Who is Anna Kern briefly. Alcove list of Anna Kern

(Russia, Tver region, Torzhoksky district, Prutnya)

The Church of the Resurrection in Prutnya was built by the landowners Lvovs (owners of the nearby estates of Mitino and Vasilevo), consecrated in 1781. Next to the temple is their family necropolis. Here in the cemetery is the grave of Anna Petrovna Kern, to which A. S. Pushkin dedicated his famous poem “I remember a wonderful moment”.
The fate of Anna Kern in the story of the researcher I.A. Bochkareva: "Anna Petrovna Kern (nee Poltoratskaya)" was born along with the century "on February 11, 1800 in the city of Orel, but was closely associated with the Tver region. Her paternal grandfather Mark Fedorovich Poltoratsky - director of the Imperial Court Chapel and grandmother - the legendary Agafokleya Alexandrovna (nee Shishkova) lived in the Georgian estate 12 versts from Torzhok, in a magnificent house-palace, the architect of which, according to legend, was B. Rastrelli.Anna's maternal grandfather Ivan Petrovich Vulf owned the estate of Bernovo, Staritsky district. she was brought up until the age of 3. Five years later, she was again brought to the “incomparable grandfather” in Bernovo, where Anna receives her home education, although she has become addicted to reading since she was five years old.

In the autumn of 1812, the parents took the girl to the estate of her father in the city of Lubna, Poltava province.
She was not even seventeen years old when, at the behest of her father, she became the wife of the valiant 52-year-old general, widower Yermolai Fedorovich Kern. “Batiushka refused everyone who asked him for my hand,” Anna Petrovna recalled with resentment.
1819 A. Kern arrived in St. Petersburg. At one of the evenings in the house of her aunt, Elizaveta Markovna Olenina, she first met A.S. Pushkin. “At dinner, Pushkin sat down behind me and tried to attract my attention with a flattering exclamation: “Is it possible to be so pretty! .. When I left, ... Pushkin stood on the porch and followed me with his eyes.”
They haven't seen each other for six years. In the summer of 1825, Pushkin, already a well-known poet, was in exile in his Mikhailovsky. Anna Petrovna Vulf came to the neighboring Trigorskoye estate to visit her aunt Praskovya Fedorovna Osipova. The poet came to Trigorskoye every day.
Once he brought the manuscript of the poem "Gypsies", began to read: "... he had a melodious and melodic voice ... as he said about Ovid, "and a voice like the sound of waters."
On the eve of her departure for Riga, where her husband was serving at that time, Anna Petrovna and the inhabitants of Trigorsky went on a farewell visit to Mikhailovskoye. Pushkin and Kern were walking in the old park. In memory of that walk, the linden alley is called “Kern Alley” today.

Gallery of portraits: A.P. Kern, E.F. Kern and A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky

On the day of departure, Kern Pushkin came with a gift, a copy of the 2nd chapter of Onegin, in the uncut sheets of which was a folded postal sheet with the verses "I remember a wonderful moment." Anna Petrovna recalled: “When I was about to hide a poetic gift in a box, he looked at me for a long time, then convulsively grabbed it and did not want to return it; I forcefully begged them again; What went through his mind then, I don't know. Letters flew from Mikhailovsky to Riga to the "divine" Kern.
In her life there were stormy novels. She fascinated fans with "touching languor in the expression of her eyes, smile, in the sounds of her voice." There were losses and bitter losses in her life: of the three daughters, only Ekaterina Ermolaevna remained. M. Glinka, who is in love, dedicated the romance “I remember a wonderful moment” to her. The connection of A.P. Kern with A.N. Wulf - a Tver nobleman and a good acquaintance of Pushkin, who reflected the history of their relationship in his diary.
Anna Kern was already forty when her 19-year-old second cousin Alexander Vasilyevich Markov-Vinogradsky fell passionately in love with her.
In 1839 their son Alexander was born. After the death of E.F. Kern, in 1842 they got married. They lived happily ever after and died, like in a fairy tale, in one year.
Their life was not serene: the condemnation of relatives, poverty. I had to lead a wandering life, moving from one relative to another. They rented apartments in Torzhok, visited the Lvovs in Mitin, and the Bakunins in Pryamukhino.

She left to posterity the priceless "Memories" about Pushkin and his contemporaries.
Anna Petrovna died on May 27, 1879 in Moscow. She bequeathed to be buried next to her beloved husband in Pryamukhino (Markov-Vinogradsky died on January 27 of the same year, when they were visiting the Bakunins). The son could not fulfill her last will: after the rains, 35 versts of a country road from Torzhok to Pryamukhino turned out to be insurmountable. Her last refuge was the family cemetery of the Mitinsky Lvovs - the Prutnensky churchyard ”- I.A. Bochkareva.
“Anna Petrovna Kern was lucky in the memory of generations more than all her cousins - Wulf (Anneta, Evpraksia, Netty), Anna Olenina - combined. The "wonderful moments" of the poet's life, experienced and recreated in high artistic images, made her name out of competition among other female names associated with Pushkin in our memory. And lucky - so lucky. Because the only portrait of Anna Petrovna known to us among the huge number of drawings of the poet is also one of the best in Pushkin's graphics. This is a drawing dated September-October 1829, on a draft of the poet's protest against the unauthorized publication of his poems by M. Bestuzhev-Ryumin in the Northern Star (1829). The portrait, which is a masterfully made pencil profile, conveys the pretty feminine features of a beautiful and still quite young woman. A portrait of A.M. Efros in the book “Pushkin the Portrait Painter”, to which we refer the reader who is interested in the details of this iconographic identification,” wrote L.F. Kertselli ("Tver region in Pushkin's drawings", M., 1976, p. 177)

Literature:
Booklet "Genius of Pure Beauty". Text by I.A. Bochkareva, Torzhok, 2009
L.F. Kertselli "Tver region in the drawings of Pushkin", M., 1976

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Pogost Prutnya. Church of the Resurrection of Christ. Grave of A.P. Kern 57.110358 , 34.960535 Rod. Church of the Resurrection of Christ. Grave of A.P. Kern

She went down in history as the woman who inspired Pushkin to write magnificent works. But the seductress left her mark not only in his soul, captivating many other male hearts.

Anna Petrovna Poltoratskaya was born on February 22, 1800 in the town of Orel into a noble family. Mother - Ekaterina Ivanovna - daughter of the Oryol governor Wolf, father - Pyotr Markovich - court adviser. The girl grew up in a circle of numerous noble and friendly relatives. Thanks to hired teachers and a governess, she received a good education.

Like many provincial young ladies, she had few temptations and opportunities for entertainment. Timid attempts at flirting and coquetry were strictly suppressed by their parents (at the age of 13, the girl even lost her long braid - her mother cut off her daughter's hair so that there was nothing to seduce the male sex). But there was plenty of time and prerequisites for naive girlish dreams. What was the disappointment of sixteen-year-old Anna when one day Poltoratsky conspired about the marriage of his daughter with Yermolai Kern. The 52-year-old general was an enviable match for any local marriageable girl. However, the girl submitted to the will of her father only out of fear that she had experienced for her parent all her childhood.

