These nannies and uncles should be given a place of honor in the history of Russian literature.
I. S. Aksakov
At the beginning of October 1828, the poet A. A. Delvig, who had been staying in Moscow, finally got ready for the return journey and set off for the Neva banks. On the eve of his departure, the baron - at that time the publisher of the "Northern Flowers" - received from another poet, E. A. Boratynsky, a number of manuscripts intended for placement in the almanac. Among the pile of papers handed over was the poem "Bal" ("Ball Evening").
Upon arrival in St. Petersburg, A. A. Delvig immediately acquainted his closest friend, Alexander Pushkin, with the delivered work. It is known that in October the latter thought a lot about the work of Yevgeny Boratynsky, commemorated the "elegiac poet" in conversations with friends, and even drew his portrait on the margins of a draft. And shortly after that, Pushkin left the northern capital - and moved to the Tver province.
Already from there, from Malinniki (the estate of the devoted P. A. Osipova), he wrote (somewhere in late October - early November) a letter to E. A. Boratynsky. Pushkin's message has not been preserved, but we still know that there, among other things, dissatisfaction was expressed with some lines of the recently read "Ball". Here is what the annoyed E. A. Boratynsky himself said about this to Anton Delvig in the first days of December 1828:
“I received a letter from Pushkin, in which he tells me a few words about my Ball. He, like you, doesn't like his mother's speech. I don't defend her; but I would like to know why exactly it is not good, because in order to correct it, you need to know what it sins with.
So, Pushkin (and, in some ways, Baron A. A. Delvig, in solidarity with him) was not satisfied with the moralizing speeches that she addressed to the heroine of the Ball, Princess Nina (who had just taken a deadly poison), her nanny (or nurse) . The unsuspecting "gray-haired mother" broadcast in the darkness of the "dead night" literally the following:
"Is it you, my child,
Such a late time? ..
And do not close your eyes with sleep,
Grieving God knows what!
This is how you spend your life
Though from the mind, but stupidly;
Well, right, you're leaving yourself,
But it is sinful, where it is sinful!
And what's wrong with your fate?
As I look, the house is full
Do not count how good;
You are of a great rank;
Your prince of a pleasant face,
The soul in him is so meek, -
Hourly Supreme Creator
Bless another!
You forgot God... yes,
You never go to church;
Believe who will leave the Lord,
The Lord will also leave him;
And He rules our spirit,
He guards our flesh!
In a sketch of Pushkin's 1828 article about "The Ball" (an article never completed and not published during the life of the reviewer), we read: "This brilliant work is full of original beauty and extraordinary charm. The poet, with amazing art, combined in a quick story a playful and passionate tone, metaphysics and poetry. (XI, 75). True, further, Pushkin, having finished with sincere compliments, reproached E. A. Boratynsky for the “strict tone of reproach, reproach”, taken by the author in relation to the “poor, passionate heroine” (XI, 76) poems. Here, probably, the nocturnal maxims of the old Moscow nurse were also implied.
Of course, the coughing, sighing heavily, continually crossing herself (“with a dry, decrepit hand”) and making prostrations to the ground, Yevgeny Boratynsky’s “mother” turned out to be overly rigoristic, stilted, if not caricatured. Yes, and the moment for the nanny's sermon was chosen by the author unsuccessfully: the artist here clearly did not cope with the "plan" of the work. But Pushkin, catching all this, could have other, and very good, reasons for a critical assessment of this artistic image.
We need to take into account that to all sorts of mothers and nannies, metropolitan and provincial, he, and then especially, treated very seriously, frankly biased.
existing in Rus' serfdom is usually described by historians, writers and publicists using one color and is associated in the public mind with infinitely terrible evil, with "Wild lordship, without feeling, without law" ( II, 83). To a certain extent, this is, of course, true: after all, a significant part of the population of the empire for centuries has inescapably remained in legally registered slavery. But we should, condemning the countless abominations of the nobility, remember something else: Russian laws were rarely executed exactly, from now to now, but they were often corrected by Russian peculiar concepts.
Their similar correction, at first done within the limits of any locus in private, gradually gained strength, went beyond the boundaries of the locus and became a common tradition that softened or modified important normative acts (or their paragraphs) to a paradoxical unrecognizability.
A stubborn multi-coloured way of life, stealthily editing the officially proclaimed official existence on official paper, is one of our most ancient and characteristic national features.
Therefore, adherence to non-canonical concepts at times led to the appearance in the estates of notorious tyrants, indefatigable saltychs - however, in parallel, in the neighborhood, their beautiful-hearted and suspicious antipodes, other-worldly eccentrics ("farmazons") also grew up.
And here is another household amendment to the tight serf law. According to the law, serfs were supposed to be shy and well-behaved, languishing in a closed herd with a herd, content only with master's rattles, but the law was quietly turned by loyal subjects so that for some reason they began to move out of the dumb herd, endowed with dignity and rise personalities who glorified the slave state.
The formation of a relatively small category of persons, which later one of the historians aptly called "pillar fortresses» . There are extremely curious messages about them in memoirs and other sources.
“In our old houses, the large number of servants and courtyard people,” wrote, for example, Prince P. A. Vyazemsky, “was not the only consequence of conceited nobility: there was also a family beginning. Our fathers kept in their house, fed and clothed the old servants who served their fathers, and at the same time warmed and raised the children of these servants. This is the root and beginning of this crowd of more household members than servants.
