In the middle of nowhere. “I remember a wonderful moment...” A
To the 215th anniversary of the birth of Anna Kern and the 190th anniversary of the creation of Pushkin’s masterpiece
Alexander Pushkin will call her “the genius of pure beauty”, and will dedicate immortal poems to her... And he will write lines full of sarcasm. “How is your husband’s gout doing?.. Divine, for God’s sake, try to get him to play cards and have an attack of gout, gout! This is my only hope!.. How can I be your husband? “I can’t imagine this, just as I can’t imagine heaven,” the loving Pushkin wrote in despair in August 1825 from his Mikhailovsky in Riga to the beautiful Anna Kern.
The girl, named Anna and born in February 1800 in the house of her grandfather, Oryol governor Ivan Petrovich Wulf, “under a green damask canopy with white and green ostrich feathers in the corners,” was destined for an unusual fate.
A month before her seventeenth birthday, Anna became the wife of division general Ermolai Fedorovich Kern. The husband was fifty-three years old. Marriage without love did not bring happiness. “It is impossible to love him (my husband), I am not even given the consolation of respecting him; I’ll tell you straight - I almost hate him,” only young Anna could believe the bitterness of her heart in the diary.
At the beginning of 1819, General Kern (in fairness, one cannot help but mention his military merits: more than once he showed his soldiers examples of military valor both on the Borodino field and in the famous “Battle of the Nations” near Leipzig) arrived in St. Petersburg on business. Anna also came with him. At the same time, in the house of her aunt Elizaveta Markovna, née Poltoratskaya, and her husband Alexei Nikolaevich Olenin, president of the Academy of Arts, she first met the poet.
It was a noisy and cheerful evening, the youth were amusing themselves with games of charades, and in one of them Queen Cleopatra was represented by Anna. Nineteen-year-old Pushkin could not resist complimenting her: “Is it permissible to be so lovely!” The young beauty considered several humorous phrases addressed to her impudent...
They were destined to meet only after six long years. In 1823, Anna, leaving her husband, went to her parents in the Poltava province, in Lubny. And soon she became the mistress of the wealthy Poltava landowner Arkady Rodzianko, a poet and friend of Pushkin in St. Petersburg.
With greed, as Anna Kern later recalled, she read all Pushkin’s poems and poems known at that time and, “admired by Pushkin,” dreamed of meeting him.
In June 1825, on her way to Riga (Anna decided to reconcile with her husband), she unexpectedly stopped in Trigorskoye to visit her aunt Praskovya Aleksandrovna Osipova, whose frequent and welcome guest was her neighbor Alexander Pushkin.
At Auntie’s, Anna first heard Pushkin read “his Gypsies,” and literally “wasted with pleasure” both from the marvelous poem and from the poet’s very voice. She retained her amazing memories of that wonderful time: “...I will never forget the delight that gripped my soul. I was in ecstasy...”
And a few days later, the entire Osipov-Wulf family set off on two carriages for a return visit to neighboring Mikhailovskoye. Together with Anna, Pushkin wandered through the alleys of the old overgrown garden, and this unforgettable night walk became one of the poet’s favorite memories.
“Every night I walk through my garden and say to myself: here she was... the stone on which she tripped lies on my table near a branch of withered heliotrope. Finally, I write a lot of poetry. All this, if you like, is very similar to love.” How painful it was to read these lines to poor Anna Wulf, addressed to another Anna - after all, she loved Pushkin so passionately and hopelessly! Pushkin wrote from Mikhailovsky to Riga to Anna Wulf in the hope that she would convey these lines to her married cousin.
“Your arrival in Trigorskoye left an impression on me deeper and more painful than that which our meeting at the Olenins once made on me,” the poet confesses to the beauty, “the best thing I can do in my sad village wilderness is to try not to think.” more about you. If there was even a drop of pity for me in your soul, you, too, should wish this for me...”
And Anna Petrovna will never forget that moonlit July night when she walked with the poet along the alleys of the Mikhailovsky Garden...
And the next morning Anna was leaving, and Pushkin came to see her off. “He came in the morning and, as a farewell, brought me a copy of Chapter II of Onegin, in uncut sheets, between which I found a four-fold sheet of paper with poems...”
