Mikhail Lermontov
"A. O. Smirnova"

In the simplicity of the ignoramus
In short, I wanted to know you,
But these sweet hopes
Now I'm completely lost.

I want to tell you a lot without you,
I want to listen to you in front of you;
But silently you look sternly,
And I am silent in embarrassment.
What to do?.. With unskillful speech
I can't occupy your mind...
All this would be funny
If only it weren't so sad...

The poem was written in 1840 for the album of one of the outstanding women of St. Petersburg secular society, Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova (Rosset).

AUTOGRAPHED POEM

“Virgin-Rose” of the Russian salon

Alexandra Smirnova-Rosset was simply beautiful and smart. This was enough for an eternity...

Famous social beauty. Maid of Honor of the Imperial Court. The owner of the famous literary and artistic salon. Author of the brilliant “Notes” and “Autobiography”. The poems of Alexander Pushkin “In motley and fruitless anxiety” and Mikhail Lermontov “I want to tell you a lot without you” are addressed to her. Gogol dedicated his legendary book“Selected passages from correspondence with friends.” She was distinguished by a sharp, caustic mind. Served as a prototype for the image of Irina in Ivan Turgenev’s novel “Smoke”. An entire collection of poetry could be compiled from poems dedicated to her...

What names that have gained fame in Russian literature would not be found on its pages: Vasily Zhukovsky, Pyotr Vyazemsky, Vasily Tumansky, Pushkin, Lermontov, Alexei Khomyakov, Ivan Myatlev, Sergei Sobolevsky! The list is intriguing and impressive.

I can’t help but remember Pushkin’s ironic:

Black-eyed Rossetti*
In autocratic beauty
These captivated all hearts
Those, those, those and those, those, those.

(Alexander Pushkin, “Madrigal A.O. Rosset”)

(*Rosseti is an ancient pronunciation of the surname in the Italian style. Alexandra Osipovna was dark-skinned in the southern way, and they called her either Spanish or Italian. - Auth.). What captivated Russian celebrities and their hearts, tempered in romantic storms, by the mysterious beauty Rosset? And where did this autocratic beauty come from?

It's all about mixing several bloods, temperaments and characters at once. Judge for yourself. Alexandra Osipovna's father was French by birth. A graduate of the maritime school, Osip (Iosif) Ivanovich Rosset, in his early youth, went into Russian service, where he became the commandant of the Odessa port, the head of quarantine (the current customs - Author) and the commander of the rowing flotilla. Osip Ivanovich Rosset married 16-year-old Nadezhda Ivanovna Lorer (sister of the Decembrist Nikolai Lorer. - Author), and she had a father German origin, and mother is Georgian. Yakov Polonsky, the teacher of Smirnova’s son, a poet and writer, wrote later: “From the Rossets she inherited French liveliness, sensitivity to everything and wit, from the Lorers - graceful habits, love of order and taste for music; from his Georgian ancestors - laziness, fiery imagination, deep religious feeling, oriental beauty and ease of manners.”

This characterization turned out to be true and accurate, despite the fact that life circumstances and fate taught Alexandra Osipovna their bitter lessons from early childhood. Her father died early, Nadezhda Ivanovna married again, and the girl was given to be raised by her grandmother, Ekaterina Evseevna Tsitsianova, the owner of the modest estate of Gramakleya-Vodino near Nikolaev (Ukraine). Wonderful years of childhood passed there, leaving a bright mark on my soul. Later, Alexandra Osipovna wrote in her Autobiography: “If Gogol had begun to describe Gramaclea, I don’t know what special he could have said about it, except that at the entrance to the village there was a spring of the coldest and silvery water, and what a river, which flowed near the garden was dark, deep and rolled so slowly between the reeds that it seemed motionless.”

Life in the village had a deep moral influence on the girl’s delicate, very receptive nature and determined a lot in her character. Later she wrote: “I am sure that the mood of the soul, the mentality, the inclinations, which have not yet developed into habits, depend on the first childhood impressions: I never loved the garden, but loved the field, did not love the salon, but loved the cozy little room where they say what they think, that is, whatever they want.”

In a letter to Gogol, Alexandra Osipovna bitterly admitted years later: “I can’t forget neither the steppes, nor those starry nights, nor the cries of quails, nor cranes on the roofs, nor the songs of barge haulers.” It is impossible not to notice, re-reading these lines hundreds of years later, how masterfully Alexandra Osipovna speaks Russian literary language how rich and expressive it is, one might say, hiddenly poetic! Language proficiency at such a level in the 19th century was rare for a woman, especially a high-ranking secular lady, such as Alexandra Osipovna, both in her youth as a maid of honor of the Court, and in her mature years as the wife of a chamberlain (the highest court rank in Imperial Russia, corresponded to the rank of major general in the army. - Author). Perhaps it was precisely this quality, and also the innate intelligence, courtesy, genuine aristocracy in manners, which, however, was not liked by everyone, for a long time attracted many wonderful Russian people to her salon, not only aristocrats, but also democrats and commoners, Slavophiles and Westerners, “revolutionary rebels” and socialites. Turgenev and Sergei Aksakov, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Polonsky could meet and talk peacefully in her house. With everyone she found mutual language, was welcoming and extremely friendly. This “bewitching” simplicity of hers also originated in her happy “Gramakley” childhood.

