Palm groves and aloe thickets,
Silver-matte stream,
The sky is endlessly blue,
The sky, golden from the rays.
And what else do you want?
heart?
Is happiness a fairy tale or
lie?
Why temptations?
Gentile
Are you giving yourself obediently?
Do you want it again?
poisons,
Do you want to fight in the fiery
I'm delirious,
Don't you have the power to live,
like herbs
In this intoxicating garden?
For a wondrous sigh, and a free bird singing,
Its name is the Road of Forgiveness,
Ah, when the skies are cloudless,
We just show up here.
People call her with love:
And, she is nightingale and golden.
You will rest your soul in her forest,
And, memory will preserve its beauty.
Its name is the Road of Forgiveness.
“Why,” I ask in surprise.
“Oh, because,” they will answer me quietly, “
What a gentle bird, singing in the spring.
June, beginning of summer. in the Moscow region
The fluffy lilac is blooming again.
Above Soroty, in jasmine with bird mystery
The nightingale gives us roulades.
People's holiday! Pushkin's birthday!
And everyone wants at this very moment
Come, bow and listen
His poems. He pulls like a magnet.
He is here, Our Pushkin! No matter how many years have passed
He's nearby. We know, we feel it.
And time has not passed, it has moved apart
Boundaries of the poet's admirers.
Write about autumn with great calm...
The ringing river darkens.
And the city tower has a sharp spire,
It seems to me that it pierced the clouds.
Write about autumn...
While the meadows are bright,
Clear glades, talkative groves,
And the month has pointed horns,
Like a woman's underwear,
rinses in the river.
Write about autumn...
The cranes are flying away -
A combination of grief and sadness,
But all that they shouted goodbye
Dissolves into the distance without a trace.
Write about autumn...
About a blessed time,
Homemade wine ferments in the cellars.
The owner of the house has no place...
The birch grove has blossomed and come to life!
Nature has blossomed with the beauty of the Don...
The nightingale doesn't stop talking for days...
The bird is calling a Cossack to a concert.
This beauty should not be missed!
To visit the nightingale in the grove in the spring...
You won’t go to the spring grove alone,
A beautiful Cossack girl, you can take it with you.
To take a look at the spring nature...
Yes, cling to the chest of a Cossack woman in the grove!
It’s not a sin to stay with a beauty until the morning...
Her beauty! Enjoy in the grove!!!
There was such a grove, I remember!
...Among the grass that quietly murmurs
Stumps stick out like islands -
They cut down the grove for firewood.
There was a river nearby, I remember.
Murmuring, the boat rocked at noon.
Now there are two tracks from the river, -
Rotten and musty water.
There was love. She's like a bird
She flew in a chintz dress,
Laughing, she shouted: “Catch up!”
Where are these days? Just stumps...
But even though you are cut down, grove,
Your leaves are rustling, rustling.
But even though you have dried up, river,
Your water is murmuring, murmuring.
But even that love and trust
Not...
When I drive past
I was passing by
Birch Grove for a visit
Invited...
But for many years I have been an invitation
Rejected...
After all, the city called, I gave myself to it
Gave...
I took it TODAY
Invitation…
She stopped and said: “STOP!”
Solution.
Birches with a blue sky
Met...
With its enchanting melody
Caressed...
Birches are like a child
Hugged...
She sang songs to them, danced,
I was jubilant...
And the sun is with me
Pelo...
With warm rays my heart
Warmed up...
When I said goodbye and went home
She was leaving...
Noisy in the spring wind
Old bamboo...
It makes noise - shhhh...
Is it the wind rustling through the leaves?
Or does bamboo sound like that in the wind?
Why are you silent -
Tell?!
- And not bamboo and not wind
The world sounds
It's your mind
Says the words
Do you hear the noise?
Shhh
And the two monks fell silent
They became silent
Very differently, they became silent
In the bamboo grove
And time is immortal
They began to drip
And something elusive
They began to change
And something elusive
It began to soar
In the bamboo grove
Do you hear?
Shhh
At the beginning of the 18th century, among the possessions of the royal family on Pskov land was a vast estate - Mikhailovskaya Bay. When the daughter of Peter I, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, ascended the throne, she began to generously gift her father’s associates, who were in disgrace for a long time after his death. Among them was the famous Abram Petrovich Hannibal, the poet’s great-grandfather. By Elizabeth's decree of January 12, 1742, he was granted most of the Mikhailovskaya Bay. According to the census census of 1744, A.P. Hannibal owned 41 villages in Mikhailovskaya Bay, where more than 800 serfs lived. After the death of A.P. Hannibal in 1781, Mikhailovskaya Bay was divided between his three sons. According to a separate entry, “the village of Kuchane, which is now the village of Petrovskoye” with villages was received by Pyotr Abramovich Hannibal, “the village of Oklad, which is now called the village of Voskresenskoye” with villages - Isaac Abramovich Hannibal, “the village of Ustye, which is now called the village of Mikhailovskoye” with villages - Osip Abramovich Hannibal. After retiring from military service, Osip Abramovich spent the last years of his life (died in 1806) almost constantly in Mikhailovskoye, where at the end of the 18th century he created an estate: he built a manor house and laid out a park.
When O. A. Hannibal died, Mikhailovskoye was inherited by his family - his wife, Marya Alekseevna, and daughter, Nadezhda Osipovna, the poet’s mother. After the death of her mother (1818), Nadezhda Osipovna remained the owner of the estate. Since 1836, Mikhailovskoye went to her children: Olga, Lev and Alexander.
After the death of the poet, Mikhailovskoye became the property of his children: sons, Alexander and Grigory, and daughters, Maria and Natalya. In 1866, Pushkin’s youngest son, Grigory Alexandrovich, settled in Mikhailovskoye. By this time, the old Hannibal house had fallen into disrepair, and G. A. Pushkin sold it for scrap, building a new one of slightly different architecture in the same place. Subsequently, this house burned down twice - in 1908 and 1918, but each time it was restored (in 1908-1911 according to the design of the architect V. A. Shuko). In 1899, the village of Mikhailovskoye was purchased from G. A. Pushkin by the treasury and transferred to the jurisdiction of the Pskov nobility, who in 1901 decided to create a charitable institution here - a colony for elderly writers (it opened only in 1911).
By 1917, the former Pushkin estate was in a pitiful state. The Great October Socialist Revolution made the people the masters of Pushkin's places. Already in the first years of Soviet power, the Pskov Provincial Executive Committee was engaged in the restoration and restoration of this most valuable monument of Russian culture. On November 11, 1921, he decided to protect Pushkin’s sites in the Opochetsky district of the Pskov province. This decision spoke of the need to take Pushkin Corner under protection as a historical monument of significance for the entire republic.
The petition of local Soviet authorities met with the warm support of the People's Commissar of Education A.V. Lunacharsky. Already on March 17, 1922, the Small Council of People's Commissars adopted a resolution in which it was written: “To declare the Pushkin Corner (Mikhailovskoye, Trigorskoye, as well as the burial place of A.S. Pushkin in the Svyatogorsk Monastery) a protected estate with its transfer under protection as historical monument..."
In 1936, Petrovskoye, the ancient settlement of Voronin and Savkina Gorka, as well as the entire Svyatogorsk Monastery, were included in the Pushkinsky Reserve. The total territory of the reserve exceeded 700 hectares.
During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, the Nazis destroyed the museums of the reserve, stole their valuables, and cut down hundreds of trees in the reserve parks.
After the end of the war, the Soviet government took all measures to bring the Pushkinsky Nature Reserve back to life. Already in 1949, on the 150th anniversary of the birth of A.S. Pushkin, it was largely restored. On June 12, 1949, the House-Museum of A.S. Pushkin was opened; the nanny’s house and the Assumption Cathedral of the Svyatogorsk Monastery-Museum were restored even earlier.
