The Presidential Library illustrates the friendship between Prince Vyazemsky and Russia’s first poet

July 23, 2020 marks the 228th anniversary of the birth of Pyotr Andreyevich Vyazemsky, a poet, literary critic, publicist, statesman, like-minded friend of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. The Presidential Library’s collections provide electronic copies of unique publications, such as “Letters from N. M. Karamzin to Prince P. A. Vyazemsky. 1810–1826”, “Letters from Prince P. A. Vyazemsky: from the papers of P. Ya. Chaadayev”, the prince’s lifetime memoirs about his participation in the Battle of Borodino “Wake of the Battle of Borodino and Memoirs of 1812” (1869), “Ostafyevsky Archive of the Princes of Vyazemsky" and others.

Pyotr Vyazemsky came from an old and noble princely family. The father of the future poet, Andrei Vyazemsky, was already a major general at the age of 25, and at the age of 40 and more he was appointed to the post of Nizhny Novgorod and Penza Governor General. In 1792, when Peter was born, he bought the Ostafyevo estate near Moscow, and soon the Vyazemsky estate became one of the centers of cultural life in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century. His wife was Irish Jenny O’Reilly, in baptism - Evgenia Ivanovna. The future poet was left an orphan early - his mother died when her son was 10 years old, five years later his father died. And if the paternal lineage was well known to him, then he knew little about his mother. Already a 30-year-old man, he is asking his friend, historian Alexander Turgenev: “Do me a favor, find my relatives in Ireland: my mother was named O’Reilly. She was previously married to a Frenchman and divorced him to marry my father, who was traveling then... Here is a glorious romance adventure!” This letter is one of many included in the “Ostafyevsky Archive of the Princes of of Vyazemsky”, which is available in the Presidential Library. The archive includes the correspondence of several generations of the Vyazemsky family, but these documents are combined with the role “that belonged to Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky in his contemporary literary life and those friendly ties in which he was with the largest representatives of Russian literature of the late XVIII - first half of the XIX century".

After the death of the parents, the writer and historian Nikolai Karamzin, whom he called “the second father” in one of his poems, became the guardian of the young prince. It was thanks to him that Vyazemsky early became close to the circle of writers - Vasily Zhukovsky, Konstantin Batyushkov, Vasily Pushkin - uncle of Alexander Pushkin. The young prince turned out to be a master of the epigram, a poet whom everyone knows, everyone read, but only in manuscripts. Vyazemsky’s epigrams aroused both the readers’ delight and the indignation of those to whom they were addressed: “I am not in mercy with the Petersburg literature... The main heart is on me for Bulgarin, literary Figaro (mind aside) and for Krylov, which I put below Dmitriev”.

In 1815, Vyazemsky joined the Arzamas literary circle along with Vasily Zhukovsky, Konstantin Batyushkov, Denis Davydov, Alexander Pushkin in his ranks. Vyazemsky was one of the first to guess the brilliant talent in this very young “Arzamas”. He first met with Pushkin in absentia. Having heard “Memoirs in Tsarskoe Selo” in the reading of Vasily Pushkin in January 1815, in a letter to Batyushkov Vyazemsky wrote: “What can you say about the son of Sergei Lvovich? Miracle, and that’s it. His “Memories” turned our heads to Zhukovsky. What strength, precision in expression, what a hard and masterful brush in the paintings. May God grant him health and teachings, and in him will be good and woe to us. Crush, rogue!".

On March 25, 1816, on the way to Moscow, Vyazemsky decided to visit the Imperial Tsarskoe Selo Lyceum. Here he first met with Pushkin. Despite the seven-year age difference, Vyazemsky and Pushkin liked each other. Already on March 27, Pushkin was writing the first letter to Vyazemsky: “So be it, don’t blame it if my letter makes you yawn your poetical excellency; it’s their own fault, why was the unfortunate Tsarskoe Selo wilderness teasing, who was already being pulled by a rabid demon of paper…Amiable Arzamas! Comfort us with your messages - and I promise you, if not eternal bliss, then at least the sincere gratitude of the whole Lyceum”. In 1817, when Vyazemsky was visiting the Karamzins in Tsarskoe Selo, he attended lyceum final exams and visited Pushkin on his 18th birthday. Soon they began to see each other often. Both valued each other as worthy interlocutors - they were related by views on the surrounding reality, sharpness of mind... Their friendship, correspondence, cooperation and rivalry lasted almost two decades.

..."And in a hurry, and in a hurry to feel", - these lines of Vyazemsky from the First Snow elegy are familiar to the majority as an epigraph to the first chapter of Eugene Onegin. Pushkin highly appreciated the work of Vyazemsky, dedicated several poems to him and the third edition of the poem “The Fountain of Bakhchisaray”.

In turn, Vyazemsky spoke with admiration about Pushkin’s work, dedicated the translation of the Adolf novel to him, was grateful for the edits he made to some of his poems, and made the publisher of the poem “The Fountain of Bakhchisaray” which Pushkin himself called “incoherent in a letter to Vyazemsky ”excerpts". Vyazemsky prepared the poem for publication, and in March 1824 it was published. Pyotr Andreyevich turned out to be more insightful than his ingenious friend - the Fountain of Bakhchisaray was received with enthusiasm by readers. The poem was preceded by Vyazemsky's essay: “A conversation between the publisher and the classic from the Vyborg side or from Vasilyevsky Island. Instead of the preface to “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai””, where in the role of a romantic critic, he brought himself out.

On August 9, 1824, Pushkin arrived at the Mikhailovsky estate, where he was exiled by order of the emperor.

The 1830s in the history of relations between Vyazemsky and Pushkin is a time of both fruitful and creative interaction, as well as discrepancies, literary and political. In the early 30s, Pushkin and Vyazemsky were among the regular authors of the Literary Newspaper, published by the poet Anton Delvig. In his article “Two Writers Equal in Value...” he calls Pushkin and Vyazemsky “the most zealous” employees of the newspaper. When in 1836 Pushkin decided to publish Sovremennik, Vyazemsky (by the way, it was he who proposed the name of the magazine and his concept to Pushkin back in 1827) agreed to cooperate in it, but the magazine brought only losses, and the Pushkin family was one step away from the disaster. With the death of Pushkin, the activity of the prince as a critic and journalist completely disappeared.

Upon learning of Pushkin’s duel and wound, Vyazemsky immediately went to Moika, 12. At the funeral service of Pushkin in the church on Konyushennaya Square, the prince put one of his gloves in the poet’s coffin - as a sign of a future meeting.

In 1837, Vyazemsky created one of his most powerful poems. This frank confession in full is available in the publication “Letters from Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky: from the papers of P. Ya. Chaadayev” (1897) provided on the Presidential Library’s portal.

Vyazemsky lived another fifty-six years... but was he happy?.. Pushkin’s death knocked down the prince - in part, this was partly his death as a poet, the death of an entire literary generation.

Since 1863, Vyazemsky mainly lived abroad and died in Baden-Baden on November 22, 1878. He was buried in St. Petersburg, in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.