Alexandra Rosset successfully continued her education, begun at home, at the Catherine St. Petersburg Noble Institute, where the teacher of Russian literature was Pyotr Aleksandrovich Pletnev, a famous scientist and friend of Pushkin. It was Pletnev who introduced young Rosset to his friend’s new creations - “Prisoner of the Caucasus”, “Bakhchisarai Fountain”, the first chapters of “Eugene Onegin”. Alexandra Osipovna maintained friendly relations with Pletnev forever - she corresponded with him until the professor’s death, sent new books from abroad, and worried about his health.

On July 19, 1831, Pletnev asked Alexander Pushkin: “Thank Rosseti for its friendship towards me. Her concern about my fate really touches me. I don’t know how to explain to myself why I deserved so much participation from her; but I very much know how to be grateful and devoted for this.” Pushkin answered him: “I see Rosseti often; she loves you and we often talk about you” (Pushkin to Pletnev. August 3, 1831). Alexandra Osipovna’s frequent meetings with Pushkin, who had known her since the winter of 1828-1929, were due to the fact that both of them were neighbors in Tsarskoye Selo, where Alexandra Osipovna lived as a maid of honor (she became one in October 1826), and Alexander Pushkin - as a person who has just found family happiness. Rosset and the newlyweds Pushkin often met, rode together in a stroller, and took long walks. Alexandra Osipovna was only three years older than 19-year-old Natalia Nikolaevna and became very friendly with her. During the day, she often came to their Kamennoostrovskaya summer dacha, and together with Natalie they chatted carefree in the living room, drank tea and waited for Pushkin to call them upstairs to his sunny office. There he often read to the two of them newly written stanzas of fairy tales and poems and asked their opinions. Natalia Nikolaevna usually remained modestly silent or jokingly waved it off, promising to say something later when she thought about it. Alexandra Rosset usually spoke up right away, and her opinion was extraordinary and even funny. Thus, a memoir has been preserved about how Pushkin was amused by Rosset’s statement about the poems “Approaching Izhora”: “It’s as if they are akimbo and want to dance!” Pushkin laughed for a long time and infectiously, and then, delighted with the fact that Alexandra accurately grasped the rhythm of the poetic meter, he expressed a subtle compliment to her intelligence.

Alexandra Osipovna’s mind simultaneously attracted men to her and repelled them. He created many problems both in communication and in family life. The marriage of Alexandra Osipovna Rosset and Nikolai Mikhailovich Smirnov, concluded on January 11, 1832, could not be called happy. And at the end of their lives they even tried to separate!

Nikolai Mikhailovich, a kind and intelligent man by nature, was distinguished by a quick-tempered character, often throwing tantrums and scandals over any, even the most trifling, reason. Alexandra Osipovna, for all her tactfulness and worldliness, did not find it easy to get along with her husband; sometimes she gave free rein to her natural causticism: and then bitterly repented of it.

However, in marital wars there were also frequent truces. Being a hospitable housewife, Alexandra Osipovna, when she felt tolerable, organized receptions, tea parties and balls. Yes, and the situation obliged me to do so. Nikolai Mikhailovich rose to high ranks: he became chamberlain, Kaluga, and then St. Petersburg, governor (in 1850-1860). They only noticed that he was often too sad, and only the cheerful and animated voice of his wife and the laughter of his children could dispel his melancholy.

This melancholy may have had its own origins: the death of their first child in 1833, family problems with relatives (the Smirnovs had to help a lot with Alexandra Osipovna’s four brothers and the family of her maternal uncle, the Decembrist Nikolai Lorer, exiled to the Caucasus. This caused hidden discontent in the courtyard and created a number of inconveniences in Smirnov’s career as a government official. - Author), the difficult birth of Alexandra Osipovna in the summer of 1834. Then she gave birth to lovely twins, but she barely survived...

Health problems arose, Alexandra Osipovna often and for a long time received treatment abroad. She rarely saw Pushkin, she even somehow playfully threatened him that “she would put him in the category of foreigners who were ordered not to be accepted” (Pushkin - Pushkina, August 1834). In March 1835, the Smirnovs were abroad again. From Berlin, Alexandra Osipovna informed Pyotr Vyazemsky that she was subscribing to Sovremennik, hoping for “Pushkin’s taste” and promising him to supply materials about Berlin literary news for the magazine. The first issue of Sovremennik delighted her with Gogol’s “The Carriage” and Pushkin’s “Journey to Arzerum,” which she wrote to Vyazemsky about on May 4, 1836.

