"Pushkin's grandson is fighting against Russia!" What did Russian newspapers write about the poet at the beginning of the 20th century?

Pushkin's Memorial Day is celebrated in Russia - on February 10, 1837, the great poet died after being seriously wounded in a duel with Dantes. In the Stalinist USSR, the 100th anniversary of Pushkin's death was celebrated almost as a national holiday, "our everything" was actually deified. And how was Pushkin treated in tsarist Russia? Fortunately, in those days there was no hint of deification, just the opposite. Journalist Liliya Gushchina collected some interesting testimonies from Russian newspapers of 1900-1917.

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“In Yalta, there is a striking lack of cheap editions of the works of the great poet in bookstores. The booksellers declare that they have absolutely no cheap works by Pushkin and offer instead their "Nana" and "Capital slums".

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“I.E. Repin completed the painting "Pushkin on the exam".

Contrary to the desired belief that Pushkin was "black", Repin depicted his red. There has already been a controversy in the press about this and, probably, there will be more.

It is somehow strange, even unpleasant to see Pushkin red. Poet and suddenly... red. And what a poet!

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"Pushkin's Corner", the village of Mikhailovskoye, is kept in an extremely careless form. A petition was sent to the name of the Pskov provincial marshal of the nobility, where it is proposed, in the name of the poet’s blessed memory, to remove all “bazaar” furniture from the estate, in no case encourage Svyatogorsky clerks to play billiards in Pushkin’s house, and prohibit tourists from signing on tables and things , and stop the favorite custom of Messrs. tourists to climb into Pushkin's carriage, which is not guarded by anyone.

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“It is necessary to rank the act of one Moscow theater as incredible rudeness, which every day put on a play called “Pushkin's First Night”. The leaders of the theater, spitting on the memory of the poet, sacred to many, are raking in money with dirty hands.

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“In one of the Prussian cavalry units currently operating on the Russian front, the captain count Georg-Nikolai Merenberg is serving. Count Merenberg is the grandson of our great Pushkin. He is the only son of Pushkin's daughter, Natalia Alexandrovna, and Prince Nikolai-Wilhelm of Naussky. A few years ago, Count Merenberg made a claim to the Luxembourg crown, but, in view of his origin from a morganatic marriage, the grandson of the king of poetry was removed, signed a waiver of his rights, for which he received a multimillion-dollar reward. Count Merenbert, called to active service, sought admission to the army operating against France, but, in view of his Luxembourg connections, this was considered inconvenient, and Pushkin's grandson has to participate in a campaign against the Russians.

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"Melitopol. Priest of the City Cathedral Fr. John Beletsky donated to the local museum the work of a self-taught sculptor, a prisoner of the local prison castle - a bust of Pushkin of remarkable resemblance, made of rye bread.

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“A letter from his brother was found in the papers of N.I. Turgenev. A.I. Turgenev reports “a few immortal lines” of Pushkin, who read to him in Moscow excerpts from the unpublished chapter of Onegin:

Seeing one Russia in the world,

Pursuing your ideal

Lame Turgenev listened to them,

And, hating the whips of slavery,

Foresaw in this crowd of nobles

Liberators of the peasants.

It is curious that N. Turgenev, then already an emigrant, was offended by Pushkin for this inclusion of him among the revolutionaries and called the poet a "barbarian."

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“In yesterday's issue of Russkoye Slovo, Mrs. Teffi's feuilleton was published under the title “My First Pushkin”.

There, by the way, is given as the most beloved since childhood, Pushkin's poem "Bird".

Yesterday I dissolved the dungeon

My air captive,

I returned the singer to the groves,

I returned freedom to her...

But the poem "Yesterday I dissolved the dungeon" belongs to Tumansky, known only for this one poem, published in many anthologies.

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“Mrs. Vyaltseva is going to sing Tatyana in “Eugene Onegin”, and before the start of rehearsals she is conducting her research, wanting to establish what hair color Pushkin's Tatyana had. Here is what the singer told our correspondent:

- All the actresses play her as a brunette, but meanwhile Pushkin does not say anything about hair color. It seems to me that Tatyana should rather be a blonde. Dreaminess is not characteristic of brunettes. However, one of these days I will receive exact information. Tatyana Larina's own daughter lives in Pskov, and I have already written to her ... "

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“The constable of the Glebovsky volost of the Yaroslavl province, Kuroyedov, answered the request of the provincial government about how the fees for the monument to A.S. Pushkin are made: “A.S. Pushkin was not in the volost entrusted to me. Nothing is known about his personality in our volost”.

* Our everything - it's a common name for Pushkin in Russia.