Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

Karamzin’s interest in the recent intellectual fad for Freemasonry brought him to its center in Moscow, to the circle of the Mason Novikov, where to the astonishment of his old friends he turned from a wastrel into a “pious student of wisdom” (while still retaining his cheerfulness) and also made his debut as a writer in Novikov’s magazine for children.

The key episode in Karamzin’s seemingly uneventful life (he died in 1826, not reaching sixty) was his only trip to Europe in 1789–1790, during which he had a half hour’s conversation in Konigsberg with the great philosopher Immanuel Kant, “a tiny, thin old man, extremely white and gentle”² (they discussed the topical question of the discovery of new lands and exchanged views on China). In Paris, arriving at the right time in the right place, Karamzin listened to the fiery speeches of the revolutionaries Mirabeau and Robespierre at the National Assembly.

Back in Russia, Karamzin published “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” based on his European trip, in the magazine he founded, Moscow Journal. This catapulted him into the spotlight as the leader of Russian sentimentalism, which arose in imitation of European models: Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his epistolary novel Julie, or the New Heloise, and Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Karamzin’s most popular work of that period was his novella Poor Liza, about a poor peasant girl, seduced and abandoned by a rich young man, who drowns herself in a Moscow pond. Several generations of Russian readers, particularly women, wept over Poor Liza and other works by Karamzin, discovering their own spirituality and the value of their inner emotional world.

Sometimes a poet’s biography resembles the popular narratives of his era. The true story of the childhood and adolescence of Vassily Zhukovsky could be the plot of a typical Karamzin work, just as capable of jerking tears from sensitive souls. The future great poet was the bastard child of Afanasy Bunin, a wealthy provincial landowner of sixty-seven. His mother was a young Turkish slave, brought to Russia in 1770 as a gift to Bunin from his serfs who had fought in the Russo-Turkish War. She was christened as Elizabeth.

The son of Bunin and Elizabeth was given the patronymic and family name of his godfather, Andrei Zhukovsky, a hanger-on in the Bunin household. Bunin loved his Turkish mistress and his son. He was already married, but according to people who knew, “his wife, having had several children with him, left the marital bed and allowed his freedom of choice in the demands of Hymen.”³

It became a multicultural menage a trois. The Turkish woman was installed as the Bunins’ housekeeper, coming to the lady of the house, Maria, for instructions, which she received while standing. But when Bunin moved permanently from the big house to the small cottage where Elizabeth lived, his wife broke off all relations with her. Elizabeth took the first step toward reconciliation: she brought her three-month-old son to the big house and placed him silently at the lady’s feet. Maria wept and gave in: peace was reestablished.

Bunin had hothouses built on his rich estate and grew lemons and apricots, unknown in Tula Province, as well as exotic flowers. Little Vassily Zhukovsky was another hothouse flower, growing up amid his numerous stepsisters. With his curly hair, dusky skin, and big eyes, he resembled his Turkish mother.

But Maria saw a resemblance to her only son, who had studied at Leipzig University and upon his return to Russia committed suicide over an unhappy love affair, like young Werther in Goethe’s novel. She basically adopted Zhukovsky, but he always called her “grandmother,” saving “mother” for Elizabeth.

The master of the house loved hunting, feasting, and women, but Maria adored books, receiving the latest works from Moscow and St. Petersburg, thereby acquiring most of the books published by the Mason Novikov. Many of his almanacs and magazines served as abundant food for thought for young Zhukovsky. Maria did not know foreign languages, but her son’s governors had taught him to speak, read, and write fluently in French and German (later, he mastered English as well). With time, Russia read the best poems by Goethe, Schiller, Byron, and Thomas Gray in Zhukovsky’s translations, which remain exemplary to this day.

Zhukovsky’s artistic gifts became evident when he was four. According to family lore, Vassily drew a copy of an icon on the floor with chalk; seeing it, the maid fell to her knees in prayer—it was a miracle! The boy immediately put an end to the religious ecstasy by claiming his author’s rights.

Zhukovsky’s public literary debut was a performance in a private house of his tragedy Camillus, or Liberated Rome, based on Plutarch. The twelve-year-old author was also the director and an actor, appearing in a red cape and a “Roman” helmet of gold paper with ostrich feathers, bearing a big wooden sword.

The audience had to pay a 10-kopeck admission (his “grandmother” was let in for free, as an exception). The tragedy’s success inspired a new play, but it was an embarrassing flop. Zhukovsky later claimed that this failure contributed to his lifelong insecurity about his writing abilities.

Zhukovsky tended to be overly self-analytical, dreamy, and absent-minded—the typical hero of sentimental prose. His father died when Zhukovsky was eight, leaving him nothing in his will. His “grandmother” gave him 10,000 rubles—a considerable sum, but Zhukovsky still felt miserable.

He later recalled bitterly, “I took every kindness to me as pity. Yes, I had not been left or abandoned, I had a corner, but alas, I felt no one’s love; consequently, I could not repay love with love.”⁴

An exaggeration? Probably. A pose? Unlikely. Pure at heart, Zhukovsky was not a poseur.

The sentimental age in Russia gave rise to the ideal sentimental monarch, Alexander I, grandson of Catherine the Great and son of Emperor Paul I. In the remarkable line of Romanov rulers, Alexander I may be the most mysterious figure. His name is still surrounded by legends.

He was born to be happy but grew up, as Alexander Herzen put it, a “crowned Hamlet”—ambivalent, insecure, and given to mystical urges. His childhood gave no clue to the fateful zigzags and dramatic situations in his adult life.

Catherine adored her intelligent and gentle first grandson. She had hated Elizabeth I for taking away her son, Paul, but Catherine repeated (consciously? unconsciously?) the same stratagem: torn away from his parents, Alexander became the favorite toy of the empress.

There is a great similarity (little noted) between the childhood years of Alexander and Zhukovsky. Naturally, the future tsar and the future poet grew up in quite different conditions, but the psychological situation was approximately the same: the powerful grandmother who did not like the mother; the absent father, temperamental and hysterical; a sense of instability about the world and one’s place in it.

Both boys found escape in the theater. Young Zhukovsky performed in his own plays, while eight-year-old Alexander delighted Catherine in a performance of her own anti-Masonic play, The Deceiver. They grew up to be magnetic personalities; a courtier once said that Alexander was “un vrai charmant.” The same could be said of Zhukovsky.

Catherine left detailed instructions on bringing up Alexander and his younger brother, Konstantin. They were forbidden to torment animals, to kill birds, butterflies, and flies, and were trained not to fear mice and spiders, to