These "household members" included the uncles of the barchuks, and of course the nannies and nurses-mothers of noble children. “The nanny who nursed the oldest gentleman or lady, or the old confidante of girlish tricks, not only herself enjoyed the privilege of almost equality with the gentlemen, but all her kinship drew closer to the younger generation of gentlemen,” asserted V. V. Selivanov. Yes, and in the memoirs of G. I. Philipson, a similar serf appears. “My nanny was a very intelligent woman, but, above all, kind and loving, honest and completely disinterested,” the author noted. - She followed me for six years, and then she nursed another brother and four sisters. Her meekness and patience were unbelievable.<…>. Subsequently, she became almost a member of our family. Mother gave her a holiday, but she did not even think of leaving us ... "
Yakov Seryakov. Bas-relief portrait of Arina Rodionovna, 1840s. Image from hohmodrom.ru
A person who does good, good deeds, himself can perceive his activity in different ways. One is so simply bursting with pride, he wants to inflate his chest more abruptly so that more medals for charity fit there. The other is calm, so he chuckles into his mustache. The third one does not even chuckle - he tries so that no one knows about it at all.
But this is not an extreme. It is possible throughout your life to actually accomplish a civic feat and not even understand it. That was exactly what Arina Rodionovna, the nanny of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, was like.
Rodionov, but not Yakovlev
Many write that Arina Rodionovna Yakovleva was born in 1758 at the Suyda manor in the St. Petersburg province. It is not true. Arina Rodionovna has never been any Yakovleva. Surnames were not supposed to be serfs. Just Arina Rodionova daughter. According to other sources - Irina, Irinya.
The surname Yakovleva arose after the death of the old woman. It was invented by Pushkin scholars, who are inclined to exalt everything that is connected with their idol, and at the same time with an unshakable source of income. Well, not quite, of course, they came up with - the father of the nanny, a serf, bore the proud name of Rodion Yakovlev son. In fact, Jacob was the grandfather of the nanny, and you need to have the richest imagination to turn the grandfather's name into a surname.
However, some researchers go further and assign another surname to the nanny, allegedly received during the wedding. Nee Yakovleva, and married Matveeva. In fact, her husband - also a serf - was called Fyodor Matveev son.
The word “son” was sometimes omitted for brevity, which is why the scanty, devoid of suffix patronymic names really looked like surnames, but they were not at all like that.
In any case, Fyodor Matveev died two years after Pushkin's birth (if anyone does not remember, it was in 1799), presumably from overzealous drunkenness. Before that, he managed to accustom his wife to a glass - the respectful attitude of the legendary nanny to alcohol was noted by many contemporaries.
Here, for example, are the memoirs of Maria Ivanovna Osipova, a neighbor on Mikhailovsky: “The old woman is extremely respectable, all gray-haired, but with one sin - she loved to drink.”
Yes, and Alexander Sergeevich himself did not say in vain: “Let's drink from grief; where is the mug? In his poems, in principle, there are no random words.
Nanny with experience
Drawing by A. S. Pushkin, presumably depicting Arina Rodionovna in her youth and old age (1828).
Our heroine's career as a nanny began almost immediately after the wedding: she raised Pushkin's mother, Nadezhda Osipovna Gannibal, and then her children. In 1792, Arina Rodionovna was called to take care of little Alexei, the uncle of the unborn poet.
The nanny came out nice and, as a recognition of services, three years later she was given her own hut, and two years later they were taken into the Pushkin family as not only a relative, but a very close person. In any case, when in 1807 the Hannibals sold their St. Petersburg lands, this did not affect the nanny in any way - she had long been assigned not to the land, but to the owners.
In a word, by the time the future great poet was born, Arina Rodionovna had the experience of a nanny. But for some reason, it was for Sasha that she experienced the most ardent, one might say, selfless love.
Pushkin was for her, as they say, the light in the window. And he, of course, reciprocated her, calling the nanny "mom". Subsequently, he wrote: “In the evening I listen to the tales of my nanny, the original nanny Tatyana ... She is my only friend - and with her only I am not bored.”
Anna Kern complained that Pushkin "truly loved no one but his nanny." And the publicist Yevgeny Poselyanin wrote about the death of his nanny: “He became an orphan without her, because no one loved him as much as she did, with this - the most necessary and rarest in life - love, giving everything and demanding nothing, love to which you can snuggle up and relax."
Outwardly, for all that, the nanny did not differ in mimicry. From the newfangled "year-olds" and "bubblers" as well as other "taste" it, perhaps, would have turned her out. Arina Rodionovna looked stern, she was inclined to grumble. Yes, it all came from the heart and from great love.
Pavel Annenkov, Pushkin's biographer, wrote: "The combination of good nature and grouchiness, a tender disposition for youth with feigned severity left an indelible impression in Pushkin's heart."
The poet himself wrote in the poem "... Again I visited ...":
Her simple speeches and advice
And reproaches full of love
They encouraged my weary heart
Quiet joy.
Apparently, those “reproaches full of love” were worth a lot.
And there was a painstaking watch:
Where I lived with my poor nanny.
Already the old woman is gone - already behind the wall
I do not hear her heavy steps,
Nor her painstaking watch.
The poem "... Again I visited ..." was written in 1835, a little more than a year before his death. It seems that at that moment Alexander Sergeevich believed that Arina Rodionovna would have been alive - she would have been able to protect him from all the high society misfortunes that had led the poet to the Black River.
An unexpected return to childhood
Painting by Nikolai Ge “A. S. Pushkin in the village of Mikhailovsky. Image from wikipedia.org
It was thanks to Arina Rodionovna that Pushkin managed not to become either an extreme Westernizer or an extreme Russophile. And similar trends in his era were in vogue. As a result, Alexander Sergeevich could admire Chaadaev - but at the same time pay tribute to Russian folklore, be a member of the English Club - but at the same time, in his own words, sell him for two hundred rubles.
