People leave, but their things remain. The photograph is silent, but the memory is not silent
When people leave, things remain after them. Things silently testify to the most ancient truth - that they are more durable than people. There are no inanimate objects. There are inanimate people. Without Pushkin's things, without the nature of Pushkin's places, it is difficult to fully understand his life and work. The poet's contemporaries knew this well, and best of all Alexander Ivanovich Turgenev, who wrote about Pushkin's house, about pines, lilacs, a mound and much more in Mikhailovsky.
Today, Pushkin's things are in reserves and museums. Here they live a special, mysterious life, and the keepers read the letters hidden in them.
Among the relics kept in the poet's Mikhailovsky house is Pushkin's iron cane. He loved canes and sticks. They were very different from him. In the poet's office, in his apartment-museum on the embankment of the Moika River in Leningrad, there are three wooden canes. Wooden with an ivory knob, the inscription “A. Pushkin”, it was depicted by the artist N. N. Ge in his painting “Pushkin and Pushchin in Mikhailovsky”. The second is wooden (reed) with a handle, in which is embedded a bronze gilded button from the uniform of Peter the Great. This button was presented by Peter to his godson, the Arab Ibrahim Gannibal. How the cane got to Pushkin is unknown. Maybe here, in Petrovsky, he received it as a gift from his grandfather? The third cane is walnut with an amethyst head.
One must think that in addition to these canes, Pushkin had other canes. He depicted one of them in his Mikhailov drawing, the other was depicted in the portrait of Pushkin by his contemporary artist P. I. Chernetsov in 1830.
Pushkin also had iron canes. One of them is located in the Mikhailovsky study of the poet. It is forged from round iron with a T-shaped handle, with a four-sided tip-point. The cane arrived at Mikhailovskoye from the Pushkin House of the USSR Academy of Sciences on the eve of the grand opening of the restored house-museum, on the 150th anniversary of Pushkin's birth. It was transferred to the funds of the Pushkin House by the Odessa Art Museum in 1938. Pushkin got himself this stick when he lived in Chisinau. M. De Ribas and I. P. Liprandi talk about it in their memoirs.
Leaving Chisinau for Odessa, Pushkin took with him his iron staff. He liked to walk the streets of the city, figuratively brandishing his stick. The poet's contemporaries - Odessans - tell about this. Leave for Mikhailovskoye, Pushkin left the cane to his friend A.F. Merzlyakov, from him she passed to the poet A.I. Podolinsky, then to the son of the adjutant Count M.S. Vorontsov - Yagnitsky, who in turn presented it to his friend I. M. Dontsov. In 1880, Dontsov presented it to N. G. Troinitsky from Odessa.
In his book Past and Present, L. M. Leonidov, People’s Artist of the USSR, who lived in Odessa in the 1980s, says that Troinitsky donated this stick to the Odessa Museum of History and Antiquity. It was in 1887. In 1899, the cane was exhibited at the Pushkin anniversary exhibition in Odessa among other Pushkin relics.
Living in Mikhailovsky, Pushkin could not do without a cane. He was a great walker. Stick, staff, cane - a necessary accessory for any wanderer, traveler, seeker. A willow twig, a pine club, a juniper or pine stick - Pushkin could have had all this and probably had.
Remembering his iron staff from Kishinev-Odessa, Pushkin got himself a new, also iron staff, in Mikhailovskoye. It was the work of a local blacksmith. Under Pushkin, good blacksmiths were everywhere here - on Voronin, in the Svyatogorsk monastery, at the Hannibals in Petrovsky, and even in Mikhailovsky itself, although half-abandoned, there was also a forge. In the Pskov region, from time immemorial, iron household items - such as a horseshoe, a bit, an ax, a shovel, a staff, a poker - were made at the place where their owner lived. They differed in features that were characteristic of the area. Such is Pushkin's Mikhailov cane. Exactly the same can be seen today in the hands of local residents. Who knows exactly who forged Pushkin's rural staff. The Odessa stick of Pushkin has dimensions: length 88.5 centimeters, handle 10.5 centimeters, weight 2 kilograms 400 grams (6 pounds).
And what was Pushkin's staff of Mikhailov? Here is what is said about this in folk stories published in the pre-revolutionary press at various times.
The story of the coachman Pushkin - Pyotr Parfyonov:
“He always has an iron stick in his hands, weighing nine pounds, he will go into the field, he throws the stick up, catches it on the fly, like a drum major” (recording of 1859).
Another entry by a peasant from the village of Gaiki, which is near Mikhailovsky: “It used to be that Alexander Sergeevich was walking, he would take his stick and throw it forward, reach it, pick it up - and throw it forward again, and continuing to throw it another time until he came home ".
The spy A. K. Boshnyak did not forget to write about it in his 1826 denunciation of the year when he described Pushkin’s rural life: “At the fair of the Svyatogorsky Assumption Monastery, Pushkin was in a shirt, belted with a pink ribbon, in a wide-brimmed straw hat and with an iron stick in his hand” .
P. Annenkov, the first biographer of Pushkin, also recalls this village cane in his book: “The Mikhailovsky staff was useful to Pushkin when he fell with a horse on ice and was badly hurt, which he wrote to P. Vyazemsky on January 28, 1825. When the doctors examined Pushkin's health in Pskov, they found that the patient "had in the lower limbs, especially on the right shin, a widespread expansion of the blood-returning veins, which made the collegiate secretary Pushkin difficult to move in general, and the staff was declared a necessary thing for him."
In 1826, Pushkin drew his self-portrait on the page of the manuscript of the novel "Eugene Onegin". He depicted himself in full growth, with a stick in his right hand. This stick has a handle in the form of the letter "t", it is very similar to the iron cane, which is told in the stories of local peasants. It should be noted that Pushkin usually painted only what he liked and what he wanted to tell not only to himself, but also to people. He was very precise in his images.
Tradition has preserved for us the story of the end of Pushkin's iron staff. Here's how it seemed to happen.
When Pushkin at the end of his life (in 1835) “revisited” his native places, he decided to visit his youth friend Evpraksia Nikolaevna Wulf from Trigorskoye, who in 1831 married the Pskov landowner Baron B. A. Vrevsky and lived in his estate Golubovo located near Mikhailovsky.
Here he spent several days. Leaving the welcoming house, Pushkin threw his cherished staff into the Golubovsky pond as a memory of a date, separation, as an oath to visit this place again ...
Shortly after the war, we tried to find this cane in the Golubovsky pond, we went there with a descendant of the Vrevskys, but, alas, the pond almost completely died out and overgrown, and our search did not lead to anything ...
In February 1937, on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the death of the great poet, a solemn commemorative meeting was held in Pushkinskiye Gory. It was attended by residents of surrounding villages, villages, teachers and students of local schools. The oldest people of Pushkin's Svyatogorye also came. The youngest of them were at least 70–75 years old, and the oldest were 100 or more. They were gathered to tell about what they had heard about Pushkin from their grandfathers when they were little kids.
A certain elder Ivan Gavrilovich Gavrilov told how Pushkin went to the smithy and beat the anvil with a large hammer. And Ivan Pavlov, a resident of a village near Lake Beloguliye, who is over 100 years old, told how “many years ago” scientists who came from St. Petersburg to Mikhailovskoye found a cane in the nanny’s house and called all the old people here to identify this cane - they say whether she was Pushkin, and when they were sure, they took her to St. Petersburg.
All this was published on the pages of the newspaper "Pushkinsky Kolkhoznik" on February 18, 1937. Is there any truth in these stories, how much truth is in what seems to us a figment of fantasy, this question has yet to be decided by researchers and keepers of Pushkin's relics. Historical science claims that folk memories are not accidentally called an expression of folk wisdom. There are things and events that the people do not want to remember, but there are, on the contrary, things that the people tenaciously keep in their memory and pass on from generation to generation, to eternity.
After the death of the poet, almost all of Mikhailovsky's belongings scattered around the world, many of them died from the negligence of their pre-revolutionary keepers, many were destroyed by the Nazis. The search for Pushkin's relics and memorial items is going quite well. Only for last years we managed to find books from the famous libraries of Trigorsky and Petrovsky, a genuine drawing of the poet's sister Olga Sergeevna, very rare household items ... The search for personal belongings of Pushkin's ancestors, the Hannibals, was especially successful. These things were included in the exposition of the restored historic house in Petrovsky.
The fate of another thing sometimes seems incredible and in its details surpasses the sophisticated imagination of man. About one such thing, recently placed on the exposition of the hall of the Mikhailovsky House-Museum, and will be discussed. You read the inventory of the property of this house, compiled a few months after the death of the poet by the Pskov official Vasyukov, and you are surprised at its modesty and simplicity.
Entering Pushkin's life, these things took on a kind of new personality traits and served him as friends in the merry and sad hours of being. Here in the corner of the hall is the old, old grandfather's "skinny" billiards, as everyone called him in the house. It was he, Pushkin, who found him in the carriage house. Having learned that this thing is very old and that the famous great-grandfather Abram Petrovich Hannibal had brought it with him to the estate, he ordered the billiards to be repaired, darned and put in the hall. Since then, billiards has become a companion of the poet's life. I. I. Pushchin saw this billiards when he visited the disgraced house in January 1825. “There was billiards in the hall, it could serve as entertainment for him,” he emphasized in his “Memoirs”. AN Wolf and the poet's brother Lev Sergeevich tell about billiards. Pushkin himself recalls in that famous fourth chapter of "Eugene Onegin", in which he depicted his life in Mikhailovskoye, when
One, immersed in calculations,
Armed with a blunt cue,
He's on a two-ball billiard
Playing since morning. -
Village evening will come:
Billiards left, cue forgotten ....
After the death of Pushkin, the billiards, which had become completely dilapidated, were sent back to the barn, where rats spoiled it and it completely turned into junk. Pushkin's son Grigory Aleksandrovich, who settled in Mikhailovsky in the 60s, was an avid billiard player, he started a new large billiards in his house, and ordered the old billiards to be sent from the barn to the nanny's house, but soon the billiards were again sent to the barn, where they burned down when the fire of the estate in 1018.
Restoring Pushkin's house in 1911, the organizers of the museum did not try to restore Pushkin's billiards, but made a new, ordinary billiards, typical for provincial taverns and visiting houses. The journalist Harris in her note about Mikhailovsky, published in the Bayan magazine (No. 7–8, 1914), describes this object as follows: “The house-museum is an unsuccessful imitation of antiquity. In the billiard room there is an ugly, bulky billiard table covered with bright green clerical cloth.
Restoring the poet's house and its material world, I thought a lot about Pushkin's billiards. What was its shape, size, finish? I visited many memorable places and museums where old billiards are preserved: in Moscow, Leningrad, Lomonosov, I studied and copied billiards in the "Nashchokin's house", stored in the All-Union Pushkin Museum. In the famous drawing by Pushkin, made by him in Odessa in the spring of 1824, a part of a billiards is depicted, very similar to Nashchokin's billiards. It seemed to me that this was not at all what Mikhailovsky needed, and I continued my search. I reasoned as follows: as soon as a billiards table could fit in the nanny's house, it means that it was small, collapsible. This is first. Secondly, both Pushkin and Pushchin, and all others who have seen this billiards, say that they played two balls on it, and not with a simple cue, but with a blunt one.
Billiards is an old game. In his "Lexicon of Common Truths" G. Flaubert writes: "Billiards is the noblest game. It is indispensable during life in the village ... ”They were already fond of him in the 18th century in France, England, Italy, Germany, and America. Under Peter the Great, billiards appeared in Russia as well. Its detailed description can be found in many ancient encyclopedias. The oldest billiards is French. It is without pockets, small in size, they played two balls on it with a blunt, curved, bone-tipped cue, on its field there was a metal pin, which was called "pass".
Newer ones are large billiards with pockets and a straight cue. They played five and fifteen balls (pyramid). Such billiards exist in our time in clubs and houses of culture.
Everything shows that Pushkin had a French type of billiards.
At my request, A.V. Vilm, a former employee of the State Hermitage Museum, sought out engravings of the 18th century depicting such billiards. There was little left: to draw up drawings, to find the necessary material - Karelian birch, an old golden lace, cloth ... All this was found. The carpenter-restorer-cabinet maker of our museum P. F. Fedorov set about recreating the billiards, and soon it was ready.
Today, as in 1825, Pushkin's billiards again stand in the hall of the Mikhailovsky house. Everyone entering the room, looking at it, cannot help but recall the wonderful lines from Eugene Onegin.
And what about the cue and the four balls that were lying yesterday in this hall in a hill of mahogany, where are they now? the reader will ask. We answer this: these things are not the things of the poet, but found by his son Grigory Alexandrovich in the vicinity of Mikhailovsky, as he testifies in his letter to the editor of Petersburg Newspaper on the eve of the anniversary of 1899.
Now they are in a room next to the hall (dining room), which contains various family heirlooms of the poet's family members, which we have collected in recent years.
Near Pushkin's house, under the canopy of a large two-century-old maple (the last Pushkin maple in Mikhailovsky), among dense bushes of lilac, acacia and jasmine, in some places entwined with green hops, stands a small wooden outhouse. This outbuilding was built by Osip Abramovich Gannibal in late XVIII century, simultaneously with a large manor house. It housed a bathhouse and a lighthouse. Under Pushkin, Arina Rodionovna lived in a room.
In the bathhouse, Pushkin took a bath when, with the onset of cold weather, he could not swim in Soroti. He came to the babysitter's room when he was especially lonely. Here, with the nanny, he felt like a god in his bosom. Here he went to rest, to listen to her wonderful tales. Everything here was simple, Russian, rustic, cozy… Ancient chests, benches, in the red corner, “under the saints”, a table covered with a homespun tablecloth, a buzzing spindle… In the other corner there was a Russian stove with a bench, bunches of fragrant herbs. Opposite the stove on the shelf - a copper samovar, a road cellar, clay bottles for homemade liquors - anises, bison, cherries, to which, to be honest, Pushkin was a big hunter. On the chest of drawers is the cherished casket of the nanny ...
In the spring of 1826, Pushkin was looking forward to the arrival in Trigorskoye of the poet Nikolai Mikhailovich Yazykov, about whom he had heard a lot from his friend at Derpt University Alexei Nikolaevich Wulf, the son of Praskovya Alexandrova Osipova from his first marriage. Finally, to Pushkin's greatest joy, Yazykov and Wulf arrived in the village . These were happy days in the life of the exiled poet.
Yazykov liked everything in Trigorskoye and Mikhailovskoye - both the local nature, and the owners of Trigorskoye, and the young "maidens of the Trigorsky mountains", and especially Pushkin, before whom he was in awe. Nikolai Mikhailovich was also delighted with Arina Rodionovna. She attracted him with her spiritual attachment to the poet, maternal care for him, her wonderful folk speech, "captivating stories" about the old days, about the past. In turn, the friend of "her Sasha" became dear to the old woman; Arina Rodionovna always treated him cordially, trying in every possible way to please him. Yazykov recalls the “easy hours” spent with Arina Rodionovna and her “holy hospitality” in two of his poems dedicated to her. One of them was written during the life of the nanny.
