I remember wonderful moment:
You appeared before me
how fleeting vision,
like a genius pure beauty.
In the languor of hopeless sadness,
In the anxieties of noisy bustle,
A gentle voice sounded to me for a long time
And dreamed of cute features.
Years passed. Storms gust rebellious
Scattered old dreams
And I forgot your gentle voice
Your heavenly features.
In the wilderness, in the darkness of confinement
My days passed quietly
Without a god, without inspiration,
No tears, no life, no love.
The soul has awakened:
And here you are again
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
And the heart beats in rapture
And for him they rose again
And deity, and inspiration,
And life, and tears, and love.
Analysis of the poem "I remember a wonderful moment" by Pushkin
The first lines of the poem "I remember a wonderful moment" are known to almost everyone. This is one of the most famous lyrical works of Pushkin. The poet was a very amorous person, and devoted many of his poems to women. In 1819 he met A.P. Kern, who long time captured his imagination. In 1825, during the exile of the poet in Mikhailovsky, the second meeting of the poet with Kern took place. Under the influence of this unexpected meeting Pushkin and wrote the poem "I remember a wonderful moment."
The short work is an example of a poetic declaration of love. In just a few stanzas, Pushkin unfolds before the reader long history relationship with Kern. The expression "genius of pure beauty" very capaciously characterizes the enthusiastic admiration for a woman. The poet fell in love at first sight, but Kern was married at the time of the first meeting and could not respond to the poet's advances. Image beautiful woman pursues the author. But fate separates Pushkin from Kern for several years. These turbulent years erase "cute features" from the memory of the poet.
In the poem "I remember a wonderful moment" Pushkin shows himself to be a great master of the word. He possessed amazing ability say about infinitely many things in just a few lines. In a short verse, we see a gap of several years. Despite the conciseness and simplicity of the style, the author conveys to the reader changes in his mental mood, allows you to experience joy and sadness with him.
The poem is written in the genre of pure love lyrics. The emotional impact is reinforced by lexical repetitions of several phrases. Their precise arrangement gives the work its originality and elegance.
The creative legacy of the great Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin is enormous. “I remember a wonderful moment” is one of the most expensive pearls of this treasure.
...1819. St. Petersburg. The living room in the Olenins' house, where the color of Russian writers gathered - from Ivan Andreevich Krylov to the very young but already famous Sasha Pushkin. Traditional readings - Krylov reads his fable "Donkey". The traditional "charades" of the Olenins. The role of Cleopatra fell to the niece of the mistress of the house - a young general. Pushkin absently glances at the "actress". Over a basket of flowers, just like a flower - tender female face amazing beauty...
A.P. Kern: “After that, we sat down to dinner. At the Olenins’, they dined on small tables, without ceremony and, of course, without ranks. And what ranks could there be where an enlightened host valued and valued only sciences and arts? At dinner, Pushkin sat down with my brother behind me and tried to attract my attention with flattering exclamations, such as: "Est-il permis d" etre aussi jolie! (Is it possible to be so pretty! (fr.)). Then a playful conversation began between them about who is a sinner and who is not, who will be in hell and who will go to heaven. Pushkin said to his brother: "In any case, there will be many pretty ones in hell, you can play charades there. Ask m-me Kern if she would like to go to hell?" I answered very seriously and somewhat dryly that I don't want to go to hell. "Well, how are you now, Pushkin?" the brother asked. "Je me ravise (I changed my mind (fr.))," replied the poet, "I don't want to go to hell, although there will be pretty women..."
A. Fedoseenko. Anna Petrovna Kern
... Anna Petrovna Kern was born on February 11, 1800 in Orel, in a wealthy noble family court adviser P.M. Poltoratsky.
Both her father and grandmother - Agafokleya Alexandrovna, from a very rich family of Shishkovs - were domineering, despotic people, real petty tyrants. The sickly and quiet mother - Ekaterina Ivanovna Wulf - was completely under the heel of her husband and mother-in-law. The impressionable girl for the rest of her life retained memories of the rather primitive environment in which she grew up - and this same environment had the most direct influence on her character and fate.
Anna got very good for those times home education, she read a lot, which, together with her natural quickness of mind and curiosity, gave her a sensitive, romantic nature and, as they would say now, intellectual, at the same time sincere and mentally very different from many young ladies of her circle ...
... But, having barely begun, her life turned out to be broken, "nailed to the flower." On January 8, 1817, a charming seventeen-year-old girl, at the insistence of her relatives, marries General Yermolai Kern, who was 35 years older than her. The petty tyrant's father was flattered that his daughter would be a general's wife - and Anna obeys in despair. A refined, dreaming of ideal romantic love girl was in no way suitable for a rude martinet, poorly educated, who had become a general from lower ranks. Her peers envied her - and the beautiful general shed tears, looking at her husband with disgust - clean water Arakcheev military - the provincial garrison environment and society were unbearable for her.
She later writes: “I have always been indignant against such marriages, that is, marriages of convenience. human dignity, and there is deep debauchery, entailing misfortune ... "
... In 1817, during a celebration on the occasion of great maneuvers, Emperor Alexander drew attention to Anna - "... I was not in love ... I was in awe, I worshiped him! .. I would not exchange this feeling for any others, because it was quite spiritual and aesthetic, there was no ulterior motive in it about obtaining mercy through the favorable attention of the king - nothing, nothing like that ...
All love is pure, selfless, self-satisfied ... If someone told me: "This person, before whom you pray and revere, fell in love with you like a mere mortal," I would bitterly reject such a thought and would only wish to look at him, to be surprised at him, to worship him as the highest, adored being! .. "For Alexander - an easy flirtation with a pretty, very similar to famous beauty, Queen Louise of Prussia, general. For Anna - the beginning of awareness of her attractiveness and charm, the awakening of women's ambitions and - the opportunity to escape from the gray and terrible anguish of garrison life with her husband, unloved to the point of suffering. The children did not please either - in 1818 a daughter, Katya, was born, then two more girls. In her diary, which she addressed to her relative and friend Theodosia Poltoratskaya, she wrote with cruel frankness: “You know that this is not frivolity and not a whim; I told you before that I did not want to have children, the thought of not loving them was terrible for me and now it is still terrible. You also know that at first I really wanted to have a child, and therefore I have a certain tenderness for Katya, although I sometimes reproach myself that she is not quite great.Unfortunately, I feel such hatred for this whole family, it's such overwhelming feeling in me, that I am not able to get rid of it by any effort. This is a confession! Forgive me, my angel!". Fate did not give these unwanted children - except for Katya - a long life.