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
In the languor of hopeless sadness,
In the worries of noisy bustle,
A gentle voice sounded to me for a long time
And I dreamed of cute features.
Years passed. The storm is a rebellious gust
Dispelled old dreams
And I forgot your gentle voice,
Your heavenly features.
In the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment
My days passed quietly
Without a deity, without inspiration,
No tears, no life, no love.
The soul has awakened:
And then you appeared again,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
And the heart beats in ecstasy,
And for him they rose again
And deity and inspiration,
And life, and tears, and love.
Then, as Kern recalled, the poet snatched his “poetic gift” from her, and she forcibly managed to return the poems.
Much later, Mikhail Glinka would set Pushkin’s poems to music and dedicate the romance to his beloved, Ekaterina Kern, Anna Petrovna’s daughter. But Catherine will not be destined to bear the name of the brilliant composer. She will prefer another husband - Shokalsky. And the son who was born in that marriage, oceanographer and traveler Yuli Shokalsky, will glorify his family name.
And another amazing connection can be traced in the fate of Anna Kern’s grandson: he will become a friend of the son of the poet Grigory Pushkin. And all his life he will be proud of his unforgettable grandmother, Anna Kern.
Well, what was the fate of Anna herself? The reconciliation with her husband was short-lived, and soon she finally broke with him. Her life is replete with many love adventures, among her fans are Alexey Wulf and Lev Pushkin, Sergei Sobolevsky and Baron Vrevsky... And Alexander Sergeevich himself, in no way poetic, reported his victory over an accessible beauty in a famous letter to his friend Sobolevsky. The “Divine” inexplicably transformed into the “Whore of Babylon”!
But even Anna Kern’s numerous novels never ceased to amaze her former lovers with her reverent reverence “before the shrine of love.” “These are enviable feelings that never get old! – Alexey Vulf sincerely exclaimed. “After so many experiences, I did not imagine that it was still possible for her to deceive herself...”
And yet, fate was merciful to this amazing woman, gifted at birth with considerable talents and who experienced more than just pleasures in life.
At the age of forty, at the time of mature beauty, Anna Petrovna met her true love. Her chosen one was a graduate of the cadet corps, a twenty-year-old artillery officer Alexander Vasilyevich Markov-Vinogradsky.
Anna Petrovna married him, having committed, in the opinion of her father, a reckless act: she married a poor young officer and lost the large pension that she was entitled to as the widow of a general (Anna’s husband died in February 1841).
The young husband (and he was his wife’s second cousin) loved his Anna tenderly and selflessly. Here is an example of enthusiastic admiration for a beloved woman, sweet in its artlessness and sincerity.
From the diary of A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky (1840): “My darling has brown eyes. They look luxurious in their wonderful beauty on a round face with freckles. This silk is chestnut hair, gently outlines it and shades it with special love... Small ears, for which expensive earrings are an unnecessary decoration, they are so rich in grace that you will fall in love. And the nose is so wonderful, it’s lovely!.. And all this, full of feelings and refined harmony, makes up the face of my beautiful one.”
In that happy union, a son, Alexander, was born. (Much later, Aglaya Alexandrovna, née Markova-Vinogradskaya, would give the Pushkin House a priceless relic - a miniature depicting the sweet appearance of Anna Kern, her grandmother).
The couple lived together for many years, enduring poverty and adversity, but never ceasing to tenderly love each other. And they died almost overnight, in the bad year 1879...
Anna Petrovna was destined to outlive her adored husband by only four months. And as if in order to hear a loud noise one May morning, just a few days before his death, under the window of his Moscow house on Tverskaya-Yamskaya: sixteen horses harnessed to a train, four in a row, were dragging a huge platform with a granite block - the pedestal of the future monument to Pushkin.
Having learned the reason for the unusual street noise, Anna Petrovna sighed with relief: “Ah, finally! Well, thank God, it’s high time!..”
A legend remains to live: as if the funeral cortege with the body of Anna Kern met on its mournful path with a bronze monument to Pushkin, which was being taken to Tverskoy Boulevard, to the Strastnoy Monastery.
