"I remember wonderful moment…" Alexander Pushkin

I remember a wonderful moment...
I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius pure beauty.

In the languor of hopeless sadness
In the worries of noisy bustle,
A gentle voice sounded to me for a long time
And I dreamed of cute features.

Years passed. The storm is a rebellious gust
Dispelled old dreams
And I forgot your gentle voice,
Your heavenly features.

In the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment
My days passed quietly
Without a deity, without inspiration,
No tears, no life, no love.

The soul has awakened:
And then you appeared again,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.

And the heart beats in ecstasy,
And for him they rose again
And deity and inspiration,
And life, and tears, and love.

Analysis of Pushkin’s poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment”

One of the most famous lyrical poems by Alexander Pushkin, “I remember a wonderful moment...” was created in 1925, and has a romantic background. It is dedicated to the first beauty of St. Petersburg, Anna Kern (nee Poltoratskaya), whom the poet first saw in 1819 at a reception in the house of her aunt, Princess Elizaveta Olenina. Being a passionate and temperamental person by nature, Pushkin immediately fell in love with Anna, who by that time was married to General Ermolai Kern and was raising a daughter. Therefore, the laws of decency of secular society did not allow the poet to openly express his feelings to the woman to whom he had been introduced just a few hours earlier. In his memory, Kern remained a “fleeting vision” and a “genius of pure beauty.”

In 1825, fate brought Alexander Pushkin and Anna Kern together again. This time - in the Trigorsky estate, not far from which was the village of Mikhailovskoye, where the poet was exiled for anti-government poetry. Pushkin not only recognized the one who captivated his imagination 6 years ago, but also opened up to her in his feelings. By that time, Anna Kern had separated from her “soldier husband” and was leading a rather free lifestyle, which caused condemnation in secular society. There were legends about her endless novels. However, Pushkin, knowing this, was still convinced that this woman was an example of purity and piety. After the second meeting, which made an indelible impression on the poet, Pushkin created his poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment...”.

The work is a hymn to female beauty, which, according to the poet, can inspire a man to the most reckless feats. In six short quatrains, Pushkin managed to fit the entire story of his acquaintance with Anna Kern and convey the feelings that he experienced at the sight of a woman who long years captured his imagination. In his poem, the poet admits that after the first meeting, “a gentle voice sounded to me for a long time and I dreamed of sweet features.” However, as fate would have it, youthful dreams remained a thing of the past, and “the rebellious gust of storms scattered the former dreams.” During the six years of separation, Alexander Pushkin became famous, but at the same time, he lost his taste for life, noting that he had lost the acuity of feelings and inspiration that was always inherent in the poet. The last straw in the ocean of disappointment was the exile to Mikhailovskoye, where Pushkin was deprived of the opportunity to shine in front of grateful listeners - the owners of neighboring landowners' estates had little interest in literature, preferring hunting and drinking.

Therefore, it is not surprising when, in 1825, General Kern’s wife came to the Trigorskoye estate with her elderly mother and daughters, Pushkin immediately went to the neighbors on a courtesy visit. And he was rewarded not only with a meeting with the “genius of pure beauty,” but also awarded her favor. Therefore, it is not surprising that the last stanza of the poem is filled with genuine delight. He notes that “divinity, inspiration, life, tears, and love were resurrected again.”

However, according to historians, Alexander Pushkin interested Anna Kern only as a fashionable poet, covered in the glory of rebellion, the price of which this freedom-loving woman knew very well. Pushkin himself misinterpreted the signs of attention from the one who turned his head. As a result, a rather unpleasant explanation occurred between them, which dotted all the i's in the relationship. But even despite this, Pushkin dedicated many more delightful poems to Anna Kern, for many years considering this woman, who dared to challenge the moral foundations of high society, to be his muse and deity, whom he bowed and admired, despite gossip and gossip.

A.S. Pushkin, like any poet, experienced the feeling of love very keenly. All his experiences and sensations poured out on a piece of paper in wonderful verses. In his lyrics you can see all the facets of feeling. The work “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” can be called a textbook example of the poet’s love lyrics. Probably, every person can easily recite at least the first quatrain of the famous poem by heart.

In essence, the poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” is a love story. The poet in a beautiful form conveyed his feelings about several meetings, in in this case about the two most significant ones, he managed to touchingly and sublimely convey the image of the heroine.

The poem was written in 1825, and in 1827 published in the almanac “Northern Flowers”. The publication was handled by the poet’s friend, A. A. Delvig.

In addition, after the publication of the work of A.S. Pushkin, various musical interpretations of the poem began to appear. So, in 1839 M.I. Glinka created the romance “I Remember a Wonderful Moment...” based on poems by A.S. Pushkin. The reason for writing the romance was Glinka’s meeting with Anna Kern’s daughter, Ekaterina.

Dedicated to whom?

Dedicated to the poem by A.S. Pushkin to the niece of the President of the Academy of Arts Olenin - Anna Kern. The poet first saw Anna in Olenin’s house in St. Petersburg. This was in 1819. At that time, Anna Kern was married to a general and did not pay attention to the young graduate of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. But that same graduate was fascinated by the beauty of the young woman.