... She was 20 years old when she fell seriously in love for the first time - the name of her chosen one is unknown, she calls him in the Diary Immortel or Rosehip - and Kern seems to her even more disgusting.
Describing his behavior, she pleads with a relative:
“After this, who will dare to assert that happiness in marriage is possible without deep affection for your chosen one? My suffering is terrible.” “I am so unhappy, I can’t stand it anymore.
Union and, of course, will not wish my death, but in such a life as mine, I will certainly die. "..."... my parents, seeing that even at the moment when he marries their daughter, he cannot forget his mistress, allowed this to happen, and I was sacrificed."Inevitably, a riot was brewing. As Anna Petrovna herself believed, she had a choice only between death and freedom. When she chose the latter and left her husband, her position in society turned out to be false. Since 1827, she actually lived in St. Petersburg with her sister in the position of a kind of "straw widow".
... And shortly before that, she came to visit Trigorskoye, to her aunt Praskovya Alexandrovna Osipova, with whom she was very friendly, and whose daughter - also Anna - was her constant and sincere friend. And not long before that, she was visiting her friend-neighbor, the landowner Rodzianko, and together with him wrote a letter to Pushkin, to which he vividly responded: "Explain to me, dear, what is A.P. Kern, who wrote a lot of tenderness about me to your cousin? They say she's a pretty thing - but glorious Lubny is beyond the mountains. Just in case, knowing your amorousness and extraordinary talents in every respect, I suppose your work is done or half done. Congratulations, my dear: write an elegy on this, or at least an epigram ". And then he writes jokingly:
"You're right: what could be more important
In the world of a beautiful woman?
Smile, the look of her eyes
More expensive than gold and honors,
More expensive than discordant glory ...
Let's talk about her again.
I praise, my friend, her hunting,
Having a rest, give birth to children,
like his mother;
And happy who will share with her
This pleasant care ... "
The relationship between Anna and Rodzianko was light and frivolous - she was resting ...
... And finally - Trigorskoye. Arriving at the house of his friends, Pushkin meets Anna Kern there - and for the whole month that Kern spent with her aunt, Pushkin often, almost daily, appeared there, listened to her sing, read her his poems. The day before Kern's departure, together with her aunt and cousin, she visited Pushkin in Mikhailovsky, where they went from Trigorskoye in two carriages, the aunt and her son rode in one carriage, and the cousin, Kern and Pushkin - chastely in another. But in Mikhailovsky, they still wandered around the neglected garden for a long time at night, but, as Kern states in his memoirs, "I did not remember the details of the conversation."
There is still debate about whether this poem is really dedicated to Anna - so the nature of their relationship with the poet and his subsequent very impartial reviews about her do not correspond to the highly romantic tone of admiration for the Ideal, the Genius of Pure Beauty - but in any case, this masterpiece in the subsequent reader's perception is associated ONLY with it.
And the poet's outburst, when he grabbed the gift, was most likely associated with an outburst of jealousy - his friend and Anna's cousin, Alexei Wulf, turned out to be his happy rival, and much of his behavior was caused by this rivalry. Yes, and Anna had no special illusions about him: "Lively perceiving goodness, Pushkin, however, it seems to me, was not carried away by it in women; he was much more fascinated by their wit, brilliance and outer beauty. The coquettish desire to please him more than once attracted the attention of the poet more than the true and deep feeling inspired by him ... The reason that Pushkin was more fascinated by the brilliance than by the dignity and simplicity in the character of women was, of course, his low opinion of them, which was completely in the spirit of that time."
“You assure me that I don’t know your character. What do I care about him? I really need him - do pretty women have to have a character? The main thing is eyes, teeth, arms and legs ... How is your husband doing? I hope "He had a major attack of gout the day after your arrival? If you knew what disgust... I feel for this man!... I beg you, divine, write to me, love me"... "... I love you more than you think ... You will come? - won't you? - and until then, do not decide anything about your husband. Finally, be sure that I am not one of those who will never advise drastic measures - sometimes it is inevitable, but first you need to think carefully and not create a scandal unnecessarily. It is now night, and your image rises before me, so sad and voluptuous: it seems to me that I see ... your half-open lips ... to me it seems that I am at your feet, I squeeze them, I feel your knees - I would give my whole life for a moment of reality.
He is like a timid, naive young man, realizing that he did something wrong, trying in vain to return the moments of missed opportunities. Poetry and real life, alas, did not intersect ...
At that moment, 
in July in Mikhailovsky (or Trigorsky) their thoughts did not coincide, he did not guess the moods of an earthly real woman who for a moment escaped from the bosom of her family to freedom, but Alexei Wulf caught these moods ...
... Pushkin understood this - later. Self-esteem - a poet, a man - was wounded. 
In a letter to her aunt, he writes: "But still the thought that I mean nothing to her<(курсив мой>that, having occupied her imagination for a moment, I only gave food to her cheerful curiosity - the thought that the recollection of me would not overtake her absent-mindedness in the midst of her triumphs and would not darken her face more in sad moments - that her beautiful eyes would stop at what some Riga veil with the same piercing and voluptuous expression - oh, this thought is unbearable for me ... Tell her that I will die from this ... no, better not say it, otherwise this delightful creature will laugh at me. But tell her that if there is no hidden tenderness for me in her heart, if there is no mysterious and melancholy attraction in it, then I despise her - you hear - I despise her, not paying attention to the surprise that such an unprecedented feeling will cause in her. .
The poet is offended, angry, caustic - the beauty is impregnable - or rather, she is available to everyone except him. Wolf follows her from Trigorsky to Riga - and their stormy romance unfolds there. By modern standards, such a relationship is incest, but then marrying cousins was in the order of things, respectively, and having them as mistresses. However, Anna nowhere and never uttered the word "I love" in relation to Pushkin - although to flirt with famous poet she was certainly pleased.
In 1827, she finally separated from her husband for good, broke free from the prison confinement of her disgusted marriage and, probably, experienced an upsurge of feelings, an unquenched thirst for love, which made her irresistible.
Anna's appearance, apparently, does not convey any of her known portraits, and yet she was a universally recognized beauty. And in St. Petersburg, “in freedom”, she blooms incredibly. She captivates with sensual charm, which is beautifully conveyed in the enthusiastic poem of the poet A. I. Podolinsky “Portrait”, written by her in an album in 1828::
"When, slender and light-eyed,
She stands in front of me
I think: the hour of the prophet
Brought down from heaven to earth!