On January 8, 1817, Anna Poltoratskaya began to bear the surname Kern. Her husband was despotic, rude and narrow-minded. He could not achieve not only love, but even the respect of his young wife. Anna quietly hated and despised him. She treated the daughters born of the hateful general coldly. And her own life with eternal moving after the military spouse seemed to her dull and bleak.

Anna Kern and Alexander Pushkin

The existence of a young woman was brightened up only by infrequent trips to relatives and friends, where parties were held with games and dances. She enjoyed them with rapture, basking in universal love and admiration. At one of these dinners in 1819, it happened to Alexander Pushkin. At first, Kern did not even notice the unattractive poet among the more eminent guests. But Alexander Sergeevich immediately noticed this sweet coquette, both shy and modest, and tried with all his might to attract Anna's attention. What caused some irritation in the well-bred beauty - the poet's remarks seemed to her painfully inappropriate and defiant.

Their next meeting took place in 1825 at the Trigorskoye estate. By this time, Kern appreciated Pushkin's talent, becoming a fan of his work, therefore she treated the poet more favorably than the first time. With age and experienced blows of fate, Anna herself has changed. The young woman was no longer as timid as before. Seductive, self-confident, mastered to perfection. And only some shyness, slipping from time to time, added to Anna a special charm. Pushkin was inflamed with passion, displaying the whole whirlwind of his experiences in the famous verses “I remember a wonderful moment” (later he dedicated many more delightful lines to her), which, of course, flattered Kern, but did not give rise to mutual feelings. Before leaving the estate, the beauty graciously allowed the poet to write letters to her.

For the next two years, an entertaining correspondence was conducted between Pushkin and Anna Kern, in which Alexander Sergeevich confessed his mad love for Kern. In refined terms, he deified his muse and endowed with unthinkable virtues. And then suddenly, in another fit of jealousy, he began to rage and scold, addressing her almost insultingly. His confidence in Anna's benevolence towards his cousin and friend of the poet, Wulf (who, by the way, retained fiery feelings for this woman all his life) drove Pushkin into a frenzy. Alexander did not write anything like this to any former or subsequent lady.

In 1827, Kern finally broke up with her husband. The unloved husband aroused not only disgust, but also hatred: either he tried to bring his own wife to his nephew, then he deprived her of maintenance, then he was fiercely jealous ... However, Anna paid for her independence with her own reputation, henceforth becoming “fallen” in the eyes of society.

The same Pushkin, not seeing an object of adoration in front of him, but at the same time, regularly receiving news about Anna's incredible popularity with other men (among her admirers was even Alexander's brother, Leo), became more and more disappointed in her. And when he met his beloved in St. Petersburg, and Kern, drunk from the freedom she had finally gained, gave herself to him, he sharply lost interest in the beauty.

"A wonderful moment" - and all life
The fate of Anna Petrovna Kern

photo from the Internet

Enthusiastic, able to appreciate perfectly Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin sang in his work the beauty and grace of many women, but the immortal poetic masterpiece in which the "language of the heart" speaks is the poem "I remember a wonderful moment ...", which inspired him Anna Petrovna Kern.

Ermolai Fedorovich Kern - the first husband of Anna Petrovna

May marks 133 years since her death. Everyone with whom Pushkin's life path crossed remained in Russian history, because reflections of the great poet's talent fell on them. And if not for this poem and five letters from Pushkin to A.P. Kern, no one would know her name now. The oblivion of this, of course, an outstanding woman occurred shortly after the death of Pushkin and was associated with her final departure from social life. But more than a century has passed since her death, and interest in this woman not only does not subside, but also increases due to the emergence of new studies of the life and work of Pushkin and his entourage. But Anna Kern was received in secular salons and intellectual circles of St. Petersburg not only thanks to Pushkin's poetic canonization. So who is she, Anna Petrovna Kern, and how did her fate develop after the “wonderful moment” passed? A.P. Kern left memoirs written at different times. Of course, most of the manuscripts are devoted to Pushkin and his inner circle, and they occupy one of the first places in a series of biographical materials about the brilliant poet. But there are among the manuscripts of Anna Kern and "Memories of childhood and youth in Little Russia", as well as a description of her life at different times.
Anna Petrovna Kern was born on February 11 (22), 1800 in Orel, in the house of her grandfather I.P. Wolf (on her mother's side), the Oryol governor. Her grandmother was the daughter of F.A. Muravyov, brother of Senator N.A. Muravyov. Anna's mother married Peter Markovich Poltoratsky, whose ancestors belonged to an old Ukrainian Cossack family, and thanks to their grandfather, M.F. Poltoratsky, they received the right to hereditary nobility, and her father, P.M.

Alexander Vasilyevich Markov-Vinogradsky - the second and beloved husband of Anna Kern

Poltoratsky, a retired lieutenant, was marshal of the nobility in Lubny. The Poltoratskys communicated with the descendants of ancient Cossack families, such as Novitsky, Kulyabki, Kochubei. Anna's father, in his youth, was in the diplomatic service in Sweden for several years, was well-read and, according to Anna Petrovna, was head and shoulders above all the Lubents, and they respected him for his mind and education.
At the age of three, Anna was brought from Orel to the village of Baranov, Tver province, to her grandfather I.P. Vulf, where she was brought up until the age of 12 with her cousin A.N. Vulf. Then she was taken to Lubny, Poltava province, where her parents lived. Here Anna led the life that all provincial young ladies lead: she “taught her brother and sisters, having learned to read early, from the age of five, she read a lot, danced at balls, listened to the praises of strangers and censures of relatives, participated in home performances.” My father was strict with his family, and it was impossible to contradict him in anything. At the age of 17, her father married Anna to a 52-year-old general, a rude, poorly educated martinet. Naturally, family life turned into hard labor for a young woman. Anna wrote in her diary: “It is impossible to love him - I have not even been given the consolation to respect him; To be honest, I almost hate him."

The daughter of Anna Petrovna Kern is Ekaterina Ermolaevna Kern, to whom the composer M. Glinka dedicated his romance “I remember a wonderful moment ...” to poems by A. Pushkin