Before Yazykov's departure from Mikhailovsky, Arina Rodionovna presented him with a gift box, which she had ordered from a village craftsman especially for Yazykov. In this box, Yazykov then kept his souvenirs from Trigorsky, letters from Pushkin and the Osipov-Wulf to him, and the autograph of poems “At the seashore, a green oak ...” presented to him by Pushkin.
Upon learning of the death of the nanny, Yazykov dedicates another poem to her memory, “To the death of the nanny of A. S. Pushkin,” which ends like this:
I will find that humble cross,
Under which, between other people's coffins
Your ashes lay down, exhausted
Labor and the burden of years.
Before him with a sad head
bow; I remember a lot
And with a touching dream
My soul will melt!
Many years later. In 1938, shortly after the centenary of the death of A. S. Pushkin, a descendant of N. M. Yazykov, Anna Dmitrievna Yazykova, handed over the manuscripts and letters of Yazykov and Pushkin, stored in the cherished casket, to the State Literary Museum in Moscow, and bequeathed the casket to be transferred after his death to the nanny's house in Mikhailovsky.
Anna Dmitrievna died in the village of Muromtsevo, Vladimir Region, where she was evacuated in 1944 from Novgorod, at the age of 96.
Her testamentary order to transfer the casket to Mikhailovsky was carried out by a close friend of Anna Dmitrievna, teacher E. A. Piskunova in 1951.
This box is rectangular in shape, oak, with cherry wood trim, with a hinged lid, in the center of which is a small, now sealed hole “for a piggy bank”. On the inside of the lid is a yellowed paper sticker with the inscription in ink:
"For a black day
This box was made in 1826 on July 16th.
The casket is locked, its safety is quite good. This is the only authentic thing of Arina Rodionovna that has survived to this day.
Once little Sasha Pushkin wrote a poetic joke on French and gave it to his tutor, the Frenchman Ruslo, to sit down. Gouverneur ridiculed the poems and their author. The boy was deeply offended and kept his offense for a long time.
A few years later, Pushkin gave his father a dog. To the question of Sergei Lvovich, what is the name of the dog, the mischievous replied: “Ruslo! ..” Such is the family tradition kept by the descendants of the poet’s sister Olga Sergeevna Pavlishcheva.
In the family of the dog, they began to call not Ruslo, but Ruslan, in honor of the hero of the poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila", which the whole Pushkin family was proud of.
The dog was kind, he was loved by all the household and servants. Sergey Lvovich himself was crazy about him. Wherever he went, wherever he went, Ruslan was always with him. He was, apparently, from the Irish setters, whether the breed is pure - now no one knows.
Everyone in Mikhailovskoye has always loved dogs. It had its own large kennel, or, as people still say, "meeting house". Trigorsk friends of the Pushkins in their memoirs say that Alexander Sergeevich often came to them with his huge dogs - wolfhounds.
The poet's sister Olga Sergeevna also loved dogs. In one of his letters to her from the south, the poet wrote: “What are your favorite dogs? Have you forgotten the tragic deaths of Omphala and Bizzaro?" (her favorite dogs. - S. G.).
The son of the poet Grigory Alexandrovich had the best kennel in the district.
In 1824, a significant year for Mikhailovsky, when the entire Pushkin family was here in full force, Sergei Lvovich ordered his portrait from the artist Gampeln, in which he is depicted in a redingote - a travel summer coat. At his feet, he asked the artist to portray his faithful friend Ruslan.
Today, this portrait hangs in the bedroom of Pushkin's parents in their Mikhailov house.
Years passed and the old dog died. It happened in the summer of 1833 in Mikhailovsky. Here is how her father wrote about this loss to Olga Sergeevna: “How can I portray you, my priceless Olga, the grief that has befallen me? I have lost a friend, and a friend such as I can hardly find! My poor, poor Ruslan! He no longer walks on the earth, which, as they say in Latin, let it be light over him!
Yes, my irreplaceable Ruslan! Although he was only an unrequited four-legged, in my eyes he became much higher than many, many bipeds: my Ruslan did not steal, did not rob, did not gossip, did not take bribes, did not arrange intrigues at work, did not gossip and did not start quarrels. I buried him in the garden under a large birch, let him lie quietly.
I want to erect a mausoleum for this friend, but I'm afraid: now my senseless louts - that's who the real animals are - will write me down as a pagan ... "
For the planned mausoleum, he also composed an epitaph (in French and in Russian):
Here lies my Ruslan, my friend, my faithful dog!
He was a striking example of honesty for everyone,
He lived only for me, with death he took away
All feelings are good: he was not a hypocrite,
Not a thief, a drunkard, a depraved reveler too:
And what is smart? He was only a dog!
This message upset Olga Sergeevna extremely. Being an artist, she responded to the death of Ruslan with a watercolor drawing. The picture shows two dogs. On the right, a wall is schematically shown, and on it are inscriptions - with the heading: "In memory of Ruslan."
Under the drawing on the left is the date: "VII 1833", on the right - the artist's signature "O.".
This drawing was purchased in 1975 in Leningrad in the family of cameraman F. P. Ovsyannikov. Now he is in the poet's house next to the portrait, which depicts Sergei Lvovich and his good friend Ruslan.
Arriving in August 1824 from Odessa to Mikhailovskoye lightly, Pushkin needed a lot. The backwoods, which at that time was the Opochets district, tightly isolated it from civilization. In his letters to friends and brother Lev Sergeevich, he continually asks to send various essentials from St. Petersburg: plain and postal paper, pens, an inkwell, various books, galoshes, cheese, mustard, an incense burner, etc. He asks to send and sulfur matches (letter to brother, sent at the beginning of November 1824). In the list of things that Pushkin wanted to have in Mikhailovskoye (this list is enclosed in one of his letters to his brother in December 1825), it says - “allumette” (the word is written in French, it means “matches”. - S. G. ). What kind of matches in question in these documents? Did the modern type of matches exist at that time?
As you know, the world's first matches (phosphorus) were invented in France in 1831. For lack of funds, their inventor Charles Soria could not take a patent, and two years later his invention was rediscovered by the German chemist Kamerer, who in 1833 managed to compose a chemical mass that ignited easily when rubbed against a rough surface. This invention was acquired by the Viennese manufacturers Remer and Preschel; they first began to manufacture matches in a factory way and distribute them in Europe.
encyclopedic Dictionary Brockhaus and Efron reports that matches were originally brought to Russia from abroad (Hamburg), and since 1837 they began to be manufactured in Russia, and their production was concentrated exclusively in St. Petersburg.
Initially, phosphorus matches were sold in Russia at a fabulous price - 1 silver ruble per box (100 pieces). The common people could not afford them, and only wealthy people used them.
So, matches were invented abroad in 1833, and appeared in Russia in 1837. What kind of matches does Pushkin write to his brother in 1824? But about what.
In Russia, matches have been around for a long time. We generally called a match a small splinter. To make it burn better, its end was smeared with resin or sulfur.
At the end of the 18th century, peculiar lighters (allumette) appeared in Russia, something like closed metal or glass lamps, in which a light glowed and where matches were inserted through special holes, through which it was possible to get fire. There were these "lighters" about several matches, their cases were in the form of vases with artistic decoration. There were such matchboxes in rich houses. I happened to see one of these lighter-matches on the table in the Peterhof office of Nicholas I, the other - in the fund of the All-Union Pushkin Museum in Leningrad.
There were match lighters of a different nature, In one of the old printed manuals early XIX century, in the paragraph "On domestic fire", the following is told: " The best remedy to have a constant fire in your house - a burning lamp. But it can easily happen that the lamp goes out, then it is necessary to have a flint and flint on hand. In ordinary carving with flint from steel, it is not always possible to get fire, and therefore matches can be made. Wrap a piece of platinum wire in the form of a knitting needle with a screw near the paper lamp. This lamp is lowered into a jar of alcohol and lit, as soon as this match glows red hot, put out the lamp, because the end of the match will keep the heat as long as there is at least a drop of alcohol in the lamp. Two spoonfuls are sufficient to maintain this temperature for sixteen hours. These appliances have the important convenience that in their use there is no danger from fire or the smell of a lamp in which oil burns. Sometimes this device can be used instead of incense burners, and then ambergris or other spirits are poured in place of wine spirit ”(“ Encyclopedia of a Russian experienced urban and rural housewife, housekeeper, housekeeper, cook, cook, containing a guide to urban and agriculture, extracted from 40 , 50 and 60 years of experience of Russian housewives. Composed by Boris Volzhin in St. Petersburg").
About such matches, probably, Pushkin wrote to his brother in 1824, and not about those that were invented almost ten years later and are now known to everyone.
In the autumn of 1835, Pushkin lives in the stuffy atmosphere of Imperial Petersburg. He rushes out, to the village, to Mikhailovskoye, where he always found consolation, rest and peace. Finally, on September 10, he arrives, feeling in his heart that he is probably here for the last time.
In these sad days, he wrote the elegy “I visited again ..” - a deep reflection on his fate, on obedience to the general law of being, on the unknown future. He sees in Mikhailovskoye familiar places that he loved since childhood, he sees the old, which is irresistibly replaced by the new. He talks with himself, with his reader, stretches out the hand of the tribe to the young, unfamiliar ...
The poet reminds us that in the life of every person some truths are comprehended twice: the first time - when he is young, and the second time - when he has accumulated wisdom and life experience. “Again I visited ...” - an unfinished poem. Perhaps Pushkin did this deliberately so that the reader's thought would work further. He wants the next generation to remember him with a kind word. And in order to remember him, you need to leave a good memory for yourself. For the only thing that is dear to a man is that he has done good, and especially that which was not easy for him is loved. And every person should strive to leave a good mark after himself with his deeds, his work, his own. Creativity… Such is the lofty meaning of the elegy.
There are two souvenirs in the Mikhailovsky House-Museum related to the fate of the “three pines” sung by Pushkin in an elegy. These are pieces of wood. One is large, rounded, reminiscent of a growth that occurs on the trunks of very old pines. It has been plucked all over by pilgrims who tore off pinches of wood as a memento back in those years when this relic was almost the only exhibit of the museum. The other is a small rectangular bar, on the front side of which two silver plates are attached. The top plate is engraved with the lines:
On the border of the Grandfather's Possessions, on place tom,
Where the road goes uphill
Pitted by rains, three pines
Standing - one at a distance, two others
Close to friend.
On the bottom plate there is an inscription: “Part of the last pine, broken by a storm on July 5, 1895. Mikhailovskoye.
The first pilgrim who, after the death of Pushkin, made a walk along Mikhailovsky in February 1837, was A. I. Turgenev. He followed in the footsteps of Pushkin. Been everywhere. He also bowed to the “three pines”, but he saw not three, but only two, the third was gone.
Twenty-two years later, another pilgrim, the writer K. Ya. Timofeev, also took a walk along Mikhailovsky and also found only two pines: “The third one has long been cut down, as the rector of the Svyatogorsky monastery explained to me. The tree was needed for the monastery mill ... "
And 15 years later, in the year of the installation of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow, the Novoe Vremya newspaper reported that “in Mikhailovskoye only one Pushkin pine tree survived, but this one looks like a real invalid, all branches are destroyed, greenery - not a twig, only one large trunk, decrepit, decrepit, covered with thick bark.
“I remember this last pine especially well - thick, slightly inclined, with a broken top. She lived in this form until a storm finally broke her in July 1895. So told Yuli Mikhailovich Shokalsky, the grandson of A.P. Kern, a geographer who spent his young years in Mikhailovskoye with the son of the poet Grigory Alexandrovich.
In the summer of 1898, the poet S. G. Skitalec (Petrov) visited Grigory Alexandrovich. The owner told him about the fate of the last pine: “When the storm broke the trunk of the last pine and only its tall wit remained, I saw that it had become dangerous for people, and with pain in my heart I ordered it to be cut down, and the trunk to be kept in my office. Before doing all this, I invited a photographer and ordered him to take a picture. There were several prints of the photograph: one remained in Mikhailovskoye, another was donated by Osipov to Trigorskoye, the third was sent to the Academy of Sciences, and the fourth in 1899, on the day of the celebration of the centenary of the birth of Alexander Sergeevich, was presented to Pskov.
At the request of his relatives and friends, Grigory Alexandrovich made several small souvenir blocks with a silver inscription from pine and sent them to his brother Alexander, his sister Natalya - Countess Merenberg, who lived in Germany, his nephew - the son of his wife's sister N. Volotsky, Yu. M. Shokalsky, M.A. Philosophova - the sister of the wife of Grigory Alexandrovich, as well as the Academy of Sciences, Lyceum and poet K.K. Sluchevsky.
Leaving Mikhailovsky for Lithuania, where he settled in Markuchei, the estate of his wife V. A. Melnikova, Grigory Alexandrovich took with him a pine trunk, cutting off a large piece from it, which he handed over for eternal storage to the new owner of Mikhailovsky - the Pskov Pushkin Committee. It is this piece of pine and one of the bars with the inscription that everyone who comes to the poet's house sees. These relics are exhibited next to the manuscripts of the elegy "Again I visited ...".
Today, the souvenir that belonged to Alexander Alexandrovich Pushkin is located far away, in Belgium, with the heirs of the great-grandson of the poet N. A. Pushkin, who died in 1968, who live in Brussels; copies of K. K. Sluchevsky and Yu. M. Shokalsky are in the funds of the All-Union Pushkin Museum. In Mikhailovsky, a copy of M. A. Philosophova is kept.
And the living "three pines" again stand in their place - "on the border of the grandfather's possessions." They were restored by us in 1947. They were planted at the age of twelve. Now they have grown, become tall. They will soon be forty years old. Two of them stand "close to each other." Near their roots, "a young grove has grown," and the bushes "crowd around under their canopy, like children." And the third pine planted in the distance is the "old bachelor." Every year it becomes gloomier and gloomier, as it should be ...
When you pass by the "three pines", you always hear the welcoming "noise of the trees" and you cannot help but remember the bright name of the poet and his immortal "I visited again."
Pushkin's cookery in Mikhailovskoye has recently been replenished with new exhibits. We managed to find pots and pans of red copper, mortars, teapots, jars, patches, bowls for cooking jam, a form for preparing the sweet dish praised by Pushkin - blancmange and much more from the collectors of ancient kitchen utensils. Some of the items we purchased in Pskov from Natalya Osipovna Sokolova, whose mother S. S. Dvilevskaya-Markevich was acquainted with Maria Nikolaevna Pushchina, the wife of Pushkin's friend I. I. Pushchin. By the way, the reserve also acquired an old original portrait of Maria Nikolaevna from Natalia Osipovna.
It is known that in the family of Pushkin's parents there were cooks and cooks from courtyard people. They were sent for training to experienced craftsmen who belonged to other landowners. At that time, almost every home had books about cooking, including the Encyclopedia of Russian Experienced City and Rural Housewives, Housekeepers, Housekeepers, Cooks, Cooks…. The latter has been reprinted several times. Many houses had rare recipes passed down from generation to generation.
The Pushkins' parental home was an unimportant school of gastronomy and culinary art. According to A.P. Kern, their friends did not like to dine with the old Pushkins. On the occasion of their dinner, A.P. Delvig once composed ironic verses to Pushkin:
Friend Pushkin, do you want to taste
Bad butter and rotten eggs?
