A wonderful moment: Anna Petrovna Kern. The scandalous life and tragedy of Anna Petrovna Kern - kaleidoscope
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Be that as it may, we can talk about Pushkin endlessly. This is exactly the guy who managed to “inherit” everywhere. But this time we have to look at the topic “Anna Kern and Pushkin: a love story.” These relationships could have gone unnoticed by everyone if not for the emotionally tender poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment,” dedicated to Anna Petrovna Kern and written by the poet in 1825 in Mikhailovskoye during his exile. When and how did Pushkin and Kern meet? However, their love story turned out to be quite mysterious and strange. Their first fleeting meeting took place in the Olenins' salon in 1819 in St. Petersburg. However, first things first.
Anna Kern and Pushkin: a love story
Anna was a relative of the inhabitants of Trigorskoye, the Osipov-Wulf family, who were Pushkin’s neighbors on Mikhailovskoye, the poet’s family estate. One day, in correspondence with her cousin, she reports that she is a big fan of Pushkin’s poetry. These words reach the poet, he is intrigued and in his letter to the poet A.G. Rodzianko asks about Kern, whose estate was located next door to him, and besides, Anna was his very close friend. Rodzianko wrote a playful response to Pushkin; Anna also joined in this playful, friendly correspondence; she added several ironic words to the letter. Pushkin was fascinated by this turn and wrote her several compliments, while maintaining a frivolous and playful tone. He expressed all his thoughts on this matter in his poem “To Rodzianka.”
Kern was married, and Pushkin knew her well, not very happy Family status. It should be noted that for Kern Pushkin was not a fatal passion, just as she was not for him.
Anna Kern: family
As a girl, Anna Poltoratskaya was a fair-haired beauty with cornflower blue eyes. At the age of 17, she was given in an arranged marriage to a 52-year-old general, a participant in the war with Napoleon. Anna had to submit to her father’s will, but she not only did not love her husband, but even hated her in her heart, she wrote about this in her diary. In their marriage, they had two daughters; Tsar Alexander I himself expressed a desire to be godfather one of them.
Kern. Pushkin
Anna is an undeniable beauty who attracted the attention of many brave officers who often visited their house. As a woman, she was very cheerful and charming in communication, which had a devastating effect on them.
When Anna Kern and Pushkin first met at her aunt Olenina’s, the young general’s wife already began to have casual affairs and fleeting connections. The poet did not make any impression on her, and at some points seemed rude and shameless. He immediately liked Anna, and he attracted her attention with flattering exclamations, something like: “Is it possible to be so pretty?!”
Meeting in Mikhailovsky
Anna Petrovna Kern and Pushkin met again when Alexander Sergeevich was sent into exile to his native estate Mikhailovskoye. It was the most boring and lonely time for him; after the noisy Odessa, he was annoyed and morally crushed. “Poetry saved me, I was resurrected in soul,” he would later write. It was at this time that Kern, who could not have come at a more opportune time, one July day in 1825, came to Trigorskoye to visit her relatives. Pushkin was incredibly happy about this; she became a ray of light for him for a while. By that time, Anna was already a big fan of the poet, she longed to meet him and again amazed him with her beauty. The poet was seduced by her, especially after she soulfully sang the then popular romance “The Spring Night Breathed.”
Poem for Anna
Anna Kern in Pushkin's life for a moment became a fleeting muse, an inspiration that washed over him in an unexpected way. Impressed, he immediately takes up his pen and dedicates his poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” to her.
From the memoirs of Kern herself it follows that on the evening of July 1825, after dinner in Trigorskoye, everyone decided to visit Mikhailovskoye. The two crews set off. In one of them rode P. A. Osipova with her son Alexei Wulf, in the other A. N. Wulf, her cousin Anna Kern and Pushkin. The poet was, as ever, kind and courteous.
It was a farewell evening; the next day Kern was supposed to leave for Riga. In the morning, Pushkin came to say goodbye and brought her a copy of one of the chapters of Onegin. And among the uncut sheets, she found a poem dedicated to her, read it and then wanted to put her poetic gift in the box, when Pushkin frantically snatched it and did not want to give it back for a long time. Anna never understood this behavior of the poet.
Undoubtedly, this woman gave him moments of happiness, and perhaps brought him back to life.
Relationship
It is very important to note in this matter that Pushkin himself did not consider the feeling he experienced for Kern to be love. Maybe this is how he rewarded women for their tender caress and affection. In a letter to Anna Nikolaevna Wulf, he wrote that he writes a lot of poems about love, but he has no love for Anna, otherwise he would become very jealous of her for Alexei Wulf, who enjoyed her favor.
B. Tomashevsky will note that, of course, there was an intriguing outbreak of feelings between them, and it served as the impetus for writing a poetic masterpiece. Perhaps Pushkin himself, giving it into the hands of Kern, suddenly thought that it could cause a false interpretation, and therefore resisted his impulse. But it was already too late. Surely at these moments Anna Kern was beside herself with happiness. Pushkin's opening line, “I remember a wonderful moment,” remained engraved on her tombstone. This poem truly made her a living legend.
Connection
Anna Petrovna Kern and Pushkin broke up, but their further relationship is not known for certain. She left with her daughters for Riga and playfully allowed the poet to write letters to her. And he wrote them to her, they have survived to this day, however, on French. There were no hints of deep feelings in them. On the contrary, they are ironic and mocking, but very friendly. The poet no longer writes that she is a “genius of pure beauty” (the relationship has moved into another phase), but calls her “our Babylonian harlot Anna Petrovna.”
Paths of destinies
Anna Kern and Pushkin would see each other next two years later, in 1827, when she left her husband and moved to St. Petersburg, which would cause gossip in high society.
After moving to St. Petersburg, Kern, along with her sister and father, will live in the very house where she first met Pushkin in 1819.
She will spend this day entirely in the company of Pushkin and his father. Anna could not find words of admiration and joy from meeting him. It was most likely not love, but great human affection and passion. In a letter to Sobolevsky, Pushkin will openly write that he recently slept with Kern.
In December 1828, Pushkin met his precious Natalie Goncharova, lived with her for 6 years in marriage, and she bore him four children. In 1837, Pushkin would be killed in a duel.
Liberty
Anna Kern would finally be freed from her marriage when her husband died in 1841. She will fall in love with cadet Alexander Markov-Vinogradsky, who will also be her second cousin. She will be quiet with him family life, although he is 20 years younger than her.
Anna will show Pushkin's letters and poem as a relic to Ivan Turgenev, but her poverty-stricken situation will force her to sell them for five rubles apiece.
One by one her daughters will die. She would outlive Pushkin by 42 years and preserve in her memoirs the living image of the poet, who, as she believed, never truly loved anyone.
In fact, it is still unclear who Anna Kern was in Pushkin’s life. The history of the relationship between these two people, between whom a spark flew, gave the world one of the most beautiful, most elegant and heartfelt poems dedicated to beautiful woman, which only existed in Russian poetry.
