A. K. Tolstoy always strove for the village, the bosom of nature. Only during rare trips to the Red Horn did he breathe deeply, feeling the integrity of life, which, it would seem, was lost by him in St. Petersburg. The poet constantly yearned for his childhood in the wilderness of the Chernigov province. He wrote to Sophie on his next visit to Pustynka:

“Now I just returned from the forest, where I searched and found a lot of mushrooms. We once talked about the influence of smells and to what extent they can recall and restore what has been forgotten for many years. It seems to me that forest smells have more of this property. And yet, maybe it seems so to me, because I spent all my childhood in the forests. The fresh smell of mushrooms excites me whole line memories. Now, sniffing the ginger, I saw in front of me, as if in lightning, all my childhood in all details until the age of seven. With his chosen one, Tolstoy found complete understanding here too.

Sofya Andreevna became the muse of her chosen one. The writer Elena Khvoshchinskaya, a witness to their stormy romance, recalled: “When you read lyric poetry Count Tolstoy, she (Sofya Andreevna. - V.N.) rises alive in your eyes in many of his poems ... ”However, the poet’s love cannot be cloudless. At times Alexei Konstantinovich was painfully jealous of Sofya Andreevna for her past; There were moments when it seemed to him that

We accidentally met in worldly fuss,

We fall into it by chance.

(“With a gun over his shoulders, alone in the moonlight ...”. 1851)

But these moods were transient, to which one can find poetic evidence:

Listening to your story, I fell in love with you, my joy!

I lived your life and I cried with your tears;

Mentally, together with you, I suffered the past years,

I felt everything with you, both sadness and hope,

I was hurt by many things, I reproached you in many ways;

But I don't want to forget your mistakes or your sufferings;

Your tears are dear to me and every word is dear!

I see the poor in you as a child, without a father, without support;

Early you knew grief, deceit and human slander,

Sooner, under the weight of troubles, your strength was refracted!

You poor tree, drooping head down!

You lean against me, little tree, against the green elm:

You lean against me, I stand securely and firmly!

(“Listening to your story, I fell in love with you, my joy! ..” 1851)

In the 1850s, A. K. Tolstoy was primarily a lyric poet. His poetry, like a diary, tells about the relationship with Sofya Andreevna Miller. According to this diary, one can follow all the vicissitudes of the poet's love - from the first days of painful uncertainty to the realization that at last his life has entered the only channel destined from above.

From the book Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy author Zhukov Dmitry Anatolievich

Chapter Five "Amidst a Noisy Ball, Accidentally..." At the beginning of 1851, Alexei Tolstoy was already thirty-three years old. He believed that he lived them badly, but no one knew his painful thoughts. Mind and upbringing endowed him with a simple manner, but in this aristocratic simplicity there was

From the book The Man Who Knew No Fear author Kitanovic Branko

In broad daylight Let's return to the events that took place in Rovno at about the same time as the "case with von Ortel." On April 20, 1943, Valya Dovger and Kuznetsov saw on the podium during the celebrations on the occasion of the birthday of the Fuhrer General Herman Knut. This fat general was important

From the book Frosty Patterns: Poems and Letters author Sadovskoy Boris Alexandrovich

"I met you in the splendor of the ball..." I met you in the splendor of the ball. In a kaleidoscope of vulgar faces A quivering lamp flickered The living shadow of your eyelashes. From lush feathers fanned, In the hands and on the chest flowers. But the eyes of children bowed So timidly and bashfully you. When is the ball

From the book My Profession author Obraztsov Sergey

"In the midst of a noisy ball" Perhaps my friendship with the Negro would have ended on these tomfoolery, as my friendship with B-ba-bo once ended, if the Negro had not begun to mimic the singers, or rather, not even the singers, but my own singing lessons. I have already said that some

From the book Kolyma Notebooks the author Shalamov Varlam

We walk among the hummocks We walk among the hummocks In the blue rays of the moon, All damned questions, They say, are resolved. But the moon, like a mint gingerbread, Children's icy gingerbread, Suddenly rolls back, And - it's over with the moon. And, disturbed by a miracle, My heart will tremble, I will get

From book Invisible to the world tears. Dramatic fates of Russian actresses. author Sokolova Ludmila Anatolyevna

Alla Larionova: the queen of the ball - Mi-la-ya ... - the lingering melody of the gypsy choir glided smoothly over the waves. - You hear me ... - Honey, - Mikhail Zharov repeated quietly in his low, hoarse voice. And, hiding his face from the camera, he whispered hotly: “How you look like Lyuska (Lyudmila