So come dine with me
Today with my family.
At the Lyceum, Pushkin's desk was spartan. Daily soups, porridges, compotes… brought to life his impromptu:
Blessed is the husband,
sits closer to the porridge ...
With lyceum dishes, Pushkin rather developed his appetite than satisfied it. The school regime allowed him to dream more than feast. At this time, he sings "circular punch bowl." But this cup was probably not drunk as often as it was celebrated. Luxurious dinners and feasts were drawn in the dreams of the young poet:
In a bright room
Fun round table covered:
Shchi is smoking, wine is in a glass
And the pike lies in the tablecloth...
At the end of the lyceum, the young poet was drawn into the secular whirlpool. In this vain, but tempting for a young man, school of life, he learned a lot about many things that were previously inaccessible to him. In the words of A. I. Herzen, during these years he learned to "live in harmony with Venus, with a dagger, with a book and a glass." He pays tribute to various overseas wines that were fashionable at that time - chateau-iquem, Burgundy, champagne ... But the time soon came when "innate fate" threw him into exile to the south, where he was forced to forget "the capitals of the distant and glitter, and noisy feasts ".
In Chisinau, where Pushkin lived rather poorly, he got acquainted with the dishes of local Moldavian cuisine, in Odessa - with the latest European cuisine at dinners with local wealthy merchants and the Governor General.
Exiled from Odessa to the Pskov province, Pushkin found himself in a modest village environment and lived simply and modestly. Parents did not meet the disgraced son with feasts and pies. And when they soon left Mikhailovskoye, they took their cooks with them. The duties of the hostess, housekeeper and cook were taken over by the old nanny Arina Rodionovna, a jack of all trades. Her brasna and drinking, her tinctures, marshmallows and jams, as you know, amazed N. M. Yazykov, and he even sang in his poems the gastronomic art of Arina Rodionovna.
From time to time, Pushkin instructs Brother Lev to send either wine, or mustard, or a dozen rum, or Limburg cheese. There was no time for gourmet food in the village, but even here Pushkin happened to feast with rare guests - Pushchin, Delvig, Yazykov, and there were good supplies for them in the poet's house. Here is his order in verse, given to his brother:
Do you know what kind?
I have one law:
Thirst full freedom
And tolerance for all sorts of wines.
My hospitable cellar ...
It is unlikely that this cellar contained rare wines. But kvass, tinctures, liqueurs - there was plenty, and before all this, Arina Rodionovna was a great craftswoman.
Provisional stocks of Mikhailovsky were large and varied. There were many chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, sheep, calves, and cows on the farm. Milk - the sea; sour cream, cream, cottage cheese - pretty much. The river, lakes and ponds of Mikhailovsky abounded with fish - crucian carp, bream, ide, catfish, crayfish. And what could be better than fried crucian carp in sour cream or jellied catfish? There is nothing to say about forest mushrooms and berries - cloudberries, raspberries, blueberries, currants. Folk legends say that Pushkin liked to pick mushrooms himself. And what about grandfather's apple orchard with its antonovka, boletus, pear, and Ochakov's cherries, plums, pears?
And Pushkin got acquainted with the excellent aristocratic cuisine of the Pskov village in the house of his friends Osipov-Wulf. Here ancient dining traditions were sacredly observed. Fat pancakes were fried at Shrove Tuesday, and a goose was stewed at Christmas. Easter cakes and Easter cakes were prepared on Holy Sunday, various cakes, blancmange and pies were prepared on name days. This house was especially famous for its apple pies. In his letters to the Osipovs, Pushkin even signed: "Your apple pie."
Pushkin was not picky. He loved the refined, but willingly ate the simple. Often preferred the latter. He loved baked potatoes, cranberries with sugar, soaked apples, lingonberries, jams, homemade soup and porridge.
“He was not a gourmand at all,” says P. A. Vyazemsky. - I even think he did not appreciate and did not - well comprehended the secrets of the art of cooking; but for other things he was a terrible glutton. I remember how on the road he ate twenty peaches, bought in Torzhok, almost in one gulp. Soaked apples also often got from him. O. A. Smirnova in her notes says that Pushkin's favorite village jam was gooseberry. “You could often see on his table ... a jar of gooseberry jam.” Yes, and how Pushkin could not love such jam, since it was cooked according to all those old rules that were recommended by a special printed recipe!
Cooking gooseberry jam was a difficult and tricky business. Here is how the recipe of the then “rural encyclopedia” says about it: “Peeled, rinsed, green, unripe gooseberries, harvested between June 10 and 15, put in an ant pot, shifting in rows with cherry leaves and a little sorrel and spinach. Pour in strong vodka, close the lid, coat it with dough, put it into the oven for several hours, as hot as it is after taking the bread out of it. The next day, take out the gooseberries, pour into cold water with ice directly from the cellar, after an hour move the water and boil it once, then a second time, then a third, then put the berries again in cold water with ice, which is mixed several times, each time keeping the berries in it for a quarter of an hour, then throw the berries on a sieve, and when the berry drains, spread it on a linen tablecloth, and when it dries, hang it on the steelyard, for each pound of berries take 2 pounds of sugar and one glass of water. Boil the syrup from three-quarters of the sugar, boil, remove the foam and pour the berries into this hot syrup and boil, and when it starts to boil, sprinkle with the rest of the sugar and boil three times with a key, and then keep on low heat, tasting. After all this, put the jam in pound jars and wrap them in wax paper, and on top with a bubble and tie. This jam is considered excellent and the best, the best of the village supplies.
Possessing exemplary health, Pushkin, according to his contemporaries, loved to eat. In "Onegin" there is a line - "the stomach is faithful, our breguet."
At the end of his life, exhausted by the worries and expenses of city life in the capital, Pushkin dreamed of a village, of Mikhailov's cookery. Now he had the most modest, but unfulfilled desires: "Peace, yes, a pot of cabbage soup, but a big one himself."
But, alas, this happiness was not destined for him ...
502. Indicate the elements of reasoning in the text below. When people leave, things remain after them. Things silently testify to the most ancient truth - that they are more durable than people. There are no inanimate objects. There are inanimate people. Without Pushkin's things, without the nature of Pushkin's places, it is difficult to fully understand his life and work. The poet's contemporaries knew this well, and best of all Alexander Ivanovich Turgenev, who wrote about Pushkin's house, about pines, lilacs, a mound and much more in Mikhailovsky. It has long been known that for any poet, the places where his fate took shape, where his "prophetic apples" were opened, especially the roads. They remain for him forever the most remarkable in the world. Start your creative biography Pushkin himself connected not only with the Tsarskoye Selo gardens, but also with Mikhailovsky groves. In Mikhailovsky, he realized "why he was born into the world." He comprehended in it the true generosity of nature, its infinity, "beauty, eternally shining." And he gave his heart and love to the local sky and earth, its bread, flowers, trees and birds. Mikhailovskoye was his home, through the windows of which he saw his Fatherland. It was his destiny and happiness. Through the love of flowers, birds and herbs to great poet love for his people came, love bright, cheerful, like the wonderful song of a nightingale or oriole. Through love for the nature of Mikhailovsky, joy comes to all of us. (S. S. Geichenko)When people leave, things remain after them. Things silently testify to the most ancient truth - that they are more durable than people. He was carrying Pushkin's things, without the nature of Pushkin's places it is difficult to fully understand his life and work. The poet's contemporaries knew this well, and best of all - Alexander Ivanovich Turgenev, who wrote about Pushkin's house, about pines, lilacs, a mound and much more in Mikhailovsky. Today, Pushkin's things are in reserves and museums. Here they live a special, mysterious life, and the keepers read the letters hidden in them.
... Pushkin loved canes and sticks. They were different for him. In the poet's office, in his apartment-museum on the embankment of the Moika River in Leningrad, there are three canes: a wooden one with an ivory knob, the inscription “A. Pushkin”, it was depicted by the artist P. Ge in his painting “Pushkin and Pushchin in Mikhailovsky”. The second is wooden (reed) with a handle, in which is embedded a bronze gilded button from the uniform of Peter the Great. This button was presented by Peter to his godson, the Arab Ibrahim Gannibal. How the cane got to Pushkin is unknown. Maybe here, in Petrovsky, he received it as a gift from his grandfather? The third reeds are walnut with an amethyst knob.
One must think that, in addition to these canes, Pushkin also had other canes. He depicted one of them in his Mikhailov drawing. Another was depicted in the portrait of Pushkin by his contemporary artist P. Chernetsov in 1830.
Pushkin also had two iron canes. One of them is located in the Mikhailovsky study of the poet. It is forged from round iron, with a T-shaped handle, with a four-sided tip-point. The cane arrived at Mikhailovskoye from the Pushkin House of the USSR Academy of Sciences on the eve of the grand opening of the restored house-museum, on the 150th anniversary of Pushkin's birth. It was transferred to the funds of the Pushkin House by the Odessa Art Museum in 1938. Pushkin got himself this stick when he lived in Chisinau. M. de Ribas and I. Liprandi talk about it in their memoirs.
Leaving Chisinau for Odessa, Pushkin took with him his iron staff. Pushkin loved to walk the streets of the city, figuratively brandishing his stick. The poet's contemporaries - Odessans - tell about this. Leaving for Mikhailovskoye, Pushkin left the cane to his friend A. Merzlyakov, from him she passed to the poet A. Podolinsky, then to the son of the adjutant Count M. Vorontsov - Yagnitsky, who, in turn, presented it to his friend I. Dontsov. In the 1880s, Dontsov presented it to I. Troinitsky from Odessa.
In his book “Past and Present”, A. Leonidov, People's Artist of the USSR, who lived in Odessa in the 80s, says that N. Troinitsky donated this stick to the Odessa Museum of History and Antiquities. It came out in 1887. In 1899, the cane was exhibited at the Pushkin anniversary exhibition in Odessa among other Pushkin relics.
Remembering his iron Kishinev-Odessa staff, Pushkin got himself a new one in Mikhailovskoye, also made of iron. It was the work of a local blacksmith. Under Pushkin, good blacksmiths were everywhere here - on Voronich, in the Svyatogorsky monastery, at the Hannibals in Petrovsky, and even in Mikhailovsky itself, although half-abandoned, there was also a forge. In the Pskov region, from time immemorial, iron household items, such as a horseshoe, a bit, an ax, a shovel, a staff, a poker, were made at the place where their owner lived. They differed in features that were characteristic of the area.
Pushkin's Odessa stick has dimensions: length 88.5 centimeters, handle 10.5 centimeters, weight 2 kilograms 400 grams (6 pounds).
What was Pushkin's Mikhailovsky staff? Here is what is said about this in folk stories published in the pre-revolutionary press at various times.
The story of Pushkin's coachman Pyotr Parfyonov: “He always has an iron stick in his hands, nine pounds in weight, he will go into the field, throws the stick up, catches it on the fly, like a tambour-major” (recording of 1859).
Another note from a peasant from the village of Gaiki, which is near Mikhailovsky: “Sometimes, Alexander Sergeevich was walking, he would take his stick and throw it forward, reach it, pick it up and throw it forward again, continuing to throw it another time until he came home.”
The spy A. Boshnyak did not forget to write about it in his 1826 denunciation when he described Pushkin’s rural life: “At the fair of the Svyatogorsky Assumption Monastery, Pushkin was in a shirt, belted with a pink ribbon, in a wide-brimmed straw hat and with an iron stick in his hand.”
P. Annenkov, the first biographer of Pushkin, also recalls this village cane in his book: “The Mikhailovsky staff was useful to Pushkin when he fell with a horse on ice and was badly hurt, which he wrote to P. Vyazemsky on January 28, 1825. When the doctors examined Pushkin's health in Pskov, they found that the patient had in the lower extremities, especially on the right shin, a widespread expansion of the blood-returning veins, which made the collegiate secretary Pushkin difficult to move in general, and the staff was declared a necessary thing for him.
In 1826, Pushkin drew his self-portrait on the page of the manuscript of the novel "Eugene Onegin". He depicted himself in full growth, with a stick in his right hand. This stick has a handle in the form of the letter "T", it is very similar to the iron cane, which is told in the stories of local peasants. It should be noted that Pushkin usually painted only what he liked and what he wanted to tell not only to himself, but also to people. He was very precise in his images.
Tradition has preserved for us the story of the end of Pushkin's iron staff. Here's how it seemed to happen.
When Pushkin at the end of his life (in 1835) “revisited” his native places, he decided to visit his youth friend Evpraksia Nikolaevna Vulf from Trigorskoye, who in 1831 married the Pskov landowner Baron B. Vrevsky and lived in his estate Golubovo, located near Mikhailovsky.
Here he spent several days. Leaving the welcoming house, Pushkin threw his cherished staff into the Golubovsky pond as a memory of a date, separation, as an oath to visit this place again ...
Shortly after the war, we tried to find this cane in the Golubovsky pond, we went there with a descendant of the Vrevskys, but, alas, the pond almost completely died out and overgrown, and our search did not lead to anything ...
In February 1937, on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the death of the great poet, a solemn commemorative meeting was held in Pushkinskiye Gory. It was attended by residents of surrounding villages, villages, teachers and students of local schools. The oldest people of Pushkin's Svyatogorye also came. The youngest of them were at least 70–75 years old, and the oldest were 100 or more. They were gathered to tell about what they had heard about Pushkin from their grandfathers when they were little kids. And the old people talked about many things, about how Pushkin loved to pull the flax, how he helped the fishermen on Sorot to pull the nets to the shore, how he climbed onto the church bell tower and merrily rang the bells ...
And a certain elder Ivan Gavrilovich Gavrilov told about how Pushkin went into the forge and hit the anvil with a large hammer. And Ivan Pavlov, a resident of a village near Lake Beloguli, who was over a hundred years old, told how “many years ago, experts who arrived from St. whether she was Pushkin, and when they were sure, they took her to St. Petersburg.
All this was published on the pages of the newspaper "Pushkinsky Kolkhoznik" in the issue of February 18, 1937. Is there any truth in these stories, how much truth is in what seems to us a figment of fantasy - this question has yet to be decided by researchers and keepers of Pushkin's relics. Historical science claims that folk memories are not accidentally called an expression of folk wisdom.
There are things and events that the people do not want to remember, but, on the contrary, there are waxes that the people tenaciously keep in their memory and pass on from generation to generation, to eternity.
Such is the memory of the people of Pushkin's Mikhailovsky iron staff, with which he walked as a wanderer through many villages and villages of the Pskov region, which was for him both a "life-giving homeland" and a "native country."
After the death of the poet, almost all of Mikhailovsky's belongings scattered around the world, many of them died from the negligence of their pre-revolutionary keepers, many were destroyed by the Nazis. The search for Pushkin's relics and memorials continues. Only in the last two or three years have we been able to find books from the famous libraries of Trigorsky and Petrovsky, an authentic drawing by the poet's sister Olga Sergeevna, and very rare household items...
Entering Pushkin's life, these things took on a kind of new individual traits and served as his friends and merry and sad hours of being.