The poet’s second meeting with Kern took place in 1825; it was this meeting that served as the impetus for writing the work “I Remember a Wonderful Moment.” Then the poet was in exile in the village of Mikhailovskoye, and Anna came to the neighboring estate of Trigorskoye. They had a fun and carefree time. Later, Anna Kern and Pushkin were more closely connected friendly relations. But those moments of happiness and delight were forever imprinted in the lines of Pushkin’s work.

Genre, size, direction

The work relates to love lyrics. The author reveals feelings and emotions lyrical hero who remembers the best moments of his life. And they are connected with the image of the beloved.

The genre is a love letter. “...You appeared before me...” - the hero turns to his “genius of pure beauty”, she became a consolation and happiness for him.

For this work A.S. Pushkin chooses iambic pentameter and cross rhyme. Using these means, the feeling of the story is conveyed. It’s as if we see and hear the lyrical hero live, who slowly tells his story.

Composition

The ring composition of the work is based on an antithesis. The poem is divided into six quatrains.

1. The first quatrain tells about the “wonderful moment” when the hero first saw the heroine.
2. Then, by contrast, the author paints the difficult, gray days without love, when the image of the beloved gradually began to fade from memory.
3. But in the finale the heroine appears to him again. Then “life, tears, and love” are resurrected in his soul again.

Thus, the work is framed by two wonderful meetings of heroes, a moment of charm and insight.

Images and symbols

The lyrical hero in the poem “I remember a wonderful moment...” represents a man whose life changes as soon as an invisible feeling of attraction to a woman appears in his soul. Without this feeling, the hero does not live, he exists. Only a beautiful image of pure beauty can fill his being with meaning.

In the work we encounter all kinds of symbols. For example, the image-symbol of a storm, as the personification of everyday hardships, everything that the lyrical hero had to endure. The symbolic image “darkness of imprisonment” refers us to the real basis of this poem. We understand that this refers to the exile of the poet himself.

And the main symbol is the “genius of pure beauty.” This is something incorporeal, beautiful. Thus, the hero elevates and spiritualizes the image of his beloved. Before us is not a simple earthly woman, but a divine being.

Topics and issues

• The central theme in the poem is love. This feeling helps the hero live and survive in harsh days. In addition, the theme of love is closely related to the theme of creativity. It is the excitement of the heart that awakens inspiration in the poet. An author can create when all-consuming emotions bloom in his soul.
• Also, A.S. Pushkin, like a real psychologist, very accurately describes the state of the hero at different periods of his life. We see how strikingly contrasting the narrator’s images are at the time of his meeting with the “genius of pure beauty” and at the time of his imprisonment in the wilderness. It's like two completely different people.
• In addition, the author touched upon the problem of lack of freedom. He describes not only his physical captivity in exile, but also an internal prison, when a person withdraws into himself, fences himself off from the world of emotions and bright colors. That is why those days of loneliness and melancholy became imprisonment for the poet in every sense.
• The problem of separation appears to the reader as an inevitable but bitter tragedy. Life circumstances often cause a rupture, which hits the nerves painfully, and then hides in the depths of memory. The hero even lost the bright memory of his beloved, because the awareness of the loss was unbearable.

Idea

The main idea of ​​the poem is that a person cannot live fully if his heart is deaf and his soul is asleep. Only by opening up to love and its passions can one truly experience this life.

The meaning of the work is that just one small event, even insignificant to those around you, can completely change you, your psychological portrait. And if you yourself change, then your attitude towards the world around you changes. This means that one moment can change your world, both external and internal. You just need not to miss it, not to lose days in the hustle and bustle.

Means of artistic expression

In his poem A.S. Pushkin uses a variety of paths. For example, to more vividly convey the hero’s state, the author uses the following epithets: “wonderful moment”, “hopeless sadness”, “tender voice”, “heavenly features”, “noisy bustle”.

We meet in the text of the work and comparisons, so already in the first quatrain we see that the appearance of the heroine is compared with a fleeting vision, and she herself is compared with the genius of pure beauty. The metaphor “a storm of rebellion scattered previous dreams” emphasizes how time unfortunately takes away from the hero his only consolation - the image of his beloved.

So, beautifully and poetically, A.S. Pushkin was able to tell his love story, unnoticed by many, but dear to him.

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TO ***

I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.

In the languor of hopeless sadness
In the worries of noisy bustle,
A gentle voice sounded to me for a long time
And I dreamed of cute features.

Years passed. The storm is a rebellious gust
Dispelled old dreams
And I forgot your gentle voice,
Your heavenly features.

In the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment
My days passed quietly
Without a deity, without inspiration,
No tears, no life, no love.

The soul has awakened:
And then you appeared again,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.

And the heart beats in ecstasy,
And for him they rose again
And deity and inspiration,
And life, and tears, and love.

A. S. Pushkin. “I remember a wonderful moment.” Listen to the poem.
This is how Yuri Solomin reads this poem.

Analysis of Alexander Pushkin’s poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment”

The poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” joins a galaxy of unique works in Pushkin’s work. In this love letter, the poet sings of tender sympathy, feminine beauty, and devotion to youthful ideals.

Who is the poem dedicated to?

He dedicates the work to the magnificent Anna Kern, the girl who made his heart beat twice as fast.

The history of creation and composition of the poem

Despite small size The poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” contains several stages from the life of the lyrical hero. Capacious, but so passionate, it reveals the state of mind of Alexander Sergeevich in the most difficult times for him.