Bottom line
After the death of Pushkin’s mother and the death of the poet himself, Kern did not interrupt her close relationship with his family. The poet’s father, Sergei Lvovich Pushkin, who felt acute loneliness after the death of his wife, wrote reverent heartfelt letters to Anna Petrovna and even wanted to live with her “the last sad years.”
She died in Moscow six months after the death of her husband - in 1879. She lived with him for a good 40 years and never emphasized his inadequacy.
Anna was buried in the village of Prutnya near the city of Torzhok, Tver province. Their son Alexander committed suicide after the death of his parents.
Her brother also dedicated a poem to her, which she read to Pushkin from memory when they met in 1827. It began with the words: “How can you not go crazy.”
This concludes our consideration of the topic “Pushkin and Kern: a love story.” As it has already become clear, Kern captivated all the men of the Pushkin family, they somehow incredibly succumbed to her charm.
Fans of Pushkin's work, of course, know who Anna Kern is. The biography of this woman is closely connected with the fate of the great Russian poet. Anna Kern is a Russian noblewoman who lived in the 19th century and went down in history precisely thanks to her role in the life of A.S. Pushkin. However, her fate is notable not only for this. Very interesting life path Anna Kern passed. Her biography can intrigue even people far from poetry. After reading this article, you will become familiar with the main events in her life.
Origin of Anna Kern
This woman was born in 1800, a year later than A.S. Pushkin. She went through a long and eventful life - Anna Kern died in 1879. The biography of our heroine begins with meeting her parents. Her father was Pyotr Markovich Poltoratsky. His grandfather on his side is Mark Fedorovich Poltoratsky (his portrait is presented below) - a Russian singer and state councilor (years of life - 1729-1795).
Anna Kern lived with her parents in the estate of the Oryol governor I.P. Wulf. This man was her grandfather maternal line. Later the family moved to the Poltava province, to the district town of Lubny. Anna Kern spent her childhood here, as well as in Bernovo, on the estate of I. P. Wulf.
The father and mother of our heroine were from the circle of official nobility. These were quite wealthy people. Anna's father is a court councilor and a Poltava landowner. His father was M. F. Poltoratsky, the head of the singing choir located at the court, known even in the time of Elizabeth. M. F. Poltoratsky was married to Shishkova Agathoklea Alexandrovna, a powerful and rich woman. The mother of our heroine was Ekaterina Ivanovna, nee Wulf. She was distinguished by kindness, but was weak-willed and sickly. The head of the family was, of course, her husband.
Unhappy marriage, birth of daughters
From a young age, Anna Kern fell in love with reading. Her biography continues with the fact that after some time she began to “go out into the world.” The girl looked closely at the “brilliant” officers. However, her father himself introduced her to the groom. He brought Ermolai Fedorovich Kern, a general and officer, to the house (his portrait is presented below). When Anna met him, she was 17 years old, and her future husband was 52. Anna did not like this man. She wrote in her diary that she couldn’t even respect him, that she practically hated him.
This was expressed later in her attitude towards the children born from her marriage with the general - Anna was rather cool towards them. From Ermolai Fedorovich she had two daughters, Ekaterina and Anna (born in 1818 and 1821, respectively). They were sent to be raised at the Smolny Institute.
Forced relocations
Our heroine had to get used to the role of the wife of an army soldier from the time of Arakcheev. Her husband had to frequently change garrisons, moving on duty to Elizavetgrad, Pskov, Dorpat, or Riga...
In Kyiv, Anna Petrovna Kern became friends with the Raevsky family, whose brief biography interests us. She spoke of this family with admiration. Her close friends in Dorpat were the Moyers. The head of this family was a professor of surgery and worked at the local university. His wife was the first love of the poet Zhukovsky, his muse. Anna Petrovna also remembered a trip to St. Petersburg, which took place at the beginning of 1819. In the house of E. M. Olenina, her aunt, the girl heard Krylov, and also saw A. S. Pushkin for the first time. This is how Anna Petrovna Kern quietly entered the poet’s life. Pushkin's biography is marked with a bright page associated with this woman. However, their close acquaintance took place a little later.
Anna Kern's hobbies
In the same year, 1819, a certain man briefly appeared in the life of our heroine, whom Anna called “rosehip” in her diary. Then she began an affair with A.G. Rodzianko, a local landowner. It was he who introduced Anna Kern to the works of Alexander Sergeevich, whom she had already briefly encountered before. The great poet did not make an impression on Anna Petrovna at that time; he even seemed somewhat rude to her. However, thanks to A.G. Rodzianko, Pushkin and Anna Petrovna Kern became close. short biography This woman is noted for the fact that she was completely delighted with the poetry of Alexander Sergeevich.
Connection with Pushkin
By June 1825, Anna had already left her husband. She was traveling to Riga and on the way decided to look into the Trigorskoye estate, which belonged to P. A. Osipova, her aunt. Here our heroine again met Alexander Sergeevich (the Mikhailovskoye estate, where he was then located, was located nearby). The poet flared up with passion, which was reflected in Pushkin’s famous poem dedicated to his beloved A. Kern (“I remember a wonderful moment...”). However, at this moment Anna Petrovna was flirting with Alexei Vulf, Osipova’s son and a friend of the poet. In Riga, a passionate romance took place between her and Alexei.
Alexander Sergeevich continued to suffer. Only 2 years later his beloved condescended to become her admirer. However, Anna Petrovna Kern and Pushkin did not stay together for long. The poet's biography is marked by the fact that, having achieved his goal, he discovered that his feelings had disappeared from that moment. Soon the connection between Alexander Sergeevich and Anna Petrovna ceased. But our heroine is still known as Pushkin’s mistress. Anna Kern, her biography and relationship with the great poet are of interest to many to this day.
A. Kern after the break with Pushkin
After this break, Anna was close to A.V. Nikitenko, A.D. Illichevsky, D.V. Venevitinov, the family of Baron Delvig, I.S. Turgenev, F.I. Tyutchev, as well as M.I. Glinka . The latter wrote music for Pushkin’s poem “I remember a wonderful moment...”. However, he dedicated it not to Anna Kern, but to her daughter Catherine. Our heroine stopped maintaining contact with this circle after Pushkin’s marriage. Nevertheless, after Delvig’s death, she maintained warm relations with the family of Alexander Sergeevich. Anna Kern still went to visit Sergei Lvovich and Nadezhda Osipovna Pushkin. She also kept in touch with Pushkina (Pavlishcheva) Olga Sergeevna, who was a “confidante” in her affairs of the heart. By the way, it is in her honor that Anna will name her youngest daughter Olga.
True love A. Kern
Our heroine continued to fall in love, despite the fact that she acquired the status of an outcast in secular society. At the age of 36, she met her true love. Her chosen one turned out to be Sasha Markov-Vinogradsky (his portrait is presented above), Anna Petrovna’s second cousin, at that time a 16-year-old cadet. Anna completely stopped appearing in secular society, to which she preferred a quiet family life. Three years later, her son Alexander was born, who was an illegitimate child, since Anna Petrovna was officially still married to the general.
