A genius of pure beauty. "The genius of pure beauty

“I remember a 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 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.

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 the woman who captivated his imagination for many years. 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.

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? Great is the secret of genius... Just a harmonious combination of a few words, and when they sound, a light female image, full of enchanting charm, immediately appears in our imagination, as if materializing out of thin air... A poetic love letter to eternity...

Many literary scholars have subjected this poem to the most thorough analysis. Disputes about various options for its interpretation, 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 tearing 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 the development of 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 a musical composition, given both by real events in Pushkin’s life and by the ideal image of the “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 lofty 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 that 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 glory, but, on the contrary, that process of revival and restoration of spiritual the poet’s strength, 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 the main character of this poem is not a woman at all, but a 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... The theme of love in this The 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 of the poet’s real biography, but rather of an internal biography, “three successive states of the soul.” It was from this time that a clearly expressed philosophical view of this work emerged. 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 as a real source of inspiration” in the person of 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 admits 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 his 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”, the divine Revelation, which with an instant flash illuminates and permeates 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 of 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, meaning only the theme of the poet’s creative inspiration. 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 inspiration of Pushkin’s muse, will arouse great interest, cause controversy, speculation and be reproduced by novelists, playwrights, and painters.”

100 thousand - on a blank piece of paper The next day came, and our hero found himself again before the gaze of the highest. This time the owner was not alone: ​​sitting next to him was a plump little man with a long, gristly nose and wearing pince-nez. “Well, Wolf, let’s continue.” I heard you're good at

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