Having met the “fleeting vision” for the first time, the poet lost his head like a youth. But his love remained unrequited, because the beautiful girl was married. Nevertheless, Pushkin discerned purity, sincerity and kindness in the object of his affection. He had to hide his timid love for Anna deeply, but it was this bright and virgin feeling that became his salvation in the days of exile.

When the poet was in southern exile and in exile in Mikhailovskoye for his freethinking and bold ideas, he gradually began to forget the “sweet features” and “gentle voice” that supported him in solitude. Detachment has filled the mind and worldview: Pushkin admits that he cannot, as before, feel the taste of life, cry, love, and only experiences mournful pain.

Days pass boringly and dullly, a joyless existence cruelly takes away the most valuable desire - to love again and receive reciprocity. But this faded time helped the prisoner grow up, part with illusions, look at “former dreams” with a sober look, learn patience and become strong in spite of all adversity.

An unexpected insight opens a new chapter for Pushkin. He meets again with an amazing muse, and his feelings are ignited by conscious affection. The image of Anna haunted the talented writer for a very long time in moments of fading hope, resurrecting his fortitude, promising sweet rapture. Now the poet’s love is mixed with human gratitude to the girl who returned his smile, fame and relevance in high circles.

It is interesting that “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” is a lyrical work that over time acquired a generalized character. In it, specific personalities are erased, and the image of the beloved is viewed from a philosophical point of view, as a standard of femininity and beauty.

Epithets, metaphors, comparisons

In the message, the author uses the reinforcing effects of poetry. Artistic media trowels are interspersed in every stanza. Readers will find vivid and living examples of epithets - “wonderful moment”, “heavenly features”, “fleeting vision”. Precisely chosen words reveal the character of the heroine being described, paint her divine portrait in the imagination, and also help to understand in what circumstances it descended on Pushkin great power love.

Blinded naive dreams the poet finally sees the light and compares this state with storms of rebellious impulses that bitingly tear the veil from the eyes. In one metaphor he manages to characterize all catharsis and rebirth.

Meanwhile, the Russian classic compares his angel with the “genius of pure beauty” and continues to worship him after returning from exile. He meets Anna as suddenly as the first time, but this moment is no longer filled with youthful love, where inspiration blindly follows feelings, but with wise maturity.

At the very end of the poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment,” Alexander Sergeevich exalts a man’s sympathy for a woman and emphasizes the importance of platonic love, which gives people the opportunity to rethink the past and accept a future in which “life, tears, and love” coexist peacefully.

I remember a wonderful moment (M. Glinka / A. Pushkin) Romancelisten.Performed by Dmitry Hvorostovsky.

To the 215th anniversary of the birth of Anna Kern and the 190th anniversary of the creation of Pushkin’s masterpiece

Alexander Pushkin will call her “the genius of pure beauty”, and will dedicate immortal poems to her... And he will write lines full of sarcasm. “How is your husband’s gout doing?.. Divine, for God’s sake, try to get him to play cards and have an attack of gout, gout! This is my only hope!.. How can I be your husband? “I can’t imagine this, just as I can’t imagine heaven,” the lover Pushkin wrote in despair in August 1825 from his Mikhailovsky in Riga to the beautiful Anna Kern.

The girl, named Anna and born in February 1800 in the house of her grandfather, Oryol governor Ivan Petrovich Wulf, “under a green damask canopy with white and green ostrich feathers in the corners,” was destined for an unusual fate.

A month before her seventeenth birthday, Anna became the wife of division general Ermolai Fedorovich Kern. The husband was fifty-three years old. Marriage without love did not bring happiness. “It is impossible to love him (my husband), I am not even given the consolation of respecting him; I’ll tell you straight - I almost hate him,” only the diary could young Anna believe in the bitterness of her heart.

At the beginning of 1819, General Kern (in fairness, one cannot help but mention his military merits: more than once he showed his soldiers examples of military valor both on the Borodino field and in the famous “Battle of the Nations” near Leipzig) arrived in St. Petersburg on business. Anna also came with him. At the same time, in the house of her aunt Elizaveta Markovna, née Poltoratskaya, and her husband Alexei Nikolaevich Olenin, president of the Academy of Arts, she first met the poet.

It was a noisy and cheerful evening, the youth were amusing themselves with games of charades, and in one of them Queen Cleopatra was represented by Anna. Nineteen-year-old Pushkin could not resist complimenting her: “Is it permissible to be so lovely!” The young beauty considered several humorous phrases addressed to her impudent...

They were destined to meet only after six for long years. In 1823, Anna, leaving her husband, went to her parents in the Poltava province, in Lubny. And soon she became the mistress of the wealthy Poltava landowner Arkady Rodzianko, a poet and friend of Pushkin in St. Petersburg.

With greed, as Anna Kern later recalled, she read all Pushkin’s poems and poems known at that time and, “admired by Pushkin,” dreamed of meeting him.

In June 1825, on her way to Riga (Anna decided to reconcile with her husband), she unexpectedly stopped in Trigorskoye to visit her aunt Praskovya Aleksandrovna Osipova, frequent and welcome guest which was her neighbor Alexander Pushkin.

At Auntie’s, Anna first heard Pushkin read “his Gypsies,” and literally “wasted with pleasure” both from the marvelous poem and from the poet’s very voice. She retained her amazing memories of that wonderful time: “...I will never forget the delight that gripped my soul. I was in ecstasy...”