Death of a spouse, new marriage
Her husband died early in 1841. As the general's widow, Anna was entitled to a significant pension. However, on July 25, 1842, she married her lover. Now Anna’s surname became Markova-Vinogradskaya. Because of this, our heroine could no longer claim a pension, so the spouses had to live quite modestly. Long years they spent in a village near Sosnovitsy, located in the Chernigov province. This was the only way it was possible. This village is the only family estate of Anna Petrovna’s new husband.
Difficulties the family had to face
Alexander Vasilyevich in 1855 received a position in St. Petersburg. He began to work in the family of Prince S.A. Dolgorukov, and after a while - the head of the department of appanages. Life was not easy for the couple. Anna had to earn extra money by translating. However, despite all the difficulties, their union was unbreakable. Alexander Vasilyevich retired in November 1865 with the modest rank of collegiate assessor. Naturally, one could not count on a large pension. The Markov-Vinogradskys decided to leave St. Petersburg. They lived wherever they had to, the spouses were haunted by poverty. Anna Petrovna, out of need, sold Pushkin’s letters, for which she was given 5 rubles.
Death of Alexander and Anna
A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky died in Pryamukhin on January 28, 1879 in terrible agony. The cause of death was stomach cancer. Four months later, on May 27, Anna also died. This happened in Moscow, in furnished rooms located on the corner of Tverskaya and Gruzinskaya (Anna Petrovna was transported to Moscow by her son). They say that the funeral procession moved along Tverskoy Boulevard when the monument to A.S. Pushkin was erected on it. So great poet V last time met the “genius of pure beauty.”
Our heroine was buried in a graveyard near an old stone church located in the village of Prutnya (6 km from Torzhok). The road was washed away by rains, which did not allow the coffin to be delivered “to my husband” to the cemetery. 100 years later in Riga, near former church, erected a modest monument to this woman. Of course, Anna Kern was a bright and interesting person. Her short biography presented in the article, we hope, convinced you of this.
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
K*** A.S. Pushkin
Anna Petrovna Kern (née Poltoratskaya, by her second husband Markova-Vinogradskaya; February 11 (22), 1800, Orel - May 16 (27), 1879, Torzhok) - Russian noblewoman, best known in history for the role she played in the life of Pushkin . Author of memoirs.
“I was born in Orel, in the house of my grandfather Ivan Petrovich Wulf, who was the governor there..., February 11, 1800.” (Kern A.P. “Memories”). On the facade of the Rus Hotel building in May 1990. a memorial plaque was installed indicating that the house in which A.P. was born stood on this site. Kern.
Anna Petrovna received her education at home. From 8 to 12 years old, she was taught by a governess called from St. Petersburg. She knew a little French and foreign literature (mainly based on novels). Together with her parents she lived in the estate of her maternal grandfather Ivan Petrovich Wulf, the Oryol governor, whose descendant Dmitry Alekseevich Wulf is her great-nephew.
Portrait of Ivan Petrovich Wulf. 1811 Kiprensky Orest Adamovich.
Later, her parents and Anna moved to the district town of Lubny, Poltava province, where her father, Pyotr Markovich Poltoratsky, was the district leader of the nobility. Anna spent her entire childhood in this city and in Bernovo, an estate that also belonged to I.P. Wulf.
Bernovo. Wulf Manor.
Her parents belonged to the circle of wealthy official nobility. His father is a Poltava landowner and court councilor, the son of the head of the court singing choir, M.F. Poltoratsky, known back in Elizabethan times, married to the rich and powerful Agathoclea Alexandrovna Shishkova. Mother - Ekaterina Ivanovna, nee Wulf, a kind woman, but sickly and weak-willed, was under the command of her husband. Anna herself read a lot.
A. Arefiev-Bogaev. Portrait of Anna Petrovna Kern (1840)
The young beauty began to “go out into the world”, looking at the “brilliant” officers, but the father himself brought the groom to the house - not only an officer, but also General Ermolai Fedorovich Kern from the noble family of Kern, who was of English origin. At this time, Anna was 17 years old, Yermolay Fedorovich was 52. The girl had to come to terms and the wedding took place on January 8, 1817.
Dow, George - Portrait of Ermolai Fedorovich Kern.
In her diary she wrote: “It is impossible to love him - I am not even given the consolation of respecting him; I’ll tell you straight - I almost hate him.” Later, this was expressed in her attitude towards the children from her marriage with the general - Anna was quite cool towards them (her daughters Ekaterina and Alexandra, born in 1818 and 1821, respectively, were brought up at the Smolny Institute). Alexandra died around 1835. In 1826, Anna Petrovna gave birth to another daughter, Olga, who died in 1833. By the way, the son of Ekaterina Ermolaevna Kern, Yuli Shokalsky, is a Soviet oceanographer, geographer and cartographer, honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (since 1939; corresponding member since 1923).
Unknown artist.
Portrait of Anna Kern's daughter, Ekaterina Ermolaevna (1818-1904)
Anna Petrovna had to lead the life of the wife of an army servant of the Arakcheevsky times with the change of garrisons “according to assignment”: Elizavetgrad, Dorpat, Pskov, Old Bykhov, Riga... In Kyiv she becomes close to the Raevsky family and speaks about them with a feeling of admiration. In Dorpat best friends become the Moyers - a professor of surgery at a local university and his wife - “Zhukovsky’s first love and his muse.”
In winter 1819 in St. Petersburg, in the house of her aunt E.M. Olenina, she enthusiastically listened to I.A. Krylov, and here fate for the first time accidentally confronted her with Pushkin, whom she simply did not notice. “At one of the evenings at the Olenins’, I met Pushkin and did not notice him: my attention was absorbed in the charades that were being played out then and in which Krylov, Pleshcheev and others participated,” she writes in her memoirs, and then, as if making excuses: “In a daze ... such charm (Krylov) was difficult to see anyone other than the culprit of poetic pleasure, and that’s why I didn’t notice Pushkin" ... Although Pushkin tried his best to attract her attention with "flattering exclamations such as, for example: Is it possible to be so pretty!" and conversations in which she “found something... insolent, did not answer anything and left.”
Anechka Kern and Alexander Pushkin. Author?
He had not yet become the Pushkin whom all of Russia admired, and perhaps that is why the ugly, curly-haired young man did not make any impression on her... “When I was leaving and my brother got into the carriage with me, Pushkin stood on the porch and followed me with his eyes,” - writes Anna Kern in her memoirs (the brother with whom she got into the carriage is Alexey Vulf, Anna Kern’s cousin). Later cousin A.N. Wulf wrote to her: “You made a strong impression on Pushkin during your meeting at the Olenins; he says everywhere: “She was dazzling.” She was nineteen years old, Pushkin twenty. However, in 1819 a certain man flashed into her life - from the diary you can find out that she called him “rosehip.”
P.F. Sokolov. Portrait of A.S. Pushkin. 1836
Six years passed, and the poems and verses of the poet, exiled by the emperor to the village of Mikhailovskoye, thundered throughout Russia. “For 6 years I did not see Pushkin, but from many I heard about him as a glorious poet, and I read greedily: The Prisoner of the Caucasus, the Bakhchisarai Fountain, The Robbers and the 1st chapter of Onegin...” And she is already delighted with him... Here she is, Magic power art. An ugly, curly-haired young man with African features turned into a desired idol. As she writes: “Admired by Pushkin, I passionately wanted to see him...”