The braid and curls are dark-haired,
The outfit is casual and simple,
And on the chest of a luxurious beads
Luxuriously fluctuate at times.
Spring and summer combination
In the living fire of her eyes,
And the quiet sound of her speeches
Gives birth to bliss and desire
In my yearning chest."
On May 22, 1827, after being released from exile, Pushkin returned to St. Petersburg, where, as A.P. Kern writes, they met every day in his parents' house on the Fontanka embankment. Soon, Anna Kern's father and sister left, and she began to rent a small apartment in the house where Pushkin's friend, the poet Baron Delvig, lived with his wife. On this occasion, Kern recalls that "once, introducing his wife to one family, Delvig joked:" This is my wife, "and then, pointing to me:" And this is the second one.
She became very friendly with Pushkin's relatives and with the Delvig family, and, thanks to Pushkin and Delvig, she entered the circle of people who make up the color of the nation, with whom her living subtle soul always dreamed of communicating: Zhukovsky, Krylov, Vyazemsky, Glinka, Mickevich, Pletnev, Venevitinov , Gnedich, Podolinsky, Illichevsky, Nikitenko.
Anna Petrovna played her part in introducing the young Sophia Delvig, with whom she became very friendly, to gallant amusements. Pushkin's mother Nadezhda Osipovna called these two ladies "inseparable". Delvig's brother Andrey, who at that time lived in the poet's house, frankly disliked Kern, believing that she "wants to quarrel with Delvig with his wife for an incomprehensible purpose."
At that time, a young student Alexander Nikitenko, a future censor and professor at St. Petersburg University, who rented an apartment in the same house with her, met Anna Petrovna Kern. He almost fell into the net of an irresistible seductress. Kern struck him at the first meeting. In May 1827, he gave in his "Diary" a wonderful portrait of her: 
... And at the same time, Pushkin finally had the opportunity to take "galant revenge." In 1828, in February, a year and a half after writing the lines "I remember a wonderful moment," Pushkin boasted in a letter to his friend Sobolevsky, not embarrassed in expressions and, moreover, using the lexicon of janitors and cab drivers (sorry for the ugly quote - but what is, is): "You don't write to me about the 2,100 rubles I owe you, but you write to me about m-me Kern, whom, with the help of God, I'm the other day..." Apparently, Pushkin wrote such a frank and rude message about intimacy with a once passionately beloved woman, because he experienced the strongest complex due to the fact that he had not been able to get this intimacy earlier, out of a sense of rivalry with the same Wulf - and he certainly needed to convey to friends that this fact happened, even if belatedly. In no other letter in relation to other women did Pushkin allow such rude frankness.
Subsequently, Pushkin would write to Alexei Vulf sarcastically: "What is Anna Petrovna, whore of Babylon, doing?" And Anna Petrovna enjoyed her freedom. Her beauty became more and more attractive
This is how she writes about herself in her diary: “Imagine, I just glanced in the mirror, and it seemed to me something insulting that I am now so beautiful, so good-looking. I will not continue to describe my victories to you. - admiration."
Pushkin on Kern: "Do you want to know what Mrs. K ... is? - she is graceful; she understands everything; she is easily upset and just as easily consoled; she has timid manners and bold actions - but at the same time she is wonderfully attractive."
The poet's brother, Lev Sergeevich, is also fascinated by the beauty and dedicates a madrigal to her:
"How can you not go crazy?
Listening to you, admiring you;
Venus ancient sweetheart,
Showing off with a wonderful belt,
Alcmene, mother of Hercules,
With her in a row, of course, it can become,
But to pray and love
Them as hard as you
They need to hide you from you,
You broke their shop!"
... General Kern continued to bombard various authorities with letters, demanding assistance in returning the lost wife to the bosom of the family. The girls - three daughters - were with him until they entered Smolny ... Her Excellency the general, who had escaped from her husband-general, still used his name ... and, apparently, the money she lived on.
In 1831 Pushkin got married. Soon Delvig dies. Sofya Delvig gets married very quickly and unsuccessfully. All this radically changes the usual life of Anna Kern in St. Petersburg. "Her Excellency" was no longer so invited, or not invited at all to literary evenings, where talented people known to her gathered firsthand, she lost contact with those talented people with whom, thanks to Pushkin and Delvig, her life brought her together ... The specter of poverty perceptibly stood before the beautiful general. The husband refused her monetary allowance, apparently, in this way trying to bring her home. One by one, her two youngest daughters and mother die. Deprived of all means of subsistence, robbed by her father and relatives, she tried to sue her mother's estate, in which Pushkin unsuccessfully tried to help her, tried to earn extra money with translations - and Alexander Sergeevich also helped her in this, albeit grumbling.
In 1836 family circumstances Kern again acquired a dramatic turn. She was in complete despair, because by the time she graduated from the Smolny Institute, General Kern appeared as her daughter Ekaterina, who intended to take her daughter to him. The matter was settled with difficulty. ... On February 1, 1837, in the Stables Church, where Pushkin was buried, Anna Kern, along with everyone who came under the vaults of the temple, "wept and prayed" for his unfortunate soul. And at this time, she was already overtaken by an all-consuming mutual love...
..."I remember the haven of love, where my queen dreamed of me... where the air was saturated with kisses, where her every breath was a thought of me. I see her smiling from the depths of the sofa, where she was waiting for me...
I have never been so completely happy as in that apartment!!... She came out of that apartment and slowly walked past the windows of the building, where I, clinging to the window, devoured her with my eyes, capturing her every movement with my imagination, so that after, when the vision will disappear, indulge yourself with an intoxicating dream! ... And this gazebo in Peterhof, among fragrant flowers and greenery in the mirrors, when her gaze, burning me, ignited ... "
The young man for the sake of love lost everything at once: a predetermined future, material well-being, career, location of relatives. It was the love that Anna Kern had been looking for for so long. In 1839, their son Alexander was born, to whom Anna Petrovna gave all her unspent maternal tenderness. In 1841, Anna Kern's husband, General Ermolai Fedorovich Kern, died at the age of seventy-six, and a year later Anna Petrovna formally married A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky and becomes Anna Petrovna Markova-Vinogradskaya, honestly refuses a decent pension assigned to her for the deceased General Kern, from the title of "Excellency" and from material support father.