That's how they last met,
Remembering nothing, not grieving about anything.
So the blizzard blows with its reckless wing
It dawned on them in a wonderful moment.
So the blizzard married tenderly and menacingly
The mortal ashes of an old woman with immortal bronze,
Two passionate lovers, sailing separately,
That they said goodbye early and met late.
A rare phenomenon: even after her death, Anna Kern inspired poets! And the proof of this is these lines from Pavel Antokolsky.
...A year has passed since Anna's death.
“Now the sadness and tears have already ceased, and the loving heart has ceased to suffer,” complained Prince N.I. Golitsyn. “Let us remember the deceased with a heartfelt word, as someone who inspired the genius poet, as someone who gave him so many “wonderful moments.” She loved a lot, and our best talents were at her feet. Let us preserve this “genius of pure beauty” with a grateful memory beyond his earthly life.”
Biographical details of life are no longer so important for an earthly woman who has turned to the Muse.
Anna Petrovna found her last refuge in the churchyard of the village of Prutnya, Tver province. On the bronze “page”, soldered into the gravestone, are the immortal lines:
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me...
A moment - and eternity. How close are these seemingly incommensurable concepts!..
"Farewell! Now it’s night, and your image appears before me, so sad and voluptuous: it seems to me that I see your gaze, your half-open lips.
Goodbye - it seems to me that I am at your feet... - I would give my whole life for a moment of reality. Farewell…".
Pushkin’s strange thing is either a confession or a farewell.
Special for the Centenary
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
In the languor of hopeless sadness,
In the worries of noisy bustle,
A gentle voice sounded to me for a long time,
And I dreamed of cute features.
Years passed. The storm is a rebellious gust
Dispelled old dreams
And I forgot your gentle voice,
Your heavenly features.
In the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment
My days passed quietly
Without a deity, without inspiration,
No tears, no life, no love.
The soul has awakened:
And then you appeared again,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
And the heart beats in ecstasy,
And for him they rose again
And deity and inspiration,
And life, and tears, and love.
Pushkin, 1825
Kern, Anna Petrovna(1800-1879) - niece of Pushkin’s neighbor P. A. Osipova. She stayed in the summer of 1825 in Trigorskoye.
In the first stanza, the poet recalls his first meeting with her, in 1819, in St. Petersburg, in the Olenins’ house.
Kern wrote about how Pushkin gave her these poems on the day of her departure from Trigorskoye:
« He came in the morning and, as a farewell, he brought me a copy of the 2nd chapter of “Onegin”, in uncut sheets, between which I found a quarter-folded sheet of paper with the verses: “I remember a wonderful moment” and so on. When I was about to hide the poetic gift in the box, he looked at me for a long time, then frantically snatched it away and did not want to return it; I forcibly begged them again; I don’t know what flashed through his head then».
I remember a wonderful moment: You appeared before me, Like a fleeting vision, Like a genius of pure beauty. In the languor of hopeless sadness In the worries of noisy bustle, A gentle voice sounded to me for a long time And I dreamed of sweet features. Years passed. The rebellious gust of storms scattered my former dreams, And I forgot your tender voice, your heavenly features. In the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment, my days dragged on quietly, without deity, without inspiration, without tears, without life, without love. The soul has awakened: And now you have appeared again, Like a fleeting vision, Like a genius of pure beauty. And the heart beats in ecstasy, And for him the deity, and inspiration, And life, and tears, and love have risen again.
The poem is addressed to Anna Kern, whom Pushkin met long before his forced seclusion in St. Petersburg in 1819. She made an indelible impression on the poet. The next time Pushkin and Kern saw each other was only in 1825, when she was visiting the estate of her aunt Praskovya Osipova; Osipova was Pushkin’s neighbor and a good friend of his. It is believed that the new meeting inspired Pushkin to create an epoch-making poem.