This was her last letter, where she spoke about the living Pushkin. The news of the death of a friend found Alexandra Osipovna in Paris. They were sitting at the dinner table - Gogol, Sobolevsky, Andrei Karamzin, and some other mutual acquaintance. Along with the expected coffee, Andrei Karamzin was given a letter. He, with the owner’s permission, printed it out, read it and turned pale. His mother informed him of Pushkin's death. Not believing himself, Andrei Nikolaevich reread the shocking lines out loud. Alexandra Osipovna, always restrained and completely in control of herself, gasped and burst into sobs. A cheerful “coffee” evening turned into a funeral funeral. Everyone had something to remember: Alexandra Osipovna probably remembered Pushkin’s gift - a morocco album with large sheets and inlaid clasps, which the poet presented to her in March 1832, making her a firm promise to write “historical notes” and presenting that lovely poem, the lines of which she had already repeated by heart so many times:

In motley and fruitless anxiety
Lots of light and yard.
I kept my gaze cold
Simple heart, free mind,
And truly a noble flame.
And like a child, she was kind;
Laughed at the absurd crowd,
She judged sensibly and brightly.
And jokes of anger, the blackest,
I wrote straight out...

(Alexander Pushkin, “In Motley Anxiety,” 1832)

But age took its toll...

It is possible that Alexandra Osipovna undertook to write her “Notes” and “Autobiography” only in memory of her brilliant friend. In her letter to Vyazemsky in March 1837 there are the lines: “I would have many things to tell you about Pushkin, about people and affairs; but in words, because I’m afraid of written messages.” Mysterious words, aren't they? The maid of honor of the court and the chamberlain's wife knew too much. So much that it would not fit into any biography or memoir...

And ahead of Alexandra Osipovna Rosset-Smirnova there was still a long, long series of years ahead, brilliant acquaintances with the best people centuries and sad farewells to them, mental depressions and hobbies, heated debates and coldness of attention: And sorrows, sorrows, sorrows. The blackness of loneliness. As in any human life. When it became too difficult, Alexandra Osipovna took out albums with yellowed sheets of paper from their secluded places and spent a long time reading the lines, faded with time:

I want to tell you a lot without you,
In front of you, I want to listen to you;
But silently you look sternly,
And I am silent in embarrassment...

(Mikhail Lermontov, “To A.O. Osipova”)

Michel wrote these lines alone, in her living room, having come one morning for a visit and not finding her. He quietly left, leaving the album uncovered: Her heart went cold from the brilliant simplicity of these lines when she returned and read it. I didn’t dare say thank you. Michel was proud and shy. Is it really just a letter of recommendation to Uncle Nikolai Ivanovich? But it didn’t save either. The bullets of the Caucasians were spared, but the Russians do not recognize pity. And a dark scarf and tears - is this the outcome for the grief that she experienced upon receiving the news of the death of the Poet? Not at all. But why say too much? Once upon a time, she wrote: “I am silent with those who do not understand me”...

There have been more of them over the years. Yes, and she was getting old, although she still read a lot, followed everything, learned Greek easily, which shocked and amazed her enemy-admirer Yakov Polonsky.

But more and more often, with illnesses and losses, she became withdrawn into herself. She was overcome by a strange, persistent feeling of melancholy and anxiety. Only sometimes did she allow herself to “shake off the old days,” and then, from the brightness and expressiveness of her speeches, assessments, and sometimes sarcastic verdicts, everyone in the living room was frozen in admiration and hung on her every word. This was She, the former “Donna Sol” (an expression from a poem by Vyazemsky), to whom those who, even under Her, were considered a legend, enthusiastically dedicated poems. And she, the living legend herself, gradually went under the protection of their shadows, also becoming a shadow...

On June 7, 1882, the Moskovskie Vedomosti newspaper placed a notice in a mourning frame: “The body of the widow of Privy Councilor Alexandra Iosifovna Smirnova, who died on June 7 of this year in Paris, is to be brought to Moscow on September 8, the day of burial in the Donskoy Monastery on September 9 at 11 a.m. Relatives and friends are invited to honor the memory of the deceased on this day."

Drawing by Alexander Pushkin

P.S. The legendary “Notes” of Alexandra Osipovna had a strange posthumous fate. Her daughter Olga Nikolaevna almost completely falsified their text, taking advantage of the similarity of handwriting. Complex textual processing became possible only in the twenties of the twentieth century. “Notes, diaries, memories of A.O. Smirnova" and her "Autobiography" were published in their original form in 1929-1931. It has not been reprinted since then. They are a bibliographic rarity. The modern reader knows only fragmentarily...

P.P.S. Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova-Rosset was also called
“Madame Recamier du Nord”, “the pearl of all Russian women” (Gogol), “rose maiden” (Khomyakov), “Donna Sol Hugo” (Vyazemsky), “heavenly little devil” and “eternal princess” (Zhukovsky).