In the European spirit, Pushkin was brought up by his secular uncle and the very environment in which the Pushkin-Hannibal family lived. At the other pole there was only Arina Rodionovna. And nothing, coped.
Alexander Sergeevich's sister wrote that the nanny "masterfully told fairy tales, knew popular beliefs and poured out proverbs and sayings."
The poet himself wrote in the poem "The confidante of magical antiquity ...":
You, rocking the cradle of a child,
My youthful ear captivated me with melodies
And between the sheets she left a flute,
Which she herself enchanted.
Education continued in 1824-1826, during Mikhailov's exile. The old nurse gladly kept him company. And Alexander Sergeevich again plunges into the world of Russian legends.
Pavel Annenkov wrote: "The whole fabulous Russian world was known to her as briefly as possible, and she conveyed it in an extremely original way."
Pushkin himself wrote to his brother in 1824: “Do you know my classes? before dinner I write notes, I have dinner late; after dinner I ride, in the evening I listen to fairy tales - and thereby reward the shortcomings of my accursed upbringing. What a delight these stories are! Each is a poem!
Near the seaside, the oak is green;
Golden chain on an oak tree:
And day and night the cat is a scientist
Everything goes round and round...
And the prologue becomes far more famous than the poem itself. Hand on heart, how many remember the plot of Ruslan and Lyudmila itself? And everyone knows about the scientist cat with his golden chain.
Favorite babysitter
Big Boldino. Museum-reserve. Monument to A. S. Pushkin and Arina Rodionovna. Image from wikipedia.org
Little is known about the personality of Arina Rodionovna. And this constantly inspired researchers to all sorts of conjectures. Of course, they were not limited to attaching all sorts of surnames to it. Someone attributed to the uneducated nanny participation in secret societies - either Old Believer or pagan. The annual rings of the oak, around which the cat walked, were quite seriously compared with the Scandinavian philosophy of the universe.
All this, of course, is nonsense. By and large, Pushkin's nanny was not much different from the wanderer Feklusha from Alexander Ostrovsky's Thunderstorm. One has people with dog heads, the other has a talking cat. The difference is small.
Pushkin wrote to Pyotr Vyazemsky in 1826: “My nanny is hilarious. Imagine that at the age of 70 she memorized a new prayer "For the tenderness of the heart of the lord and the taming of the spirit of his ferocity", probably composed during the reign of Tsar Ivan. Now her priests are tearing up a prayer service.
Alexander Sergeevich really loved his nanny to the point of madness. It was she who went down in history as the main companion of the poet. And not, for example, Nikita Kozlov, "uncle", who also raised the poet from childhood, former near with him throughout his life and in 1837, together with Sergei Turgenev, lowered the coffin with his body into the grave.
It is generally accepted that it was Arina Rodionovna who became the prototype for many of Pushkin's characters - Tatyana's nanny from "Eugene Onegin", Dubrovsky's nanny, Xenia's mother from "Boris Godunov" and a number of other ordinary Russian women.
The nanny died in 1828 in St. Petersburg at the age of 70. In the house of Arina Rodionovna in the village of Kobrino, a museum was opened in 1974.
The name of the nanny of the great poet Arina Rodionovna is known to almost every schoolchild. Everyone knows that the nanny loved, as she said, her "angel Alexander Sergeevich." The poet always appreciated her kindness and affection. more than once said that Arina Rodionovna became the prototype of the nanny main character Tatyana in the poem "Eugene Onegin". He also "brought" Arina Rodionovna in a number of female images in the tragedy "Boris Godunov", the play "Mermaid", the novel "Arap of Peter the Great". Many lines of poetry were dedicated to her. However, we have not reached complete biography Arina Rodionovna, memories of her are found in the notes of some of Pushkin's contemporaries, but many of them are superficial. Perhaps that is why Pushkinists to this day are arguing about Arina Rodionovna herself and about the role she played in the life and work of the poet ...
Arina Rodionovna was born on April 10, 1758 in the village of Suyda, Petersburg province, which belonged to Count F.A. Apraksin. In 1785, Count Apraksin sold all the inhabitants of the village to Abram Petrovich Gannibal, the grandfather of A.S. Pushkin.
Like all the inhabitants of the village, Arina was a serf. When she was ten years old, her father died, leaving seven children. The girl had to work from an early age - already at eight she washed and cleaned the hut, sewed and embroidered, from the age of ten she worked in the field, looked after horses and cattle. “Poverty, malnutrition, the backbreaking labor of a serf — these are her childhood memories,” notes S. Boyko, the author of an article about her. Despite the hard life, Arina was a kind, cheerful girl - she was loved in the village; She also told great stories. A real storyteller sometimes came to the village, an elderly peasant who could not do hard peasant work, but knew many fairy tales and knew how to tell them talentedly, and lived by this. Arina listened with admiration to the storyteller, and then retold the tales to the children - she had a very good memory. Having matured, she mastered the skill of a storyteller and began to compose fairy tales herself, applying the laws of construction of this folklore genre: peculiar beginnings, sayings and endings, constant paths (epithets, comparisons) and inventing epithets on her own, storylines and so on, talentedly telling fairy tales - where it is necessary to raise or lower your voice, change intonation, make precise pauses, convey with facial expressions and gestures everything that needed to be conveyed in performance. Having become a wonderful storyteller, already an adult Arina, whom we know as Pushkin's famous nanny Arina Rodionovna, she conveyed to the future great poet her love for Russian folk art, for the rich Russian language.