Here is the old, old grandfather's "skinny" billiards, as everyone called him in the house. It was he, Pushkin, who found him in the carriage house. Having learned that this thing is very old and that the famous great-grandfather Abram Petrovich Hannibal had brought it with him to the estate, he ordered the billiards to be repaired, darned and put in the hall. Since then, billiards has become a companion of the poet's life. I. Pushchim saw this billiards when he visited the disgraced house in January 1825. “There was billiards in the hall, it could serve as entertainment for him,” he emphasized in his “Memoirs”. L. Wolf and the poet's brother Lev Sergeevich tell about billiards. Pushkin himself recalls in that famous fourth chapter of "Eugene Onegin", in which he depicted his life in Mikhailovskoye, when
One, immersed in calculations.
Armed with a blunt cue,
He's on a two-ball billiard
Igrat since morning.
Village evening will come:
Billiards left, cue forgotten ...
After the death of Pushkin, the billiards, which had become completely dilapidated, were sent back to the barn, where rats spoiled it and it completely turned into junk. Pushkin's son Grigory Aleksandrovich, who settled in Mikhailovsky in the 60s, was an avid billiard player, he started a new large billiards in his house, and ordered the old billiards to be sent from the barn to the nanny's house, but soon the billiards were again sent to the barn, where they burned down when estate fire.
Restoring Pushkin's house in 1911, the organizers of the museum did not try to restore Pushkin's billiards, but made a new, ordinary billiards, typical for provincial taverns and visiting houses. The journalist Harris, in her article about Mikhailovsky, published in the Bayan magazine (No. 7–8, 1914), describes this object as follows: in the House-Museum, an unsuccessful imitation of antiquity. In the billiard room there is an ugly, bulky billiard table covered with bright green clerical cloth.
Restoring the poet's house and its material world, I thought a lot about Pushkin's billiards. What was its shape, size, finish? I visited many memorable places and museums where old billiards are preserved: in Moscow, Lomonosov, I studied and copied billiards in the "Nashchokin's house" in the All-Union Pushkin Museum in Leningrad. In the famous drawing by Pushkin, made by him in Odessa in the spring of 1824, a part of a billiards is depicted, very similar to Nashchokin's billiards. It seemed to me that all this was not what Mikhailovsky needed, and I continued my search. I reasoned as follows: as soon as a billiards table could fit in the nanny's house, it means that it was small, collapsible. This is first. Secondly, both Pushkin and Pushchin, and all others who saw this billiards, say that they played two balls on it and not with a simple cue, but with a blunt one.
Billiards is an old game. In his "Lexicon of Common Truths" G. Flaubert writes: "Billiards is the noblest game. It is indispensable during life in the village ... ”They were already fond of him in the 18th century in France, England, Italy, Germany, and America. Under Peter the Great, billiards appeared in Russia as well.
The oldest billiards is French. It is without pockets, small in size, they played two balls on it with a blunt, curved, bone-tipped cue, on its field there was a metal pin, which was called "pass".
Newer ones are large billiards with pockets and a straight cue. They played five and fifteen balls (pyramid). Such billiards exist in our time in clubs and houses of culture.
Everything shows that Pushkin had a French type of billiards.
At my request, A. Vilm, a former employee of the State Hermitage Museum, sought out engravings of the 18th century depicting such billiards.
There was little left: to draw up drawings, to find the necessary material - Karelian birch, an old golden lace, cloth ... All this was found.
P. Fedorov, a carpenter and restorer-cabinet maker of our museum, set about recreating the billiards, and soon it was ready.
Today, as in 1825, Pushkin's billiards again stand in the hall of the Mikhailovsky House. Everyone entering the room, looking at it, cannot help but recall the wonderful lines from Eugene Onegin.
“And the cue and the four balls that yesterday lay in this room in a hill of mahogany, where are they now?” the reader will ask. We answer this: these things are not the poet’s caves, but found by his son Grigory Alexandrovich in the vicinity of Mikhailovsky, as he testifies in his letter to the editor of a St. Petersburg newspaper on the eve of the anniversary of 1899.
Now they are in a room next to the hall (dining room), which contains various family heirlooms of the poet's family members, which we have collected in recent years.
In the spring of 1826, Pushkin was looking forward to the arrival in Trigorskoye of the poet Nikolai Mikhailovich Yazykov, about whom he had heard a lot from his friend from the University of Dorpat, Alexei Nikolaevich Wulf, the son of Praskovya Alexandrovna Osinova. Finally, to the greatest joy of Pushkin, N. Yazykov and A. Wulf arrived in the village. These were the best days in the life of the exiled poet. Everything was right for Yazykov in Trigorsky and Mikhailovsky - the local nature, and the owners of Trigorsky, and the young "maidens of the Trigorsky mountains", and especially Pushkin, before whom he was in awe. Nikolai Mikhailovich was also crazy about Arina Rodionovna. She attracted him with her spiritual attachment to the poet, maternal care for him, her wonderful folk speech, "captivating stories" about antiquity, probation. And in turn, the friend of “her Sasha” became dear to the old woman; Arina Rodionovna always treated him cordially, trying in every possible way to please him. Yazykov recalls the “easy hours” spent with Arina Rodionovna and her “holy hospitality” in two of his poems dedicated to her. One of them was written during the life of the nanny.
Before Yazykov's departure from Mikhailovsky, Arina Rodionovna presented him with a gift box, which she had ordered from a village craftsman especially for Yazykov.
Upon learning of the death of the nanny, Yazykov dedicates another poem to her memory, “On the death of the nanny of A. S. Pushkin,” which ends like this:
I will find that humble cross,
Under which, between other people's coffins,
Your ashes lay down, exhausted
Labor and the burden of years.
Before him with a sad head
I bow: I remember a lot -
And with a touching dream
My soul will melt!
Many years later. In 1938, shortly after the 100th anniversary of the death of A. S. Pushkin, a descendant of N. Yazykov, Anna Dmitrievna Yazykova, handed over the manuscripts and letters of Yazykov and Pushkin, stored in the cherished casket, to the State Literary Museum in Moscow, and bequeathed the casket to be transferred after his death to the nanny's house in Mikhailovsky.
Anna Dmitrievna died in the village of Muromtsevo, Vladimir Region, where she was evacuated in 1944 from Novgorod, at the age of 96.
Her testamentary order to transfer the casket to Mikhailovsky was carried out by a close friend of Anna Dmitrievna, teacher E. Piskunova, in 1951.
Once, little Sasha Pushkin wrote a poetic joke in French and gave it to his French tutor Ruslo to read.
A few years later, Pushkin gave his father a dog. To the question of Sergei Lvovich, what is the name of the dog, the mischievous one answered: “Ruslo! ..”
Such is the family tradition kept by the descendants of the poet's sister Olga Sergeevna Pavlishcheva.
In the family of the dog, they began to call not Ruslo, but Ruslan, in honor of the hero of the poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila", which the whole Pushkin family was proud of.
The dog was kind, he was loved by all the household and servants. Sergey Lvovich himself was crazy about him. Wherever he went, wherever he went, Ruslan was always with him. He was, apparently, from the Irish setters, whether the breed is pure, now no one knows.
Everyone in Mikhailovskoye has always loved dogs. It had its own large kennel, or, as people still say, "meeting house". Trigorsky friends of the Pushkins in their memoirs say that Alexander Sergeevich often came to them with his huge wolfhound dogs.
The poet's sister Olga Sergeevna also loved dogs. In one of his letters to her from the south, the poet wrote: “What are your favorite dogs? Have you forgotten the tragic deaths of Omphala and Bizzaro?" (Her favorite dogs. - S. G.)
In 1824, a significant year for Mikhailovsky, when the whole Pushkin family was here in full force, Sergei Lvovich ordered his portrait from the artist K. Gampeln, in which he is depicted in a reddingote; road summer coat. At his feet, he asked the artist to portray his faithful friend Ruslan.
Today, this portrait hangs in the bedroom of Pushkin's parents in the Mikhailovsky house.
Years passed and the old dog died. It happened in the summer of 1833 in Mikhailovsky. Here is how her father wrote about this loss to Olga Sergeevna: “How can I portray you, my priceless Olga, the grief that has befallen me? I have lost a friend, and a friend such as I can hardly find! My poor, poor Ruslan! He no longer walks on the earth, which, as they say in Latin, let it be light over him!
Yes, my irreplaceable Ruslan! Although he was only an unrequited four-legged, in my eyes he became much higher than many, many bipeds: my Ruslan did not steal, did not rob, did not gossip, did not take bribes, did not arrange intrigues at work, did not gossip and did not start quarrels. I buried him in the garden under a large birch, let him lie quietly.
I want to erect a mausoleum for this friend, I'm afraid: now my senseless louts - that's who the real animals are - will write me as a pagan ... "
For the planned mausoleum, he also composed an epitaph (in French and in Russian):
Here lies my Ruslan, my friend, my faithful dog!
He was a striking example of honesty for everyone,
He lived only for me, with death he took away
All feelings are good: he was not a hypocrite,
Not a thief, a drunkard, a depraved reveler too:
And what is smart? He was only a dog!
This message upset Olga Sergeevna extremely. Being an artist, she responded to the death of Ruslan with a watercolor drawing. The picture shows two dogs. On the right, a foot is schematically shown, and on it are letters with the heading "In Memory of Ruslan."
How slow is the traveler's attention
On cold gravestones"
That will attract my friends
The hands of a familiar shape!
After many, many years it
Reminds them of a former friend:
"He is no longer in your circle,
The heart is buried here."
Under the drawing on the left is the date: “VII 1833”, on the right is the signature of the artist “O. Pouschkin.
This drawing was acquired by me in 1975 in Leningrad in the family of cameraman F. Ovsyannikov. Now he is in the poet's house next to the portrait, which depicts Sergei Lvovich and his good friend Ruslan.
Arriving in August 1824 from Odessa to Mikhailovskoye lightly, Pushkin needed a lot. The backwoods, which at that time was the Opochets district, tightly isolated it from civilization. In his letters to his friends and brother Lev Sergeevich, he keeps asking to send various essential items from St. Petersburg: plain and postal paper, pens, an inkwell, various books, galoshes, cheese, mustard, an incense burner, etc.
He also asks to send matches (a letter to his brother, sent in early November 1824). What matches are we talking about?
As you know, the world's first matches (phosphorus) were invented in France in 1831. For lack of funds, their inventor Charles Sorin could not take a patent, and two years later his invention was rediscovered by the German chemist Kamerer, who in 1833 managed to compose a chemical mass that ignited easily when rubbed against a rough surface. This invention was acquired by the Viennese manufacturers Remer and Preschel; they first began to manufacture matches in a factory way and distribute them in Europe.
The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron reports that "matches were originally brought to Russia from abroad (Hamburg), and since 1837 they began to be manufactured in Russia, and their production was concentrated exclusively in St. Petersburg."
Initially, phosphorus matches were sold in Russia at a fabulous price - 1 silver ruble per box (100 pieces). The common people could not afford them, and only wealthy people used them.
So, matches were invented abroad in 1833, and appeared in Russia in 1837. What kind of matches does Pushkin write to his brother in 1824? But about what.
A match in Russia has long been generally called a small splinter. To make it burn better, its end was smeared with resin or sulfur. At the end of the 18th century, peculiar lighters (allumette) appeared in Russia, something like closed metal or glass lamps, in which a light was glimmering and where matches were inserted through special holes, through which it was possible to get fire. There were these "lighters" about several matches, their cases were in the form of vases with artistic decoration. There were such matchboxes in rich houses. I happened to see one of these lighter-matches on the table in the Peterhof office of Nicholas I, the other - in the fund of the All-Union Pushkin Museum in Leningrad.
There were match lighters of a different nature. In one of the old printed manuals of the beginning of the 19th century, in the paragraph “On domestic fire”, the following is said: “The best way to have a constant fire in your house is a burning lamp. But it can easily happen that the lamp goes out, then it is necessary to have a flint and flint on hand. In ordinary carving with flint from steel, it is not always possible to get fire, and therefore matches can be made. Wrap a piece of platinum wire in the form of a knitting needle with piit near a paper lamp. This lamp is lowered into a jar of alcohol and lit, as soon as this match glows red hot, put out the lamp, because the end of the match will keep the heat as long as there is at least a drop of alcohol in the lamp. Two spoonfuls are sufficient to maintain this temperature for sixteen hours. These appliances have the important convenience that in their use there is no danger from fire or the smell of a lamp in which oil burns. Sometimes this device can be used instead of incense burners, and then ambergris or other spirits are poured in place of wine spirit ”(“ Encyclopedia of a Russian experienced urban and rural housewife, housekeeper, housekeeper, cook, cook, containing a guide to urban and agriculture, extracted from 40 , 50 and 60 years of experience of Russian housewives. Composed by Boris Volzhin in St. Petersburg").
About such matches, probably, Pushkin wrote to his brother in 1824.
Autumn 1835 Pushkin lives in the stuffy atmosphere of Imperial Petersburg. He rushes out, to the village, to Mikhailovskoye, where he always found consolation, rest and peace. Finally, on September 10, he arrives, feeling in his heart that he is probably here for the last time.
In these sad days, he wrote the elegy "I visited again ..." - a deep meditation on his fate, on obedience to the general law of being, on the mysterious future. He sees in Mikhailovskoye familiar places that he loved since childhood, he sees the old, which is irresistibly replaced by the new. He talks with himself, with his reader, stretches out the hand of the tribe to the young, unfamiliar ...
The poet reminds us that in the life of every person some truths are comprehended twice: the first time - when he is young and the second time - when he has accumulated wisdom and life experience. “Again I visited ...” - an unfinished poem. Perhaps Pushkin did this deliberately so that the reader's thought would work further. He wants the next generation to remember him with a kind word. And in order to remember him, you need to leave a good memory for yourself. For the only thing that is dear to a man is that he has done good, and especially that which was not easy for him is loved. And each person should strive to leave behind a good mark with his deeds, his work, his creativity ... Such is the lofty meaning of the elegy.
There are two souvenirs in the Mikhailovsky House-Museum related to the fate of the “three pine trees” sung by Pushkin in an elegy. These are pieces of wood. One large, rounded shape, reminiscent of a growth, which are found on the trunks of very old pines. It has been plucked all over by pilgrims who tore off pinches of wood as a memento back in those years when this relic was almost the only exhibit of the museum. The other is a small rectangular bar, on the front side of which two silver plates are attached. The top plate is engraved with the lines:
On the border
Grandfather's possessions, on the spot
Where the road goes uphill
Pitted by rains, three pines
Standing - one at a distance, two others
Close to each other...
On the bottom plate there is an inscription: “Part of the last pine, broken by a storm on July 5, 1895. Mikhailovskoye.
The first pilgrim who, after the death of Pushkin, took a walk along Mikhailovsky in February 1837 was A. Turgenev. He followed in the footsteps of Pushkin. He also bowed to the “three pines”, but he saw not three, but only two, the third was gone.
