E p growth. Personalities. Countess E. P. Rostopchina

E p growth. Personalities. Countess E. P. Rostopchina

Bright life and amazing destiny. Perhaps, this is how the biography of Evdokia Rostopchina can be characterized. The most famous writers of the first half of the 19th century unconditionally recognized her poetic talent. And the best works have become classics of female lyrics in Russian literature. Evdokia Rostopchina (nee Sushkova) was born in Moscow in 1811 in the family of State Councilor P. V. Sushkov and D. I. Pashkova. Having lost her mother early, who died of consumption when the girl was only six years old, Evdokia Petrovna was brought up by her maternal grandfather I. A. Pashkov. In the family where she grew up, little Dodo received the education that a future secular young lady was supposed to have, i.e. just a little bit: the Law of God, drawing, music, dancing, a little - history, geography and arithmetic. She knew several foreign languages ​​and read a lot. Sensitive and receptive, most of all she liked to walk in the far corners of the large garden. Thickets and moonlight were her small world, in the silence of which the first lines of poems were born. Even as a child, under the influence of the poetic works of those years, Evdokia Petrovna wrote an ode to Charlotte Corday, but then destroyed it. However, the literary environment, innate talent and passion for creativity contributed to the transformation of Sushkova into a poetess at an early age. Her poems were liked by their sincerity and musicality of the lines. Some of them she read in the poetic salon of her uncle, the poet and playwright N. V. Sushkov, and some only to her close friends, those whom she trusted - Mikhail Lermontov and Nikolai Ogarev. Both were admirers of literary talent and connoisseurs of her feminine charm, because, having matured, the little dreamer Dodo turned into a young charming girl. The first trips to the world became triumphant. Young freshness, charm and the halo of nascent glory surrounding her - all this contributed to recognition and love. At one of the balls at the Moscow Prince D.V. Golitsyn, Evdokia Petrovna met Pushkin. Later, she dedicated the poem "Two Meetings" to this event. And she once said about her attitude to the poet: “she idolized - always.” Once P. A. Vyazemsky, a famous writer and friend of Pushkin, accidentally met with the poems of Evdokia Sushkova. He rewrote the play "The Talisman" and secretly sent it to A. A. Delvig, who at that time was the editor of the almanac "Northern Flowers" in St. Petersburg. In 1831, the debut in print took place, although the authorship was not indicated, because the addition of poetry was not a commendable occupation for young ladies.
The news that Evdokia Petrovna Sushkova was marrying Count Andrei Fedorovich Rostopchin caused a lot of rumors and gossip in Moscow. Everyone knew that young people do not have warm feelings for each other. Andrey Rostopchin, although those around him did not notice greed and anger behind him, had an extravagant and quick-tempered character. Accustomed to a different environment, Dodo had to learn to live in a different world. In May 1833, the wedding took place. There are suggestions that by marriage, Dodo Sushkova tried to wrest from her heart and forget her first unrequited love, which she wrote about in the Talisman. Who was this person? Most likely, this question will remain unanswered. Family life did not become happy for Evdokia Petrovna, but secular society even more willingly opened its doors to the rich and beautiful Countess Rostopchina. In 1836 the Rostopchin family moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Thanks to the title and their connections, they were able to occupy a prominent position there, and Countess Rostopchina became a welcome guest in secular salons. The period from 1836 to 1838 passed in a palace whirlwind, Rostopchina knew the taste of literary and female success. But it couldn't last that long. Evdokia Petrovna was too smart to simply confine herself to the role of a secular lady. And how do you know if the tragic death of Pushkin played a role in this rejection of secular entertainment? The last time Pushkin was in Rostopchina's salon was one day before the duel. She understood that she was tormenting the poet, as she also understood what role the “opinion of the world” played in his state. The fatal shot on the Black River became a milestone that divided the lives of many contemporaries into “before and after”, and took away some of its important part from life. After the death of the poet, V. A. Zhukovsky handed over to Rostopchina Pushkin’s book, which he had prepared for new poems, with a proposal to supplement and complete it. Zhukovsky understood the value of the gift. He would not hand it over without good reason. The light and melodious poems of Evdokia Petrovna have already won her lasting fame. And many literary critics of that time put her works on a par with the works of Pushkin. In the spring of 1838, Evdokia Petrovna decided to leave St. Petersburg. Saying goodbye to the capital and taking the cherished Pushkin book, she moved to the Voronezh province, to the count's estate in the village of Anna. Almost three years of intense and fruitful work in "Anna's" quiet have borne fruit. In 1839, two stories by Rostopchina were published as a separate book, and in 1941 a collection of poems was published, which included works written from 1829 to 1839. In February 1841, M. Yu. Lermontov came to St. Petersburg on vacation. They had something to talk about with Dodo. This year was special for her: the first volume of her works was published. Later he will ask to send him to Pyatigorsk a volume of poems with the name Dodo on the cover. They will have another meeting, during which Lermontov will share gloomy forebodings with Evdokia Petrovna. She will make fun of his suspiciousness, and in order to distract him from gloomy thoughts, she will give an album in which a few lines about him ...

In memory of this relationship, several poems and the play "On the Road" remained. In 1847, the Rostopchins moved to Moscow to a large house on Sadovaya. This period of life was filled with creativity. Poems and prose, lyrics and plays. Almost all works were published in magazines and almanacs. But other times came in literature, and Rostopchina more and more diverged from the new time. Each new work of criticism met more and more unfriendly. Dobrolyubov mocked her new novel At the Pier. And Chernyshevsky very mockingly commented on her new collection, accusing her of petty selfishness and ignoring public requests. But the nature of her work was different, and it was in vain to expect denunciations of the injustices of life from her. Rostopchina continued to write, but interest in her work faded. And by criticizing the new literary trends in Russia, she completely isolated herself. In 1857, Evdokia Petrovna was diagnosed with an incurable disease. She spent the last years in a difficult home environment, but managed to keep her presence of mind. Tyutchev, who was visiting her, was horrified by what had become of a woman who had recently flourished. However, a conversation with her made him forget that in front of him was a woman who had very little time left to live. Almost forgotten by the public, Evgenia Petrovna Rostopchina died in Moscow in December 1858. The poetess was buried at the Pyatnitskoye cemetery.

Vladislav Khodasevich

Countess E.P. ROSTOPCHINA

Her life and lyrics

Keep my weak trace, keep a legend about me.

Rostopchina

If we delete from the biography of Rostopchina everything that relates to her literary activities, we get a description of the most ordinary life of a young lady and lady who lived in the first half of the last century. A young lady, a lady - these are the images that first of all arise before us in the biography of the poetess, once glorious, now forgotten. Poetry, literary fate only draw the contours of these images more sharply.

Rostopchina's creativity never preceded life, never subordinated the real world to the created one. On the contrary, it itself followed closely behind life, fitting into it as a whole. Rostopchina's life, so ordinary and so touching in its banality, is nevertheless in something larger than her poetry. That is why in her books there are so many similar to a lyrical diary, so many autobiographical allusions and direct memories, so many poems "in case", dedications, "answers".

But life itself, captured in these memoirs, is like an old novel: not such that it was destined to cross out a chapter in the history of literature, not such that an entire era was subsequently named after its heroine, but an average novel of an average, not too inventive writer about average hero. We can say: nothing is more like a novel by Rostopchina herself than her own life.

Who is the heroine of such an "average" Russian story? She, of course, must come from a good noble family, her father is either an official or a landowner. Rostopchina's father, Pyotr Vasilyevich Sushkov, was an official. Mother came from a landowner's family Pashkov. Rostopchina was born in Moscow and grew up there. The first half of the 19th century is consecrated with the memory of Napoleon's invasion, all fates were connected with this invasion in one way or another: Rostopchina was born at the turn of the twelfth year - December 23, 1811.

She was to become the heroine of a touching novel. Such heroes remain orphans early: Rostopchina's mother died when little Dodo was only six years old. Father, on business, either official or family, was constantly on the road. Dodo hardly saw him. In the same way, Marina, the heroine of Rostopchina's novel "The Happy Woman", in her childhood "knew that she had a father, just as each of us could know that he had his own star, guardian and companion, given by fate, but I hardly saw my father, just as we all cannot see our star."

Future heroines were brought up by grandparents: Dodo lived in the house of her late mother's father, I.A. Pashkov. But everyone knows that grandfathers lock themselves in their offices during the day, and play cards in the evenings. Such was the old man Pashkov. The women who surround the girl in her home life, who will live in the "light", are divided into secular ladies, secular young ladies and secular old maids: grandmother Dodo Sushkova was a secular lady, one of the aunts, grandmother's daughters, a secular young lady who later married, and the other remained a secular old maid. Visits, dinners, balls, French, a little literature, antimony, powder and gossip - this is the life of these women. It is clear that they had no time to raise the Dodo. In addition, the heroine of a secular story from childhood should be handed over to the hands of tutors, governesses, teachers of French, music and dance. Among these people, the childhood of the Dodo passed.

Almost all Russian poets of the first half of the last century found in their childhood some kind of mysterious, paternal or grandfather's, half-French, half-Russian library. This wonderful library once and for all won the heart of a child, became a sweet refuge and the only consolation. It is not known for sure whether Rostopchina also found such a library at one time, but it can be assumed that in this her fate did not differ from the average fate of the future dreamer: the Sushkov family was far from alien to literature, and at an early age Evdokia Petrovna independently got acquainted with literature, both domestic and European. "Books replaced her educators" ("Happy Woman"). The works of Schiller, Byron, M. Debord-Valmor, Zhukovsky, Goethe, Karamzin early made her a dreamer. The mysterious and romantic world captivated her imagination. High feelings, ardent passions, resolute and proud characters - all this spoke to her of a certain being, beautiful and complete.

But at home, in the family that sheltered her, not in being, but in everyday life, the bitter truth of reality arose, the small unrest of Famusov's Moscow. The insignificance of the grandma's fashion, the gossip of the aunts - all this early taught Dodo to contrast her meager life with the beautiful and full-voiced world created in her imagination by the poets.

For another twelve years, Dodo herself began to write poetry. As usual, the first imitative poem "Charlotte Corday" was written and burned in a timely manner. Neither this poem, nor the early poems, except for one French impromptu, have come down to us. Probably, these were more or less enthusiastic "dreams of an inexperienced soul" about something indefinitely lofty and indefinitely heroic.

In the winter of 1828, an event took place in the life of Dodo, which was generally important in the life of her contemporaries, and even became fatal for her: it was that “first ball”, “first departure”, about which so much was written in past novels. From this day forward, the Dodo is dedicated to the "light". Childhood is over, and soon she only remembers it:

Days of childhood full of suffering

Unfinished, obscure thoughts,

When anxiously waiting

My young fledged mind

When in silence, in solitude,

The event was for me

Heaven's evening apparitions,

And the darkness of the night, and the beauty of the day.

Now, "at the age of eighteen," I longed for other, more real, exciting events, I wanted to get to know that wonderful being that I once so incompletely and vaguely dreamed of.

