Russian noblewoman Anna Petrovna Kern would not have remained in Russian history if Pushkin had not dedicated his famous poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” to her. The real life of Anna Kern, due to her numerous love affairs and affairs, was very flawed.
INVENTOR OF BOW CUBES
In fairy tales, elderly fairies plot intrigues against young beauties. In Anna's life, her father played the role of an evil genius. Pyotr Markovich Poltoratsky had the tough character of a Little Russian Cossack, and his wife Ekaterina Ivanovna was a quiet, sickly woman, inferior to her formidable husband in everything. She could not protect herself or her newborn child. “My father began to play tyrants on me from the cradle,” wrote Anna Petrovna. “When I used to cry because I was hungry or wasn’t quite healthy, he would throw me into a dark room and leave me in it until I fell asleep crying from fatigue.” Of course, Pyotr Markovich cannot be portrayed as a notorious tyrant. He was both a hospitable host and a cheerful joker, but no one in the family could contradict his opinion.
The Poltoratsky family lived on an estate near the city of Lubny, Poltava province. The provincial town did not correspond to the creative flight of imagination of Pyotr Markovich. One after another, projects of an all-Russian scale were born in his head. In 1809, Poltoratsky proposed to the government an original method for producing dry meat concentrate. The liquid that remained after boiling the lard was dried in special forms, and magnificent bouillon cubes were obtained. Production cost a penny, but the benefits for supplying the army were enormous. Emperor Alexander I awarded the landowner Poltoratsky an order for a useful invention, but according to the ever-present Russian habit, the matter was shelved. Then Pyotr Markovich decided to act at his own peril and risk. Having spent huge amounts of money, he “bought livestock, cooked a broth that was supposed to feed the army during the war, took it to St. Petersburg to sell it to the treasury, but did not want to grease the receivers, and the broth was rejected. He took it to Moscow and stored it there. Napoleon came and ate the broth."
This is how Anna Petrovna ironically recalled her father’s broth adventure.
Some of Pyotr Markovich's ideas were far ahead of their time. Poltoratsky tried to gather a company of investors to build luxury apartments in Kyiv, where land was then being given away for free. Pyotr Markovich persuaded the owners of future apartments to give him money for construction. The scam ended in court. Without any lawsuits, but with huge financial losses, the breeding of sea fish in a local pond ended. The dream of getting rich by producing butter in the form of grainy caviar burst like a soap bubble. However, Pyotr Markovich’s adventurous ardor did not subside, and as a result, the family almost went bankrupt.
Anna Kern in the 1840s
“BATTLE OF POLTAVA” GENERALS KERN
Meanwhile, Anna “dreamed in the groves and behind books, danced at balls, listened to the praise of strangers and the censure of relatives.” Pyotr Markovich kept his daughter strictly. Anna “was terrified of him and did not dare to contradict him even mentally.” Pyotr Markovich had a mature plan for his daughter’s future, from which he did not want to deviate under any circumstances. Anna had to marry a general, so young people without ranks and titles were driven away from her daughter like annoying flies. If at the ball Anna danced twice with the same gentleman, then Pyotr Markovich brought his daughter to tears with reproaches. Every dance evening ended in a huge scandal. And then a suitable contender for the hand and heart of seventeen-year-old Anna was found. The 37th Jaeger Regiment was stationed in Lubny, where Ermolai Fedorovich Kern served - a “natural Russian German”, a military general, a hero of the War of 1812, a holder of many orders, and also a man in his prime, only 52 years old.
The declaration of love was short, military-style. General Kern asked Anna:
- Am I disgusting to you?
“No,” Anna answered and ran out of the room.
Anna Poltoratskaya and General Kern got married on January 8, 1817. Why did an elderly man, who proudly called himself a “soldier,” implying that military service was the main work of his life, marry a young girl who did not love him? The answer is simple: “All ages are submissive to love.” Perhaps the general, gray in battle, fell in love... fell in love, just as Pushkin and many other men who worshiped the beauty and charm of the “genius of pure beauty” would later fall in love. However, General Kern did not deserve a response. "His
It’s impossible to love, I’m not even given the consolation of respecting him,” wrote General Kern. “I’ll tell you straight, I almost hate him.”
Several months passed after the joyless wedding, and Anna Kern wiped the nose of everyone: her despot father, her hated husband, and the Little Russian nobility. In Poltava, a review of troops took place in the presence of Emperor Alexander I, and then there was a ball, obligatory in such cases. Anna Petrovna attended the celebration with her friend. And then a terrible embarrassment occurred: Anna Petrovna noticed that the lovely heads of most of the ladies were decorated with coiffures with a feather. It turned out that this is the kind of headdress that the emperor likes. A blue flower with silver leaves was stuck into Anna Petrovna's hair. Without fashionable coiffure, Kern felt like a commander on the battlefield without a main caliber weapon! However, in the “Battle of Poltava” for the attention of Alexander I, General Kern won. Chatting sweetly, the emperor danced a Polish dance with her.
Alexander I’s passion for fleeting romances during “business trips” was well known. He could be carried away by both the queen and the stationmaster's wife. To receive the attention of the autocrat was considered the greatest honor not only for a woman, but also for her husband. The day after the ball, the governor of Poltava, Tutolmin, came to congratulate General Kern on his wife’s success. The Emperor sent Ermolai Fedorovich fifty thousand rubles. It is not difficult to guess that the rewards were intended not for the gallant general, but for the lovely general’s wife. It is curious that General Barclay de Tolly also received 50 thousand rubles for participating in the Battle of Borodino.