And flowed years of true happiness. A. Markov-Vinogradsky was, as they say, a loser, possessing no talents other than a pure and sensitive heart. He did not know how to earn his daily bread, so the family had to live in poverty and even live with various friends out of mercy. But he could not breathe in his Anette and filled the diary with touching confessions: “Thank you, Lord, for the fact that I am married! Without her, my darling, I would languish, bored. Everything is boring, except for my wife, and I am so used to her alone that she has become my necessity! What a happiness to return home! How warm, good in her arms. There is no one better than my wife".
And she wrote to her relative E. V. Markova-Vinogradskaya more than ten years later. living together: "Poverty has its joys, and we are always happy, because there is a lot of love in us. For everything, for everything, I thank the Lord! Maybe, when better circumstances we would be less happy."
They lived together for almost forty years in love and in terrible poverty, often turning into need. After 1865, Anna Kern and her husband, who retired with the rank of collegiate assessor with a meager pension, lived in terrible poverty and wandered around different angles with relatives in the Tver province, in Lubny, in Kyiv, in Moscow, in the village of Pryamukhino. Anna wrote memoirs and sacredly preserved Pushkin's relics - letters. And yet they had to be sold - at a meager price. By the way, earlier the composer Mikhail Glinka simply lost the original poem "I remember a wonderful moment" when he composed his music on it (" he took Pushkin's poems from me, written by his hand, in order to set them to music, and he lost them, God forgive him!"); music dedicated, by the way, to Anna Kern's daughter Ekaterina, with whom (daughter) Glinka was madly in love. By the time of the sale, Ekaterina had married the architect Shokalsky, and she almost did not remember her passion for Glinka.
In 1864 Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev visited the Markov-Vinogradsky family: “I spent the evening at a certain Madame Vinogradskaya, with whom Pushkin had once been in love. He wrote in honor of her many poems, recognized as one of the best in our literature. In her youth, she must have been very pretty, and now, with all her good nature (she is not smart), she retained the habits of a woman who is used to being liked. She keeps the letters that Pushkin wrote to her like a shrine. She showed me a semi-faded pastel depicting her at the age of 28 - white, blond, with a meek face, with naive grace, with amazing innocence in her eyes, smile ... she looks a bit like a Russian maid a la Parasha. If I were Pushkin, I would not write poetry for her.
She seemed very eager to meet me, and since yesterday was her angel's day, my friends gave her me instead of a bouquet. She has a husband twenty years younger than her: a pleasant family, even a little touching and at the same time comical. (Excerpt from Turgenev's letter to Pauline Viardot, February 3 (15), 1864, letter No. 1567)".
In January 1879, in the village of Pryamukhino, "from cancer in the stomach with terrible suffering", as his son writes, A.V. died. Markov-Vinogradsky, husband of Anna Kern, and four months later, on May 27, 1879, in inexpensive furnished rooms on the corner of Tverskaya and Gruzinskaya in Moscow (her son moved to Moscow), at the age of seventy-nine, she completed her life path and Anna Petrovna Markova-Vinogradskaya (Kern).
... She was supposed to be buried next to her husband, but strong torrential rains, unusual for this time of year, washed out the road and it was impossible to deliver the coffin to her husband at the cemetery. She was buried on a churchyard near the old stone church in the village of Prutnya, located six kilometers from Torzhok. A well-known mystical story about how "her coffin met with a monument to Pushkin, which was imported to Moscow."
The son of the Markov-Vinogradskys, who had been in poor health since childhood, committed suicide shortly after the death of his parents. He was about 40 years old, and he was, like his parents, completely unadapted to life. Katenka Shokalskaya-Kern lived a long and quiet life and died in 1904.
The stormy and difficult earthly life of Anna Petrovna was over. Until now, people bring fresh flowers to her modest grave, and newlyweds from all over the area come here to swear eternal love to each other in the name of the one who, albeit not for long, was so dear to the great love of life Pushkin.
At the grave of A.P. A large granite boulder stone was installed on the core, a white marble board with carved four lines of the famous Pushkin poem was fixed on it ...
"If your spouse is very tired of it, leave it ... You say: "What about the publicity, what about the scandal?" Hell! When a husband is abandoned, this is already a complete scandal, the future does not mean anything, "he writes to her in one of the letters. Soon she leaves her elderly husband, the general, and goes to live in St. Petersburg. He is Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, she is Anna Petrovna Kern, the daughter of a Poltava landowner, whose name remains in our memory only thanks to the inspired lines of the poem "I remember a wonderful moment ...", confirming the prophetic words of the lyceum student Illichevsky: "... rays of glory Pushkin will be reflected in his comrades. As it turned out, not only in comrades ... Who is she, this Anna Kern? Nobody! Just the one in right time in right place was next to the Poet and the Man. Who would know about you, dear Anna Petrovna, if it were not for... From the only portrait (miniature) that has come down to us, a woman is looking, by modern standards, completely ineffectual: expressionless eyes, a straight fold of her lips, a parting of blond hair, half-naked shoulders ... You look away - and you can’t remember the faces. Oh, those poets... |
Anna Petrovna Kern (miniature).
Perhaps the portrait is simply unsuccessful: Turgenev, after meeting with the sixty-four-year-old A.P. Kern, writes in a letter to Pauline Viardot: "In her youth, she must have been very pretty."
At the age of 17, having submitted to the will of her parents, Anna Petrovna married the fifty-two-year-old General Kern, and gave birth to three daughters from him ... (And what? Not an old man at all by today's standards ... three children at this age! .. well done! True! the martinet is narrow-minded ... and in our time there are enough of them. Well, the girl was not lucky ...)
In 1819, in St. Petersburg, in the house of her aunt E.M. Olenina, she listened to I.A. Krylov and met Pushkin for the first time, and, as she writes in her memoirs: "... did not notice him. it was strange to see anyone but the hero of the occasion."
He had not yet become the Pushkin that Russia admired, and perhaps that is why the ugly, curly-haired youth did not make any impression on her.
When she left, "...Pushkin stood on the porch and followed me with his eyes," writes Kern in his memoirs.
Later, her cousin wrote to her: "You made a strong impression on Pushkin .., he says everywhere:" She was dazzling. ""
She was nineteen years old, Pushkin was twenty.
Six years passed, and the "southern poems" of Pushkin, exiled into exile in the village of Mikhailovskoye, thundered throughout Russia.
And she is already delighted with him ... Here it is, the magical power of art. An ugly curly-haired young man turned into a desired idol. As she writes, "I longed to see him."