In subsequent years, reconstruction continued in the reserve in order to give Pushkin’s places the appearance they had during the poet’s lifetime. In the estate, three outbuildings, a cellar, a people's hut, and a peasant barn were restored; the Spruce Alley and an orchard were planted in their original sizes. At the opposite end of the Spruce Alley from the estate, there is, as before, the Pushkin family chapel.
In Mikhailovskoye, the “pond with silver willows” has reappeared, as well as the amazingly beautiful Hannibalovsky pond. Right next to the path connecting the pond with Spruce Alley, you can now see the Pushkin Grotto. In the Svyatogorsk monastery-museum, the Holy Gate (main entrance) was restored, Pushkin’s tomb and the stone blind area around it were repaired. Some details lost over time have been recreated on the poet’s tombstone. The majestic “monastery fence”, mentioned by Pushkin in “Boris Godunov,” rose to its previous dimensions.
The Osipov-Wulf house has been restored in Trigorskoye, where a museum exhibition is now located. Around the house there are flower beds, lawns, as in Pushkin's times, decorative garden gazebos, a green gazebo, and an orchard.
There is a bathhouse in Trigorsky Park, where there is also an exhibition telling about some episodes of Pushkin’s communication with Trigorsky friends.
In 1982, two previously existing outbuildings appeared near the manor house, after the restoration of which the central part of the Trigorsk estate became the same as it was during Pushkin’s stay here.
In recent years, extensive work has been carried out to restore and improve the most interesting monument of the Pushkin Nature Reserve - Petrovsky, the former estate of Pushkin's ancestors and relatives - the Hannibals. Here you can see a grotto gazebo, park alleys, the Hannibals' house, and on the territory adjacent to its facade, facing the village of Petrovskoye, there are decorative gazebos, lawns, paths, alleys. Now the last of the three estates that are part of the Pushkin Nature Reserve, Petrovskoye, has acquired the appearance that it had under Pushkin.
The State Museum-Reserve of A. S. Pushkin has become the largest scientific and museum institution for promoting the creative heritage of the great Russian poet. Every year it is visited by over 600 thousand tourists and excursionists from various places in the country. The All-Union Pushkin Poetry Festival, held in Mikhailovsky every year on the first Sunday in June, gained not only all-Union, but also international fame.
The first attempt to organize a Pushkin holiday was made in June 1899 - on the centennial anniversary of the birth of A.S. Pushkin.
However, before the Great October Socialist Revolution, the anniversary celebrations held in Pushkin's places could not become a truly national holiday, since there was no main character of such a holiday - a literate, cultural, educated people. After all, the overwhelming majority of peasants - the main population of the then Pskov province - remained literate, and Pushkin’s works were little known even in the vicinity of Mikhailovsky.
Two years after the organization of the Pushkin Reserve, in 1924, on the initiative of the most prominent Soviet scientists and representatives of the Soviet public, the Society of Friends of the Pushkin Reserve was created. It declared its task to promote the creative heritage of the great poet.
In 1924, when the centenary of Pushkin’s arrival in Mikhailovskaya exile was celebrated, the idea of holding folk festivals dedicated to Pushkin in the reserve was put forward. This idea came to life in 1937, on the centenary of the poet’s death. In the post-war years, such holidays became especially widespread. Since 1967, the All-Union Pushkin Poetry Festival has been held annually on the first Sunday of June in Mikhailovsky.
Its participants include writers and poets from all Union republics, representatives of literature from many nationalities of our country. To listen to their poetic words about Pushkin, their new works, tens of thousands of people gather in a huge clearing in Mikhailovsky. These are the great poet's fellow countrymen - Pskovites, guests from different republics. Writers from fraternal socialist countries, progressive writers and figures of world culture come to the holiday.
The All-Union Pushkin Poetry Festival opens with a ceremonial meeting at the Pskov Drama Theater named after A. S. Pushkin. The next day, its participants, poets and prose writers, speak to readers in factories and factories, on collective and state farms, in houses of culture and libraries. Then a memorial ceremony is held in honor of the great poet at his grave in the Svyatogorsk monastery-museum. After this, everyone heads to Mikhailovskoye, where the grand celebration continues.
The All-Union Pushkin Festival of Poetry, which can rightfully be called a holiday of socialist culture, testifies to the undying love of the Soviet people for the immortal poetry of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.
For the great work on the aesthetic education of workers, studying and promoting the creative heritage of the great Russian poet, the State Pushkin Museum-Reserve was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in March 1972.
Mikhailovskie Groves
A four-kilometer road leads from Pushkinskie Gory to Mikhailovsky, which bifurcates halfway: the straight road goes further, to Trigorsky, and turning right, you can get to the ancient Russian village of Bugrovo (under Pushkin - Bugri).
Immediately behind the village wall there is a forest - Mikhailovsky Groves. From here to the poet's estate in Mikhailovskoye, the road, often turning sharply, goes through a beautiful pine forest.
In different places of the Pushkinsky Nature Reserve, the Mikhailovsky groves differ in the composition of tree species. Where they adjoin Mikhailovsky Park and ledges descend to Lake Malenets, mainly centuries-old pines of a special type grow - ship pines - slender smooth-bore giants up to thirty meters high, with a small evergreen tent on top. This is the oldest part of the Mikhailovsky Groves, and it is here that most of the trees - Pushkin's contemporaries - have been preserved.
Mikhailovsky groves are always full of life. From spring, when migratory birds return here, to their native nesting grounds, from distant lands, until autumn, an incessant hubbub of birds can be heard there. And already on the first snow you can
see traces of elk, wild boar, wild goat, fox, squirrel, hare. In spring, many forest lawns turn blue with snowdrops.
The skies are shining blue. The forests are still transparent, as if turning green with fluff.
Mikhailovsky groves inspired Pushkin with many poetic images and entered his poetic vocabulary. They, with their world of sounds and magical visions, were often in tune with his mood, sometimes poetically inspired, sometimes sad.
Shortly before his death, in the fall of 1835, as if summing up his numerous visits to the Pskov village, Pushkin wrote:
In different years, Under your canopy, Mikhailovsky groves, I appeared...
And now, when you enter the protected Mikhailovsky groves, when with every turn of the road you discover their new captivating beauty, you seem to be waiting to meet Pushkin himself, remembering his lines:
It seems like I was still wandering in these groves for the evening.
Manor
The poet's estate is small; it was created by Pushkin's grandfather, Osip Abramovich Hannibal, on a small territory, which is limited from the north by a steep cliff to the Soroti River, and from the south by Mikhailovsky groves. In the western part of the estate, from its outskirts to the Soroti River and Lake Malenets, there are mowing meadows. On the eastern side there is a wide clearing, bordered on three sides by pine forest and birch groves, and on the fourth by a group of one and a half century old linden trees.
From these linden trees, along a small slope, an alley leads to a pond with a humpbacked wooden bridge thrown across it. The pond is surrounded by tall silver willows.
The estate offers a unique view of the surrounding area. Here one involuntarily recalls Pushkin’s lines in which this landscape is discerned:
Everywhere before me are moving pictures: Here I see azure plains of two lakes, Where a fisherman’s sail sometimes turns white, Behind them a row of hills and striped fields, Scattered huts in the distance, Roaming herds on the damp banks...
The layout of the estate is very simple and convenient. In the center there is a manor house (House-Museum of A.S. Pushkin). In front of the entrance, twenty-six linden trees grow in a large circle, and in the center there is a powerful elm. Under Pushkin, there were bushes of lilac, jasmine and yellow acacia. These changes in the layout of the estate occurred in the last century: the elm was planted by the poet’s son in the 1870s, and the linden trees appeared in 1899, on the centenary of the birth of A.S. Pushkin.