From Aksenov's book author Petrov Dmitry Pavlovich

Chapter 7. AFTER THE BALA However, it only seemed that with the expulsion from the Union of Writers of the instigators of the almanac, the "case of the Metropol", turned by the persecutors into a kind of banner of insurrection, was over. Those who could not be expelled from the SP experienced a different kind of persecution. For example,

From the book Welcome to the USSR author Troitsky Sergey Evgenievich

PRODUCTION MORNING Together with Runev, we wandered towards our high-rise buildings, on the way discussing with enthusiasm the acquaintance with new girls on Lenin mountains, as well as the newest album of SCORPIONS - "BLACK OUT". We already wanted a runaway, but the creative of the thrower came to my mind

From the book of Betancourt author Kuznetsov Dmitry Ivanovich

INSTEAD OF A PHILHARMONIC BALL On the day when Espejo first appeared in the Yusupov Palace, there was a slight confusion in the Betancourt family. All females at the same time remembered that they forgot to buy tickets for a masquerade ball on Bolshaya Morskaya Street. Urgently

From the book Ugresh Lira. Release 3 author Egorova Elena Nikolaevna

"Among the crowd, among the dimmed views..." Among the crowd, among the dimmed views I'm looking for you, like the sun. Maybe your voice is somewhere nearby, Your playful sunny squint. Maybe not so bad. I'm in love affairs. And in the hearts of worldly turmoil, Maybe

From the book Tenderer than the sky. Collection of poems author Minaev Nikolai Nikolaevich

P. A. Tersky (“Among the restless ...”) Amid the restless Soviet Lyrics, Thoughts of the state, And in the form of a child, This book, Petro, Will probably be Very pleasant for everyone by the purity of the meter. February 20, 1926

From the book Stubborn Classic. Collected Poems (1889–1934) author Shestakov Dmitry Petrovich

From the book by Natalia Goncharova. Love or deceit? author Cherkashina Larisa Sergeevna

XIII. “There was a time: with the sparkles of the ball ...” There was a time: with the sparkles of the ball, In the breath of festive bows, Spring carelessly sang Her dawn, her love. Life will not return from the beginning, The former flowers will not bloom, Only forever in the chest sighed That last tremor of bows ... August 29

From the author's book

The hostess of the ball In the life of Natalia Nikolaevna, already without Pushkin, there are not so many significant days. And then one of them, forgotten like a withered flower between album pages, suddenly filled with former life. Oddly enough, but the memory of him was preserved thanks to Leonty Vasilievich

In the midst of a noisy ball

In the midst of a noisy ball, by chance,
In the turmoil of the world,
I saw you, but the mystery
Your features are covered.

I liked your slim figure
And all your thoughtful look
And your laughter, both sad and sonorous,
Since then it has been in my heart.

In the hours of lonely nights
I love, tired, lie down -
I see sad eyes
I hear a cheerful speech;

And sadly I fall asleep so
And in the dreams of the unknown I sleep ...
Do I love you - I don't know
But I think I love it!

Many people remember these poems by Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817-1875), and the melody of Tchaikovsky's romance that merges with them. But not everyone knows that there are living events behind the poem: the beginning of an extraordinary romantic love.

They first met at a masquerade ball in the winter of 1850–51 at the St. Petersburg Bolshoi Theatre. He accompanied the heir to the throne, the future Tsar Alexander II, there. From childhood, he was chosen as a playmate of the Tsarevich and, secretly burdened by this, regularly bore the burden of being chosen. She appeared at the masquerade because, after the break with her husband, the Horse Guardsman Miller, she was looking for an opportunity to forget herself and dissipate. In the secular crowd, for some reason, he immediately drew attention to her. The mask covered her face. But gray eyes looked intently and sadly. Fine ashy hair crowned the head. She was slender and graceful, with a very thin waist. Her voice was mesmerizing - a thick contralto.
They did not speak for long: the fuss of the colorful masquerade ball separated them. But she managed to impress him with the accuracy and wit of her fleeting judgments. She, of course, recognized him. In vain he asked her to reveal her face, to take off her mask... But she took his business card, giving a sly promise not to forget him. But what would have happened to him, and to both of them, if she had not come to that ball then? Perhaps it was on that January night of 1851, when he was returning home, that the first lines of this poem formed in his mind.

This poem will become one of the best in Russian love lyrics. Nothing is invented in it, everything is as it was. It is full of real signs, documented, like a reportage. Only this is a “reportage” that poured out from the heart of the poet and therefore became a lyrical masterpiece. And he added another immortal portrait to the gallery of "muses of Russian romances."