She goes to her aunt in Trigorskoye, which was located near Mikhailovsky, to meet the FIRST Russian poet (well, like modern fans, she wanted to, and rushed out of the darkness to a concert of a pop star in regional center; she made her way behind the scenes behind the steward ... but she achieved ... she saw!., and maybe she achieved something else ...), and stays there from mid-June to July 19, 1825 (normally, more than a month without a husband, without three daughters , - came off full program!) together with her cousin P.A. Vulf-Osipova and her two daughters, one of whom, Anna Nikolaevna, was carried away by Pushkin and retained a deep unrequited feeling for life.
The genius of the poet seems to have had on women a huge impact; however, women at any time liked talented, famous and strong-willed and body.
The whole month that Kern spent with her aunt, Pushkin appeared almost daily at Trigorskoye, read his poems to her, listened to her sing. The day before the departure, Kern, along with her aunt and sister, visited Pushkin in Mikhailovsky, where the two of them wandered around the neglected garden for a long time at night, but, as Kern claims in her memoirs, she did not remember the details of the conversation.
Strange ... however, maybe there was no time for talking ...
The next day, saying goodbye, Pushkin gave her a copy of the first chapter of Eugene Onegin, between the sheets of which she found a sheet of paper folded in four with the verses "I remember a wonderful moment ..."
Five letters, written by him after Anna Petrovna Kern, and carefully preserved by her, slightly reveal the secret of their relationship. Unfortunately, Kern's letters to Pushkin have not been preserved, which makes the picture incomplete.
Here are a few quotes: "Your visit to Trigorskoe left an impression on me deeper and more painful than that which our meeting at the Olenins' had." "... I'm furious and I'm at your feet." "...I'm dying of boredom and I can only think about you."
It is not known what Kern answered him, but in the next letter he writes: “You assure me that I don’t know your character. And what do I care about him? I really need him - do pretty women have to have a character? teeth, arms and legs... How is your husband doing? I hope he had a major attack of gout the day after your arrival? If you only knew how disgusted... I feel for this man!... I beg you, divine write to me, love me..."
In the next letter: "... I love you more than you think ... You will come? - isn't it? - but until then, do not decide anything about your husband. Finally, be sure that I am not one of those who never advises drastic measures - sometimes it is inevitable, but first you need to think carefully and not create a scandal unnecessarily. It is night now, and your image rises before me, so sad and voluptuous: it seems to me that I see ... your half-open lips ... it seems to me that I am at your feet, squeezing them, feeling your knees - I would give my whole life for a moment of reality.
In the penultimate letter: "If your husband is very tired of you, leave him ... You leave the whole family there and come ... to Mikhailovskoye! Can you imagine how happy I would be? You say:" And the publicity, but the scandal? "Damn it! When a husband is abandoned, it's already a complete scandal, what happens next doesn't mean anything or means very little. Agree that my project is romantic! And when Kern dies, you'll be free as air... Well, what do you say to that?" " (By the way, E.F. Kern will die only after 16 years in 1841 at the age of 76 - he was a strong old man.)
And in the last, fifth letter: "Do you seriously say that you approve of my project? ... my head is spinning with joy. Talk to me about love: that's what I'm waiting for. The hope of seeing you still young and beautiful is the only thing that I expensive."
Probably, it is impossible to draw direct parallels between Pushkin's letters and the fact that at the beginning of 1826 Anna Petrovna Kern leaves her husband, a general, and leaves for St. Petersburg with her daughters, father and sister, because at the age of 20 (she was born on February 11, 1800) she writes in her diary: "... my fate is connected with a man whom I cannot love and whom ... I almost hate. I would run away ... if only to get rid of this misfortune - to share fate with such a rude, uncouth person ."
A few days after Pushkin gave Kern a piece of poetry in Trigorskoye, he ended his letter to one of his friends with these words: “I feel that my spiritual powers have reached full development, I can create." And what, if not love, makes a person create? Although many Pushkinists believe that his passion was not particularly deep. And the course of their unspoken thoughts can be understood: an enthusiastic woman came to the Poet in exile, and a poet was just a man who was a poet...
On May 22, 1827, Pushkin, after being released from exile, returned to St. Petersburg, where, as A.P. Kern writes, “I visited almost every day” in the house of his parents. He himself lived in a tavern near Demut on the Moika (one of the best St. Petersburg hotels) and "sometimes came to us, going to his parents."
Soon the father and sister left, and A.P. Kern began to rent a small apartment in the house where Pushkin's friend, the poet Baron Delvig, lived with his wife. On this occasion, Kern recalls that "once, introducing his wife to one family, Delvig joked: "This is my wife," and then, pointing to me: "And this is the second one."
"Pushkin ... often entered my room, repeating the last verse he wrote...", "... visiting me, he talked about conversations with friends ..," "... wanted to spend a few hours with me , but I had to go to Countess Ivelevich ... "- Anna Petrovna recalls their relationship during this period in a streamlined way.
Veresaev writes that it was only in Moscow that Pushkin, when his former passion had faded, recognized Kern as a woman, although some authors write that this happened for the first time in Mikhailovsky. Pushkin immediately boasted in a letter to his friend Sobolevsky, not embarrassed in expressions and, moreover, using the lexicon of cabbies (sorry for the ugly quote - but what it is, it is): “You don’t write to me about 2100 rubles, I owe you, and you write to me about m-me Kern, whom I fucked the other day with the help of God.
As with all poets, so with Pushkin, falling in love passed quickly. A little later, Pushkin would write to Wulf with a slight sneer: "What is Anna Petrovna, whore of Babylon, doing?" - I mean THEM(Kern and Wolfe) relationship. And ten years later, in a letter to his wife, Pushkin would call Anna Kern a fool and send her to hell.
Why so rude? Veresaev explains it this way: "There was one short moment when a piquant, easily accessible to many (but not to a poet in love (aut)) mistress was suddenly perceived by the poet's soul as a genius of pure beauty - and the poet is artistically justified."
Having received a good education at home, possessing independent thinking, carried away by literature, she was always drawn to smart, sincere, talented people, and never before or since did she live such a rich spiritual life as at that time. Among her friends were the entire Pushkin family, the Delvig family, Vyazemsky, Krylov, Zhukovsky, Mitskevich, Glinka, Baratynsky. Already in her old age, when she was almost sixty, she will reflect the impressions of communicating with them in memoirs that are so puritanical in nature that Pushkin and his entourage look like a finished bronze composition, where Glinka is a “kind and amiable person”, a “dear musician” with "the most pleasant character", Mickiewicz "constantly amiable and pleasant", and Baron Delvig "amiable, kind and pleasant".
