The epithet "first" is often combined with the name of Anthony Pogorelsky. He is the author of the first fantastic story in Russian literature, one of the first "family" novels, the first story-fairy tale for children "The Black Hen, or Underground inhabitants". The tale was published in 1828 and brought the author a long fame as an outstanding children's writer, although it was his only creation for little readers.
The literary activity of the writer (his real name is Aleksey Alekseevich Perovsky, 1787-1836) lasted only five years: in 1825 his story "Lafertovskaya poppy seed" was published, and in 1830 - the novel "Monastyrka"
The last years of his life Perovsky spent in his small Little Russian estate Pogoreltsy (hence his pseudonym), devoting himself to literary activity and the upbringing of Alyosha's nephew - later the famous writer A.K. Tolstoy. He was told the story of the Black Hen, which formed the basis of the tale-tale.
Obviously, precisely because at first it was a living story for a small listener, the verbal fabric of the story is so light, so soft intonations, clear thoughts and detailed descriptions. Apparently, the author tried to convey to the boy the impressions of his own childhood, his memories of the Petersburg boarding house, from where he fled, injuring his leg, which caused him to limp all his life. In "Black Chicken ..." traces of German romantic literature, in particular legends about the dwarves, are also visible. But the main thing in the story is attention to the formation of the character of the child, to the psychological characteristics of childhood, the gradual introduction of the child to the perception of facts and reasoning on abstract topics.
Here Pogorelsky showed himself as a writer of a realistic direction. The hero of the story, the boy Alyosha, is a psychologically convincing, living image of a child. The experiences of a little man living in a boarding house, yearning for his parents, his fantasies, relationships with teachers, love for animals - all this is reflected in the story, recreated with the talent of a true children's writer, whose skill was also manifested in the organic fusion of the fantastic and the real.
Alyosha, who was alone at the boarding house on Saturday, had the only consolation for the books that the German teacher allowed him to borrow from his library. And at that time in German literature the fashion for knightly novels and magical stories full of mysticism reigned. And in Alyosha, "a young imagination wandered through knightly castles, over terrible ruins or through dark dense forests."
It is no wonder that a real black chicken, to which Alyosha is so attached that he gave his grandmother's gift - a gold coin for her salvation - in the boy's dream turns into a magical creature - the minister of the underworld. Such a fusion of magical and real plans is quite consistent with the emotional state of the child, when he is immersed in dreams and does not really distinguish between fiction and reality. The story is intended for the reader, for whom dreaming, fantasizing is the same as breathing.
Pogorelsky was one of the first in Russian literature to succeed in subordinating the pedagogical task to fiction. It is quite possible to apply the definition of N.I. Novikova - raising a child "in a pleasant way for him." Using Alyosha's example, he convincingly showed what was good and what was bad. It is bad to be lazy, to show off in front of your comrades, to be frivolous and talkative (after all, because of this, misfortune happened in the underworld). And good traits are also clearly defined in Alyosha's actions. The author also shows the intrinsic value of childhood, the richness of the child's mental world, his independence in determining good and evil, the direction of his creative abilities. For the first time since the "Knight of Our Time" N.М. Karamzin's hero is a child.
Since the publication of "The Black Hen ..." one of the leading ideas of Russian literature has become the main idea of \u200b\u200bPogorelsky: the child easily passes from the world of dreams and naive fantasies into the world of complex feelings and responsibility for their deeds and actions.
An important merit of the Pogorelskogs is that with his story "The Black Hen, or Underground inhabitants" he actually laid the foundation for the formation of the language of Russian children's prose. His work is written in the same language that was constantly heard in cultural families of that time - without the bookish and outdated words that are difficult for children.
The artistic merit and pedagogical focus of Pogorelsky's story made it an outstanding work of 19th century literature. It opens up the history of Russian fictional children's prose, the history of autobiographical prose about childhood.
Antony Pogorelsky, a short biography of a Russian writer, a member of the Russian Academy, is included in this article.
Anthony Pogorelsky short biography
The real name of the writer is Aleksey Alekseevich Perovsky. The exact date of his birth has not been established. It is known that he was born in 1787 and came from a very famous family. He was the illegitimate son of Count Alexei Kirillovich Razumovsky. Alexey Perovsky spent all his childhood in the estate of Count Razumovsky in Ukraine, where he received his primary education.
In 1805 he entered Moscow University, and graduated two years later with a doctorate in philosophy and verbal sciences.
From a young age he had the ability to write, he was familiar with many writers - Karamzin, Zhukovsky, Turgenev. But at that time he saw his purpose only in the public service.
From 1808 to 1812 he was in the service (various positions) in the provinces and in St. Petersburg. When the Patriotic War began in 1812, Pogorelsky, against the will of his father, leaves the post of Secretary of the Minister of Finance and goes to the army. He served in the third Ukrainian Cossack regiment and took an active part in partisan raids and major battles.
Until 1816 he served in Saxony, occupied by the Allies, as an adjutant of Princess N. G. Repnina. Here Pogorelsky gets acquainted with creativity, which in the future had a significant impact on him.
In 1816, the future poet leaves the service and returns to St. Petersburg, where he continued to carry out civil service. During this period, the circle of his literary acquaintances rapidly expanded. Pogorelsky enters the Arzamas circle and meets. In addition to all this, he becomes an educator for his nephew - whose mother was Pogorelsky's sister, left her husband shortly after the birth of their common son.
In 1822, the writer's father died and Pogorelsky inherited, in which he lived for a long time, and from whose name he took a pseudonym. Under such a pseudonym as Pogorelsky, in 1825 the first significant artistic work of the writer was published - a story called "Lafertovskaya poppy seed". By the way, the highly valued Pogoreltsy estate in Ukraine went to Pushkin after the death of the owner.
Later, in 1828, a collection called "The Double, or My Evenings in Little Russia" was published.
Pogorelsky's children's fantastic story "The Black Hen" also dates back to 1829, and in 1830 the publication of the most famous and major work of the poet, the novel "Monastyrka", began.
All published works of Anthony Pogorelsky turned out to be too innovative for their time and caused a storm of extensive discussions.
In 1830, Pogorelsky decided to finally retire. The writer lived on his estate, Pogoreltsy, traveled to Russia and Europe, and devoted much time to raising his nephew. Died Anthony Pogorelsky 1836 on the way to Nice for treatment for tuberculosis.
Anthony Pogorelsky - a pseudonym; real name - Alexey Alekseevich Perovsky; Russian Empire, Moscow; 1787 - 06/21/1836
Anthony Pogorelsky is one of the classics of Russian literature. First of all, he is known for the fairy tale "The Black Hen or Underground inhabitants", which became one of the first works in our country about childhood. Due to the fact that this tale of Pogorelsky should be read in accordance with the school curriculum, it became widely known. But other books and poems by Pogorelsky deserve close attention.
Biography of Anthony Pogorelsky
Anthony Pogorelsky or Aleksey Alekseevich Perovsky was born in 1787 in Moscow. He was the illegitimate son of Alexei Razumovsky, the Minister of Education of the Russian Empire and the son of the last hetman of the Zaporozhye Army. Alexei spent his childhood in the Rozumovsky estate, where he received an excellent education at home. In 1805, he entered Moscow University, where two years later he received a doctorate in philosophy and verbal sciences.
The first book by Anthony Pogorelsky was, which he translated into German while still studying at the university. After graduation, three books by Pogorelsky on botany were published. And in the same 1808 he entered the service in the 6th department of the Senate. In 1812, against the wishes of his father, he went to serve in the army, where he took part in a considerable number of battles as part of the 3rd Ukrainian Cossack Regiment. He retired in 1816.
After Aleksey Perovsky left the army, he settled in St. Petersburg, where he became one of the members of the "Arzamas" circle. At that time, it included and. By the way, it was Perovsky who put a lot of effort fighting off the attacks of his contemporaries on. After the birth of his nephew Alexei Tolstoy in 1817, he devoted a lot of time to his education. In 1822, after the death of his father, together with his nephew and his sister, he moved to an estate in the Chernigov province. It was here, in 1822, that he wrote his first story under the pseudonym Anthony Pogorelsky. Prior to that, his works were published under various other pseudonyms ranging from "ъ" to "Pogorelsky". The story was called "The Double or My Evenings in Little Russia." It consisted of four short stories, united by a common meaning. By the way, it was the "Double", as many believe, became a model for writing.
Well, in 1829, it became possible to read the tale of Anthony Pogorelsky "The Black Hen or Underground inhabitants". He wrote this tale for his beloved nephew with whom he traveled a lot around Europe. After that, there were several more books by Anthony Pogorelsky, which were quite favorably received by the public, but now they are practically forgotten. The writer died in 1833 on the way to Nice from tuberculosis.
Books by Anthony Pogorelsky on the site Top books
Due to the fact that the tale of Anthony Pogorelsky is so popular to read, it got into our rating. In addition, the presence of a fairy tale in school curriculum ensured her such popularity that this work of Antoniy Pogorelsky is presented in the rating. And given all these parameters, Pogorelsky's tale is presented in our ratings not for the last time.
Anthony Pogorelsky list of books
- Double, or My evenings in Little Russia
- Magnetizer
- Monastyrka
- Visitor magic
ANTONY POGORELSKY (1787-1836)
The writer Anthony Pogorelsky is perhaps hardly familiar to the modern general reader. The life fate of Aleksey Alekseevich Perovsky - this is his real name - due to the paucity of preserved information, we know only in the most general outlines: a brilliant and comprehensively educated man, reminiscent of Byron's beautiful appearance and slight limp, an influential dignitary, a friend of Pushkin, Vyazemsky, Zhukovsky ...
Delving deeper into the history of literature, during the infancy of Russian prose, we often find the word "first" next to Pogorelsky's name: the first Russian science fiction story comes out from under his pen, one of the first everyday, "family" novels.
