Обзорная экскурсия по музею А.С. Пушкина

Pushkin School Museum

Dear guests! You will get acquainted with our school museum of Alexander Pushkin.

Alexandre Pushkin was born in June 1799 in Moscow where he spent the first years of his life. Here are the views of Moscow of that time. Pushkin’s family played a very important role in his life. Pushkin’s father, Sergey Lvovich, was an educated man. He was fond of thearte, poetry and French novels. Young Alexandre used to take books from his father’s library and read them somewhere in a secret corner where his parents couldn’t find him. Pushkin’s mother, Nadezhda Osipovna, was very beautiful. She was called “La Belle Creole” at the society parties. Alexandre was not their only child. There was also a daughter Olga and another son, Lev. And this is Arina Rodionovna, Pushkin loved his nanny dearly and devoted some poems to her. One of them is called “To my nanny”:

Dear doting sweetheart of my childhood,
Companion of my austere fate,
In the lone house deep in the wild wood
How patiently for me you wait.
Alone beside your window sitting
You wait for me and blame the clock,
While, in your wrinkled hands, your knitting
Fitfully falters to a stop.
Beyond the crumbling gates the pine trees
Shadow the road you watch so well.
Nameless forebodings, dark anxieties,
Oppress your heart. You cannot tell
What visions haunt you: Now you seem to see…(1826)

The Lyceum

Of course, Arina Rodionovna took good care of the boy, but the time has come to get proper education. In 1811 a new school was to be open in Tsarskoye Selo.It was supposed to unite the best features of private and state schools. Boys from 11 up to 14 years of age could enter it. The Lyceum was open on October,19 1811. Its first headmaster was Vasily Malinovsky. He considered the Lyceum his home and called the students his children. After his sudden death Anton Engelgard became the headmaster, though the students kept the memory of Malinovsky long after his death. Tsarskoye Selo was a very picturesque place. Pushkin and his friends often went for a walk in the park. The beauty of surrounding nature was later described in Pushkin’s verses. Pushkin’s friends were so different. Kuhelbecker was very tall. Other boys teased him and made his funny portraits. Deivig became a poet. He died very young. His death was a heavy blow for his friends. Yakovlev was a very good musician. He composed music and sang his own songs to his friends. Puschin was the best friend of Pushkin. It was a life-long friendship. The main occupation of the students were classes. They studied a lot of things but the humanities were above all. The students wrote essays, fables and poems.

Pushkin was born a poet. Some of his contemporaries noticed Pushkin’s talent while he was at school.

Exam. Derzhavin. A famous Russian artist Ilya Repin depicted a very important moment in Pushkin’s life. It happened in 1815. In the presence of numerous guests and officials there was a public examination at the Lyceum. Among the listeners there was a famous Russian poet Derzhavin, quite old at that time. Pushkin recited his verse “The recollections at Tsarskoye Selo”, got confused and ran away. Derzhavin jumped up from his seat in astonished admiration. He was delighted with a young poet. Russia’s national poet had stepped out before his public. Another leading poet of that time, Zhukovsky, considered Pushkin a real poet. He even gave Pushkin his portrait and wrote on it :”To the pupil who conquered his teacher”.

Pushkin’s life after the graduation was not so easy. For some of his poems he was ordered to leave Saint Petersburg. At first he went to the South and later to his estate Mikhailovskoye.

Mikhailovskoye. The time A/ Pushkin spent in Mikhailovskoye was not very long but it gave us wonderful poetry such as “The Gypsies” and “Eugene Onegin”.

The estate Mikhailovskoye occupied 9 hectares and was almost inseparable from the forest. The main part was the house with the beautiful view on surrounding park and meadows. This picture shows a bridge in the park in Mikhailovskoye. A. Pushkin used to go to the church, talk to peasants and listen to the songs of gypsies during long evenings. He loved this place but he missed his friends especially Ivan Puschin. On one of the winter mornings A. Pushkin was sitting at the breakfast table when he heard the bells ringing. He did not expect anyone to visit him. To his great surprise and joy it was Ivan Puschin. He had a chance to call on Pushkin and did it. Of course, they talked a lot about their days in the lyceum, about their friends and Tsarskoye Selo. Neither of them knew that it was their last meeting. Later Ivan Puschin took part in the events of 1825 known as the Decembrists’ uprising.