Diplomat Nikolai Kiselev, with whom “Donna Sol” was in love

From the memoirs of her daughter: “My mother was much shorter, brunette, with classic features, with wonderful eyes, very black; these eyes either became thoughtful, or flashed with fire, or looked boldly, seriously, almost sternly. Many admitted to me that she embarrassed them with her eyes, with her direct, penetrating gaze. She had charming black hair with a steel tint, unusually thin. She was perfectly put together, but not from a fashion point of view (she did not pull herself together, almost always wore her hair very simply and hated toilet, rags and precious jewelry), but from a classical point of view. She had the build of a statue: legs, the back of her head, the shape of her head, her arms, her profile, her relaxed movements, her gait - everything was classic. Not long ago, a lady who knew my mother from childhood told me: “I remember how her gait struck me even then; after all, I was a child. She had swan-like movements and so much dignity in her gestures and naturalness.”

Peter Vyazemsky: “One girl flourished in St. Petersburg, and we were all more or less prisoners of war of the beauty. Despite her secularism, she loved Russian poetry and had a subtle and true poetic instinct; she guessed (moreover, she correctly understood) everything lofty and everything funny... Add to this, in contrast to the not devoid of charm, some kind of southern laziness, fatigue... She was a mixture of contradictions, but these contradictions were like musical dissonance, which under the artist’s hand merges into a strange but fascinating consonance.”

Mikhail Lermontov introduced the image of Rosset through his heroine Minskaya into the unfinished story “Shtos”: “She was of average height, slender, slow and lazy in her movements, black, long, wonderful hair set off her still young, regular, but pale face, and on this face the stamp of thought shone."

After the death of our heroine, Field Marshal Alexander Baryatinsky told her daughter: “Your mother is the only one in everything; This is a historical personality with all-round abilities. She would be able to reign, and manage, and create, and at the same time she brings something of her own, personal into the prose of life. And everything about her is so natural.”

There is a son left...

Sergei Aksakov about Gogol’s feelings for Smirnova-Rosset: “He loved Smirnova with passion, perhaps because he saw in her a repentant Magdalene and considered himself the savior of her soul. In my simple human sense, Gogol, despite his spiritual height and purity, his strictly monastic way of life, without knowing it, was somewhat partial to Smirnova, whose brilliant mind and liveliness were still charming at that time. She herself told him once: “Listen, you are in love with me”... Gogol got angry, ran away and did not go to her for three days... Gogol was simply blinded by A.O. Smirnova and, no matter how popular the word may be, he is not indifferent, and she once told him this herself, and he was very frightened by this and thanked her for warning him.” His son, Ivan Sergeevich Aksakov, in 1846 (Smirnova was already 37 years old at that time!) also dedicated two poems to her.

For the famous eccentric Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, Alexandra Smirnova was generally the woman who was the only one who truly admired him and with whom he was connected until the end of his life. First of all, they were united by a common love for the beauties of Little Russia: Alexandra was raised as a child by her grandmother in Gramaclea (now Vodian-Loreno), which is not far from Nikolaev. “I often thought that the Lord himself led me with his hand, and from a poor village in the very south of Russia brought me to the chambers of the Russian tsars in the very north.” Although the blood of representatives of different nationalities flowed in her veins, she considered Little Russia her homeland and, calling Gogol “Khokhlik,” she called herself “Khokhlachka.”

Autograph of Alexei Tolstoy's poem "Bells", which he gave to Alexandra Osipovna

Poem by Peter Vyazemsky with compliments

Gogol, in love, constantly wrote only laudatory reviews about Alexandra Osipovna: “This is the pearl of all Russian women I have ever known, and I have known many of them who are beautiful to my liking. But hardly anyone has sufficient strength to appreciate it. And I myself, no matter how much I always respected her and no matter how friendly I was with her, only in one suffering moment did I recognize her and mine. She was a true comforter, while hardly anyone’s word could console me, and, like two twin brothers, our souls were similar to each other.” And “The love that connected us with you is high and holy. It is based on mutual spiritual assistance, which is several times more significant than any external assistance.”

In addition to Gogol, Alexandra Osipovna was very close friends with Zhukovsky. Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky met Alexandra Osipovna in the spring of 1826 at the final exams at the Catherine Institute, where the latter studied, most likely they met in the palace, where she was the empress's maid of honor, and he was the heir's mentor. However, they later became friends in the Karamzins’ house. Alexandra Osipovna describes Vasily Andreevich as a “big child”, a “cute eccentric” who poorly understands the essence of palace intrigue. Zhukovsky was infatuated with the black-eyed Alexandra and even proposed to her through Pletnev. She turned him into a joke, and they remained friends for life: they were united by one common cause - now she, now he, and sometimes together, acting according to a pre-agreed plan, they saved Russian writers from persecution, royal wrath and gendarmerie intrigues. “On this day, Pletnev came to give a lesson to the grand dukes, and we invited him to dine with us,” Smirnova recalled. - After dinner, he suddenly says to me: “You are starting to get bored in the palace, isn’t it time for you to get married?” - "For whom? Is it for a chamberlain?" - “What about Vasily Andreevich? He gave me instructions to talk to you.” - “What are you talking about, Pyotr Alexandrovich, Zhukovsky is also an old woman. I love him very much, he’s fun to be with, but the idea that he might get married never occurred to me.”