“The best of the worst, that is, if you will, very good writer... ". This paradoxical assessment, which belonged to N. G. Chernyshevsky, refers to Anthony Pogorelsky, who stood at the origins of Russian romantic prose.
A not very zealous writer, one might say, absent-minded, writing a little and unhurriedly, Pogorelsky nevertheless occupied a noticeable place in the literature of the 1820-1830s. Researchers unanimously acknowledge a number of important merits for him in the development of Russian prose of the "pre-Pushkin" and "pre-Pushkin" periods, in the formation and formation of a romantic trend.
The literary heritage is small, but it has hardly been studied. His archive almost disappeared without a trace, carelessly provided by the writer to the will of fate and the game of chance. In the last years of his life, completely leaving literary activityindifferent to literary fame, Pogorelsky cared little about him. According to the legend, the manager of his estate, a passionate gourmet, took out the papers of his patron for his favorite dish - cutlets in papillotes ...
Having entered literature as a "Karamzinist", then involved in the Pushkin circle, Pogorelsky continued creatively not only in such his closest younger contemporaries as Gogol or V. Odoevsky, but also to a large extent in the next literary generation - primarily in his nephew, his pupil Alexei Konstaninovich Tolstoy , on the creative formation of which he had a considerable influence.
Alexei Alekseevich Perovsky was born in the reign of Catherine in 1787 in the village of Perovo near Moscow. He was the illegitimate son of Count Alexei Kirillovich Razumovsky and "maiden" Maria Mikhailovna Sobolevskaya. This union turned out to be lasting: it lasted until the death of Razumovsky and gave numerous and bright offspring. The count, in addition to his legal wife and offspring, had ten more children from the bourgeois woman Maria Sobolevskaya. In the 1810s, Emperor Alexander I, at the request of the count, granted all his "pupils" a title of nobility, however, he flatly refused to do the same for their mother. The illegitimate children of Alexei Kirillovich received the surname Perovskys - from the Razumovskys' estate near Moscow, Perovo, where Empress Elizaveta Petrovna secretly married their great-uncle and her favorite. The Razumovsky family itself could not boast of antiquity: only by the middle of the eighteenth century, it dizzily ascended from the Chernigov peasants to the first courtiers and statesmen thanks to the favor of Elizabeth Petrovna to the handsome shepherd and singer of the village church Alexei Rozum. The writer's father, Count Alexei Kirillovich Razumovsky, was the son of the President of the Academy of Arts and the last hetman of Ukraine Kirill Razumovsky, as well as the nephew of the Elizabethan favorite A. Razumovsky and the grandson of the register Cossack Grigory Rozum.
It must be said that the count's "pupils" turned out to be extremely worthy people. The sons were especially famous. So, Lev Perovsky was a military man, and later the minister of internal affairs and estates. Vasily Perovsky also rose to high ranks; in the middle of the 19th century, he served as governor-general of Samara and Orenburg. In 1833, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin visited him in Orenburg, collecting materials for the "History of the Pugachev rebellion" in the Urals. A little later, in the Separate Orenburg Corps, which was also subordinate to V. Perovsky, the poet and artist Taras Shevchenko served his exile as an ordinary soldier. Our hero, Alexei Perovsky, became a prominent figure in public education and a romantic writer under the pseudonym Anthony Pogorelsky. As for the Perovskys' daughters, for example, one of them, Anna, married Count Konstantin Tolstoy, brother of the outstanding artist and medalist Fyodor Tolstoy. In 1817, they had a son, the future wonderful poet, writer and playwright and author of the most interesting horrible stories, Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy. The husband of another daughter, Olga, was the Novgorod landowner M. Zhemchuzhnikov. From this marriage there were two sons, who also later became famous ... The famous terrorist-populist Sofya Perovskaya also emerged from the Perovski family.
"Accidental" offspring of one of the most famous "accidental" families in Russia, Aleksey Perovsky spends his childhood in Pochep - his father's estate in Bryansk, where he, having retired from state affairs with the accession of Paul I, lives at this time. Children live in luxury, but in the position of orphans and foster children. The father - an arrogant, bilious, earnest freemason - and a Voltairean, a misanthrope, equally capable of Christian humility and cruelty - acted at first in the role of a benefactor, and it seems children were rarely allowed to see him. There is evidence that Count Alexei Kirillovich was especially fond of the eldest - Alexei.
Nevertheless, the Perovskys receive an excellent and versatile education at home. When Razumovsky - not without difficulty - achieves their elevation to the nobility, the future writer gets the opportunity to continue his education at Moscow University. This happened in August 1805. Two years later, in October 1807, he graduated from the university and received the highest degree - Doctor of Philosophy and Verbal Sciences. The three obligatory trial lectures he read (two of which Perovsky, in excess of the established requirements, read in German and French) were devoted to botany, the subject of a father's passion, grafted to his son: 1) “How to distinguish animals from plants and what is their attitude to minerals "in German" Wie sind Thiere und Gewachse von einander unterschieden und welches ist ihr Verhaltnis zu den Mineralien "2)" On the purpose and benefits of the Linear system of plants "in French" Sur le but et l'utilite du systeme des plautes de Linne "3)" About plants that would be useful to propagate in Russia "in Russian. The address to the professors, which preceded the third, Russian lecture, exposed the young candidate for doctor Karamzin's admirer. These lectures can be considered a kind of approach to serious literary works, so clearly shows up in them an orientation towards the narrative techniques of Karamzin, whose ardent admirer was the young author. They also contain the grain of Perovsky's hobbies for agriculture, which was largely facilitated by his participation in the management of his father's huge estates. Perovsky's first literary experience dates back to the same time: in 1807 he translated Karamzin's Poor Liza into German, considering it a "delightful work", "magnificent" and "beautiful" precisely "in the way of its presentation." His work, published in Moscow, Perovsky devotes "to his Excellency Mr. Privy Counselor and actual chamberlain, Count Alexei Razumovsky." The ceremony and "etiquette" of this dedication quite expressively depicts the nature of the relationship between father and son, there is some kind of historical paradox in the fact of dedication: in the coming years, Razumovsky, already as Minister of Public Education, will receive denunciations from PI Golenishchev. Kutuzov against the dangerous freethinker Karamzin. “If my experience had succeeded in the best possible way,” wrote Perovsky, “even then, had it not been for your approval, I would have considered it very imperfect. My only wish is that you take these sheets of paper as a sign of perfect respect and as the only proof of boundless gratitude available to me, which I owe you. Your lordship's most devoted servant ... "
A year after Poor Liza, in 1808, Perovsky's lectures at the university were published as a separate book, this time with a dedication to Alexei Kirillovich's brother Lev Kirillovich Razumovsky. A tray copy of the book is also known to the Count's sister Natalya Kirillovna Zagryazhskaya - the same Zagryazhskaya, with whom Pushkin later became related through his wife and whom he loved so much. All these, it would seem, are secondary, but very indicative facts of the recognition of the illegitimate son of A.K. Razumovsky as the closest noble relatives. This undoubtedly had important and beneficial consequences for the young Perovsky. Lev Kirillovich lived in Moscow not only as a broad and wealthy gentleman, but also was close friends with Karamzin, the Vyazemsky family, with the famous music connoisseur, Count M. Yu. Vielgorsky. At the same time, in his university years, he approached them, as well as with Zhukovsky and Perovsky. He converges with the younger Vyazemsky (most likely in 1807). Together they "swam the fast flow of youth", together they went through life, maintaining closeness until the end of their days.
My friend, dear companion,
At the young dawn of the day
With whom did I test my strength
New life for me
.....................................................
Somehow, I will meet by chance,
We collided in a good hour
And sympathy with a secret connection
Souls in us have become related.
(P. A. Vyazemsky. "Wake")
The efforts and talents of the young Perovsky turned out to be primarily directed to the bureaucratic service, and his father's extensive connections and increasing weight in government circles opened up wide opportunities for him for quick career advancement. After graduating from the university in October 1807, Perovsky went to serve in St. Petersburg in January 1808, having received the rank of collegiate assessor in the sixth department of the Senate, quite high for young years. By this time, his father returned to state activities as a trustee of the Moscow educational district, and a few years later he became the minister of public education.
The son of an influential nobleman, however, did not intend, following the example of others, to skimp on service. Already in August 1809, he left the scattered and cheerful capital for six months of wandering around the Russian province - he was assigned to Senator P.A.Obreskov, who was going to audit Perm, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Vladimir provinces. Pictures of Russian provincial life gave many impressions and considerable food to his keen eye and mind. It is no coincidence that after the death of a friend, returning in thought to this time, when in the future author of "Monastyrka" "the artist matured", Vyazemsky, a member of the same Commission, wrote:
You asked the life of the provinces,
Their quirks, fuss
And he knew how from these thorns
Call out fresh flowers
Upon his return from the trip, Perovsky did not stay long in St. Petersburg - he was again drawn to his cozy, dear Moscow. In November 1810, he moved here to serve as an executor in one of the branches of the 6th Department of the Senate. It seems that Moscow's friendships played an important role here, and this is not surprising: in Moscow, the idol Karamzin, the boil of literary life, attracted a magnet, and the “elders” - Karamzin himself and his associates - looked with hope at the new literary generation, among which about myself Zhukovsky and Vyazemsky. The correspondence with the latter gives us direct evidence of such communication between Perovsky and this circle. It is not known whether Perovsky himself is aware of himself at this time as a writer - in any case, he is already the author of a literary translation and "sins" with poetry. Actually, his literary inclinations were manifested already from childhood. In the home archive of N.V. Repnin (at the direction of A. Pogorelsky's biographer V. Gordenyu) there was a notebook with Alexei's children's composition, presented to his father on his name day. Vyazemsky's poetic appeals to Perovsky help to get some idea of \u200b\u200bthe character and literary tastes young manaccompanied by "golden-winged genius". He is a secret writer of "idylls", but at the same time he is a constant participant in friendly gatherings of ironic and riotous Moscow youth, among whom Vyazemsky - "a madman, a young wasteful" - was a favorite. It is no coincidence that, along with "idylls", at this time Perovsky also appeared "amphigurias" - comic, poetic nonsense, often accompanied by a cheerful hoax. For Perovsky, the reputation of a "dear prankster" and a master of "joke" pranks is strengthened - it is not for nothing that he writes his poems into the album of another famous Moscow wit and amateur poet S. A. Neyolov. For instance:
Minister Pete sits in the corner
And plays on the dial
But pop comes in
And taking off the cloak
Squats politely.