The story of the origin of the poem is as romantic as the birth of love is romantic.
According to one version, at a ball in the St. Petersburg Bolshoi Theater (Stone Theater), the chamber junker Alexei Tolstoy (33 years old) appeared by chance - on duty he accompanied Tsarevich Alexander, the future emperor.

As usual at masquerade balls, the ladies wore half masks, leaving only their eyes open. A girl with sad gray eyes beautiful figure and melodious voice attracted the attention of Tolstoy. She waltzed gracefully, wittily answered questions, showing a kind disposition and education ... Tolstoy was so interested in her that by the end of the ball the beautiful stranger completely subdued him.

According to another version, it was not Tolstoy, but Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, who met Sofya Andreevna Miller at the ball. The masked girl intrigued Turgenev, and he arranged a date with her. Turgenev painted the scene of acquaintance at the ball to his friend Alexei Tolstoy. He became interested and persuaded Turgenev to take him on a date. The two of us came.

Seeing the ugly face of 24-year-old Sofya Andreevna, Turgenev's enthusiasm vanished in an instant. Later, recalling that meeting, he will say - she had "the face of a Chukhonian soldier in a skirt." During the meeting, the disappointed Turgenev was frankly bored, and Tolstoy, on the contrary, was happy to talk with Sofia Andreevna. He did not see her wide, narrow-lipped mouth, or snub-nosed nose, or mournfully lowered eyebrow line - he enjoyed the conversation and found the girl charming.

Feelings for an imaginary image seemed real to Tolstoy, he plunged into them with his head. A few days later, the lover poured out his feelings in the poem "Among the noisy ball."

Later, in a conversation with a friend and relative A. M. Zhemchuzhnikov, Tolstoy called her "sweet, talented, kind, educated, unhappy and with a beautiful soul."

According to the third version - Tolstoy and Turgenev came to that masquerade ball together. The difference was that Turgenev was disappointed in Sofya Miller, and Tolstoy, on the contrary, fell in love with her.

Historical facts testify that only 12 years after the first meeting, Alexei Konstantinovich and Sofya Andreevna got married.

There is an opinion that all these years they loved each other mutually, but, getting acquainted in detail with the details of the biography of Alexei Konstantinovich, I began to doubt Sofya Andreevna's reciprocal love.

It is believed that if a decent woman loves, and, most importantly, famous man, then angels immediately begin to sing around her, and she is transformed, moving to the side of good, because a good person certainly loves his own kind, good and good "evil wives" do not happen. Unfortunately, it happens.

The good, kind, intelligent and talented Alexei Tolstoy loved Sophia Miller, so by default she had to have positive spiritual qualities, for example, to love her husband and help him in his affairs. Some of the literary critics believe that Tolstoy allegedly would not have written a single line without the support of Sophia Miller.

Biographers agree that Sofya Andreevna was widely educated, read and spoke fourteen or sixteen languages ​​​​(when she could!), knew how to conduct and maintain a conversation on any topic, sang beautifully, understood literature and music ... this, of course, a big plus for a woman, but education, manners and behavior are not synonymous with happy love.

According to data gleaned from various biographical sources, I concluded that if any of this couple loved, it was Tolstoy, and Sophia only allowed herself to be loved. Perhaps, at the beginning of their romantic acquaintance, she tried to respond to the feelings of Alexei Konstantinovich, but passion is not love, it is short-lived and fragile.

My doubts arose under the influence of some facts.
1.
In love with Tolstoy, despite the fact that Sophia was married, he came to the Miller house and made Sophia a marriage proposal. If she loved him, she would take advantage of this circumstance and resolutely leave her unloved husband (remember Anna Karenina), but she did not leave, although her relationship with her husband was purely formal by that time. So she didn't really like Tolstoy either.

2.
When Sophia's husband, cavalry colonel Lev Fedorovich Miller, fought in Crimean War, she started an affair with the writer Grigorovich, although she knew about Tolstoy's feelings: she received frequent romantic letters from him with declarations of love and poems dedicated to her. Surely she knew that rumors about her connection with Grigorovich would inevitably reach the enamored Tolstoy and cause him pain and suffering, but ... the unloved is not a pity!

3.
A.M. Zhemchuzhnikov recalled a conversation with A.K. Tolstoy's mother, Anna Alekseevna, who confessed to him that she was upset by her son's "attachment" to Sofya Andreevna, that she was "deeply outraged" by her "deceit and calculation" and refers to her sincerity "with complete distrust."