Living room with a photograph of Pyotr Tchaikovsky with his personal autograph (on the piano) in the Smirnov House in Tbilisi

When Smirnova-Rosset was already married and had her own salon, one evening Zhukovsky stayed up late with her and, leaving, said: “You see how pleasantly we spent the evening, it could have been every day, but you didn’t want to.” Vasily Andreevich was even jealous of Alexandra Osipovna for Gogol. A letter from Zhukovsky from Frankfurt am Main, where Gogol was visiting him at that time, has been preserved: “Every day I receive packages from you. For me, only the address, and everything else to Gogol. Even without you, I know that I am Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky, that I am still in Dusseldorf, that I now live in Frankfurt. But I never thought that I was just Gogol’s tail, which you sometimes deign to pull so that Gogol would respond to you.”

Alexandra Osipovna herself was jealous, though only of her friends. Thus, she was close friends (since 1838) with the poetess Countess Evdokia Petrovna Rostopchina, who in turn was a close friend of Vladimir Odoevsky. In one of her letters, she writes: “Although you promised to write to me, I don’t know why your letter delighted me with its surprise. Obviously, my heart was unconsciously incredulous, and when I wanted to boast that in St. Petersburg you remembered me first, I learned with annoyance that Odoevsky was the first to be made happy...”

Secretary of the hostess - Alexandra Smirnova-Rosset in the Tbilisi house

She was never happy in her marriage. She did not love her husband Nikolai Mikhailovich Smirnov, a rich man and a card player, a kind and eccentric man, a senator, diplomat, governor of Kaluga and St. Petersburg, with whom she had children, money, and comfortable living in Russia and abroad. As Alexandra Osipovna herself said to her friend Alexander Sergeevich: “To hell, Pushkin, your position in the world! The heart wants to love, but there is absolutely no one to love.” But the groom was rich, and her family was poor: “I sold myself for six thousand souls for my brothers.”

This, of course, is just a pale sketch of this undeniably beautiful, intelligent, emancipated and eccentric woman. This is exactly the portrait that emerges after reading her correspondence, autobiographical essays (those that she wrote herself), and the memoirs of her contemporaries about her.

In Tbilisi there is a memorial museum “House of Smirnovs”...

Svetlana MAKARENKO, “Celebrities”

Lermontov wrote a lot about love. His whole life was filled with love experiences. That is why love lyrics are one of the main ones in his work. Among the most famous short poems by Lermontov about love are the following:

Silhouette

I have your silhouette
I love its sad color;
It hangs on my chest,
And he is gloomy, like the heart in her.
There is no life and fire in the eyes,
But he is always near me;
He is your shadow, but I love you
Like the shadow of bliss, your shadow.

TO ***

You're too sweet to be innocent
And you are too kind to love!
You could give happiness to half the world,
But you won’t be happy yourself;
Bliss does not send us fate
Doubly so. - Have you seen the fast flow?
Its shores are blooming, while the bottom
Always deep, cold and dark!

A. O. Smirnova

I want to tell you a lot without you,
I want to listen to you in front of you;
But silently you look sternly,
And I am silent in embarrassment.
What to do?.. With unskillful speech
I can’t occupy your mind...
All this would be funny
If only it weren't so sad...

They loved each other so long and tenderly...

They loved each other so long and tenderly,
With deep melancholy and insanely rebellious passion!
But, like enemies, they avoided recognition and meeting,
And their short speeches were empty and cold.
They parted in silent and proud suffering
And the sweet image was only sometimes seen in dreams.
And death came: the meeting came after the grave...
But in the new world they did not recognize each other.

May I love someone

Let me love someone:
Love doesn't brighten my life.
She's like a plague spot
It burns in the heart, although it is dark;
We drive away with hostile force,
I live by what death is to others:
I live like the ruler of the sky -
In a wonderful world - but alone.

In the simplicity of the ignoramus
In short, I wanted to know you,
But these sweet hopes
Now I'm completely lost.

I want to listen to you in front of you,
But silently you look sternly,
And I am silent in embarrassment.
What to do?.. With artless speech
I can’t occupy your mind...
All this would be funny
If only it weren't so sad...

I want to tell you a lot without you,
I want to listen to you in front of you,
But silently you look sternly,
And I am silent in embarrassment.
What to do?.. With unskilled speech
I can’t occupy your mind...
All this would be funny
If only it weren't so sad...

I want to tell you a lot without you,
I want to listen to you in front of you,
But silently you look sternly,
And I am silent in embarrassment.
We are constrained by the joy of children,
No, I won't write anything down
In the album of your social life -
Not even your name.
My lies are so unskillful
Why is it wrong for them to bother you...
All this would be funny
If only it weren't so sad...

Lermontov, 1840

Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova-Rosset(1809 - 1882) was on friendly terms with Pushkin, Gogol, Zhukovsky. Lermontov during a short stay in St. Petersburg in 1840-1841. often visited her literary salon, and also met with her at the house of his friends the Karamzins.