Voltaire is an old man,
Taking off your wig
Beats eggs in it,
And Jean Racine,
Like a good son
Sobbing with pity.
It is quite obvious, however, that in Perovsky these verses are not the fruit of "pure" literary creativity; they arise as a reflection of a certain way of life, a certain form of everyday behavior. Subsequently, this "everyday" mystification is organically included in the literary method of the writer, constituting its original and distinctive feature. The tradition of "joke" poetry — of course, not without the direct influence of Perovsky — will brilliantly resurrect after several decades and continue under the pen of his nephew, one of the co-authors of Kozma Prutkov.
However, Perovsky during these years was distinguished not only by his cheerfulness, but also by his "sound" mind, an independent and insightful look at "persons, customs and mores", which he closely followed "in private." Internal formation, the choice of a life position was not easy. So, in search of her, Perovsky repeatedly makes attempts to get closer to the Masons, wants to become a member of the lodge, and only the unexpected resistance of his father, a prominent and influential Freemason, prevented this intention: “It is too early for Aleksey Alekseevich to engage in our conversations, but he needs to look around the world with its beauties. "
The young man tries to occupy himself with activities in the public arena: he becomes a member of the Society of Naturalists, his signature appears among the founders of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature (1811-1830). Perovsky is trying to add some variety to the prim and monotonous activity of the last of them, offering the chairman of the Society, AA Prokopovich-Antonsky, his humorous poems "Abdul-Vizier" for public readings. Soon he was already mentioned among the full members of the Society of Russian History and Antiquities. But even here he, obviously, does not find satisfaction and in fact does not accept in the work of societies. Moscow did not live up to expectations, and in January 1812 Perovsky left it and again rushed to St. Petersburg, this time as Secretary of the Minister of Finance for the Department of Foreign Trade.
However, he did not have a chance to serve here for long - with Napoleon's invasion of Russia, Perovsky, like many, carried away by a common patriotic impulse, could no longer think of himself as a civilian official - in July, contrary to his father, he became a Cossack officer. With the rank of headquarters captain, he is enrolled in the 3rd Ukrainian Cossack regiment. The very nature of the conflict with his father is very indicative: the prohibition of Razumovsky's son to go to the theater of hostilities was so sharp and categorical that it was even accompanied by a threat to deprive the “illegal” heir of material support and property. In response to this, Perovsky wrote to him: “Can you think, Count, that my heart is so low, my feelings are so mean that I will dare to abandon my intention not out of fear of losing your love, but out of fear of losing my property? These words will never be blotted out of my mind ... "
Perovsky's decision remained unchanged, and his military service lasted until 1816. As part of the 3rd Ukrainian regiment, he went through the most difficult military campaign in the fall of 1812, took part in partisan actions, fought at Tarutin, Losets, Morungen, Dresden and at Kulm. Distinguished by courage and ardent patriotic sentiment, Perovsky went the military path typical for the advanced Russian officers, liberated his homeland and Europe from the invasion of Napoleonic hordes, sharing the burdens of military service with his comrades, fought with enemies, lived in poverty, and won. In October 1813, after the capture of Leipzig, a young officer who had proved himself well and also fluent in German, was noticed by the Governor-General of the Kingdom of Saxony (Saxony fought on the side of Napoleon) by Prince N.G. Repnin-Volkonsky and was appointed to him as a senior adjutant. In May 1814, Perovsky was transferred to the Ulansky Life Guards Regiment, stationed in Dresden. Perovsky lived here for over two years.
Life in Germany, entry into German culture, various artistic experiences, acquaintance with the novelties of German romantic literature seriously influenced the formation of the aesthetic tastes of the future writer. It is very likely that during these years he was fresh on the trail of getting acquainted with the first collections of stories by E. TA Hoffmann: "Fantasies in the manner of Callot" (1814), "Night stories" (1816), the novel "Elixir of the Devil" (1815) ... Many plots and motifs borrowed from these works will be resurrected a decade later and for the first time will find life on Russian soil under the pen of the writer Anthony Pogorelsky. From this time on, the bizarre fantasy of Hoffmann's fairy tales will both occupy and captivate Russian minds for a long time.
In 1816, Perovsky reappears in St. Petersburg: after parting with his military uniform, he receives the rank of court adviser and becomes an official for special assignments in the department of spiritual affairs of foreign confessions, having entered here under the leadership of A.I. Turgenev. Here his literary ties are quickly renewed. In St. Petersburg Zhukovsky, Karamzins. Perovsky plunges into the environment of "Arzamas", for him, "Arzamas" in spirit and temperament, is undoubtedly close and consonant. The atmosphere of cheerful and reckless destruction of archaic canons finds in him an undoubted response. In any case, he is clearly losing interest in the idea of \u200b\u200bpublic service - for all his connections, Perovsky has not received a single award during this time - and "turns" to literature.
At this time, an important event took place in the Perovskys family, which largely determined the course of his future life: his sister, the beautiful Anna Alekseevna Razumovskaya, who was married to Count K.P. Tolstoy, had a son, Aleksey, the future writer Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, who was well known to amateurs genre of horror stories such as "Ghoul" and "Ghoul Family". However, this marriage did not work out: immediately after the birth of the child, Anna Alekseevna leaves her husband, and Alexei Perovsky takes his sister and one and a half month old nephew to his estate, the village of Pogoreltsy, Chernigov province. From now on until the end of his days, he devotes himself to caring for them and raising his beloved Alexasha.
In the coming years, Perovsky apparently divides his time between Pogoreltsy and St. Petersburg, where he is in the service. In any case, it is known that in the fall of 1818 he, in the circle of Petersburg friends, visited the Karamzins in Tsarskoe Selo next summer.
At the same time, he met Pushkin. He probably knew the name of the young poet even earlier. With the return to St. Petersburg, the circle of communication turned out to be quite narrow: evenings at Zhukovsky, Alexander Turgenev, at the Perovskys themselves, at this time in St. Petersburg and Alexei's brother, Vasily Alekssevich, Zhukovsky's friend, later the Orenburg military governor, who accompanied Pushkin to the Pugachev places.
In 1820, Alexei Perovsky declares himself as a writer: he again tries his hand at poetry, this time "serious". However, the experiences of that time that have come down to us - the not completely finished ballad "Wanderer-singer" and the message "Friend of my youth", addressed most likely to my sister in connection with the birth of her nephew - do not provide sufficient material for any assessments, all the more that both poems remained in manuscript. His only poetic publication of this time was a translation of one of Horace's odes, published in Grech's journal "Son of the Fatherland" (1820, Ch. 65). One way or another, these experiments, written albeit with a talented, but completely traditional pen, probably do not satisfy the author, and we do not know of other samples of Perovsky's poem.
However, it was by no means an ode to Horace that drew attention to the new literary name.
In late July and early August 1820, Pushkin's first poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila" was published as a separate edition, and fierce magazine battles unfolded around it. This polemic itself arose in the atmosphere of an active offensive of the adherents of the canons of classicism to the new-romantic-literary direction and was a direct consequence of it. Articles in Moscow and St. Petersburg magazines reproached Pushkin for violating the established norms of genre and style and for disregarding the laws of "morality". In defense of the poet, on behalf of his associates and friends, Aleksey Perovsky spoke out with brilliant articles - and these articles occupied a special place in the disputes around Ruslan and Lyudmila. In this first noticeable printed speech, Perovsky presented a certain literary position, expressing the views of the senior "Arzamas" people, primarily Zhukovsky, Vyazemsky, Alexander Turgenev, and found in him not only a connoisseur and admirer of a rising poetic star, but also an adherent of a new direction, a writer Pushkin circle. A vivid dullness, sharpness and accuracy of judgments, as well as the ability to literary mystification, successfully and subtly used as a polemic device - all this was fully revealed in Perovsky's articles.
The magazine "Son of the Fatherland" became the arena of the main battles. A.F. Voeikov, an "Arzamas", who gravitated, however, by his literary orientation towards "classicist" normativity, and D.P. Zykov, a friend of P.A.Katenin, an archaist and open opponent of "Arzamas", spoke out against Pushkin. whom Pushkin and his friends considered the author of the article. Both Voeikov in his notorious "Analysis", and Zykov in the "questions" that made up the article and aimed at exposing the plot, compositional and artistic "absurdities" of "Ruslan and Lyudmila" - both spoke from the standpoint of the normative poetics of the 18th century.
Perovsky's anti-critics were born in the circle of Pushkin's supporters and, apparently, were previously discussed there. In any case, Turgenev informed Vyazemsky about the first of them (against Zykov) even before the press, and about Voeikov's article that angered the “Arzamas”, he reported to the same correspondent: “I already wrote to you about criticism of Pushkin and spoke frankly to Voeikov, that such remarks cannot move our literature. Yesterday Alexey Perovsky brought me some criticism, and they were quite fair. I will send them to the Son. "
Parodying the comic side of the "interrogation" perpetrated by the young poet Zykov, caustically sneering at Voeikov's petty quibbles, Perovsky, at the same time, opposes the very principles of classicist poetics, which his literary opponents profess, hinting, among other things, at the inappropriateness of attacks on the exiled poet. For Pushkin, the “young giant”, he demands criticism not only “true”, but also benevolent, thereby emphasizing the high authority of the new poetic genius, in which, like the “Arzamas” people, he sees the hope of Russian literature. “My officials: Voeikov (who also served at that time under the command of Turgenev) and Alexei Perovsky are fighting battle over Pushkin,” A. Turgenev wrote to Vyazemsky these days.