As soon as Bobyl came closer to the Snow Maiden at Ostrovsky, a clumsy goblin tucked up in her place. As soon as the poor Dodo tried to get closer to the dreamed being, the same way of life turned out to be in its place: "light", that is, an infinite number of all the same grandmothers and aunts. But all the same, she knew that somewhere behind the "light" there is a truly beautiful, truly bright world. However, the prince did not come to disenchant this dark life, to save the Dodo from reality. And it seemed to her already that it was better to die:

God grant that youth, bleak, inscrutable, The desired end would soon come, And that the spirit of death, winged, luminous, Put a poppy crown on my head.

It seems to the poor girl that it is too late for her to dream of happiness:

I believe I burn without a doubt

But fortunately there is no faith in the heart!

It's all terribly sad, but that's the way it should be. In the end, twenty years old, grandmothers and aunts take their toll: Dodo does not die, but goes out into the world, she is unable to resist him, she shines. At times it seems to her that the "ideal" is forgotten:

I am not fond of the mountain world,

I don't sing the song of my heart...

But I'm accustomed to the coldness of life

And I love substance.

Materiality! She is the decision

Mysteries of life...

Such gloomy aphorisms are written by Dodo Sushkova in 1832. She is already going to "sign a break with a dream."

So, there is no need to live anymore, the heroine is defeated, she is weakening ... It's time to appear life-giving "first love". And of course she is. At the balls, Dodo was an extraordinary success. She was very beautiful. Fans surrounded her. There were many profitable and brilliant games among them. But after all, we all know that the heart of the heroine should belong to a young man, poor, albeit noble, with genuine feelings, with a soul open to everything poetic and sublime. Such a young man was, it seems, Prince Alexander Golitsyn. Their first love must be unhappy. Can a heroine love without obstacles? And in fact, the grandmother and aunts decided that Golitsyn was not a couple for Dodo. There were, of course, tears and complaints, but, in the end, Dodo submitted. She gave her consent to a rich and no less noble fiance, betrothed by her aunts, Count Andrei Fedorovich Rostopchin, the son of the famous Moscow commander in chief. About this matchmaking cousin Dodo, E.A. Khvostova says:

“This wedding was completely unexpected for all of us and sadly surprised me. Cousin, a week before the decision of her fate, wrote to me and spoke with despair about her fiery and unchanging love for another. But how to express my surprise, I did not believe my eyes and ears when my cousin met me, not pale, not emaciated, but cheerful, blooming, happy. Her first exclamation was: “Imagine, Catherine, all Moscow is jealous of my fate, my diamonds, and what an office I will have! just a toy my bridegroom consults with me in everything. "I became unbearably sad: is it really, I thought, that I am also destined to marry for convenience?" one

This was in May 1833, Dodo was not the heroine of a tragedy: she was not to die, like Juliet, but, like the heroine of a sad, banal story, she was to fully experience "essentiality" and really sign a break with former dreams. She became Countess Rostopchina.

Evil tongues said that Dodo, who really did not want to marry Rostopchin, tried to compromise; there is the following anecdote: the then Moscow lion, Prince Platon Meshchersky, was diligently courting her. However, he did not make a formal proposal. And now, as if at a ball at the governor-general, in order to push Meshchersky to decisive action, Dodo told him that, it seems, she would be forced to marry; To this Meshchersky replied: "Be ashamed, Dodo, for what purpose are you telling me this?" The whole anecdote has the character of a belated secular gossip: twenty-seven years after the death of Rostopchina, the author of the note still finds it necessary to hide behind a pseudonym: The Old Woman from the Steppe 2. But one can still notice that one thing is certain: Moscow society already knew then: Dodo Sushkova is not going down the aisle of her own free will.

She had to go through a lot of hardships. The marriage was unhappy. In addition to the fact that he was imprisoned without love from Evdokia Petrovna, there were some other reasons for this, which the poetess's brother, S.P., vaguely hints at. Sushkov, in a biographical sketch written by him. However, he says that it is "useless" to expand on this subject. It is only known for certain that Rostopchin was three years younger than his wife, that is, he married at the age of nineteen 4, that he was a man with some kind of "strangeness", that he thought little about his wife, devoting more time either to the horse farm or to collecting pictures that until 1836, when the count went to mineral waters, they had no children. In general terms, these testimonies are confirmed by L. Rostopchina, the daughter of the poetess, in her "Family Chronicle". She characterizes her father as a guards "naughty", a reveler, worn out early, bald at 19, and so on.

According to Rostopchina's poems, one can trace her whole life, as if in a diary. She wrote a lot. But in the collection of her poems there is not a line written between August 1832 and January 1834. Probably, what was written during the matchmaking and during the first months of marriage, spent in the countryside, she did not consider it possible to print. Be that as it may, in her books this whole period is marked by silence, and after it, like a sigh of relieved fatigue, the first words of the next section sound:

Sometimes, exhausted by longing,

The heavy sleep of the soul freezes,

And many days in succession

Time will pass over the dead...

But if she wakes up...

Like Nensky, the husband of the "Happy Woman," Andrey Fedorovich did not prevent his wife from living as she liked. As social decency allowed, he did not interfere with her. Rostopchina "woke up" in the winter of 1834-35, in Moscow, and, of course, at the ball. At this time, having apparently suffered a lot and reconciled with a lot, she wrote to some "former confidante":

Child, with your questions,

Please don't torture my heart!

I'm afraid that, tempted by them,

I'll talk casually...

Not! Not! I am proud silence

Forever made a good vow ...

Isn't it better to hide the suffering,

Who is not healed?

Isn't it better to appear at the ball

With a smile, in full triumph,

Than a victim to pass for sorrow

And on the tooth to get a rumor?

Seeing an early crash

Your hope and dreams

Believe me - it's smart to look for oblivion

In the fumes and noise of vanity.

From that time on, the ball finally took possession of Rostopchina. It turned out that this is the place where the causes of longing are so well hidden, where romantic dreams come true with exciting and fragile poverty. Cavaliers in Childe Harold cloaks, courteous and eloquent glances, languid string music, "play of passions" under the guise of coldness, handshakes, meaningful and seemingly random smiles, both promising and careless at the same time, light love pranks that still don't know what they will lead to in a word, everything that makes every ball a little masquerade - all this captivated her. The ball became for Rostopchina something like an "artificial paradise", a bizarre synthesis of everyday life and existence, the consonance of two voices, of which, in her own words, one, "bewitching, carries us to heaven", the other "chains us to the life of the earth."

And now she could never get out of the power of this charm. Her captive imagination tirelessly created images, painful and beautiful. The secular young lady has turned into a lady, still not forgetting her former dreams. While the heroine of the novel was a girl, she freely and simply reached for joy; now that she has become a lady, the time for new doubts has come for her: dreams of personal happiness collided with the laws of conjugal duty and with fear of the so-called "ruthlessness of the world." In these doubts, in this internal struggle, silent and proud, Rostopchina drew new suffering, new pain and joy, new motives for her lyrics.

In the Old Testament novels, between the sacramental phrase: "she felt that she was preparing to become a mother" - and "the first, faint cry of a child" there is always an area of ​​fog and silence. In Rostopchina's poetry, the time interval from November 1836 to October 1837 is marked by such silence and coincides with the pregnancy and the birth of the first child. But since October 1837, as in the previous winter, we find Rostopchina in St. Petersburg.

Here she is destined to experience love, already furnished in all respects with the laws of the ball. She already has to confess in "A Conversation During the Mazurka":

Even though I say: "no one ever!" -

I'm so inexperienced, hot and young

That, really, I can hardly vouch for myself.

I'm scared to hear you...

Now she again has to go against herself, again drown out love, "fearing the excitement of passion", and, finally, after long languor, say:

It's all over forever between us...

And apart hearts, and apart steps ...

Although we both love, but, having met friends,

We parted like enemies.

....................................................

I answered casually with a joke.

He stood up... anger burned in his eyes...

In my soul, in my chest there was weeping and a rebellious groan,

He didn't see anything!

He did not see how the heart beat painfully

Under my smoky dress...

He did not hear the involuntary cry of suffering

Under women's laughter ordered!

Banal words? Right. A banal denouement of a little novel? This is also true. But what beautiful, human pain the confessions of those days sound! What mournful impulses, what sad thoughts:

Love is something tomorrow, then yesterday,

Lives in hope and loss.

Banal heroine, banal guards hero! But with what eternally beautiful sorrow of separation he is sanctified:

Will you remember me someday... but it's too late,

When I'm far away in my steppes...

When for a long time we will forever be different -

Then you will understand and remember me...

Passing sometimes in front of an empty house,

Where you were always met by my cordial greetings,

You sadly ask: "So she's not here anymore?" -

And, hurrying past, waving the white sultan,

You will remember me.

And what an eternal, sacred monument over the "grave of love" will remain the quiet words of dedication, spoken much later, after seventeen years:

But by your sweet name

You will be worshiped in it.

Not in a literary salon, not in the editorial office of a magazine, but on a ballroom floor, under the sign of "light", Rostopchina met with two great poets: in 1829, at a ball at Prince. Golitsyn, with Pushkin, and around the same time, with the Sushkov cousins, with Lermontov.

The first ballroom triumphs of Dodo coincide in time with the first literary successes, however, not yet extending beyond the limits of "their" circle. Her graceful, lightly written, often improvised poems go from hand to hand 5 ; it happens that through one of the relatives - N.P. Ogarev, - Herzen's circle also falls. Friends, acquaintances, university youth - everyone is satisfied with the freshness and beauty of talent. Poems are learned by heart. Herzen uses them in his letters 6 .

In 1830 Prince. P.A. Vyazemsky took the poem "Talisman" from her, and it appeared in Northern Flowers 1831, signed D-a 7 . For an aspiring poetess to get into Northern Flowers were very honorable. But the grandmother and aunts found that it was indecent for a secular, well-bred young lady to appear in print, and later Dodo's poems began to reappear in magazines only after marriage, signed either by Mr. E. R., or simply a. In the winter of 1836, Rostopchina became close to a circle of St. Petersburg writers, among whom were: Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Pletnev, Vyazemsky, gr. Sollogub. At this time, Pletnev wrote to I.I. Dmitrieva about how "Moscow Sappho" was well received in St. Petersburg, "which is quite rare with new arrivals, especially from Belokamennaya" 8 . At meetings at Sollogub, where women were not allowed at all, an exception was made for Rostopchina. Her poems were taken by magazines like hot cakes. Not only the public, but also writers appreciated them highly. Somewhat later, on April 25, 1838, Zhukovsky wrote to her:

"I am sending you, Countess, a book as a memento, which may have some value for you. It belonged Pushkin; he prepared it for his new poems, and did not have time to write a single one; I got it from the hands of death, I started it; what you find in it is not printed anywhere 10 . You will complete and complete this book by him. She has now reached her true destination. All this in the old days I would have written in verse, and verse would have been good, because it would have been about you and your poetry; but the verses are no longer flowing as they used to - I will finish simply: do not forget my instructions; let this year of solitude be a truly poetic year of your life" 11 .