Young Anna wanted to shine in the world, to have fun, but she had to lead the nomadic life of a military wife, moving from garrison to garrison. Having gone through almost all the wars of his time, repeatedly wounded, Anna's husband was a conscientious and honest servant, of which there were many at that time. The military orders and his portrait, painted by order of the emperor for the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace, testified to the merits of the general. For official business, the general had little time for his young wife, and Anna preferred to entertain herself. Noticing the enthusiastic looks of the officers, Anna Kern began to have affairs on the side.
For the first time, Pushkin and Anna met in St. Petersburg in 1819 at the house of Anna's aunt, E.M. Olenina. Pushkin was fascinated by the charm and beauty of 19-year-old Anna. The poet immediately drew attention to this "pretty woman", but then the poet did not impress Anna, and she even rude to him, calling him a "monkey". Pushkin's second meeting with Anna Kern took place in 1825 in Trigorskoye, where she came to visit her relative, P.A. Osipova. Her unexpected arrival stirred up in the poet an almost extinguished and forgotten feeling. In the atmosphere of a monotonous and painful, albeit intense creative work, Mikhailovsky exile, the appearance of Kern caused an awakening in the soul of the poet. He again felt the fullness of life, the joy of creative inspiration, the ecstasy and excitement of passion. For a month they met almost daily, and Anna turned into a "genius of pure beauty" for the poet. Anna's relative, P.A. Osipova, seeing that their relationship was going too far, forcibly took Anna to her husband in Riga, where he was the commandant. Saying goodbye to Anna on July 19, 1825, Pushkin handed her the poem "I remember a wonderful moment ..." along with a copy of one of the first chapters of "Eugene Onegin". Their relationship did not stop there: in July - September, Pushkin and Kern corresponded a lot. Soon Anna again came to Trigorskoye, but with her husband, and they did not stay there for long. After the return of Anna Petrovna with her husband to Riga, she broke off relations with him and left for St. Petersburg, where she began to lead a secular lifestyle. She became friends with Pushkin's family, with his friend Anton Delvig and his wife Sophia, and even rented an apartment in the same house with them. Delvig called her "my second wife" in his letters. Pushkin also regularly visited here after his return to St. Petersburg from Mikhailovsky. The poet, often meeting here with Anna, had lengthy conversations with her. Pushkin's great love and romantic feeling for her turned into an easy love affair, which soon ended and turned into friendship: Pushkin found a kindred spirit in Anna. P.A. Osipova Pushkin wrote about Anna: “She has a flexible mind, she understands everything, she is shy in her methods, bold in her actions, but extremely attractive.”
Ermolai Fedorovich Kern tried to return Anna Petrovna to "marital duties", he refused her money and publicly stated that his wife "left him. Having ruined her debts, she indulged in a prodigal life, carried away by her completely criminal passions. But Anna could not live with such a husband, who was alien to her and deeply hated, she could not endure his rude martinet, tyranny and ignorance. For almost ten years, Anna Petrovna had to endure her unloved husband. Even the children did not please her: three daughters were brought up at the Smolny Institute, where their father, E.F. Kern, assigned them, since Anna did not want to deal with them. Since 1827, Anna and her husband parted completely, and she, along with her sister Elizabeth and father P.M. Poltoratsky, lived in St. Petersburg. During these Petersburg years, Anna led a secular lifestyle, maintained friendly relations with many famous writers and composers. She had a reputation for being an irresistible coquette: fans changed, time passed, and the future remained uncertain. The 1830s turned out to be especially difficult for Anna Petrovna: one after another, two of her daughters died, her former friends moved away and dispersed. Her husband deprived her of maintenance, and her financial situation was difficult. Anna tried to earn money by translating foreign authors, but not very successfully. The year 1836 was especially tragic for Anna Petrovna: her only surviving daughter, Ekaterina, graduated from the Smolny Institute, and her father, General E.F. Kern, wanted to take her daughter to him, but with great difficulty Anna managed to settle everything. In 1837-1838, Anna Petrovna lives in St. Petersburg with her daughter Ekaterina, who is cared for by the composer M. Glinka.
He often visits them and dedicates to Catherine his romance "I remember a wonderful moment ..." based on A. Pushkin's poems, written by the poet in honor of her mother. Anna feels lonely, her search for true love was not successful: in her search, she was looking not for adventure, but for love, and each time she believed that she had finally found it. And it was at this time that fate sends her the last love, which will last until the last days of her life. The beginning did not portend anything romantic: a relative from Sosnitsa, Chernigov province, D. Poltoratskaya, asked to visit her son Alexander Markov-Vinogradsky, who studied at the 1st St. Petersburg Cadet Corps and was Anna Petrovna's second cousin. And the unexpected happens - a young cadet falls in love with his cousin. She does not remain indifferent to his feelings, and, perhaps, the tenderness and thirst for love that was not in demand in previous years flares up in her. It was the love that Anna Kern had been looking for for so long. They agree: she is 38, he is -18. In April 1839, their son Alexander was born, to whom Anna Petrovna gave all her unspent maternal tenderness, and Alexander Markov-Vinogradsky was happy: “Everything that is done is from God, and our union, strange as it may be, is blessed by Him! Otherwise, we would not be so happy, we would not have such a Sasha, who now consoles us so much! There is no need to regret anything that happened, everything is for the better, everything is fine!
General E.F. Kern, retired in 1837, died in 1841. In the same year, after graduating from the corps with the rank of second lieutenant and having served only two years, A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky retired and, against the will of Anna Petrovna's father, married her. Anna's father is angry: he deprived his daughter of all inheritance rights and any fortune, even to her mother's hereditary estate. For her deceased husband, E.F. Kern, Anna was entitled to a large pension, but, having married Markov-Vinogradsky, she refused it. And the years of true happiness flowed: although her husband did not have any talents, except for a sensitive and sensitive heart, he could not breathe on his Anet, exclaiming: “Thank you, Lord, for the fact that I am married! Without her, my darling, I would languish bored ... she became a necessity for me! What a joy to be back home! How good it is in her arms! There is no one better than my wife!" They were happily married despite their poverty. They had to leave St. Petersburg for their husband's tiny estate in the Chernigov province, which consisted of 15 souls of peasants. But their spiritual life, abandoned in the wilderness of the village, was amazingly full and varied. Together they read and discussed the novels of Dickens and Thackeray, Balzac and George Sand, Panaev's stories, the thick Russian magazines Sovremennik, Otechestvennye Zapiski, and Library for Reading.
In 1840, Anna's husband, Alexander Vasilievich, received a position as an assessor in the Sosnitsky district court, where he served for more than 10 years. And Anna tried to earn extra money with translations, but how much can you earn on this in the outback. No life's difficulties and hardships could disturb the touchingly tender harmony of these two people, based on the commonality of spiritual needs and interests. They said they had "worked out their own happiness." The family lived in poverty, but between Anna and her husband there was true love, which they kept until the last day. Eloquent evidence of the financial situation and morale of this unusual family union is Anna's letter, which she wrote after more than 10 years of family happiness to her husband's sister Elizaveta Vasilievna Bakunina: “Poverty has its joys, and we feel good, because we have a lot of love .. ... perhaps, under better circumstances, we would be less happy ... ”At the end of 1855, they moved to St. Petersburg, where Alexander Vasilyevich received a job as a home teacher in the family of Prince SD Dolgorukov, and then as a clerk in the department of appanages. They lived in St. Petersburg for 10 years, and these years were the most prosperous in their life together: relatively well-off financially and extremely rich in mental and social activity. They were friends with the family of N.N. Tyutchev, a writer and former friend of Belinsky. Here they met with the poet F.I. Tyutchev, P.V. Annenkov, writer I.S. Turgenev. In November 1865, Alexander Vasilyevich retired with the rank of collegiate assessor and with a small pension, and they left St. Petersburg. Again they were pursued by poverty - they had to live with relatives and friends. They alternately lived in the Tver province with relatives, then in Lubny, then in Kyiv, then in Moscow, then with Alexander Vasilyevich's sister in Pryamukhin. Anna Petrovna even sold five of Pushkin's letters for 5 rubles each, which she regretted very much. But they still endured all the blows of fate with amazing stamina, without becoming embittered, not disappointed in life, without losing their former interest in it. The age difference never bothered them. They lived together for more than forty years in love and harmony, although in severe poverty. On January 28, 1879, Alexander Vasilievich died of stomach cancer, in terrible agony. The son brought Anna Petrovna to live with him in Moscow, where she lived in modest furnished rooms on the corner of Tverskaya and Gruzinskaya for about four months until her death on May 27 of the same, 1879.
All her life, Anna Petrovna and her husband undividedly honored A.S. Pushkin. The fact that Pushkin sang Anna Petrovna in verse was a source of pride for Alexander Vasilyevich and aggravated his truly reverent attitude towards his wife. About the great poet, Pushkin, about his love for her, about friendship with him, Anna retained very warm memories until the end of her life. Pushkin's sincere friendly communication with A. Kern was not an accident, it had a prerequisite for the originality and originality of her personality. At the request of Anna Petrovna, on her tombstone were engraved the words of a declaration of love for her beloved poet: “I remember a wonderful moment ...” And today, in close connection with the history of our social development, with the poetry of the great Pushkin, Glinka’s music, she lives in a grateful memory of generations, this extraordinary woman is an outstanding daughter of her era, who became her chronicler.