On both sides of the manor house there are services and outbuildings. If you look from the side of the park, then on the left there is a bathhouse, traditionally called the nanny's house - in memory of Arina Rodionovna, Pushkin's nanny, who lived in one of the rooms of the bathhouse. Even further to the left is a large cellar with a wooden gable roof. Pushkin’s coachman, Pyotr Parfenov, who was with the poet for some time in Mikhailovsky, told how Pushkin “in the morning he fired a pistol into the cellar, right here behind the bathhouse, and fired it a hundred times in the morning.”
To the left of the cellar is a barn - an ordinary peasant building, typical of the Pskov region of that time. It is covered with thatch. You look at him, and Pushkin’s poetic image comes back to life:
Then suddenly there will be a rustle of straw on the dilapidated roof...
1. House-Museum of A. S. Pushkin
4. House of the estate manager
5. Forge and human
6. Clerk's house
7. Barn Foundation of the carriage house Pushkin Grotto Pushkin gazebo Pushkin family chapel “Island of Solitude” “Kern Alley” (Linden Alley) Spruce Alley Sorot River
16. Small pond near "Kern Alley"
17. Pond with a bridge near the Hannibalovsky Pond grotto
19-20. Orchard
21. Administrative building (scientific part of the reserve)
22. Circle lined with linden trees. In the center is an elm planted by the son of the poet G.A. Pushkin
23. Lake Malenets
24. Mill
25. Glade where poetry festivals take place
26. "Pond with Silver Willows"
27. A building built by the son of the poet G. A. Pushkin for storing agricultural products (nowadays there is a museum fund here)
28. Garden gazebo
29. An ancient mound excavated by his son
poet G.A. Pushkin
On the other side of the manor house there is an outbuilding - a former kitchen and servants' room. To the right are two more wings: the estate manager's house and the clerk's house. Behind the outbuildings there is an orchard.
The modest estate in Mikhailovskoye was dear to Pushkin primarily as a place of his creative inspiration. This feeling is expressed in the poem "To the Brownie":
Love my little garden and the shore of sleepy waters, And this secluded vegetable garden With a dilapidated gate, with a collapsed fence! Love the green slope of the hills, the meadows crumpled by my wandering laziness, the coolness of the linden trees and the noisy shelter of maples - they are familiar with inspiration.
The Pushkin mansion stands on the edge of a steep hill; The southern façade faces the park, the northern façade faces the Soroti River and picturesque surroundings. The description of this house and its location is guessed in the lines of “Eugene Onegin”:
The master's house was secluded, protected from the winds by a mountain, and stood above the river. In the distance, golden meadows and fields dazzled and blossomed before him, villages flashed by; here and there herds wandered through the meadows...
Built by the poet’s grandfather at the end of the 18th century, it was small and modest compared to the estates of neighboring landowners. The poet in the poem "Domovoy" calls it "the modest family of my monastery", and in one of the letters to his brother - "Mikhailovskaya hut".
The poet's son, G. A. Pushkin, while rebuilding the house, retained, however, the old foundation, and this, together with the documents, helped later, in 1949, to restore the house in the form it had under A. S. Pushkin. Now the house houses a museum, the exhibition of which is dedicated to the life and work of the poet in the Pskov village.
In the entrance hall there is a plan of the Hannibals' estates from 1786, a lithograph of the village of Mikhailovsky from 1837, as well as photographs and Pushkin's autographs (in copies), telling about the history of the Pushkin estate from the time of its foundation to the present day, about Pushkin's first visits here in 1817 and 1819, about the poet’s stay in Mikhailovsky exile. From the front door to the right they lead to Pushkin’s office, to the left - to the nanny’s room.
Nanny's room. This room was allocated to Arina Rodionovna in the manor house when the poet’s parents left Mikhailovskoye, leaving their exiled eldest son here in her care. Here the courtyard girls of Mikhailovsky gathered to practice needlework and small crafts. Arina Rodionovna supervised these works.
Nowadays, the nanny's room has been recreated in a memorial and everyday way. Along one wall stretches a long and wide wooden bench, on which antique spinning wheels with tows and spindles, and bobbins for weaving lace are placed in a row. There are also preserved examples of handicrafts here. The decoration of the room is simple. The furniture is antique, from Pushkin's time.
Parents room. Next to the nanny's room is the room that Pushkin's parents occupied during their visits to the village. The exhibition housed here tells about the poet’s stay in exile: about his reading circle, correspondence, about the visits of friends to him, about his work on “Gypsies”, “Boris Godunov”, a cycle of lyrical poems and epigrams. Among the visual materials presented in the exhibition is a copy of the famous painting by N. N. Ge “Pushkin and Pushchin in Mikhailovsky”, portraits of N. M. Yazykov, I. I. Pushchin, A. A. Delvig, A. M. Gorchakov, with whom the poet met here, as well as portraits of some of his friends and acquaintances with whom he was in correspondence and with whom he visited on their estates located in the neighborhood of Mikhailovsky. There are also portraits of Pushkin - Tropinsky (copy) and works by an unknown artist of the first third of the 19th century. Of particular interest are a rare miniature depicting the poet’s mother, N. O. Pushkina, placed in the display case, made by an unknown artist on an ivory plate, as well as a drawing of the poet’s sister, Olga Sergeevna, sent by her to her father, Sergei Lvovich, in Mikhailovskoye in 1833.
Living room. Adjacent to the parents' room is a living room, or hall, which divides the entire house into two halves. Through it you can go to the front hall, to the balcony with four wooden columns and to the back porch of the house. The exiled poet, trying to ward off the landowner neighbors who were bothering him, like his hero Onegin, often left the house from this porch when uninvited guests arrived at his front porch.
And how Onegin drove his neighbors away, we remember well:
At first everyone went to see him; But since they usually served Him a Don stallion from the back porch, As soon as along the high road He heard their home rattles, - Offended by such an act, Everyone stopped their friendship with him.
In the living room, the atmosphere of Pushkin's time has been recreated. There are sconces on the walls, between them there are portraits of Pushkin’s ancestors and relatives. There is a tall tiled fireplace in the corner. The setting of the hall is very reminiscent of what Pushkin wrote about in the rough lines of the second chapter of Eugene Onegin:
In the living room there is damask wallpaper, portraits of grandfathers on the walls, and stoves in colorful tiles.
There is also an old billiards table installed in 1977 to replace Pushkin’s house, which burned down in a fire in 1908.
Dining room. Behind the living room there is a large room that served as a dining room in the Pushkin house. The literary exhibition tells about Pushkin's work on the poem "Count Nulin", on the "village" chapters of "Eugene Onegin", "Note on National Education" and a number of other works. The topic “Pushkin and the Decembrists” is also covered here. Separate sections are devoted to the poet’s visits to the Pskov village in 1826, 1827 and 1835. The first editions of chapters of the novel "Eugene Onegin", written in Mikhailovsky, are presented.
In this room hang a portrait of Pushkin by the artist O. A. Kiprensky (copy), “Pushkin on a wooded hill” by an unknown artist of the first half of the 19th century.
There is a large piece of pine wood on a wooden pedestal. It is from one of the three pines that were sung by Pushkin in the poem “I Visited Again.”
Nearby there is a display case in which four billiard balls from Pushkin’s billiards are stored. Other memorial items are also placed there: a billiard cue, a shelf for cues, several pieces of dishes, a coffee cup and saucer of the poet’s father, S. L. Pushkin. There is also a handle from Pushkin’s carriage, which burned down in 1908, and a small samovar from Mikhailovsky.
Poet's office. Pushkin's office is adjacent to the dining room. It reproduces the atmosphere that was here during the poet’s life during the period of Mikhailovsky exile. This was done on the basis of various documents from Pushkin’s time, and the memoirs of the poet’s contemporaries who visited him. This is how Pushkin’s office appears to be according to the memoirs of his contemporaries.