Critical speeches of Alexei Perovsky were highly appreciated by Pushkin himself. Following the controversy from the southern exile and not knowing yet about the authorship of Perovsky, he wrote on December 4, 1820 to N.I. Gnedich: “... the one who took the trouble to answer him (Voeikov) (gratitude and pride aside), smarter than all of them. " Later, in 1828, in the preface to the second edition of Ruslan and Lyudmila, recalling Zykov's "questions", Pushkin called Perovsky's answer to him "witty and funny."
In the same 1820, Alexei Perovsky was elected a member of the Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. By this time, Fyodor Glinka became its head, and the future Decembrists began to play a prominent role in society: KF Ryleev, Nikolai and Alexander Bestuzhev, V. Kyukhelbecker. This also includes A. Delvig, A. Griboyedov. With many of them, Perovsky becomes personally closer. In any case, according to the important testimony of I. N. Loboyko, he met with some of them at one of Perovsky's parties. One should not, of course, exaggerate the significance and nature of these connections. As A. K. Tolstoy later recalled, the enormous trust he had in his uncle was constantly “fettered by the fear of upsetting him, sometimes annoying him, and by the confidence that he would rebel with all ardor against some ideas and some aspirations ... - writes Tolstoy, - how I hid from him reading some of the books from which I then drew my Puritan principles, for in the same source were those principles of love of freedom and the Protestant spirit, with which he would never be reconciled ... ". Of course, Perovsky, a cheerful, sociable and intelligent person, first of all unusually attracted, in the words of the same Loboyko, "a good-natured and entertaining manner". And yet, not only this explains his undoubted closeness at this time to the advanced Petersburg circles.
In the spring of 1822, Count A.K. Razumovsky dies in Pochep, and in July Perovsky resigns and settles in his now hereditary village, Pogoreltsy. Anna Alekseevna and her son also live with him. Here, in the quiet of the Ukrainian village, in solitude, brightened up by the presence of dear people, an excellent library and the refined atmosphere of a manor house, the writer Anthony Pogorelsky is born.
For several years Perovsky has been living almost without a break, now in Pogoreltsy, now in another hereditary estate, the Red Horn, is engaged in gardening, supplying ship timber to the Nikolaev shipyards. At this time, apparently, he wrote his first stories, which later became part of the cycle "The Double, or My Evenings in Little Russia": "Isidora and Anyuta", "The harmful consequences of unbridled imagination" and "Lafertovskaya Poppy". In any case, setting off for St. Petersburg in January 1825, Perovsky is already carrying the last of these stories with him, and it appears in the March book of the Petersburg journal of AF Voeikov "News of Literature". For the same magazine he also intended "Disastrous Consequences ..." (under the original title "Unhappy Love"), but did not publish it and later revised it.
"Lafertovskaya poppies", signed by the new literary pseudonym Anthony Pogorelsky (from the Pogoreltsy estate), immediately attracted everyone's attention. The combination of a fantastic fairy tale, told, moreover, mischievously and naturally, with the juicy depicted life of the Moscow outskirts, was new; the author's audacious neglect of the "sensible" necessity of a "reasonable" explanation of the miraculous was also new: the first fantastic story appeared in Russian literature. In Lefortovo, inhabited by small Moscow people, in the wretched house of the retired postman Onufrich, the reader meets the image of the Lafertian poppy-woman, an old witch, who chooses a postman for her daughter, and her granddaughter, Masha, the bridegroom, Aristarkh Falaleevich, who turns out to be the beloved grandmother ... Having destroyed the witchcraft and abandoned the unjust wealth left by her grandmother, Masha marries a beloved inmate, as if as a reward for a girl who turned out to be a rich heir.
The unusual plot ending and the absence of a chord that fully resolves the fantastic plan confused, first of all, the publisher of "Novosti" - all the same Voeikov, who provided the story with his "Denouement". He found it necessary to explain all the details and vicissitudes of the fantastic plot from the point of view of common sense, as well as everyday and psychologically justified realities. "The well-meaning author of this Russian story, probably, had here the goal of showing, - wrote Voeikov, - to what extent the frightened imagination, heated up from childhood with fairy tales about witches, presents all objects in a perverse form." From Voeikov's point of view, the old woman's wealth is nothing more than a "rich tribute of superstitious people" who came to her to guess, a black cat that turned into Mr. Murlykin is the fruit of Masha's imagination, upset by the "imaginary witchcraft of the poppy seed," for good, Murlykin "unfortunately was black-haired, chubby and wore thick sideburns, "etc. The publisher found an excuse for this in the" superstition of the Russian common people, little familiar with the Enlightenment, "especially since superstition, to indignation, had spread even among enlightened Parisian women. For the rationalist Voeikov, the tense and ironic romantic fantasy of Lafertovskaya poppynitsa turns out to be completely incomprehensible, alien, and unacceptable. The new way of artistic thinking provokes opposition: in essence, his "publisher's note" was a continuation of an old dispute with Perovsky that arose five years ago over "Ruslan and Lyudmila." It is not by chance that, publishing The Double a few years later, Perovsky concludes the Lafertovskaya Makovnitsa, which was included in it, with a polemical - quite in the spirit of his critical articles - an author's dialogue with the Double filled with mocking irony, directly addressing the reader to Voeikov's maxims: "... in vain, however, you haven't added a denouement, ”says the Double. - “Someone will really think that Grandma Machine was a witch. - For superstitious people you will not find enough solutions, - I answered. - However, whoever desires to know the denouement of my story, let him read the Literary News of 1825. There he will find a denouement, composed by the venerable publisher of Invalid, which I have not told you for that, that I do not want to appropriate someone else's property. "
The reaction to Pushkin's story is quite remarkable. “My soul, what a lovely grandmother's cat!” He wrote in admiration to his brother from Mikhailovsky on March 27, 1825. - I read the whole story twice and in one breath, now I only rave about Tr (ifon) Fal. (barely) Murlykin. I speak smoothly, closing my eyes, turning my head and arching my back. Pogorelsky is Perovsky, isn't it? "(Pushkin made a slip, calling the cat Trifon. In fact, Aristarkh Faleleich). Much later, in The Undertaker, which is undoubtedly close in style to the Lafertovskaya Makovnitsa, Pushkin will compare his guard Yurko with the postman Onufrich Pogorelsky.
The nature of fiction in the story is a fusion of two traditions: folk tale and Hoffmann's motives. The latter should be mentioned separately. Passion for the work of Hoffmann in Russia in the first half of the 19th century was widespread, and A. Pogorelsky was one of the first to turn to his works as a source of literary devices, motives and plot situations. Much reminds of Hoffmann in the story. This is an old witch woman who combines her mystical craft with the everyday trade in honey poppies and paid fortune-telling, and “from her eloquent lips prophecies about future blessings poured out like a river, and visitors intoxicated with sweet hope, when leaving the house, often rewarded her twice as much as when entering ". The reader of those years could not help but recall the "Golden Pot" and Louise Rauerin, who combined witchcraft with the sale of apples, and her black cat, capable, like the cat of the old woman from "Lafertovskaya poppynitsa", of reincarnation.
Even more important is the similarity of the basic structural principles: in Pogorelsky, like in Hoffmann, the narrative is based on the constant interweaving of the supernatural and the real. However, the artistic originality of the story lies in the use by the author of the so-called folk fiction. We are talking about folk superstitions, prejudices, features of a folk tale and ideas of a common person about good and evil, which create an extraordinary flavor of the story. Humorous features in the guise of a cat as an official, the motive of the evil power of money, characteristic of the romantics of the "mercantile" era, anticipate the poetics of Nikolai Gogol in Pogorelsky.
For example, in the story the number "three" is mentioned several times in connection with the old woman's witchcraft. For the first time, in the story about the revenge of the sorceress to the policeman who wrote a denunciation on her, it is said that she took revenge on him three times: “... soon after that the informer's son, a playful boy, running around the yard, fell on a nail and gouged out his eye; then his wife he accidentally slipped and dislocated his leg; finally, to complete all the misfortunes, their best cow, having not been sick with anything before, suddenly fell. " Attention should be paid to the last method of revenge: according to popular belief, if pets, especially cows, began to die for no apparent reason, it means that they offended something, angered the sorcerer. After all, a cow at that time was a nurse, without which a large family could not survive.
Arriving in St. Petersburg, Perovsky not only enters the literary field and renews literary ties; he also returns to public service: he was offered the post of trustee of the Kharkov educational district. Perovsky is in charge of not only Kharkov University, but also the Nizhyn Gymnasium of Higher Sciences, where Gogol studied then. However, the new official duties did not require his constant presence in Kharkov, and Perovsky again returned to Pogoreltsy, where, by the way, he devotes a lot of time to raising his nephew. A year later, he returned to St. Petersburg, where this time he was going to negotiate with the Minister of Public Education A.S. Shishkov about the disastrous state of the university entrusted to him. Upon arrival in St. Petersburg, Perovsky was also appointed a member of the Committee for the Organization of Educational Institutions and promoted to full state councilor. In the same 1826, by order of Nicholas I, Perovsky wrote a note "On public education in Russia", which was a review of the report of M. L. Magnitsky, the trustee of the Kazan educational district, known for his reactionary ideas, "On the cessation of teaching philosophy in all educational institutions." Recall that at the same time, also at the suggestion of Nicholas I, Pushkin wrote his famous note on public education.
The autumn of 1826 and the winter of the following year, Perovsky spends between Petersburg and Moscow; Anna Alekseevna leaves for Moscow with her son, she lives here in her second marriage - to Major General Denisyev - and the Perovskys' mother. Maria Sobolevskaya lived in full prosperity, acquired an extensive estate on Novaya Basmannaya in Moscow, and although she remained in the bourgeois class, later became the legal wife of Major General M. Denisiev. It is worth dwelling separately on the history of Basmannaya Street and the mansion of Perovsky's mother.