N. Rusheva Pushkin and Anna Kern.
Pushkin learned about the admiring fan, whom he himself admired, in 1824 from her relatives, the Wulfs, who lived in Trigorskoye, located next to Mikhailovsk. True, the nature of these admirations was different, which determined the drama of the further history of their relationship... Their acquaintance continued... though at first in absentia. And again, Mr. Case played his role here. Pushkin’s friend Arkady Rodzianko lived next to the Kern estate; Pushkin writes a letter to Rodzianko in which he inquires about the fate of Kern. Rodzianko, naturally, shows the letter to Anna Petrovna, and the two of them write a response to Pushkin (Anna Petrovna inserts her own remarks into the letter, and very sweetly and relaxedly, but at the same time one gets the feeling that Rodzianko and Kern have more than just friendly relations).
S. Gulyaev. I remember a wonderful moment.
In June 1825, having already left her husband, on the way to Riga, she looked into Trigorskoye, the estate of her aunt, Praskovya Aleksandrovna Osipova, where she again met Pushkin (the Mikhailovskoye estate is located nearby). The poet's genius had a huge influence on women. However, women at any time liked men who were talented, famous, strong in spirit and body.
Pushkin in Mikhailovsky. Konchalovsky Petr Petrovich.
But men also often like women who like them... For the entire month that Kern spent with her aunt, Pushkin often, almost daily, appeared in Trigorskoye, listened to her sing, read his poems to her. The day before departure, Kern, together with her aunt and cousin, visited Pushkin in Mikhailovskoye, where they traveled from Trigorskoye in two carriages, the aunt and her son rode in one carriage, and the cousin, Kern and Pushkin chastely in the other. But in Mikhailovskoye, the two of them wandered around the neglected garden for a long time at night, but, as Kern states in his memoirs, “I didn’t remember the details of the conversation.”
Anna Kern Alley in the park of the Mikhailovskoye estate.
The next day, saying goodbye, Pushkin brought her a copy of the first chapter of Eugene Onegin, in the pages of which she found a sheet of paper folded in four with the verses “I remember a wonderful moment.” “When I was getting ready to hide the poetic gift in the box, he looked at me for a long time, then convulsively snatched it away and did not want to return it; I forcibly begged for them again; I don’t know what flashed through his head then,” she writes. Why Pushkin wanted to take the poems back is a mystery... There are many versions about this, but this only adds spice to the poet’s love-passion story...
This is how Pushkin saw Anna Kern
(drawing in the margin of the manuscript; presumably it depicts Anna Kern), 1829.
Pushkin's letters to Kern are preserved in French; they are at least no less parodic and playful than they are marked by a serious feeling, corresponding to the nature of the game that reigned in Mikhailovsky and Trigorsky. Anna Petrovna only two years later, already in St. Petersburg, entered into a fleeting relationship with the poet; Pushkin treated this event ironically and in a rather rude tone mentioned what happened in a letter to his friend S. A. Sobolevsky. In another letter, Pushkin calls Kern “our Babylonian harlot Anna Petrovna.”
In her later life, Kern was close to the family of Baron A. A. Delvig, to D. V. Venevitinov, S. A. Sobolevsky, A. D. Illichevsky, A. V. Nikitenko, M. I. Glinka (Mikhail Ivanovich wrote beautiful music for the poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment,” but dedicated it to Ekaterina Kern, the daughter of Anna Petrovna), F. I. Tyutchev, I. S. Turgenev.
However, after Pushkin’s marriage and Delvig’s death, ties with this social circle were severed, although Anna still had a good relationship with the Pushkin family - she still visited Nadezhda Osipovna and Sergei Lvovich Pushkin, “the “Lion” whose head I turned,” and of course, with Olga Sergeevna Pushkina (Pavlishcheva), “confidante in matters of the heart,” (in her honor Anna will name his youngest daughter Olga).
Anna Petrovna Kern. Reproduction of a portrait by Ivan Zherin.
After the death of Nadezhda Osipovna and the death of Pushkin, Kern’s relationship with the poet’s family did not break. Sergei Lvovich Pushkin, invariably amorous, and after the death of his wife acutely felt loneliness, wrote heartfelt, almost love letters to Anna Petrovna: “... I am not yet in love with you, but it is with you that I would like to live the last sad ones that remain for me.” years."
Anna continued to love and fall in love, although in “secular society” she acquired the status of an outcast. Already at 36 years old, she fell in love again - and it turned out to be true love. The chosen one was a sixteen-year-old cadet of the First Petersburg cadet corps, her second cousin Sasha Markov-Vinogradsky. She completely stopped appearing in society and began to lead a quiet family life. Three years later she gave birth to a son, whom she named Alexander. All this happened outside of marriage.
Silhouette of Anna Kern (presumably), here she is 25 years old.
A little later (at the beginning of 1841), old Kern dies. Anna, as the general's widow, was entitled to a decent pension, but on July 25, 1842, she officially married Alexander and now her last name is Markova-Vinogradskaya. From this moment on, she can no longer claim a pension, and they have to live very modestly.
Here is what Turgenev wrote: “I spent the evening with a certain Madame Vinogradskaya, with whom Pushkin was once in love. He wrote many poems in honor of her, recognized as some of the best in our literature. In her youth, she must have been very pretty, and now, despite all her good nature (she is not smart), she has retained the habits of a woman accustomed to being liked. She keeps the letters that Pushkin wrote to her like a shrine. She showed me a half-faded pastel depicting her at 28 years old - white, blond, with a meek face, with naive grace, with amazing innocence in her eyes and smile... she looks a little like a Russian maid a la Parasha. If I were Pushkin, I wouldn’t write poetry to her..."
At this time, Anna was suspected of tuberculosis and in order to cure her and somehow make ends meet, they had to live for many years in the village of Sosnitsa, Chernigov province - the home of Anna Petrovna’s grandfather. In 1855, Alexander Vasilyevich managed to get a position in St. Petersburg, first in the family of Prince S.A. Dolgorukov, and then as a head of the department of appanages. It was hard, Anna Petrovna earned money by translating, but their union remained unbreakable until her death.
In November 1865, Alexander Vasilyevich retired with the rank of collegiate assessor and a small pension, and the Markov-Vinogradskys left St. Petersburg. They lived here and there, and were haunted by terrible poverty. Out of necessity, Anna Petrovna sold her treasures - Pushkin's letters, for five rubles apiece.
On January twenty-eighth, 1879, A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky died in Pryamukhin (“from stomach cancer in terrible pain”), and four months later (May 27) Anna Petrovna herself died, in “furnished rooms”, on the corner of Gruzinskaya and Tverskoy (her son moved her to Moscow). They say that when the funeral procession with the coffin passed along Tverskoy Boulevard, the famous monument to the famous poet was just being erected on it. This is how Genius met his “genius of pure beauty” for the last time.