In the simplicity of the ignoramus
In short, I wanted to know you,
But these sweet hopes
Now I'm completely lost.
I want to tell you a lot without you,
I want to listen to you in front of you,
But silently you look sternly,
And I am silent in embarrassment.
What to do?.. With artless speech
I can’t occupy your mind...
All this would be funny
If only it weren't so sad...

Analysis of Lermontov's poem “A. O. Smirnova"

The addressee of the work of 1840 is Alexandra Smirnova-Rosset, a bright and gifted woman. Before her marriage, she served as a maid of honor for two empresses and enjoyed their favor for her rare intelligence, tact and taste. Smirnova was attracted cultural life, she visited the salon of Karamzin’s daughter and organized similar meetings herself, and was on friendly terms with outstanding writers of that time.

Lermontov, going on a visit to the Smirnovs one morning, did not find the mistress of the house. The poet wrote down a poem dedicated to Alexandra Osipovna in an album lying on the table in the salon. The work, which appeared by chance, is in fact not impromptu: the researchers managed to find a draft and a finished autograph in a different edition. The poem exists in several versions, and none of them has acquired final status.

Following the genre features of the album madrigal, the poetic text begins with a compliment to the addressee. The lyrical subject, admiring the lady's intelligence and education, critically positions himself as an “ignoramus” - a sincere but simple-minded person who wanted to make a short acquaintance with the heroine. The personal nature of the first quatrain prompted the publishers to exclude these lines from the version published during the poet’s lifetime.

The central part of Lermontov’s work is devoted to the theme of communication difficulties; the dominant motives here are embarrassment and timidity, which hinder the hero. The antithesis “without you” - “with you” outlines the contradictory desires of the lyrical “I”, which cannot determine its role. The hero seems to be trying on the masks of a speaker and a listener, not daring to choose a specific one. The use of two lexemes of the same root - “silent” and “silent” - emphasizes the awkwardness of the situation when a conversation contains more pauses than words. The lyrical hero is depressed by his inept attempts to make friends with the addressee.

The rhetorical question is followed by a generalization in which the hero admits his powerlessness: “unskillful speech” is not capable of attracting the attention of an intelligent, insightful interlocutor. The aphorism that makes up the final couplet has acquired an independent life in the language system, receiving the status of a catchphrase.

Lermontov's creation is distinguished by its grace and expressiveness of style, and the accuracy of conveying subtle shades of emotions. The intimate nature of the lyrical situation prompted some researchers to classify the poem as a sample love lyrics, however, the problematic of the work indicates a desire to earn sympathy and establish friendly relations with the addressee.

“A great master is one who looks with his own eyes at what everyone has seen, and who knows how to see beauty in familiar, attention-grabbing phenomena.

Auguste Rodin.

In the middle of the last century, on the pages of the magazine "Youth" there was a discussion about "physicists" and "lyricists" in poetry. In short, by “physicists” we meant poets who write with their minds, but not with their hearts. The “lyricists” included poets who put feelings, experiences, and emotions in the first place in their works. The dispute between the “physicists” and the “lyricists” did not lead to anything - each camp remained unconvinced. There are a great many poems in our time. Muses hover like butterflies over every more or less literate person. The number of people who consider themselves poets numbers in the tens of thousands. Now, even in any psychiatric hospital, every second patient is a poet! At the same time, the average level of poetic qualifications of most poets is low and, basically, this category of poets can be classified as “handymen” of poetry. In means mass media A huge number of texts are published that seem to be written according to all the rules, but do not represent any poetic value.
Every reader, every educated person must clearly distinguish between two concepts - versification and poetry.
What is versification? This is, firstly, the ability to choose a rhyme, secondly, to choose a rhythm and follow it throughout the entire poem, and thirdly, to express one’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions in the correct literary language. In addition, in any poem a memorable image must clearly emerge, and there must be correctly used comparisons and metaphors. But each of the above concepts is only a step leading to the brilliant throne of Poetry, part of the mosaic of the big picture. Versification is an inanimate frame, it is only a photograph of reality. But if you breathe a soul into this frame, it comes to life and begins an independent life as a piece of great Poetry. The mistake of many poets (even great ones) is that, having gone through all the stages of versification, they stop at the last milestone. Everything they do is done correctly, everything is in place, all the laws of versification are observed, but they cannot overcome the last step - breathing the soul into the work. These are the “physicists” mentioned at the beginning of the article. They simply photograph reality, but do not depict it like true artists, in whom every stroke, every stroke reveals the soul and character of the depicted object.
The famous literary critic Shengeli in his “Treatise on Russian Verse” (1921) wrote: “The craft of versification can be taught to everyone. A skilled poet may or may not be a poet, but an incompetent one cannot be. That is, the craft of versification is a necessary condition for all writers, but he alone is not enough to be a poet."
In other words, thinking and sensitive natures who write bad poems, theoretically they can someday become poets, but they will never become poets.
More than two hundred years ago, Nicolas Boileau, in his work “Poetic Art,” mercilessly ridiculed numerous upstart poets with their bad verses in magnificent Alexandrian stanzas:

1. A poet will never become a poet.
2. Not heeding the voice of empty vanity,
Test your talent both soberly and severely.