“Alexander’s room,” wrote I. I. Pushchin, “was near the porch, with a window onto the courtyard, through which he saw me when he heard the bell. This small room contained his bed with a canopy, a desk, a wardrobe with books, etc. and so on. Everything was a poetic mess, scribbled sheets of paper were scattered everywhere, bitten, burnt pieces of feathers were lying everywhere (he always wrote with stubs that he could barely hold in his fingers, from the Lyceum onwards.)
E. I. Osipova (married Fok) testified: “I myself, when I was still a girl, visited his estate more than once and saw the room where he wrote... Alexander Sergeevich’s room was small, pitiful. a simple wooden bed with two pillows, one leather, and a robe lay on it, and the table was cardboard, tattered: on it he wrote, and not from an inkwell, but from a lipstick jar.”
Her sister, M.I. Osipova, said: “The entire furnishings of the rooms of the Mikhailovsky house were very modest: in the right room, with three windows, where A. S.’s study was, there was a very simple, broken wooden bed. Instead of one an unpainted table, two chairs and shelves with books completed the decoration of this room..."
"Pond with Silver Willows"
A. S. Pushkin’s office looks just as modest and unassuming in its furnishings now. In the center of the small room there is a desk covered with green cloth. On it lie stacks of books, sheets covered in the poet’s rapid handwriting. Next to the four-arm candlestick there are scissors for removing carbon deposits from candles, in a metal glass there are goose feathers, next to the inkwell there is a sandbox. There is a bookcase between the windows, and on the opposite side there is a shelf lined with books - duplicates of those used by the poet. Among them are “History of the Russian State” by N. M. Karamzin, “Tragedies” by Alfieri Vittorio, almanacs and other publications that were in the poet’s personal library. Perhaps books were the only wealth in this modest home. "Books, for God's sake, books!" - the poet asked in one of his letters to his brother. He addressed these constant requests to his brother and many of his friends and acquaintances in almost every letter from Mikhailovsky imprisonment.
In the poet's office, opposite the desk, against the wall, there is a sofa, and against the opposite wall there is a wooden bed with a canopy. Next to the sofa, in the corner, there is a dressing table with an oval mirror and a blank for a hat, in the other corner, by the fireplace, there are smoking pipes with chibouks. There is a large carpet on the floor, covering almost the entire room. All of these are either copies of Pushkin’s things, or things of that time, typical of noble life.
Among the original Pushkin things, the poet's office contains an iron cane, a floor bookcase, a portrait of the great English poet Byron, Anna Petrovna Kern's footstool (the poet sat on this bench more than once when visiting Anna Petrovna in her St. Petersburg apartment), a silver candlestick with a set.
Pushkin often took the iron cane when going for a walk around the outskirts of Mikhailovsky. On the sofa in the poet’s office there are two pistols - exactly the same as the one with which he practiced shooting. Nearby is an old riding riding riding crop - the same one Pushkin had, who rode a lot around the area on a “raven argamak”.
At the desk stands an antique leather chair with a high back. This chair from the collection of Trigorsk items was donated to the Pushkin House Museum in the spring of 1964 by relatives of the Osipov-Wulfs.
Above the sofa on the wall hangs an old copper hunting horn on a metal chain: such a horn was given to the exiled poet by one of the neighboring landowners, as A.P. Kern testified.
In the left corner of the office, opposite the windows, there is a fireplace lined with white tiles.
In the fireplace, on a metal grate - the ash pan - there are fireplace tongs with long handles and a pile of extinguished coals. It seems that the poet just wrote the lines here:
Burn, fireplace, in my deserted cell; And you, wine, friend of the autumn cold, pour a gratifying hangover into my chest, a momentary oblivion of bitter torment.
On the ledges of the fireplace, next to a snuffbox and a casket embroidered with colored beads, is a small figurine of Napoleon with his arms folded crosswise and a frowning face. A sculpture of the French emperor was an almost obligatory accessory to the office of a liberal-minded young nobleman of that time. It was mentioned by Pushkin in his description of Onegin’s village office, which in many respects was undoubtedly “written off” from the office in Mikhailovskoye:
Tatyana, with a tender gaze, looks at everything around her, And everything seems priceless to her, Lives up her languid soul with Half-tormenting joy: And the table with the dimmed lamp, And the pile of books, and under the window there is a bed covered with a carpet, And the view through the window through the moonlight, And this a pale half-light, And a portrait of Lord Byron, And a column with a cast-iron doll Under a hat with a cloudy brow, With hands clenched in a cross.
A few steps from the manor's house there is a small building - a nanny's house - a wooden hut covered with planks. Inside, the house is divided into two halves by a corridor. The doors to the right lead to the bathhouse room, to the left - to Arina Rodionovna’s little room. In the right room, the atmosphere of a peasant bathhouse of that time is recreated. Directly opposite the bathhouse, across the corridor is the entrance to Arina Rodionovna’s little room. This is a room with three windows. In the right corner there is a Russian stove with an iron damper and a cast-iron viewer. Adjacent to it is a couch with a wooden footrest and a canvas canopy made by local peasants. Next to the stove there is a large wooden chest, on the other side there is a small table on which there is an old copper samovar, several saucers and cups of that time, and a tin mug. There is also a travel cellar made of Karelian birch for storing tea and sugar. In the light there are also tabletops, an iron light for a torch, candlesticks, along two walls (under the windows) there are wide wooden benches, on one of them there is an old Pskov spinning wheel with a tow and a spindle. Near the benches there is a table and a wooden sofa.
Near the wall opposite the entrance to the small room is a peasant chest of drawers, darkened with time, and on it is an open rectangular oak drawer trimmed with mahogany. This box is the only genuine thing that has come down to us from Arina Rodionovna. Apparently, it served as a piggy bank: on the top cover there is a small hole for coins. This is also evidenced by the inscription on a piece of paper, yellowed with time, glued to the inside of the top cover: “For the black day. This box was made on the 15th of July 1826.”
The setting of the little room helps us get to know the life of the poet's faithful friend during the Mikhailovsky exile - his nanny, Arina Rodionovna.
The personification of the best features of a Russian peasant woman, she was a talented poet and storyteller, and her fairy tales captured Pushkin’s imagination even in childhood. Pushkin called Arina Rodionovna “the original of nanny Tatyana.”
The poet’s sister, Olga Sergeevna, testifies that “she was a real representative of Russian nannies: she spoke fairy tales masterfully, knew folk beliefs and sprinkled in proverbs and sayings. Alexander Sergeevich, who loved her since childhood, appreciated her fully while he lived in exile, in Mikhailovsky.
Pushkin carried the charming image of this simple Russian woman in his soul and in poetry until the end of his life. Shortly before his death, having arrived in Mikhailovskoye in 1835, he remembers the deceased “dove”. “In Mikhailovskoye I found everything as before, except that my nanny is no longer there,” he wrote from here to his wife. And in the poem “I Visited Again,” created during that period, he sadly wrote:
Here is the disgraced house, Where I lived with my poor nanny. The old woman is no longer there - I’m already behind the wall. I don’t hear her heavy steps, nor her painstaking watch. And in the evening, with the howling of the storm, Her stories, which I had forgotten from a small age - but all pleasant to the heart, Like the familiar and monotonous sound of a Favorite stream.
The appearance and character traits of the nanny were, to one degree or another, reflected in “Dubrovsky”, “Eugene Onegin”, “Boris Godunov”, “Rusalka”. The poet sang it in several lyrical poems.
Mikhailovsky Park
Mikhailovsky Park, created at the founding of the estate by Pushkin’s grandfather, O. A. Hannibal, according to the then standards of landscape art, has been well preserved to this day.
It is divided into two halves, eastern and western, by a central driveway - Spruce, which starts from a decorative round flowerbed near the manor's house. In this part of the park, close to the house, there are huge, thirty-meter tall spruce trees that are already over two hundred years old. Under their thick canopy, one involuntarily recalls the poet’s words about his native park:
And the canopy expanded into a dense, huge, neglected garden, a haven for pensive dryads.
