That wonderful moment you appeared before me. I remember a wonderful moment

K Kern*

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 the poem “I remember a wonderful moment” by Pushkin

The first lines of the poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” are known to almost everyone. This is one of Pushkin's most famous lyrical works. The poet was a very amorous person, and dedicated many of his poems to women. In 1819 he met A.P. Kern, who captured his imagination for a long time. In 1825, during the poet’s exile in Mikhailovskoye, the poet’s second meeting with Kern took place. Under the influence of this unexpected meeting, Pushkin wrote the poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment.”

The short work is an example of a poetic declaration of love. In just a few stanzas, Pushkin unfolds before the reader the long history of his relationship with Kern. The expression “genius of pure beauty” very succinctly characterizes enthusiastic admiration for a woman. The poet fell in love at first sight, but Kern was married at the time of the first meeting and could not respond to the poet’s advances. The image of a beautiful woman haunts the author. But fate separates Pushkin from Kern for several years. These turbulent years erase the “nice features” from the poet’s memory.

In the poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment,” Pushkin shows himself to be a great master of words. He had the amazing ability to say an infinite amount in just a few lines. In a short verse, a period of several years appears before us. Despite the conciseness and simplicity of the syllable, the author conveys to the reader changes in his emotional mood, allowing him to experience joy and sadness with him.

The poem is written in the genre of pure love lyrics. The emotional impact is enhanced by lexical repetitions of several phrases. Their precise arrangement gives the work its uniqueness and grace.

The creative legacy of the great Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin is enormous. “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” is one of the most precious pearls of this treasure.

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 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, whose frequent and welcome guest 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 Alexey 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 of the cadet corps, a 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 a bronze monument to Pushkin, which was being taken to Tverskoy Boulevard, to the Strastnoy Monastery.

That's how they last 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

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 this case about the two most significant ones, and managed to convey the image of the heroine touchingly and sublimely.

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 had more 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 the feelings and emotions of the lyrical hero, who recalls 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.

The first quatrain tells about the “wonderful moment” when the hero first saw the heroine.
Then, by contrast, the author paints the difficult, gray days without love, when the image of the beloved gradually began to fade from memory.
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, as 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 for 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.

Interesting? Save it on your wall!

Pushkin was a passionate, enthusiastic person. He was attracted not only by revolutionary romance, but also by female beauty. Reading the poem “I remember a wonderful moment” by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin means experiencing the excitement of beautiful romantic love with him.

Regarding the history of the creation of the poem, written in 1825, the opinions of researchers of the work of the great Russian poet were divided. The official version says that A.P. was the “genius of pure beauty.” Kern. But some literary scholars believe that the work was dedicated to the wife of Emperor Alexander I, Elizaveta Alekseevna, and is of a chamber nature.

Pushkin met Anna Petrovna Kern in 1819. He instantly fell in love with her and for many years kept the image that struck him in his heart. Six years later, while serving his sentence in Mikhailovskoye, Alexander Sergeevich met with Kern again. She was already divorced and led a fairly free lifestyle for the 19th century. But for Pushkin, Anna Petrovna continued to remain a kind of ideal, a model of piety. Unfortunately, for Kern, Alexander Sergeevich was only a fashionable poet. After a fleeting romance, she did not behave properly and, according to Pushkin scholars, forced the poet to dedicate the poem to himself.

The text of Pushkin’s poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” is conventionally divided into 3 parts. In the title stanza, the author enthusiastically talks about his first meeting with an amazing woman. Delighted, in love at first sight, the author is perplexed, is this a girl, or a “fleeting vision” that is about to disappear? The main theme of the work is romantic love. Strong, deep, it absorbs Pushkin completely.

The next three stanzas tell the story of the author's exile. This is a difficult time of “languishing hopeless sadness,” parting with former ideals, and confronting the harsh truth of life. Pushkin of the 20s was a passionate fighter who sympathized with revolutionary ideals and wrote anti-government poetry. After the death of the Decembrists, his life seemed to freeze and lose its meaning.

But then Pushkin again meets his former love, which seems to him a gift of fate. Youthful feelings flare up with renewed vigor, the lyrical hero seems to awaken from hibernation, feels the desire to live and create.

The poem is taught in a literature lesson in 8th grade. It is quite easy to learn, since at this age many experience first love and the poet’s words resonate in the heart. You can read the poem online or download it on our website.

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.

On this day - July 19, 1825 - the day of Anna Petrovna Kern’s departure from Trigorskoye, Pushkin presented her with the poem “K*”, which is an example of high poetry, a masterpiece of Pushkin's lyricism. Everyone who values Russian poetry knows him. But in the history of literature there are few works that would raise as many questions among researchers, poets, and readers. Who was the real woman who inspired the poet? What connected them? Why did she become the addressee of this poetic message?

The history of the relationship between Pushkin and Anna Kern is very confused and contradictory. Despite the fact that their relationship gave birth to one of the poet’s most famous poems, this novel can hardly be called fateful for both.

The 20-year-old poet first met 19-year-old Anna Kern, the wife of 52-year-old General E. Kern, in 1819 in St. Petersburg, in the house of the president of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, Alexei Olenin. Sitting at dinner not far from her, he tried to attract her attention. When Kern got into the carriage, Pushkin went out onto the porch and watched her for a long time.

Their second meeting took place only six long years later. In June 1825, while in Mikhailovsky exile, Pushkin often visited relatives in the village of Trigorskoye, where he met Anna Kern again. In her memoirs, she wrote: “We were sitting at dinner and laughing... suddenly Pushkin came in with a big thick stick in his hands. My aunt, next to whom I was sitting, introduced him to me. He bowed very low, but did not say a word: timidity was visible in his movements. I also couldn’t find anything to say to him, and it took us a while to get acquainted and start talking.”

Kern stayed in Trigorskoye for about a month, meeting with Pushkin almost daily. The unexpected meeting with Kern, after a 6-year break, made an indelible impression on him. In the poet’s soul “an awakening has come” - an awakening from all the difficult experiences endured “in the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment” - in many years of exile. But the poet in love clearly did not find the right tone, and, despite Anna Kern’s reciprocal interest, a decisive explanation did not happen between them.

On the morning before Anna's departure, Pushkin gave her a present - the first chapter of Eugene Onegin, which had just been published. Between the uncut pages lay a piece of paper with a poem written at night...

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.

From the memoirs of Anna Kern we know how she begged the poet for a sheet of paper with these verses. When the woman was about to hide it in her box, the poet suddenly frantically snatched it from her hands and did not want to give it back for a long time. Kern begged forcibly. “What flashed through his head then, I don’t know,” she wrote in her memoirs. By all appearances, it turns out that we should be grateful to Anna Petrovna for preserving this masterpiece for Russian literature.

15 years later, composer Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka wrote a romance based on these words and dedicated it to the woman with whom he was in love - Anna Kern's daughter Catherine.

For Pushkin, Anna Kern was truly a “fleeting vision.” In the wilderness, on her aunt’s Pskov estate, the beautiful Kern captivated not only Pushkin, but also her neighboring landowners. In one of his many letters, the poet wrote to her: “Frivolity is always cruel... Farewell, divine, I’m furious and falling at your feet.” Two years later, Anna Kern no longer aroused any feelings in Pushkin. The “genius of pure beauty” disappeared, and the “harlot of Babylon” appeared - that’s what Pushkin called her in a letter to a friend.

We will not analyze why Pushkin’s love for Kern turned out to be just a “wonderful moment,” which he prophetically announced in poetry. Whether Anna Petrovna herself was to blame for this, whether the poet or some external circumstances were to blame - the question remains open in special research.