In the spring of 1818, General Kern quarreled with his immediate superior, General Saken. Saken complained to the emperor about Ermolai Fedorovich, and General Kern fell into disgrace. Only the intervention of the lovely general’s wife could resolve the misunderstanding. Alexander I still had affection for her and even agreed to be the absentee godfather of Catherine’s newborn daughter. As a gift to the young mother, the emperor sent a diamond clasp worth six thousand rubles. At the beginning of 1819, the Kern couple went to St. Petersburg. Alexander I loved to walk around the capital alone, without accompanying persons or guards. The routes of his favorite walks were known to all St. Petersburg residents. For several days Anna Petrovna came to the embankment of the Fontanka River and, shivering from the St. Petersburg cold, waited to meet the emperor, but she never saw him. “Chance brought me a glimpse of this happiness: I was riding in a carriage quite quietly across the Police Bridge, suddenly I saw the Tsar almost at the very window of the carriage, which I managed to lower, bow low and deeply to him and receive a bow and a smile, which proved that he recognized me.” . A deep bow was enough for General Kern to receive an appointment as a division commander in Dorpat.
In St. Petersburg, Anna Petrovna often visited her aunt Elizaveta Markovna Olenina and met many St. Petersburg celebrities. “At one of the evenings at the Olenins’, I met Pushkin and did not notice him,” Anna Petrovna recalled, “my attention was absorbed in the charades that were being played out then and in which Krylov took part... At dinner, Pushkin sat down... behind me and tried to draw attention to attracting my attention with flattering exclamations, such as: “Is it possible to be so pretty!” Anna Petrovna remained cold to the poet’s compliments, because she was in love with the emperor and worshiped him “as the highest adored being.”
In September 1819, Anna Petrovna had the opportunity to see Alexander I again. At a ball in Riga, the emperor danced the third dance with General Kern, and after reviewing the troops, the tsar bowed to all the ladies present. Anna Petrovna remarked: “...he bowed to me in particular.”
“OH GOD, HAVE COMPLEXITY ON ME!”
Anna Petrovna called her married life a miserable existence. The husband’s behavior was annoying to the point of disgust: he “either sleeps, or is on exercises, or smokes.” Every word the general said insulted the delicate female nature: “The cab driver even has more sublime thoughts.” She considered her principles and thoughts to be unattainably sublime. In July 1820, having learned about the unrest in France, the general’s wife was delighted: “They say that this could lead to war. How good it would be!” Of course, war is such a delight: a hateful husband will disappear out of sight, and if you’re lucky, you can end up a widow! Then she will unite with the object of her mad passion. Anna Petrovna called him Rosehip. The name of the officer who hid under the bush of a pseudonym remained unknown. Rosehip served in Little Russia, and Anna was burning with love in Pskov and over the summer of 1820 she wrote 76 pages of feverish romantic delirium: “I bought myself a dress in Orsha for 80 rubles, but only it has short sleeves, and I don’t want to wear it until I won’t make long sleeves. I don’t want to show my beautiful arms, lest it lead to all sorts of adventures, but that’s over now, and I will adore Rosehip until my last breath... Oh, what a beautiful, what an exalted soul he has! "
General Kern considered herself an irresistible conqueror of hearts: “I just took a quick glance in the mirror... I am now so beautiful, so good-looking,” “The Governor is very pretty, but... her beauty fades when you see me.” After the regimental ball, Anna Petrovna boasted to her friend: “I won’t describe my victories to you. I didn’t notice them and listened to the coolly ambiguous, unfinished evidence of surprise and admiration.” Only General Kern was not delighted with his wife, saying that by her grace “I must wipe away my tears with my fists.”
In July 1820, Anna Petrovna discovered that she was pregnant again. She honestly admitted that she did not want to have children and could not love them because of her insurmountable hostility towards her husband. General Kern allowed his pregnant wife to go to Lubny to live with her parents. It is quite possible that Anna Petrovna met the incomparable Rosehip. However, romantic feelings often fade when a man notices a woman's growing belly. At the beginning of 1821, Kern gave birth to a daughter named Anna. Motherhood did not bring joy, the soul was looking for love, and the body was thirsting for passion...
THE BIG LOVE BANG THEORY
In all reference publications, Arkady Gavrilovich Rodzianko is called a poet, but not a single poem of his has ever been published. In St. Petersburg, Rodzianko served in the military, dabbled in poetry, and was accepted into the Green Lamp literary society, where he met Pushkin. In 1821, Rodzianko returned to Little Russia to his estate, located near Lubna. A handsome single landowner became the neighbor of the lovely General Kern, who had once again left her husband. On December 8, 1824, Pushkin wrote to Rodzianko: “Knowing your amorousness and extraordinary talents in all respects, I consider your work done or half done.” Not only was the deed done, but in the spring of 1825 the relationship had already begun to weigh heavily on the lovers. Anna Petrovna thought: maybe her husband is not so bad, but marriage has its advantages? General Kern was a respected lady, the queen of balls, and with the rank of a retired wife she was not even invited to a decent house. It is quite possible that the money simply ran out, because Anna Petrovna was completely financially dependent on her husband.
In mid-June 1825, Kern went to her husband, who at that time was the commandant of Riga. On the way, she decided to stop at the Trigorskoye estate to see Aunt Praskovya Aleksandrovna Osipova for advice on how to persuade the general to a truce. Trigorskoye resembled some planetary system unknown to science. Pushkin, like the Sun, is in the center, and the lady planets revolved around, experiencing the force of his gravity. Osipova’s eldest daughter, ugly and whiny Anna, loved Pushkin to the point of unconsciousness. Alexander Sergeevich courted Anna, but looked with lust at Osipova’s second daughter, the “half-airy maiden” Eupraxia. Praskovya Alexandrovna was distantly related to Pushkin and, of course, loved him in a related way, but somehow suspiciously strongly. And then Anna Kern appears, and in the tense atmosphere of universal falling in love, a Big Love Explosion occurs! The universe will never be the same: to that which is indestructible, unshakable and eternal, brilliant lines will be added...