Finally, in 1840, Pletnev enthusiastically warned readers Contemporary about the upcoming publication of the book "Poems of Countess E.P. Rostopchina", and in 1841 the book went on sale. The magazines greeted her with loud praise. Grech and Polevoy praised Rostopchina in Russian Herald, Bulgarin - in northern bee; in Son of the Fatherland Nikitenko wrote that "the sphere of her ideas belongs to the modern generation: it is mostly anxiety and suffering of unsatisfied being"; Shevyrev lavished praise on Muscovite. Belinsky also praised the book, but at the same time noted the power of the ball in Rostopchina's poetry and regretted that her thoughts and feelings did not find "a wider and more worthy sphere than the salon."

With a light hand of his, Rostopchina passed into the history of Russian poetry as a salon and ballroom poetess. The verdict was unique and final. Belinsky's words have been repeated and are repeated to this day as an irrefutable truth. However, they lose sight of the fact that Belinsky, when he wrote about Rostopchina, knew incomparably less about her than we can know. Her poetry was exhausted for him by one first book. He judged the heroine of the novel only in so far as correctly, since one can judge her by reading the first chapter and not knowing the subsequent ones. Finally, as a contemporary, he could not consider her poetry in connection with her life, and yet, precisely when it comes to Rostopchina, this should lead to even greater errors than in other cases.

We already know what the ball was like in her life: in the ball she searched for and, in her own way, found oblivion of reality. But at the same time, she drew the motives of her poetry only in the events of real life. The ball, being for her the easiest, least real form of reality, at the same time gave her experiences the most real, for the most exciting. Honoring two beings in herself, a woman and a priest, she in a certain sense gave preference to a woman: after all, the poet lived in her, feeding on her feminine feelings, the dreamed paradise of being grew out of the roots of everyday life. The woman was unhappy in her personal fate: the poet created a tragedy of love from this. The lady was afraid of social condemnation: a pitiful feeling. But the poet knew how to transform it into a sense of mystery. Thus she incessantly grew her great and most important from her small and accidental. This little was predetermined by the life of the salon and the ball; if there were no woman, there would be no poet. This is bad? I don't know, maybe ... But to this we owe several beautiful poems.

Even in other poets, Rostopchina was not at all indifferent to what gender they belonged to. If this did not affect her general literary assessments, then in the sense of a direct, cordial perception of poetry, she gave preference to women and frankly admitted that:

Women's poems with special delight

I'm attractive...

The best assessment of her poetry was made by Rostopchina herself. I am referring to the handwritten inscription she made on the 1841 copy of "Poems" presented to the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and now kept in the library of the Moscow Rumyantsev Museum. Here is the full text of this document, which, as far as we know, has not been used by Rostopchina's critics and has not appeared in print:

Se n "est pas un livere- c "est une rИvИlation tout sincere et tout fИminine des impressions, des souvenirs, des enthousiasmes d" un coeur de jeune fille et de femme, des ses pensers et des ses reves, de tous ce qu "il a vu, senti, compris , - enfin, ces pages sont un de ces r and cits intimes qu "on n" ose confier qu "aux Bmes sympathiques, qu" aux intelligences les plus noblement indulgentes, qu "Y ce petit, bien petit nombre d" and lus dont on aimerait Yu ètre entendue, dont Ie suffrage console, dont la bienveillance rend heu-reuse et fiXre. Et Yu qui donc, MADAME, s "adresserait-on si ce n" est Yu VOTRE MAJESTE, Yu Elle, la plus Iminement Femme d "entre toutes les femmes, la plus douce et la plus tendre, la mieux pensante et la plus richement dou ande en sentiments, en imagination, en bont and?.. La souveraine, MADAME, trouve partout des vois reconnaissantes et sincХres pour dire ce qu "inspirent ses vertus, - moi, j" ose m "adresser en VOUS Yu la femme... Yu 1 "Bme, au Coeur qui m "ont ИтХ rИvИlИs par Vous-mИme dans ces trop rares mats si chХres paroles que Vous avez toujours pour moi, et dont Ie souvenir me reste, sacrИ, et doux! .. Daignes, MADAME, agrИer cet hommage de 1" admiration la plus vraie et la plus respectueuse, - j "oserais dire aussi la plus tendre, - et laissez-moi croire et espIrer que quelquefois Vous y jetterez Vos regards, et qu" alors j "obtiendrai ce que je dIsire tant, - une pensIe , un sourire, une larme, ce quelque chose de sympathique et de spontan and que vient du coeur, et que le coeur seui doit recueillir!..

Le mien est si plein de Vous, de Vos bontIs, - le mien, MADAME, est Yu Vous depuis si long-temps, il Vous comprend si bien, - il saura apprИcier ce qu "il unbitionne! ..

Je suis avec le plus profond respect de
Votre Majest
La trxs-fidxle sujette,
Eudoxie Rostoptchine.

Petersbourg, 1st Mai 1841. 12

These words are the key to Rostopchina's poetry. They quite accurately express her view of her own lyrics, they outline the requirements that she made of herself, and thus all the advantages and disadvantages of her poems are predetermined.

The only person who understood the true nature of her poetry was Tyutchev, who in one verse managed to define her entire work, as true as it was concise:

Either a lyre sound, or a woman's sigh, -

he said.

So, the heroine lives, dreams, languishes. Writes lyrical diaries, publishes them. Readers, especially women, admire. The heroine is "on roses", as we used to say in the 18th century, translating from French. Finally, accompanied by parting words from her admirers, in September 1845 she leaves for a poetic journey abroad. In Rome, she occupies a place of honor among the local Russians. Gogol gives her his attention. In the garden of Villa d'Este, her compatriots offer her a laurel wreath.

However, this triumph was destined to be the last. The year 1846 is fatal in the life of Rostopchina: her fame begins to fall immeasurably faster than it had grown before. A re-evaluation of her poems begins. Once an enthusiastic admirer, Pletnev wrote to Zhukovsky already in 1845: “She has a lot of good and good things both in her heart and in her mind, only everything perishes from frivolous vanity. From her talent in poetry, she will never form anything artistic. She is in concepts about art seems to be stuck in the eighties" 13 .

At the end of 1846 in northern bee Rostopchina's ballad "Forced Marriage" was printed without a signature. In a note to it, Bulgarin intriguingly invited readers to unravel the name of the author. Perhaps this note was the impetus for the fact that they began to "decipher" the ballad, trying, in addition to the author's name, to guess its hidden meaning. And so, in the relationship of the young wife to the old baron, a hint was seen of the relationship of oppressed Poland to Russia. There was, however, another opinion. A.V. Nikitenko writes in his "Memoirs": "Both the censor and the public understood that Rostopchina was talking about her own relationship with her husband, which, as everyone knows, is hostile." Despite this, the case of the allegorical meaning of the poem was started and stopped only thanks to the personal order of the sovereign (Sushkov). The very ballad became taboo. For a long time she went from hand to hand in manuscripts and was published in foreign collections of "free" Russian poems. The political interpretation of Forced Marriage has become universal.

We do not undertake to judge the true meaning of the ballad. The liberal spirit was not alien to Rostopchina in the early period of her life; but when it comes to poems written in 1846, their political significance must be judged with great caution: she joined the too conservative camp shortly after the publication of the ballad, when she returned to Russia. In addition, too much in the ballad can be taken as allusions to the personal fate of the author, as, according to Nikitenko, many accepted it. But, on the other hand, there are verses in "A Forced Marriage" that are difficult to explain with references to the author's biography and are very understandable, if we mean Poland by wife. Such, in particular, are the last two stanzas.

However, whatever the true meaning of the poem, the noise that arose was supposed to give Rostopchina many difficult minutes: understood as a political satire, the ballad quarreled Rostopchina with the court; understood differently, it gave rise to gossip and gossip about the author's personal life and sounded like a belated appeal to the "light", which Rostopchina feared as much as she despised him.

In the same year, she published a piece whose autobiographical meaning seems undeniable. This is a cycle of poems under the general title "Unknown novel". The preface says that the cycle consists of poems by a young woman who recently died. “She went out willingly, dressed up and danced, like all of us sinners. But if you happened to take her by surprise, you would always find her dull and pale, and through all her efforts to seem calm, some kind of sad excitement flashed, some heartfelt, languishing anxiety, which we were not able to explain to ourselves. True, they said that she had some kind of grief, a former love; they said that she had once been engaged and the matter broke up, that later she met her former fiancé and that love they resumed and lasted for several years ... They said that the grief of separation was killing her ... But who would have believed this with her luxury and contentment? .. "

If we compare with these words the content of the autobiographical novel "The Happy Woman" and the hints of some kind of late meeting in some verses, then, in connection with the dedication of the "Unknown Novel" to the mysterious initials: K.P.I.M., one would like to assume that the whole point here is in Prince Platon Meshchersky. The writer of these lines, despite all efforts, failed to establish the patronymic of Platon Meshchersky. But if our assumption is correct, then the hero of 1837 is also undoubtedly him. To him, in 1837, "love that lasted several years" resumed - and "Unknown Romance" is a recollection of this love. Then the gossip of the "Old Lady from the Steppe" will want to be brought closer to Rostopchina's own hint at the dispersed matchmaking. But then the dedication written in 1855 and preceding the poems, which reflected the events of the second half of the thirties, should also be attributed to Meshchersky. Maybe these words are about him:

A temple of the heart has been erected to you,

But by your sweet name

He does not shine: under the eternal mystery

You will be worshiped in it.

Maybe all her life in the heart of the "windy woman" lived one unchanging love? Perhaps all her love poems, all her confessions, all her sorrows are about him alone?

Our assumption is also supported by the fact that, having published The Unknown Novel for the first time in 1846, Rostopchina in a later published collection of her poems placed it immediately after the works written in the thirties. Apparently, by that time she attributed these verses according to their inner meaning, according to the place they occupied in her life. Only for the sake of this did she decide to sacrifice the chronological sequence, which she strictly adhered to; and only in order not to confuse the reader and obviously not disturb the order, she did not put any designations of the place and time of writing under the poems included in the Unknown Novel, although in general she put such designations without fail.

It is also possible, however, that the poems of the "Unknown Novel" were written at the end of the thirties, but only later provided with a preface and published. If so, then our conjecture is even more plausible.

The final solution to this issue is in the letters, papers and drafts of Rostopchina. They are also stored in the Moscow Rumyantsev Museum, but access to them is now closed by those who donated them there: closed for reasons that have nothing to do with literature.

In 1847 Rostopchina returned to Russia. The meeting with former friends and admirers turned out to be unexpectedly cold, and here is an excerpt from the "Song of Return":

Who here is happy for me?

Who greeted my arrival with a blessing?

Who needs me? Whose sad look

I was looking for with desire and languor?

And without me the usual way of life

He amused everyone with daily anxiety ...

Two years have passed without me - and what?