Between the giant spruce trees there are young lush fir trees. They were planted after the Great Patriotic War to replace those destroyed by the Nazis.
In 1956, plantings were made in Spruce Alley, and now it has the same length as in Pushkin’s time - two hundred and fifty meters. At the opposite end of the estate, the alley closes with a low hill on which stands the Pushkin family chapel, restored in 1979.
Perhaps the poetic image in the poem “Conversation of a Bookseller with a Poet”, written by Pushkin here in Mikhailovsky, is connected with it:
Everything excited the tender mind: The flowering meadow, the shine of the moon, The noise of the old storm in the chapel...
To the right of Spruce Alley, a narrow alley stretches past a pond with a bridge across it to the old Hannibal Pond - one of the most picturesque corners of Mikhailovsky Park.
Near the alley that leads from Spruce Alley to Hannibal Pond, there is the Pushkin Grotto.
The Pushkin Grotto, one of the highlights of Mikhailovsky Park, disappeared many decades ago. And in the spring of 1981, it was restored again on the basis of excavations carried out here and documents and evidence found. The sight of the grotto involuntarily brings to mind Pushkin’s lines “From Ariostov” by Orlando Furioso, written by the poet in 1826, at the end of his exile, and addressed to his native Mikhailovsky:
Flowers, meadows, a living stream, A happy grotto, cool shadows, A haven of love, fun and laziness... ........................ ...What, poor thing, will I reward you with?..
"Alley Kern"
On the left side of Spruce Alley in the depths of the park there is a wooden hexagonal Pushkin gazebo with a low spire, recreated on the site of the same gazebo from Pushkin’s time. Four alleys radiate from it. Among them is a birch road (restored in 1954), which leads to a small pond overgrown with duckweed. One of the most beautiful alleys of the park, the linden alley, begins from the pond; the name “Kern Alley” was assigned to it, associated with the visit of Mikhailovskoye in June 1825 by Anna Petrovna Kern, who was then visiting Trigorskoye.
This meeting with A.P. Kern left a deep, bright feeling in Pushkin’s heart. On July 21, 1825, he wrote to A. N. Wulf in Riga (original in French): “Every night I walk in the garden and repeat to myself: she was here - the stone on which she tripped lies on my table, near the branch faded heliotrope, I write a lot of poetry - all this, if you like, is very similar to love..."
And four days later he wrote to A.P. Kern herself: “Your visit to Trigorskoye left in me an impression deeper and more painful than that which our meeting at the Olenins once made on me. The best I can do in my sad village wilderness is trying not to think about you anymore." But the poet could not help but think about her, and his subsequent letters to A.P. Kern were filled with the same strong, painful feeling. They remained friends until Pushkin's death.
From the "Kern Alley" you can go to the "island of solitude". This is a small island in the middle of a round pond, shaded by a group of pines, birches and lindens. According to legend, Pushkin loved to visit this secluded corner of the park.
From the northern façade of the House-Museum, the park descends to the Soroti River.
Almost from the very back porch of the house, a wide wooden staircase leads to the river, framed on both sides by jasmine and lilac bushes.
If you look towards the windmill from here, then in a short distance behind it you can clearly see Savkina Hill - one of the most interesting places in the Pushkin Nature Reserve.
WALTZ
(Annette is not dancing, she is sitting on the sofa, Pushkin comes up to her after the dance).
Pushkin: Annette, have mercy, well, tell me at least something kind, merciful... well? My friend, let's run away from here, let's go abroad with you! A?
Anna: Where? Oh, my God, you just want laughs and hahaha, but I... You keep making jokes... Torment me... But I don’t know what to do...
Pushkin: Do not Cry! You are my one and only, unique! Angel, angel. And abroad - I’m probably kidding. However, I have been thinking about this for a long time and will continue to think about it!
Music.
¾ Despite the fact that life in Mikhailovskoye and Trigorskoye resembled a cheerful idyll of love and creativity, it was an exile and at times it became unbearable for Pushkin. It is no coincidence that he was considering plans to escape.
¾ Soon after arriving in the village, Pushkin tried to organize an escape with the help of his brother. When Lev left for St. Petersburg, the poet gave him instructions to prepare there everything necessary for a secret departure to France or Italy. Lev did not come to Mikhailovskoye, although Pushkin insisted - his parents did not let him in. And the escape did not take place.
¾ However, less than six months had passed before Pushkin was carried away by a new escape plan - through Dorpat, creating incredible projects for an operation for an imaginary aneurysm in his leg, dressing up as Alexei Vulf's servant, and so on. But this plan also failed.
¾ December 1, 1825, having learned about the death of Emperor Alexander, Pushkin, not wanting to wait in inaction for the new king to decide his fate, under the name of the serf Osipova - Wulf, makes another attempt to escape from the family estate to the capital, but for some reason returns back.
¾ According to one version, a hare crossed his path - this was a bad sign.
¾ Two weeks later, on the eve of December 14, he again leaves Mikhailovsky for St. Petersburg and again returns from the road.
¾ It is not difficult to imagine the possible consequences of this trip if it were a success.
¾ Pushkin would have ended up with everyone else on Senate Square.
Music "Moonlight Sonata".
¾ On a dark, cold December evening in 1825, Pushkin really did not want to leave Trigorskoye, to return to the empty, uncomfortable Mikhailovsky house.
¾ Pushkin was just getting ready when a frightened maid ran into the living room.
Horn.: Lady, Arseny has arrived!
Prask. Al.: Call me!
Arseny (in extreme excitement): I sold the apples, but to buy them! Where there! Such a commotion! Soldiers, guards, outposts. Listen, they're catching someone. I didn't understand anything. I took my legs away!
Pushkin: What is there, a riot?
Arseny: Truly a riot.
Prask. Al.: And the sovereign?
Arseny: And the sovereign is with the troops, but I don’t know which one.
Pushkin: How so which? One sovereign - Constantine!
Arseny: Yes, who says - Konstantin, and who says - Nikolai. I heard so... but I don’t know how to say it, as if in the dead of midnight our boyars - ministers and generals - demand the tsar to the Senate. And when he arrived, Konstantin jumped up and knocked at the gate with a huge sword. How can you not miss it?
Prask. Al: Impossible, this is already the beginning of fairy tales! Go away.
Arsen. (maid): And at midnight, before the cross and the Gospel, they swore allegiance to each other and went against each other.
Pushkin (to Arseny): Wait, are there only troops in the square?
Arseny: And gentlemen officers, and black people.
(leaves)
Pushkin: I predicted a riot for you last year.
(everyone leaves)
Music "Moonlight Sonata".
¾ Days of anxiety and uncertainty dragged on.
¾ Expecting a search, and possibly arrest, Pushkin burns his notes, which he worked on for so long and which he values so much.
¾ Letters almost never arrive.
¾ Newspapers report arrests sparingly.
¾ In the lists of those arrested, Pushkin is alarmed to find the names of friends.
¾ Pushkin’s own position is very doubtful: he does not know what and how much the government knows and lives in anxious anticipation.
¾ However, he decides to turn to the new emperor with a request to return from exile.
¾ On the night of September 3-4, 1826, Pushkin was given a letter from the governor of the Pskov province Aderkas, with instructions to appear in Moscow.
Music.
Emperor: Hello, Pushkin, are you happy with your return?
Pushkin: Yes, sir.
Emperor: My brother, the late emperor, sent you to live in the village. I am releasing you from this punishment, on the condition that you do not write anything against the government.
Pushkin: I, sir, have not written against the government for a long time.
Emperor: But were you friends with many of those in Siberia?
Pushkin: True, sir. I loved and respected many of them and continue to have the same feelings for them!
Pushkin: Inevitably, sir, all my friends were in the conspiracy, I could not help but participate in it. Absence alone saved me, for which I thank God.
