Princes Yusupov and A.S. Pushkin

On April 9 at 14.00 in the Upper Hall of the Colonnade the opening of the exhibition “Princes Yusupov and A.S. Pushkin” will take place. The exhibition, opening in the year of the 105th anniversary of the museum-reserve, is dedicated to the 225th anniversary of the great poet.

The relationship of A. S. Pushkin with the family of princes Yusupov is generally well known and is usually limited to several facts: the rent by his parents of an outbuilding in the Moscow palace of Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov (1751–1831); Pushkin’s visits to Arkhangelsk in 1827 and 1830; message addressed to N.B. Yusupov “To the nobleman”; the creation of Pushkin Alley in Arkhangelsk and the installation of a bust of the poet on it in 1903. The relationship between the Yusupovs and Pushkin goes beyond the life of the latter; preserving the memory of the poet has become an important component of the history of not only the Yusupov family, but also the Arkhangelskoye estate.

In his childhood memoirs, Pushkin mentions the “Yusupov Garden” - a small regular park that belonged to N.B. Yusupov, where, obviously, he was taken for walks and which became the first of the “slender gardens” that he could see in his life.

The acquaintance of the poet and Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov took place at the end of 1826 or the beginning of 1827, when, after returning from exile, Pushkin shone in Moscow living rooms, warmly received by friends, as well as a wide circle of contemporaries. The prince was ready for this meeting, since his library preserved several editions of the anthology “Exemplary Russian Works in Poems,” in which more than a dozen of Pushkin’s works were published (presented at the exhibition). The library also had separate editions of the poet’s works, including the tragedy “Boris Godunov”, published shortly before N.B. Yusupov’s death.

It is believed that Pushkin visited Arkhangelskoye twice: in the spring of 1827 with S. A. Sobolevsky and in the summer of 1830 with Prince P. A. Vyazemsky. The impressions from meeting the owner of the estate and the first trip were reflected in Pushkin’s message “To the Nobleman,” which was addressed to N.B. Yusupov, which caused a lively struggle between literary “parties” and accusations against Pushkin of groveling before the powers that be, unworthy of such an honor.

The most striking fact of this controversy is N. A. Polevoy’s pamphlet “Morning in the Study of a Noble Master” (1830), so harsh that the censor who missed it was fired. According to some researchers, Pushkin and Vyazemsky went to Yusupov with a request to lobby for the censor’s return to service. The drawing by artist N. de Courteil represents two friends during a meeting between the prince and his peasants.

However, the opinion of V. G. Belinsky soon became generally accepted: “… this is a complete picture of the Russian 18th century painted in marvelous colors… artistic comprehension and depiction of an entire era in the person of one of its most remarkable representatives.” Upon learning of the prince’s death, Pushkin wrote: “My Yusupov has died.”

In St. Petersburg, Pushkin’s social acquaintances included N. B. Yusupov’s son Boris Nikolaevich and his wife Zinaida Ivanovna. It is known that in the story with J. Dantes, which ended with the death of the poet, Z. I. Yusupova supported Pushkin, grieved over his death and, as a sign of gratitude, received one of Pushkin’s autographs as a gift from V. A. Zhukovsky - an excerpt from an article about A. A. Delvig, which was kept in the family archive until the end of the 1910s.

Pushkin’s message ends the collection of biographies of representatives of the princely Yusupov family and family documents of the 16th – 19th centuries, published in 1866–1867 by Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov Jr. Moreover, the title “To a nobleman” was corrected to “Message to Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov.” It was probably at this time that a plaster bust of Pushkin and a cast of his death mask appeared in the family collection.

The daughter of N.B. Yusupov Jr. Zinaida Nikolaevna Princess Yusupova Countess Sumarokova-Elston and her husband Felix Feliksovich continued the family tradition. In Arkhangelskoye, in memory of Pushkin’s visits to the estate, Pushkin Alley was created, in which the gallery of ancient gods and heroes ends with a bust of the poet. This bust became the first estate monument to Pushkin in Russia, which contributed to the transformation of Arkhangelskoye already in the 1910s into one of the literary estates of the near Moscow region, and the monument and alley became one of the local attractions.

In 1907, Z. N. and F. F. Yusupov published a facsimile of Pushkin’s autograph of the message “To the Nobleman,” which was kept in the family, marking the beginning of the scientific study of the poem. The exhibition displays one of the printing clichés from which the beginning of the message was printed.

From a close relative, Ekaterina Fedorovna Tizenhausen, F. F. Yusupov also inherited Pushkin’s manuscripts - the poet’s letters to her mother, E. M. Khitrovo. These letters, like the Pushkin autographs of the Yusupov family, were kept in St. Petersburg, in their palace on the Moika, from where in 1918 and 1925 they were transported to the Pushkin House (now the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences).

There are no documents in the museum’s archives indicating interest in the Pushkin theme before 1940. Although in guidebooks to the Moscow region the name of Pushkin is constantly mentioned in connection with Arkhangelsk, as in all guidebooks to the museum without exception, the first of which was published in 1955.

In the post-war period, museum staff not only collected the memories of the poet’s contemporaries, but also monitored the study of the message “To the Nobleman” by domestic philologists. Through their efforts, editions of A. S. Pushkin’s works were identified in N. B. Yusupov’s library, and several exhibitions and celebrations were held in the 1980s – 2000s in honor of the poet’s birth. In recent years, new documents relating to the stay of the Pushkin family in the Yusupov Palace in Moscow have been introduced into scientific circulation.

The exhibition is accompanied by a multimedia installation “Reading Pushkin Together,” which allows you to see virtual manuscripts and voice the most famous poetic lines of Alexander Sergeevich.