When Arina was 23 years old, she married a serf Fyodor Matveev from a neighboring village. In his poem "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin describes the conversation of the main character of the work - Tatyana Larina with a nanny (as Pushkin himself said, "the original nanny Tatyana"); it is likely that it conveys the mood of this fact in the life of his beloved nanny - such was the typical fate of a Russian woman - a peasant woman in those years.
"Tell me baby 
About your old years:
Were you in love then?
And yes, Tanya! In these summers
We haven't heard of love;
And then I would drive from the world 
My dead mother-in-law. —
“But how did you get married, nanny?”
So, apparently, God commanded.
My Vanya was younger than me, my light ...
And I was thirteen years old.
For two weeks the matchmaker went 
To my family, and finally
Father blessed me.
I cried bitterly from fear
They untwisted my braid with weeping
And with singing they led to the church.
And then they introduced someone else into the family ...
Arina Rodionovna had two sons and two daughters. The direct descendants of Pushkin's nanny lived in the Leningrad region in the 1930s.
In the same year, when Arina got married, Abram Petrovich Gannibal died, and she, together with her husband, became the serf of his son, Osip Abramovich. And in 1797, Arina Rodionovna was taken to the Pushkins' house - she was chosen from all the serfs for her kind disposition, diligence, ability to get along with children and was taken into the house as a nanny for the daughter Olya, who was born to Sergei Lvovich and Nadezhda Osipovna, Pushkin's older sister. Two years later, the gentlemen gave Arina Rodionovna freedom, and she could have left, but she remained in the house and nursed the other Pushkin children.
The children loved their nanny very much. Olya recalled many years later: “Arina Rodionovna skillfully told fairy tales, knew folk beliefs and poured proverbs and sayings.”
And Pushkin later wrote:
Confidante of magical old times,
Friend of fiction, playful and sad,
I knew you in the days of my spring,
In the days of joys and initial dreams.
I was waiting for you: in the evening silence 
You were a cheerful old woman
And she sat above me in a shushun,
In big glasses and with a frisky rattle.
You, rocking the cradle of a child,
My youthful ear captivated me with melodies
And between the sheets she left a flute,
Which she herself enchanted.
But the moment came when the nanny, a simple peasant woman, was replaced by a real “madame” - a poor but noble lady who spoke French perfectly: at that time she was “in honor” French, the whole world spoke only French, and Maria Alekseevna Gannibal, and Sergei Lvovich did not want their son to "listen to the yard" and speak Russian; in Russian, the children - Olya, Sasha and the youngest son Lev - could speak only in the nursery, and outside it - only in a foreign language. Little Sasha was very worried about this, he asked his parents to leave Arina Rodionovna in the house, but they were adamant. On the very first evening, Sasha asked the new nanny to tell him a fairy tale, but she began to speak French. The boy fell silent and turned to the wall. He then realized for the first time that he was interested only in those fairy tales that Arina Rodionovna used to say.
Arina Rodionovna returned to the village of Mikhailovskoye, Pskov province. It was there that the disgraced poet Pushkin was exiled from St. Petersburg in July 1824 under the supervision of the local authorities. And here, with joy, he was greeted by his aged nanny, Arina Rodionovna, who still loved her Sasha just as much, and he called her "mother". Pushkin often came to her small house, standing next to the master's, and listened to the nurse's songs, her fairy tales. In a letter to a friend, Pushkin wrote in December 1824: “... in the evening I listen to my nanny's tales ...; she is my only friend - and with her only I am not bored.
To his beloved nanny, a dear and close person, a simple peasant woman, the poet dedicated his poem, which is called “Nanny”. The poem was written in October 1826 in Moscow, where Pushkin was unexpectedly summoned by the tsar, which greatly alarmed Arina Rodionovna.
Friend of my harsh days,
My decrepit dove!
Alone in the wilderness of pine forests
For a long, long time you've been waiting for me.
You are under the window of your room
Grieving like clockwork
And the spokes are slowing down every minute
In your wrinkled hands.
Looking through the forgotten gates
To the black distant path:
Anguish, foreboding, worries
They squeeze your chest all the time ...
Several letters to Pushkin have been preserved, written under the dictation of Arina Rodionovna, in which all the deepest love of the nanny for her Sasha is manifested: “... you are constantly in my heart and mind; and only when I fall asleep, I will forget you and your favors to me ... Your promise to visit us in the summer makes me very happy. Come, my Angel, to us, in Mikhailovskoye, I will put all the horses on the road ... I will wait for you and pray to God to let us see each other ... "
Arina Rodionovna died in 1828 in the house of Olga Sergeevna Pavlishcheva, nee Pushkina, the same Olya, by whose nanny she was introduced into the Pushkins' house.
In the same year, Pushkin published the second edition of his poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila", in which he placed the Prologue, written in Mikhailovsky, where he spoke about how Russian folk tales were dear to him, which he listened to with pleasure both in childhood and in the years of Mikhailovsky references from her nanny Arina Rodionovna.
Around the image of the legendary Arina Rodionovna - the nanny of the great Russian poet Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin - there were many different rumors and legends. Despite the fact that the famous pupil himself always spoke of this respected woman with sincere love and gratitude, some Pushkinists and the poet's contemporaries noted amazing and even contradictory moments in the biography and character of the nanny, whose name became a household name.
Izhorka or Chukhonka?
Arina Rodionovna (1758-1828) was a peasant serf. She was born in the village of Lampovo, Petersburg province, not far from the village of Suyda. Her parents Lukerya Kirillova and Rodion Yakovlev raised seven children. The real name of the girl was Irina (or Irinya), but in the family she was always called Arina, and so it happened.