Emperor: What are you writing now, Pushkin?
Pushkin: Almost nothing, sir, censorship is very strict.
Emperor: Why do you write something that the censorship does not allow?
Pushkin: Censorship does not allow even the most innocent things to pass through; it acts in an incomprehensible way.
Emperor: Well, then I myself will be your censor. From now on you will send me everything you write. You've fooled around enough, Pushkin. If I set you free, do you give me your word to become different?
(Pushkin is silent. The Emperor perceives his silence as a sign of consent. The Emperor leaves with Pushkin)
Emperor: Gentlemen, forget the old Pushkin, now this is my Pushkin.
Courtiers:
¾ Leaving the royal office in the Kremlin palace, Pushkin breathed a sigh of relief.
¾ He thought that he had finally found the freedom he wanted.
¾ The cheerful mood was supported by the unanimous delight with which Moscow society greeted the poet.
¾ He left the capital as an unknown youth.
¾ Alexander I pursued him, but it would never have occurred to the tsar to indulge in personal explanations with him.
¾ His return was solemn.
¾ The Tsar talked with him longer than with any of his dignitaries, and after the audience he publicly called him the smartest man in Russia.
¾ Moscow has just crowned an emperor, now it is crowning a poet.
¾ Moscow caressed Pushkin.
¾ They vied with each other to invite him to houses.
¾ Dozens of new acquaintances, completely unexpected!
¾ At all balls, the first attention is given to Pushkin.
¾ In the mazurka and cotillion the ladies chose him continuously...
Dance Mazurka (Polonaise)
Vyazemsky: Dear Zinaida Alexandrovna! I received your note. (is reading)“Dear prince, come to me by all means... If you catch the moth Pushkin, bring him to me...”
Zinaida Volkonskaya: Pyotr Andreevich, he is already here.
Pushkin:"Boris Godunov". Kremlin Chambers. 1598, February 20. Princes Shuisky and Vorotynsky.
We are dressed up to know the city together,
But it seems we have no one to watch:
Moscow is empty; following the patriarch
All the people went to the monastery.
How do you think the anxiety will end?
Z. Volkonskaya, Vyazemsky and the lady.
Z.V.: It is impossible to convey the effect this reading had on all of us. To this day, the blood begins to move at just one memory.
IN.: We heard a simple, clear, intelligible and at the same time, literate, fascinating speech.
Lady: We listened to the first apparitions quietly and calmly, or, better to say, in some bewilderment. But the further it went, the more intense the sensations became. The chronicler's scene with Gregory simply stunned everyone. I can’t even tell you what happened to me...
(Pushkin finishes reading)
Pushkin: Why are you silent? Shout: Long live Tsar Dimitri Ivanovich! The people are silent.
(Pause. Silence. Only then applause).
Everyone leaves.
Pushkin in the foreground. Emperor in the background
Pushkin: Dear Sir Alexander Khristoforovich, I actually read my tragedy to some persons (of course, not out of disobedience, but only because I poorly understood the highest will of the sovereign). I submit as a duty to forward it to Your Excellency in the same form as I read it.
Emperor: His Imperial Majesty is pleased that you take up the subject of the education of youth. You can use all your leisure time, you are given complete and complete freedom when and how to present your thoughts and considerations.
(Pushkin and the Emperor leave)
¾ Pushkin understood that this was a test of his trustworthiness.
On November 2, he left for Mikhailovskoye. In September he left there in such a hurry that, of course, he did not take the necessary things. He should go to the village to settle his affairs, and only after that think about life in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
¾ There was a more compelling reason: it was necessary to complete the royal task, and for this it was necessary to work in private, to think everything over - the hustle and bustle of Moscow interfered with the work.
¾ There is some kind of poetic pleasure in returning free to an abandoned prison.
¾ Pushkin stayed in the village for two or three weeks. The note “On Public Education” was ready.
¾ When the king read it, he expressed displeasure.
¾ The paper was put “under the cloth”. And secret surveillance of the poet intensified.
¾ Between the “tsar of the Russian land” and the “tsar of Russian poetry” the figure of Benckendorff grew. Pushkin, like a schoolboy, had to give an account of his every action.
¾ The reprimands followed one after another: for reading the unpublished “Boris Godunov”, for publishing the dubious “Anchar”, for an unauthorized trip to the Caucasus.
¾ There is some kind of homelessness, disorder in Pushkin’s life of these years, with all its splendor, noise, enthusiastic applause from admirers and many friends.
¾ Wandering along the “high roads”; hotels, inns, short stops with friends; no corner of your own, no saving solitude; persecution of gendarmes; worries about a piece of bread...
¾ Then marriage, return to service, new endless troubles, worries, financial difficulties, an unsuccessful attempt to publish a magazine, persecution.
¾ More and more often, his dreams carried him into village life, into the silence of Mikhailovsky and Trigorsky.
¾ But in order to leave for your family estate, you again need the permission of the emperor.
¾ 10 years ago he wrote similar petitions to escape from Mikhailovsky exile, and now he himself strives to go there.
Pushkin:
Over the years
Under your canopy, Mikhailovsky groves,
I appeared; when is your first time
Saw me then I was
Cheerful young men, carelessly, greedily
I was just starting to live; years
We rushed by, and you took in me
Tired alien; I still
I was young, but already fate and passions
I was exhausted by the unequal struggle.
I saw the enemy in a dispassionate judge,
The traitor is in the comrade who shook
I have a hand at the feast - everyone is in front of me
Seemed like a traitor or an enemy to me.
Lost in fruitless trials
There was my inexperienced youth,
And stormy feelings boiled in the heart
And hatred and dreams of pale revenge.
But here I am a mysterious shield
Holy providence dawned,
Poetry as a comforting angel
She saved me, and I was resurrected in soul.
Other participants:
I visited again
that corner of the earth where I spent
an exile for two years unnoticed.
Ten years have passed since then - and a lot
Changed my life.
And myself, obedient to the general law,
I have changed - but here again,
The past embraces me vividly,
And it seems the evening was still wandering
I'm in these Groves.
Here is the disgraced house
where I lived as my poor nanny.
The old lady is no longer there, already behind the wall
I don’t hear her heavy steps,
Not her painstaking watch.
Into a wooded hill above which is often
I sat motionless and looked
To the lake, remembering with sadness
Other shores, other waves...
Between the fields of golden green pastures
It is blue and spreads widely,
Through its unknown waters
A fisherman swims and pulls
Poor net. We'll slop along the banks
The villages are scattered behind them
The mill crooked, its wings were struggling
Moves in the wind...
Here on the border
Grandfather's possessions, in that place,
Where the road goes up the mountain,
Rugged by the rains, three pines,
One stands at a distance, the other two
Close to each other. Here when they're past
I rode on horseback in the moonlight
The rustling of their peaks is a familiar sound
I was greeted. Along that road
Now I have gone and in front of me
I saw them again, they are still the same,
Still the same rustling sound familiar to the ear -
But near the roots they are outdated
(where once everything was empty, bare)
Now the young grove has grown.
Green family, bushes crowding
Under their canopy they are like children. And in the distance
One of their sullen comrades stands,
Like an old bachelor and around him
Everything is still empty.
Hello tribe
Young, unfamiliar. Not me
I will see your mighty late age,
When you outgrow my friends
And you will cover their old head
From the eyes of a passerby. But let my grandson
Hears your welcoming noise when
Returning from a friendly conversation,
Full of cheerful and pleasant thoughts,
He will pass by you in the darkness of the night
And he will remember me.
¾ We return to leave.
¾ And we leave to return.
Mikhailovskie Groves
I don’t remember which poet said: “Poetry is everywhere, even in the grass. You just have to bend down to pick it up.”
It was an early morning. It was raining. The cart drove into a centuries-old pine forest. There was something white in the grass on the side of the road.