Nikolai Latushkin

scandalous life

tragedy

Anna Kern

(short version)

A look at common knowledge

Nikolai Latushkin's book

"The scandalous life and tragedy of Anna Kern"

published in 2010.

Full version.

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“No philosophy in the world can make me forget that my fate is connected with a person whom I cannot love and whom I cannot even afford to respect. In a word, I will say frankly - I almost hate him,” she writes.

"If only I could free myself from the hateful chains with which I am bound to this man! I cannot overcome my disgust for him."

Even the appearance of a child did not reconcile them at all and did not weaken her hatred for her husband, and this dislike, and this is terrible, indirectly moves to her own children, born in marriage with Yermolai Kern:

“You know that this is not frivolity and not a whim; I told you before that I did not want to have children, the thought of not loving them was terrible for me, and now it is still terrible.

You also know that at first I really wanted to have a child, and therefore I have a certain tenderness for Katenka, although I sometimes reproach myself that she is not quite big. But all the heavenly forces will not make me fall in love with this: unfortunately, I feel such hatred for this whole family, it is such an irresistible feeling in me that I am not able to get rid of it with any effort.

At the climax of her hatred for her husband, Anna Kern realizes that she is pregnant with her second child: “So, you yourself see, nothing is already can't help me in my trouble. The Lord was angry with me, and I am condemned to become a mother again, without experiencing either joy or motherly feelings.

Even my daughter is not as dear to me as you are.<appeal to Theodosia Poltoratskaya, approx. author>. And I'm not at all ashamed of it; after all, you can’t command the heart, but still I must tell you this: if it were a child from ..., it would be dearer to me than my own life, and my current state would give me unearthly joy, whenever ..., but to my joy far away - hell in my heart ... "

By the way, in the 1830s, two of her daughters died one after another, the middle Anna and the younger Olga. It's sad ... Why transfer negative things directed at your husband to your children? The fate of her fourth child, Alexander, who was already born in love and in another marriage, is also tragic: as an adult, he committed suicide at the age of forty shortly after the death of his parents, apparently due to inability to live ...

General Eromolay Kern is very jealous of his young beautiful wife for all the young people in the town and arranges scenes of jealousy for her:

“He gets into the carriage with me, does not let me get out of it, and the dear one yells at me at the top of his voice - he is too kind that he forgives me everything, they saw me, I was standing around the corner with one officer. If If it weren’t for the fact that, to my eternal misfortune, I seem to be pregnant, I wouldn’t stay with him for a minute!

“In the carriage, he began to yell as if stabbed to death that, they say, no one in the world would convince him that I was staying for the sake of the child; he supposedly knows the real reason, and if I don’t go, he will also stay. I didn’t want to humiliate myself and not justified."

“In the name of heaven itself, I beg you,” she addresses her father’s cousin in her diary, “talk to daddy; I exactly followed all daddy’s advice about his jealousy ... If my own father does not intercede for me, who should I look for then protection?

Yermolai Kern understood that he was not loved by his young wife, and with the directness characteristic of a general, he tried to teach Anna Petrovna some etiquette of life with an unloved husband, but she, apparently, simply did not understand this ... or did not accept:

“It was about Countess Bennigsen ... The husband began to assure that he knew her well, and said that she was a quite worthy woman who always knew how to behave herself perfectly, that she had many adventures, but this is forgivable, because she is very young, and husband is very old, but in public she is affectionate with him, and no one will suspect that she does not love him. And how do you like the principles of my precious husband?

"…is he<Eromolay Kern> believes that it is inexcusable to have lovers only when the husband is in good health. What a low look! What are the principles! At the driver's and then the thoughts are more sublime.

Anna Kern, apparently hoping that her father's cousin, to whom she sent the diary in parts, would somehow be able to influence her father, and complained to her about her difficult lot:

"Who after this will dare to assert that happiness in marriage is possible without deep affection for his chosen one? My suffering is terrible."

" I'm so unhappy, I can't take it anymore. The Lord, apparently, did not bless our union and, of course, will not wish my death, but in a life like mine, I will certainly die.

“No, it’s absolutely impossible for me to endure such a life any longer, the die is cast. And in such a miserable state, drowning in tears all my life, I can’t bring any benefit to my child either.”

"Now I beg you, tell your father about everything and beg him to take pity on me in the name of heaven, in the name of everything that is dear to him."

"... my parents, seeing that even at the moment when he marries their daughter, he cannot forget his mistress, allowed this to happen, and I was sacrificed."

Do not forget that she was only twenty years old, she lived in the house of an unloved husband, and she had no one to tell about her troubles - only the paper of her diary ...

At some point, his nephew, Peter, whom Yermolai Kern tries to use for his own purposes, settles in the house of Ermolai Kern for a long time. Which, you will understand further for yourself:

"... he (the husband) conspired with his dear nephew ... He and his kind nephew are always whispering about something, I don’t know what kind of secrets they have there and what they are talking about ... Mr. Kern<племянник>got it into his head that he must accompany me everywhere in the absence of his uncle.

"I must also inform you that P. Kern<племянник>is going to stay with us for quite a long time, he is more affectionate with me than he should be, and much more than I would like. He keeps kissing my hands, throwing tender glances at me, comparing me now with the sun, now with the Madonna, and says a lot of all sorts of stupid things that I can’t stand. Everything insincere disgusts me, but he cannot be sincere, because I do not love him ... and he<Ермолай Керн>I’m not at all jealous of him, despite all his tenderness, which surprises me to the extreme - I’m ready to think that they agreed among themselves ... Not every father is as gentle with his son as he is with his nephew.