Only sometimes does she describe living real faces, where Pushkin is "... reckless and arrogant ... not always ... prudent, and sometimes not even smart", and that "... a circle of gifted writers and friends grouped around Pushkin, bore the character of a careless Russian gentleman who loves to deceive ... with a desire to have smart and noisy fun, and sometimes to have a good time.
For these words, she is often accused of bias, but probably in vain. True talent is not boring and not boring, it creates as it breathes, easily and imperceptibly for others, and does not put itself on a pedestal during its lifetime, but enjoys this life.
With a considerable amount of humor, she recalls that "Baratynsky never put punctuation marks except for a comma, and Delvig said that Baratynsky allegedly asked him:" What do you call the genitive case?
From the memoirs it is impossible to determine the degree of her closeness with Pushkin in this period, but to assume that Pushkin had special treatment to A.P. Kern is incorrect, because in 1828, as the researchers write, he was already infatuated with Anna Alekseevna Olenina and even asked for her hand.
By the way, Pushkin, as Kern herself notes, “had a low opinion of women, he was fascinated by wit, brilliance and external beauty in them,” and not virtue. Once, speaking of a woman who passionately loved him (apparently, it was about Anna Nikolaevna Wulf), he said: "... there is nothing tasteless than long-suffering and selflessness."
Some biographers, analyzing her (Kern) girlish Rest Diary, written by her at the age of 20, claim that it contains evidence of some special inclination of hers with early years to the coquetry and flirtation that developed later, but not everyone agrees with this.
What's in it? Descriptions of the balls ("... it's four o'clock in the afternoon, and I just got out of bed, so tired of the ball"), tea and dancing at the governor's, a description of her passion for some "worthy object that took possession" of her soul. She writes: "... I confess that for the first time I really love, and all other men are indifferent to me." "To love is to grieve, but not to love is not to live. So, I want to be tormented, grieve and live, as long as God pleases to relocate to eternity." (By the way, when she was seventy years old, she wrote that during her youth, young people "did not have that frivolity .., that licentiousness, which is striking now ..."). About what "worthy subject" in question, is unknown, but it is known that General Kern reprimands her for the fact that "I was seen, I was standing around the corner with one officer", "in the carriage he (Kern) began to yell, as if stabbed to death, that ... no one nothing in the world will convince him that I stay at home for the sake of the child, he knows real reason, and if I don’t go (to the ball), then he will also stay.
Her disgust for her husband is so great that she writes: "... even my daughter is not so dear to me ... if it were a child from ..., it would be dearer to me than my own life." And some strange episodes related with the quirks of an elderly husband-general worthy of the pages of a modern scandalous yellow edition.
His nephew, who is a year younger than Anna Petrovna, settles in the general’s house, and in her notes, indicated in the diary “At 10 pm, after dinner,” the following is literally: “Now I was with P. Kern (the general’s nephew) in his room. Not I know why, but my husband wants me to go there when he goes to bed at all costs. More often than not, I avoid it, but sometimes he drags me there almost by force. And this young man ... not he is neither timid nor modest ... behaves like a second Narcissus, and imagines that one must at least be made of ice in order not to fall in love with him, seeing him in such a pleasant pose. My husband made me sit down beside his bed .., everyone asked me, isn't it, what a beautiful face his nephew has. I confess, I'm just at a loss and can't figure out what it all means and how to understand such strange behavior. "
In the thirties, events take place in the fate of Anna Petrovna Kern that radically change her Petersburg way of life. On February 18, 1831, Pushkin married the brilliant Natalya Nikolaevna Goncharova, with the one "who I loved for two years ..." - as he wrote in the sketch of the autobiographical story "My fate is decided. I'm getting married.", That is, since 1829 his heart belonged to Natalya Nikolaevna.
Soon, in the same 1831, Delvig dies. With the death of Delvig and the marriage of Pushkin, A.P. Kern’s connection with this circle of people close and dear to her was cut off.
The following years brought A.P. Kern a lot of grief. She buried her mother, her husband demanded her return, she tried to do translations in order to have "a livelihood", but she did not have enough experience and skill, and nothing came of it.
Several sharp and mocking words of Pushkin about her translations are known, but Pushkinists note that his friendly attitude towards her remains unchanged. Pushkin even helped her in the efforts to buy out the family estate, which, unfortunately, were not crowned with success.
And on February 1, 1837, she "wept and prayed" in the twilight of the Konyushennaya Church, where Pushkin was buried.
But life went on. She, still attractive at 37 years old, falls in love with her second cousin, a pupil cadet corps, A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky, is much younger than her, and she reciprocates. He sacrifices everything to her: career, material security, the location of relatives. In 1839, their son is born (this is the fourth child of Anna Kern), who is called Alexander.
In 1841, General Kern dies, and in 1842 Anna Petrovna officially formalizes her marriage to A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky and takes his last name.
She refuses the title of "Excellency", from the solid pension assigned to her for General Kern, from the support of her father. It was another bold step in her life, which not every woman of her circle would have dared to take.
They lived together for almost forty years. Material insecurity, which at times reached extreme need, all sorts of everyday hardships relentlessly pursued them. However, no difficulties could break the union of these two people; they have, in their own words, "worked out their happiness."
In 1851, Anna Petrovna wrote: “Poverty has its joys, and it’s always good for us, because there is a lot of love in us. Perhaps, under better circumstances, we would be less happy. every smile of the surrounding world in order to enrich oneself with spiritual happiness. The rich are never poets... Poetry is the wealth of poverty..."
After the death of Pushkin, Anna Petrovna jealously kept everything that was at least to some extent connected with the memory of the poet - from his poems and letters to her to a small footstool on which he happened to sit in her house.
And the further their acquaintance went into the past, the more Anna Petrovna felt how generously she was gifted by fate, which brought her on the path of life with Pushkin. And when she was approached with a proposal to tell about her meetings with the poet, she did it willingly and quickly. At that time, she was about sixty years old: well, this just perfectly matches Pushkin's lines "... everything is instantaneous, everything will pass, what will pass will be nice."
Later P.V. Annenkov reproached her: "... you said less than what you could and should have said", that the memories should have turned into notes and "at the same time, of course, any need for half-confidence, silence, reluctance, as in in relation to oneself, and in relation to others ... false concepts of friendship, of decency and indecency. Of course, for this it is necessary to separate from small and vulgar considerations of the petty-bourgeois understanding of morality, permissible and inadmissible ... "The public expected juicy details and scandalous revelations ?