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
The poems were written after a walk in Mikhailovskoye on June 18, 1825. The next day, the servants ran around Osipova’s house like crazy, packing things for the road. Praskovya Alexandrovna took her daughters and Anna Petrovna to Riga out of harm’s way, but Pushkin’s letters flew after her: playful, jealous, full of passionate declarations of love for the “divine” Anna. Praskovya Alexandrovna accidentally read one of the letters and was horrified. She reconciled her niece with her husband, and Kern corresponds with Pushkin! Osipova immediately left Riga, having quarreled with Anna Petrovna.
General Kern capitulated to his sweet little wife, and the couple lived together again. However, Anna Petrovna was irresistibly drawn to Pushkin. An excuse was needed for a trip to Trigorskoye, and Kern told her husband that she wanted to make peace with her aunt. The general expressed a desire to accompany his wife. In October 1825, the Kern couple arrived in Trigorskoye. Anna Petrovna saw Pushkin several times. “He really didn’t get along with his husband, but with me he was again as before and even more tender, although in fits and starts, afraid of all the eyes turned on him and me.”
“THE WHORE OF BABYLON,” OR “AFTER DINNER MUSTARD”
The Kern couple stayed in Trigorskoye for several days and returned to Riga. Anna Petrovna immediately began a whirlwind romance with her cousin Alexei Wulf. And then (“to my misfortune”) I discovered again that I was pregnant. Who was the child's father? General Kern? Pushkin? Wulf? It seems that Anna Petrovna herself did not know for sure. Kern's further behavior had nothing to do with morality, common sense and logic, even feminine. At the beginning of 1826, pregnant, without her own means of support, Kern left her husband and went to St. Petersburg. In the capital, Anna Petrovna unexpectedly became close to Pushkin’s parents and even lived in their house for some time. In the spring of 1826, the Kern couple’s daughter, four-year-old Anechka, died. Anna Petrovna did not go to the funeral, citing ill health. However, ill health and pregnancy did not prevent Anna Petrovna from making new connections. Pushkin's sister Olga claimed that "Aneta Kern is charming, despite her big belly." Indeed, a big belly did not interfere with a small romance with a certain Boltin, and the next victim on the love front was Pushkin’s younger brother Lev Sergeevich.
On July 7, 1826, exactly nine months after Anna Petrovna visited Trigorskoye for the second time, she gave birth to a daughter, named Olga in honor of Pushkin’s sister. The romance with Lev Pushkin flared up with renewed vigor. Lev Sergeevich, following the example of his older brother, gifted Kern with poetry:
How can you not go crazy?
Listening to you, admiring you...
Fortunately, Lev Pushkin did not have time to go crazy; he was declared fit for military service and left for the Caucasus in March 1827. Rumors about Kern’s adventures reached Mikhailovsky, and Alexander Sergeevich, in a letter to Alexei Vulf, asked a caustic question: “What is the Babylonian harlot Anna Petrovna doing?” Subsequently, several generations of Pushkinists stood up to defend the honor and dignity of the “genius of pure beauty,” scientifically proving that she was not a harlot, and Pushkin was just joking. However, Anna Kern did not in any way correspond to the image of the disembodied Muse. Anna Petrovna desperately flirted with the unknown student Alexander Nikitenko and the famous mathematician Pyotr Bazin. Nikitenko was young and from Kern’s attention he walked as if “foggy and as if in a state of slight intoxication.” One day Anna Petrovna invited a poor student to a party, and Nikitenko sobered up from what he saw: “General Bazin’s address is an example of social ease: he almost sat on Madame Kern’s lap, while speaking, he constantly touched her shoulder, her curls, almost grabbed her waist . Surprising and not funny!”
General Kern served in Smolensk, and heard a lot about the behavior of his wife, who, in his words, “indulged in prodigal life.” The general was reluctant, but continued to send money to his unlucky wife. However, Anna Petrovna was always strapped for money and was very happy when she managed to rent an inexpensive, cozy apartment on Vladimirsky Prospekt. And the neighbors turned out to be simply wonderful: Pushkin’s lyceum friend Baron Anton Antonovich Delvig and his wife Sofya Mikhailovna. On Wednesdays and Sundays, the capital's intellectual elite gathered at the Delvigs'. Anna Petrovna enjoyed the spiritual life and attention of famous St. Petersburgers, but she paid for Baron Delvig’s hospitality with black ingratitude. Anna Petrovna literally pushed Delvig’s wife into the arms of her regular lover Alexei Wulf. Delvig sensed something was wrong and took his wife to Kharkov. However, Wulf did not remain idle. Her younger sister Liza Poltoratskaya settled in Anna Petrovna’s apartment. Wulf began to corrupt the girl, “leading her gradually through all the pleasures of sensuality, but without touching virginity.” Kern knew everything, saw everything and did not object. In turn, Wulf did not prevent Anna Petrovna from teaching love lessons to the 18-year-old ensign and from having an intimate relationship with Baron Vrevsky and Alexei Illichevsky. In honor of Anna Petrovna, former lyceum student Illichevsky burst into poetry with a light gastronomic overtone:
You are neither a widow nor a maiden,
And my love for you
After dinner, mustard.
At that time, it became fashionable among loving men to compile so-called Don Juan lists. Sergei Aleksandrovich Sobolevsky surpassed everyone, who added the names of five hundred women to the list of his love victories. Among them was Anna Kern. Sobolevsky, a man of the broadest erudition, the author of caustic epigrams and a tireless reveler, was a close friend of Pushkin. In February 1828, Sergei Alexandrovich left for Moscow, and Pushkin wrote to a friend: “Careless! You don’t write to me anything about the 2100 rubles I owe you, but you write about M-de Kern, which, with the help of God, I the other day you...” Of course, Pushkin did not imagine that his friendly correspondence would be read “by his proud grandson the Slavs, and the Finn, and the now wild Tungus, and the friend of the steppes, the Kalmyk.” Alexander Sergeevich wrote without looking back for eternity. How he felt and how he treated M-de Kern with her greatly tarnished reputation is what he wrote.