And a few days later, the entire Osipov-Wulf family set off on two carriages for a return visit to neighboring Mikhailovskoye. Together with Anna, Pushkin wandered through the alleys of the old overgrown garden, and this unforgettable night walk became one of the poet’s favorite memories.

“Every night I walk through my garden and say to myself: here she was... the stone on which she tripped lies on my table near a branch of withered heliotrope. Finally, I write a lot of poetry. All this, if you like, is very similar to love.” How painful it was to read these lines to poor Anna Wulf, addressed to another Anna - after all, she loved Pushkin so passionately and hopelessly! Pushkin wrote from Mikhailovsky to Riga to Anna Wulf in the hope that she would convey these lines to her married cousin.

“Your arrival in Trigorskoye left an impression on me deeper and more painful than that which our meeting at the Olenins once made on me,” the poet confesses to the beauty, “the best thing I can do in my sad village wilderness is to try not to think.” more about you. If there was even a drop of pity for me in your soul, you, too, should wish this for me...”

And Anna Petrovna will never forget that moonlit July night when she walked with the poet along the alleys of the Mikhailovsky Garden...

And the next morning Anna was leaving, and Pushkin came to see her off. “He came in the morning and, as a farewell, brought me a copy of Chapter II of Onegin, in uncut sheets, between which I found a quarter-folded sheet of paper with poems...”

I remember a wonderful moment:
You appeared before me,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.

In the languor of hopeless sadness,
In the worries of noisy bustle,
A gentle voice sounded to me for a long time

And I dreamed of cute features.

Years passed. The storm is a rebellious gust

Dispelled old dreams
And I forgot your gentle voice,
Your heavenly features.

In the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment

My days passed quietly

Without a deity, without inspiration,
No tears, no life, no love.

The soul has awakened:
And then you appeared again,
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.

And the heart beats in ecstasy,
And for him they rose again

And deity and inspiration,
And life, and tears, and love.

Then, as Kern recalled, the poet snatched his “poetic gift” from her, and she forcibly managed to return the poems.

Much later, Mikhail Glinka would set Pushkin’s poems to music and dedicate the romance to his beloved, Ekaterina Kern, Anna Petrovna’s daughter. But Catherine will not be destined to bear the name of the brilliant composer. She will prefer another husband - Shokalsky. And the son who was born in that marriage, oceanographer and traveler Yuli Shokalsky, will glorify his family name.

And another amazing connection can be traced in the fate of Anna Kern’s grandson: he will become a friend of the son of the poet Grigory Pushkin. And all his life he will be proud of his unforgettable grandmother, Anna Kern.

Well, what was the fate of Anna herself? The reconciliation with her husband was short-lived, and soon she finally broke with him. Her life is replete with many love adventures, among her fans are Alexei Wulf and Lev Pushkin, Sergei Sobolevsky and Baron Vrevsky... And Alexander Sergeevich himself, in no way poetic, reported his victory over an accessible beauty in a famous letter to his friend Sobolevsky. The “Divine” inexplicably transformed into the “Whore of Babylon”!

But even Anna Kern’s numerous novels never ceased to amaze her former lovers with her reverent reverence “before the shrine of love.” “These are enviable feelings that never get old! – Alexey Vulf sincerely exclaimed. “After so many experiences, I did not imagine that it was still possible for her to deceive herself...”

And yet, fate was merciful to this amazing woman, gifted at birth with considerable talents and who experienced more than just pleasures in life.

At the age of forty, at the time of mature beauty, Anna Petrovna met her true love. Her chosen one was a graduate cadet corps, twenty-year-old artillery officer Alexander Vasilyevich Markov-Vinogradsky.

Anna Petrovna married him, having committed, in the opinion of her father, a reckless act: she married a poor young officer and lost the large pension that she was entitled to as the widow of a general (Anna’s husband died in February 1841).

The young husband (and he was his wife’s second cousin) loved his Anna tenderly and selflessly. Here is an example of enthusiastic admiration for a beloved woman, sweet in its artlessness and sincerity.

From the diary of A.V. Markov-Vinogradsky (1840): “My darling has brown eyes. They look luxurious in their wonderful beauty on a round face with freckles. This silk is chestnut hair, gently outlines it and shades it with special love... Small ears, for which expensive earrings are an unnecessary decoration, they are so rich in grace that you will fall in love. And the nose is so wonderful, it’s lovely!.. And all this, full of feelings and refined harmony, makes up the face of my beautiful one.”

In that happy union, a son, Alexander, was born. (Much later, Aglaya Alexandrovna, née Markova-Vinogradskaya, would give the Pushkin House a priceless relic - a miniature depicting the sweet appearance of Anna Kern, her grandmother).

The couple lived together for many years, enduring poverty and adversity, but never ceasing to tenderly love each other. And they died almost overnight, in the bad year of 1879...

Anna Petrovna was destined to outlive her adored husband by only four months. And as if in order to hear a loud noise one May morning, just a few days before his death, under the window of his Moscow house on Tverskaya-Yamskaya: sixteen horses harnessed to a train, four in a row, were dragging a huge platform with a granite block - the pedestal of the future monument to Pushkin.

