Be that as it may, but you can talk about Pushkin endlessly. This is exactly the same little one who managed to “inherit” everywhere. But this time we have to make out the topic “Anna Kern and Pushkin: A Love Story”. This relationship could have gone unnoticed for everyone, if not for the emotionally tender poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment”, dedicated to Anna Petrovna Kern and written by the poet in 1825 in Mikhailovsky during his exile. When and how did Pushkin and Kern meet? The love story, however, turned out to be rather mysterious and strange. Their first fleeting meeting took place in the Olenins' salon in 1819 in St. Petersburg. However, first things first.
Anna Kern and Pushkin: a love story
Anna was a relative of the inhabitants of Trigorsky, the Osipov-Wulf family, who were Pushkin’s neighbors in Mikhailovsky, the poet’s family estate. Once in a correspondence with her cousin, she reports that she is a big fan of Pushkin's poetry. These words reach the poet, he is intrigued and in his letter to the poet A.G. Rodzianko asks about Kern, whose estate was in his neighborhood, and besides, Anna was his very close friend. Rodzianko in a playful form wrote an answer to Pushkin, Anna joined in this playful friendly correspondence, she added several ironic words in the letter. Pushkin was carried away by such a turn and wrote her a few compliments, while maintaining a frivolously playful tone. He expressed all his thoughts on this in his poem “Towards Rodzianka”.
Kern was married, and Pushkin knew well her not very happy marital status. It should be noted that for Kern Pushkin was not a fatal passion, as, however, it was for him.
Anna Kern: family
As a girl, Anna Poltoratskaya was a fair-haired beauty with cornflower eyes. At 17, she was married to a 52-year-old general, a participant in the war with Napoleon. Anna had to submit to the will of her father, but she didn’t love her husband, she even hated in her heart, she wrote about this in her diary. In marriage, they had two daughters, Tsar Alexander I himself expressed a desire to be the godfather of one of them.
Kern. Pushkin
Anna is an undisputed beauty who attracted the attention of many brave officers who often visited their house. As a woman, she was very cheerful and charming in communication, which destructively acted on them.
When for the first time Anna Kern and Pushkin met at her aunt Olenina, the young general even then began to have random novels and fleeting connections. The poet did not make any impression on her, and in some moments seemed rude and shameless. Anna liked him right away, and he attracted her attention with flattering exclamations, something like: “Is it possible to be so pretty ?!”
Meeting in Mikhailovsky
Anna Petrovna Kern and Pushkin met again when Alexander Sergeyevich was sent into exile in his Mikhailovskoye estate. It was the most boring and lonely time for him, after the noisy Odessa he was annoyed and morally crushed. “Poetry saved me, I have risen in my soul,” he writes later. It was at this time that, by the way, on one of the July days of 1825, Kern came to visit her relatives in Trigorskoye. Pushkin was incredibly happy about this; for some time she became a ray of light for him. By that time, Anna was already a big fan of the poet, she longed for a meeting with him and again struck him with her beauty. The poet was seduced by her, especially after the mentally sung by her popular at that time romance “Spring Night breathed”.
Poem for Anna
Anna Kern in Pushkin’s life for a moment became a passing muse, an inspiration that surged through him in an unexpected way. Impressed, he immediately takes a pen and devotes his poem to her, "I Remember a Wonderful Moment."
From the memoirs of Kern herself it follows that on the evening of July 1825, after dinner at Trigorskoye, everyone decided to visit Mikhailovskoye. Two crews hit the road. In one of them, P. A. Osipova and her son Alexei Wulf were traveling, in the other, A. N. Wulf, her cousin Anna Kern and Pushkin. The poet was, more than ever, amiable and courteous.
It was a farewell evening, the next day Kern was supposed to leave for Riga. In the morning, Pushkin came to say goodbye, brought her a copy of one of the heads of Onegin. And among the uncircumcised sheets, she found a poem dedicated to her, read it, and then wanted to put her poetic gift in the box, as Pushkin frantically grabbed it and did not want to give it away for a long time. Anna did not understand this behavior of the poet.