The past is forgotten and the very trace!

Two years... for the people!.. for the secular!.. God!

That is more than hundreds of hundreds of years

For your eternity!

Rostopchina was mistaken in blaming only the forgetfulness of the world for everything. There were other, much more significant causes of coldness.

Too immersed in her "feminine" and poetic affairs, mixing them too often, she did not notice the movement that was taking place in Russian society. She was naively sure that this was the case: after a two-year absence and travel, she, a thirty-six-year-old beauty and universally recognized "Moscow Sappho", was returning to her homeland. But she missed the moment of her return: after all, it was 1847. In her absence, many things began to be looked at in a new way. Just as superficial was her view of the relationship with criticism. She believed that the critics had simply "forgotten" her, Countess Rostopchina. In fact, the triumph of new trends began in Russian literature itself. The outward expression of the turning point was the fact that it was in this year that Pushkin founded Contemporary passed to Panaev and Nekrasov.

Then she tried to resort to a naive means: in the hope that everything would somehow be settled, and not realizing that this was impossible, she began to behave in literature as in a secular salon. Feeling the general hostility, she tried to pretend not to notice him. But soon this tactic had to be abandoned and barricaded in Pogodin's circle. With the help of the same Pogodin, she even manages to assemble a rather magnificent salon, standing aside from contemporary trends. From here, from this improvised fortress, she is going to make sorties, to defend the ideals of her youth "from the Germanists, realists, scumbags and all the reptile writing brethren," as she puts it in one letter.

In the next year, 1848, anxiety finally takes possession of her, and she writes to Pogodin that now "poetry, especially not women's," is now. Now she "would like to be God for an hour in order to drown the communists, anarchists and villains with a second, kind flood; I would also like to be Nikolai Pavlovich for half an hour in order to call to the face of all Moscow liberals and democrats and humbly ask them, as if they do not love monarchical rule , take a walk abroad" 15 .

However, at this time Rostopchina wrote a lot. Back in the late thirties, she published two stories under the pseudonym of Clairvoyant. Now prose becomes for her a means of struggle. More and more space in her writings is occupied by satire and indignation. Rostopchina writes novel after novel, story after story. And novel after novel, story after story, meets the press, under the leadership of Contemporary, ridicule or offensive silence. Rostopchina is indignant, but her understanding of the environment does not grow in her. In 1851 she wrote to Pogodin: "Here is stagnation, wilderness, insignificance and melancholy" 16 .

The next year, 1852, was a year of misfortune. Former friends died: Zhukovsky and Gogol. Relationships with literature have finally deteriorated, and Contemporary published the first thoroughly swearing article about Rostopchina. She could not stand it and replied with "Ode to Poetry", a weak but spiteful poem.

Relations with light also deteriorated. Not only has the liberal contagion penetrated there, but something completely unbearable is already happening there: they are beginning to laugh at her as a woman. She is given to understand that she is an aging beauty, that it is too late for her to surround herself with young people and bare her shoulders. Gossip rises, around - gloating. What? We must respond to the world! And she writes "The Circus of the 19th Century". A merciless sentence is passed to the light, but he does not remain in debt and takes revenge as best he can.

So things go from bad to worse. Weak patriotic poems are replaced by vicious attacks on acquaintances. Among the friendly journals, only two are retained: Library for reading and Muscovite.

In 1856, a two-volume collection of her poems was published. The book was met with friendly attacks from critics. AT Contemporary Chernyshevsky's venomous and cruel article was published. The following year, in the same magazine, Dobrolyubov insulted the novel "At the Pier". Other criticism is not far behind, and the attacks are getting more and more violent. Despite a few well-wishers (Pogodin, his uncle, N.V. Sushkov, Grech), Rostopchina feels that he is surrounded by enemies. “They hated me and slandered me before they even saw me,” she writes again to Pogodin. “Khomyakov armed the Aksakovs and all the brethren against me, they proclaimed me Westerner and began to persecute God knows what for ... Westerners, minded Pavlov where I did not go to bow, they scolded me aristocratic; and not only wrote poems and prose for me, but attributed me nameless, abusive poems, which is incomparably more offensive to me ... Then I looked around me and realized that I one and against me parties... I also heard what the Cherkasskys shouted against me, and what the Kireevs divulged, and what was preached by the Countess Salyas, and in drunken orgies Contemporary..." 17

Further, in the same letter, her memory somewhat betrays her when she touches on friendly relations with Pushkin, with whom she was little acquainted, and with Karamzin, who died when she was only 15 years old, but her position among those who fought between parties: “I lived in the brevity of Pushkin, Krylov, Zhukovsky, Turgenev, Baratynsky, Karamzin. Sim, nor to this".

However, to what extent she confused literary relations with personal ones, how naively she singled out women's literature from literature in general, as in poetry, as if at a ball, she competed primarily with women - all this can be seen from the further lines of the same messages: "The first one hurt me was Belinsky ... I was sacrificed on the altar erected ... to Mrs. Gan ... Then they destroyed me in favor of Pavlova, Salyas, and finally - Khvoshchinskaya."

Decidedly, she did not understand where "light" ends and literature begins. She reached the height of irritation and herself admitted: "I am sometimes too carried away by my indignation."

And then, one day, in 1856, she got carried away just like that and wrote the satire "Mad House" - an imitation of the famous satire of Voeikov. Got both "sim" and "these". The poems were not published, however, they went from hand to hand. Some didn't take it down. Ogarev recalled Rostopchina's tears, with which she once, probably as a girl, she mourned the Decembrists, and wrote to her sternly and sternly:

Repent with sinful lips

Repent sincerely, warmly,

Repent with bitter tears,

Until the time is up!

Ask valiantly for forgiveness

In his windy betrayal

The younger generation,

All decent people.

However, time has passed. Rostopchina was "finished". She spent the last months of her life either "in anger and hissing", gossiping and collecting gossip about herself, then praying and fasting. On December 3, 1858, she died of cancer, in great agony; On the 7th, after the funeral service in the church of Peter and Paul on Basmannaya, she was buried at the Pyatnitsky cemetery.

For all the last time of her life, only once did she answer her enemies with pride worthy of a poet:

The host of my brothers and friends is far away.

He died at the end of his life.

No wonder that a lonely priestess

At the empty altar I stand.

Rostopchina was a bad citizen - and she could hardly be a good citizen in terms of upbringing and fate. But from her life, so ordinary, with unsuccessful love, sudden success and quick fall, she created a sad and thoughtful story. With her feminine soul, she created from the Moscow gentleman the image of the only one who is loved forever.

At his feet she brought her heart, perhaps knowing little, but loving much. And she adorned her love with the sounds of the lyre as much as with the sweet attributes of femininity: flowers, bracelets, the haze of ball gowns, the smell of perfume, the whiteness of bare shoulders:

Not for you, but for whom

New outfits and fresh flowers,

The desire to please, to be better and more attractive,

And ballroom fees, and ballroom dreams? ..

Not for you, but for whom

And pitch shiny loose curls?

Why, how you love, look like soft silk,

Will their rings curl not under your hand? ..

Not for you, but for whom

Both a cut-out sleeve and a gold bracelet

On those shoulders, arms that they secretly wear too

And your gentle caresses, and kisses trail?

In her poems there are enough formal blunders, bad rhymes, images that are outdated even in her time. Her poetry is not brilliant, not wise, and not deep. This is not a pompous ode, not a thoughtful elegy. This is a romance, fraught with a special charm, peculiar to it alone, which is composed as much of the beautiful as of the exquisitely tasteless.

Beauty, slightly banal, is one of the necessary elements of a romance. His pathos is not great. But the one who sings the romance puts into its simple content all the slightly ordinary drama of the soul of the suffering, albeit simple.

In our days, tense, deliberately complex, spiritually living beyond one's means, there is a special joy in looking into such a soul, loving its feelings, simple and ancient, like the earth, whose rotation, charm and power are eternally sacred and - eternally banal. . Ah, how old and decrepit are those to whom the green springs, the nightingale's lye and the moonlit night seem outdated!

Let, at least sometimes, holy simplicity and its own sister, holy banality, overshadow them with their light wings.

1908
Gireevo

NOTES

1 Notes by E.A. Tail, born Sushkova. Materials for the biography of M.Yu. Lermontov. SPb., 1870

2 Russian Archive, 1885, N 10.

3 See "Compositions of Count Rostopchina". SPb., 1890, vol. I.

4 Russian Archive, 1868, p. 854: Materials for the complete works and biography of gr. F.V. Rostopchina.

5 See Russian Archive, 1865, N 7. "From the notebook of Prince N.V. Putyaty".

6 Bulletin of Europe, 1885, N 3, article by E.S. Nekrasova.

7 That is, Daria Sushkova: judging by the diminutive name Dodo, Vyazemsky believed that her name, like her late mother, was Daria. The pseudonym was created by him.

8 Russian Archive, 1868, p. 653.

9 Sollogub. "Memories". SPb., 1887, p. 219.

10 These were nine small poems, which are now part of Zhukovsky's works under the general title: From the album donated by Count. Rostopchina.

11 Rostopchina lived in the village: this was the second pregnancy, again marked by silence.

12 Empress!

This is not a book - this is a completely sincere discovery and befitting only for a woman of impressions, memories, delights of the heart of a girl and a woman, his thoughts and his dreams, everything that he experienced, felt and understood - in a word, these pages are a sincere story, what you decide to entrust only to a sympathetic soul, only to a mind marked by the noblest indulgence, only to a small, so small number of the elect, whose understanding we so cherish, whose approval consoles, whose favor one can be happy and proud. - And to whom, then, should this heart turn, EMPRESS, if not to YOUR MAJESTY, to Her, to the highest degree a Woman among all women, the kindest and most tender, the most excellent thinking and the richest of all endowed with feeling, imagination, kindness? .. The Empress finds gratitude everywhere and sincere lips, saying what her virtues inspire them to, - I, I dare, in YOUR face, turn to the Woman ... to the soul and heart that were opened to me by you in those very rare, but so dear words, which You always find for me and the memory of which remains sacred and sweet for me!.. Deign, EMPLOYED, to accept this tribute of admiration of the most true and respectful, - I dare to say, and the most tender, - and let me believe and hope that sometimes you turn your eyes here and that then I will find the reward that I so desire - your thought, a smile, a tear, something that is sympathetic and natural, coming from the heart and which can only be perceived by the heart .

My heart is so full of you, your kindness - my heart, EMPLOY, has been yours for so long and knows you so well - and it will be able to appreciate the reward that it so strives for.

With the deepest reverence for Your Majesty, loyal subject

Evdokia Rostopchina

13 Works, vol. III.

14 Badgers. "Life and Works of M.P. Pogodin", vol. X.

15 Ibid.

16 Badgers. "Life and Works of M.P. Pogodin", vol. XI, p. 373. 1

17 Badgers. "Life and Works of M.P. Pogodin", vol. XIV.

Among the books that have long acquired the unconditional status of priceless love folios, Countess Evdokia Rostopchina's novel The Happy Woman, written in 1853, is rightfully recognized as a masterpiece of love prose. This love story with the heat of insane passions and the grace of style leaves readers in a state of light trance and is considered the best book in the piggy bank of world romantic literature. Everyone writes their own love story - this was the case in the 19th century, this is happening now ...