Having learned the reason for the unusual street noise, Anna Petrovna sighed with relief: “Ah, finally! Well, thank God, it’s high time!..”

A legend remains to live: as if the funeral cortege with the body of Anna Kern met on its mournful path with bronze monument Pushkin, who was being taken to Tverskoy Boulevard, to the Strastnoy Monastery.

So in last time they met

Remembering nothing, not grieving about anything.

So the blizzard blows with its reckless wing

It dawned on them in a wonderful moment.

So the blizzard married tenderly and menacingly

The mortal ashes of an old woman with immortal bronze,

Two passionate lovers, sailing separately,

That they said goodbye early and met late.

A rare phenomenon: even after her death, Anna Kern inspired poets! And the proof of this is these lines from Pavel Antokolsky.

...A year has passed since Anna's death.

“Now the sadness and tears have already ceased, and the loving heart has ceased to suffer,” complained Prince N.I. Golitsyn. “Let us remember the deceased with a heartfelt word, as someone who inspired the genius poet, as someone who gave him so many “wonderful moments.” She loved a lot, and our best talents were at her feet. Let us preserve this “genius of pure beauty” with a grateful memory beyond his earthly life.”

Biographical details of life are no longer so important for an earthly woman who has turned to the Muse.

Anna Petrovna found her last refuge in the churchyard of the village of Prutnya, Tver province. On the bronze “page”, soldered into the gravestone, are the immortal lines:

I remember a wonderful moment:

You appeared before me...

A moment and an eternity. How close are these seemingly incommensurable concepts!..

"Farewell! Now it’s night, and your image appears before me, so sad and voluptuous: it seems to me that I see your gaze, your half-open lips.

Goodbye - it seems to me that I am at your feet... - I would give my whole life for a moment of reality. Farewell…".

Pushkin’s strange thing is either a confession or a farewell.

Special for the Centenary

Anna Kern: Life in the name of love Sysoev Vladimir Ivanovich

"GENIUS OF PURE BEAUTY"

"GENIUS OF PURE BEAUTY"

“The next day I was supposed to leave for Riga with my sister Anna Nikolaevna Wulf. He came in the morning and, as a farewell, he brought me a copy of the second chapter of “Onegin” (30), in uncut sheets, between which I found a four-fold sheet of paper with verses:

I remember a wonderful moment;

You appeared before me,

Like a fleeting vision

Like a genius of pure beauty.

In the languor of hopeless sadness,

In the worries of noisy bustle,

And I dreamed of cute features.

Years passed. The storm is a rebellious gust

Dispelled old dreams

Your heavenly features.

In the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment

My days passed quietly

Without a deity, without inspiration,

No tears, no life, no love.

The soul has awakened:

And then you appeared again,

Like a fleeting vision

Like a genius of pure beauty.

And the heart beats in ecstasy,

And for him they rose again

And deity and inspiration,

And life, and tears, and love!

When I was about to hide the poetic gift in the box, he looked at me for a long time, then frantically snatched it away and did not want to return it; I forcibly begged them again; I don’t know what flashed through his head then.”

What feelings did the poet possess then? Embarrassment? Excitement? Maybe doubt or even remorse?

Was this poem the result of a momentary infatuation—or a poetic epiphany? The great secret of genius... Just harmonious combination a few words, and when they sound in our imagination, a light female image, full of enchanting charm, immediately appears in our imagination, as if materializing from thin air... A poetic love letter to eternity...

Many literary scholars have subjected this poem to the most thorough analysis. Disputes about various options its interpretations, which began at the dawn of the 20th century, are still ongoing and will probably continue.

Some researchers of Pushkin’s work consider this poem to be simply a mischievous joke by the poet, who decided to create a masterpiece of love lyrics from the cliches of Russian romantic poetry of the first third of the 19th century. Indeed, out of one hundred and three of his words, more than sixty are well-worn platitudes (“tender voice”, “rebellious impulse”, “divinity”, “heavenly features”, “inspiration”, “heart beats in ecstasy”, etc.). Let's not take this view of a masterpiece seriously.

According to the majority of Pushkinists, the expression “genius of pure beauty” is an open quote from V. A. Zhukovsky’s poem “Lalla-Ruk”:

Oh! Doesn't live with us

A genius of pure beauty;

Only occasionally does he visit

Us from heavenly heights;

He is hasty, like a dream,

Like an airy morning dream;

And in holy remembrance

He is not separated from his heart!

He is only in pure moments

Being comes to us

And brings revelations

Beneficial to hearts.

For Zhukovsky, this phrase was associated with a number of symbolic images - a ghostly heavenly vision, “hasty, like a dream,” with symbols of hope and sleep, with the theme of “pure moments of being,” the separation of the heart from the “dark region of the earth,” with the theme of inspiration and revelations of the soul.

But Pushkin probably did not know this poem. Written for the holiday given in Berlin on January 15, 1821 by the Prussian King Frederick on the occasion of the arrival from Russia of his daughter Alexandra Feodorovna, the wife of Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich, it appeared in print only in 1828. Zhukovsky did not send it to Pushkin.

However, all the images symbolically concentrated in the phrase “genius of pure beauty” again appear in Zhukovsky’s poem “I used to be a young Muse” (1823), but in a different expressive atmosphere - expectations of the “giver of chants”, longing for pure genius beauty - when his star twinkles.