"Even more disgust <чем муж, - прим. автора> his nephew calls me, perhaps because I am very perceptive and see that he is the most narrow-minded, the most stupid and self-satisfied young man I have ever met. ... he has the most vulgar expressions on his tongue. To catch me on a bait, you need to take it more carefully , and this man, no matter how clever and gentle he is, will never achieve my frankness and will only waste his strength in vain.

Some strange episodes related to the quirks of the elderly husband-general, described in the diary, are worthy of the pages of the modern scandalous yellow edition ... In her entries, indicated in the diary "At 10 pm, after dinner" is literally the following:

“Now I was with P. Kern, in his room. I don’t know why, but my husband wants me to go there when he goes to bed at all costs. More often I avoid this, but sometimes he drags me there this young man, as I have already told you, is neither shy nor modest, and instead of feeling embarrassed, he behaves like a second Narcissus, and imagines that one should be at least of ice, so as not to fall in love with him, seeing in such a pleasant pose. My husband made me sit down beside his bed and began to joke with both of us, everyone asked me that, they say, is it not true, what a beautiful face his nephew has. I confess to you , I’m just at a loss and can’t think of what it all means and how to understand such strange behavior... I remember once I asked my nephew if his uncle was not a bit jealous of him, and he answered me that if he even had reasons to be jealous, he would not show it.I confess to you that I am afraid it is too bad to speak of a husband, but some of his qualities do him no credit at all. If a man is able to make offensive assumptions about ... his own wife, then he is certainly capable of letting his nephew drag her "...

"It is disgusting for me to live with a man of such low, such vile thoughts. To bear his name is already a sufficient burden."

It cannot be said that Anna meekly endured all the tyranny of her husband ... As best she could, she nevertheless resisted the circumstances and the pressure of the general:

“Today I had a pretty fair argument with my venerable husband about his highly esteemed nephew. ... I told him that I didn’t want to be an empty place in his house, that if he allows his nephew not to put me in anything, then I don’t want to be here stay longer and find refuge with my parents. He answered me that you would not frighten him with this and that, if I liked, I could go wherever I wanted. But my words still had an effect, and he became very humble and affectionate. "

From all this and a hated husband (remember what she wrote in her diary: "... no, it is absolutely impossible for me to endure such a life any longer, the die is cast. And in such a miserable state, drowning in tears all my life, I and my child do no good I can’t "...), having decided to live on, and this question, apparently, was seriously before her, and Anna Kern fled to St. Petersburg at the beginning of 1826 ...

But ... Pushkin had his own stormy personal life in St. Petersburg, Anna Kern had her own stormy one. They were close, but not together.

Although, as some researchers write, as soon as Pushkin appeared nearby, Anna Kern’s new favorites were given clear signs by her, meaning their role was secondary to the background of the poet ...

“When remembering the past, I often and for a long time dwell on the time that ... was marked in the life of society by a passion for reading, literary pursuits and ... an extraordinary thirst for pleasure,” she writes. Isn't this the key phrase that betrays her essence and determines her attitude to life? .. at least to life at that time? ..

On February 18, 1831, Pushkin married the brilliant Natalya Nikolaevna Goncharova, with the one "who I loved for two years ..." - as he wrote in the sketch of the autobiographical story "My fate is decided. I'm getting married", that is, since 1829 his heart has already belonged to Natalya Nikolaevna.

On the eve of Pushkin's wedding, Delvig's wife wrote to Anna Kern: "... Alexander Sergeevich returned on the third day. They say he is more in love than ever. However, he almost never talks about her. Yesterday he quoted a phrase - it seems, Ms. Villois, who told her son: "Talk about yourself with only one king, and about your wife - with no one, otherwise you always run the risk of talking about her with someone who knows her better than you."

“Pushkin left for Moscow, and although after his marriage he returned to St. Petersburg, I met him no more than five times,” writes Anna Petrovna. - "... marriage made a profound change in the character of the poet ... he looked at everything more seriously. In response to congratulations on the unexpected ability of a married man to behave like a decently loving husband, he jokingly replied:" I'm just cunning.

A very curious congratulation on the "unexpected ability of a married man to behave like a decently loving husband" from the lips of Anna Kern in the context of the topic sounds somewhat ambiguous ...

Soon Delvig dies.

Regarding the death of Delvig, Anna Kern, in a letter to Alexei Wulff, casually throws into the army (from the diary of Alexei Wulff dated February 9, 1831): “I forgot to tell you the news: Baron Delvig moved to a place where there is no jealousy and sighing!”

“This is how they report the death of those people whom, a year before this, we called our best friends. It is comforting to conclude from this that in this case we ourselves would have been remembered for a long time, ”Alexey Wulf makes a dejected note in his diary.

It seems that Anna Kern had an amazing ability to easily and quickly forget ... In Riga in the summer of 1825, her stormy romance with Alexei Wulf (cousin) begins. This happened in a short period of time after Pushkin's gift to Anna Kern of the poem "I remember a wonderful moment." Pushkin remembered moments, but Anna Petrovna instantly forgot the admirer of the poet, as soon as she left Trigorskoye.

Let me remind you that Anna Kern went to Riga to “reconcile” (because of her financial difficulties) with her husband, General Kern, who at that time led the Riga garrison. As always happens in such cases, the husband did not know what his wife was doing in her free time (or turned a blind eye to it), and "reconciled" with his wife.

The romance between Alexei Wulf and Anna Kern continued, judging by Wulf's diary, until the beginning of 1829. And who knows, perhaps it would have lasted longer if Alexei Wulff, due to lack of money, had not gone to serve in the army in January 1829.

Pushkin's marriage and Delvig's death radically changed the habitual Petersburg life of Anna Kern. “Her Excellency” was no longer invited, or not invited at all, to literary evenings where talented people known to her knew firsthand, she lost contact with those talented people with whom, thanks to Pushkin and Delvig, she brought her life together ... Secular society with her she was rejected with an indefinite status ... "You are neither a widow, nor a maiden," as Illichevsky said in 1828 in a playful poem dedicated to Anna Kern, whose father had a mustard factory:

But it's up to fate
You are neither a widow nor a maiden,
And my love for you -
Mustard after dinner.

As if an evil rock dominated her all the following years. One after another, her two daughters die, the middle Anna and the younger Olga. In early 1832, her mother died. “When I had the misfortune to lose my mother and was in a very difficult situation, Pushkin came to me and, looking for my apartment, ran, with his characteristic liveliness, through all the neighboring yards, until he finally found me,” she writes. Her husband refused her monetary allowance, apparently in this way trying to return her home ... What this woman, fearless in front of human rumors, lived all these years, is a mystery ...

Pushkin and E.M. Khitrovo tried to help her in the hassle of returning the family estate, in which her mother lived until her death, sold by the father of Anna Kern to Sheremetev.

"... I will not refrain from keeping silent about one circumstance that led me to this idea of redeeming my sold estate without money", - writes A. Kern.

To redeem without money ... a very interesting desire ... Troubles, unfortunately, were not crowned with success.