A memorial stone with Pushkin’s line: “I remember a wonderful moment...” near the Church of Peter and Paul in Riga (now the Ave Sol concert hall).
Before her death, she ordered to be buried next to her husband, but her will was not carried out due to the very slushy weather of the spring of 1879, which washed away the road, which became soggy from moisture to such an extent that it became completely impassable. Anna Petrovna was not taken to her husband’s grave and was buried halfway on the old rural cemetery, near the old stone church in the village of Prutnya, 6 kilometers from Torzhok. The fate of her fourth child, her son, Alexander, was also tragic; he committed suicide as an adult at the age of forty, shortly after the death of his parents, apparently due to inability to adapt to life.
And 100 years later in Riga, near the former church, a modest monument to Anna Petrovna was erected with an inscription in Latvian.
They bring and bring
Flowers here from Pushkin...
Anna Petrovna Kern (11 (22) February 1800, Orel - 16 (27) May 1879, Torzhok; née Poltoratskaya, by her second husband - Markova-Vinogradskaya) - Russian noblewoman, best known in history for the role she played in Pushkin's life. Author of memoirs.
Father - Poltoratsky, Pyotr Markovich. Together with her parents she lived in the estate of her maternal grandfather I. P. Wulf, the Oryol governor, whose descendant D. A. Wulf is her great-nephew.
Later, the parents and Anna moved to the district town of Lubny, Poltava province. Anna spent her entire childhood in this city and in Bernovo, an estate that also belonged to I.P. Wulf.
Her parents belonged to the circle of wealthy official nobility. The father is a Poltava landowner and court councilor, the son of the head of the court singing choir, M.F. Poltoratsky, known back in Elizabethan times, married to the rich and powerful Agathoclea Alexandrovna Shishkova. Mother - Ekaterina Ivanovna, nee Wulf, a kind woman, but sickly and weak-willed, was under the command of her husband. Anna herself read a lot.
The young beauty began to “go out into the world”, looking at the “brilliant” officers, but the father himself brought the groom to the house - not only the officer, but also General E.F. Kern. At this time, Anna was 17 years old, Yermolay Fedorovich was 52. The girl had to come to terms and on January 8, 1817, the wedding took place. In her diary she wrote: “It is impossible to love him - I am not even given the consolation of respecting him; I will say frankly - I almost hate him.” Later, this was expressed in her attitude towards the children from her marriage with the general - Anna was quite cool towards them (her daughters Ekaterina and Anna, born in 1818 and 1821, respectively, were raised at the Smolny Institute). Anna Petrovna had to lead the life of the wife of an army servant from Arakcheev’s times with a change of garrisons “according to assignment”: Elizavetgrad, Dorpat, Pskov, Old Bykhov, Riga...
In Kyiv, she becomes close to the Raevsky family and speaks about them with a feeling of admiration. In Dorpat, her best friends become the Moyers - a professor of surgery at the local university and his wife - “Zhukovsky’s first love and his muse.” Anna Petrovna also remembered her trip to St. Petersburg at the beginning of 1819, where in the house of her aunt, E.M. Olenina, she heard I.A. Krylov and where she first met Pushkin.
However, in 1819, a certain man flashed into her life - from the diary you can find out that she called him “rosehip.” Then she began an affair with the local landowner Arkady Gavrilovich Rodzianko, who introduced Anna to the works of Pushkin, whom Anna had encountered briefly earlier. He didn’t make an “impression” on her (then!), he even seemed rude. Now she was completely delighted with his poetry. biography of a. Kern Pushkin
In June 1825, having already left her husband, on the way to Riga, she looked into Trigorskoye, the estate of her aunt, Praskovya Aleksandrovna Osipova, where she again met Pushkin (the Mikhailovskoye estate is located nearby). At this time, Pushkin wrote Kern’s famous madrigal poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment...”. Anna at that moment was flirting with the poet’s friend (and Osipova’s son, her cousin) Alexei Wulf, and in Riga a passionate romance happened between them (Wulf also courted her sister Lisa Poltoratskaya).
Pushkin's letters to Kern are preserved in French; they are at least no less parodic and playful than they are marked by a serious feeling, corresponding to the nature of the game that reigned in Mikhailovsky and Trigorsky. Anna Petrovna only two years later, already in St. Petersburg, entered into a fleeting relationship with the poet; Pushkin treated this event ironically and in a rather rude tone mentioned what happened in a letter to his friend S. A. Sobolevsky. In another letter, Pushkin calls Kern “our Babylonian harlot Anna Petrovna.”
In her later life, Kern was close to the family of Baron A.A. Delviga, to D.V. Venevitinov, S.A. Sobolevsky, A.D. Illichevsky, A.V. Nikitenko, M.I. Glinka (Mikhail Ivanovich wrote beautiful music for the poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment”), but dedicated it to Ekaterina Kern, the daughter of Anna Petrovna), F.I. Tyutchev, I.S. Turgenev.
However, after Pushkin’s marriage and Delvig’s death, the connection with this social circle was severed, although Anna remained on good terms with the Pushkin family - she still visited Nadezhda Osipovna and Sergei Lvovich Pushkin, “the “Lion” whose head I turned,” and of course same, with Olga Sergeevna Pushkina (Pavlishcheva), “confidante in matters of the heart,” (in her honor Anna will name her youngest daughter Olga).
Anna continued to love and fall in love, although in “secular society” she acquired the status of an outcast. Already at the age of 36, she fell in love again - and it turned out to be true love. The chosen one was a sixteen-year-old cadet of the First St. Petersburg Cadet Corps, her second cousin Sasha Markov-Vinogradsky. She completely stopped appearing in society and began to lead a quiet family life. Three years later she gave birth to a son, whom she named Alexander. All this happened outside of marriage. A little later (at the beginning of 1841), old Kern dies. Anna, as the general's widow, was entitled to a decent pension, but on July 25, 1842, she officially married Alexander and now her last name is Markova-Vinogradskaya. From this moment on, she can no longer claim a pension, and they have to live very modestly. In order to somehow make ends meet, they have to live for many years in a village near Sosnovitsy, Chernigov province - the only family estate of their husband. In 1855, Alexander Vasilyevich managed to get a place in St. Petersburg, first in the family of Prince S.A. Dolgorukov, and then the head of the department of appanages. It was hard, Anna Petrovna earned money by translating, but their union remained unbreakable until her death. In November 1865, Alexander Vasilyevich retired with the rank of collegiate assessor and a small pension, and the Markov-Vinogradskys left St. Petersburg. They lived here and there, and were haunted by terrible poverty. Out of necessity, Anna Petrovna sold her treasures - Pushkin's letters, for five rubles apiece. On January twenty-eighth, 1879, A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky died in Pryamukhin (“from stomach cancer in terrible pain”), and four months later (May 27) Anna Petrovna herself died, in “furnished rooms”, on the corner of Gruzinskaya and Tverskoy (her son moved her to Moscow). They say that when the funeral procession with the coffin passed along Tverskoy Boulevard, the famous monument to the famous poet was just being erected on it. This is how Genius met his “genius of pure beauty” for the last time.