In modern Moscow, reserved corners are still preserved, where, it would seem, time stood still. One of these places is Basmanny Sloboda. Its origin dates back to the second half of the 16th century, and it is traditionally believed that it got its name from the state-owned bread "Basman", which was baked here and delivered exclusively to the royal table. However, this version seems questionable. It is unlikely that there were so many bakers in Moscow who made special bread so that they formed a whole settlement, and a very large one (for example, in 1679 there were 113 households here). Like other metropolitan settlements (Goncharnaya, Kuznechnaya, Kozhevennaya, etc.), Basmannaya arose on the site of a settlement of artisans - "basmanniks" who made patterned decorations on metal or leather. Such thin sheets were used to cover - "basmili" - wooden crosses and frames of icons. “A wooden cross, upholstered in copper, gilded basma,” says a certain inventory. And the bakers ... Well, a certain number of bakers also lived here, and they really made a special kind of bread, marked with a brand. Let us remind you that the message with the embossed seal of the Golden Horde Khan was also called basma. Thus, the development of the word could be as follows: khan's basma, then generally relief images, finally, state-owned bread with a stamp.
The first was formed in the settlement of Staraya Basmannaya street, then New Basmannaya appeared. Until the end of the 17th century, both of them were separated by huge (about 4.5 hectares) vegetable gardens of the Ascension Convent, located in the Kremlin. The importance of the streets especially increased during the reign of Peter I. The Tsar very often traveled this road to the German settlement and Lefortovo. And along both Basmanny, soldiers and officers of the newly formed regular regiments began to settle, due to which this area was at one time called the Captain's Quarter. At the same time, the Church of Peter and Paul appeared on Novaya Basmannaya, built by the architect I. Zarudny "according to the decree of the Tsar's majesty and according to the drawing given by His Majesty's own hand."
By the middle of the 18th century, the social status of the former settlement changed dramatically. It becomes one of the places of residence of the noble aristocracy: the princes Golitsyn, Kurakin, Trubetskoy, Counts Golovkins, Shuvalovs, Gudovichs, nobles Naryshkins, Golovins, Lopukhins, Demidovs, Eropkins, Sukhovo-Kobylins ... whole manors, many of which have recently been magnificently restored.
One such mansion (No. 27) rises on Novaya Basmannaya street next to the former Basmanny police station with a fire tower and not far from the famous Razgulyay square. The house is wooden, on a high foundation (still 18th century); in the mezzanine there are elongated 8-glass windows, behind them there is an enfilade of state rooms. Above is a mezzanine with five windows under a triangular pediment. The center of the building is highlighted by a pilaster portico and modestly decorated with stucco decorations.
The mansion was rebuilt after the fire of 1812, when this site was owned by Admiral N. S. Mordvinov, a prominent economist and supporter of liberal reforms. He was the only one who did not sign the death warrant for the five Decembrists in 1826. For some time this house was rented by the writer N.M. Karamzin. After Mordvinov, the mansion on Novaya Basmannaya passed to the new owner, and since then it has been called "Perovskaya's house" or "Denisieva's house". Thus, this Moscow mansion received a double and even triple name in everyday life. The Basmanny House was constantly full of numerous people from Perovskaya family. Thus, the artist Lev Zhemchuzhnikov wrote: “I remembered the past: my childhood and my mother, rooms, dressing table, courtyard and garden, surrounded by a fence, a tower. The house, built of pine beams of horse-drawn wood, stood unclosed ... The estate was spacious; a crane walked in a large yard and a horse with tangled legs grazed; there was a pond in the garden. Since the 1860s, most of the buildings on Novaya Basmannaya pass from the nobility to the merchants. The same fate befell the possession of Perovskaya-Denisieva. After the death of Vasily Alekseevich Perovsky (1857), the large textile merchants Alekseevs became the owners of the estate. One of them is S. Alekseev wanted to build a large shopping arcade here. However, on this quiet street, they would seem out of place. Meanwhile, the content of such an extensive became overhead, and at the end of the 19th century, the son of S. Alekseev divided it into nine parts, which he sold, leaving only a small plot with a house.
In the future, the owners of the old building on Basmannaya changed many times; at one time there were even communal apartments and a kerosene shop in it. And now the commercial bank "Moscow Lights" is located here.
So, back to our hero again. In 1826 he renewed his acquaintance with Pushkin, who had been returned from exile. With the onset of spring, Perovsky and his sister and nephew left for Germany for almost six months. In Weimar, they visit Goethe - AK Tolstoy later described this memorable visit in his autobiographical notes. Upon Perovsky's return from Germany in 1828, his first book, "The Double, or My Evenings in Little Russia", was published. The "Prussian Invalid" (1828, p. 83) commented sympathetically about the book, noting that "not many stories are so entertaining, so witty. Not many are told and associated with such art. " The Northern Bee wrote: “The author skillfully took advantage of various beliefs, dark rumors and superstitious stories about unrealizable incidents and conveyed them to us even more skillfully, being able to arouse curiosity and maintain it until the very end” (Str. 1828, no. 38).
The cycle of stories - four novellas, united by a dialogical frame, the very nature and plots of the inserted novellas, the content of the author's conversations with the Double - all this immediately addressed critics to the traditions of Western European romanticism, primarily to L. Tik and Hoffman with his Serapion brothers. In the future, the compositional construction of the "Double" - the first such experience on Russian soil - became one of the favorite techniques of Russian romantics, having been continued and developed in such, for example, outstanding monuments of romantic literature as "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" or "Russian Nights "VF Odoevsky or" Evenings on Khopr "by MN Zagoskin. However, unlike Gogol and Odoevsky, whose narration is led by four heroes who spend time in unfolded philosophical disputes and recreating an external, "philosophical" picture of the world, the two "leaders" in Pogorelsky are actually the same person, one human consciousness, inside which the rational-educational and romantic principles are in conflict. It is no coincidence that in describing the appearance of the Twin, Pogorelsky gives his exact self-portrait. This one, like other light and graceful autobiographical "medallions" in the cycle, again involuntarily reminds of the addiction to literary mystification. Both the "open" autobiographical beginning, drawing his own estate, and elegiac reflections on happiness, plotting and figuratively echoing the poetic message "Friend of my youth", also undoubtedly having a purely personal character - all this to some extent denounces the writer in Pogorelsky a special kind, not alien to the degree of high artistic amateurism, in which life, situational, or artistic stimuli play an important role. Perhaps this feature of the writer's creative personality will help us to some extent understand the fundamental features of his "Double".
Pogorelsky's book, born in the atmosphere of romanticism asserting itself in Russian literature, fully reflected this "breakdown" of directions, the movement of the writer-sentimentalist of Karamzin's orientation, who shared educational ideas, towards a new artistic worldview. The very "duality" of Pogorelsky is a psychological duality of consciousness of just this kind. The author's speech with the Twin is about “newfangled” objects-premonitions, predictions, ghosts, magnetic force, and their discussion fluctuates all the time between two extreme points: keen interest in the named topics and attempts to rationalize them. It is no accident that in these debates the Double's lengthy reasoning about the properties of the human mind, which goes back to the philosophy of the materialist Helvetius, finds its place. These tendencies of "rational" fiction, precisely by their "rationality" differing from Western romantic models and in their very initial, and sometimes naive forms, first formulated by Pogorelsky in The Double, were later picked up and developed in Russian romantic prose, and most fully ... Odoevsky. It was on this principle that the Russian science fiction story developed mainly. These features just give the "key" to reading the very diverse inserted short stories "The Double", each of which goes back to a certain literary source.
The first short story - "Isidor Anyuta" - directly addresses us to Karamzin's "Sensitive" story. Pogorelsky pays tribute to her in full and at the same time shakes her foundations. The romantic intensity of action, which is unusual for this genre, the “mysterious” tragic ending, along with these excellent pictures of Moscow devastated by Napoleon, are all obvious symptoms of a violation of the “purity” of the genre.
The second short story - "The harmful consequences of unbridled imagination" - is also devoted to the story of unhappy love (as it was originally called), but it is told in a completely different way. In critical literature, starting with his lifetime responses, this story has more than once, with good reason, been associated with the name of Hoffmann. However, this observation is valid only up to certain limits. Indeed, Pogorelsky so openly, in places almost literally repeats the plot collision of Hoffmann's "The Sand Man", that one cannot fail to see this as a conscious intention of the technique. Here, just like in Hoffmann's, the young man's love for a doll, his same tragic epiphany, madness and end. And yet the difference between the two works is very significant. Pogorelsky destroys the closed existence of Hoffmann's heroes in the world of dreams and poetry, in a world half asleep, half asleep, and unexpectedly transfers the tone of the narrative to a different, socio-didactic register. It is true that the Russian "Hoffmaniana" began with Pogorelsky, for this is the first appeal of a Russian writer to Hoffmann, but it is also true that a special tradition of mastering the work of the great German romantic in Russia began with Pogrelsky. It is along the path of introducing socio-didactic motives that NA Polevoy, a passionate admirer of the German writer, will go in his “Hoffmann's” fantastic stories; the same will be interpreted by the largest Russian romantic science fiction Odoevsky - in particular, the motive of the "puppetry" of secular society will be repeated in his "Tale of how dangerous it is for girls to walk in a crowd along Nevsky Prospekt" "Included in the cycle" Colorful fairy tales "(1833).
As for the third short story "The Double" - "Lafertovskaya poppies", its "conditional plausibility", focused on the folklore element, in artistically turned out to be the most perfect and convincing: the story invariably stood out in the cycle as the most successful. As we remember, this part came out separately three years earlier.