A series: graceful age

* * *

The following excerpt from the book Happy Woman (E. P. Rostopchina, 1853) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.

© AST Publishing House LLC, 2016

Evdokia Petrovna Rostopchina

Evdokia Petrovna Rostopchina is a Russian writer, countess, one of the most famous Russian poets of the second quarter of the 19th century. Contemporaries considered her clever and beautiful, noted the liveliness of character and kindness, sociability. Lermontov and Tyutchev, May and Ogarev dedicated their poems to her. At the end of the thirties of the nineteenth century, her name was even put next to the name of Pushkin.

She was born on December 23, 1811 in Moscow, on Chistye Prudy, in the parish of the Assumption of the Virgin, on Pokrovka, in the house of her maternal grandfather, Ivan Aleksandrovich Pashkov.

Her father, Pyotr Vasilievich Sushkov (later a real state councilor), was at that time in the service in Moscow and was an official of the VIII class and a commissariat commission agent. He married Darya Ivanovna Pashkova, daughter of a retired lieutenant colonel, and Evdokia Petrovna was their first child.

In 1812, on the occasion of the approach of the French to Moscow, the Pashkov family and with them Daria Ivanovna Sushkova with their newborn daughter went to the Simbirsk province, which belonged to their grandfather I.A. Pashkov village of Talyzino, where they lived until the retreat of Napoleon from Moscow, after which they returned to Belokamennaya, where Pyotr Vasilyevich Sushkov had arrived, according to his position, to whom, as it appears in his formulary list, it was entrusted in 1812 and 1813 "preparation things for the reserve army", which he did in devastated Moscow, "without raising prices for any things, despite the factories and plants burned in Moscow."

In January 1816, Darya Ivanovna gave birth to a son, Sergei, in March 1817, Dmitry, and exactly two months later, on May 13 of the same year, she died of consumption, having only 27 years of age. Soon P.V. Sushkov, at the request of his father-in-law, went to the Beloretsk Iron Works belonging to him in the Orenburg province, where he stayed for quite a long time, and from there he moved to live in St. Petersburg, where he was transferred to serve. Three orphans remained in Moscow, in the house of their grandfather, where they lived at their own expense, using only a free apartment and a table. Evdokia Petrovna stayed in this house until her marriage, and her brothers only until 1826, when their father, being appointed head of the Orenburg customs district, took the boys with him to Orenburg.

Dmitry Petrovich Sushkov, brother of Rostopchina, wrote about his sister in a biographical note to Prince P.A. Vyazemsky: “... Meanwhile, the upbringing of Evdokia Petrovna went on as usual: one governess was replaced by another and several teachers came to give her lessons; but, to tell the truth, this upbringing, although it cost our father a lot of money, was rather careless, since, in fact, no one supervised its correctness. Fortunately, the child was endowed by nature with a lively, sharp mind, a good memory and an ardent imagination, with the help of which Evdokia Petrovna easily learned everything that was then, and still is, the alpha and omega of the home education of our high-society young ladies.

Of her teachers in various subjects, it is worth mentioning Gavrilov and Raich, who developed in her an innate love for poetry in general and for Russian poetry in particular. If it weren’t for them, Russian literature would perhaps consider one less talent among its own, since no one was engaged in literature in the Pashkovs’ house, and even such an occupation on the part of a young girl would be considered an indecent act.

Here it would be appropriate to list the main governesses and teachers of Evdokia Petrovna, as far as I remember them.

One of her first governesses was Madame Morino, a French émigré from a good family, who, before the revolution, was in an intimate relationship with the Count of Provence, later King Louis XVIII. It goes without saying that, with the exception of her native language and contemporary French literature, her knowledge in all other subjects was extremely limited, so that, in fact, she could not teach anything else.

N.G. immediately followed her. Bogolyubova, a former Smolyanka. She was a smart, kind, well-bred girl, and really knew a lot, from whom her pupil borrowed a lot of good things and could have borrowed even more, but, unfortunately, for some reason, she soon moved to another place.

Her successor was Madame Poudret, a fat, stupid, rude and absolutely ignorant Swiss woman, who, really, should not have been a governess, but perhaps a scrubber. This vile woman treated her pupil extremely rudely and even tyrannized her. Moreover, she had a very ambiguous morality and, in the presence of Evdokia Petrovna and us, her brothers, boys of seven or eight years old, she treated very freely, to say the least, with our tutor, Mr. Frossard, her compatriot, just as rude and as ignorant as she herself, as well as with our common art teacher, the Frenchman Gas. Subsequently, Poudre kept a girl's boarding house in Moscow.

Poudre was followed by - and this was Evdokia Petrovna's last governess - Madame Duvernoy, a Frenchized Pole, a kind woman, but who had no knowledge, as a result of which she did not teach anything and was in essence not a governess, but something in the nature of a companion for walks and trips easily to relatives and closer friends.

Fortunately, Evdokia Petrovna was not spoiled by this soulless upbringing: a sensitive and tender soul lived in the child. A good memory, curiosity and attraction to literature, maintained in the environment around her, which was fond of literary interests, in connection with the poetic mood of the girl and the passion for creativity innate in every talented nature, made her a writer at an early age.

Rostopchina developed an early passion for reading and quickly mastered several foreign languages, including French, German, English, and Italian. Hiding from her relatives, from the age of twelve she began to write poetry. And she gave them to her acquaintances to read: the student of Moscow University, the poet and revolutionary Nikolai Ogarev, and the student of the Noble Boarding School, Mikhail Lermontov.

Passion for poetry could not be kept secret for a long time: the first publication of her poems - in the almanac "Northern Flowers for 1831" signed "D ... a" - occurred when the girl was not even eighteen years old.

Evdokia Petrovna was very pretty; when she began to go out into the world, her fresh girlish beauty and the halo of nascent poetic glory surrounding her young head brought her a series of dizzying triumphs. She was immediately noticed - and several years of a cheerful secular life flashed before her with a quick, magical vision.

At the age of 22, Evdokia Petrovna, in order to get rid of domestic oppression, married the young and wealthy Count Andrei Fedorovich Rostopchin, the son of the Moscow mayor. The wedding took place in May 1833, and the young people lived cheerfully and openly in their house on the Lubyanka, accepting all of Moscow.

The writer's husband turned out to be a very narrow-minded person, his interests were limited to carousing, cards and horses, and Evdokia, feeling very unhappy in the family, completely devoted herself to secular life, began to look for entertainment in the world, attending and arranging balls. Rostopchina was the subject of much gossip and slander. She was constantly surrounded by a crowd of ardent admirers, to whom she treated far from cruelly. According to contemporaries, Rostopchina “was small in stature, gracefully built, had irregular, but expressive and beautiful facial features. Her large, dark and extremely short-sighted eyes "burned with fire." Evdokia Petrovna's speech, passionate and captivating, flowed quickly and smoothly. Being a person of extraordinary kindness, she helped the poor a lot.

In the autumn of 1836, Rostopchina and her husband arrived in St. Petersburg and settled in a house on Palace Embankment. The Rostopchins were accepted in the highest capital society and literary salons of the city - at Odoevsky, Zhukovsky, in the Karamzin family. A well-read, witty, interesting interlocutor, Evdokia immediately started a literary salon in her house, where the whole color of St. Petersburg writers began to gather. Her frequent guests were Gogol, Pushkin, Zhukovsky, Sollogub, Vyazemsky, Pletnev, Grigorovich, Druzhinin, Myatlev and many, many others. Odoevsky and Lermontov carried on an active personal correspondence with her, the same Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky dedicated his Cosmorama to her. Even before marriage, Rostopchina met Pushkin. She met him in 1829 or 1830 at a ball at the Moscow Governor-General Prince D.V. Golitsyn and made an excellent impression on him. He spoke highly of her work.

In the salon of Evdokia Rostopchina, new works were read, literary events were discussed, musical evenings were held with the participation of Viardot, Glinka, Liszt, Tamburini, Rubini. The scattered secular life, interrupted by frequent and lengthy travels in Russia and abroad, did not prevent the countess from indulging in literary pursuits with enthusiasm.

By this time, the beginning of Rostopchina's romance with Andrei Nikolayevich Karamzin, one of the sons of the historian N.M. Karamzin, hussar colonel. A.N. Karamzin was married to Baroness Eva Aurora Charlotte Shernval, a socialite from a Swedish family, maid of honor and lady of state of the Russian imperial court, and a major philanthropist. In 1853, Andrei Karamzin volunteered for the Balkan theater of military operations of the Crimean War and soon died in battle during an extremely unprofessional cavalry attack, which he himself organized and led. In 1854, having learned about his death, Evdokia Petrovna wrote: “... the goal for which it was written, dreamed, thought and lived, this goal no longer exists; there is no one to solve my poems and my prose now ... ”But all this will be later, but for now she is not only one of the most fashionable ladies in St. Petersburg, but also a poetess recognized by all.

However, Rostopchina feels that her life, with outward brilliance, is “devoid of the first happiness - home warmth”, and her heart “is not at all created for the life that she is forced to lead now,” and therefore she likes to repeat the verse of Pushkin’s Tatyana: “... glad to see all this rags of a masquerade ... "The desire to discern the true essence of a person behind the cold, secular half-masks unites Rostopchina with Lermontov, who in 1841 wrote in her album:" I believe: under the same star // We were born with you, // We walked on the same road, / We were deceived by the same dreams.

In December 1849, the Rostopchins moved permanently to Moscow. They lived luxuriously, richly, though not particularly openly. The count was still fond of gypsies, troikas, ballet, attended the English Club, the countess lived separately from him and spent time in her quarter in her own way, received guests, occasionally went out. She no longer wrote small lyrical plays, but larger things, as well as works in prose, such as her most famous novel about piercing, burning deadly love, The Happy Woman. She also wrote small plays for the theatre; the latter were light, sweet trifles, usually prepared for someone's benefit performance.

From her marriage to Andrei Fedorovich Rostopchin, Evdokia Petrovna had two daughters and a son. The first daughter, Olga, was married to the diplomat and Italian envoy to Romania, Count Joseph Tornielli-Brusatti di Vergano. The second daughter Lydia, a writer, lived on a modest pension received from the emperor, and spent her last years in Paris. Son Victor - Colonel, was married to Maria Grigorievna von Reitlinger, had two sons - Boris and Victor.

They say that Evdokia Rostopchina had two more daughters from an extramarital affair with Andrei Karamzin. They bore the surname Andreevsky and were brought up in Switzerland. In addition, Rostopchina had an illegitimate son, Ippolit, from Pyotr Pavlovich Albedinsky, an adjutant general who did not have a higher military education or special military merits. Albedinsky owed his military career mainly to his handsome appearance and great connections at court.