In order to have a "living" she decided to start translating from French, she even turned to Pushkin for assistance, but ... to be a good translator, you need to have experience and talent close to or equal to the original, because she did not succeed (remember - "but stubborn work was nauseating to him, nothing came out of his pen, "although there is no historical connection, only situational ...). What is it? the arrogance of a person who is close to real literature? or despair, an attempt to somehow earn? Probably the last one...

Several ironic, impartial words of Pushkin are known about her translation of George Sand's novel, but Pushkinists note that they have a friendly attitude towards her (in the 1830s, Pushkin even wrote to Anna Kern: " Be calm and contented and believe my devotion "he had all his life."

A life that was cut short by a duel with Dantes (Baron Gekkern) ... Like this: Kern and Huck core… Love and death with consonant names…

They say that on the eve of the duel, Pushkin asked his wife: "For whom will you cry"? “I will weep for the one who is killed,” she replied. Y-yes… What is it? stupidity? misplaced honesty? Pushkin had no luck with women ... Unfortunately, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the quote, I could not find its source (you can see this quote here writing an anonymous letter, which served as an occasion for a duel in which the fatal trace of another woman in Pushkin's life can be traced).

Pushkin's duel with Dantes on the Black River was the thirteenth. Pushkin... By the way, he had a lot of superstitions and habits. One of them - never to return for a forgotten object - was violated only once: before the duel with Dantes, he returned for an overcoat ...

On February 1, 1837, in the Stables Church, where Pushkin was buried, Anna Kern, along with everyone who came under the vaults of the temple, "wept and prayed" for his unfortunate soul.

But, despite all the blows of fate that Kern experienced, life went on. Her second cousin, a pupil of the cadet corps, who has not yet left its walls, falls desperately in love with her, still bright and alluring at 36 years old, sixteen-year-old A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky, who is twenty years younger than her, and she reciprocates. Not bad for that time! Even in our time, such unequal ties, and even with relatives (although in those days many had the habit of marrying even cousins, that is, cousins, but here it’s just a second cousin), cause a lot of gossip ... A brave woman.

Everything repeats itself, first as a tragedy, then ...?

When she was sixteen years old, she married an elderly general - it was a tragedy ... When a young sixteen-year-old second lieutenant began dating her, a 36-year-old woman - was that ..? Farce? No, it was love...

The young man for the sake of love lost everything at once: a predetermined future, material well-being, a career, the location of relatives.

In 1839, their son was born, who was named Alexander. At the same time, Anna Kern is still the official wife of General Kern - everyone knows how society looked at it in those days. This was the fourth child of Anna Kern. The name given to my son did not seem accidental to me ... Which of them, Alexandrov, was Emperor Alexander the First or the poet Alexander Pushkin chosen for him as a guiding star? Unknown. It is only known that Markov-Vinogradsky was very proud of the fact that the brilliant poet once dedicated poems to his wife ...

In 1841, Anna Kern's husband, General Ermolai Fedorovich Kern, died at the age of seventy-six, and a year later Anna Petrovna formally married A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky and becomes Anna Petrovna Markova-Vinogradskaya, honestly refuses a decent pension assigned to her for the deceased General Kern, from the title of "Excellency" and from the material support of her father.

A reckless proud woman ... She always had love in the foreground ... (remember - "... she has timid manners and bold actions").

They lived together for almost forty years in love and in terrible poverty, often turning into need (the husband was not very adapted to work and was indifferent to career growth, but immensely idolized his wife).

Difficulties only strengthened their union, in which they, in their own words, "worked out happiness for themselves."

The whole life of Anna Kern is the tragedy of a woman who did not love her with irretrievably lost years of youth, whose life was distorted by her own parents, who married her to an unloved fifty-two-year-old general, the life of a woman who did not experience true first love ... and, apparently, both the second ... and the third ... She wanted to love , I wanted to be loved ... and this became her main goal in life ... Did she achieve it? Don't know…

“Poverty has its joys, and it’s always good for us, because there is a lot of love in us,” Anna Petrovna wrote in 1851. “Perhaps, under better circumstances, we would be less happy. We, desperate to acquire material contentment, are chasing the pleasures of the soul and we catch every smile of the surrounding world in order to enrich ourselves with spiritual happiness. Rich people are never poets... Poetry is the wealth of poverty..."

How sad it is - "poetry is the wealth of poverty" ... and how true in essence ... Pushkin, by the way, at the time of his death had huge debts ... but was not poor ... Paradoxically, but it is true.

Everything that was connected with the name of Pushkin, Anna Petrovna sacredly kept all her life: a volume of Eugene Onegin, presented to her by Pushkin, his letters and even a small footstool on which he once sat in her apartment in St. Petersburg. “Several days later, he came to me in the evening and, sitting on a small bench (which I keep as a shrine)…” she writes in her memoirs. Let me remind you that Kern's letters to Pushkin have not been preserved, and this fact says a lot - Pushkin did not keep her letters, as she kept them ...

The past associated with the name of Pushkin, over time, illuminated her memories more and more brightly, and when she was approached with an offer to write about her meetings with the poet, she immediately agreed. Now, so many years after their first meeting at the Olenins, when she simply "did not notice" the poet, she already perfectly understood what a lucky ticket fate had thrown her, crossing their paths, and unraveled all the secret signs she had placed ... At that time, she I was about sixty years old: well, it just perfectly matches Pushkin's lines "... everything is instantaneous, everything will pass, what will pass will be nice."

By the way, P.V. Annenkov, after reading her memoirs, reproached her: “... you said less than what you could and should have said,” that the memories should have resulted in notes and “at the same time, of course, any need for semi-confidence, silence is already lost , non-contracts both in relation to oneself and in relation to others ... false concepts of friendship, of decency and indecency. Of course, for this it is necessary to separate from the petty and vulgar considerations of the petty-bourgeois understanding of morality, permissible and inadmissible "..."

Did the public expect juicy details and scandalous revelations?

After reminiscing about Pushkin and his entourage, Anna Petrovna got a taste for it, wrote "Memoirs of my childhood" and "remembered" her three meetings at the age of seventeen with Emperor Alexander Pavlovich, where there are also many curious moments 1 .

"He (the emperor) left - others fussed, and the brilliant crowd hid the sovereign from me forever..."

This is the last phrase of Anna Kern's memoirs about the emperor, which quite definitely characterizes both her personality and her ambitions.

After 1865, Anna Kern and her husband A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky, who retired with the rank of collegiate assessor with a meager pension, lived in terrible poverty and wandered around with relatives in the Tver province, in Lubny, in Kyiv, in Moscow , in the village of Pryamukhino.

Apparently, the lack of funds even in "Memories of Childhood" made her recall a long-standing episode of her life: "70 Dutch chervonets ... took<у матери>Ivan Matveyevich Muraviev-Apostol in 1807. He was then in need. Subsequently, he married a rich woman and said that he married a whole granary, but forgot about the debt ... What if the heirs remembered him and helped me now in need? .. "

And again: "... when giving me in marriage, they gave me 2 villages from my mother's dowry and then, less than a year later, they asked for permission to mortgage them for raising the rest of the children. Out of delicacy and foolishness, I did not hesitate for a minute and agreed ... ... without asking, will they provide me for this, and for about half a century I lived in need ... Well, God bless them.