3. Poems where there are thoughts, but the sounds hurt the ear,
No one will listen or read with us.

4. When Parnassus emerged from darkness in France,
Arbitrariness reigned there, uncontrollable and wild,
Having bypassed Caesura, streams of words rushed...
Rhymed lines were called poetry.

Isn't this a direct reminder that one should, after all, distinguish between verses (“rhymed lines”) and poetry? And everything is naively simple and has long been known. But do we always follow this advice?

And here are M. Tsvetaeva’s advice to a novice poet:
- “Poems are a responsibility. Whatever happens, it will come true. Knowing this, I simply didn’t write some things.”
- “You still feed on the outer world, while the poet’s food is the inner world. Your poems are superficial because in them the outer world is not passed through the inner world.”
- “Your poems are younger than you. Grow up to yourself and outgrow - this is the path of a poet.
- "Words in your poems for the most part replaceable, which means they are not the same. Your poetic unit, for now, is a phrase, not a word. You want to say a lot, but you haven’t yet reached the point where you just HAVE to say something.”

People learn to write poetry, but they are born poets, so not every poem contains something that makes you want to cry, laugh, rejoice or yearn, what is called real poetry. The poems of a real great poet are distinguished by the following main features:

Precise condensed verse;
- richest sound recording;
- rhythm that exactly matches the content;
- beautiful alliteration;
- imagery of speech.

Tvardovsky said wonderfully about this - “a poet is someone who is read by people who usually do not read poetry.”
The main advantage of poetry is that it makes small things big. It’s as if you look through a small window - and suddenly the widest distances spread out before your eyes and your heart trembles with excitement.
Not everything that is called poetry is poetry. However, genuine poetry is always poetry. There are few of them and even the most famous poets you can find only a dozen or two poems that meet the needs of true Poetry, poetry with a capital P. Real poetry is always a discovery; This is a new world and it is impossible to accurately define and indicate the framework of this world to the future poet: they say, create from here to now? But you can point out the signs of a cheap poetic craft. This is the absence of a poetic metaphor, these are hackneyed phrases and long-worn words, this is senile grumbling or simply the poems have nothing to say. The main thing that distinguishes real poetry is poetic thought, which, alas, is rarely found today, despite all the author’s ambitions.

Even 150 years ago, M. Yu. Lermontov wrote about the role and purpose of the poet and poetry “The real great poet cannot create works simply for the sake of the process of versification itself. He involuntarily thinks about the meaning and purpose of his work, what he wants to tell people about.”
And further:
If you want to be great, know how to shrink
All mastery lies in self-restraint.

Mikhail Yuryevich always strived to follow this rule of “self-restraint.” Very characteristic in this regard is his poem to A.O. Smirnova.
In the original version it looked like this:

In the simplicity of the ignoramus
In short, I wanted to know you,
But these sweet hopes
Now I'm completely lost.

I want to listen to you in front of you,
But silently you look sternly,
And I am silent in embarrassment.

We are constrained by childish timidity,
No, I won't write anything down
In the album of your social life,
Not even your name.

My lies are so unskillful
That it is a sin for them to disturb you.
All this would be funny

Lermontov understood perfectly well that the poem was not fully developed, that there were details in it that should be removed. After a little "cleaning" it turned out
beautiful poem:

I want to tell you a lot without you,
I want to listen to you in front of you,
But silently you look sternly,
And I am silent in embarrassment.

What to do! With unskillful speech
I can't occupy your mind.
All this would be funny
If only it weren't so sad.

Young Lermontov, a romantic poet, feeling his powerful poetic gift that elevated him above people, first of all valued his own freedom, despising the opinions of the mocking, brilliant world.

I have lived on my own until now
Ran freely my song,
Like a wild bird in the desert,
Like a boat in the distance across the lake.

But already in his youth, the poet was overcome by doubts: is it possible to desire fame and immortality if his people drag out a miserable, insignificant existence.

I'm crazy! you are right, right!
Immortality on earth is funny.
How dare I wish for loud glory,
When are you happy in the dust?

