Was there really a love affair between Pushkin and Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna: The Secret of the Great Classic

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Everyone knows the great poet's passion for Ekaterina Bakunina, whom Pushkin himself called his first love. But was the first deep feeling really evoked by a young girl, while before meeting her impressionable Alexander had personally observed the captivating beauty and grace of Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna? It is unlikely that the beautiful image of a young woman, and even of royal blood, did not leave a trace in the heart of an aspiring poet. However, about what was happening in the soul of a teenager, the matured Pushkin preferred to remain silent, leaving his descendants only hints of his secret, behind which, perhaps, love was hidden, which became truly his first.

When Pushkin first saw Elizaveta Alekseevna and how the empress struck him

The future empress arrived in Russia in 1792, when Catherine II wanted to marry her beloved grandson Alexander and chose the daughters of Margrave Karl Ludwig of Baden - Louise Maria Augusta and Frederick Dorothea. After the show, the chosen one of 15-year-old Alexander was 13-year-old Louise, who on May 10, 1793 became engaged to the son of Paul I, taking the name Elizaveta Alekseevna along with Orthodoxy.

The young Pushkin saw the Empress for the first time on October 19, 1811. On this day, the grand opening of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum took place. Alexander I and his wife honored the event with their presence. Despite her high position, the queen's behavior lacked the formality dictated by etiquette - she communicated with everyone in a friendly and unconstrained manner, captivating both professors and lyceum students.

12-year-old Alexander was no exception - charmed, almost at first sight, by the natural beauty, innate grace and sincere benevolence of Elizaveta Alekseevna, the sensual poet retained childhood impressions for life. Later, namely in 1818, he reflected these impressions in the poem "To N. Ya. Plyuskova" ("On a modest, noble lyre …"). But before that, namely in 1816, the teenager more than once managed to contemplate the empress, when she, surrounded by the maid of honor, visited Tsarskoe Selo to spend the summer.

How Elizaveta Alekseevna saved Pushkin from exile to Siberia

Elizaveta Alekseevna did not enjoy the favor of either the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, or the royal spouse, who for a long time, without hiding, cohabited with the maid of honor Maria Naryshkina. On the other hand, the "sovereign's wife", burdened by the secular society, was extremely popular among the enlightened aristocrats, who appreciated her for her charitable work shown during the war with Napoleon, as well as the courage that she showed in the difficult circumstances of her personal life.

Alexander I, on the contrary, despite the recent victory in the war, did not arouse sympathy with his rule among the noble youth, who longed for liberal changes and real reforms that could limit the autocracy and destroy the obvious relic of feudalism - serfdom. Pushkin, who was a member of the Green Lamp, a free literary society, and absorbed the spirit of freedom from conversations, allowed himself to compose epigrams and poems that exposed the emperor and his entourage in a very hard-hitting light.

The authorities noticed the poetic liberties pretty quickly, and the payback for them was serious - they were sent to the Solovetsky Monastery. But thanks to the intercession of Elizaveta Alekseevna, who highly appreciated the talent of young Pushkin and respected Karamzin and Chaadaev, who asked her for help, the severe punishment did not take place: the monastery was replaced by expulsion from St. Petersburg. In May 1820, the poet was sent into exile in the south of the Empire in Bessarabia, having been banned from living in the capital and Moscow until further notice.

Who is NN, or what are Pushkin's ciphers "talking about"

Alexander Sergeevich was famous for his ardent and amorous nature, which became the reason for his numerous novels, including with married ladies. At the same time, he did not hide his loves and connections, telling his friends about them orally and in writing. In 1829, he personally compiled a list of women whom he was fond of at different periods of his life, and wrote it down in the album of Elizaveta Ushakova, the future wife of his friend S. D. Kiselyov. In this list, among the easily identifiable names of the former "muses", there are two letters NN. Who is hiding behind this anonymous designation, neither the contemporaries of Alexander Sergeevich, nor the present-day Pushkinists could guess. There are only many versions of who could be the poet's "hidden love": Maria Raevskaya, who later became the wife of the Decembrist Volkonsky, and Ekaterina Karamzina, and Tatar Anna Ivanovna, who was the Raevskys' companion, were called as an option.

However, the existing guesses are hardly close to the truth: nothing prevented Pushkin from writing openly the name of one of the persons mentioned in the same way as he did not conceal the names of 36 other women from the list. But among them there were married, and titled, and beauties older than the poet by 20 years. But if we assume that not a mere mortal was hiding behind the nameless NN, then such secrecy is easily explained: Alexander Pushkin, for all his frivolity, did not even want to mention the name of the one who, in distant October 1811, caused his first teenage crush. So he tried to protect his ideal from idle speculation and gossip that constantly accompanied the novels of the "beacon of Russian poetry" - and he succeeded.

Was there a love triangle "Pushkin-Elizaveta Alekseevna-Alexander I"?

At the time when Pushkin first saw the empress, she was a 32-year-old woman who survived the death of two young daughters and the loss of her lover, the cavalry guard Alexei Okhotnikov, who became the father of her second child. And if historical documents and records of eyewitnesses of the events have been preserved about this connection, then there is no information about the existence of close relations between Elizaveta Alekseevna and the young Pushkin.

Even the poet's secret platonic love for the wife of Alexander I is only an assumption, in favor of which only the episodic mention of the empress in the poet's verses, the mysterious NN in Ushakova's magazine and the drawn profile of a woman similar to Elizabeth speaks.

However, there is one more detail that can hardly be attributed to a mere coincidence. Departing from Moscow to the Caucasus in 1829, Alexander Sergeevich made a big detour in order to make a special trip to Belev. There he visited the crypt where part of the remains of the queen, who died in 1826, rested. It happened just in May, the month when the soul of Elizaveta Alekseevna left the mortal world, which brought her nothing but suffering, loss and high origin.

But many classics, including Pushkin, were participants in military conflicts.