Decembrists. In 1825 Russia was the country where serfdom existed. In other words a man could buy or sell another man. Some Russian nobles, mostly officers, thought it was a shame for their country. After the victory over Napoleon in the war of 1812 they hoped the tsar Alexandre 1 would abolish serfdom. This did not happen. So they founded secret societies in the North and in the South of Russia. Their leaders were Ryleyev and Pestel. The picture shows the uprising on December 14, 1825. The aim was to introduce a Constitution and change the life in Russia for the better. The uprising failed. Five leaders were hanged., 120 were exiled to Siberia. Here are the portraits of some Decembrists: Lunin, Pestel, Ryleyev. And this is the cell where Pushkin’s best friend, Ivan Puschin, was kept in Siberia. On one of Pushkin’s manuscripts we can see the faces of Puschin, Kuhelbecker and Ryleyev.

Here are also some ladies’ faces – Volkonskaya, Muravyova and Ivashova. They followed their husbands to Siberia. One of them brought to Siberia a famous Pushkin’s poem addressed to all Decembrists.

The prison walls will crash… Content
At door will freedom wait to meet you,
Your brothers, hastening to greet you,
To you the sword will, glad, present.

But life went on. In September 1830 Pushkin went to Boldino to arrange his affairs before his marriage to Natalia Goncharova. Autumn was always his favourite season. That autumn in Boldino was something special. In three months Pushkin created 50 different pieces.

After his marriage to Natalia Goncharova in February 1831, Pushkin Settled down in Saint Petersburg. Here are the portraits of Alex, Serg.,Nat., Nickol.

Natalia was very beautiful. When Pushkin married her she was 18. They spent their honeymoon in Tsarskoye Selo. Pushkin and his young wife came to Tsarskoye Selo, where he had once spent six happy Lyceum years on the 25th of May 1831, just before his birthday. It was at the Lyceum where he found his first and best friends. It was there that he became a poet. He was walking back into the world of his sweet memories.

The young couple stayed at Kitayeva’s house. It was a small wooden house owned Anna Kitayeva, the widow of a court valet de chamber. The cottage was constructed by Alexey Gornostayev under the supervision of Vassily Stasov. The Pushkins spent there several months from May till December.

The routine was soon established: he used to work in the morning in the study on the mezzanine floor and go out for a stroll in the park in the evening. “Many people would go on purpose to catch a glimpse of Pushkin in the summer time, as he circled the lake arm in arm with his wife…”

The summer months were filled with joy, of friendly contacts and happiness of poetic work. Vassily Zhukovsky and Nikolai Gogol, a new name in literature came to visit Pushkin later in the evenings. The poet rejoiced at the arising literary circle.

The poet used to work a lot and some of his famous poems were written then. Here Pushkin returned to his earlier novel in verse Eugene Onegin and amended it with Onegin’s letter to Tatyana.

The October 19 Pushkin celebrated here the twentieth anniversary of the Lyceum. Alas, his bosom friends were not with him.

And yet the poet looked ahead with hope that summer.

Soon, marriage to one of the leading beauties of society brought its problems and he had to write hard to support his growing family, sometimes escaping back to his countryside for quiet concentration. By 1837, Pushkin was falling into greater and greater debt and faced rumours that his wife had started conducting a scandalous affair. In response, the poet challenged Natalya’s alleged lover to a duel. It left both men injured. Pushkin died two days later. He was 37 when he was killed in a duel, defending his wife’s honour. In Russia his popularity as a writer was well established in his lifetime and it has never been surpassed.

And long the people yet will honour me
Because my lyre was tuned to loving kindness
And, in a cruel age, I sang of liberty
And mercy begged of Justice in her blindness