For the last two years of her life, Countess Evdokia Rostopchina was often and very ill. The last time she took up the pen at the end of August 1858 was to write for Alexandre Dumas, who was then in Russia, her brief memoirs of Lermontov. Dumas received her letter in the Caucasus, in December, when Rostopchina was no longer alive: on the third of December (fifteenth according to the old style), 1858, she died in Moscow, where she was buried at the Pyatnitskoye cemetery in the tomb of the Rostopchins.

Exactly 200 years ago, on January 4, 1812, Evdokia Petrovna Rostopchina, nee Sushkova, was born in Moscow, a Russian poetess, translator, playwright and prose writer.
Beautiful, smart, talented... and unhappy...

Having lost her mother at the age of six, Evdokia Sushkova, along with her two younger brothers, grew up in Moscow in the wealthy family of her grandfather, mother's father, Ivan Alexandrovich Pashkov. The girl read a lot and studied German, French, Italian and English.

For some time, Evdokia Petrovna carefully concealed from everyone that she was engaged in poetry, but one of her poems, "The Talisman", accidentally fell into the hands of Prince P. A. Vyazemsky, who, without her knowledge, placed these poems in one of the St. Petersburg almanacs and signed under them: D. S ... va. This, apparently, a strange and incomprehensible signature occurred because Evdokia Petrovna was usually called, in her family, "Dodo", and Prince Vyazemsky, not knowing her real name, believed, that her name was Daria and therefore put the letter D. instead of A., that is, Avdotya, as the future Countess Rostopchina was then called in society. This poem, somewhat altered, was subsequently included in the poetic novel: “The Diary of a Girl” (Poems by Count Rostopchina, ed. 1859, p. 151). When the “Talisman” appeared in print and in Moscow, for some reason, the name of the writer became known , in the Pashkovs' house everyone pounced on her, reproaching her in every possible way for this shameful and indecent act, so that the young poetess more than once had to be terribly terribly because she was not able to fully conceal in herself the talent given to her from God. ( Sushkov D. To the biography of E. P. Rostopchina)

Twenty-two years old, in order to get rid of domestic oppression, Evdokia decided to accept the proposal of the young and wealthy Count Andrei Fedorovich Rostopchin (1813-1892), the son of the former Moscow commander in chief. The wedding took place in May 1833, and the young people lived cheerfully and openly in their house on the Lubyanka, accepting all of Moscow.
By her own admission, Rostopchina was, however, very unhappy with her rude and cynical husband and began to look for entertainment in the world, she was surrounded by a crowd of admirers, whom she treated far from cruelly. Scattered secular life, interrupted by frequent and lengthy travels in Russia and abroad, did not prevent Rostopchina from indulging in literary pursuits with enthusiasm.

In 1836 the family moved to St. Petersburg and was a member of the highest intellectual society of the capital. Rostopchina began to sign her publications with R, and then with her full name. In her work, she was supported by such poets as Lermontov, Pushkin, Zhukovsky. Ogarev, May and Tyutchev dedicated their poems to her. The guests of her literary salon were Zhukovsky, Vyazemsky, Gogol, Myatlev, Pletnev, V. F. Odoevsky and others.

Most of her lyrics were poems about unrequited love. In 1839 she published the book "Essays of the Great World", which was ignored by both readers and critics. Although Rostopchina also wrote novels and comedies, her prose was not particularly successful.

Countess Rostopchina was as much known for her beauty as for her intelligence and poetic talent. Small in stature, gracefully built, she had irregular, but expressive and beautiful features. Her large, dark and extremely short-sighted eyes "burned with fire." Her speech, passionate and captivating, flowed quickly and smoothly.

In the world, she was the subject of many gossip and slander, to which her secular life often gave rise to. At the same time, being of extraordinary kindness, she helped the poor a lot and gave everything that she received from her writings to Prince Odoevsky for the charitable society he founded.

During a trip abroad in 1845, the poetess wrote the ballad "Forced Marriage", in which she allegorically condemned Russia's relations with Poland.

forced marriage
... I regarded her as an orphan,
And he took her ruined,
And gave with a mighty hand
She is my patronage;
Dressed her in brocade and gold,
Surrounded by countless guards,
And, so that the enemy does not lure her,
I myself stand over it with damask steel.
But dissatisfied and sad
Ungrateful wife!

Returning in 1847 from a trip abroad, completely ruined by her husband, Countess Rostopchina settled in Moscow (Nicholas I forbade the poetess to appear in the capital) in the house of her mother-in-law E.P. Rostopchina, an ardent Catholic.
The last years of Evdokia's life passed in an extremely difficult home environment and a constant dull struggle with her mother-in-law, who mercilessly condemned her secular hobbies and the Orthodox upbringing she gave to her children.

Rostopchina continued to write poetry, plays, translations, but interest in her work was already waning. In the last years of her life, the poetess ridiculed various literary movements in Russia, eventually finding herself in isolation.

During the Crimean War, she wrote a number of patriotic poems.
In 1852, the story "The Happy Woman" was published.

In 1857 Ogaryov wrote a poem to Rostopchina.

A curious detail from the memoirs of a relative:

When Countess Rostopchina was in Moscow, she wrote, in addition to many small poems, one novel, "At the Pier", and several small comedies, in the form of French dramatic proverbs, of which one or two were also presented on the St. Petersburg stage.
In the same era, precisely in 1856, the court bookseller, Smirdin-son, published in St. Petersburg, in 4 volumes, a new edition of the countess's poems. In addition to the small comedies mentioned above, Countess Rostopchina also wrote a comedy in verse: "The Return of Chatsky to Moscow," in which she brought out most of the characters in Griboyedov's immortal comedy.
The Petersburg actor, A. M. Maksimov, wanted to put this comedy in his benefit performance, but the dramatic censorship, which was then attached to the 3rd Department of His Imperial Majesty's own Chancellery, did not dare, for special reasons, to allow the performance of this comedy. However, out of respect for the literary fame of Countess Rostopchina, her play was reported to the Emperor and the comedy was read personally by His Majesty; but the highest permission did not follow the presentation of this. A few years later, after the death of the writer, this comedy was published as a separate publication, but did not have literary success, meeting unfavorable and clearly hostile reviews of our then journalism, which at that time tried to destroy the literary authorities of the past.

Almost forgotten by the public, after two years of illness, Countess Rostopchina died of cancer on December 3, 1858. She was buried in the old Pyatnitskoye cemetery in Moscow.

That's all. Such a short life of a beautiful woman, a poetess, practically unknown today. Everything on earth passes someday, and human life is like an autumn leaf mercilessly blown away by the wind...

autumn leaves
Dry, yellow leaves
Harbingers of a sad time
I love you!.. My dreams
Accustomed to the funeral thought,
Made friends with unearthly thought;
And there is a kinship, a holy kinship
Between all the yearning and me -
indelibly fatal
The stigma of the days of the past over the soul! ..

The steady flame of a candle

night, peace and quiet.

Oh, don't be silent, don't be silent,

reveal your secret.

O. Kharlamova

On December 7, on Basmannaya, near the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, people crowded. The church was full of worshipers: a funeral ceremony for the deceased Countess E. P. Rostopchina was performed. She died on December 3, after a long painful illness, at the age of 47. Her body was buried behind the Trinity outpost at the Pyatnitskoye cemetery, near the ashes of her father-in-law, the famous mayor of Moscow in 1812.

N. V. Putyata. 12/07/1858. Moscow

Anyone who knew Countess Rostopchina, knew her closely, could not help but admire this smart, educated, talented, frank and sociable person who flashed like a meteor in our society and which the modern generation knows only from rumors that have nothing to do with her literary activity.

A. V. Starchevsky. Biography of Rostopchina. 1870s

Even in the most insignificant poems, the countess boldly looks through the personality. The name of Rostopchina will pass to posterity as one of the bright phenomena of our time. At the present moment she belongs to the number of our most gifted poets.

A. V. Druzhinin. Review of the book: "Poems of Countess E. Rostopchina." 1856

…Where is it, this old, harmonic, poetic time?..

And I want to awaken in you the long-slumbering echo of experienced melodies, they will infuse you with your own memories, which so often went hand in hand with mine! .. Our mutual friends will rise before you ... everything will come to life, speak, sing the wondrous, passionate, life-giving song of antiquity.

E. P. Rostopchina - V. F. Odoevsky. 11/04/1858

Resurrected in the sad memory

That time of light when

You lived as a sweet lady

In Moscow, near Chisty Pond...

In those days when restless

The heart was looking for hot words,

You gave me favorably

Notebook of cherished verses ...

N.P. Ogarev. "Apostate" (dedicated to Count R-oh), 1857

N. P. Ogarev met my sister when she was a girl of 14 years old, and he was still studying at Moscow University ...

She was gifted by nature with excellent mental abilities, an extraordinary memory, great curiosity, and a passionate love for poetry and literature.

S. P. Sushkov. 1890

Yes, then they learned Racine, Zhukovsky by heart, that generation of dreamers gave us Tatyana, the delightful Tatyana of Pushkin, a sweet, noble, charming type of girl of that time ...

Books replaced her teachers, she surrounded herself with geniuses and thinkers of all ages and peoples ...

Of course, from this migration to the ideal and written world, she withdrew in concepts and feelings from reality, indulged in reverie and enthusiasm, but this very thing gave a special charm to her words, her address; she spoke as others write.

From the novel by E. P. Rostopchina "Happy Woman". 1852

Evdokia Petrovna began to write poetry secretly from her relatives.

In the prosaically worldly Pashkov family, where she was brought up, no one was engaged in literature.

S. P. Sushkov. 1888

... Prince Pyotr Andreevich Vyazemsky, who visited the Pashkov family, got acquainted with the poems of Evdokia Petrovna under the name "Talisman", wrote them off and, without her consent, published them in the St. hobby - everyone found that it was indecent for a noble secular young lady to write, and it was already completely shameful to print her works! .. Evdokia Petrovna no longer risked giving her poems to print until the very time of her marriage, although she wrote quite a lot of them ...

S. P. Sushkov. 1890

I have a sacred talisman.

I keep it: in it all the heart's property,

In it is the goal of hopes, in it is the knot of being,

The coming pledge, days of the past ecstasy.

He is not a bracelet with a mysterious lock,

He is not a ring with cherished words,

He is not a letter of confession and pleas,

Not a nice name performed by the album,

And not a feather from a white sultan,

And not a portrait under a double roof...

But do not name you a talisman,

Do not guess the secrets of the fatal.

The talisman is dearer to me than hope,

I will give my life and blood for him:

My talisman is a memory

And unchanging love!

E. Rostopchina. "Mascot". 1830. Moscow

She possessed a rare, remarkable ease of composing poetry.

I was sometimes a witness, during our trips with her together between Moscow and the village of Voronovo, where the Rostopchins always spent the summer, how she, leaning her head in the corner of the carriage and looking into space, began to compose poems, and in the evening or the next day, right wrote them down.