The general’s insatiable love appetite surprised even the seasoned Wulf: “1830 September 1st. Anna Petrovna is still delirious about love, to the point that she would like to get married to her lover. I marvel at her!.. Fifteen years of almost continuous misfortune, humiliation, the loss of everything that society values a woman with, could not disappoint this heart or imagination?
In 1832, after the death of her mother, Anna Petrovna tried to sue her relatives for part of the family fortune, but lost the case. In 1833, her youngest daughter Olenka died. After the death of his daughter, General Kern stopped sending Anna Petrovna money. In 1828, Baron Delvig died suddenly, and the cheerful friendly meetings in his house ended. Married Pushkin tried not to maintain relationships with ladies with whom he had affairs in the past.
Natalia Dementieva. “Alcove list of Anna Kern” // newspaper “The Secret Materials”, N23, November 2015.
“IT’S TIME, SHE’S IN LOVE”
In 1837-1838, Anna Petrovna lived in St. Petersburg with her daughter Ekaterina, who was cared for by the composer M. Glinka.
He often visits them and dedicates his romance “I Remember a Wonderful Moment...” to Catherine, based on poems by A. Pushkin, written by the poet in honor of her mother. Anna feels lonely, her search for true love was not successful: in her search she was looking not for adventure, but for love, and every time she believed that she had finally found it. And it was at this time that fate sent her her last love, which would last until the last days of her life. The beginning did not foretell anything romantic: a relative from Sosnitsy, Chernigov province, D. Poltoratskaya, asked to visit her son Alexander Markov-Vinogradsky, who studied in the 1st St. Petersburg Cadet Corps and was Anna Petrovna’s second cousin. And the unexpected happens - a young cadet falls in love with his cousin. She does not remain indifferent to his feelings, and perhaps tenderness and thirst for love, which was never in demand in previous years, flares up in her. This was the love that Anna Kern had been looking for for so long. They agree: she is 38, he is 18. In April 1839, their son Alexander was born, to whom Anna Petrovna gave all her unspent maternal tenderness, and Alexander Markov-Vinogradsky was happy: “Everything that is done is from God, and our the union, no matter how strange it may be, is blessed by Him! Otherwise, we wouldn’t be so happy, we wouldn’t have such a Sasha, who now comforts us so much! There is no need to regret anything that happened, everything is for the better, everything is fine!”
General E.F. Kern, retired in 1837, died in 1841. In the same year, having graduated from the corps with the rank of second lieutenant and having served for only two years, A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky retired and, against the will of Anna Petrovna’s father, married her. Anna's father is angry: he deprived his daughter of all inheritance rights and all fortune, even to her mother's hereditary estate. For her deceased husband, E.F. Kern, Anna was entitled to a large pension, but after marrying Markov-Vinogradsky, she refused it. And years of true happiness flowed by: although her husband had no talents other than a sensitive and sensitive heart, he could not get enough of his Aneta, exclaiming: “Thank you, Lord, that I am married! Without her, my darling, I would be exhausted and bored... she has become a necessity for me! What a joy it is to return home! How good it is to be in her arms! There is no one better than my wife!” They were happily married despite poverty. They had to leave St. Petersburg for her husband’s tiny estate in the Chernigov province, which consisted of 15 peasant souls. But their spiritual life, abandoned in the wilderness of the village, was amazingly full and varied. Together they read and discussed novels by Dickens and Thackeray, Balzac and George Sand, stories by Panaev, thick Russian magazines Sovremennik, Otechestvennye Zapiski, Library for Reading.
Alexander Vasilievich Markov-Vinogradsky
In 1840, Anna's husband, Alexander Vasilyevich, received a seat as an assessor in the Sosnitsky district court, where he served for more than 10 years. And Anna tried to earn extra money by translating, but how much can you earn from this in the outback. No difficulties or adversities in life could disturb the touchingly tender agreement of these two people, based on a commonality of spiritual needs and interests. They said that they “developed their own happiness.” The family lived poorly, but between Anna and her husband there was true love, which they preserved until the last day. Eloquent evidence of the financial situation and moral state of this unusual family union is Anna’s letter, which she wrote after more than 10 years of family happiness to her husband’s sister Elizaveta Vasilyevna Bakunina: “Poverty has its joys, and we feel good, because we have a lot of love... ... maybe under better circumstances we would have been less happy...” At the end of 1855 they moved to St. Petersburg, where Alexander Vasilyevich received a position as a home teacher in the family of Prince S.D. Dolgorukov, and then as head of the department of appanages. They lived in St. Petersburg for 10 years, and these years were the most prosperous in their life together: relatively wealthy financially and extremely rich in mental and social activity. They were friends with the family of N.N. Tyutchev, a writer and former friend of Belinsky. Here they met with the poet F.I. Tyutchev, P.V. Annenkov, and the writer I.S. Turgenev.
Alleged portrait of Anna Kern. A. Arefov-Bagaev. 1840s (According to another attribution, Anna Begicheva, daughter of I.M. Begichev, is depicted here).
In November 1865, Alexander Vasilyevich retired with the rank of collegiate assessor and with a small pension, and they left St. Petersburg. Again they were haunted by poverty - they had to live with relatives and friends. They alternately lived in the Tver province with relatives, then in Lubny, then in Kyiv, then in Moscow, then with Alexander Vasilyevich’s sister in Pryamukhin. Anna Petrovna even sold five letters from Pushkin for 5 rubles apiece, which she very much regretted. But they still endured all the blows of fate with amazing fortitude, without becoming embittered, without becoming disillusioned with life, without losing their former interest in it. The age difference never bothered them. They lived together for more than forty years in love and harmony, although in severe poverty. On January 28, 1879, Alexander Vasilyevich died of stomach cancer, in terrible agony. The son took Anna Petrovna to his place in Moscow, where she lived in modest furnished rooms on the corner of Tverskaya and Gruzinskaya for about four months before her death on May 27 of the same year, 1879.