Despite the fact that officially in the 18th century almost all the serfs of the St. Petersburg province were considered Russian, the majority of the inhabitants of those places, in fact, were representatives of assimilated Finno-Ugric nationalities. The environs of Suida were inhabited mainly by Izhors - the descendants of one of the tribes of the people, who bore the name "Chud". In addition to them, Chukhons also lived on these lands.
Historians and Pushkin scholars do not have exact information to which of these Finno-Ugric nationalities, completely mixed with Russians and not preserved, Arina Rodionovna belonged. But some of the tales she told to her famous pupil have a distinct northern flavor. Even the image of an oak standing near the Lukomorye clearly echoes the Scandinavian legends about the Yggdrasil tree, connecting different levels universe.
From a family of Old Believers?
Some historians note that families of Old Believers have long lived in the vicinity of the village of Suyda in the St. Petersburg province. Many of these people hid their religious views so as not to be persecuted by the official church.
In addition to the fact that Arina Rodionovna was born in the places of the traditional settlement of the Old Believers, her origin from this environment is also indicated by the information contained in the letter of A.S. Pushkin to his friend P.A. Vyazemsky on November 9, 1826. So, the great poet writes: “My nanny is hilarious. Imagine that at the age of 70 she memorized a new prayer "For the tenderness of the heart of the lord and the taming of the spirit of his ferocity", probably composed during the reign of Tsar Ivan. Now her priests are tearing up a prayer service ... "
The simple fact that Arina Rodionovna knew by heart or learned from somewhere a rare ancient prayer that existed even before the schism Orthodox Church, may indicate her close communication or kinship with the Old Believers. After all, only they so reverently preserved religious texts, many of which were lost by the official church.
Serf without a surname
Arina Rodionovna did not have a last name, like many serfs. Although her parent is recorded in church registers as Yakovlev, and her husband as Matveev, these were not names, but patronymics. In those days, Peter, the son of Ivan, was called Peter Ivanov, and the grandson of the same Ivan did not inherit the surname of his grandfather, but was called after his father - Petrov.
However, Irina, the daughter of a peasant, Rodion Yakovlev, is indicated in the birth record. There is also information about the wedding of Irinya Rodionova and Fyodor Matveev in the church book of the village of Suyda. These facts confused many researchers who mistakenly called Pushkin's nanny Yakovleva as a girl, and Matveeva as a wife.
mother of four children
Some people believe that Arina Rodionovna did not have her own family, and therefore she was strongly attached to her pupil. However, this was not the case. In 1781, a 22-year-old peasant woman got married and moved to the village of Kobrino, Sofia district, where her husband Fyodor Matveev (1756-1801), who was two years older than his young wife, lived.
Four children were born in this marriage. The eldest son of the legendary nanny was called Yegor Fedorov. IN revision tale for 1816, he is listed as the head of the family, as he was the eldest man in the house of the dowager mother.
And the husband of Arina Rodionovna died at the age of 44. Some sources claim that from drunkenness.
Drinker
All posts by A.S. Pushkin about his nanny are imbued with special warmth and gratitude. But some people who knew this woman pointed out that Arina Rodionovna liked to knock over a glass or two from time to time.
So, the poet Nikolai Mikhailovich Yazykov wrote in his memoirs: "... she was an affectionate, caring troublemaker, an inexhaustible storyteller, and sometimes a cheerful drinking companion." This man, who knew his friend's nanny well, noted that despite her fullness, she was always a mobile and energetic woman.
Quite frankly, a neighbor of the great poet on the estate in the village of Mikhailovskoye also spoke about Arina Rodionovna. The noblewoman Maria Ivanovna Osipova left the following entry in her memoirs: "... an extremely respectable old woman, all gray-haired, but with one sin - she loved to drink."
Perhaps in the poem Winter evening» A.S. Pushkin, it is far from accidental that the following lines appeared:
Let's drink, good friend
My poor youth
Let's drink from grief; where is the mug?
The heart will be happy.
Although there is no other information that this respected woman ever drank or (God forbid!) introduced her famous pupil to alcohol, does not exist.
Folk storyteller
It is unlikely that any of the Pushkinists would deny that Arina Rodionovna had a noticeable influence on the work of the great poet. Some historians call her a real folk storyteller - an inexhaustible storehouse of ancient legends, legends and myths.
Becoming an adult, A.S. Pushkin realized what an invaluable national and cultural asset fairy tales were, which his dear nanny knew by heart. In 1824-1826, while in exile, the great poet took advantage of the moment to once again listen and write down the magical stories about Tsar Saltan, about the golden cockerel, about the Lukomorye, about the dead princess and the seven heroes, as well as many others. The author breathed new life into these tales, bringing to them his literary gift and poetic look.
At the beginning of November 1824 A.S. Pushkin wrote to his younger brother Lev Sergeevich from the village of Mikhailovsky that he was engaged in writing until lunch, then he rides, and in the evening he listens to fairy tales, thereby making up for the shortcomings of his education. Probably, the poet meant that at the beginning of the 19th century, the nobles did not study oral folk art at all.
“What a charm these fairy tales are! Each is a poem! exclaimed the poet in a letter to his brother.
As the Pushkinists established, according to their nanny A.S. Pushkin also recorded ten folk songs and several expressions that seemed very interesting to him.
The main nurse of Russian literature turns 260 years old.
Fate made sure that just such a person appeared on the path of Alexander Sergeevich. Arina Rodionovna gave her love to the poet, she was not only a nanny for him, but a true friend. The old woman could grumble, be feignedly strict, but Alexander knew about her boundless love for him, - says Olga Solodovnikova, head of the department of the Pushkin Central Library.