S. P. Sushkov. 1890

Ringing, buzzing, crushed by a small trill

Valdai bell remote ...

It hears the call of the native -

Some wild fun

With insane, unaccountable longing...

Ringing, buzzing, as if sounding the alarm,

To lure the thought and seduce the heart! ..

And it became boring to live in Sydney,

And I want to go somewhere

And I want to hurry to someone! ..

E. Rostopchina ... "Bell". 27.08.1853. Voronovo

Give me migratory wings

Give me free will, sweet will!

I'll fly to a foreign country

To my dear friend I stealthily! ..

I will sink into the water, I will throw myself into the flame!

I will overcome everything to see him,

I will rest with him from the evil torment,

I will flourish with my soul from his love! ..

E. Rostopchina. "People's Song". 1831

Since 1835, poems began to appear in almost all periodicals, marked with the mysterious signature “Countess E. R.” ... But the poetic “incognito” did not remain a secret for long, and all readers pronounce the mysterious letters in definite and clear words: “Countess E. Rostopchin "...

The main reason for the unsuccessful literary incognito of Countess Rostopchina was the poetic charm and high talent that imprinted her beautiful poems ... The muse of Countess Rostopchina is not alien to poetic inspirations, breathing not only with the mind, but also with deep feeling.

Meanwhile, all the poetry of Countess Rostopchina, so to speak, is chained to the ball ...

Poetry is a woman: she does not like to appear every day in the same dress; on the contrary, every hour she loves to appear new; to always be varied is her life; and all our balls are so similar to each other that poetry will not even send its maid there, not only will it not go itself.

V. G. Belinsky. Review of the book: "Poems of Countess E. Rostopchina." Otechestvennye zapiski, No. 9, 1841

O! Let my dreams be hidden forever

My predilection for society and light

From you, persecutors of innocent vanity!

Relentless, you are a woman poet

Command the thought and inspiration to live ...

All that is innate to us arrogantly destroy ...

And I, I am a woman in every sense of the word,

I am completely submissive to all female inclinations;

I'm only a woman - I'm ready to be proud,

I love the ball!.. Give me the balls!

E. Rostopchina. "Temptation". 1839

At a ball at the Moscow governor-general, Prince D.V. Golitsyn, in the first winter of her eighteenth birthday and departure into society, she met Pushkin.

Proud of the gentleman and hand in hand with him,

I intervened in the dances ... and with my happiness

On that evening, the beautiful whole world gleamed.

He addressed me with tender greetings,

He wanted to unravel my secrets...

He was told by the rumor of the city,

That nourishing the soul with heavenly food,

Poetry spells comprehended and I -

And he looked at me with curiosity ...

And every word of it, every look

In my dreams they burn with a bright point! ..

E. Rostopchina. "Two meetings". 1839

Pushkin became so interested in the passionate and enthusiastic outpourings of the young interlocutor that he spent most of the evening with her and after that he immediately became acquainted with the Pashkov family.

S. P. Sushkov. 1890

... After two poems by Pushkin, only the following are remarkable: "Secret Thoughts" by Count E. R-noy ...

V. G. Belinsky. Literary chronicle. Sovremennik, v. 9. 1838

The day before his mortal duel, Pushkin dined with the countess and, as her husband Count A.F. Rostopchin, repeatedly ran away from the living room to wet his head: before that, he was on fire.

P. Bartenev. 1905

I am sending you, countess, a book as a memento, which may have some value for you. She belonged to Pushkin; he prepared it for his new poems and did not have time to write a single one; I got it from the hands of death. You will complete and complete this book by him.

V. A. Zhukovsky - E. P. Rostopchina ... 04/25/1838
PUSHKIN'S DRAFT BOOK

Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky

I look with excitement, with touched melancholy

On an orphan book, on white sheets,

Where our deceased hand inspired

I was going to enter both songs and dreams ...

E. P. Rostopchina ... April, 1838

Not without intent, our oldest master, teacher and friend of Pushkin, handed over his draft book to the author of these poems.

S. P. Shevyrev. Review of the book: "Poems of Countess E. Rostopchina." 1841

In her style, artless and created by the very nature of things, not the slightest imitation is imperceptible. She would rather sacrifice brilliance than fidelity and property of expression.

P. A. PLETNEV On the Poems of Countess E. P. Rostopchina. Sovremennik, v. 18. 1838

There is mother's love: it keeps and warms,

And gently protects, and generously caresses ...

There is a sister love: she and compassion

And complicity in the earthly field ...

... And there is still love ... But that one! .. Where are the expressions,

Where are the colors and words to express it?..

To fully convey both the purpose and purpose

That passion, that love? .. Only her being

And the world is illuminated!.. It burns and shines;

All the soul of a woman, all the secret heart of the heat

She brings the bliss of the beloved as a gift,

And they alone live, and they alone tremble!

She is a priceless pearl, she is a fragrant color,

And there is no such thing among earthly joys! ..

E. Rostopchina. "Three loves". 1840

I shook the olden days - and went to the Karamzins. Everything that is most charming among us was found there: Smirnov, Rostopchina, and so on. Lermontov was too. He came on vacation from the Caucasus. After tea, the youth played burners, and then started dancing.

P. A. Pletnev - Y. K. Grot. 28.11. 1841

...Belonging to the same circle, we constantly met in the morning and in the evening.

The three months that Lermontov then spent in the capital were, I believe, the happiest and most brilliant in his life. Well received in the world, loved and spoiled in the circle of his close ones, he would compose some charming poems in the morning and come to us to read them in the evening.

E. P. Rostopchina - Alexandru Dumas. 08/27/1858. Moscow.

From the dedication written to the album:

Countess ROSTOPCHINA

I believe: under one star

You and I were born.

We walked along the same path

We were deceived by the same dreams ...

So two waves rush together

Random, free couple

In the desert of the blue sea:

They are driven together by the south wind;

But they will be scattered somewhere

Cliff stone chest…

M. Yu. Lermontov. April 1841

This album was presented to me by M. Yu. Lermontov before his departure to the Caucasus, therefore, before his death.

E. P. Rostopchina. Note to the poem "Empty Album".

Once in his youth, Lermontov dedicated to Evdokia Petrovna, then still Dodo Sushkova, the poem "Dodo":

You know how to disturb the hearts,

Stop the crowd of eyes

Destroy with a proud smile,

With a gentle smile to revive ...

Like a sloppy verse in the Talisman,

As above the rebellious abyss

Free sail of the shuttle,

You are carefree and easy...

Y. Lermontov. End of December 1831. Moscow

Evdokia Petrovna was far from being a beauty in the generally accepted meaning of this expression. She had regular and thin features, a swarthy complexion, beautiful and expressive brown eyes, black hair, her height was medium, and her body did not differ in harmony of forms. She never struck with her beauty, she naturally pleased all intelligent people ...

S. P. Sushkov. 1888

At the beginning of 1833, Evdokia Petrovna married Count Andrei Fedorovich Rostopchin. At first, she did not agree to accept his proposals, but after that she succumbed to the general influence and pressure from her relatives.

S. P. Sushkov. 1890

The cousin, a week before the decision of her fate, wrote to me and spoke with despair about her fiery and unchanging love for another.

E. A. Sushkova. 1851

And trembling with fear and longing ...

In vain you look in two mirrors

And tell fortunes on cards

In vain you walk through the cloisters,

And fast and sad.

No, dreams will not come true soon

Your cherished dreams

And black thoughts will change

Sweet thrill of love!

But keep patience in your soul

Believe and wait... Love and sing!

Know that there is providence in the sky,

There is a friend here… and peace be with you!”

Our Sushkova is engaged to the young Count Rostopchin.

They say that from this wedding all Moscow tear and rush; Sushkova completely fascinated the old woman Rostopchina, who at first did not want to give consent and called her to her in order to present to her all the dangers of this marriage, based on youth, on pranks, on the inconstancy of her son.

But God did not put a timid soul into Sushkova: she answered that she was coming to a free death.

And finally, the future mother-in-law liked it so much that she says that she could never guess a better happiness for her son.

P. A. Vyazemsky - A. I. Turgenev. 05/10/1833

The wedding took place in the Church of the Introduction on Lubyanka.

S. P. Sushkov. 1890

She entered her husband's house without delusion, with the intention of faithfully and holyly fulfilling her duties, no longer dreaming of love, but ready to give her husband a direct and high friendship.

From the novel by E. P. Rostopchina "The Happy Woman". 1852

In the autumn of 1836, the young couple came to live in St. Petersburg. I have indelible memories of the dinners that often took place at the Rostopchins, at which Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Prince Vyazemsky, Prince Odoevsky, Pletnev gathered ... All these literary celebrities of ours treated the young talented writer with sincere, warm sympathy and flattering praise.

S. P. Sushkov. 1890

The day before I received an invitation to dine with Rostopchina. Apart from her brothers, there was no one there. She read to me many new verses from her handwritten book - and I, I confess, was amazed at how often her poems reach true, deep poetry.

I. A. Pletnev - Y. K. Grot. 12/10/1840

Rostopchina definitely killed many, many of our brothers, Russian poets.

P. M. Yazykov - A. M. Yazykov. 11/22/1843

In general, the tender charm of feelings in her is everywhere supported and ennobled by the strength of thought.

What do the poems look like to you?

There are few such noble, harmonious, light and lively verses in our modern literature, and in women's literature they are definitely the best verses that have ever fluttered onto paper from under lovely ladies' fingers.

A. V. Nikitenko. Review of the book "Poems of Countess E. Rostopchina". 1841

In them, follow the development of the singer's dream,

Then agree with him, then disassemble, judge

And deny it!

But women's poems are a special delight

I am attractive; but every woman's verse

Excites my heart, and in the sea of ​​my thoughts

It reflects longing and joy ...

Yes, the female soul should glow in the shadows,

Like a hidden beam in an urn of a marble lamp,

Like the moon at dusk through the shell of clouds,

And, warming life, invisible, glimmer.

E. Rostopchina. How Women Should Write. 1840

In the spring of 1845, the entire Rostopchin family went abroad, where they remained for more than two years.

S. P. Sushkov. 1890

We rode in a dormez [travel carriage]... A huge six-seat carriage followed the dormez. We traveled to Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, spending one winter in Rome and two in Paris.

L. A. Rostopchina. 1904

Neither the charm of the first journey, nor the charm of everything I have seen, can destroy the thought of Russia in my soul.

E. P. Rostopchina - F. V. Bulgarin. 08/26/1846

"Carry me," I called then,

To the beloved shores under the heavens, dear ones!

E. Rostopchina. "Prayer to the Guardian Angel" 1840

Dear, at night, I love

Drive through an unknown city

And under the mysterious moon

Take a look around,

Houses with their roofs are funny,

With strange, belated decoration,

And churches with golden domes,

In wealth, now dilapidated,

And the huts of low bourgeois

Arbitrary architectures,

Where Russian laziness is given by God

Daily bread and free sleep...