Twenty-two years later, another pilgrim, the writer K. Timofeev, also took a walk along Mikhailovsky and also found only two pines: “The third one has long been cut down, as the rector of the Svyatogorsky monastery explained to me. The tree was needed for the monastery mill ... "
And fifteen years later, in the year of the erection of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow, the Novoye Vremya newspaper reported that “only one Pushkin pine tree remained alive in Mikhailovskoye, but this one looks like a real invalid, all branches are destroyed, greenery - not a twig, only one large trunk, decrepit, decrepit, covered with thick bark ... ".
“I remember this last pine especially well, thick, slightly inclined, with a broken top. She lived in this form until a storm finally broke her in July 1895, ”says Yuli Mikhailovich Shokalsky, the grandson of A. Kern, a geographer who spent his young years in Mikhailovsky with Grigory Aleksandrovich Pushkin.
In the summer of 1898, the poet S. Skitalets (Petrov) visited Grigory Alexandrovich. The owner told him about the fate of the last pine tree: “When a storm broke the trunk of the last pine tree and only its tall wit remained, and saw that it had become dangerous for people, and with pain in his heart ordered to cut it down, and keep the trunk in his office. Before doing all this, I invited a photographer and ordered him to take a picture.
There were several prints of the photograph: one remained in Mikhailovskoye, another was donated by Osinov to Trigorskoye, the third was sent to the Academy of Sciences, and the fourth in 1899, on the day of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Sergeevich, was presented to Pskov.
At the request of his relatives and friends, Grigory Alexandrovich made several small souvenir bars with a silver inscription from pine and sent them to his brother Alexander, his sister Natalya - Countess Merenberg, who lived in Germany, his nephew - the son of his wife's sister I. Volotsky, Yu. Shokalsky, M. Philosophova - the sister of the wife of Grigory Alexandrovich, as well as the Academy of Sciences, the Lyceum and the poet K. Sluchevsky.
Leaving Mikhailovsky for Lithuania, where he settled in Markuchai, the estate of his wife V. Melnikova, Grigory Alexandrovich took with him a pine trunk, cutting off a large piece from it and transferring it to the new owner of Mikhailovsky, the Pskov Pushkin Committee, for eternal storage. It is this piece of pine and one of the bars with the inscription that everyone who comes to the poet's house sees. These relics are exhibited next to the manuscripts of the elegy "Again I visited ...".
Today, the souvenir that belonged to Alexander Alexandrovich Pushkin is located far away, in Belgium, with the heirs of the great-grandson of the poet A. S. Pushkin, who died in 1968, who live in Brussels; copies of K. Sluchevsky and Yu. Shokalsky in the funds of the All-Union Pushkin Museum. In Mikhailovsky, a copy of M. Philosophova is kept.
And the living "three pines" again stand on their bridge - "on the border of the grandfather's possessions." They were restored by us in 1947. They were planted at the age of twelve. Now they have grown, become tall. They will soon be forty years old. Two of them stand "close to each other ...". Near their roots, “a young grove has grown”, and “bushes crowd under their canopy like children” ... And the third pine planted in the distance is “an old bachelor”. Every year it becomes gloomier and gloomier, as it should be ...
When you pass by the "three pines", you always hear the welcoming "noise of trees" and you cannot help but remember the bright name of the poet and his immortal "Again I visited ...".
A few years ago I received a letter from Canada from a certain K. Chipman, head of the Russian department of Canadian radio. In this letter, the author informs that their radio has recorded in Montreal an interview with Canadian literary scholar R. Pletnev about a recently discovered poem attributed to Pushkin. A brief history of this poem is as follows.
Not far from Mikhailovskoye there was once an old estate of landowners Filosofovs Bogdanovskoye, where the poet often visited, played cards with the owner and ... looked after his wife. The Filosofov family tradition tells that one day Pushkin, opening the drawer of the card table, quickly wrote the following joking lines at the bottom of it:
She was mysteriously silent
And he was mysteriously silent,
She didn't say a word
He didn't answer.
And finally, with a pleading look,
She said to him:
"My friend, about this conversation
Don't tell anyone."
The table with Pushkin's poem was kept in Bogdanovsky before the revolution. He burned out in the years civil war together with the house, when many landowners' estates in the Pskov region were on fire. But this poem had lists that were kept by members of the Philosophical family, who lived in St. Petersburg and Moscow. One of these lists appeared after the revolution in Paris. A relative of the Filosofovs, N. Trubetskaya, found out about this, and she brought the list to Canada, where she constantly lives and works. The list was handed over for study to Professor R. Pletnev, a well-known specialist in Russian literature and Pushkin studies in the West.
In his interview to Canadian radio, R. Pletoi stated that this poem could have been written by Pushkin, but it would probably be impossible to fully prove this. R. Pletnev emphasized that the poem belongs to the category of Pushkin's jokes and has no great artistic value.
Bogdanovsky was often visited, not only by Alexander Pushkin, but also by his father, Sergei Lvovich, and brother Lev. Both loved to write poetry in the albums of their friends and acquaintances. According to the poetic warehouse, the general harmony, vocabulary and a kind of "album" this playful poem is more like the creation of Lev Sergeevich Pushkin than his great brother. That's what I think when I read these verses over and over again.
A small drawing from the time of Pushkin pasted on thin old cardboard. At the top, one under the other, are two narrow paper stickers in the form of strips with text in French. The text is composed of words cut from some book or magazine of the early 19th century. Text on the picture.
This text should explain the subject of the watercolor. What is shown on it?
In the picture we see an almost empty room. In the foreground is a large rounded sofa with a semi-soft back. On the wall to the left one can see a mirror in a narrow wooden frame and, almost next to it, a wide frame, probably with a painting. There are two young people in love on the sofa, she and he, in a rather intimate pose - he, like a small child, sits on her lap, hugging his beloved with his right hand on the shoulder and leaning his face against her face ... His eyes are blissfully closed, his lips - they whisper ... She, leaning towards him, looks at the viewer with wide-open eyes, which seem to say: “Please, look as much as you like. I am calm, he loves me ... I am with him like “Zemfira, who left Aleko ...” She is wearing a crimson dress, a brown gypsy shawl with red stripes on her shoulders. He wears a brown frock coat, with a black tie around his neck.
Silence, family, homeliness, comfort - this is the general atmosphere of the room. And behind the sofa, on the right, having opened the door to the room, someone's head with disheveled hair and bulging eyes sticks out. In it we recognize the features of the author of "Gypsies" - A. S. Pushkin.
The faces of the depicted bear an undoubted portrait character. And if Pushkin is looking out of the door, then who is sitting on the sofa? Carefully examining the miniature, on the right, vertically, you can read the inscription “1829. K. G.” Where was Pushkin this year? Where did he live, with whom he met especially often, was he friends?.. Who is depicted in this caricature?
1829 Pushkin is "circling" in the light. Until mid-May, he lives in Moscow. Dreaming of marriage. Wooed to Sofya Fedorovna Pushkina, Ekaterina Nikolaevna Ushakova ... Matchmaking to S. Pushkina was not successful. This girl was officially declared the bride of another - N. Panin.
The image of S. Pushkina was not reflected in any way either in later life or in Pushkin's poetry ...
Her successor was another maiden - Ekaterina Nikolaevna Ushakova. Contemporaries say that Pushkin's love for Ushakova was immeasurable and mutual. But the rumor was deceived in their predictions.
After leaving for St. Petersburg, Pushkin did not appear for a long time in Moscow on Presnya, where the Ushakovs lived. A new girlish heart captured his imagination, he became interested in Anna Alekseevna Olenina - the daughter of the director of the St. Petersburg Public Library, president of the Academy of Arts A. Olenin, Anna Petrovna Kern's cousin. Having been refused by Olenina's parents, Pushkin returned to Moscow again with the intention of resuming his courtship of Ekaterina Nikolaevna Ushakova. But here another setback awaited him. He learned that his "Zemfira" E. N. was engaged to another.
With whom did I stay? Pushkin exclaimed.
With deer antlers, - the bride answered him ... (A hint at Pushkin's passion in St. Petersburg for A. Olenina.)
Despite the quarrel, the poet continued to visit the Ushakovs' house. Contemporaries say that at first the husband (Naumov) was very jealous of his wife for her girlish past, for Pushkin ... But then the love and consent of the husband and wife to Pushkin's great, but kind envy always reigned in the house.
The album of Ekaterina Nikolaevna's sister, Elizaveta Nikolaevna, has survived to this day, in which, among the numerous caricatures, there is also a caricature of Pushkin.
All this allows us to assert that the watercolor miniature kept in the museum fund of the reserve depicts in a joking manner the young spouses Ushakovs and Pushkin, who remained “with a nose”, like with a tray, like “Aleko, to whom Zemfira turned out to be unfaithful”. To what has been said, it must be added that in the old days, in Pushkin's time, they liked to make inscriptions for caricature drawings not by hand, not with a pen, but by sticking cut letters and words from books and magazines. They were made in albums and on separate sheets. These are the inscriptions on the drawing made by someone close to the Ushakovs' house.
It was not possible to find out who the artist, the author of the watercolor. The drawing came to the museum-reserve from the funds of the State Literary Museum in 1905, where, in turn, it came from the State Theater Museum named after A. A. Bakhrushin in 1938. The same museum acquired our watercolors from the descendants of the Ushakovs. It was almost fifty years ago.
Pushkin's cookery in Mikhailovsky has recently been replenished with new exhibits. We managed to find pots and pans of red copper, mortars, teapots, jars, patches (clay bowls with steep sides), basins for cooking jam, a form for preparing the sweet dish praised by Pushkin - blancmange and much more. Some of the items we purchased in Pskov from Natalya Osipovna Sokolova, whose mother, O. Dvilevskaya-Markevich, was acquainted with Maria Nikolaevna Pushchina, the wife of Pushkin's friend I. Pushchin.
By the way, the reserve also acquired an old original portrait of Maria Nikolaevna from Natalia Osipovna.
At that time, almost every home had books about cooking, including the Encyclopedia of the Russian Rural Housekeeper, Housekeeper, Cook and Cook; the latter has been reprinted several times. Many houses had rare recipes passed down from generation to generation. According to the Pushkins' parental home, it was an unimportant school of gastronomy and culinary art. According to A. Kern, their friends did not like to dine with the old Pushkins. On the occasion of their dinner, A. Delvig once composed ironic verses to Pushkin:
Friend Pushkin, do you want to taste
Bad butter and rotten eggs?
So come dine with me
Today with my family.
At the Lyceum, Pushkin's desk was spartan. Daily soups, porridges, compotes… brought to life his impromptu:
Blessed is the husband, who sits closer to the porridge ...
With lyceum dishes, Pushkin rather developed his appetite than satisfied it. The school regime allowed him to dream more than feast.
At this time, he sings "circular punch bowl." But this cup was probably not drunk as often as it was celebrated. Luxurious dinners and feasts were drawn in the dreams of the young poet:
... In a bright room
Fun round stop covered;
Bread and salt on a clean bedspread,
Shchi is smoking, wine is in a glass
And the pike lies in the tablecloth...
At the end of the Lyceum, the young poet was drawn into the secular whirlpool. In this vain, tempting school of life for a young man, he learned a lot about many things that were previously inaccessible to him. He learned to "live in harmony with Venus, with a dagger, with a book and a glass." He pays tribute to various overseas wines that were fashionable at that time - chateau, burgon, champagne ... But the time soon came when "innate fate" threw him into exile to the south, where he was forced to forget "the capitals of the distant and glitter, and noisy feasts" ...
In Chisinau, where Pushkin lived rather poorly, he had to get acquainted with the products of the local Moldavian culinary arts. In Odessa, he gets acquainted with the novelties of European cuisine at dinners with local wealthy merchants and with the governor general.
Exiled from Odessa to the Pskov province, Pushkin found himself in a modest village environment and lived simply and modestly. Parents did not meet the disgraced son with feasts and pies. And when they soon left Mikhailovskaya, they took their cooks with them. The duties of the hostess, housekeeper and cook were taken over by the old nanny Arina Rodionovna, a jack of all trades. Her brasna and drinking, her tinctures, marshmallows and jams, as you know, amazed N. Yazykov, and he even sang in his poems the gastronomic art of Arina Rodionovna.
From time to time, Pushkin instructs Brother Lev to send either wine, or mustard, or a dozen rum, or Limburg cheese. There was no time for gourmet food in the village, but even here Pushkin happened to feast with rare guests - I. Pushchin, A. Delvig, N. Yazykov, and for a long time there were good supplies in the poet's house. Here is his order in verse, given to his brother:
Do you know what kind?
I have one law;
Thirst full freedom
And tolerance for all kinds of wines!
My hospitable cellar ...
It is unlikely that this cellar contained rare wines. But there was plenty of kvass, tinctures, liqueurs, and before all this, Arina Rodionovna was a great craftswoman.
Provisional stocks of Mikhailovsky were large and varied. There were many chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, sheep, calves, and cows on the farm. Milk - the sea; sour cream, cream, cottage cheese - pretty much. The river, lakes and ponds of Mikhailovsky abounded with fish - crucian carp, bream, ide, catfish and crayfish. And what could be better than fried crucian carp in sour cream or jellied catfish? There is nothing to say about forest mushrooms and berries - cloudberries, raspberries, blueberries, currants. Folk legends say that Pushkin liked to pick mushrooms himself. And what about grandfather's apple orchard with its antonovka, boletus, pear, and Ochakov's cherries, plums, pears?
Pushkin met the fine aristocratic cuisine of the Pskov village in the house of his friends Osinov-Wulf. Here ancient dining traditions were sacredly observed. Fat pancakes were baked for Shrovetide, and a goose was stewed for Christmas. Easter cakes and Easter cakes were prepared on Holy Sunday, various cakes, blancmange and pies were prepared on name days. This house was especially famous for its apple pies. In his letters to the Osinovs, Pushkin even signed: "Your apple pie."
Pushkin was not picky. He loved the refined, but willingly ate the simple. Often preferred the latter. He loved baked potatoes, cranberries with sugar, soaked apples, lingonberries, jam, homemade soup and porridge.
“He was not a gourmand at all,” says P. Vyazemsky. - He even, I think, did not appreciate and did not well comprehend the secrets of the art of cooking; but for other things he was a terrible glutton. I remember how on the road he ate twenty peaches, bought in Torzhok, almost in one gulp. Soaked apples also often got from him. O. Smirnova in her notes says that Pushkin's favorite village jam was gooseberry. “You could often see on his table ... a jar of gooseberry jam.” Yes, and how Pushkin could not like such jam, since it was cooked according to all those old rules that were recommended by a special printed recipe!
Cooking gooseberry jam was a difficult and tricky business. Here is how the recipe of the then “rural encyclopedia” says about it: “Peeled, rinsed, green, unripe gooseberries, harvested between June 10 and 15, put in an ant pot, shifting rows of cherry leaves and a little sorrel and spinach. Pour in strong vodka, close the lid, coat it with dough, put it into the oven for several hours, as hot as it is after taking the bread out of it. The next day, take out the gooseberries, pour them into cold water with ice directly from the cellar, after an hour mix the water and boil with it once, then a second time, then a third, then put the berries again in cold water with ice, which you mix several times, each once holding the berries in it for a quarter of an hour, then put the berries on a sieve, and when the berry drains, spread it on a linen tablecloth, and when it dries, hang it on a steelyard, for every pound of berries take 2 pounds of sugar and one glass of water. Boil the syrup from three-quarters of the sugar, boil, remove the foam and pour the berries into this hot syrup and boil, and when it starts to boil, sprinkle with the rest of the sugar and boil three times with a key, and then keep on low heat, tasting. After all this, put the jam in pound jars and wrap them with wax paper, and on top with a bubble and tie. This jam is considered excellent and the best of the village supplies.