Once in the Pushkins' house as a nanny for the poet's elder sister Olga and his younger brother Leo, she did not immediately begin to follow little Sasha. He was watched by two other women and uncle Nikita Kozlov, who later accompanied the coffin with the body of the poet on his last journey. And yet, only Pushkin called her his nanny, he more than once addressed her or the images inspired by her in his poems.Arina Rodionovna brought up all the wards of the lordly children in Russian. She skillfully, sincerely told fables, terrible stories, fairy tales, she knew popular beliefs, poured proverbs and sayings. Not only children loved to listen to her, but also all domestic servants. . “Despite the fact that it was strictly forbidden for everyone around us to scare us with witches, brownies, the nannies talked about them among themselves all day,”- recalled the sister of the poet Olga. Scientists say that the information and knowledge that a child receives under the age of seven forms his personality.It was during this period that young Sasha first heard about the hut on chicken legs, and the tale of the dead princess and the seven heroes.Apparently, in fact, the serf peasant woman had a special gift and conquered children's souls, and her speech was forever deposited in their memory. This role of hers is especially important because in the childhood of the poet “his upbringing contained little Russian; he heard only French.Almost until 1811, before entering the Lyceum, Pushkin lived under the same roof with Arina Rodionovna.He loved her with a kindred, unchanging love,often referring to her not only as "nanny", but also as "mom".
However, a special closeness between Pushkin and Arina Rodionovna developed already during his two-year exile. In July 1824, a disgraced poet from St. Petersburg was sent to the village of Mikhailovskoye in the Pskov province under the supervision of the local authorities. And here he was greeted with joy by his aged nanny, who still loved her Sasha just as much. In Mikhailovsky, Arina Rodionovna not only guarded the estate, but also conducted all the master's affairs. In the memoirs devoted to exile, the names of the nanny and the poet are inseparable. In the house, the nursery and Pushkin's rooms were nearby. “The entrance to it is right from the corridor; opposite his door is the door to the nanny's room, where there were a lot of embroidery frames,- recalled I.I. Pushchin. According to the coachman Pushkin P. Parfyonov: “ He is all with her, if at home. She gets up a little in the morning, and she runs to look at her: “Is she healthy, mom?” - he kept calling her mom ... And if the old woman gets sick there, or something, he’s all after her ... ".
They spent the evenings together.The nanny sat down at the table with her eternal stockings or with a spinning wheel and, under the spindle running briskly in her hands, she told her tales - melodiously, simply,which, according to the poet himself, she did excellently. He often came to her small house, standing next to the master's, giving rise to legends that Pushkin did not even live at home, but in the "nanny's house". In a letter to a friend, Pushkin wrote in December 1824: “... in the evening I listen to the tales of my nanny ...; she is my only friend - and with her only I am not bored.
The whole fabulous Russian world was known to her in the shortest possible way, and she conveyed it in an extremely original way.In November 1824, Pushkin wrote to his brother Leo: Do you know my classes? Before dinner I write notes, I have dinner late; after dinner I ride, in the evening I listen to fairy tales - and thereby reward the shortcomings of my accursed upbringing. What a delight these stories are! Each is a poem!. And he wrote down fairy tales, which the nanny knew a great many, songs, with interest "collected" sayings, proverbs, folk expressions told to her.
For example, let's compare fragments of one of the nanny's fairy tales recorded by Pushkin and the prologue of the poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila ":" ... here's a miracle: there is an oak tree by the sea of the sea, and on that oak tree there are golden chains and a cat walks along those chains, tells tales up, sings songs down ... but a miracle: 30 youths come out of the sea exactly in -exactly even in voice, and hair, and face, and height, and they come out of the sea only for one hour ... and with them an old man ... ".
And in Pushkin's poem:
Near the seaside, the oak is green;
Golden goal on oak volume:
And day and night the cat is a scientist
Everything goes round and round...
The creative individuality of Arina Rodionovna the storyteller was studied by the folklorist M. K. Azadovsky. Based on Pushkin's recording of seven folk tales, the scientist noted that the performer owned the traditional repertoire, which appears in "beautifully preserved, of great artistic power and poetic freshness." She willingly used the number 30 or 33, rhymed freely. In a purely fairy-tale tradition, she used names-nicknames, especially often used her favorite epithet: golden.
Thus, the creative gift of Arina Rodionovna, wisdom, patience, hospitality and tender love for her pet earned the invariable respect of Pushkin, his friends and admirers of his talent. In a poem by A.S. Pushkin's "Matchmaker Ivan, how we will drink ..." a portrait of his beloved nanny is given:
She was a craftswoman!
And where did you get it from!
And where are reasonable jokes,
Sayings, jokes,
Fables, epics
Orthodox antiquity!
It's so comforting to listen to!
And I would not drink, and I would not eat,
Everyone would listen and sit.
Who came up with them so well?
Much later, having already become famous, Pushkin would conclude that acquaintance with old songs, epics, fairy tales is necessary for a perfect knowledge of the basics of the Russian language.The important role of nurse's tales in the life and work of Pushkin was noted by the critic and poet Apollon Grigoriev: “Oh, the tales of Arina Rodionovna ... you kept such a bright, pure stream in the soul of a young, French-bred nobleman that distant offspring will remember you with a kind word and blessing ...”.
Pushkin began to write his fairy tales later, he carried their idea in himself for a long time, time had to pass for the fabulous writings to see the light.Almost all of Pushkin's fairy tales were born already in 1830-31, that is, five years after seclusion in Mikhailovsky.