Anna Alekseevna knew what she was talking about. In society, Sophia Miller has strengthened the opinion that she has an unworthy past for a decent girl.

The fact is that the young (unmarried) Sophia had an affair with Prince Grigory Vyazemsky, from whom she gave birth to a child. Vyazemsky did not want to legitimize their relationship, because of which a duel took place between him and Sophia's brother, as a result of which the brother was killed.

4.
Being married to A.K. Tolstoy, Sofya Andreevna addressed him only by her last name, for example: "What nonsense are you talking about, Tolstoy." Her husband annoyed her, and she did not hide it. She was dismissive of his work, saying, for example, that even Turgenev writes better! She was bored in the company of her husband and went to have fun in Europe, spending family money on luxury, while their estates were ruined.

But love ... love for this woman still lived in the heart of the poet:

The passion has passed, and its ardor is disturbing
It no longer torments my heart,
But I can't stop loving you!
Everything that is not you is so vain and false,
Everything that is not you is colorless and dead .... /A.K. Tolstoy/

5.
Count Alexei Konstantinovich was lucky in life, it seemed that nothing could overshadow his days - he lived, loved, worked, had great health, could go out hunting with a knife in his hands ... why in last years Tolstoy suffered from severe nerve disorder? Maybe the cause of Tolstoy's death (at 58) was not an accidental overdose of a sedative, but a deliberate act of suicide?

Sofya Andreevna was also a good actress - "in public" she showed herself to be a modest, caring and loving wife, and outsiders had the opinion that Tolstoy and Miller were a happy couple.

Biographers credit Sofya Tolstaya (Miller) with the fact that she edited her husband's manuscripts and was engaged in his publishing business. I think the biographers attributed to Sofya Miller the dignity of another Sofya Andreevna Tolstoy - the wife of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, who, indeed, carried a load of editorial worries. The third Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya, the wife of S.A. Yesenin, did the same; she also took Active participation in the publishing business of her husband.
And what the two Sofya Andreevnas were doing can be easily attributed to the third ....

It was not easy for talented people to live in Russia, so sensitive, intelligent and, most importantly, loving wives were "shelter and rest" for them. Alas, Alexei Konstantinovich was deprived of spiritual shelter, although he remained a romantic until the end of his days, keeping devotion, loyalty and love to the chosen one of his heart.

Of course, he felt the coldness of his life's friend, and this greatly upset him, but the memory of the first meeting at the ball helped heal spiritual wounds:

"In the hours of lonely nights
I love, tired, lie down -
I see sad eyes
I hear a cheerful speech;

And sadly I fall asleep so
And in the dreams of the unknown I sleep ... "

Here are these: "I love to lie down at lonely nights, tired," and "I fall asleep so sadly" - they do not give me rest. I sympathize and sympathize with this big, kind, gentle and vulnerable person... surely Tolstoy understood the difference between the real Sophia and the imaginary Sophia.

The observant and wise Faina Georgievna Ranevskaya once remarked: "A woman smarter than men. Have you ever heard of a woman who would lose her head just because a man has beautiful legs? "

But a man can! And he can lose his head only because of beautiful legs, but also because of beautiful eyes, especially if they are sad, like a lady in a half mask. These eyes, eyes, awakened in the soul of the kind, sympathetic and impressionable Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy an interest in their owner.

We call beautiful a face in which all its components are proportionate, they complement each other, combine into a whole and create a unique beauty of the face. It happens much more often that facial features are individually beautiful and expressive, but they do not fit together with each other, and you can only admire, for example, the nose, lips or eyes. Let us recall how Leo Tolstoy described the ugly face of Princess Marya in "War and Peace":

"... the princess's eyes, large, deep and radiant (as if rays of warm light sometimes came out of them in sheaves), were so good that very often, despite the ugliness of the whole face, these eyes became more attractive than beauty ..."

It is not surprising to fall in love with such eyes!

Sophia's face below her eyes was hidden by a half-mask - "mystery" / I saw you, but your secrets covered the features /. I believe Tolstoy liked her eyes / "Only her eyes looked sad" /, he liked her "thin" camp, (and what else to look at?), Heard Sophia skillfully joked, witty answered questions, skillfully kept up the conversation / "A her voice sounded so wondrous," and her laugh was, "Like the ringing of a distant flute, Like the wave of the sea playing" - he saw something, heard something, how little it takes to fall in love! The rest was done by the poetic imagination.