At the end of her life, due to the constant lack of money, Anna Petrovna even had to sell Pushkin's letters, the only value that she possessed and carefully kept them to the last. The letters were sold at a ridiculous price - five rubles per letter (for comparison: during the life of Pushkin, a very luxurious edition of "Eugene Onegin" cost twenty-five rubles per copy), so Anna Kern did not receive any significant material benefit. By the way, earlier the composer Mikhail Glinka simply lost the original poem "I remember a wonderful moment" when he composed his music for it ("he took Pushkin's poems from me, written by his hand, to put them to music, and lost them, God forgive him!"); music, dedicated, by the way, to Anna Kern's daughter Ekaterina, with whom (daughter) Glinka was madly in love ...

So the poor woman, by the end of her life, had nothing left but memories ... a sad story ...

In January 1879, in the village of Pryamukhino, "from cancer in the stomach with terrible suffering," as his son writes, A.V. died. Markov-Vinogradsky, husband of Anna Kern, and four months later, on May 27, 1879, in inexpensive furnished rooms on the corner of Tverskaya and Gruzinskaya in Moscow (her son moved her to Moscow), at the age of seventy-nine, Anna Petrovna Markova-Vinogradskaya ended her life path ( Kern).

She was supposed to be buried next to her husband, but heavy torrential rains, unusual for this time of year (nature wept over the coffin of a genius of pure beauty), washed out the road and it was impossible to deliver the coffin to her husband at the cemetery. She was buried on a churchyard near the old stone church in the village of Prutnya, located six kilometers from Torzhok ...

A textbook famous romantic mystical story about how "her coffin met with a monument to Pushkin, which was imported to Moscow." Was it or not, it is not known for certain, but I want to believe that it was ... Because it is beautiful ...

There is no poet, there is no this woman... but this is the case when life after death continues. "I erected a monument to myself not made by hands ..." - Pushkin prophetically said to himself, but for this he had to create everything for which we love him, but just one poem dedicated to a sinful living woman, the simple words of a genius "I remember a wonderful moment ..." immortalized the name of an ordinary earthly woman to whom they were dedicated. And if somewhere the poetic image and the real person do not coincide, well ... this only proves that both the Poet and the Woman were just normal living people, and not popular prints, as they were presented to us earlier, and this is their human normality in no way diminishes their place in the spiritual aura of the nation.

And let one shine, but the other reflects ...

1985 (with later additions)

The article is based on the books of memoirs by A.P. Kern.

Accuracy of quotes (although they are from reliable sources)

Check with specialized publications.

In this story, it is necessary to clearly distinguish that there are two stories. One is a romantic myth, the other is real life. These stories intersect at key points, but they always go in parallel... Which story you prefer is your choice, but at some point I wondered who Anna Kern was, as I studied the subject, I regretted that I had destroyed a myth that has lived in me since my youth ... Pushkin wrote many poems to many women, and I personally prefer the one dedicated to Alexandra (Alina) Osipova, but by some unknown laws the name of Anna Kern, to whom the poem "I remember a wonderful moment" is dedicated , in modern terms, has become a brand ... She, like Pushkin, is known to everyone ... A hotel in Finland on a waterfall in Imatra is named after her; in Riga (where she went after visiting Mikhailovsky) a monument was erected to her; in a hotel in St. Petersburg there is a double room "Anna Kern" and, probably, there are many more things associated with her name. Apparently, myths and legends are more important to all of us than reality ... I would call this story Russian folklore ... or a bylichka ...

M ifas haunt us all our lives... or we invent them ourselves...

Full version of the article

"The scandalous life and tragedy of Anna Kern"

Footnotes from the text.

*1. Here are some quotes from the memories of Alexander I < цитаты, взятые в кавычки, и не определенные по принадлежности в тексте, принадлежат тексту воспоминаний Анны Керн>:

At the ball, the emperor invited Anna Kern to dance and "... said: Come to me in Petersburg. I said with the greatest naivety that it was impossible that my husband was in the service. He smiled and said very seriously: He can take a six-month vacation. I got so bold at this that I told him: You'd better come to Lubny! Lubny is such a charm! He laughed again and said: I will come, I will certainly come!

“There were rumors around the city,” she writes, “probably unfair, that the emperor asked where our apartment was and wanted to pay a visit ... Then they talked a lot that he said that I looked like a Prussian queen . Based on these rumors, Governor Tutolmin, a very narrow-minded person, even congratulated Kern, to which he replied with surprising prudence that he did not know what to congratulate on?

Queen of Prussia Louise Augusta Wilhelmina Amalia,

with which Emperor Alexander I compared Anna Kern.

"... I was not in love ... I was in awe, I worshiped him! .. I would not exchange this feeling for any others, because it was quite spiritual and aesthetic. There was not a second thought in him about getting mercy through the benevolent attention of the king - nothing, nothing like that ... All love is pure, unselfish, content with itself.

If someone told me: "This person, before whom you pray and revere, fell in love with you like a mere mortal," I would bitterly reject such a thought and would only want to look at him, be surprised at him, worship him as a higher, adored being. !.."

"...immediately after the review in Poltava, Mr. Kern was exacted by the royal mercy: the sovereign sent him fifty thousand for maneuvers."

"Then that same spring, my husband Kern fell into disgrace, due to his arrogance in dealing with Saken."

"... we learned that my father is in St. Petersburg and is calling Kern there to try again with the tsar<apparently, to settle the issue (auth.)>. …this led to my second meeting with the emperor, although for a moment, but not without a trace. The emperor, as everyone knows, used to walk along the Fontanka in the morning. Everyone knew his watch and Kern sent me there with his pageboy nephew. I didn’t like it very much, and I was freezing and walking, annoyed both at myself and at this persistence of Kern. As luck would have it, we never met the king.

When I got tired of this fruitless festivity, I said that I would not go anymore - and did not go. For that occasion, this happiness gave me a glimpse: I rode in a carriage quite quietly across the Police Bridge, suddenly I saw the king almost at the very window of the carriage, which I managed to lower, bow low and deeply to him and receive a bow and a smile, which proved that he recognized me.

A few days later, Kern, the former divisional commander, was offered a brigade stationed in Derit by Prince Volkonsky on behalf of the tsar. The husband agreed, saying that he was ready to accept not only a brigade, but a company in the service of the king.

"Dinner," he said<Ермолай Керн>- The emperor did not speak to me, but from time to time looked at me. I was neither alive nor dead, thinking that I was still under his wrath! After dinner, he began to approach first one, then another - and suddenly came up to me: "Hello! Is your wife here? She will be at the ball, I hope?"

To this, Kern, naturally, declared his ardent gratitude for the attention, said that I would certainly be, and came to hurry me.

It can be said that this evening I had the most complete success that I have ever met in the world!

Soon the emperor entered ... stopped ... walked a little further and, by a strange, happy accident, he stopped right in front of me and very close ...