After 1865, the Markov-Vinogradskys led a wandering life - sometimes they lived with relatives in the Tver province, then in Lubny, then in Moscow. They were still haunted by appalling poverty.
Anna Petrovna even had to part with her only treasure - Pushkin's letters, to sell them for five rubles apiece (for comparison, during Pushkin's life a very luxurious edition of "Eugene Onegin" cost twenty-five rubles a copy). By the way, earlier the original poem "I remember a wonderful moment" composer Glinka simply lost when he composed his music on it, by the way, dedicated to Anna Kern's daughter, with whom (daughter) Glinka was madly in love ... so poor woman by the end of life, except for memories, there was nothing left ... sadly ...
In January 1879, A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky died of stomach cancer with terrible suffering, and four months later in Moscow, in modest furnished rooms at the corner of Tverskaya and Gruzinskaya, at the age of seventy-nine, Anna Petrovna Markova- Vinogradskaya (Kern).
The story that has become a legend that "her coffin met with a monument to Pushkin, which was imported to Moscow," is well-known. Was it or not, it is not known for certain, but I want to believe that it was ... Because it is beautiful ...
There is no poet, there is no this woman... but this is the case when life after death continues. "I erected a monument to myself not made by hands ..." - Pushkin prophetically said to himself, but for this he had to create everything for which we know him, love and appreciate him, but only one poem dedicated to a sinless living woman, simple words genius "I remember a wonderful moment ..." immortalized the name of an ordinary earthly woman, to whom they were dedicated. And if somewhere poetic image and real person do not match, well... this only proves that both the Poet and the Woman were normal living people, and not popular prints, as they were presented to us earlier, and this human normality in no way detracts from their place in the spiritual aura of the nation.
And let one shine, but the other reflects ...
Nikolai Latushkin
(Information on the memoirs of A.P. Kern and various
literary and journalistic sources)
The graceful profile of this woman is captured by Pushkin's hand on the margins of the drafts of Eugene Onegin. And we owe it to the appearance of the great poem "I remember a wonderful moment ..."
Anna Petrovna Kern is one of the most remarkable beauties of her time, a woman whose name is forever linked in our minds with the name of the greatest Russian poet. The history of their relationship a prime example how far the vulgar everyday life is from poetic fantasy and at the same time how firmly they are connected.
"Like a fleeting vision, like a genius of pure beauty"
Pushkin first saw Anna in 1819 in St. Petersburg visiting her aunt Elizaveta Olenina. They played charades. At this evening there was also the fabulist Krylov, who, with his humor and pleasant manners, and even more so, with his fame, attracted the attention of everyone. By that time, Anna Petrovna had turned 19, she had been married to General E.F. for two years. Kern, who was 35 years older than her and whom she not only did not love, but did not even respect.
The young general's wife arrived in St. Petersburg after wandering with her hateful husband through the garrisons in Derpt, Riga, Kyiv, Elisavetgrad, and Pskov. And here is the St. Petersburg high-society salon. Charades. Krylov! And a cloud of dandies in civilian clothes and uniforms that curl around her, beauties with golden curls and violet eyes.
In this whirlwind of impressions, Anna Petrovna barely noticed a curly-haired, short and very mobile young man with negro plump lips. He showed his admiration for her in every possible way and even allowed himself a somewhat cheeky compliment: “Is it possible to be so pretty ?!”
Pushkin at that time was known in St. Petersburg as a real playboy: after graduating from the lyceum, he reveled, dragged after actresses, was a member of the literary societies, close to the Decembrists, and quickly gained fame as a poet. The indifference of the beauty, one must think, touched him.
“The soul has come to an awakening: And here again you appeared ...”
The second time Anna Petrovna appeared to Pushkin six years later. It was in Trigorsky - the estate, located next to Mikhailovsky, where the poet was serving his exile.
Pushkin, not jokingly, suffered on the banks of Soroti from melancholy and loneliness. After a noisy, cheerful Odessa, he found himself "in the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment", in a small country house, which could not even afford to properly heat due to scarcity of funds. The dull evenings he spent with the good old nurse, books, lonely walks - that's how he lived at that time. It is not surprising that the poet was very fond of visiting the Wulfs in Trigorskoye. The good owner of the estate Praskovya Alexandrovna Osipova-Wulf, her daughters Evpraksia and Anna, stepdaughter Alexander and son Alexei were invariably glad to Alexander Sergeevich, and he was also glad to come to follow the Trigorsk young ladies and have fun.
And in June 1825, Anna Petrovna Kern came to her aunt Praskovya Alexandrovna. And Pushkin fell in love again. Here society was not as brilliant as in St. Petersburg, and Pushkin at that time was already a well-known poet. Anna Petrovna knew and loved his poems. No wonder that this time she listened to his compliments much more favorably. And he no longer chatted nonsense, as in their first meeting.
Alexander Sergeevich behaved like a poet in love. He was jealous and suffered from the fact that Kern makes signs of attention to Alexei Vulf. He kept a stone on the table, which she supposedly stumbled over while walking. Finally, one day he presented her with the first chapter of "Eugene Onegin", where between the pages lay a sheet with the poem "I remember a wonderful moment ..." She read it and found the poem beautiful, but Pushkin suddenly, like a boy, took the sheet away from her, and then agreed to return only after much persuasion.
That summer ended quickly. Anna had to go to her unloved husband.
"Lady Kerna has filthy feet"
Yes, yes, that’s exactly what Pushkin wrote two years later about the very one that he called “the genius of pure beauty.” There are letters in which he "goes through" poor Anna Petrovna even more harshly. In one, he calls her “our Babylonian harlot Anna Petrovna,” and in another, even more terrible: “You don’t write to me about 2100 rubles that I lent, but you write to me about m-m Kern, which I, with God's help, the other day in ..b ... ”This is a letter to Sobolevsky, in which a lot is said about money matters, about various common acquaintances, and so indifferently and casually about Anna Petrovna, about the genius of pure beauty.
By that time, Anna Petrovna had finally left her husband and lived in St. Petersburg the most enchanting life that one can imagine. She had endless affairs that made her position as a divorced woman even more scandalous. She had a relationship with Wolf and with Pushkin's friend Delvig, and with the composer Glinka, and with the poet Venevitinov, and with the bibliophile Sobolevsky, and even, according to rumors, with Alexander Sergeevich's dad. In general, having achieved the woman for whom he felt tender feelings, Pushkin discovered that he was by no means the only one who enjoyed her favor.