Lydia Aizenstein.
Be that as it may, we can talk about Pushkin endlessly. This is exactly the guy who managed to “inherit” everywhere. But this time we have to look at the topic “Anna Kern and Pushkin: a love story.” These relationships could have gone unnoticed by everyone if not for the emotionally tender poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment,” dedicated to Anna Petrovna Kern and written by the poet in 1825 in Mikhailovskoye during his exile. When and how did Pushkin and Kern meet? However, their love story turned out to be quite mysterious and strange. Their first fleeting meeting took place in the Olenins' salon in 1819 in St. Petersburg. However, first things first.
Anna Kern and Pushkin: a love story
Anna was a relative of the inhabitants of Trigorskoye, the Osipov-Wulf family, who were Pushkin’s neighbors on Mikhailovskoye, the poet’s family estate. One day, in correspondence with her cousin, she reports that she is a big fan of Pushkin’s poetry. These words reach the poet, he is intrigued and in his letter to the poet A.G. Rodzianko asks about Kern, whose estate was located in his neighborhood, and besides, Anna was his very close friend. Rodzianko wrote a playful response to Pushkin; Anna also joined in this playful, friendly correspondence; she added several ironic words to the letter. Pushkin was fascinated by this turn and wrote her several compliments, while maintaining a frivolous and playful tone. He expressed all his thoughts on this matter in his poem “To Rodzianka”.
Kern was married, and Pushkin knew well her not very happy marital situation. It should be noted that for Kern Pushkin was not a fatal passion, just as she was not for him.
Anna Kern: family
As a girl, Anna Poltoratskaya was a fair-haired beauty with cornflower blue eyes. At the age of 17, she was given in an arranged marriage to a 52-year-old general, a participant in the war with Napoleon. Anna had to submit to her father’s will, but she not only did not love her husband, but even hated her in her heart, she wrote about this in her diary. During their marriage, they had two daughters; Tsar Alexander I himself expressed a desire to be the godfather of one of them.
Kern. Pushkin
Anna is an undeniable beauty who attracted the attention of many brave officers who often visited their house. As a woman, she was very cheerful and charming in her interactions, which had a devastating effect on them.
When Anna Kern and Pushkin first met at her aunt Olenina’s, the young general’s wife already began to have casual affairs and fleeting connections. The poet did not make any impression on her, and at some points seemed rude and shameless. He immediately liked Anna, and he attracted her attention with flattering exclamations, something like: “Is it possible to be so pretty?!”
Meeting in Mikhailovsky
Anna Petrovna Kern and Pushkin met again when Alexander Sergeevich was sent into exile to his native estate Mikhailovskoye. It was the most boring and lonely time for him; after the noisy Odessa, he was annoyed and morally crushed. “Poetry saved me, I was resurrected in soul,” he would later write. It was at this time that Kern, who could not have come at a more opportune time, one July day in 1825, came to Trigorskoye to visit her relatives. Pushkin was incredibly happy about this; she became a ray of light for him for a while. By that time, Anna was already a big fan of the poet, she longed to meet him and again amazed him with her beauty. The poet was seduced by her, especially after she soulfully sang the then popular romance “The Spring Night Breathed.”
Poem for Anna
Anna Kern in Pushkin's life for a moment became a fleeting muse, an inspiration that washed over him in an unexpected way. Impressed, he immediately takes up his pen and dedicates his poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” to her.
From the memoirs of Kern herself it follows that on the evening of July 1825, after dinner in Trigorskoye, everyone decided to visit Mikhailovskoye. The two crews set off. In one of them rode P. A. Osipova with her son Alexei Wulf, in the other A. N. Wulf, her cousin Anna Kern and Pushkin. The poet was, as ever, kind and courteous.
It was a farewell evening; the next day Kern was supposed to leave for Riga. In the morning, Pushkin came to say goodbye and brought her a copy of one of the chapters of Onegin. And among the uncut sheets, she found a poem dedicated to her, read it and then wanted to put her poetic gift in the box, when Pushkin frantically snatched it and did not want to give it back for a long time. Anna never understood this behavior of the poet.
Undoubtedly, this woman gave him moments of happiness, and perhaps brought him back to life.
Relationship
It is very important to note in this matter that Pushkin himself did not consider the feeling he experienced for Kern to be love. Maybe this is how he rewarded women for their tender caress and affection. In a letter to Anna Nikolaevna Wulf, he wrote that he writes a lot of poems about love, but he has no love for Anna, otherwise he would become very jealous of her for Alexei Wulf, who enjoyed her favor.
B. Tomashevsky will note that, of course, there was an intriguing outbreak of feelings between them, and it served as the impetus for writing a poetic masterpiece. Perhaps Pushkin himself, giving it into the hands of Kern, suddenly thought that it could cause a false interpretation, and therefore resisted his impulse. But it was already too late. Surely at these moments Anna Kern was beside herself with happiness. Pushkin's opening line, “I remember a wonderful moment,” remained engraved on her tombstone. This poem truly made her a living legend.
Connection
Anna Petrovna Kern and Pushkin broke up, but their further relationship is not known for certain. She left with her daughters for Riga and playfully allowed the poet to write letters to her. And he wrote them to her, they have survived to this day, although in French. There were no hints of deep feelings in them. On the contrary, they are ironic and mocking, but very friendly. The poet no longer writes that she is a “genius of pure beauty” (the relationship has moved into another phase), but calls her “our Babylonian harlot Anna Petrovna.”