Pushkin's old "mummy", with the light hand of the poet who created a poetic, romantic myth about his nanny, entered Russian literature forever, becoming a "textbook image". He sang it in poems of different periods,calling "the confidante of magical antiquity", "friend of my youth", "good girlfriend":
Confidante of magical old times,
Friend of fictions playful and sad,
I knew you in the days of my spring,
In the days of joys and initial dreams.
I was waiting for you; in the evening silence
You were a cheerful old woman,
And she sat above me in a shushun,
In big glasses and with a frisky rattle ...
The poem "The Confidante of Magical Antiquity" is entirely unique in that in it the old nanny and the lovely maiden Muse appear as two incarnations of the same person.
According to the poet, Arina Rodionovna was the “original” of Dubrovsky’s nanny, Tatyana’s nanny from Eugene Onegin. It is generally accepted that she is also the prototype of Xenia's mother in "Boris Godunov", the female images of the novel "Peter the Great's Moor", the princess's mother ("Mermaid").
For example, in his poem "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin describes the conversation of the main character of the work - Tatyana Larina with a nanny (as Pushkin himself said, "the original nanny Tatyana"); it is likely that it conveys the mood of this fact in the life of his beloved nanny - such was the typical fate of a Russian peasant woman in those years:
Tell me nanny
About your old years:
Were you in love then?
And yes, Tanya! In these summers
We haven't heard of love;
And then I would drive from the world
My dead mother-in-law. —
“But how did you get married, nanny?”
So, apparently, God commanded.
My Vanya was younger than me, my light ...
And I was thirteen years old.
To his beloved nanny, a dear and close person, a simple peasant woman, the poet dedicated his poem, which is called “Nanny”. The poem was written in October 1826 in Moscow, where Pushkin was unexpectedly summoned by the tsar, which greatly alarmed Arina Rodionovna.Anton Delvig asks his lyceum friend in a letter: “ My soul, the position of your nurse scares me. How did she cope with a completely unexpected separation from you? Not very cheerfully endured, the courtyard Pyotr Parfenov recalled: "Arina Rodionovna loosened up, wept bitterly". At the beginning of November 1826, Pushkin was again in "his hut," as he liked to call Mikhailovskoye. From there he wrote to Vyazemsky: “You know that I don’t show sensitivity, but the meeting of my servants ... and my nanny - by God, tickles the heart more pleasantly than words ... My nanny is hilarious. Imagine that at the age of seventy she had learned a new prayer for the tenderness of the Vladyka's heart and the taming of the spirit of his ferocity, a prayer probably composed during the reign of Tsar Ivan. It is not difficult to guess whose heart Arina Rodionovna wanted to "touch" and whose ferocity to "tame". She prayed to the autocrat for mercy to the beloved of her soul - Alexander Sergeevich. From the memoirs of Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova - the maid of honor of the Empress: " The sovereign-emperor spoke with Pushkin about his poor Arina Rodionovna (the poet was very sorry for her). The sovereign spoke about old Russian servants and about poems where Pushkin mentions his grandmother and his old nanny.
The nanny, the first and most faithful friend of the poet, is remembered by his contemporaries, close friends, for whom Arina Rodionovna also became a loved one. Prince Pyotr Andreevich Vyazemsky writes: "My bow to the waist to Rodionovna." Ivan Ivanovich Pushchin, returning from Mikhailovsky, asks Pushkin in a letter: "Bow to the nanny."
"Svet Rodionovna, will I forget you?" - wrote the poet Nikolai Mikhailovich Yazykov, who visited Pushkin in the spring of 1826. He was delighted with Arina Rodionovna. “I'm crazy about your nanny! What a motherly concern she has for you. Her spiritual beauty is amazing, wonderful vernacular, captivating stories about antiquity, about past life! Nikolai Mikhailovich, subsequently, dedicated the poem “How sweet is your holy hospitality ...” to her.
And according to A.P. Kern, Pushkin he truly did not love anyone, except for his nanny ... ".
The last time the poet met his beloved nanny was in the village of Mikhailovsky in September 1827. By that time, Arina Rodionovna was already 69 years old. By January 1828, Pushkin's older sister Olga had decided to get married. Parents were against the marriage of their daughter with Nikolai Pavlishchev. The couple settled in St. Petersburg, and the parents, stepping over themselves, had to provide them with serfs for housekeeping. Among them was Arina Rodionovna.
She had to travel to the capital in March. The still winter-like cold road took away a lot of strength from her - the nanny began to get sick. In the house of the Pavlishchevs, she died on August 12, 1828.
Arina Rodionovna was buried at the Smolensk cemetery in St. Petersburg. Two years later, Alexander Pushkin tried to find her grave, but could not - it was lost forever. Only in 1977 did a plaque appear at the Smolensk cemetery in memory of the poet's nanny.
In 1880, when more than 40 years had passed since Pushkin's death, the writer I.S. Aksakov at the opening of the monument to the poet in Moscow will make a speech about a simple peasant woman - Arina Rodionovna: “From adolescence to the very grave, this brilliant, illustrious poet was not ashamed in public, in wonderful verses, to profess tender affection not for his mother, but for his nanny ... So this is who the first inspirer, the first muse of the great artist is the nanny, this is a simple village woman! May she, this nanny, and on behalf of Russian society, have eternal grateful memory!
Pushkin managed to create a kind poetic image of his beloved nanny, but, surprisingly, almost nothing is known about the appearance of Arina Rodionovna.
The portrait of the nanny by an unknown artist is widely known. It can be found even in school textbooks.
