Video: Illegitimate geniuses: Russian classics who were not allowed to bear the names of their real fathers
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
The famous Russian composer and chemist Alexander Borodin passed away 131 years ago. At birth, he was recorded as the son of a serf serf Prince Gedianov, who was his real father, and was deprived not only of his surname, but also of many class privileges due to his illegitimate status. Like many famous writers, poets, artists and composers who were born from serfs or foreign women out of wedlock.
Alexander Borodin was born from the extramarital affair of the 25-year-old soldier's daughter Avdotya Antonova and the 62-year-old Georgian prince Gedianov (Gedevanishvili). The boy was recorded as the son of the prince's serf, Porfiry Borodin, and received his surname and patronymic. Before his death, the prince gave his 8-year-old son freedom. Due to his illegitimate status, the boy could not attend the gymnasium. This, however, did not prevent him from getting a good education at home, enrolling in the Medical-Surgical Academy as a volunteer, obtaining a doctorate in medicine, publishing more than 40 works in chemistry, and becoming one of the founders of the classical genres of symphony and quartet in Russia.
The artist Orest Kiprensky was the son of the landowner Alexei Dyakonov and the serf peasant Anna Gavrilova. To hide the fact of the birth of an illegitimate son, the landowner married Anna to a courtyard, Adam Schwalbe, in whose family his son grew up. He received his surname, according to one version, by the name of the estate where he was baptized - Koporye - Koporsky, and later it was changed to a more harmonious version - Kiprensky; according to another version, it was named after the patroness of lovers, Cypride (Aphrodite). At the age of 6, the boy received his freedom, and when his father noticed his abilities, he sent him to the school at the Academy of Arts. All his life Orest Kiprensky called Adam Schwalbe his father and, having painted his portrait, presented him at an exhibition in Italy called "Portrait of a Father". The artist became one of the best portrait painters of the early 19th century, creating the famous portraits of A. Pushkin, E. Davydov, Z. Volkonskaya, V. Zhukovsky and other prominent contemporaries.
The poet Vasily Zhukovsky was also an illegitimate child. His mother was the Turkish woman Salha, who was captured during the Russian-Turkish war, and the Tula landowner Afanasy Bunin became his father. Since all of Bunin's legitimate sons died in childhood, his wife agreed to adopt Vasily. From a legal point of view, this was impossible, so he bore the surname and patronymic not of his own father, but of his adopted landowner Andrei Zhukovsky. In his own family, he grew up as a pupil. And in order for the illegitimate son to receive the privileges of the nobility, he was enrolled in fictitious military service in infancy - to receive the nobility through the officer's rank.
From one of his foreign trips, a wealthy landowner Ivan Yakovlev brought 16-year-old German woman Henrietta Hague, from whom he soon had an illegitimate son, Alexander. This marriage was not officially registered, and the father invented the surname for the illegitimate son from the German word "Herz" - "heart" - Herzen, which symbolized Yakovlev's heartfelt affection for his mother. This is how the future famous writer and revolutionary Alexander Herzen was born.
From Germany he brought himself a bride, who became his legal wife only 2 years after the birth of his son, and the landowner Shenshin. At the same time, at that time, the girl was married, and she was simply kidnapped (with her own consent) and taken to Russia. Charlotte Fet's son Athanasius was born in 1820, but who his father was - the legal German husband Johann Fet or the illegal Russian husband - was not known for sure. Until the age of 14, the boy bore the surname Shenshin, but then he was deprived of his father's name and the right of inheritance as an illegitimate child and a foreigner. All his life the poet was tormented by his origin. Only in 1846 he was returned to Russian citizenship, and from 1873, with the permission of Emperor Alexander II, he was again able to bear the surname Shenshin. When the commoner Fet became the nobleman Shenshin, Turgenev reacted to it like this: "". And the poet entered the history of Russian literature under the name Afanasy Fet.
Artist Vasily Perov, one of the founding members of the Association of Traveling Exhibitions, was the son of Baron Grigory Kridener and the petty bourgeoisie Akulina Ivanova. Despite the fact that his parents were soon married, their son was listed as illegitimate and was deprived of the rights to his father's surname and title. According to his godfather, at first he was Vasiliev, and when the literacy teacher noticed his ability, the boy received the name Perov - for his skillful use of the pen and zeal in calligraphy.
Art critics suggest that it is the artist's illegitimate birth that reveals the riddle of "Poor Liza" by Kiprensky: why this picture aroused special feelings in him.
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