Paths of destinies
Anna Kern and Pushkin would see each other next two years later, in 1827, when she left her husband and moved to St. Petersburg, which would cause gossip in high society.
After moving to St. Petersburg, Kern, along with her sister and father, will live in the very house where she first met Pushkin in 1819.
She will spend this day entirely in the company of Pushkin and his father. Anna could not find words of admiration and joy from meeting him. It was most likely not love, but great human affection and passion. In a letter to Sobolevsky, Pushkin will openly write that the other day he slept with Kern.
In December 1828, Pushkin met his precious Natalie Goncharova, lived with her for 6 years in marriage, and she bore him four children. In 1837, Pushkin would be killed in a duel.
Liberty
Anna Kern would finally be freed from her marriage when her husband died in 1841. She will fall in love with cadet Alexander Markov-Vinogradsky, who will also be her second cousin. With him she will lead a quiet family life, although he is 20 years younger than her.
Anna will show Pushkin's letters and poem as a relic to Ivan Turgenev, but her poverty-stricken situation will force her to sell them for five rubles apiece.
One by one her daughters will die. She would outlive Pushkin by 42 years and preserve in her memoirs the living image of the poet, who, as she believed, never truly loved anyone.
In fact, it is still unclear who Anna Kern was in Pushkin’s life. The history of the relationship between these two people, between whom a spark flew, gave the world one of the most beautiful, most elegant and heartfelt poems dedicated to a beautiful woman that have ever been in Russian poetry.
Bottom line
After the death of Pushkin’s mother and the death of the poet himself, Kern did not interrupt her close relationship with his family. The poet’s father, Sergei Lvovich Pushkin, who felt acute loneliness after the death of his wife, wrote reverent heartfelt letters to Anna Petrovna and even wanted to live with her “the last sad years.”
She died in Moscow six months after the death of her husband - in 1879. She lived with him for a good 40 years and never emphasized his inadequacy.
Anna was buried in the village of Prutnya near the city of Torzhok, Tver province. Their son Alexander committed suicide after the death of his parents.
Her brother also dedicated a poem to her, which she read to Pushkin from memory when they met in 1827. It began with the words: “How can you not go crazy.”
This concludes our consideration of the topic “Pushkin and Kern: a love story.” As it has already become clear, Kern captivated all the men of the Pushkin family, they somehow incredibly succumbed to her charm.
Anna Petrovna appeared to Pushkin for the second time six years later. It was in Trigorskoye, an estate located next to Mikhailovsky, where Pushkin served his exile.
Pushkin, not jokingly, suffered on the banks of Soroti from melancholy and loneliness. After the noisy, cheerful Odessa, he found himself “in the wilderness, in the darkness of confinement,” in a small village house, which, due to the scarcity of funds, he could not even afford to properly heat. Dull evenings that he whiled away with the kind old nanny, books, lonely walks - that’s how he lived at that time. It is not surprising that the poet loved to visit the Wulfs in Trigorskoye. The kind owner of the estate Praskovya Aleksandrovna Osipova-Wulf, her daughters Eupraxia and Anna, stepdaughter Alexandra, son Alexey were invariably glad to see Alexander Sergeevich, and he was also happy to come to flirt with the Trigorsk young ladies and have fun.
And in June 1825, Anna Petrovna Kern came to visit her aunt Praskovya Alexandrovna. And Pushkin falls in love again. Here society was not as brilliant as in St. Petersburg, and Pushkin was already very famous at that time. Anna Petrovna loved and knew his poems. It’s no wonder that this time she listened to compliments much more favorably. But he no longer talked such nonsense as he did when they first met.
Alexander Sergeevich fell in love and behaved like a real poet in love. He is jealous and suffers because Kern shows attention to Alexei Vulf. He keeps a stone on the table that she supposedly tripped over while walking. Finally, one day he brings her the first chapter of “Eugene Onegin,” where between the pages lies a piece of paper with the poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment.” She reads it and finds the poem beautiful, but Pushkin suddenly, like a boy, takes the piece of paper from her and agrees to return it only after much persuasion.
That summer ended quickly. Anna had to go to her unloved husband.
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
I look at such a familiar portrait, it is considered the only reliable one, and I try to imagine this woman as the muse of our Genius, who inspired him to write an immortal poem, which later, on another occasion, by coincidence, another Genius made a romance.
The idea of beauty, its canons, and unwritten criteria were different in different eras. Now, having become accustomed to other examples of beauty, I don’t see the “genius of pure beauty” in this portrait, but the poet did, although by that time he had already seen many of the world’s first beauties and knew how to appreciate beauty, of course.
Most likely, the poet saw something more interesting and deep in this very young, but already very unhappy woman. It was not beauty and secular manners, which were so valued then, that Pushkin sang about.
In "Eugene Onegin" the poet writes about that practically first meeting:
"She was not in a hurry,
Not cold, not talkative,
Without a look, insolent for everyone,
Without pretense of success,
Without these little antics,
No imitative undertakings;
Everything was quiet, it was just there."
I think, as often happens, the circumstances of that meeting, after which immortal poems were born, explain a lot. In Mikhailovsky, “in the wilderness, in the darkness of confinement,” despite all the ease of that local existence, the poet was bored after the cozy patriarchal Moscow and especially after the brilliant sovereign Petersburg.
Regarding the “darkness of imprisonment,” the poet, of course, went too far, after all, the family estate is not the Peter and Paul Ravelin, but I’m sure it was very boring, it was the wilderness.
Mikhailovskoye and around it are dazzlingly beautiful places in Central Russia. But it’s one thing to come here to visit good friends, and quite another to live here for a long time, and even in the very peculiar position of an exile. Boring...