She was buried in a graveyard near an old stone church in the village of Prutnya, 6 kilometers from Torzhok - the rains washed out the road and did not allow the coffin to be delivered to the cemetery, “to her husband.” And 100 years later in Riga, near the former church, a modest monument to Anna Petrovna was erected with an inscription in a language unfamiliar to her.
...1819. Saint Petersburg. The living room in the Olenins’ house, where the elite of Russian writers gathered - from Ivan Andreevich Krylov to the very young but already famous Sasha Pushkin. Traditional readings - Krylov reads his fable "Donkey". The Olenins' traditional "charades". The role of Cleopatra fell to the niece of the mistress of the house - a young general's wife. Pushkin glances absentmindedly at the “actress.” Above a basket of flowers, itself, like a flower - tender woman's face amazing beauty...
A.P. Kern: “After that, we sat down to dinner. At the Olenins’, we dined on small tables, without ceremony and, of course, without ranks. And what ranks could there be where the enlightened owner valued and treasured only the sciences and arts? At dinner, Pushkin sat down with my brother behind me and tried to attract my attention with flattering exclamations, such as: “Est-il permis d”etre aussi jolie!” (Is it possible to be so pretty! (French)). Then a humorous conversation ensued between them about who is a sinner and who is not, who will be in hell and who will go to heaven. Pushkin said to his brother: “In any case, there will be a lot of pretty people in hell, you can play charades there. Ask m-me Kern if she would like to go to hell?” I answered very seriously and somewhat dryly that I didn’t want to go to hell. “Well, how are you now, Pushkin?” - asked the brother. “Je me ravise (I changed my mind (French)”), the poet replied, “I don’t want to go to hell, although there will be pretty women there...”
A. Fedoseenko. Anna Petrovna Kern
...Anna Petrovna Kern was born on February 11, 1800 in Orel, into a wealthy noble family of court councilor P.M. Poltoratsky.
Both her father and grandmother - Agathoklea Alexandrovna, from a very rich family of the Shishkovs - were powerful, despotic people, real tyrants. The sickly and quiet mother - Ekaterina Ivanovna Wulf - was completely under the thumb of her husband and mother-in-law. The impressionable girl retained throughout her life memories of the rather primitive environment in which she grew up - and this same environment had the most direct influence on her character and destiny.
Anna received a very good education at home for those times, she read a lot, which, combined with her natural liveliness of mind and curiosity, gave her a sensitive, romantic and quite, as they would say now, intellectual nature, at the same time sincere and in terms of mental needs, very different from many young ladies of their circle...
...But, barely having begun, her life turned out to be broken, “nailed in bloom.” On January 8, 1817, a lovely seventeen-year-old girl, at the insistence of her relatives, married General Ermolai Kern, who was 35 years older than her. The tyrant father was flattered that his daughter would be a general - and Anna obeys with despair. A refined girl dreaming of ideal romantic love was in no way suited to a rude martinet, poorly educated, who had become a general from the lower ranks. Her peers envied her - and the beautiful general's wife shed tears, looking at her husband with disgust - clean water Arakcheevsky military - the provincial garrison environment and society were unbearable for her.
Later she would write: “I have always been indignant against such marriages, that is, marriages of convenience. It seemed to me that when entering into a marriage for benefits, a criminal sale of a person is committed, as a thing, human dignity is trampled upon, and there is deep depravity, entailing misfortune...”
...In 1817, during a celebration on the occasion of big maneuvers, Emperor Alexander drew attention to Anna - “... I was not in love... I was in awe, I worshiped him!.. I would not exchange this feeling for any other, because it was completely spiritual and aesthetic. There was not a second thought in it about obtaining mercy through the favorable attention of the king - nothing, nothing like that...
All love is pure, unselfish, content with itself... If someone had told me: “This man, before whom you pray and revere, loved you like a mere mortal,” I would have bitterly rejected such a thought and would only have wanted to look at him, to be surprised by him, to worship him as a higher, adored being!.." For Alexander - a light flirtation with a pretty, very similar to the famous beauty, the Prussian Queen Louise, general. For Anna - the beginning of realizing her attractiveness and charm, the awakening of female ambitions and - an opportunity to escape from the gray and terrible melancholy of garrison life with a husband unloved to the point of suffering. The children were not happy either - in 1818, a daughter, Katya, was born, then two more girls. She wrote in her diary, which she addressed to her relative and friend Feodosia Poltoratskaya. with brutal honesty: “You know that this is not frivolity or whim; I told you before that I don’t want to have children, the thought of not loving them was terrible for me and is even more terrible now. You also know that at first I really wanted to have a child, and therefore I have some tenderness for Katenka, although I sometimes reproach myself that she is not quite great. 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 by any effort. . This is a confession! Forgive me, my angel!. Fate did not give these unwanted children - except Katya - a long life.
...She was 20 years old when she first fell seriously in love - the name of her chosen one is unknown, she calls him in the Diary Immortel or Rosehip - and Kern seems even more disgusting to her.
Describing his behavior, she begs her relative:
“After this, who will dare to assert that happiness in marriage is possible even without deep attachment to one’s chosen one? My suffering is terrible.” “I’m so unhappy, I can’t stand it anymore. The Lord, apparently, did not bless our
union and, of course, will not wish for my death, but with a life like mine, I will certainly die." "Now I beg you, tell daddy 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."A riot was inevitably brewing. As Anna Petrovna herself believed, she had a choice only between death and freedom. When she chose the latter and left her husband, her position in society turned out to be false. Since 1827, she actually lived in St. Petersburg with her sister in the position of a kind of “straw widow.”
...And shortly before that, she came to visit Trigorskoye, to visit her aunt Praskovya Aleksandrovna Osipova, with whom she was very friendly, and whose daughter - also Anna - was her constant and sincere friend. And not long before that, she was visiting her neighbor friend, the landowner Rodzianko, and together with him she wrote a letter to Pushkin, to which he promptly responded: “Explain to me, dear, what A.P. Kern is, who wrote a lot of tenderness about me to your cousin? They say she’s a lovely thing - but the glorious Lubnys are just around the corner. ". And then he writes jokingly:
"You're right: what could be more important
Is there a beautiful woman in the world?
Smile, the look of her eyes
More precious than gold and honor,
More precious than discordant glory...
Let's talk about her again.
I praise, my friend, her hunt,
Having rested, give birth to children,
Like your mother;
And happy is whoever shares with her
This pleasant care..."
The relationship between Anna and Rodzianko was easy and frivolous - she was resting...
...And finally - Trigorskoe. Arriving at the house of his friends, Pushkin meets Anna Kern there - and for the entire month that Kern spent with her aunt, Pushkin often, almost daily, appeared there, listened to her sing, and read his poems to her. The day before departure, Kern, together with her aunt and cousin, visited Pushkin in Mikhailovskoye, where they traveled from Trigorskoye in two carriages, the aunt and her son rode in one carriage, and the cousin, Kern and Pushkin chastely in the other. But in Mikhailovskoye, the two of them wandered around the neglected garden for a long time at night, but, as Kern states in his memoirs, “I didn’t remember the details of the conversation.”