I jumped off the cart, bent down and saw a plank overgrown with bindweed. There was an inscription on it in black paint. I pulled away the wet stems of bindweed and read the almost forgotten words: “In different years, under your canopy, Mikhailovsky groves, I appeared.”
What is this? - I asked the driver.
Mikhailovskoye,” he smiled. - This is where the land of Alexander Sergeich begins. There are signs like this everywhere.
Then I came across such tablets in the most unexpected places: in the unmown meadows above Sorotya, on the sandy slopes on the road from Mikhailovskoye to Trigorskoye, on the shores of lakes Malentsa and Petrovskoye - simple Pushkin stanzas sounded everywhere from the grass, from the heather, from the dry strawberries. Only leaves, birds and the sky listened to them - the pale and shy Pskov sky. “Farewell, Trigorskoe, where joy met me so many times.” "I see two lakes, azure plains."
One day I got lost in a walnut thicket. A barely noticeable path was lost between the bushes. A barefoot girl with a bag of blueberries must have run along this path once a week. But here, in this thicket, I saw a white board. It contained an excerpt from Pushkin’s letter to Osipova: “Is it possible for me to buy Savkino? I would build a hut here, put my books and come to spend several months in the circle of my old and good friends.”
Why this inscription ended up here, I could not guess. But soon the path led me to the village of Savkino. There, waves of ripe oats approached the very roofs of the low huts. There was not a soul to be seen in the village; only a black dog with gray eyes barked at me from behind the fence and the stumpy pines rustled quietly around on the hills.
I traveled almost the entire country, saw many places, amazing and heart-tugging, but none of them possessed such sudden lyrical power as Mikhailovskoe. It was deserted and quiet there. There were clouds above. Below them, across green hills, across lakes, along the paths of a hundred-year-old park, shadows passed. Only the hum of bees broke the silence.
Bees collected honey in a high linden alley, where Pushkin met Anna Kern. The linden trees have already faded. A little cheerful old woman often sat on a bench under the linden trees with a book in her hands. An antique turquoise brooch was pinned to the collar of her blouse. The old lady was reading “Cities and Years” by Fedin. This was the granddaughter of Anna Kern - Aglaya Pyzhevskaya, a former provincial dramatic actress.
She remembered her grandmother and willingly talked about her. She didn't love her grandmother. And it was hard to love this crazy hundred-year-old woman who quarreled with her granddaughters over the best piece at dinner. The granddaughters were stronger than the grandmother, they always took away the best pieces from her, and Anna Kern cried with resentment at the vile girls.
The first time I met my granddaughter Kern was on a loose slope where three famous pines once grew. They are gone now. Even before the revolution, two pine trees were burned by lightning, and the third was cut down at night by a miller-thief from the village of Zimari.
The workers of the Pushkin Nature Reserve decided to plant three new young pines in place of the old ones. It was difficult to find the place of the old pines: not even stumps remained from them. Then they called together the old collective farmers to determine exactly where these pines grew.
The old men argued all day. The decision should have been unanimous, but three old men from Deriglazov were contrary. When the Deriglazovskys were finally persuaded, the old men began to pace the slopes, estimate, and only in the evening they said:
Here! This is the place! You can plant.
When I met Kern's granddaughter near three newly planted young pine trees, she was mending a fence broken by a cow.
The old woman told me, laughing at herself, that she had taken root in these Pushkin places like a cat, and could not leave for Leningrad. And it's high time to leave. In Leningrad, she was in charge of a small library on Kamenny Island. She lived alone, she had no children or relatives.
No, no,” she said, “don’t talk me out of it.” I will definitely come here to die. These places fascinated me so much that I don’t want to live anywhere else. Every day I come up with something to do to delay my departure. Now I go around the villages, writing down everything that the old people say about Pushkin. Only old people lie,” she added sadly. - Yesterday one told how Pushkin was summoned to a meeting of state powers and asked: should he fight Napoleon or not? And Pushkin says to them: “Where should you go to fight, venerable state powers, when your men wear the same trousers all their lives. You won’t be able to handle it!”
Granddaughter Kern was tireless. I met her first in Mikhailovskoye, then in Trigorskoye, then in the Voronichi churchyard, on the outskirts of Trigorskoye, where I lived in an empty, cool hut. She wandered everywhere on foot - in the rain and in the heat, at dawn and at dusk.
She talked about her past life, about famous provincial directors and drunken tragedians (these stories left the impression that in the old days only tragedians were talented) and, finally, about her novels.
“Don’t you see that I’m such a fussy old lady,” she said. - I was a cheerful, independent and beautiful woman. I could leave behind interesting memoirs, but I still can’t get around to writing them. I’ll finish writing down the old people’s stories and get ready for the summer holiday.
The summer holiday takes place in Mikhailovsky every year on Pushkin’s birthday. Hundreds of collective farm carts, decorated with ribbons and Valdai bells, converge on the meadow beyond Soroty, opposite Pushkin Park.
Bonfires are lit in the meadows and round dances are held. They sing old songs and new ditties:
Our pines and lakes
Very wonderful.
We are Mikhailovsky Groves
We take care of it carefully.
All local collective farmers are proud of their fellow countryman Pushkin and take care of the reserve no worse than their own vegetable gardens and fields.
I lived in Voronichi with the caretaker of Trigorsky Park, Nikolai. The hostess threw dishes all day and scolded her husband: she badly needs a man who has grown attached to this park day and night, runs home for an hour or two, and even then sends his old father-in-law or the boys to the park to watch over him.
One day Nikolai came home to drink tea. Before he had time to take off his hat, the disheveled housewife burst in from the yard.
Go to the park, crazy! - she screamed. “I was rinsing my clothes on the river, and I saw some little Leningrad kid running straight into the park.” No matter how much trouble he causes!
What can he do? - I asked. Nikolai jumped out of the threshold.
“You never know,” he answered as he walked. - It’s not even an hour before he breaks another branch.
But everything ended well. “Spanenok” turned out to be the famous artist Nathan Altman, and Nikolai calmed down.
There are three huge parks in the Pushkinsky Nature Reserve: Mikhailovsky, Trigorsky and Petrovsky. They are all different from each other just as their owners were different.
Trigorsky Park is saturated with sun. For some reason this impression remains from him even on cloudy days. The light lies in golden glades on the cheerful grass, green linden trees, cliffs above Soroty and on the bench of Eugene Onegin. These sunspots make the depths of the park, immersed in summer smoke, seem mysterious and unreal. This park seems to be created for family holidays, friendly conversations, dancing by candlelight under black tents of leaves, girlish laughter and playful confessions. It is full of Pushkins and Yazykovs.
Mikhailovsky Park is a hermit's shelter. This is a park where it's hard to have fun. It is designed for solitude and reflection. He is a little gloomy with his centuries-old spruce trees, tall, silent and imperceptibly passes into centuries-old and deserted forests as majestic as himself. Only on the outskirts of the park, through the darkness that is always present under the arches of old trees, will a clearing suddenly open, overgrown with shiny buttercups, and a pond with quiet water. Dozens of small frogs pour into it.
The main charm of Mikhailovsky Park is in the cliff above Sorotya and in the house of nanny Arina Rodionovna, the only house left from the time of Pushkin. The house is so small and touching that it’s even scary to climb onto its dilapidated porch. And from the cliff above Sorot you can see two blue lakes, a wooded hill and our eternal modest sky with clouds sleeping on it.
In Petrovsky Park there was the house of Pushkin’s grandfather - the obstinate and gloomy Hannibal. Petrovsky Park is clearly visible from Mikhailovsky beyond Lake Kuchane (aka Petrovskoye). It is black, damp, overgrown with burdocks, you enter it as if you were entering a cellar. Hobbled horses graze in the burdocks. Nettles choke the flowers, and in the evenings the park groans with the hubbub of frogs. Husky jackdaws nest in the tops of dark trees.