In the summer there is still some variety in walks to neighboring estates, but in Russia there is still a long autumn-winter period when it is not boring, but very boring.
Anna Petrovna wrote about her life in the garrisons - there was nothing to do, “reading is already making my head spin.”...
The Woolf sisters no longer inspire, the “wonderful moments” are behind them, and the poet needs inspiration like air.
And here She appears. Once upon a time, 6 years ago, their paths had already crossed in the northern capital, but then they, twenty years old, did not notice each other.
Now He is a famous poet, exiled to his estate for freethinking. She is the one who escaped to the estate next to Mikhailovsky to visit her sisters from her martinet husband, a general 35 years older than her, married at the age of 16, who not only did not love him, but felt physical disgust towards him. According to a good friend of the family, “thick epaulets constituted his only right to be called a man.” After several years of wandering around the garrisons with their specific environment, after “he, evil and unbridled, exhausted all kinds of insults on her,” in the summer of 1825 she meets in the cozy estate of her relatives a poet already famous in Russia with a difficult character, with frequently changing mood.
At such a moment that meeting took place. Anna Petrovna herself said about herself that she looked “a little down-at-heel,” I think, rather, she felt like one, which is very understandable.
That meeting was preceded by a humorous, ironic correspondence through a mutual good friend who said:
“Even then she emanated the exquisite aroma of scandal.”
A month in the village flew by unnoticed; before leaving, Anna Petrovna received a piece of paper inserted into the first chapter of Eugene Onegin with the very dedication that immortalized her name. The poet, as happens with poets, could see more than others saw; the imagination of the Genius of poetry completed for him the Genius of beauty.
Neither Kern herself, nor any of her contemporaries-memorists testified that either party lost their head from that love. In Kern's memoirs, the idea appears that Pushkin loved no one except his nanny and his sister. Everything was in the spirit of that time, that era when it was considered normal to live easily and cheerfully for one’s own pleasure, which did not always work out for various reasons. It was a flirtation, such a game, easy, non-binding, not always so innocent, one of the participants in that game turned out to be the Genius of Russian Poetry.
This is the solution...
After leaving the general with her children, and after his death marrying her second cousin, who was much younger than her, the attitude towards the poet’s muse in the world was ambiguous. Some contemporary memoirists, describing well-known episodes of that time in which Kern definitely took place, considered it inappropriate to mention her name.
Pushkin’s attitude towards her did not change subsequently:
"When your younger years
The noisy rumor is a disgrace,
And you, by the sentence of the world
I lost my rights to honor,
Alone, among the cold crowd,
I share your suffering..."
Anna Petrovna, one might say, having run away with her daughters from her general, loses all her means of livelihood.
She even had to write the following to the Tsar: “The complete ruin of the father of my court councilor Poltoratsky, which involved all my property, as well as the refusal of my husband, Lieutenant General Kern, to give me legal maintenance, deprived me of all means of subsistence, ... the disease has depleted the remaining means ..."
Later, having got married, she loses the right to a general’s pension, her husband loses his career due to the reprehensibility of his marriage."
From this letter to her brother (1871) one can judge the situation of Anna Petrovna in her advanced years:
“Help me once again, probably for the last time, because I’m on very thin strands: I almost went twice this winter. Please don’t refuse me this last time, please send 100 to St. Petersburg in the name of.. .; I owe her part, and for the rest she will renew my wardrobe, because the mice ate my wardrobe.”
The only priceless wealth of that time were several letters from Pushkin to her, which (except for the very first) were sold in a completely hopeless situation for next to nothing, one might say, given into good hands.
And despite all the hardships, she and her husband, who had lived together for 36 years, wrote to their relatives:
“We, despairing of ever acquiring material contentment, value every moral impression and chase the pleasure of the soul and catch every smile of the world around us in order to enrich ourselves with spiritual happiness. Rich people are never poets... Poetry is the wealth of poverty.”
Her letters have not survived. But her memories remained, which are considered a very accurate and sincere touch to the portrait of that era.
The same age as the century, she died in 1879, outliving her husband by 4 months.
“The coffin with A.P.’s body was taken to Pryamukhino, Tver province, where her husband was buried,
but they did not deliver it due to muddy roads and were buried in the village of Prutnya"
We have paved the road to Space; we have not yet reached the country roads.
***
The poem that was once given to Glinka was then lost by him.
The poems resonated with music much later, when meeting with Anna Petrovna’s daughter Ekaterina.
So in one romance three Russian Geniuses met...
*****
Used Memoirs of A.P. Kern and her contemporaries.
Reviews
Anna Petrovna met Pushkin again only 2 years later, already in St. Petersburg. There she entered into a fleeting relationship with the poet; Pushkin treated this event ironically and in a rather rude tone mentioned what happened in a letter to his friend Sergei Sobolevsky.
Careless!
You don’t write to me anything about the 2100 rubles I owe you, but you write to me about M-me Kern,
which, with the help of God, I fucked the other day.
Even earlier, in a letter to Alexei Wulf dated May 7, 1826, Pushkin calls Anna Kern “our Babylonian harlot Anna Petrovna.”
Over the two centuries that have passed since the writing of the poem “I remember a wonderful moment...”, literary scholars and historians have managed to conduct a lot of research on the relationship of the great poet with Anna Petrovna Kern. From their first meeting in St. Petersburg, in the aristocratic salon of the Olenins, to the last, most mysterious and already legendary. Maria Molchanova found out who Anna Kern is.
The beautiful romantic lines written by Alexander Pushkin in poems about Kern are noticeably “grounded” by his impartial statements about the “genius of pure beauty” in letters to friends, which still tickles the nerves of lovers of piquant details. Be that as it may, Pushkin’s dedication to Anna Kern became almost the most popular lyric poem in Russian literature. And Anna Petrovna herself remained in the memory of posterity the embodiment of femininity, an ideal muse.