In these lines one can already hear the poet’s repentance in his proud arrogance, in his distance from earthly, everyday life. They say that people need a poet, he must be with them in sorrow and in joy. Lermontov came to the understanding that literature, poetry, is a powerful means of influencing the hearts and minds of people. The world of a real poet is an inner world. A poet from God most often does not know the path he will follow, but he knows the goal and this is the main thing in his life. A person who engages in poetry from time to time, depending on his mood, cannot reach the heights of creativity and infinity; the one who wants to proclaim divine truth must surrender to it completely, must sacrifice himself. For a true poet, poetry is a sacred act, a true poet is a servant of the elements, and he must live among these elements in complete detachment from outside world. There is a difference between creativity and inspiration. The higher the author’s spiritual feelings when working with poetry, the richer the work. You can sit down and write from the ceiling, or better yet, compose a verse according to all the rules and laws. But there are moments when you are visited by the same inspiration in which you write and write, and it is then that you receive true pleasure and pleasure. And if, after some time, when reading this verse, you also acutely experience what is written about, it means that the work was a success. In general, a poem in this regard should be perceived as a spiritual statement of the author, as a mantra or prayer, which not only tells a story, but also conveys (this is the most important thing) energy and arouses the reader’s feelings. The more feelings and experiences the author puts into his work, the higher his energy and power of influence on others. Sometimes you can come across paradoxical things - from the point of view of the rules of versification, a thing is written poorly, but it has such energy that it reaches the heights of real poetry. After all, our feelings increase significantly if we share them with others, and those around us understand them. Let it be a choral singing of a drinking song or mutual love.
In the distant 50s of the last century, Yuz Aleshkovsky wrote “Song about Stalin,” which began with the words:

Comrade Stalin, you are a great scientist -
You know a lot about linguistics,
And I'm a simple Soviet prisoner,
And my comrade is the gray Bryansk wolf.

The song spread throughout the country within a short time. What was the secret of the enormous popularity of this clearly not poetry? Everything is very simple. The author caught the mood Soviet citizens during the “Thaw” era and was able to accurately express their feelings. He put enormous energy into the words of the song, which resonated in the hearts of millions of people.
Or take the well-known “A Christmas tree was born in the forest.” The poems contain neither beautiful images nor magnificent comparisons and metaphors. And yet, 200 million people know the words to this simple song and sing it. Why? Yes, because the energy invested by the author in the text of this poem turned out to be close to millions of people, the author’s mood resonated with the mood of millions of readers.
No one said better than Akhmatova about giving a poetic sound to a poem:

If only you knew what kind of rubbish
Poems grow without shame.
Like a yellow dandelion by the fence,
Like burdocks and quinoa.

An angry shout, a fresh smell of tar,
Mysterious mold on the wall...
And the verse already sounds, perky, tender,
To the delight of you and me.

Real poetry is not only high energy, but also foresight. Remember the poem by M.Yu. Lermontov "Prediction":

The year will come, Russia's black year,
When the crown of kings falls,
The mob will forget their former love for them,
And the food of many will be death and blood..."

"No, I'm not Byron, I'm different
The yet unknown chosen one,
Like him, a wanderer driven by the world,
But only with a Russian soul.

I started earlier, I’ll finish sooner..."

And every line of the great poet’s poems turned out to be prophetic.
In her poem “To the Jews” M. Tsvetaeva writes:

All over the earth - from edge to edge -
Crucifixion and Descent from the Cross.
With the last of your sons, Israel,
Truly we will bury Christ.

The poem was written in 1916, when the poetess first met Mandelstam. Tsvetaeva and Mandelstam often walked around Moscow and were passionate about each other. And wasn’t it about him that Tsvetaeva wrote the last two lines?!
Of course, you can’t take everything literally. There is also such a form of art as the art of reading. Osip Mandelstam, alas, was not buried, but thrown into a hole on the Second River near Vladivostok. And he, a baptized Jew, was not the first and not the last son of Israel. But how could she know? How could I have foreseen it?!
She couldn’t... But Poetry could and can, But on one condition: if the Creator imprinted a kiss on the Poet’s forehead. And then Poetry will begin to broadcast to contemporaries and descendants about what was and will be, and sound the alarm bell of human hearts. You just need to listen to her voice.
True Poetry, as you know, knows everything and does not know how to lie. Moreover, there comes a moment when she, separating from the author, begins to live independently and merges with eternity. Poetry is the language of the soul. This is both a cry from the soul and its confession. Some people are drawn to poetry all their lives, but most are not destined to even touch the hem of its garments.
Speaking figuratively, POEM IS RIPPLES IN THE WATER, POETRY IS POWERFUL UNDERCURRENTS, HIDES, LOW TIDES, WHIRLS AND STORMS. Versification is only part of the art of poetry, one of the steps leading to Parnassus, and if the author wants to become a real poet, he must study its laws well and master them masterfully. The form of a poem is determined by the rules of versification, but poetry puts content into poetry (thought, vocabulary, images, etc.). You have to live by poetry and to become a real poet you need to study all your life. Learn from masters with a capital M, from great poets. And not the poet who writes 3-4 poems a day (if you wish, you can rhyme a newspaper), but the one who lives in poetry, in whom an unquenchable fire burns, given to him by God at birth.
And there is one more point that I would like to dwell on in this chapter. Even if you become a professional writer, write when you have something to say, and not when you need money to pay rent or order a new dress for your wife. Don't write to order. If you break this rule, you yourself will not notice how the fresh leaf of your talent will turn yellow and wither. A writer, especially a beginner, if he respects his talent, should not live by literature. Earn your livelihood any way you like, but not by writing. Work, wait, and if you are stubborn, the time will come and the works written earlier will begin to work for you.

P.S. Other articles on versification can be found on the MFVSM page - Dictionary of Rhymes.