The main theme of the poem is love. Pushkin presents a succinct sketch of his life between the first meeting with the heroine and the present moment, indirectly mentioning the main events that happened to the biographical lyrical hero: exile to the south of the country, a period of bitter disappointment in life, in which works of art were created, imbued with feelings of genuine pessimism (“ Demon”, “Desert Sower of Freedom”), depressed mood during the period of new exile to the family estate of Mikhailovskoye. However, suddenly the resurrection of the soul occurs, the miracle of the revival of life, caused by the appearance of the divine image of the muse, which brings with it the former joy of creativity and creation, which is revealed to the author from a new perspective. It is at the moment of spiritual awakening that the lyrical hero meets the heroine again: “The soul has awakened: And now you have appeared again...”.
The image of the heroine is significantly generalized and maximally poeticized; it differs significantly from the image that appears on the pages of Pushkin’s letters to Riga and friends, created during the period of forced time spent in Mikhailovsky. At the same time, the use of an equal sign is unjustified, as is the identification of the “genius of pure beauty” with the real biographical Anna Kern. The impossibility of recognizing the narrow biographical background of the poetic message is indicated by the thematic and compositional similarity with another love poetic text called “To Her,” created by Pushkin in 1817.
Here it is important to remember the idea of inspiration. Love for a poet is also valuable in the sense of giving creative inspiration and the desire to create. The title stanza describes the first meeting of the poet and his beloved. Pushkin characterizes this moment with very bright, expressive epithets (“wonderful moment”, “fleeting vision”, “genius of pure beauty”). Love for a poet is a deep, sincere, magical feeling that completely captivates him. The next three stanzas of the poem describe the next stage in the poet’s life - his exile. A difficult time in Pushkin’s life, full of life’s trials and experiences. This is the time of “languishing hopeless sadness” in the poet’s soul. Parting with his youthful ideals, the stage of growing up (“Dispelled old dreams”). Perhaps the poet also had moments of despair (“Without a deity, without inspiration”). The author’s exile is also mentioned (“In the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment ...”). The poet’s life seemed to freeze, to lose its meaning. Genre - message.
Pushkin was a passionate, enthusiastic person. He was attracted not only by revolutionary romance, but also by female beauty. Reading the poem “I remember a wonderful moment” by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin means experiencing the excitement of beautiful romantic love with him.
Regarding the history of the creation of the poem, written in 1825, the opinions of researchers of the work of the great Russian poet were divided. The official version says that A.P. was the “genius of pure beauty.” Kern. But some literary scholars believe that the work was dedicated to the wife of Emperor Alexander I, Elizaveta Alekseevna, and is of a chamber nature.
Pushkin met Anna Petrovna Kern in 1819. He instantly fell in love with her and for many years kept the image that struck him in his heart. Six years later, while serving his sentence in Mikhailovskoye, Alexander Sergeevich met with Kern again. She was already divorced and led a fairly free lifestyle for the 19th century. But for Pushkin, Anna Petrovna continued to remain a kind of ideal, a model of piety. Unfortunately, for Kern, Alexander Sergeevich was only a fashionable poet. After a fleeting romance, she did not behave properly and, according to Pushkin scholars, forced the poet to dedicate the poem to himself.
The text of Pushkin’s poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” is conventionally divided into 3 parts. In the title stanza, the author enthusiastically talks about his first meeting with an amazing woman. Delighted, in love at first sight, the author is perplexed, is this a girl, or a “fleeting vision” that is about to disappear? The main theme of the work is romantic love. Strong, deep, it absorbs Pushkin completely.
The next three stanzas tell the story of the author's exile. This is a difficult time of “languishing hopeless sadness,” parting with former ideals, and confronting the harsh truth of life. Pushkin of the 20s was a passionate fighter who sympathized with revolutionary ideals and wrote anti-government poetry. After the death of the Decembrists, his life seemed to freeze and lose its meaning.
But then Pushkin again meets his former love, which seems to him a gift of fate. Youthful feelings flare up with renewed vigor, the lyrical hero seems to awaken from hibernation, feeling the desire to live and create.
The poem is taught in a literature lesson in 8th grade. It is quite easy to learn, since at this age many experience first love and the poet’s words resonate in the heart. You can read the poem online or download it on our website.
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
In the languor of hopeless sadness
In the worries of noisy bustle,
A gentle voice sounded to me for a long time
And I dreamed of cute features.