The last story of "The Double" - "Journey in the Stagecoach" - was also the fruit of literary impressions. He was a kind of response to the fashionable story of the French writer and scientist Pujan "Joco, an anecdote extracted from unpublished letters about animal instinct" (1824). The interest of the writer, a natural scientist by education, in such topics is quite understandable. However, it is curious that Pogorelsky, starting from the plot collision of Puzhan's works, creates his own polemic version of the story about Zhoko. The melodramatic version of the original - the story of a female orangutan's falling in love with a man - he contrasts with a Russoist story about a monkey's maternal attachment to a kidnapped child. True, Pogorelsky does not do without a certain melodramatic intensity of passions - his hero himself kills his teacher Tutu, but this in no way diminishes the polemical pathos of the Russian version. If we take into account that the translation of Puzhan's story in 1825 appeared in the Moscow Telegraph, and in 1828 the melodrama written on its basis by Gabriel and E. Rochefort (Russian translation by R. M. Zotov) went on the Moscow stage, concluded in the latter In the short story "The Double", the hidden meaning becomes especially clear.
Pogorelsky's book did not have wide reader success and, in general, remained not fully understood. Even S.P.Shevyrev, who knew German romantic literature well, in particular Hoffmann, saw in the short stories about the doll and the monkey only "the extreme of a wayward and even unbridled fantasy that overstepped the bounds of all likelihood" (Moskovsky Vestnik, 1828, Part 10, No. 14 ). However, in responses to the "Double", everyone unanimously noted a beautiful, light and "tempting" syllable as a rare virtue in modern literature. The skill of an excellent oral storyteller, which more than once admired Pogorelsky's listeners, was fully reflected in his writing style. Vyazemsky later wrote that he "conveys himself very well in his own style." One way or another, "The Double" remained not only a monument to the era of literary "turning point", it was also a "visionary" book in its own way, because Pogorelsky's subtle literary instinct helped him accurately capture and outline a number of important trends developed by the literature of romanticism, and later found the most his perfect expression in Dostoevsky.
In the next year, 1829, two more "magic" works by Pogorelsky were published: the novel "Visitor to Magic" (according to the author's note, translated from English) in the magazine "Butterfly", with the legend about Ahasphere, popular in Europe, and the children's fairy tale "The Black Hen, or Underground inhabitants ", written by Pogorelsky, most likely for his nephew. Apparently, at the end of 1828 Zhukovsky wrote to Delvig, who published the anthology "Northern Flowers": "Perovsky has a very amusing and, in my opinion, wonderful children's fairy tale" Black Hen ". I have it. Ask for it yourself. " However, the tale was published as a separate edition, and it, which immediately won the hearts of readers, was destined for a long life. Some magazines, for example, "Moscow Telegraph" (1829, Ch. XXV. No. 2), placed approving reviews about it.
A carriage rides through the cold streets of winter Petersburg. Her passenger - a saddle man with surprisingly kind and somehow childish eyes - thought deeply. He thinks about the boy he is going to visit. This is his nephew, little Alyosha. After all, the passenger's name is also Alyosha-Alexey Alekseevich Perovsky. Perovsky thinks about how lonely his little friend is, whom his parents sent to a closed boarding school and even rarely visits. Only his uncle often visits Alyosha, because he is very attached to the boy and also because he remembers well his loneliness in the same boarding house many years ago. Alexei Perovsky was the son of a nobleman Count Razumovsky, who owned countless land and fifty-three thousand serfs. The son of such a person could almost be a prince, but Alyosha was illegitimate. Only when he became an adult did the father decide to recognize his son. Count Razumovsky loved Alexei. But he was a hot man, capable of terrible outbursts of anger. And in one of these angry moments he sent his son to a closed boarding school. How lonely Alyosha was in the cold state rooms! He was very sad and then one day he decided to run away from the boarding house. The memory of the escape remained for the rest of his life lameness: Alyosha fell from the fence and injured his leg. Then Alyosha grew up. He fought against Napoleon in the Patriotic War of 1812 - even his lameness did not prevent him from being a brave military officer. Once Alyosha, the little one, told his uncle about one incident: how, while walking in the boarding house, he made friends with the chicken, how he saved her from the cook, who wanted to make broth out of it. And then this real case turned under the pen of Perovsky into a fairy tale, kind and wise. A fairy tale that taught the boy honesty and courage.
The author has defined its genre as a fairy tale for children. The tale is charming in its artless instructiveness and the brightness of a naive fiction about a wonderful bird helping a kind and honest boy - and leaving him when he has become a frivolous and vain sloth. It faithfully depicts the life of old Petersburg, convincingly reveals the inner world of a child, who for the first time in Russian literature after the Knight of our time N.M. Karamzin became the main character of the work, unobtrusively deduces morality and subtly displays the organic interweaving of everyday life, humor and fantasy, characteristic of Pogorelsky. Subsequently, the fairy tale was especially loved by L.N. Tolstoy, entered the golden fund of Russian children's literature, having withstood dozens of reprints in many languages \u200b\u200bof the world. Its content is not limited to arguments that only what is gained by labor is reliable, that it is not good to betray comrades and that it is terrible to commit irreparable deeds. Firstly, Pogorelsky happily invented one of the most elegant literary subjects. Secondly, now you can be as surprised as you like that he so clearly and wisely spoke about the almost elusive movements of the soul of an immature person: at that time before the appearance of Leo Tolstoy's Childhood, there were still 26 years left, Tyoma's Childhood by N. G. Garin-Mikhailovsky - 66, and "Childhood Luvers" by BL Pasternak - 96. If The Double is a collection of the first Russian science fiction stories, then The Black Hen is the first Russian author's fairy tale in prose for children.
In the same 1829, Perovsky was elected a member of the Russian Academy. He is in Petersburg, and the environment of his communication here is Pushkin. With the poet himself, he is in short friendly relations and on "you". According to Vyazemsky's recollections, it is known, for example, that several years before that, Pushkin had read his Boris Godunov in Perovsky's house in St. Petersburg. At this time he was drawing closer to Delvig, and the editors of the Literaturnaya Gazeta, which was preparing for publication, saw him as a desirable author. Perovsky is included in big literature as a writer of the Pushkin circle.
In January 1830, Literaturnaya Gazeta began to appear, and in its very first issues an excerpt from Pogorelsky's new novel The Magnetiser (which, however, had no sequel), where the “mysterious” once again invades the beautiful everyday painting - a description of a provincial merchant family ". It seemed that Pogorelsky was clearly strengthening his reputation as a "fantastic" writer, but already a month later, the same Literaturnaya Gazeta announced another major work of him, in a completely different way, from the life of Maolorossia, in which "the vividness of the pictures, the fidelity of descriptions, happily captured features of Little Russian morals and a beautiful style. " It was about the most significant creation of Pogorelsky - the novel "Monastyrka".
His appearance had some background, explaining the special intensity of passions in the widespread controversy around him. The fact is that not long before that, at the end of 1829, FV Bulgarin's novel Ivan Vyzhigin appeared on the book shelves. Written, like Monastyrka, in the genre of a “moral-descriptive novel,” however, with its protective ideas, pseudo-history and pseudo-genre writing, it provoked sharp opposition in progressive circles. Nevertheless, there was nothing to oppose to him, and the readership success of Vyzhigin was enormous. The sharp rejection of the Bulgarin creation by the Pushkin circle was both a consequence and a continuation of an acute ideological and literary struggle. The story of an inexperienced pupil of the Smolny Monastery, Anyuta, which appeared from the pen of Pogorelsky, told simply, sincerely and not without psychological certainty, convincing in its reality, correctly captured the life of Ukraine - all this favorably distinguished his new novel from Ivan Vyzhigin. Not alien to a certain sentimentality and artificiality of the plot, the Romian revealed the inner logic of characters, and the pictures of everyday life and customs acquired in him the strength of life's truth. "Here is a real and, probably, our first novel of manners," wrote Vyazemsky, introducing the first volume of "Monastyrka" and the heroes of the novel to the reader: Anyuta - "the prototype of all sweet, simple-hearted, frank monasteries of the past, present and future"; Klim Sidorovich Dyundik - "an original face, marked with sharp and funny features and suitable for studying the moral"; Marfa Petrovna, “who is a woman on her mind and despite spiritual guidance is not at all afraid of her husband, but on the contrary keeps him in tight knit hands”, her two daughters, “learned French from the book“ Jardin de Paradis pour lecon des enfants ... ”. In all these faces, not excluding the "nephew of Marfa Petrovna, Mr. Pryzhkov, nee Pryzhko", who decided to trade at the Romny fair with the amusement of Parisian rascals, Vyazemsky found that psychological and everyday characterization accuracy that makes them really recognizable figures of the provincial landlord environment. it is this, according to Vyazemsky, that distinguished Monastyrka from Bulgarin's moral descriptions, which do not find direct correspondences in society and transfer ready-made schemes borrowed from foreign-language literature to Russian everyday life. The formula "the first romance of manners" was polemical in this respect; she contrasted Monastyrka with both Bulgarin and Narezhny, who had only chronological primacy over Pogorelsky. “Narezhny was a Tenier, and also a Russian Tenier of the novel.<...> Narezhny's novels douse us with varenukha, and wherever the author introduces us, it seems that you never leave his tavern. The characters in the new novel will accept completely different characters. " This review quite accurately captures the literary features of "Monastyrka": the everyday sphere, freed from insignificant, random features, taken in its characteristic manifestations, and, on the other hand, cleared of the naturalistic, "low", "rough". Let's say right away that this was both the strength and the weakness of Monastyrka in comparison with the aforementioned novels of Narezhny, whose description of everyday life is brighter, bolder and freer. “Monastyrka” also largely depends on the sentimental and romantic tradition, which held the idea of \u200b\u200bthe everyday sphere as “low”, requiring “purification”. Pogorelsky's novel, of course, is not a realistic novel; it also contains traditionally romantic situations and faces: such is, for example, the noble gypsy Vasily, with whom a whole storyline is connected. But it was a significant step forward in comparison with the "moral-satirical" novel, and besides, Vyazemsky correctly noted that "his language and syllable" completely met the "requirements of nature and art." It was also an arrow shot at Bulgarin: he was accused precisely of the absence of a "syllable", of the lifeless correctness of literary speech.