I used to be a young Muse

Met in the sublunary side,

And Inspiration flew

From heaven, uninvited, to me;

Pointed to everything earthly

It is a life-giving ray -

And for me at that time it was

Life and Poetry are one.

But the giver of chants

Haven't visited me for a long time;

His longed return

Should I wait until again?

Or forever my loss

And the harp will not sound forever?

But everything that is from wonderful times,

When he was available to me,

Everything from the dear dark, clear

I saved the days gone by -

Flowers of a secluded dream

And life's best flowers, -

I place it on your sacred altar,

O Genius of pure beauty!

Zhukovsky provided the symbolism associated with the “genius of pure beauty” with his own commentary. It is based on the concept of beauty. “The beautiful... has neither name nor image; it visits us in the best moments of life”; “it appears to us only in minutes, solely to speak to us, to revive us, to elevate our soul”; “Only that which is not there is beautiful”... The beautiful is associated with sadness, with the desire “for something better, secret, distant, that connects with it and that exists for you somewhere. And this desire is one of the most inexpressible proofs of the immortality of the soul.”

But, most likely, as the famous philologist Academician V.V. Vinogradov first noted in the 1930s, the image of the “genius of pure beauty” arose in Pushkin’s poetic imagination at that time not so much in direct connection with Zhukovsky’s poem “Lalla-Ruk” or “I am a young Muse, it happened,” as much as under the impression of his article “Raphael’s Madonna (From a letter about the Dresden Gallery),” published in the “Polar Star for 1824” and reproducing the legend widespread at that time about the creation of the famous painting “The Sistine Madonna”: “They say that Raphael, having stretched his canvas for this painting, did not know for a long time what would be on it: inspiration did not come. One day he fell asleep thinking about the Madonna, and surely some angel woke him up. He jumped up: she is here, shouting, he pointed to the canvas and drew the first drawing. And in fact, this is not a painting, but a vision: the longer you look, the more vividly you are convinced that something unnatural is happening before you... Here the soul of the painter... with amazing simplicity and ease, conveyed to the canvas the miracle that took place in its interior... I... clearly began to feel that the soul was spreading... It was where it can only be in the best moments of life.

The genius of pure beauty was with her:

He is only in pure moments

Genesis flies to us

And brings us visions

Inaccessible to dreams.

...And it certainly comes to mind that this picture was born in a moment of miracle: the curtain opened, and the secret of heaven was revealed to the eyes of man... Everything, even the very air, turns into a pure angel in the presence of this heavenly, passing maiden.”

The almanac “Polar Star” with Zhukovsky’s article was brought to Mikhailovskoye by A. A. Delvig in April 1825, shortly before Anna Kern arrived in Trigorskoye, and after reading this article, the image of the Madonna firmly established itself in Pushkin’s poetic imagination.

“But the moral and mystical basis of this symbolism was alien to Pushkin,” says Vinogradov. – In the poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment,” Pushkin used the symbolism of Zhukovsky, bringing it down from heaven to earth, depriving it of a religious and mystical basis...

Pushkin, merging the image of his beloved woman with the image of poetry and preserving most of Zhukovsky’s symbols, except for religious and mystical ones

Your heavenly features...

My days passed quietly

Without a deity, without inspiration...

And for him they rose again

Both deity and inspiration...

builds from this material not only a work of a new rhythmic and figurative composition, but also a different semantic resolution, alien to Zhukovsky’s ideological and symbolic concept.”

We must not forget that Vinogradov made such a statement in 1934. This was a period of widespread anti-religious propaganda and the triumph of the materialistic view of development human society. For another half a century, Soviet literary scholars did not touch upon the religious theme in the works of A. S. Pushkin.

The lines “in the silent sadness of hopeless”, “in the distance, in the darkness of imprisonment” are very consonant with “Eda” by E. A. Baratynsky; Pushkin borrowed some rhymes from himself - from Tatyana’s letter to Onegin:

And at this very moment

Isn’t it you, sweet vision...

And there is nothing surprising here - Pushkin’s work is full of literary reminiscences and even direct quotes; however, using the lines he liked, the poet transformed them beyond recognition.

According to the outstanding Russian philologist and Pushkin scholar B.V. Tomashevsky, this poem, despite the fact that it paints an idealized female image, is undoubtedly associated with A.P. Kern. “It’s not for nothing that in the very title “K***” it is addressed to the beloved woman, even if depicted in a generalized image of an ideal woman.”

This is also indicated by the list of poems compiled by Pushkin himself from 1816-1827 (it was preserved among his papers), which the poet did not include in the 1826 edition, but intended to include in his two-volume collection of poems (it was published in 1829). The poem “I remember a wonderful moment...” here has the title “To A.P. K[ern], directly indicating the one to whom it is dedicated.

Doctor of Philological Sciences N.L. Stepanov outlined the interpretation of this work that was formed in Pushkin’s times and has become a textbook: “Pushkin, as always, is extremely accurate in his poems. But, conveying the factual side of his meetings with Kern, he creates a work that also reveals the inner world of the poet himself. In the silence of Mikhailovsky solitude, a meeting with A.P. Kern evoked in the exiled poet memories of the recent storms of his life, and regret about the lost freedom, and the joy of a meeting that transformed his monotonous everyday life, and, above all, the joy of poetic creativity.”