Then<император>saw me... and quickly held out his hand. The usual compliments began, and then a heartfelt expression of joy to see me... I said... ...from the feeling of happiness at the occasion of the return of his favor to my husband. He remembered that he had seen me briefly in Petersburg, and added: You know why it could not be otherwise.

I don't even know what he meant to say. Was it not only because he did not meet and talk to me that he was still angry with Kern? ..

I replied that with the return of his benevolent forgiveness to my husband, I had nothing more to wish for and I was perfectly happy about it.

After that, he asked again: "Will I be at the maneuvers tomorrow." I replied that I would...

Chance got me a seat right above the top end of the table.

The Emperor walked very quietly and gracefully, passing old Saken in front of him...

Meanwhile Saken looked up and bowed to me affably. It was so close over their heads that I heard the emperor ask him: "To whom are you bowing, general?"

He answered: "It's Mrs. Kern!"

Then the emperor looked up and, in turn, bowed affectionately to me. He looked up several times.

But - everything comes to an end - and this happy contemplation of mine has come a minute - the last! I didn't think then that it would be the last one for me...

Rising from the table, the emperor bowed to everyone - and I had the good fortune to make sure that he, bowing to everyone and as he was already leaving, he looked up to us and bowed to me in particular. It was his last bow to me... Later it dawned on me that Saken spoke with the emperor about my husband and remarked, among other things: "Sir, I feel sorry for her!"

The woman who inspired the famous poet for one of his main masterpieces had a bad reputation

First fleeting meeting Anna Petrovna Kern and young poet Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, which had yet to earn the status of "the sun of Russian poetry", happened in 1819. At that time, the young beauty was 19 years old and she had been married for two years.

Unequal marriage

Down the aisle, a hereditary noblewoman, the daughter of a court councilor and a Poltava landowner, who belonged to an old Cossack family, Anna Poltoratskaya left at the age of 16. The father, whom the family unquestioningly obeyed, decided that the 52-year-old general would be the best match for his daughter. Ermolai Kern- it is believed that later his features will be reflected in the image of the prince gremina in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin».

The wedding took place in January 1817. To say that the young wife did not love her elderly husband is to say nothing. Apparently, she was disgusted with him on a physical level - but she was forced to portray a good wife, traveled with the general to the garrisons. At first.

In the diaries of Anna Kern, there are phrases that it is impossible to love her husband and that she “almost hates” him. In 1818 they had a daughter Katia. Anna Petrovna also could not love a child born from a person she hated - the girl was brought up in Smolny, and her mother took part in her upbringing to a minimum. Two of their other daughters died in childhood.

fleeting vision

A couple of years after the wedding, rumors began to circulate about the young wife of General Kern that she was cheating on her husband. Yes, and in the diaries of Anna herself, references to different men are found. In 1819, during a visit to St. Petersburg to his aunt, Kern first met Pushkin - at her aunt's. Olenina had its own salon, many famous people visited their house on the Fontanka embankment.

But then the young 21-year-old rake and wit did not make a special impression on Anna - he even seemed rude, and Kern considered his compliments to her beauty flattering. As she later recalled, she was much more fascinated by the charades that Ivan Krylov, who was one of the regulars at the Olenins' evenings.

Everything changed six years later, when Alexander Pushkin and Anna Kern got an unexpected chance to get to know each other better. In the summer of 1825, she was visiting another aunt in the estate in the village of Trigorskoye near Mikhailovsky, where the poet was serving a link. Pushkin, who was bored, often visited Trigorskoye - it was there that the "fleeting vision" sunk into his heart.

At that time, Alexander Sergeevich was already widely known, Anna Petrovna was flattered by his attention - but she herself fell under the spell of Pushkin. In her diary, the woman wrote that she was “in awe” of him. And the poet realized that he had found a muse in Trigorsky - the meetings inspired him, in a letter to his cousin Anna, Anne Wolf, he reported that he was finally writing a lot of poetry.

It was in Trigorskoye that Alexander Sergeevich handed over to Anna Petrovna one of the chapters of "Eugene Onegin" with an enclosed sheet on which the famous lines were written: "I remember a wonderful moment ..."

At the last moment, the poet almost changed his mind - and when Kern wanted to put the sheet in the box, he suddenly grabbed the paper - and did not want to give it back for a long time. As Anna Petrovna recalled, she barely persuaded Pushkin to return it to her. Why the poet hesitated is a mystery. Perhaps he considered the verse not good enough, perhaps he realized that he overdid it with the expression of feelings, or maybe for some other reason? Actually, this is where the most romantic part of the relationship between Alexander Pushkin and Anna Kern ends.

After the departure of Anna Petrovna with her daughters to Riga, where her husband then served, they corresponded with Alexander Sergeevich for a long time. But the letters are more like light playful flirting than they speak of deep passion or the suffering of lovers in separation. Yes, and Pushkin himself, shortly after meeting Anna, wrote in one of his letters to her cousin Wulf that all this “looks like love, but, I swear to you, there is no mention of it.” Yes, and his “I beg you, divine, write to me, love me”, mixed with witty barbs towards an elderly husband and reasoning that pretty women should not have character, rather speaks of admiration for the muse than of physical passion .

The correspondence continued for about six months. Kern's letters have not been preserved, but Pushkin's letters have come down to posterity - Anna Petrovna took care of them very much and regretfully sold them at the end of her life (for a pittance), when she faced serious financial difficulties.

Whore of Babylon

In Riga, Kern started another romance - quite serious. And in 1827, her break with her husband was discussed by the entire secular society of St. Petersburg, where Anna Petrovna moved after that. She was accepted in society - largely due to the patronage of the emperor, but her reputation was damaged. However, the beauty, who had already begun to fade, seemed to spit on this - and continued to twist novels, sometimes - and several at the same time.

What is interesting - the younger brother of Alexander Sergeevich fell under the spell of Anna Petrovna a lion. And again - a poetic dedication. “How can you not go crazy, listening to you, admiring you ...” - these lines of his are dedicated to her. As for the "sun of Russian poetry", sometimes Anna and Alexander crossed paths in the salons.

But at that time, Pushkin already had other muses. “Our harlot Anna Petrovna of Babylon,” he casually mentions the woman who inspired him to create one of the best poetic works in a letter to a friend. And in one letter he even speaks about her and their once-existing connection rather rudely and cynically.

There is evidence that the last time Pushkin and Kern saw each other shortly before the death of the poet - he paid Kern a short visit, expressing condolences on the death of her mother. At that time, 36-year-old Anna Petrovna was already in love with a 16-year-old cadet and her second cousin Alexander Markov-Vinogradsky.

To the surprise of secular society, this strange relationship did not quickly end. Three years later, their son was born, and a year after the death of General Kern, in 1842, Anna and Alexander got married, and she took her husband's surname. Their marriage turned out to be surprisingly strong, neither regular gossip, nor poverty, which eventually became simply catastrophic, nor other trials could destroy it.

Anna Petrovna died in Moscow, where her already adult son moved her, in May 1879, having outlived her husband for four months and Alexander Pushkin for 42 years, thanks to whom she remained in the memory of her descendants still not a Babylonian harlot, but "a genius of pure beauty ".