There is still debate about whether this poem is really dedicated to Anna - the nature of their relationship with the poet and his subsequent very impartial reviews about her do not correspond to the highly romantic tone of admiration for the Ideal, Genius Pure Beauty- but in any case, this masterpiece in the subsequent reader’s perception is associated ONLY with her.
And the poet’s outburst when he snatched the gift was most likely associated with an outburst of jealousy - his lucky rival turned out to be his friend and Anna’s cousin, Alexei Wulf, and much of his behavior was caused by this rivalry. And Anna had no special illusions about him: “Lively perceiving goodness, Pushkin, however, it seems to me, was not carried away by it in women; he was much more fascinated by their wit, brilliance and external beauty. The flirtatious desire to please him more than once attracted the poet’s attention more than the true and deep feeling that he inspired... The reason that Pushkin was more fascinated by the brilliance than by the dignity and simplicity of the character of women was, of course, his low opinion of them, which was completely in the spirit of that time."
“You claim that I don’t know your character. Why should I care about him? I really need him - should pretty women have character? The main thing is eyes, teeth, arms and legs... How is your husband doing? I hope , he had a serious attack of gout the day after your arrival? If you knew what disgust... I feel for this man... I beg you, divine, write to me, love me "... "... I love you more than you think... You will come? - won't you? - and until then, do not decide anything regarding your husband. Finally, rest assured that I am not one of those who will never advise drastic measures - sometimes this is inevitable, but first you need to think carefully and not create a scandal unnecessarily. It’s night, and your image appears before me, so sad and voluptuous: it seems to me that I see... your half-open lips... to me. It seems that I am at your feet, squeezing them, feeling your knees - I would give my whole life for a moment of reality.”
He is like a timid, naive young man, realizing that he did something wrong, trying in vain to return the moments of lost opportunities. Poetry and real life, alas, we didn’t cross paths...
At that moment, 
in July in Mikhailovskoye (or Trigorskoye) their thoughts did not coincide, he did not guess the moods of an earthly real woman who had momentarily escaped from the bosom of her family to freedom, but Alexey Vulf caught these moods...
...Pushkin understood this - later. The vanity of the poet, the man, was wounded. 
In a letter to her aunt he writes: "But still the thought that I mean nothing to her<(курсив мой>that, having occupied her imagination for a minute, I only gave food to her cheerful curiosity - the thought that the memory of me would not make her absent-minded among her triumphs and would not darken her face more in sad moments - that her beautiful eyes would stop at what - some Riga veil with the same piercing and voluptuous expression - oh, this thought is unbearable for me... Tell her that I will die from this... no, better not say it, otherwise this delightful creature will laugh at me. But tell her that if there is no hidden tenderness for me in her heart, if there is no mysterious and melancholy attraction in it, then I despise her - do you hear - I despise her, not paying attention to the surprise that such an unprecedented feeling will cause in her." .
The poet is offended, angry, sarcastic - the beauty is unapproachable - or rather, she is accessible to everyone except him. Wulf follows her to Riga from Trigorskoe - and there their whirlwind romance unfolds. By modern standards, such a relationship is incest, but then it was in the order of things to marry cousins, and, accordingly, to have them as mistresses. However, Anna never and never uttered the word “I love” in relation to Pushkin - although she undoubtedly enjoyed flirting with the famous poet.
In 1827, she finally finally separated from her husband, broke free from the prison of her hateful marriage and probably experienced an upsurge of feelings, an unquenched thirst for love, which made her irresistible.
Anna's appearance, apparently, is not conveyed by any of the known portraits of her, but she was a universally recognized beauty. And in St. Petersburg, “in freedom,” she blossoms incredibly. She captivates with her sensual charm, which is perfectly conveyed in the enthusiastic poem “Portrait” by the poet A. I. Podolinsky, written in her album in 1828::
"When, slender and bright-eyed,
She's standing in front of me,
I think: Guria of the Prophet
Brought from heaven to earth!
Dark Russian braid and curls,
The outfit is casual and simple,
And on the chest of a luxurious bead
They sway luxuriously at times.
Spring and summer combination
In the living fire of her eyes,
And the quiet sound of her speeches
Gives birth to bliss and desire
In my yearning chest."
On May 22, 1827, Pushkin, after being released from exile, returned to St. Petersburg, where, as A.P. Kern writes, they met every day in his parents’ house on the Fontanka embankment. Soon Anna Kern's father and sister left, and she began to rent a small apartment in the house where Pushkin's friend, the poet Baron Delvig, lived with his wife. On this occasion, Kern recalls that “once, introducing his wife to one family, Delvig joked: “This is my wife,” and then, pointing at me: “And this is the second one.”
She became very friendly with Pushkin’s relatives and the Delvig family, and, thanks to Pushkin and Delvig, she entered the circle of people who constitute the color of the nation, with whom her living, subtle soul always dreamed of communicating: Zhukovsky, Krylov, Vyazemsky, Glinka, Mitskevich, Pletnev, Venevitinov , Gnedich, Podolinsky, Illichevsky, Nikitenko.
Anna Petrovna played her role in introducing young Sofia Delvig, with whom she became very close friends, to gallant amusements. Pushkin’s mother Nadezhda Osipovna called these two ladies “inseparables.” Delvig's brother Andrei, who lived in the poet's house at that time, openly disliked Kern, believing that she "for an incomprehensible purpose wanted to quarrel between Delvig and his wife."
At that time, young student Alexander Nikitenko, a future censor and professor at St. Petersburg University, who rented an apartment in the same building as her, met Anna Petrovna Kern. He almost fell into the snare of an irresistible seductress. Kern amazed him at the first meeting. In May 1827, he gave a wonderful portrait of her in his Diary: 
...And at the same time, Pushkin finally has the opportunity to take “gallant revenge.” In February 1828, a year and a half after writing the lines “I remember a wonderful moment,” Pushkin boasted in a letter to his friend Sobolevsky, without hesitation in expressions and also using the vocabulary of janitors and cab drivers (sorry for the unseemly quote - but it is what it is): “You don’t write to me anything about the 2,100 rubles I owe you, but you write to me about m-me Kern, whom, with the help of God, I just the other day...” Pushkin apparently wrote such a frank and rude message about intimacy with a once passionately beloved woman because he experienced a strong complex due to the fact that he was unable to obtain this intimacy earlier, out of a feeling of rivalry with the same Wulf - and he certainly needed to convey to friends that this fact happened, even belatedly. In no other letter in relation to other women did Pushkin allow such brutal frankness.
Subsequently, Pushkin would write to Alexei Wulf with sarcasm: “What is the Babylonian harlot Anna Petrovna doing?” And Anna Petrovna enjoyed freedom. Her beauty became more and more attractive
This is how she writes about herself in her diary: “Imagine, I just glanced in the mirror, and it seemed somehow offensive to me that now I am so beautiful, so good-looking. I will not continue to describe to you my victories. I did not notice them and listened to the coolly ambiguous, unfinished evidence of surprise - admiration."