Possessing exemplary health, Pushkin, according to his contemporaries, loved to eat. In "Onegin" there is a line - "the stomach is faithful, our breguet ...".
At the end of his life, exhausted by the worries and expenses of city life in the capital, Pushkin dreamed of a village, of Mikhailov's cookery. Now he had the most modest, but unrealizable desires: "Peace, and a pot of cabbage soup, but a big one itself." But, alas, this happiness was not destined for him ...
We have in Pskov, in the State Archives, "Revision tales" by Mikhailovsky in 1825, 1836 and 1838. And thanks to them, we know the names of the “male and female” people who lived in Mikhailovskoye when Pushkin also lived there. We know not only the names of people, but also what they did, at what age they were. In the year of the poet's exile there were seventeen souls, and in the year of his death - only nine. The rest, at the behest of their parents, were either transferred to Boldino, or taken into service in St. Petersburg.
In the "Inventory of Mikhailovsky, carried out in pursuance of the decree of the Opochets noble guardianship over the family and property of A. S. Pushkin on May 18, 1838, by the zemstvo police officer Iasyukov and the lawyer Pastukhovsky with two noble witnesses," all movable property of the Pushkin village, including courtyard people, is listed. Here are their names: Eremey Sidorov, 75 years old, shepherd, Avdotya Sergeeva, his wife, 61 years old, cowgirl, her son-in-law Pavel Kurochkin, 51 years old, coachman, groom and blacksmith, his wife Avdotya, 36 years old, cowgirl, bird keeper Avdotya Arkhpova, 37 years old, Dmitry Vasiliev, 31 years old, woodsman, watchman and gardener, Praskovya, niece of Ulyana the old, living in St. Petersburg with A.S. service at the master's house and outbuildings and the daughter of Andreeva Darya, who is in St. Petersburg with Olga Sergeevna Pushkina, a youngster of 7 years old.
And what did they look like, did their images survive? It is considered not. Only the statement is false. There are images.
In the spring of 1837, at the request of A. Turgenev, M. Vielgorsky, G. Stroganov, Natalya Nikolaevna Pushkina, with the assistance of the Pskov governor A. Peshchurov, the Pskov surveyor Ilya Stepanovich Ivanov came to Mikhailovskoye to capture the view of the place where Pushkin lived and worked. The well-known artist P. Alexandrov made a lithograph from Ivanov's drawing. Everyone knows her now. It has been played thousands of times. It depicts the courtyard, Mikhailovsky's estate, the poet's house, an outbuilding, curtains, a garden, paths, Pushkin on horseback, the Osipovs riding in a carriage, a nanny, Arina Rodionovna, on the dilapidated porch of the house. But not only this was portrayed by Ivanov.
What is this old man with a stick walking past the estate? Isn't this Yeremey? And who are these seven returning with rakes and scythes from haymaking?
Maybe these are the courtyards: Praskovya - Ulyana's niece, Nastasya Mikhailova, Dmitry Vasilyev and others? And what is this little girl walking next to the adults? Yes, this, of course, is the daughter of Andreeva Darya.
So it turns out that Ivanov's "Mikhailovskoye Village" is not only an image of Pushkin's estate, but also portraits of people close to him, from Arina Rodionovna to a young girl, daughter of Daria Andreeva.
Ilya Stepanovich Ivanov was not an artist. He was only a surveyor-topographer, a draftsman. He certainly tried to be precise in his drawing. On the lithograph, it’s like a revived inventory of Mikhailovsky. We have no other images of the historical village. Therefore, Ivanov's drawing is priceless.
This is what some mysterious letters revealed to us. Others, still wandering around the wide world, are waiting in the wings ...
Pushkinogorie has long become a kind of place of cultural life of our Motherland. Here, in June of each year, the All-Union Pushkin Poetry Festival takes place, in August - the All-Union Pushkin Scientific Conference, in February - and the anniversary of the death of A. S. Pushkin - Days of Light Sorrow.
Writers K. Paustovsky, Yu. Tynyanov, S. Mikhalkov, K. Fedin, L. Leonov, Yu. Nagibin, M. Dudin have been here; artists and sculptors: S. Konenkov, P. Oreshnikov, P. Oesovsky, L. Mylnikov, E. Belashova, A. Laktionov, M. Anikushin, P. Fomin and many others. Pushkin's themes of their works, known throughout the world, were born here.
Pushkin Reserve is not only a literary monument of history and culture. This is a kind of People's Pushkin University. Here a person gets acquainted with Pushkin in the past and present. Typical Russian nature, sung by Pushkin in his many creations, inspires people of all ages.
Why are the eyes of young and mature artists turned to Pushkin? Pushkin is popular. It reflected all the manifestations of life. The soul of the poet has penetrated everywhere. It has everything that makes up the concepts of harmony, beauty, perfection, simplicity. He is realistic in everything, understandable to everyone, more intelligible than everyone. There is not a single artist who would silently pass him by in his work, be it F. Dostoevsky and L. Tolstoy, V. Mayakovsky and S. Yesenin, M. Sholokhov and L. Tvardovsky. He helped everyone find their way. He depicted the world in all its guises - aesthetic, epic, social, historical ...
I remember the winter and spring of 1949, when the well-known Soviet artist Alexander Ivanovich Laktionov worked in the rooms of the restored Pushkin's house. He came to us at the time of the nationwide recognition of his painting “Letter from the Front”.
Laktionov devoted many days to studying the life and work of the poet. He painstakingly rummaged through the books of the Pushkin library, corrosively asked the Pushkin scholars for the information he needed about Pushkin's life in Mikhailovskoye. For him, the image of the great Russian poet became clearer, his close connection with the Pskov region, the Pskov village. And when the plot of the picture was finally determined by Laktionov, he began a large canvas, to which he gave the name "Again I visited ...".
Before L. Laktionov, many Soviet artists, including V. Byalynitsky-Birulya, P. Konchalovsky, L. Khizhinsky, Yu. Neprintsev, I. Shabanov and others, worked in the Pushkin Reserve. The works of these artists have been repeatedly published in mass circulation in the form of reproductions and are well known to our people. But none of them created a large canvas, and a large painting by Y. Neprintsev perished.
“For some reason, no one has yet made a living and significant portrait of this charming piece of the motherland,” A. Lunacharsky wrote back in 1926 in one of his enthusiastic letters about Mikhailovsky, published by him shortly after his trip to the Pushkin Reserve.
Laktionov set himself the task of writing a "portrait" of the nature of the Pskov region, which is associated with the bright, life-affirming beginning of Pushkin's lyrics, permeated with great optimism. The artist planned to show Pushkin against the backdrop of the nature of his “native country”, with which the poet felt his deep, blood and spiritual kinship and with which he forever made his heart”, immortalized her in immortal poems.
In the painting by A. Laktionov, Pushkin is depicted during his penultimate visit to Mikhailovskoye (in September 1835), when the poet, exhausted by government persecution, attacks by censorship, harassment of the “secular mob”, experiencing severe material need, sought to escape from St. Petersburg, which was strangling him, to his native village, to the common people, to that corner of the earth where he spent "two years of inconspicuous" ...
October. Autumn. The maples and lindens of Trigorsky Park are burning with a bright crimson. Fallen leaves cover the wet sand of the site like a carpet. On a sofa under the shade of an oak, the poet sits in a calm, concentrated pose. His gaze is fixed on the distance, on the sad simplicity of his native corner of the earth.
Far away, for many versts, a majestic landscape opens up. In the foreground is the “quiet blue Sorot”, washing the yellowed, sun-eaten shores of the Trigorsky meadow, then the meadows themselves with stacks of freshly cut hay, “striped hills and fields”, “scattered huts in the distance” and a blue haze on the horizon.
The artist captured Pushkin at the moment when, inspired by the beauty of his native places, he wraps his thoughts and feelings in the poetic stanzas of the elegy “Once again I visited that corner of the earth ...” - stanzas addressed to the “young, unfamiliar tribe”.
Then Laktionov painted a portrait of the poet in Pushkin's house. Engravings and etchings by the Leningrad graphic artist Vasily Mikhailovich Zvontsov became winged symbols of Pushkin's very spirit - he saw so aptly and accurately depicted the real and sublime of these forests and copses, fields and hills.
V. Zvontsov was fond of drawing since childhood, in his youth he studied at an art school in Leningrad. And the Great Patriotic War beat the Nazis in the Pskov region and near Berlin, holder of many military orders and medals, now a reserve lieutenant colonel.
At the end of the war, V. Zvontsov was the secretary of the Vasileostrovsky District Party Committee in Leningrad. And finally, his old dream came true, he is a student at the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after I. E. Repin of the Academy of Arts of the USSR. After graduating from the institute as a professional artist, he remains in teaching.
Since 1953, Vasily Mikhailovich can be found in the reserve at any time of the year. He is a very kind person and friend. Every year, for each Pushkin anniversary - the birthday, death, exile of the poet to the Pskov village - Vasily Mikhailovich brings his gifts to Mikhailovskoye - etchings-miniatures on Pushkin's themes, so that we, the workers of the museum-reserve, can bring them to good memory to our dear guests - writers, poets, artists, musicians, scientists and cultural figures who take part in the Pushkin readings, conferences, literary evenings and the All-Union Pushkin Poetry Festival in Mikhailovsky.
The artist Alexei Konstantinovich Sokolov is also a good friend of the Pushkin Reserve. Many memorable Pushkin places are reflected in his paintings. Since 1947, when he was still a student at the I. E. Repin Institute of the USSR Academy of Arts, and all subsequent years, when Sokolov became a venerable artist, a teacher of painting at this institute, he is almost always in the reserve: either in summer, or in spring, or in autumn or in winter. He is an indispensable participant in the memorable Pushkin meetings, conferences and folk festivals in Mikhailovsky. He is an adviser and assistant to restorers and preservers of the reserve. A student of the largest Soviet painters, academicians I. Grabar, V. Oreshnikov, A. Mylnikov, he worked a lot and successfully on the artistic decoration of the Leningrad Metro, the Leningrad Theater for Young Spectators, the Moscow Taganka Theater, the Palace of Culture in the city of Cherepovets, etc. A. Sokolov is a master of portrait art and landscape painting.
He knows many hidden secrets of Pushkin's nature. She is his teacher and mentor, his landscapes introduce us to the world of unexplored beauty of color and light, joy and happiness.
Pushkin Mountains for Sokolov are heavenly places where the artist always aspires to new meeting with Pushkin and where he leaves, full of high love for the Fatherland and spiritually renewed.
Inexhaustible creative possibilities in the protected Pushkin places open up for novice artists, students of secondary art schools and higher educational institution Why don't they just come here? From Moscow, Leningrad, Minsk, Kyiv… Beginning in 1957, students of the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after I. E. Repin of the USSR Academy of Arts have been doing their summer creative practice here. Every year for two summer months, under the guidance of the institute's teachers and with the help of researchers and curators of the Pushkin Reserve, students from Repin go through not only painting and graphic practice, but also a kind of Pushkin studies course.
Here they improve their skills, choosing for compositions both the image of the poet, and the nature that he sang, and memorable places Pushkin Svyatogorye Mikhailovsky, Trigorsky, Petrovsky, Voronich, and portraits of living people of today's village - the descendants of the poet's countrymen. Others take up illustrating Pushkin's works. After all, nowhere is Pushkin's works so clearly, so prominently, so palpably figuratively perceived as in the place where they were written.
Meetings of young artists with Pushkin have a beneficial effect on the development of the realistic beginning of their work, on the search for their own means of expression. Every year, young artists, finishing their practice with us and leaving Pushkin's Lukomorye, together with the museum-reserve, arrange a reporting exhibition of their works in Pushkinskiye Gory. Getting acquainted with the exhibits, studies, sketches, sketches, you clearly feel the ardent heart of young artists, their love for Pushkin, for our great Motherland, you feel creative activity, growing skill.
And in recent years, masters of Russian photography E. Kassin, P. Krivtsov, V. Akhlomov, more and more often come to the reserve together with artists, live for weeks, months, shoot interestingly, unexpectedly, and everything captured here we see in their albums as if with new eyes. . This is a new, modern side of the artistic life of Pushkinogorye.
Everyone knows what role poetry plays in the formation of people, their morality, in the upbringing of “good feelings”. It pleases, soothes, shocks, inspires. It reveals such concepts as eternity, time, love, faith. It is the main source of moral strength. It is available to everyone. Pushkin Reserve - the country of poetry. Whoever comes here becomes a poet himself...
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Dudin has been in Mikhailovskoye since 1949. He came to the anniversary celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the birth of A. S. Pushkin.
This folk festival made an indelible impression on the poet. He saw and understood that the holiday in Mikhailovsky is a national holiday, because Pushkin is the creation of the people, his best son, the best expression of the genius of the Russian people. Then Dudin wrote the poem "Meeting at the anniversary of Pushkin on June 12, 1949 in the village of Mikhailovsky."
Since then, year after year, M. Dudin has been visiting Pushkin's village, he has his own "kingdom" here, his own tower-wing, his own paths and groves. The poet became closely acquainted with Pushkin's land, the life and way of life of today's village, with the villagers - the descendants of the great Pushkin. He has visited many rural libraries, clubs, houses of culture, and not only in Pushkinskiye Gory, but also in the surrounding towns and villages. He sang in his poems Pushkin's places and their relics, the work of ordinary people, wrote ditties for local collective farms, poems for memorial stones on graves unknown soldiers who died for the liberation of Pushkin's land from the fascist invaders. Together with the workers of the reserve, he landscaped its gardens and parks, the ancient settlement in Savkino. As a token of gratitude to the poet for his love and care for the Pushkin land and its people, he was awarded the title of "Honorary Citizen of Pushkinskiye Gory".
In 1007, a large cycle of Dudin's poems "Svyatogorsk Summer" was born. In it, the poet writes about nature, through the knowledge of which Pushkin came to understand the greatness of the "Russian spirit". The poet's reflections on today's fate of the earth and mankind are permeated with the eternal presence of Pushkin. The collection ends with the poem "This grain."
You were born on earth.
The testament of the distant ancestors is destined
You always winter and summer
Soul to hear: this grain!
What if the world is split
Longing strife. Does not matter
War, plague and famine will pass,
Love and song. Sow the grain!
M. Dudin and his fellow front-line poets A. Smerdov, V. Azarov, Yu. Melnikov, I. Vinogradov, S. Smirnov, Ya. Helemsky and many others, arriving in the revived Mikhailovskoye, cannot but recall what was in this holy place during the terrible years of the war ... Their poems and songs, the monumental poem by Alexander Smerdov "Pushkin Years" is a requiem to the heroic soldiers and officers who gave their lives for their Motherland, for Pushkin, for his sacred grave. In the poem by A. Smerdov, Pushkin appears not only as a singer of the military glory of our Fatherland in the past - he is a comrade-in-arms in the battles of our fighters. This idea is revealed in Smerdov's poem in all solemnity and force.