Another researcher, E. A. Maimin, especially noted the musicality of the poem: “It’s like musical composition, given simultaneously by both real events in Pushkin’s life and in an ideal way“genius of pure beauty,” borrowed from Zhukovsky’s poetry. A certain ideality in solving the theme does not, however, negate the living spontaneity in the sound of the poem and in its perception. This feeling of living spontaneity comes not so much from the plot as from the captivating, one-of-a-kind music of the words. There is a lot of music in the poem: melodious, lasting in time, lingering music of the verse, music of feeling. And as in music, what appears in the poem is not a direct, not objectively tangible image of the beloved - but the image of love itself. The poem is based on musical variations of a limited range of images-motives: a wonderful moment - a genius of pure beauty - a deity - inspiration. By themselves, these images do not contain anything immediate, concrete. All this is from the world of abstract and high concepts. But in the overall musical design of the poem they become living concepts, living images.”

Professor B.P. Gorodetsky in his academic publication “Pushkin’s Lyrics” wrote: “The mystery of this poem is that everything we know about the personality of A.P. Kern and Pushkin’s attitude towards her, despite all the enormous reverence of the woman who turned out to be able to evoke in the soul of the poet a feeling that has become the basis of an inexpressibly beautiful work of art, does not in any way and in no way bring us closer to comprehending the secret of art that makes this poem typical of a great many similar situations and capable of ennobling and enveloping feelings with beauty millions of people...

The sudden and short-term appearance of a “fleeting vision” in the image of a “genius of pure beauty,” flashing among the darkness of imprisonment, when the poet’s days dragged on “without tears, without life, without love,” could resurrect in his soul “both deity and inspiration, / And life, and tears, and love” only in the case when all this had already been experienced by him earlier. This kind of experience took place during the first period of Pushkin’s exile - it was they who created that spiritual experience of his, without which the subsequent appearance of “Farewell” and such stunning penetrations into the depths of the human spirit as “The Spell” and “For the Shores of the Fatherland” would have been unthinkable distant." They also created that spiritual experience, without which the poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” could not have appeared.

All this should not be understood too simplistically, in the sense that for the creation of the poem, the real image of A.P. Kern and Pushkin’s relationship to her were of little significance. Without them, of course, there would be no poem. But the poem in the form in which it exists would not have existed even if the meeting with A.P. Kern had not been preceded by Pushkin’s past and the whole difficult experience of his exile. The real image of A.P. Kern seemed to resurrect the poet’s soul again, revealing to him the beauty of not only the irretrievably gone past, but also the present, which is directly and precisely stated in the poem:

The soul has awakened.

That is why the problem of the poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” should be solved, as if turning it the other way: it was not a chance meeting with A.P. Kern that awakened the poet’s soul and made the past come to life in new beauty, but, on the contrary, that process of revival and restoration mental strength poet, which began somewhat earlier, completely determined all the main characteristic features and internal content of the poem, caused by the meeting with A.P. Kern.”

Literary critic A.I. Beletsky, more than 50 years ago, first timidly expressed the idea that main character of this poem is not a woman at all, but poetic inspiration. “Completely secondary,” he wrote, “seems to us the question of the name of a real woman, who was then elevated to the heights of a poetic creation, where her real features disappeared, and she herself became a generalization, a rhythmically ordered verbal expression of a certain general aesthetic idea... Love themes in this poem is clearly subordinated to another, philosophical and psychological theme, and its main theme is the theme of the different states of the poet’s inner world in the relationship of this world with reality.”

Professor M.V. Stroganov went the furthest in identifying the image of Madonna and the “genius of pure beauty” in this poem with the personality of Anna Kern: “The poem “I remember a wonderful moment...” was written, obviously, on one night - from July 18 to 19 1825, after a joint walk between Pushkin, Kern and the Wulfs in Mikhailovskoye and on the eve of Kern’s departure to Riga. During the walk, Pushkin, according to Kern’s recollections, spoke about their “first meeting at the Olenins’, spoke enthusiastically about it, and at the end of the conversation said:<…>. You looked like such an innocent girl...” All this is included in that memory of the “wonderful moment” to which the first stanza of the poem is dedicated: both the first meeting itself and the image of Kern – “an innocent girl” (virginal). But this word - virginal - means in French the Mother of God, the Immaculate Virgin. This is how an involuntary comparison occurs: “like a genius of pure beauty.” And the next day in the morning Pushkin brought Kern a poem... The morning turned out to be wiser than the evening. Something confused Pushkin about Kern when he conveyed his poems to her. Apparently, he doubted: could she be this ideal example? Will she appear to them? - And I wanted to take away the poems. It was not possible to pick them up, and Kern (precisely because she was not that kind of woman) published them in Delvig’s almanac. All subsequent “obscene” correspondence between Pushkin and Kern can, obviously, be considered as psychological revenge on the addressee of the poem for his excessive haste and sublimity of the message.”

Literary critic S. A. Fomichev, who examined this poem from a religious and philosophical point of view in the 1980s, saw in it a reflection of episodes not so much real biography the poet, how much internal biography, “three successive states of the soul.” It was from this time that a pronounced philosophical view for this work. Doctor of Philological Sciences V.P. Grekh-nev, based on the metaphysical ideas of the Pushkin era, which interpreted man as a “small universe”, organized according to the law of the entire universe: a three-hypostatic, God-like being in the unity of the earthly shell (“body”), “ soul" and "divine spirit", saw in Pushkin's "wonderful moment" a "comprehensive concept of being" and, in general, "the whole of Pushkin." Nevertheless, both researchers recognized the “living conditionality of the lyrical beginning of the poem real source inspiration" represented by A.P. Kern.