“So the Dream and the Poet met”
Anna Petrovna saved good relations with the Pushkin family, but there was never any talk of love between them. Here, in fact, the story of the “wonderful moment” would have ended, if not for one meeting that took place in 1880. A monument to the poet was erected on Strastnaya Square in Moscow. The horses, not without difficulty, dragged a wagon with a heavy sculpture cast in bronze by A.M. guardian. The road to the wagon was blocked by a funeral procession - they buried Anna Petrovna Kern, who lived to be 80 years old and died in poverty and complete oblivion. As it is said in a poem by G. Shengeli:
... Poor old age and black drogs;
So the Dream and the Poet met.
But we met!.. Silence of oblivion -
No matter how you press on the exhausted dust, -
Millions will remember the Wonderful Moment,
About Deity, about Tears, about Love!
The woman who inspired famous poet one of his major masterpieces, had a bad reputation
First fleeting meeting Anna Petrovna Kern and young poet Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, which had yet to earn the status of "the sun of Russian poetry", happened in 1819. At that time, the young beauty was 19 years old and she had been married for two years.
Unequal marriage
down the aisle hereditary noblewoman, the daughter of a court adviser and a Poltava landowner, who belonged to an old Cossack family, Anna Poltoratskaya left at the age of 16. The father, whom the family unquestioningly obeyed, decided that the best game for the daughter there will be a 52-year-old general Ermolai Kern- it is believed that later his features will be reflected in the image of the prince gremina in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin».
The wedding took place in January 1817. To say that the young wife did not love her elderly husband is to say nothing. Apparently she was disgusted with him. physical level- but she was forced to portray a good wife, traveled with the general around the garrisons. At first.
In the diaries of Anna Kern, there are phrases that it is impossible to love her husband and that she “almost hates” him. In 1818 they had a daughter Katia. Anna Petrovna also could not love a child born from a person she hated - the girl was brought up in Smolny, and her mother took part in her upbringing to a minimum. Two of their other daughters died in childhood.
fleeting vision
A couple of years after the wedding, rumors began to circulate about the young wife of General Kern that she was cheating on her husband. Yes, and in the diaries of Anna herself, there are references to different men. In 1819, during a visit to St. Petersburg to his aunt, Kern first met Pushkin - at her aunt's. Olenina had its own salon, in their house on the Fontanka embankment there were many famous people.
But then the young 21-year-old rake and wit did not make a special impression on Anna - he even seemed rude, and Kern considered his compliments to her beauty flattering. As she later recalled, she was much more fascinated by the charades that Ivan Krylov, who was one of the regulars at the Olenins' evenings.
Everything changed six years later, when Alexander Pushkin and Anna Kern got an unexpected chance to get to know each other better. In the summer of 1825, she was visiting another aunt in the estate in the village of Trigorskoye near Mikhailovsky, where the poet was serving a link. Pushkin, who was bored, often visited Trigorskoye - it was there that the "fleeting vision" sunk into his heart.
At that time, Alexander Sergeevich was already widely known, Anna Petrovna was flattered by his attention - but she herself fell under the spell of Pushkin. In her diary, the woman wrote that she was “in awe” of him. And the poet realized that he had found a muse in Trigorsky - the meetings inspired him, in a letter to his cousin Anna, Anne Wolf, he reported that he was finally writing a lot of poetry.
It was in Trigorskoye that Alexander Sergeevich handed over to Anna Petrovna one of the chapters of "Eugene Onegin" with an enclosed sheet on which the famous lines were written: "I remember a wonderful moment ..."
AT last moment the poet almost changed his mind - and when Kern wanted to put the sheet in the box, he suddenly grabbed the paper - and did not want to give it back for a long time. As Anna Petrovna recalled, she barely persuaded Pushkin to return it to her. Why the poet hesitated is a mystery. Maybe not enough good verse, perhaps - he realized that he overdid it with the expression of feelings, or maybe for some other reason? Actually, this is where the most romantic part of the relationship between Alexander Pushkin and Anna Kern ends.
After the departure of Anna Petrovna with her daughters to Riga, where her husband then served, they corresponded with Alexander Sergeevich for a long time. But the letters are more like light playful flirting than they speak of deep passion or the suffering of lovers in separation. Yes, and Pushkin himself, shortly after meeting Anna, wrote in one of his letters to her cousin Wulf that all this “looks like love, but, I swear to you, there is no mention of it.” Yes, and his “I beg you, divine, write to me, love me”, mixed with witty barbs towards an elderly husband and reasoning that pretty women should not have character, rather speaks of admiration for the muse than of physical passion .
The correspondence continued for about six months. Kern's letters have not been preserved, but Pushkin's letters have come down to posterity - Anna Petrovna took great care of them and regretfully sold them at the end of her life (for a pittance), when she faced serious financial difficulties.
Whore of Babylon
In Riga Kern spun another novel- Serious enough. And in 1827, her break with her husband was discussed by the entire secular society of St. Petersburg, where Anna Petrovna moved after that. She was accepted in society - largely due to the patronage of the emperor, but her reputation was damaged. However, the beauty, who had already begun to fade, seemed to spit on this - and continued to twist novels, sometimes - and several at the same time.
What is interesting - under the spell of Anna Petrovna fell younger brother Alexander Sergeevich a lion. And again - a poetic dedication. “How can you not go crazy, listening to you, admiring you ...” - these lines of his are dedicated to her. As for the "sun of Russian poetry", sometimes Anna and Alexander crossed paths in the salons.
But at that time, Pushkin already had other muses. “Our harlot Anna Petrovna of Babylon,” he casually mentions the woman who inspired him to create one of the best poetic works in a letter to a friend. And in one letter he even speaks about her and their once-existing connection rather rudely and cynically.
There is evidence that the last time Pushkin and Kern saw each other shortly before the death of the poet - he paid Kern a short visit, expressing condolences on the death of her mother. At that time, 36-year-old Anna Petrovna was already in love with a 16-year-old cadet and her second cousin Alexander Markov-Vinogradsky.
To the surprise secular society, this strange connection did not end quickly. Three years later, their son was born, and a year after the death of General Kern, in 1842, Anna and Alexander got married, and she took her husband's surname. Their marriage turned out to be surprisingly strong, neither regular gossip, nor poverty, which eventually became simply catastrophic, nor other trials could destroy it.
Anna Petrovna died in Moscow, where her already adult son moved her, in May 1879, having outlived her husband for four months and Alexander Pushkin for 42 years, thanks to whom she remained in the memory of her descendants still not a Babylonian harlot, but "a genius of pure beauty ".