Front-line poets in their poems speak of the mighty inspiration that they gained in Pushkin's land.
In his poem "Sappers", the poet Gleb Semenov sings of the great feat of liberation from the Nazi mines of the road to the Pushkin necropolis. These verses today sound like a tragic symphony in Pushkinskiye Gory. The poems of front-line poets are repeated in Pushkinskiye Gory: in the mouths of guides, at evenings dedicated to the meetings of pilgrims with veterans of the Great Patriotic War.
A front-line soldier from Leningrad, the poet Vsevolod Azarov, first came here, to Pushkinogorye, in the winter of 1936 - on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the death of A. S. Pushkin. “Since then I have been attached to these blessed places,” he writes in the preface to one of his poetry collections. V. Azarov is one of the first poets who visited the Pushkin Reserve after its release in July 1944. He visited many Pushkin holidays here. "The Way to Mikhailovskoye" was written by him in post-war years. Today, his poetic Pushkin cycle has been replenished with verses-memoirs of the terrible years of the war, of the caring keepers of Pushkin's places, of the joy of life of people who create new world.
For the Leningrad poet Vladislav Shoshin, Mikhailovskoye has always been “my native land”. Everything in him is close and sincere to him: the ancient city of Voronich, and the thrones in Mikhailovskoye, and the earth, and his sky.
Boris Schmidt visited Pushkinogorye in the 1930s. After the war, his four poetic books were published, entirely devoted to meetings with Pushkin, with Mikhailovsky: Three Trees (1962), Life, Tears, and Love (1970), Letter to Mikhailovskoye (1975), "Poems about my treasures" (1979). Particularly sincere are the verses dedicated to the trees - Pushkin's contemporaries, who suffered from the Nazi shells.
At various times, large cycles of poems about Mikhailovsky and Trigorsky were created by poets - Leonid Vysheslavsky (Kyiv), Larisa Romanettko (Riga), Georgy Nekrasov (Leningrad).
Ivan Vasilyevich Vinogradov Pskov poet, former partisan. He is a caring friend of the Pushkin Museum-Reserve. He is in it very often. It can be seen and heard at all Pushkin holidays and meetings. “Pushkin is with us”, “Hello, Pushkin”, “Living Pushkin”, “Pushkin's voice” - poems with which the poet spoke at the first post-war Pushkin holidays. Vinogradov's poetic word is always warm, sincere, kind. Our Vinogradov is not only a poet, but also a well-wisher - a faithful assistant to the keepers of the reserved Pushkin land in their labors for the benefit of our people.
In the modern Mikhailovskaya poetic Pushkiniana, poems and songs of other Pskov poets also sound: Vladimir Borovikov, Alexander Bologov, Igor Grigoriev, Evgeny Izyumop, Mikhail Skorodumov, Oleg Timmerman, Vladimir Polovnikov.
Do not count everything written by our poets about the Pushkin reserved Svyatogorye. But, speaking of the reserve as a country of poetry, one cannot fail to name the names of those poets who decorated Pushkin's wreath with their beautiful poems - these are the names of Samuil Marshak, Pavel Antokolsky, Maxim Rylsky, Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, Andrey Voznesensky, Evgeny Yevtushenko, Bella Akhmadullina, Larisa Vasilyeva , Silva Kaputikyan, Maxim Gettuev, David Samoilov, Sergei Ostrovoy, Sergei Smirnov, Yaroslav Smelyakov, David Kugultinov, Kaysyn Kuliev, Yakov Shvedov, Viktor Bokov, Nadezhda Polyakova, Ilya Fonyakov…
We read poems on large panels along the road along which pilgrims go to Mikhailovskoye.
KAISYN KULIEV
Keep his gait and footprints
Roads rocky Caucasus.
He saw our white backbones.
And our stars are the brightest diamonds.
I am grateful for this now.
Fate that tied both names,
What the Caucasus showed Pushkin
And Pushkin showed the Caucasus.
We know it or we don't know
Whether we want it or not,
But he can't be replaced
And forever needed.
A. VENCLOVA
He once said:
"Hello tribe.
Young, unfamiliar ... "
And so
The time you predicted has come
Your prophetic voice calls great-grandchildren,
And every day more free and full
The soul of the people responds with song.
MIRDZA KEMNE
Georgian women bring you roses,
Litvinki - rue, your greetings.
Given by Uzbek collective farms
Fragrant jida color.
And cornflower blue flame
Like a Russian eye, fire is alive,
Peoples with lush flowers
They crown your grave hill.
MAXIM RYLSKY
You erected a monument to yourself not made by hands,
No one will encroach on the age-old granite.
And the plow around him will not touch the path,
which the people keep.
You were next to those who in the gloomy years
Great paths paved forward, -
And in these days the love of all the people
Lives in your Mikhailovsky.
I really want to name all the poets who laid their hearts on the altar of Mikhailovsky. But I can't do it, because it needs a special book. All poets love Pushkin and everything Pushkin. When the Bulgarians asked E. Yevtushenko what his poem he considers to be the best, he replied: "Poems about Mikhailovsky." When P. Antokolsky was asked in Mikhailovskoye in 1967 what day he considers the happiest day of his life, he answered: "Pushkin's Poetry Day in Mikhailovskoye." The greatest of Russian arts is poetry!
The Pushkin Poetry Festival in the Pskov region is a kind of forum of grateful descendants in honor of "the great poet of all peoples, of all ages."
Pushkin's holiday is and will be nationwide, giving a visual representation of the ever-living poetic word.
Let this custom Pushkin holiday will forever remain on our land as a holiday of poetry and poets. After all, poets will also never be transferred to our land - God grant us all health and happiness!
Many, many poems about Pushkin have been written by poets from all our republics. But poetry is written not only by poets, but by everyone for whom poetry is the main essence of their life. Pushkin places attract everyone. And everyone sings the glory of the great poet. Mikhailovsky's nature is perfect, and his landscapes are poetic. In his testamentary verses addressed to future generations, Pushkin writes:
Love the green slope of the hills
Meadows crumpled by my wandering laziness,
The coolness of lindens and maples noisy shelter -
They know inspiration.
Furnace nature shines with its eternal beauty. Everything here is divine. Everything is wonderful, and people who come to bow to Pushkin express their gratitude to him with the most beautiful words, their poems. They write them down in the books of impressions of visitors to the museums of the Mikhailovsky, Petrovsky, Trigorsky, Svyatogorsky monasteries, send them by mail.
For all poets, poems about Pushkin and his land are a reflection of one's place in the poetic system, a test of oneself. A trip to Mikhailovskoye is a kind of purification for them, the awakening of the best sides of the soul. Poets come here again and again to discover a new facet of Pushkin's poetry, Pushkin's spirit, hitherto unknown to them, and through it to feel more acutely their connection with the world, with our difficult modernity.
When you stand at the foot of Mikhailovsky Hill, on which rises the poet’s house facing the sky, it seems that you are in Athens and you are standing in front of Olympus and the Muses of Poetry, Music, Spectacles are about to appear before you ...
When you stand at the foot of the Sinichya Mountain in Svyatogorye and look at the ancient Assumption Church, it seems that you are at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and now the bells will chirp and Pushkin's Tsar Boris will begin to come out ...
When you stand in front of one of the three mountains of ancient Voronin and look at the portico of the house of Pushkin's Trigorsk friends, you recall the Larins' house in the opera Eugene Onegin.
When you pass by the poetic glade of Mikhailovsky, you always hear the echo of the Pushkin Folk Poetry Festival, which takes place here every year on the birthday of Alexander Sergeevich.
And everywhere you hear the voice of Ivan Semenovich Kozlovsky. No, Ivan Semenovich does not participate in our anniversaries and Pushkin holidays - he creates them, putting his whole soul as a singer, citizen, ascetic. How many times did he sing at the Mikhailovsky estate, where the simple porch of the house-museum was his stage! How many times he sang in the garden, past which thousands of Pushkin's guests passed. How many times did he sing “Glory” to Pushkin in a poetic meadow to a hundred thousandth crowd, glory to the Soviet people - a hard worker, a winner, glory to our great Fatherland. He was echoed by the "forest and valleys" and all those present on the field. How many times did he sing a requiem to Pushkin on Sinichya Gora - old sad Russian songs, songs written by our modern Soviet poets and musicians and dedicated to the memory of Pushkin!
On the occasion of the 175th anniversary of the poet's birth, he prepared and performed for the first time with the children's choir of the Pskov Cultural Education School at the burial site of Pushkin, in the Svyatogorsk Monastery, a wonderful work by the great Russian composer S. Rachmaninov "Pimen's Monologue".
What a heart you need to have, what love for the Fatherland, for your native culture, for your people, in order to sing this greatness to Pushkin with such inspiration! Kozlovsky's voice sounds in the Assumption Cathedral in all registers, in all instruments. Ancient "voicers" built into the walls and "sails" of the building, five hundred years ago, raise the artist's singing to an indescribable height! Everyone listens with bated breath. Many have tears in their eyes. And how many people are behind the monastery wall, on all the roads leading to the Pushkin necropolis. Everyone catches every sound rushing from the top of the mountain.
Only such an artist as Ivan Semenovich Kozlovsky was able to make the ancient “voices” and the heroic walls of the monastery-fortress sing. Only he was able to fully reveal Rachmaninoff's masterpiece, his "Pimena"...
The art of Ivan Semenovich is time-tested. It is immortal! Ivan Semenovich is 85 years old! And he is still young. He is not just a wonderful singer of our great era - he is a legendary songwriter.
Addressing him with words of congratulations, we say to him and to ourselves: your art, dear Ivan Semenovich, will always live in our memory, for it is truly folk art, strengthening in the hearts of people - the builders of a new society the high moral principles of morality, ethics, beauty.
Thanksgiving Readers
I have never been to Pushkinogorye, I was not familiar with S.S. Geychenko, and the work of A.S. I knew Pushkin within the framework school curriculum. Therefore, the book "Pushkinogorye" by S.S. Geichenko was a real discovery and revelation for me.
This book is in front of me. I leaf through, look through the illustrations, read the poetic lines under them. How simple, clear, beautiful! I run through one quatrain with my eyes, then another, then I smile, then I get sad, falling into unison with the experiences and feelings of the poet.
Only now I begin to understand how interesting, subtle and rich his inner world was, how sincere and wise he was. And how modern it is!
I am reading. Pictures of the Pushkin Reserve clearly stand before me: Mikhailovskoye, its alleys, paths, gazebos, buildings, and room decoration. How many details, details of that distant past!
Reading, I hear a swarm of bees in linden trees, and "serenades of frogs" in Mikhailovsky Ponds, I smell "flax, flowers, apples in Pushkin's rooms" and the spirit of colored herbs in "fragrant stacks", I see Pushkin dressed up as a monk on a horse, crying Nikita with a dying poet, she is in her arms, I feel the heat summer day and the cold of the February days, when Pushkin died.
I imperceptibly plunge into this world and live in it. What a beautiful Russian language the book is written! I read and seem to be cleansed of that foul language and cynicism, which abound in our lives.
I tear myself away from the book and I can hardly believe that the author of the book, S.S. Geichenko was not a contemporary of A.S. Pushkin, so vividly, he clearly describes the life of the Russian poet, his experiences, life, environment.
With what tenderness and love he talks about
A.S. Pushkin and the restoration of the museum. He devoted his whole life to this. Such a dedicated attitude to the cause commands respect and admiration. S.S. Geychenko managed to recreate the world in which the great Pushkin lived and worked and gave it to us. Will the current generation have enough intelligence, skill, and most importantly, the desire to preserve all this for posterity?
In the book, I found these lines by S. Geychenko “When people leave, things remain after them. Things silently testify to the most ancient truth - that they are more durable than people. S. Geichenko left us wonderful “things” as a legacy - these are his books. They will not be silent if we take them from the shelves and read them.
The Chief Guardian of Pushkinogorye has passed away, but thanks to his work, the world of the Great Pushkin has become closer and more understandable to us.
Lyubov Alekseevna Kuznetsova,
Keto secondary school teacher
Kurgan region
I leave my heart to you...
In front of me lies a large elegant book with a beautiful cover. Let's leaf through this book together. "And I leave my heart to you." What an evocative title! This book is a testament to the great love for Pushkin, and it was written by a caring, passionate person - Galina Nikolaevna Kiyanova. The author of the book has long been engaged in journalism, of which 12 years - only Pushkin and his entourage. She had known S.S. for many years. Geychenko - "Pushkin's brownies" - that is how she called one of the chapters, it was to his blessed memory that she dedicated this book.
Most recently, I read a book by S.S. Geychenko "At Lukomorye". I really liked it not only for its content, the special manner of narration, but also for the unusual personality of the author himself. Therefore, in Kiyanova’s book, it was the chapter about S.S. that sunk into my heart. Geichenko.
Geichenko was amazing person, he not only loved Pushkin immensely, he knew a lot about the poet and was happy to share his knowledge with everyone who showed a sincere interest in Pushkin and Pushkin places. He spoke about himself in Pushkin's words. He seemed to hear this appeal of the poet:
The estates of the peaceful invisible patron, I beg you, my kind brownie, Keep the village, forest and my wild garden, And my modest family abode!
I heard and ... became the guardian of these holy places.
An incomparable sense of humor, his own special manner of speaking attracted S.S. Geychenko people.
“Sweet sounds”, “heartfelt tenderness”, “immeasurable joy”, “splendor and “solemnity”, “the essence of a deity” are the favorite expressions of Semyon Stepanovich, the passionate guardian of the Russian language, the language of the genius Pushkin, about which he, Pushkin’s “brownie”, spoke only as a "miracle worker".
S.S. Geychenko loved the wise words of A.S. Pushkin: "Work hard and remember forever that everything in the world is fleeting."
It was these words that became the motto of his whole life, given to selfless service to Pushkin and Pushkin places, to spreading knowledge about Pushkin among Russians.
To gain the confidence of Semyon Stepanovich, Galina Nikolaevna had to work hard, get the "Pushkin vaccination".
And this, in the understanding of Semyon Stepanovich, is the education in a person of love for nature, for its harmony, for everything that Pushkin came into contact with, which aroused his creativity.
The blessing of Pushkin's "brownie" helped and helps the author of the book - Kiyanova Galina Nikolaevna - in his work. It is from here that tenderness and love that pervades all the chapters of the book.
The author has a special gift from the Pushkin Reserve - a piece of spruce - the same age as Pushkin, who died from a hurricane on August 7, 1987. This is an invaluable gift, which reminds us that not so long ago Pushkin himself sat under this spruce and composed his immortal creations.
One of the chapters of the book contains an extensive correspondence of G.N. Kiyanova with S.S. Geichenko. This correspondence made an indelible impression on me. I especially remember Geychenko's manner of communicating with the author of the book and her assistant: “Dear Galochka - a Belgorod bird, kind, affectionate, sweet!”, “Dear Belgorod women! Dear friends!”, “Your letters for me are like a good chant and sweet sounds!”