Professor Yu. N. Chumakov turned not to the content of the poem, but to its form, specifically to the spatio-temporal development of the plot. He argued that “the meaning of a poem is inseparable from the form of its expression...” and that “form” as such “itself... acts as content...”. According to L. A. Perfileva, the author of the latest commentary on this poem, Chumakov “saw in the poem the timeless and endless cosmic rotation of the independent Pushkin Universe, created by the inspiration and creative will of the poet.”

Another researcher of Pushkin’s poetic heritage, S. N. Broitman, identified in this poem “the linear infinity of semantic perspective.” The same L.A. Perfilyeva, having carefully studied his article, stated: “Having identified “two systems of meaning, two plot-shaped series,” he also allows for their “probable multiplicity”; The researcher assumes “providence” (31) as an important component of the plot.”

Now let’s get acquainted with the rather original point of view of L.A. Perfileva herself, which is also based on a metaphysical approach to the consideration of this and many other works of Pushkin.

Abstracting from the personality of A.P. Kern as the inspirer of the poet and addressee of this poem and in general from biographical realities and based on the fact that the main quotes of Pushkin’s poem are borrowed from the poetry of V.A. Zhukovsky, who has the image of “Lalla-Ruk” (however, like other images of him romantic works) appears as an unearthly and immaterial substance: “ghost”, “vision”, “dream”, “sweet dream”, the researcher claims that Pushkin "genius of pure beauty" appears in his metaphysical reality as a “messenger of Heaven” as a mysterious intermediary between the poet’s author’s “I” and some otherworldly, higher entity - “deity”. She believes that the author’s “I” in the poem refers to the poet’s Soul. A "fleeting vision" To the poet's soul "genius of pure beauty"- this is the “moment of Truth”, divine revelation, with an instant flash illuminating and permeating the Soul with the grace of the divine Spirit. IN "languishing hopeless sadness" Perfilyeva sees the torment of the soul’s presence in the bodily shell, in the phrase “A gentle voice sounded to me for a long time”– archetypal, primary memory of the soul about Heaven. The next two stanzas “depict Being as such, marked by soul-wearying duration.” Between the fourth and fifth stanzas, providence or the “Divine Verb” is invisibly revealed, as a result of which “The soul has awakened.” It is here, in the interval of these stanzas, that “an invisible point is placed, creating the internal symmetry of the cyclically closed composition of the poem. At the same time, it is a turning point, a return point, from which the “space-time” of Pushkin’s small Universe suddenly turns, starting to flow towards itself, returning from earthly reality to the heavenly ideal. The Awakened Soul regains the ability to perceive deities. And this is the act of her second birth - a return to the divine fundamental principle - “Resurrection”.<…>This is the discovery of Truth and the return to Paradise...

The intensification of the sound of the last stanza of the poem marks the fullness of Being, the triumph of the restored harmony of the “small universe” - the body, soul and spirit of man in general or personally of the poet-author himself, that is, “the whole Pushkin.”

Summing up her analysis of Pushkin’s work, Perfilyeva suggests that it, “regardless of the role that A.P. Kern played in its creation, can be considered in the context of Pushkin’s philosophical lyrics, along with such poems as “The Poet” (which, according to the author of the article, is dedicated to the nature of inspiration), “Prophet” (dedicated to the providentiality of poetic creativity) and “I have erected a monument to myself not made by hands...” (dedicated to the incorruptibility of spiritual heritage). Among them, “I remember a wonderful moment...” is indeed, as already noted, a poem about “the whole fullness of Being” and about the dialectics of the human soul; and about “man in general”, as a Small Universe, organized according to the laws of the universe.”

It seems that foreseeing the possibility of the emergence of such a purely philosophical interpretation of Pushkin’s lines, the already mentioned N. L. Stepanov wrote: “In such an interpretation, Pushkin’s poem is deprived of its vital concreteness, that sensory-emotional principle that so enriches Pushkin’s images, gives them an earthly, realistic character . After all, if you abandon these specific biographical associations, the biographical subtext of the poem, then Pushkin’s images will lose their vital content and turn into conventionally romantic symbols that mean only the theme creative inspiration poet. We can then replace Pushkin with Zhukovsky with his abstract symbol of the “genius of pure beauty.” This will deplete the realism of the poet’s poem; it will lose those colors and shades that are so important for Pushkin’s lyrics. The strength and pathos of Pushkin’s creativity lies in the fusion, in the unity of the abstract and the real.”

But even using the most complex literary and philosophical constructions, it is difficult to dispute the statement of N. I. Chernyaev, made 75 years after the creation of this masterpiece: “With his message “K***” Pushkin immortalized her (A. P. Kern. - V.S.) just as Petrarch immortalized Laura, and Dante immortalized Beatrice. Centuries will pass, and when many historical events and historical figures will be forgotten, the personality and fate of Kern, as the inspirer of Pushkin’s muse, will arouse great interest, cause controversy, speculation and be reproduced by novelists, playwrights, and painters.”

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