E. Rostopchina. "Fire in the light." 1840

To Moscow, to Moscow! To that city

so familiar

Where I was born, where I grew up;

Where does the mind, drawn by hope,

Rushed forward, towards life,

Where I comprehend, where I tried to find out

earthly life; where with your own soul

I got used; where the heart developed

Where the first tears were shed by me! ..

Now to Moscow! Unforgettable graves

Pay your debt, commemorate the dead

And about the living, along the distant seashores

Scattered, think and breathe.

And God knows! - maybe by chance

Fate will please me there too,

And happy with the fulfillment of a secret thought,

I will meet my dear at home!

E. Rostopchina. "To Moscow!". 1840

The Rostopchins, on their return from abroad, expect to settle permanently in Moscow, they bought a house.

V. Berg. 1883

From the dedication:

TO ALBUM

(Gr. E. P. Rostopchina)

I don't want for housewarming

Wish you new fun

And all the updates you know,

Once sewn from idleness

From red words...

Let faith be the basis

The old hope will be again,

And, overripe in severe trouble,

Let him come to you as a new guest

One Love.

L. A. May. Moscow. 1856

From the dedication:

Countess E. P. ROSTOPCHINA

(in response to her letter)

And now, I feel, above me,

Not in reality and not in a dream,

As if it were blowing in the spring,

Either a lyre sound, or a woman's sigh ...

F. I. Tyutchev. 1850

And there were sighs. There were also tears that were invisible to the world.

Rostopchina (the three of us dined with her husband) after dinner spoke for a long time and sincerely with me about herself together. She complains that her life is deprived of the first happiness - home warmth. She says that her heart was not at all created for the life that she is forced to lead now, and she constantly repeated Tatyana's verse:

... I would be glad to give

All this rags of a masquerade...

P. A. Pletnev - Y. K. Grot. 21.10.1844
Ekaterina Andreevna Karamzina

When, satiated with the fun of the noisy light,

I want to live a mental life

And the soul asks, warmed up by a dream,

Free to stay among kindred souls, -

To the shelter of a quiet conversation enlightened,

I know the way to the dwelling of bright thoughts,

And joyfully hasten to the blessed family,

Where a friendly welcome awaits me.

They speak and think in Russian,

There hearts are imbued with a sense of homeland;

There ceremonial fashionable with its narrow chain

Doesn't choke, doesn't squeeze...

... in us the heart comes to life,

At the round table, by the bright fire

Cold winter, secular cold it will forget

And, touched, suddenly comprehends

The poetry of home life.

E. Rostopchina. "Where I feel good." 1838

Life is adorned only with joys, and poetry also adorns the difficult truths of life.

B.N. Diamonds. 1851
(for Elizaveta Petrovna Pashkova)

If only he knew how passionately and how gently

He, my idol, loves his slave ...

If only he knew that in hopeless sadness

I will wither, misunderstood by them! ..

If only he knew... in his dead soul

Love would speak again,

And half-forgotten delight of youth

It would be warmed and revived again!

And then I, lucky! .. loved ...

They would love it, maybe!

Hope flatters an insatiable longing;

He does not love ... but he could love!

E. Rostopchina. "If only he knew!" 1830

The case was about oily (1849). Pogodin called various of his acquaintances "for pancakes." Ostrovsky promised to come and read his "new comedy". Among the guests were: Gogol, Khomyakov, the actor Shchepkin, some of the young editorial staff of the Moskoviteanin, Rostopchin ...

The Countess arrived (as someone immediately noticed: in a single sleigh with one horse), she was dressed very simply. Everyone sat down on the most undemanding furniture in the master's office, others had to sculpt on the windowsills or even just stand. Ostrovsky settled himself in the left corner, by the windows, and had hardly begun to read, when Gogol, unseen and unheard of by anyone, crept up the corridor and stood in the doorway, leaning his right shoulder against the lintel, and remained so throughout the reading.

The play made a strong impression. All acts were listened to with the fullest attention, without approval, in dead silence ... The Countess spoke with the author more than with anyone and asked him to visit her on Saturday evenings. A few more people received the same invitations, so the “Saturdays of Rostopchina” arose ...

N. V. Berg. 1883

Most memorable for me was my friendship with Gogol, short-lived - in the last year of his life, when he began to visit me often, joke, show that he was pleased with my all-devoted respect, he himself spoke to me with pleasure about the novelties prepared by him, and you know as rarely happened to him.

E. P. Rostopchina - V. A. Zhukovsky. Moscow. March 13, 1852

Now everyone is occupied with one thing: this is the sad news of Gogol's death.

P. A. Pletnev - Y. K. Grot. 03/08/1852

Yes, Gogol, what is he, if not the strongest of poets?

E. P. Rostopchina - M. P. Pogodin. 05/23/1852

Accustomed from childhood to the brevity of Pushkin, Baratynsky, Vyazemsky, Zhukovsky, then to fraternal relations with Lermontov, I cannot but have a warm sympathy for everyone who follows the same path: that is, inspiration and talent.

E. P. Rostopchina - A. N. Maikov. 11/14/1856

The poet does not need anything -

No ribbons, no place, no crosses;

Poet for this grace

They won't sell you their poems!..

E. Rostopchina. From Poet to Tsars. 1856

O! Woe, woe to generations,

Between which gold is an idol! ..

Where everything is striving

Shine and make a noise,

Hurry at the expense of others to cash in, -

Even with a dishonest hand!

God be their judge!.. But their ways

We are voluntary blind -

Why, where are we going - ourselves

Creators of their own destruction?..

Proud of the tinsel environment,

Will we escape the fate of threats?

Or under a damask drapery

Fewer female tears are shed? ..

E. Rostopchina. "Russian women". 1856

In our vaguely nasty time, really, there is no time for poetry, especially not for women.

I am a writer - maybe, but first of all I am a woman, and I want to be understood a little, respected a little and, if possible, loved a lot! .. And our writers are not secular people, who do not love either the Russian word or the Russian character , not a Russian person ...

And we had people when there was someone to educate them, when the houses of Muravyov, Karamzin, Prince. Volkonskaya, and now - where is the light, where is the warmth, where is the spiritual life - our ladies play preference, slander, gossip among themselves.

E. P. Rostopchina - M. P. Pogodin. 1853

I no longer have Saturdays, some have left, others are drinking, and everyone is at odds with each other.

I walk straight ahead, on my own path, and, owing to my short-sightedness, I don’t see, I don’t notice sour faces: I don’t care about them! I am me!! Whoever loves me and pities me - thanks to those who scold me - to those who are more than contempt: inattention!

E. P. Rostopchina - Pogodin. Moscow.1851

No bitterness, no grumbling, no anger

I look at life, at the world and at people ...

But they can be heard on the right and on the left

Anathemas over my head!..

E. Rostopchina. "To my critics". 1856

I share your opinion about the "abomination of desolation" in the fields of literature. Bad imitators of Pushkin, mediocre hacks - imitators of French novelists - are so tired of the public that they no longer believe the possibility of seeing again a worthy poet or writer.

E. P. Rostopchina - M. P. Pogodin. 1848

You remember, when I came here, I had no idea about circles, parties, parishes - I simply opened my soul and arms to all the doers and movers in the field of my native word. Khomyakov armed the Aksakovs and all the brethren against me - they proclaimed me a Westerner and began to persecute me. The Westerners, in the mood of the Pavlovs, where I did not go to bow, scolded me as an aristocrat.

E. P. Rostopchina - M. P. Pogodin. 1856

... You thought - with your glory

Proud woman poet

And bitter, fatal poison

Isn't there in her shiny bowl?

You thought that my passionate verse

Easy, jokingly got me

And that he was not bought in the struggle,

A painful, terrible struggle?

E. Rostopchina. "To my two friends." 1848

I do not understand at all how people can harbor enmity or annoyance with each other because not everyone sees, feels, thinks and believes in the same way. Tolerance in everything, especially in the field of art, is for me the main and necessary condition for rapprochement, affection, friendship.

E. P. Rostopchina - F. A. Koni. Voronovo. 05/28/1854

You know that both friends and foes reproach me for being idyllic, for immaturity, for not understanding life and people, and finally for sincerity. Give me the voice of truth in this anxiety of mind and heart, too strong for female weakness!

E. P. Rostopchina - A. V. Druzhinin. 23.04. 1854
Countess ROSTOPCHINA

Oh, these days are fateful days,

Days of trials and losses -

Be glad for her return

To the places that are dear to her soul!

May the kind, benevolent genius

Quickly leads towards her

And a handful of still living friends,

And so many cute, cute shadows!

F. I. Tyutchev. 16.10. 1855

I want to quit writing and break my pen; the goal for which it was written, dreamed, thought and lived - this goal no longer exists; there is no one now to decipher my verses and my prose and notice what feeling or recollection is reflected in them! .. What is the world to my writings and me to his opinions and taste? What is he to me, what am I to him?

E. P. Rostopchina - A. V. Druzhinin. 28.10. 1854

Which is better: calmly obeying reason,

To judge, as the world judges, to weigh everything, to appreciate;

With a conditional opinion casually agreeing,

Life, heart and fate to submit to calculation?

E. Rostopchina. "What's better?". 1841

Longing overcomes me when I look at my life and at everything that it did not give, that it did not satisfy in me, that it ruined for nothing and that it took away without return ...

E.P. Rostopchin - Yu. N. Bartenev. Voronovo. 02.07.1853

... But since yesterday, spring has decided to remember us: 14 degrees Celsius, and today 16; I am coming to life and already yesterday I went to Petrovsky Park, which for the time being consists of panicles; but the nightingale is heard there - my favorite.

E. P. Rostopchina - A. V. Druzhinin. 04/23/1854

So is it true? And spring

Is it close to a general update?

Flowers, sun, inspiration

Will I be drunk again?

But, they say, who is the nightingale

Will hear on a spring day before

All other birds, - oh! that hope

Let him joyfully entrust himself!

I believe, sweet nightingale,

I believe in happy omens...

And I'll wait: maybe the light

The darkness of my soul will be changed!

E. Rostopchina. "The First Nightingale". 1840

The Countess was still in the color of a peculiar beauty.

We remember how she rode around in a carriage, on the lowered window of which her dog's paws were visible.

P. I. BARTENEV 1908

I remembered that I belong both with the heart and with the direction not of our time, but of another, the noblest, who writes not for self-interest, not from any kind, but directly and simply from an excess of thought and feeling. I remembered that I lived in the shortness of Pushkin, Krylov, Zhukovsky ... These pure glories of ours loved, praised, blessed me on the path in their footsteps ...

E. P. Rostopchina - M. P. Pogodin. 1851

... This brings me mentally ... with all Russian hearts, even unknown to me, I want to awaken an echo that sympathizes with me, wherever the Russian word is honored and loved.

E. P. Rostopchina - F. V. Bulgarin. Naples. 26.08. 1846

Do you remember me dreaming lonely

In the evening at dusk, in a mysterious silence,

And your heart whispers to you: “What a pity! She is away…"

You remember me!..