To characterize the attitude to "Monastyrka" in the Pushkin circle, it is interesting to recall the confession of Baratynsky, a subtle connoisseur of the literary style. After reading "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka," he wrote: "I attributed them to Perovsky, although I did not recognize him at all in them."
Vyazemsky's article appeared in Literaturnaya Gazeta and sounded like a battle signal. Bulgarin had to answer and defend his principles of didactic description of everyday life. Even before the release of Pogorelsky's novel, he was prejudiced against the author. On June 25, 1830, he wrote a complaint to the chief of the gendarmes, Benckendorff: "I am being persecuted and persecuted by the strong people at court now: Zhukovsky and Alexei Perovsky, because I do not want to be an instrument of any party." One way or another, Bulgarin does not dare to openly attack the “strong at court” dignitary and “strong” literary rival; in his "Northern Bee" (№№ 32-37) he crowns the author of "Monastyrka" with roses, which, however, had rather sharp thorns. Starting the article with literally the same assurances of his “non-partisan nature” as in his letter to Benckedorff, Bulgarin regards The Monastyrka as a novel “more humorous than satirical,” one of those “lovely” works in which “one should not look for anything. great truths, no strong characters, no harsh scenes, no poetic impulses ", which presents" ordinary cases of life, characters seem familiar, reasoning heard daily, but all this is so nicely put together, so skillfully distributed, so vividly drawn that the reader is involuntarily carried away ... "In these compelled praises, a remark about the" ordinariness "of persons and life situations is very important - it is this reproach, as is known, addressed to A. Bestuzhev" Eugene Onegin ", and it is this" ordinariness "unacceptable for a romantic aesthetics, opened new paths to Russian literature.
Along with dubious praises and recognition of the impeccability of the literary style, Bulgarin addresses a number of polemical attacks both directly to Pogorelsky and to the author of the article in Literaturnaya Gazeta; thus, he strongly disagreed that Monastyrka was "the only Russian novel depicting mores in their present form." Bulgarin also did not manage without rather rude attacks of a personal nature.
Pushkin's group of writers continued their offensive. In the almanac "Northern Flowers for 1831", in the "Review of Russian Literature for the second half of 1829 and the first half of 1830" Orest Somov analyzes the works of Pogorelsky and Bulgarin side by side. Accusing the latter of anachronism and complete misunderstanding of the "general character of the Russian people", considering, moreover, that "Bulgarin writes as a foreigner who has comprehended the mechanism of the Russian language", the critic, on the contrary, sees in Pogorelsky's novel essays on characters "captured from nature itself" , and as a connoisseur of Little Russia "gives all justice to the author's observation and accuracy", the psychological and ethnographic fidelity of the novel.
Moscow magazines, keeping away from the Petersburg literary battles, greeted Monastyrka more restrained. Unanimously sharing the opinion about the skill of Pogorelsky as a storyteller, they nevertheless rated Monastyrka as an imitative novel. According to the critic of the Moscow Telegraph (part 32, no. 5), this is nothing more "like a pleasant description of family intrigues", in which one should not look for "no passions, no thoughts, no deep meaning." The critic explained the "immoderate" praise of Literaturnaya Gazeta by the writer's personal friendship. The opinion of the "Moscow Telegraph" was fully shared by another magazine, "Atheney" (Part 2, No. 7). The definition of Monastyrka as Dear, abandoned by Bulgarin, an unassuming novel found sympathy and support among Muscovites; they did not miss the opportunity to offend the "literary aristocrats", which they considered the Pushkin-Delvigov circle and to which, naturally, Pogorelsky was also included.
However, the sharp and essentially "party" disputes did not prevent the novel's resounding success. They were read in the capitals and in the provinces, and interest in its continuation did not wane for several years. Pogorelsky kept himself waiting for a long time. But when, three years later, the second part of "Monastyrka" finally came out, its appearance was perceived as a notable event not only in narrow-literary circles: by that time the novel had acquired a wide readership.
Critical responses to the already completed novel were calmer in tone and were not so clearly marked by the simmering passions. The same "Moscow Telegraph" this time wrote that the "entertaining" of this "not tall, not brilliant, but extremely pleasant, sweet" work "is so natural, so simple and consequently close to everyone that the art of the author is almost imperceptible, and this is hardly is not a greater art ". "This is a clear, simple story of an intelligent, educated person." Another Moscow publication, "Rumor," - not without malice reminding readers of the "loud splash of a friend's newspaper" when the first part of the novel appeared, nevertheless spoke of "Monastyrka" as "a pleasant literary phenomenon."
Two decades later, after the writer's death, responding to the publication of a two-volume edition of his works, N. G. Chernyshevsky called the Monastyrka “a very remarkable phenomenon” for its time. According to him, in contrast to N. Polevoy or Marlinsky, Pogorelsky described not “passions” but “morals”, and therefore their success, like the success of Zagoskin's novels, “could not harm The Double and Monastyrka; moreover, the works of Pogorelsky, who, in his opinion, possessed a remarkable talent for storytelling, stand "in fictional terms incomparably higher than all these novels." This calm and objective assessment, which confirmed the view of the "monastery" of the Pushkin circle, was fully justified by the time: during the 19th century, "Monastyrka" remained one of the most read novels and even brought to life literary imitations... From the point of view of the historical and literary novel, this, in many respects still imperfect, was nevertheless the herald of that "family" realistic novel, which received further brilliant development in Russian literature up to the novels of Leo Tolstoy.
"Monastyrka" was the last work of Anthony Pogorelsky. In the interval between its two parts, in 1830, in the Literaturnaya Gazeta, his jokingly philosophical message to Baron Humboldt, "New litigation about the letter", was also published. More the name of the writer did not appear on the pages of the press.
The official activity of Pogorelsky, which proceeded very successfully, did not bring satisfaction in the conditions of an ever-growing public reaction and ended with his resignation in 1830. He also left the literary field and devoted himself entirely to the upbringing of his nephew. Using his full confidence and love, he carefully and seriously follows the first, still childhood, literary experiences of the future poet, gradually forms his literary taste, teaches him to be creative. Perovsky's letters to him are filled with literary advice. Quite eloquent, for example, is the famous case when Perovsky, apparently yielding to the author's impatient desire, published his poem in one of the periodicals, placing severe criticism on it next to it in order to point out to the young writer that his desire to publish his works was premature. Introduces Perovsky's nephew into his literary circle, shows his experiments to Zhukovsky and Pushkin, whom Tolstoy met as a boy in his uncle's house.
In 1831, Perovsky set off with his scout and sister on a trip to Italy. A great connoisseur and connoisseur of art, he reveals the world of the old Italian masters to the future poet and, in a sense, his recipient, makes a number of significant acquisitions there for his art collection. In Rome, they met with Karl Bryullov, and Perovsky agreed that he would certainly paint portraits of all three. The promised one had to wait 4 years. And in December 1835, just before Christmas, a famous painter arrived in the ancient Russian capital. Moscow lay on the path of his triumphant return from Italy to St. Petersburg, where the entire educated society had been enthusiastically speaking about Bryullov's painting "The Last Day of Pompeii" for several months. At first, Karl Pavlovich stayed at a hotel on Tverskaya Street. In Moscow, the artist was reminded of his promise, promised a generous reward, but Perovsky, knowing about the capricious disposition of the "Great Karl", his inconstancy and incontinence, transported him from the hotel to his mother's house on Novaya Basmannaya and set a condition that the artist would be I was in the house, did not take orders from outside. Bryullov first of all painted a young Alexei Tolstoy in a hunting suit and accompanied by a dog. This work of the master immediately received unequivocal recognition and is now an adornment of the collection of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. Then Karl Pavlovich proceeded to the portrait of Perovsky, but soon lost interest in work, began to disappear from home. This is understandable: Bryullov always loved noisy companies, and in Belokamennaya he was constantly surrounded by people of art - Pushkin, artists V. Tropinin and E. Makovsky, sculptor I. Vitali, composer A. Verstovsky and others. Perovsky, having learned about Bryullov's constant absence, aggravated the courtesy, but then somehow he could not resist and "very gently read the fatherly instruction." This began to annoy the painter so much that he somehow finished the portrait and ran away from home without taking his suitcases and never starting the portrait of Anna Perovskaya-Tolstoy. Alexander Pushkin visited Perovsky in his Moscow apartment shortly before the writer's death, and in May 1836 he wrote vividly about this to his wife: “I really want to bring Bryullov to Petersburg. And he is a real artist, a kind fellow and ready for anything. Here Perovsky filled it in: he moved it to his place, locked it on a turnkey basis and made it work. Bryullov fled from him by force.<...>I visited Perovsky, who showed me the unfinished paintings of Bryulov. Bryulov, who was in his captivity, ran away from him and quarreled with him. Perovsky showed me the capture of Rome by Genseric (which is worth the Last Day of Pompeii), saying: "Note how beautifully this scoundrel painted this horseman, such a swindler."
Upon his return to Russia in 1831, Perovsky lived either in Pogoreltsy or in one of the capitals, almost without parting with his loved ones, who actually replaced his family. At the same time, the old friendly ties are preserved. During these years, his name flashed more than once in the pages of Pushkin's letters.
In 1836, Perovsky's "chest disease" (obviously, tuberculosis) aggravated, and at the beginning of summer, accompanied by Anna Alekseevna and his nephew, he went to Nice for treatment. But on the way there in Warsaw on July 9 (21), Alexei Perovsky finds a sudden and imminent end.
Bibliography (only fantastic works and first editions)
- 1828 - The Double, or My Evenings in Little Russia. Cycle of stories:
- Isidor and Anyuta
- The harmful effects of unbridled imagination
- Lafertovskaya poppy-bowl
- Stagecoach travel
Pogorelsky was reprinted several times both before the revolution and during the Soviet and post-perestroika times. A detailed bibliography can be found on the website of Vitaly Karatsupa "Science Fiction Archive".