I really want to reproduce part of one of the letters: “For all thanks, merci and thanksgiving to God!
1. Thanks for the newspapers.
2. Thanks for the catalog of Vitaly Sobrovin's photo novels.
3. I will try to find for you the two-volume "Pushkin's Friends".
I have a two-volume "Drawings of Pushkin", maybe you need it too? Telegraph soon…”
And what interesting and entertaining, funny and witty signatures under the letters!
"Your old hut Semyon Geichenko." “Your grandfather Simonika Sychikofor”, “Your former young guy is now the elder Simeon.”
From the letters you can learn a lot about the people who wrote them, about their passion for Pushkin.
I also remember and liked the chapter entitled “I am faithful to the Holy Brotherhood” ..., dedicated to the lyceum years of A. S. Pushkin, his lyceum friends.
First edition Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum consisted of very talented people, many in the future became famous writers, musicians, defenders of the motherland. Pushkin's closest friends at the Lyceum and after the Lyceum were Pushchin, Delvig, Kuchelbecker. They found a common language, helped each other in difficulties and troubles.
After graduating from the lyceum, all of them (the entire first graduation!) did not lose contact. Every year, on October 19, they got together, recalled their youth, the lyceum, and their favorite teachers. Pushkin read new poems to his friends. It was fellowship for the soul. At these meetings, they grew younger, returning to their youth.
Many great and talented people gave Russia XIX century. With many of them, Pushkin was not only familiar, but also supported a good relationship. Among them were the composer M. Glinka, the poets Delvig, Zhukovsky, the wives of the Decembrists: M. Volkonskaya, A. Muravyova, simply wonderful women who played an important role in his life - P.A. Osipova-Wulf, E.A. Karamzin.
After reading the book "And I leave my heart to you" ..., I learned a lot of new and interesting things about Pushkin, about the poet's lyceum life, about Pushkin places and about Pushkin's "brownie" - Semyon Stepanovich Geichenko.
I realized how necessary Pushkin and his work is today, how close and dear it is to many Russian people even after 200 years.
Illustrations and photographs help to better understand the book, understand the time and feel the events.
The book itself is a declaration of love for Pushkin, it helps to understand the greatness of the poet, his significance for every Russian person, for the entire Russian culture.
Korosteleva Irina,
10th grade student
Ketovskoy high school
Kurgan region
My discoveries
Dear editor, hello.
Marina Khlyzova, a student of the Ketovsk secondary school in the Kurgan region, is writing to you. I study in the eighth grade.
Last year, the whole class watched a film in which Semyon Stepanovich Geichenko talked about the Pushkin places, about the restoration of a shrine destroyed by the war. Of course, it would not be entirely clear to me how much work S.S. Geychenko the restoration of the Pushkinsky Reserve, if the teacher of the Russian language and literature of our school Mikhaleva Nina Vasilievna, who has been studying the life and work of A.S. Pushkina with the guys in the mug, did not tell about this wonderful person and how much work, love, spiritual energy he had to invest in Pushkinogorye.
And here in front of me is a small volume “At Lukomorye”, its author S.S. Geichenko. I read this work in one breath. Alexander Sergeevich came to life, became closer, dearer, more understandable. I learned a lot from this book: about Pushkin's ancestors and his friends, about last trip and funerals, about the attitude of the tsar and the people towards the great poet, and most importantly - about Pushkin and Mikhailovsky. Surprisingly, but quite clearly presented Lukomorye between the rivers Sorotya and Velikaya. Here it is, Lukomorye! Lines pop up in my memory: “Lukomorye has a green oak ...” Yes, and an oak, that very miracle oak near Lukomorye.
This year we studied the story of A.S. Pushkin "The Captain's Daughter" I am reading a chapter about Nikita Timofeevich Kozlov - yes, this is Savelich! And here are the words of Sergei Lvovich (and in the story of Father Pyotr Grinev): “Shame on you, old dog, that you, despite my strict orders, did not report anything about your son ...”
I really liked the chapter "Pushkin's squirrel". It was as if the squirrel family that had come was listening to lines from a fairy tale: “A tame squirrel lives there”...
I can't stop admiring the simple and clear language of each chapter. So a man could write loving Alexander Sergeevich and who wants to leave Pushkin, Lukomorye, Dub ...
I read, go back to some chapters, re-read.
It is a pity that this book is not for sale, I would really like to have it in my library.
Marina Khlyzova,
8th grade student
Ketovskoy secondary school
Kurgan region
Part 1C1. Listen to the text and write a concise summary.
Mysterious letters
When people leave, things remain after them. Things silently testify to the most ancient truth - that they are more durable than people. There are no inanimate objects. There are inanimate people. Without Pushkin's things, without the nature of Pushkin's places, it is difficult to fully understand his life, creativity, this was well known even by the poet's contemporaries, and best of all Alexander Ivanovich Turgenev, who wrote about Pushkin's house, about pines, lilacs, a mound and much more in Mikhailovsky.
Today, Pushkin's things are in reserves and museums. Here they live a special, mysterious life, and the keepers read their hidden letters. Hundreds of thousands of people of different ages, knowledge and aspirations passed in front of me in Mikhailovsky. And they all wanted to see what surrounded the poet. And so I tell them: "Pushkin liked to sit at this window." Then they begin to look at an ordinary window and suddenly see that it is unusual, that none of them have seen such a window before, have not seen this green bush near the window. They understand that there is no other such bush in the whole world, that above the bush is the sky that was under Pushkin, and a cloud, and the silhouette of a flying bird reflected by the glass, which, perhaps, he also saw.
Many, many years after the windows, and doors, and the threshold of Pushkin's house were completely dilapidated, the lush lilac opened its fragrant flowers for people every spring. Once it was planted and groomed by someone's caring hands, and the lilac looked into Pushkin's room. And then everything sank into oblivion.
And now the threshold, and the steps, and the windows of Pushkin's house have leveled out, and we have planted lilacs again, and, as before, she gives her flowers to the dreamy traveler.
Each leaf of the bush has its own letters. Pushkin knew how to read them. To understand the village Pushkin, it is necessary that everyone who comes to Mikhailovskoye try to make out these letters.
When Pushkin was asked about his office, he answered: "The village is my office."
The village is nature. Trees, herbs, bushes, birds and animals. Pushkin loved this land. He walked through the forest without a coat, in a shirt, often barefoot, in the wind, and in the rain, and in the coolness ... He saw that in nature everything is limitless and almost nothing changes. She is eternity. It's only we who change, people.
In the spring, when everything starts anew in Mikhailovskoye and people go free, they see and hear only water. So it was under Pushkin, and so it is now. Water comes from everywhere, it floods the cherished meadows, gives birth to a huge sea and drowns streams and rivers in it, the old woman of the river and its new ones - and this water stands from one mountain to another.
Mikhailovsky's nature has its guardians. Pushkin wrote about them in the poem "Domovoi". And the most faithful guardian of this place is water.
Every day the trees, bushes, meadows and meadows of Mikhailovsky show their character in a new way. Every morning the curator of this magnificent gallery replaces one of the old paintings with some new one and, as it were, tells us: “Pushkin saw all this. Look at you too. Get better."
(S. Geichenko)
Part 2
Read the text and do tasks A1-A7; B1-B14 .
(1) Fire, smoke, ashes and ash, mangled, woven with rusty wire, stuffed with mines - that's what the Nazis left when they retreated.
(2) Instead of a reserve - a desert. (3) Ragged unhealed wound, pain and dead silence.
(4) The then president of the Academy of Sciences, Sergei Ivanovich Vavilov, from old memory, through true friends, sought out Semyon Stepanovich Geichenko. (5) He had known him for a long time as an employee of the Pushkin House, as the guardian of the Peterhof palaces; I appreciated this restless scientist who knew how to think and act.
(6) - I hope for you, take it, restore it, - said Sergey Ivanovich.
(7) It was April 1945. (8) The war was approaching Berlin in all its growing strength and ruthlessness. (9) The earth was waiting. (10) It was revived by a man who was finding his true calling.
(11) At this time, on random passing cars, with a duffel bag over his shoulders, along a road that had been turned over by an iron ram of war, Semyon Stepanovich Geychenko arrived in the Pushkin Mountains.
(12) It was necessary to clear, rake up this land defiled by the war and restore everything on the ashes as it was under Pushkin. (13) Geychenko was well aware that it is much more difficult to restore than to build again.
(14) - Well, dear, let's start, - he said, not to himself, not to the first starling, whom he saw in a miraculously preserved birdhouse on a half-burnt birch cut by fragments, standing alone by the ruins of the nanny's house. (15) - It’s easier for you, you have a birdhouse, but I have nothing. (16) Well, even if you sing, it’s still more fun ...
(17) Ducks and herons flew for the starlings. (18) Two storks took a fancy to the old Hannibal linden with the top knocked down by a shell and began to make a nest. (19) The oriole sang a silver song. (20) Grass began to grow. (21) The birch trees cut by splinters miraculously let out new shoots. (22) A mighty pine sawn by a third, on which there was an observation post and which the Nazis did not have time to cut, swam with resin and came to life. (23) The entire dugout was pulled out from under the centuries-old oak in Trigorskoye along a log, and the empty space was clogged with earth and manure. (24) And the oak began to prettier, and with a certain amount of imagination, hiding mermaids could be seen in its green leaves.
(25) Everything was stolen, destroyed, plundered by the Nazis. (26) But the director of the reserve and the people working with him believed with a bright faith that everything would be as it was under Pushkin, and spared no effort for this, working from dawn to dusk.
(27) The nursery's house was the first to be restored. (28) In 1949 Pushkin's house was rebuilt and the grand opening of the reserve took place.
(29) From all continents, poets gathered for this undying triumph of poetry. (30) Their multilingual voices, amplified by loudspeakers, rang out in the washed lush greenery, and motley festive crowds of people listened to them both in Svyatogorsky itself, near the poet’s grave, and in Mikhailovsky, in a wide meadow at the entrance to the estate.
(31) And among this festive, delighted and enchanted crowd, here and there flashed a dry tall figure of a sharp-looking man with an expressive sharp face, with a kind smile and a thick influx of blond hair falling over his eyes.
(32) He corrected them every now and then, either with his single right hand, or with a characteristic wave of his head. (33) He explained, advised, showed. (34) He was all in motion. (35) And an invisible sense of satisfaction, perhaps not even conscious, made him beautiful.
(According to M. Dudin)
For each task A1-A 7 There are four possible answers, of which only one is correct. Write the number of the correct answer.
A1. Which of the following statements answers the question: “Why SI. Vavilov told S.S. Geychenko, what does he hope for him?
1) S.S. Geichenko was a front-line soldier.
2) Semyon Stepanovich was a good builder.
3) Geychenko was a scientist who knew how to think and act.
4) S. I. Vavilov had no other choice.
A2. Choose the correct continuation of the answer to the question: “Why did Geichenko and the people working with him work from dawn to dusk?” Geychenko and people working With them, labored from dawn to dusk, because
1) wanted to make as much money as possible.
2) believed that Pushkin's places were sacred and wanted to restore them.
3) sought to please the authorities.
4) wanted to show their professional skills.
A3. Like S.S. Geychenko characterizes the information contained in sentences 31-35?
1) Semyon Stepanovich was a fussy person.
2) Geychenko always imposed his opinion on other people.
3) Semyon Stepanovich tried to show off his knowledge.
4) Geichenko was an active, knowledgeable person.
A4. Indicate the meaning in which the word is used in the text dry(proposition 31).
1) deprived of water 3) lean
2) indifferent, unkind 4) lifeless
A5. In which answer option is the content of the second sentence opposed to the content of the first?
1) Instead of a reserve - a desert. Ragged unhealed wound, pain and dead silence.
2) The war was approaching Berlin in all its growing strength and ruthlessness. The earth came to life.
3) It’s easier for you, you have a birdhouse, but I have nothing. Well, at least you sing - it's still more fun ...
4) The nanny's house was restored first. In 1949, Pushkin's house was rebuilt and the grand opening of the reserve took place.
A6. Choose the correct continuation of the answer to the question: "Why does the author of the text call the hero by name and patronymic?" This form of the name says
1) about the advanced age of the hero.
A7. Please indicate which tool artistic expressiveness contained in the fifth (5) sentence of the text. He had known him for a long time as an employee of the Pushkin House, as the guardian of the Peterhof palaces; I appreciated this restless scientist who knew how to think and act.
1) comparison 3) metaphor
2) paraphrase 4) metonymy
Answers to tasks B1-B14 write down in words and numbers, separating them with commas if necessary.
IN 1. Replace the spoken word defiled from sentence 12 as a stylistically neutral synonym. Write this synonym.
IN 2. From sentences 14-16 write out a word with an alternating vowel in the root.
AT 3. From sentences 2-6, write out a word whose spelling is determined by the rule: “After a prefix ending in a consonant letter, instead of AND, it is written Y”;
AT 4. From sentences 1-4, write out the words in which the spelling -Н- is determined by the rule: "One letter -Н- is written in words formed from unprefixed verbs and without explanatory words."
AT 5. From sentences 11 - 12, write down on the left, the spelling of the prefix in which is determined by the rule: "C is written at the end of the prefix if it is followed by a letter denoting a deaf consonant."
AT 6. From sentence 21 write out the word formed in a suffixal way.
AT 7. In the sentence below, from the read text, all commas are numbered. Write down the number(s) indicating the comma(s) when separate definition, expressed participle turnover. And among this festive, (1) delighted and enchanted crowd, here, (2) there, a dry tall figure of a sharp-looking man with an expressive sharp face flashed by, (3) with a kind smile and a thick influx of blond hair, (4) falling on eyes.
AT 8. In the sentence below, from the read text, all commas are numbered. Write down the number denoting the comma between the parts of the compound sentence.
Their multilingual voices, (1) amplified by loudspeakers, (2) rang in the washed lush greenery, (3) and motley festive crowds of people listened to them in Svyatogorsky itself, (4) near the poet’s grave, (5) and in Mikhailovsky, ( 6) in a wide meadow at the entrance to the estate.
AT 9. From sentence 19 write out the phrase, built on the basis of the connection management.
AT 10 O'CLOCK. Write down the grammatical basis of sentence 31.
AT 11. Among sentences 12-16, find an offer with an appeal. Write the number of this offer.
AT 12. Among sentences 17-24, find a sentence with homogeneous subordination. Write the number of this offer.
B13. Among offers 25-30 find compound sentences. Write the numbers of these proposals.
B14. Write out the participle from sentence 26.
Part 3
Using the read text of part 2, complete only one of the tasks on a separate signed sheet: C 2.1 or C 2.2.
C2.1
Check out Ivan and Vladimir's opinion on the use of alliances. Ivan: “In the text, the author uses coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. Isn’t it possible to get by with only subordinating conjunctions?”
Vladimir: “When writing a text, both writing and subordinating conjunctions».
Help Vladimir prove his point. Write an essay on the topic: "Unions and their role in the text".
Write an essay on the topic: "Keeper of the National Shrine".