Portrait of Anna Petrovna Kern
But the real life that Kern led outside the “halo” of Pushkin was difficult and sometimes tragic. Anna Kern's memoirs, diaries and letters have been preserved, documenting her experiences and facts of life. Anna's grandfather Mark Poltoratsky belonged to an old Ukrainian Cossack family. A native of the hundredth town of Sosnitsa, he studied at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy. Alexey Razumovsky, who was looking for talented singers for the Court Choir in the Little Russian lands, invited Mark, the owner of a wonderful baritone, to St. Petersburg.
At the age of 17, Anna is married to 52-year-old General Ermolai Kern
From the northern capital, the young singer was soon sent to Italy to improve his vocal skills. Returning to St. Petersburg, he became a conductor, and 10 years later - the manager of the Court Choir. For many years of service, he received the rank of active state councilor, which gave the right to hereditary nobility. Note that Poltoratsky had 22 children! Anna Kern was born into the family of his youngest son Peter, a retired second lieutenant, Lubensky leader of the nobility.
Portrait of Anna Kern, 1840s
Anna Petrovna lived in Lubny until her marriage, taught her brother and sisters, danced at balls, took part in home performances... “and led a rather vulgar life, like most provincial young ladies. Despite the constant fun, dinners and balls in which I took part, I managed to satisfy my passion for reading, which had developed in me since the age of five. I never played with dolls and was very happy to participate in housework.”
In those years, a horse-jaeger regiment was stationed in Lubny, and many officers were admirers of the young beauty. But Anna’s marriage was decided by the will of her father, a strict and despotic man: her fiancé was 52-year-old Major General Ermolai Fedorovich Kern, a participant in the war with Napoleon, commander of the division to which the Lubensky regiment belonged. The girl was amazed by this decision: “The general’s pleasantries made me sick, I could hardly force myself to talk to him and be polite...”
Pushkin, meeting Kern: “Is it possible to be so pretty!”
The wedding of Anna Poltoratskaya and Ermolai Kern took place on January 8, 1817 in the Lubensky Cathedral. Her disgust for the general only intensified after her marriage. In the young woman’s diary, entries constantly appeared, full of either deep melancholy or indignation: “It is impossible to love him - I am not even given the consolation of respecting him; I’ll tell you straight - I almost hate him.”
Ermolai Kern
In 1817, at a ball in Poltava, organized on the occasion of the review of the 3rd corps of General Fabian Wilhelmovich Osten-Sacken, Anna met Emperor Alexander I: “Not daring to speak to anyone before, I spoke to him as to an old friend and adored father! I wasn’t in love... I was in awe, I worshiped him! It is known that the emperor became the godfather of Anna Kern's first daughter, Catherine.
Anna Petrovna first came to St. Petersburg in 1819, where she was introduced to her aunt Elizaveta Olenina, the wife of a prominent statesman, president of the Academy of Arts Alexander Olenin. In the aristocratic salon of the Olenins on the Fontanka embankment, house 101, the creative elite of that time gathered: Karl and Alexander Bryullov, Orest Kiprensky, Nikolai Gnedich, Vasily Zhukovsky, Nikolai Karamzin, Ivan Krylov. There her first meeting with Pushkin took place, which became fateful. The poet, who was not yet very famous at that time, did not make a strong impression on Anna. Anna Kern recalled about this evening: “At dinner, Pushkin sat down with my brother behind me and tried to attract my attention with flattering exclamations.”
Pushkin and Anna Kern. Drawing by Nadya Rusheva
Their next meeting took place six years later in the village of Trigorskoye, near Mikhailovskoye - in July 1825, on the estate of Praskovya Osipova, Aunt Anna. By that time, Anna Kern became the mother of two daughters: Catherine and Anna. On the day of Anna Petrovna’s departure from Trigorskoye, Pushkin gave her a copy of the second chapter of Onegin, which included a sheet of paper with the poem “I remember a wonderful moment...”. According to Kern's diaries, when she was about to hide the gift in the box, Pushkin looked at her intently, snatched a piece of paper with poems and did not want to return it. Pushkin himself wrote about his feelings in a letter addressed to Anna Kern’s cousin, Anna Wulf, with whom she left Mikhailovskoye for Riga: “Every night I walk in my garden and say to myself: here she was... the stone on which she tripped, lies on my table next to the withered heliotrope. Finally, I write a lot of poetry. All this, if you like, strongly resembles love, but I promise you that there is no mention of it.”
Kern's diary: “Admired by Pushkin, I passionately want to see him...”
In the spring of 1826, a rift occurred between the Kern spouses, leading to divorce. Soon their four-year-old daughter Anna died. Kern did not attend the funeral because she was pregnant with her third daughter, Olga, who would die in 1834. In the first years after the divorce, Anna Kern found support among Pushkin’s friends - poets Anton Delvig, Dmitry Venevitinov, Alexei Illichevsky, and writer Alexander Nikitenko. It is known that in 1827, during her stay in Trigorskoye, she visited Pushkin’s parents and managed to “completely turn the head of Lev Sergeevich,” the poet’s brother. He even dedicated a poem to her, “How can you not go crazy, listening to you, admiring you...”.
Anna Kern in Pushkin's drawing. 1829
In 1837-1838, Kern lived in St. Petersburg in small apartments, with her only surviving daughter, Ekaterina. Mikhail Glinka often visited them, caring for Ekaterina Ermolaevna. He dedicated the romance “I remember a wonderful moment...” to her, so Pushkin’s lines were addressed to Anna Kern’s daughter. The last meeting with Pushkin took place shortly before the tragic death of the poet - he visited Anna to offer his condolences in connection with the death of her mother. On February 1, 1837, Kern “cryed and prayed” at the poet’s funeral service in the twilight of the Stable Church.