Once, on the way back from Petrovskoye to Mikhailovskoye, I got lost in the forest ravines. Streams muttered under the roots, and small lakes glowed at the bottom of the ravine. The sun was setting. The still air was reddish and hot.
From one of the forest clearings I saw a tall multi-colored thunderstorm. It rose above Mikhailovsky, growing in the evening sky, like a huge medieval city, surrounded by white towers. The dull thunder of a cannon came from her, and the wind suddenly rustled in the clearing and died down in the thickets.
It was difficult to imagine that along these simple roads with traces of bast shoes, over anthills and gnarled roots, Pushkin’s riding horse walked and easily carried its silent rider.
I remember forests, lakes, parks and the sky. This is almost the only thing that has survived here from Pushkin’s times. The local nature is untouched by anyone. She is very well taken care of. When it was necessary to supply electricity to the reserve, they decided to run the wires underground so as not to install poles. The pillars would immediately destroy the Pushkin-like charm of these deserted places.
In the Voronichi churchyard, where I lived, there was a dilapidated wooden church. Everyone called her the little church. It was impossible to call this unkempt church overgrown to the roof with yellow lichens, barely noticeable through the thicket of elderberries, anything else. In this church, Pushkin served a memorial service for George Byron.
The church porch was covered with resinous pine shavings. A school was built next to the church.
Only once during the entire time I lived in Voronichy did a hunchbacked priest in a torn straw hat hobble towards the church. He carefully leaned the walnut fishing rods against the linden tree and opened the heavy lock on the church doors. On that day, a hundred-year-old man died in Voronichi, and they brought him to the funeral service. After the funeral service, the priest again took his fishing rods and trudged to Sorot to catch chubs and carp.
The carpenters who were building the school looked after him, and one of them said:
The spiritual class has been destroyed! Under Alexander Sergeich, there was not a priest in Voronichi, but a pure brigadier general. The priest was harmful. No wonder Alexander Sergeich came up with the nickname “Skoda”. And look at this one - he’s just Kuzka, one hat dangling over the grass.
Where did their strength go? - muttered another carpenter. - Where is their silk velvet now?
The carpenters wiped their sweaty foreheads, clattered their axes, and fresh, fragrant shavings rained down to the ground.
In Trigorsky Park I met a tall man several times. He wandered along remote paths, stopped among the bushes and looked at the leaves for a long time. Sometimes I would pick a stem of grass and examine it through a small magnifying glass.
Once near the pond, near the ruins of the Osinovs’ house, heavy rain caught me. He suddenly and cheerfully made a noise from the sky. I hid under a linden tree, and a tall man slowly came there. We started talking. This man turned out to be a geography teacher from Cherepovets.
You must be not only a geographer, but also a botanist? - I told him. - I saw how you looked at the plants.
The tall man chuckled.
No, I just like to look for something new in my surroundings. This is my third summer here, but I don’t know even a fraction of what can be learned about these places.
He spoke quietly, reluctantly. The conversation ended.
The second time we met on the shore of Lake Malenets, at the foot of a wooded hill. The pine trees rustled like in a dream. Under their crowns the forest half-light swayed in the wind. A tall man lay in the grass and looked at the blue feather of a jay through a magnifying glass. I sat down next to him, and he, grinning and stopping often, told me the story of his attachment to Mikhailovsky.
My father served as an accountant in a hospital in Vologda,” he said. - In general, he was a pitiful old man - a drunkard and a braggart. Even in times of desperate need, he wore a washed, starched shirtfront and was proud of his origins. He was a Russified Litvin from a family of some Jagiellons. Under his drunken hand, he spanked me mercilessly. There were six of us children. We all lived in the same room, in dirt and disorder, in constant quarrels and humiliation. My childhood was disgusting. When my father got drunk, he began to read Pushkin’s poems and sob. Tears dripped onto his starched shirtfront, he wrinkled it, tore it and shouted that Pushkin was the only ray of sunshine in the life of such damned beggars as we. He did not remember a single Pushkin poem to the end. He just started reading, but never finished. This angered me, even though I was only eight years old at the time and could barely read printed letters. I decided to read Pushkin’s poems to the end and went to the city library. I stood at the door for a long time until the librarian called out to me and asked what I needed.
Pushkin,” I said rudely.
Do you want a fairy tale? - she asked.
No, not fairy tales, but Pushkin,” I repeated stubbornly.
She gave me a thick volume. I sat down in the corner of the window, opened the book and cried. I cried because only now, having opened the book, I realized that I couldn’t read it, that I still couldn’t read at all, and that behind these lines was hiding a tempting world about which the drunken father was crying. According to my father, I then knew by heart only two lines from Pushkin: “I see a distant shore, magical lands of the midday,” but this was enough for me to imagine a life different from ours. Imagine a person who has been in solitary confinement for decades. Finally, they arranged for him to escape, they got the keys to the prison gates, and now he, approaching the gate, behind which there is freedom, and people, and forests, and rivers, suddenly becomes convinced that he does not know how to open the lock with this key. The huge world is noisy just a centimeter behind the iron sheets of the door, but you need to know a trivial secret to open the lock, and this secret is unknown to the fugitive. He hears an alarm behind him, knows that he is about to be captured and that until his death everything will be the same as it was: a dirty window under the ceiling of the cell, the stench of rats and despair. I experienced approximately the same thing over Pushkin’s volume. The librarian noticed that I was crying, came up to me, took the book and said:
What are you doing, boy? What are you crying about? After all, you’re holding the book upside down!
She laughed and I left. Since then I fell in love with Pushkin. This is the third year I have been coming to Mikhailovskoye.
The tall man fell silent. We lay on the grass for a long time. Beyond the bends of Soroti, in the meadows, a horn sang barely audibly.
A few kilometers from Mikhailovsky, on a high hillock, stands the Svyatogorsk Monastery. Pushkin is buried under the wall of the monastery. Around the monastery there is a village - Pushkinskiye Gory.
The village is littered with hay. Day and night, carts slowly rumble along the huge cobblestones: they are transporting dry hay to the Pushkin Mountains. The warehouses and shops smell of matting, smoked fish and cheap chintz. Chintz smells like wood glue.
The only tavern rings with the thin but continuous clink of glasses and teapots. There is steam up to the ceiling, and in this steam, sweaty collective farmers and black old men from the times of Ivan the Terrible are leisurely drinking tea with crusts of gray bread. Where these old people come from here - parchment-like, with piercing eyes, with a dull, croaking voice, similar to holy fools - no one knows. But there are many of them. There must have been even more of them under Pushkin, when he wrote “Boris Godunov” here.
To get to Pushkin’s grave you have to walk through the deserted monastery courtyards and climb a weathered stone staircase. The stairs lead to the top of the hill, to the dilapidated walls of the cathedral.
Under these walls, above a steep cliff, in the shade of linden trees, on the ground covered with yellowed petals, Pushkin’s grave lies white.
A short inscription “Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin”, desolation, the sound of carts below under the slope and clouds pondering in the low sky - that’s all. Here is the end of a brilliant, excited and brilliant life. Here is a grave known to all mankind, here is that “sweet limit” that Pushkin spoke about during his lifetime. It smells like weeds, bark, settled summer.
And here, on this simple grave, where the hoarse crows of roosters can be heard, it becomes especially clear that Pushkin was our first national poet.
He is buried in rough sandy soil where flax and nettles grow, in a remote folk area. From his grave hill one can see the dark forests of Mikhailovsky and distant thunderstorms that dance in a circle over the bright Sorotya, over Savkin, over Trigorsky, over the modest and vast fields that bring peace and wealth to his renewed sweet land.
Notes
Written after Paustovsky’s trip to the north-west of the country to Novgorod, Staraya Russa, Pskov, Mikhailovskoye. First published in the magazine “Krasnaya Nov”, 1938, No. 7. First published as a separate publication in the Ogonyok library in 1941.