Materials used in compiling the text:
- M. A. Turyan "The life and work of Anthony Pogorelsky"
- A. Aliev " Noble Nest (about the Pogorelovs) "
- S. Small "Pogorelsky Anthony"
- Russian Biographical Dictionary
- Literary encyclopedia in 11 volumes, 1929-1939
- Encyclopedia Around the World
- Anthony Pogorelsky - Biography. Website www. pogorelskiy. org. ru
- Science fiction archive. archivsf. narod. ru, article by Vitaly Karatsupa "Pogorelsky Anthony"
- R. V. Iesuitov "Russian fantastic prose of the era of romanticism"
- E. Pilyugina "The nature of the fantastic in the story of A. Pogorelsky" Lafertovskaya poppyny ".
- Children's fairy-tale magazine "Honor", article "The author of the" Black chicken "".
Alexey Alekseevich Perovsky (pseudonym - Anthony Pogorelsky) is a romantic writer, by birth the illegitimate son of a wealthy Catherine's nobleman, Count Alexei Kirillovich Razumovsky and Maria Mikhailovna Sobolevskaya (later married to Denisieva). The thorough and versatile education received by Pogorelsky in his father's house was completed at Moscow University, where the young man entered in 1805 and graduated in 1807 with a doctorate in philosophy and verbal sciences. By this time, Pogorelsky's passion for natural sciences, in particular botany, which resulted in three public lectures published in 1808 as a separate book ("How to distinguish animals from plants", "On the purpose and benefits of the Linear system of plants" and "On plants , which would be useful to multiply in Russia "). These lectures can be considered as a kind of approach to serious literary works, so clearly shows through in them the orientation towards the narrative techniques of N.M. Karamzin, whose ardent admirer was the young author. In the possession of A. K. Razumovsky, and after the death of the latter in the inherited estate of Pogoreltsy of the Chernigov province (from the name of this estate, the pseudonym of the writer was formed) passed most of A. Pogorelsky's life.
His literary inclinations manifested themselves from childhood. In the home archives of N.V. Repnin (at the direction of A. Pogorelsky's biographer V. Gordenyu) there was kept a notebook with Alexei's children's composition, presented to his father on his name day. But the talent of the writer was fully revealed much later, already in the 1920s, as he entered the circles of Moscow and St. Petersburg writers. Acquaintance with N. M. Karamzin the prose writer, personal communication with the writer determined the direction of A. Pogorelsky's artistic orientations and the nature of his literary communication. In the first place among them should be put friendship with P.A.Vyazemsky, which began in 1807. Somewhat later (apparently, in 1810), Pogorelsky also met V.A.Zhukovsky, who brought him closer to A.I. Turgenev and A. F. Voeikov. These new acquaintances, as well as Pogorelsky's inherent tendency to joke and hoax, seemed to provide him with far from last place in Arzamas, however, Pogorelsky did not become an Arzamas, because he saw the main meaning of his life not in literature, but in active state activity for the good of the fatherland. Already in January 1808 we find him in St. Petersburg, where he entered the 6th department of the Senate with the rank of collegiate registrar. Attached to P.A.Obrezkov, he takes part in a six-month official trip to the central provinces of Russia with the aim of revising them, closely observes the life of remote provinces, gets acquainted with the way of life of the Kazan and Perm provinces.
Returning to Moscow in 1810, Pogorelsky for two years served as an executor in one of the departments of the 6th department and joined the Moscow cultural life. He became a member of a number of scientific and literary societies (Society of Nature Lovers, Society of Russian History and Antiquities, Society of Lovers of Russian Literature). Pogorelsky is trying to add some variety to the prim and monotonous activity of the last of them, offering his humorous poems ("Abdul-Vizier") to the chairman of the Society, AA Prokopovich-Antonsky, for public readings. At the beginning of 1812 Pogorelsky was again in St. Petersburg as secretary to the Minister of Finance, but did not stay in this position for long. With the beginning of events Patriotic War 1812, he dramatically changes his life. Fascinated by a common patriotic impulse, the young man, against the will of his father, enters military service: in the rank of headquarters captain, he was enrolled in 3rd Ukrainian The Cossack regiment, which undertook the most difficult military campaign in the fall of 1812, took part in partisan actions and in the main battles of 1813 (near Leipzig and at Kulm). Distinguished by courage and ardent patriotic sentiment, Pogorelsky went the typical battle path for the advanced Russian officers, liberated his homeland and Europe from the invasion of Napoleonic hordes, shared the burdens of military service with his comrades, fought with enemies, lived in poverty, and won.
After the capture of Leipzig, he was noticed by N.G. Repnin (Governor-General of the Kingdom of Saxony) and appointed to him as a senior adjutant. In May 1814, Pogorelsky was transferred to the Ulansky Life Guards Regiment, stationed in Dresden. Pogorelsky stayed here for about two years, during which he was able to become closely acquainted with the work of E. T. A. Hoffman, who had a very significant influence on him. Pogorelsky was one of the first in Russia to use the traditions of the remarkable German romantic in his stories.
In 1816, Pogorelsky retired and returned to St. Petersburg in order to continue his civil service, this time as an official for special assignments in the Department of Spiritual Affairs of Foreign Religions. Here the circle of literary acquaintances of the future writer expands considerably; he communicates with N.I. Grech, Arzamas, and also with A.S. Pushkin, who settled after graduating from the Lyceum in St. Petersburg. It was in the first post-war years that Pogorelsky tried his hand at poetry (a translation of one of Horace's odes was published in Grech's journal "Son of the Fatherland" (1820, Ch. 65), participates in literary polemics, defending the poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila" from attacks conservatively minded criticism (in particular, A. F. Voeikov). The service, which took a lot of energy from Pogorelsky, allowed him to leave St. literature experience of fantastic storytelling of the romantic type.Published in A.F. Voeikov's journal Novosti literatury in 1825, it seemed so unusual that images of the story of Pogorelsky. An ironic polemic with Voeikov, who did not take the innovative features of the romantic story "Lafertovskaya Makovn Itsa ", Pogorelsky introduced into his collection" The Double, or My Evenings in Little Russia "(1828), which also included" Lafertovskaya poppy seed ":" ... who certainly wants to know the denouement of my story, "the author wrote in" The Double ", - let him read the "Literary News" 1825 r. There he will find a denouement, composed by the venerable publisher of Invalida, which I didn’t tell you for that, that I don’t want to appropriate someone else’s property. ”Immediately after the appearance of the Lafertovskaya poppy seed in print, Pushkin met her, writing to his brother from Mikhailovsky on March 27, 1825 Mr. "My soul, what a lovely grandmother's cat!" I reread the whole story twice and in one breath, now I only rave about Three (background) Fal (aleich) Murlykin. I step out smoothly, closing my eyes, turning my head and arching my back. Pogorelsky is Perovsky, isn't he? "
This is how Perovsky's (Pogorelsky's) literary debut took place, and from that moment this new literary name gained fame and wide recognition. An even greater success fell to the lot of Pogorelsky's The Double: The Prussian Invalid (1828, part 83) responded sympathetically to the book, noting that "not many stories are so entertaining, so witty. Not many are told and associated with such art." The Northern Bee wrote: “The author skillfully took advantage of various beliefs, dark rumors and superstitious stories about unrealizable incidents and conveyed them to us even more skillfully, being able to arouse curiosity and maintain it until the very end” (Str. 1828, no. 38). The children's fantastic story "The Black Hen" (St. Petersburg, 1829) belongs to 1829, and some magazines, for example, "Moscow Telegraph" (1829, Part XXV. No. 2), published their approval.
Since 1830, the writer has been actively collaborating in Literaturnaya Gazeta, where the first part of Pogorelsky's most significant work, the Monastyrka, was published, which was then published in two parts in St. Petersburg and caused a lively controversy in magazines. "This novel, - noted in" Russian invalid ", - is an extraordinary, pleasant phenomenon in our literature. It is rich in entertaining incidents and vividly depicted characters, and therefore is alive and curious" (1830, No 17). The reviewer of the "Moscow Telegraph" saw in "Monastyrka" only "a pleasant description of family pictures", "the story of a good friend about kind peoplewho sometimes encountered troubles "(1830. Part XXXII. No. 5)." Monastyrka "was called" The real and our first novel of mores "in the Literaturnaya Gazeta, which actively supported Pogorelsky (1830).
Since 1826, Pogorelsky again and for a long time has lived in St. Petersburg, holding a number of prominent positions and a member of the Commission for the organization of educational institutions. He still spends the summer months in Pogoreltsy. In the spring of 1827, the writer went on a trip abroad, which lasted about a year. The service activity of Pogorelsky, which proceeded very successfully, did not bring satisfaction in the conditions of the growing public reaction and ended with his resignation in 1830. The writer spends the last years of his life in Pogoreltsy, visiting, however, Moscow. He devotes all his time to literary work, as well as the upbringing of his nephew (the son of the writer's sister, Countess A.A. Tolstoy), the future famous poet, prose writer and playwright A. K. Tolstoy.
Shortly before the death of Pogorelsky, Pushkin visited his Moscow apartment, vividly describing this meeting in a letter to his wife: “I was at Perovsky's, who showed me the unfinished paintings of Bryulov. Bryulov, who was in his captivity, ran away from him and quarreled with him. Perovsky showed me the Taking of Rome by Genseric (which is worth the last (of his) day of Pomp (ei)), saying: "Note how beautifully this scoundrel painted this horseman, such a swindler" (Pushkin. T. XVI. P. 115). , drawn by Pushkin, subtly noticed the humor of Pogorelsky, which colored many of his works.The originality of his writing style was appreciated by the writers of the Pushkin circle, who contributed to the success of his works among contemporaries.
On July 21, 1836, in Warsaw, on the way to Nice, where he was heading for tuberculosis treatment, Pogorelsky died.