Years passed. The storm is a rebellious gust
Dispelled old dreams
And I forgot your gentle voice,
Your heavenly features.
In the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment
My days passed quietly
Without a deity, without inspiration,
No tears, no life, no love.
The soul has awakened:
And then you appeared again,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
And the heart beats in ecstasy,
And for him they rose again
And deity and inspiration,
And life, and tears, and love.
On this day - July 19, 1825 - the day of Anna Petrovna Kern’s departure from Trigorskoye, Pushkin presented her with the poem “K*”, which is an example of high poetry, a masterpiece of Pushkin's lyricism. Everyone who values Russian poetry knows him. But in the history of literature there are few works that would raise as many questions among researchers, poets, and readers. Who was the real woman who inspired the poet? What connected them? Why did she become the addressee of this poetic message?
The history of the relationship between Pushkin and Anna Kern is very confused and contradictory. Despite the fact that their relationship gave birth to one of the poet’s most famous poems, this novel can hardly be called fateful for both.
The 20-year-old poet first met 19-year-old Anna Kern, the wife of 52-year-old General E. Kern, in 1819 in St. Petersburg, in the house of the president of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, Alexei Olenin. Sitting at dinner not far from her, he tried to attract her attention. When Kern got into the carriage, Pushkin went out onto the porch and watched her for a long time.
Their second meeting took place only six long years later. In June 1825, while in Mikhailovsky exile, Pushkin often visited relatives in the village of Trigorskoye, where he met Anna Kern again. In her memoirs, she wrote: “We were sitting at dinner and laughing... suddenly Pushkin came in with a big thick stick in his hands. My aunt, next to whom I was sitting, introduced him to me. He bowed very low, but did not say a word: timidity was visible in his movements. I also couldn’t find anything to say to him, and it took us a while to get acquainted and start talking.”
Kern stayed in Trigorskoye for about a month, meeting with Pushkin almost daily. The unexpected meeting with Kern, after a 6-year break, made an indelible impression on him. In the poet’s soul “an awakening has come” - an awakening from all the difficult experiences endured “in the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment” - in many years of exile. But the poet in love clearly did not find the right tone, and, despite Anna Kern’s reciprocal interest, a decisive explanation did not happen between them.
On the morning before Anna's departure, Pushkin gave her a present - the first chapter of Eugene Onegin, which had just been published. Between the uncut pages lay a piece of paper with a poem written at night...
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
In the languor of hopeless sadness
In the worries of noisy bustle,
And I dreamed of cute features.
Years passed. The storm is a rebellious gust
Dispelled old dreams
Your heavenly features.
In the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment
My days passed quietly
Without a deity, without inspiration,
No tears, no life, no love.
The soul has awakened:
And then you appeared again,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
And the heart beats in ecstasy,
And for him they rose again
And deity and inspiration,
And life, and tears, and love.
From the memoirs of Anna Kern we know how she begged the poet for a sheet of paper with these verses. When the woman was about to hide it in her box, the poet suddenly frantically snatched it from her hands and did not want to give it back for a long time. Kern begged forcibly. “What flashed through his head then, I don’t know,” she wrote in her memoirs. By all appearances, it turns out that we should be grateful to Anna Petrovna for preserving this masterpiece for Russian literature.
15 years later, composer Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka wrote a romance based on these words and dedicated it to the woman he was in love with, Anna Kern’s daughter Catherine.
For Pushkin, Anna Kern was truly a “fleeting vision.” In the wilderness, on her aunt’s Pskov estate, the beautiful Kern captivated not only Pushkin, but also her neighboring landowners. In one of his many letters, the poet wrote to her: “Frivolity is always cruel... Farewell, divine, I’m furious and falling at your feet.” Two years later, Anna Kern no longer aroused any feelings in Pushkin. The “genius of pure beauty” disappeared, and the “harlot of Babylon” appeared - that’s what Pushkin called her in a letter to a friend.
We will not analyze why Pushkin’s love for Kern turned out to be just a “wonderful moment,” which he prophetically announced in poetry. Whether Anna Petrovna herself was to blame for this, whether the poet or some external circumstances were to blame - the question remains open in special research.