Pushkin about Kern: “Do you want to know what Mrs. K... is? - she is elegant; she understands everything; she is easily upset and just as easily consoled; she has timid manners and bold actions, - but at the same time she is miraculously attractive.”
The poet’s brother, Lev Sergeevich, is also captivated by the beauty and dedicates a madrigal to her:
"How can you not go crazy?
Listening to you, admiring you;
Venus is an ancient sweetheart,
Showing off with a wonderful belt,
Alcmene, mother of Hercules,
Of course, it can be in line with her,
But to pray and love
They are as diligent as you are
They need to hide you from you,
You took over their shop!"
...General Kern continued to bombard all sorts of authorities with letters, demanding assistance in returning his errant wife to the bosom of the family. The girls - three daughters - were with him before they entered Smolny... Her Excellency the general's wife, who ran away from her general husband, still used his name... and, apparently, the money on which she lived.
In 1831, Pushkin married. Delvig soon dies. Sofya Delvig gets married very quickly and unsuccessfully. All this radically changes Anna Kern’s usual life in St. Petersburg. “Her Excellency” was no longer invited, or not invited at all, to literary evenings, where talented people known to her first-hand gathered, she was deprived of communication with those talented people with whom, thanks to Pushkin and Delvig, her life brought her together... Before the beautiful general the specter of poverty was palpably rising. Her husband refused her financial allowance, apparently in this way trying to bring her home. One after another, her two youngest daughters and mother die. Deprived of any means of subsistence, robbed by her father and relatives, she tried to sue her mother’s estate, in which Pushkin unsuccessfully tried to help her, tried to earn extra money by translating - and in this she was also helped, albeit grumbling, by Alexander Sergeevich.
In 1836, Kern's family circumstances again took a dramatic turn. She was in complete despair, because by the time her daughter Ekaterina graduated from the Smolny Institute, General Kern showed up, intending to take her daughter with him. The matter was settled with difficulty. ...On February 1, 1837, in the Stable Church, where Pushkin’s funeral service was held, Anna Kern, together with everyone who came under the arches of the temple, “cryed and prayed” for his unfortunate soul. And at this time she was already overtaken by an all-consuming mutual love...
...“I remember the haven of love where my queen dreamed of me..., where the air was saturated with kisses, where every breath she took was a thought about me. I see her smiling from the depths of the sofa, where she was waiting for me...
I have never been so completely happy as in that apartment!!... She came out of that apartment and slowly walked past the windows of the building, where I, leaning against the window, devoured her with my gaze, catching in my imagination every movement of hers, so that later, when the vision will disappear, indulge yourself with an intoxicating dream!... And this gazebo in Peterhof, among the fragrant flowers and greenery in the mirrors, when her gaze, burning through me, ignited..."
For the sake of love, the young man lost everything at once: a predetermined future, material well-being, a career, the location of his family. This was the love that Anna Kern had been looking for for so long. In 1839, their son Alexander was born, to whom Anna Petrovna gave all her unspent maternal tenderness. In 1841, Anna Kern’s husband, General Ermolai Fedorovich Kern, died at the age of seventy-six, and a year later Anna Petrovna officially formalized her marriage to A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky and becomes Anna Petrovna Markova-Vinogradskaya, honestly refuses the decent pension assigned to her for the deceased General Kern, the title of “Excellency” and material support father.
And the years of true happiness flowed by. A. Markov-Vinogradsky was, as they say, a loser, having no talents other than a pure and sensitive heart. He did not know how to earn their daily bread, so the family had to live in poverty and even live with different friends out of mercy. But he couldn’t get enough of his Aneta and filled his diary with touching confessions: “Thank you, Lord, that I am married! Without her, my darling, I would languish, bored. Everything is boring except my wife, and I am so used to her alone that she has become my necessity! What a joy it is to return home! How warm and good it is in her arms. There is no one better than my wife.".
And she wrote to her relative E.V. Markova-Vinogradskaya after more than ten years of their life together: “Poverty has its joys, and we always feel good because we have a lot of love. For everything, for everything, I thank the Lord! Maybe under better circumstances we would be less happy.”
They lived together for almost forty years in love and in terrible poverty, often turning into want. After 1865, Anna Kern and her husband, who retired with the rank of collegiate assessor with a meager pension, lived in terrible poverty and wandered around different angles with relatives in the Tver province, in Lubny, in Kyiv, in Moscow, in the village of Pryamukhino. Anna wrote memoirs and religiously preserved Pushkin's relics - letters. And yet they had to be sold - at a meager price. By the way, earlier 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 set them to music, and he lost them, God forgive him!"); music dedicated, by the way, to Anna Kern's daughter Ekaterina, with whom Glinka was madly in love. By the time of the sale, Ekaterina had married the architect Shokalsky, and she hardly remembered Glinka's passion for her.
In 1864, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev visited the Markov-Vinogradsky family: “I spent the evening with a certain Madame Vinogradskaya, with whom Pushkin was once in love. He wrote many poems in honor of her, recognized as some of the best in our literature. In her youth, she must have been very pretty, and now, despite all her good nature (she is not smart), she has retained the habits of a woman accustomed to being liked. She keeps the letters that Pushkin wrote to her like a shrine. She showed me a half-faded pastel depicting her at the age of 28 - white, blond, with a meek face, with naive grace, with amazing innocence in her eyes, smile... she looks a little like a Russian maid a la Parasha. If I were Pushkin, I would not write poetry to her.
She, apparently, really wanted to meet me, and since yesterday was her angel’s day, my friends presented me to her instead of a bouquet. She has a husband twenty years younger than her: a pleasant family, even a little touching and at the same time comical.” (Excerpt from Turgenev’s letter to Pauline Viardot, February 3 (15), 1864, letter No. 1567)."
In January 1879, in the village of Pryamukhin, “from cancer in the stomach with terrible suffering,” as his son writes, A.V. died. Markov-Vinogradsky, the 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 ( Kern).
...She was supposed to be buried next to her husband, but heavy torrential rains, unusual for this time of year, washed out the road and it was impossible to deliver the coffin to her husband at the cemetery. She was buried in a graveyard near an old stone church in the village of Prutnya, located six kilometers from Torzhok. The mystical story about how “her coffin met the monument to Pushkin, which was being imported to Moscow,” is well known.
The son of the Markov-Vinogradskys, who had poor health since childhood, committed suicide shortly after the death of his parents. He was about 40 years old, and, like his parents, he was not at all adapted to life. Katenka Shokalskaya-Kern lived a long and quiet life and died in 1904.
Anna Petrovna's stormy and difficult earthly life was over. Until now, people bring fresh flowers to her modest grave, and newlyweds from all over the area come here to swear to each other. eternal love the name of the one who, albeit for a short time, was so dear to the great lover of life Pushkin.
At the grave of A.P. A large granite stone-boulder was installed in the core; a white marble board with carved four lines of the famous Pushkin poem was mounted on it...