No one knows either the timing of the birth of love or its causes: as Pushkin said about Tatyana Larina: "The time has come - she fell in love!" The time has come for Alexei Tolstoy, and he fell in love with a stranger in a "secret" as he jumped "into the pool with his head."
There is always a predisposition to love in man; this is the fertile soil in which a single seed (beautiful legs, eyes or voice) grows into a great feeling.

It is noteworthy that Ivan Turgenev also had the opportunity to appreciate the eyes, the camp and the voice of Sophia, but for Turgenev the eyes did not become "sad eyes", the camp, although flexible, did not impress, and the voice did not evoke associations with either a flute or a sea wave. . Moreover, when he saw the face of Sophia Miller without a mask, Turgenev made a “fi”, covering his disappointment (as a well-mannered person) with a bored look.

But Tolstoy... Tolstoy was in the grip of his feelings. Imagination drew him the image of a gentle creature and made him remember the minutes of the first meeting: "And your laughter, both sad and sonorous, has been sounding in my heart ever since."
Men are mostly monogamous. Alexei Konstantinovich subconsciously felt that his first and the only love- this is a gift of fate, and it should always remain a gift from which you receive both joy, and strength, and spiritual grace!

Be that as it may, Sofya Andreevna Miller was for Alexei Konstantinovich the muse of creativity, the heroine of his love lyrics, for which she bows low.
Thanks to her (or rather, thanks to the poet's Love for her), we have the opportunity to enjoy Tolstoy's poems and listen to songs and romances on these poems, for example, such well-known ones as "Not the wind, blowing from a height", "It was early spring"," Do not believe me, friend", "Autumn. Our whole poor garden is sprinkled”, “My bells, flowers of the steppe” and many others.

And among them, a special place is occupied by the poem "In the midst of a noisy ball", to which many composers wrote music, the most famous of them belongs to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Illustration: Alexei K. Tolstoy and Sofya Tolstaya (nee Bakhmeteva, in the 1st marriage Miller)
Mita Pe collage.

Analysis of the poem Among the noisy bala by accident

Plan

1.History of creation

2.Genre

3.Main theme

4.Composition

5.Size

6.Expressive means

7. Main idea

1. History of creation. The work was written by A. K. Tolstoy under the impression of a meeting at the ball with S. A. Miller. The poet and writer, unlike most of his fellow writers, was not an amorous and constantly striving person for new novels. Sophia Miller really made Tolstoy very great impression, and to a greater extent not by beauty, but by his erudition. For a respectable and highly moral poet, the fact that Sophia was married was a huge obstacle. However, she told Tolstoy that she was unhappy in marriage and had been trying to get a divorce from her husband for a long time. As a sign of assurance of his feelings, the poet presented Sophia with a poem written almost immediately after the meeting.

2. Genre. By genre, the poem is a love lyric and represents the author's appeal to his beloved.

3. Main theme works - a description of the impression that Sophia made on Tolstoy. It is characteristic that this description is dominated not by some elements of bodily beauty (“thin body”), but by the sound of a woman’s voice and laughter. The noble poet is fascinated by the sad look of Sophia, hiding some secret. He admits that he cannot forget the "ringing laughter" of his beloved, which still sounds in his heart.

4. Composition. The poem can be divided into two main parts. The introductory (first two stanzas) part is a description of the meeting and the indelible impression made by Sophia on the poet. The third stanza represents a smooth transition from the past to the present. The final part (the fourth and fifth stanzas) is the state in which the poet is now, constantly experiencing the moments of the first meeting with his future lover. The poet does not speak directly about love for a married woman until a decisive explanation, softening the confession with the expression "it seems that I love."

5. Size. The work is written in three-foot amphibrach with cross rhyme, which gives it a special exalted dimension and musicality. Subsequently, the words of the poem were set to music.

6. Expressive means not numerous, but used by Tolstoy with great skill, and organically fit into the poem. The poet uses the necessary modest epithets ("thoughtful", "sad", "sonorous"). A vivid comparison is applied only in relation to the voice (as "the ringing of the flute" and "the playing wave of the sea"). The inversion (“thin camp”, “lonely hours”, “I love”) gives special solemnity and expressiveness to the work.

7. Main idea poems - a cautious and chaste confession of the author in love. The poet is trying to assess the strength of his feelings and the possibility of further development. A. K. Tolstoy belonged to the romantic poets of the old school. He never allowed himself rude or frank statements, treating love as the highest spiritual feeling person. The feeling of love that arose in Tolstoy could not become a fleeting hobby. He was not mistaken in his assessment. Sophia Miller became his life partner and creative muse for life.