But does it correspond to the real appearance of the nanny? At least, it contradicts the only description of Arina Rodionovna that has come down to us, made byPraskovia Alexandrovna Osipova: “The old woman is extremely respectable - with a full face, all gray-haired, passionately loving her pet ...”. There are no more words about the appearance of the nanny in history.
There is also a well-known high relief of Arina Rodionovna, carved from bone. His story is shrouded in mystery - he first became known in 1911, when he fell into the hands of Maxim Gorky, who at that time lived in Italy on the island of Capri. Where exactly the high relief came from, has not been clarified. Today, this portrait is kept in the Central Museum of A. S. Pushkin in St. Petersburg.
In addition, Pushkin scientists found two profile portraits on the margins of Alexander Sergeevich's workbooks. First, the head of an old woman in a warrior is drawn, and next to her is a half-length portrait of a girl in a sundress, with a scythe and a bandage on her head. Upon closer examination, it turned out that the faces of the old woman and the girl are strikingly similar and are a portrait of the same person in youth and old age. In the first portrait, she is probably drawn the way the poet saw her for the last time, on her deathbed - in front of us is the face of an old woman with already frozen features, with lowered eyelids. Nearby, Pushkin painted a portrait of the young Arina Rodionovna, it is more clear: the expression on the young woman's face is lively and perky. Drawing Arina Rodionovna young, the poet probably recalled his nanny's stories about her youth.
In various sources, you can find many reproductions of paintings depicting A.S. Pushkin and his faithful nanny. But they are all just a figment of the imagination of artists, reflecting rather inner essence this amazing woman, but not the outward resemblance to the original.
In 1875, at the 4th exhibition of the Association of the Wanderers, Nikolai Ge exhibited his new painting "Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin in the village of Mikhailovsky."
The painting depicts a meeting of lyceum friends in January 1825 in the village of Mikhailovskoye, when in the early morning for just one day he comes to Pushkin best friend Ivan Pushchin, who brought A.S. Griboedov’s then-banned comedy “Woe from Wit”, and Pushkin wanted to read it aloud. Pushchin settled down in an armchair, while Pushkin, with his indefatigable temperament, sat and read while standing. Behind him sits the nanny with her knitting, also listening. This is the moment we see on the canvas of the artist.
The next morning, Pushchin leaves, and Pushkin writes to him in Chita, where Pushchin was in exile after the December uprising on Senate Square:
My first friend! My friend is priceless!
And I blessed fate
When my yard is secluded
covered in sad snow,
Your bell has rung.
A real ode to friendship! After the exhibition, N.A. Nekrasov acquires the painting.
An example of genre painting is the painting by P.I. Geller (1862 - 1933) "Pushkin and the Nanny", written by him for the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Poet.
The painting depicts a room filled with books, in which Pushkin and his nanny comfortably settled down. The nanny has knitting on her knees, she tells something to her beloved Alexander Sergeevich, and he listens attentively and writes down.
Nikolai Ivanovich Shestopalov, a student of Ilya Repin, created canvases dedicated to A. S. Pushkin, amazing in terms of the organic nature of the chosen topics. In the fateful, but also jubilee year of 1937, Nikolai Shestopalov became the artist of the Pushkin Museum-Reserve. And during these years, on his picturesque canvases and wonderful watercolors, landscapes of Mikhailovsky and Trigorsky, estate interiors, views of Svyatogorsky and Pechora monasteries, ancient Russian architecture of white-stone Pskov. After all, this, whatever one may say, is the whole life of a Russian landowner. This is a manor house, a wonderful nurse with Russian fairy tales, the eternal annual cycle of peasant life, visits to monasteries and church services.
Paramonov Alexander Nikitich (1874-1949), graphic artist, muralist. He studied at the Central Theater Arts of Baron Stieglitz at the department of etching and decorative painting under V.V. Mate, G.M. Manizer, A.P. Savinsky. In 1936, on the eve of the celebration of the centennial anniversary of the great poet, he painted the painting "Pushkin and the Nanny". Paper, etching, drypoint.At the bottom of the sheet - an excerpt from a poem by N. Yazykov and a view of the house in Mikhailovsky.The plot is traditional: the nanny, knitting, tells Pushkin her “traditions of the deep antiquity”, and the poet, sitting in an armchair, listens to her and writes down what she heard in a notebook.
In 1938, the young artist Yuri Neprintsev, graduating from the institute, as thesis presented the painting "Pushkin in the village of Mikhailovsky". Throughout his later life, the “Pushkin” theme of Yu.M. Neprintsev considered one of the most important in his work.
Among the well-known Russian artists and graphic artists is the no less famous book illustrator Yuri Valentinovich Ivanov. Many people know his beautiful painting "Pushkin and Arina Rodionovna".
The poet is depicted at the same table with his faithful and reliable friend, nanny. We see part of the room: the wooden walls are hung with icons, on the table in the corner of the room there is a single candle in a candlestick and a box with nurse's knitting supplies. Pushkin's nanny sits at the table with a ball of thread for knitting. Pushkin himself sits on the opposite side of the table. His head is propped up by his hand. A thoughtful look. The poet is dressed as always in a formal suit. The head is covered with curls of hair with long sideburns. On the floor, near the feet, the nanny has closed in a ball and the cat is sleeping sweetly.
Petersburg artist Igor Shaimardanov, the author of a series of paintings about Pushkin, provided works dedicated to the poet's nurse. As conceived by the artist, in the gallery of images of Arina Rodionovna, the viewer is presented with portraits stylized as old canvases early XIX century. Also, Shaimardanov repeatedly turned to the Pushkin theme in his work, creating several series of comic pictures about the life of the poet, on which, according to the author himself, “invented, fictional and almost true stories” are depicted.