Undoubtedly, this woman gave him moments of happiness, and perhaps brought him back to life.
Relations
It is very important to note in this matter that Pushkin himself did not consider his feelings for Kern to be in love. Maybe this is how he bestowed women for their gentle affection and affection. In a letter to Anna Nikolaevna Wulf, he wrote that he writes a lot of love poems, but he doesn’t have love for Anna, otherwise he would become very jealous of her to Alexei Wulf, who enjoyed her favor.
B. Tomashevsky notes that, of course, there was an intriguing outburst of feelings between them, and it served as the impetus for writing a poetic masterpiece. Maybe Pushkin himself, giving it to Kern, suddenly thought that it could cause a false interpretation, and therefore resisted his impulse. But it was too late. Surely at these moments Anna Kern was overjoyed. The Pushkin opening line “I remember a wonderful moment” remained knocked out on her gravestone. This poem actually made her a living legend.
Communication
Anna Petrovna Kern and Pushkin broke up, but their further relationship is not known for certain. She left with her daughters in Riga and jokingly allowed the poet to write letters to her. And he wrote them to her, they have survived to this day, however, in French. No hints of deep feelings were traced in them. On the contrary, they are ironic and mocking, but very friendly. The poet no longer writes that she is “a genius of pure beauty” (relations have shifted to another phase), but calls her “our Babylonian harlot Anna Petrovna”.
Ways of Fate
Anna Kern and Pushkin will see each other next two years later, in 1827, when she leaves her husband and moves to Petersburg, which will cause gossip in high society.
Kern, together with his sister and father, after moving to Petersburg will live in the very house where she first met with Pushkin in 1819.
This day she will completely spend in the company of Pushkin and his father. Anna did not find words of admiration and joy from meeting him. It was most likely not love, but a great human affection and passion. In a letter to Sobolevsky, Pushkin openly writes that the other day he slept with Kern.
In December 1828, Pushkin met his precious Natalie Goncharova, lived with her for 6 years in marriage, she would give birth to four children. In 1837, Pushkin was killed in a duel.
Liberty
Anna Kern will finally be freed from the bonds of marriage when her husband passes away in 1841. She will fall in love with cadet Alexander Markov-Vinogradsky, who will also be her second cousin. With him, she will lead a quiet family life, although he is 20 years younger than her.
Anna will show Pushkin’s letters and poem as a relic to Ivan Turgenev, but a beggarly situation will force her to sell them at five rubles apiece.
One by one her daughters will die. She will survive Pushkin for 42 years and preserve in her memoirs the living image of a poet who, as she believed, really never loved anyone.
In fact, it is not clear who Anna Kern was in Pushkin's life. The history of the relationship between these two people, between whom a spark flew, gave the world one of the most beautiful, most elegant and soulful poems dedicated to a beautiful woman who were only in Russian poetry.
Total
After the death of Pushkin's mother and the death of the poet himself, Kern did not interrupt close relations with his family. The poet’s father, Sergei L. Pushkin, who felt acute loneliness after the death of his wife, wrote to Anna Petrovna tremulous heartfelt letters and even wanted to live with her “the last sad years”.
She died in Moscow six months after the death of her husband - in 1879. She lived with him for a good 40 years and never emphasized his failure.
Anna was buried in the village of Prutnya near the city of Torzhok, Tver province. Their son Alexander committed suicide after the death of his parents.
Pushkin's brother Lev Sergeyevich also dedicated a poem to her, which she recalled from memory to Pushkin at a meeting in 1827. It began with the words: "How can you not lose your mind."
At this point, consideration of the topic “Pushkin and Kern: A Love Story” can be completed. As it became clear, Kern captivated all the men of the Pushkin family, they somehow succumbed to her charm.