Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

On his part, Zhukovsky wrote the epistle to Alexander with great care, unlike “Bard,” which was written in the field and almost as an improvisation. This time Zhukovsky intended “to add his name to Alexander’s monument,” as he put it.

The poem was not presented directly to Alexander. First Zhukovsky sent it to his mother, the dowager empress, through his friends at court. Even though at first she had blamed her son for Paul’s assassination, she and her circle now acted as the tsar’s cultural advisers.

A cautious step-by-step procedure ensued. First Maria Fedorovna heard Zhukovsky’s ode in a small family circle (the grand dukes and duchesses), read aloud by one of the courtiers, while she followed along with a copy in her hand. Everyone was delighted: “Marvelous! Excellent! C’est sublime!” When the family circle decided that Alexander, “who floats above flattery,” would “feel the power of the poet’s genius,” another copy of Zhukovsky’s poem was sent to the emperor in Vienna.²

At the same time, the empress invited Zhukovsky to her residence in Pavlovsk, outside St. Petersburg, in order to meet him. He lived there for three days, and on the first he read his ballads to a small circle, while at the next, reading for a larger group, he declaimed “A Bard in the Camp of Russian Warriors” and “To Emperor Alexander.”

Zhukovsky and his manner of reading charmed Maria Fedorovna; as a memoirist noted, “to know Zhukovsky and not love him was impossible,” he was “a combination of child and angel.”³

The result was an invitation for Zhukovsky to accept the coveted post of “reader to the empress” (yet another important step up the court hierarchical ladder). This impressed Alexander. He also knew that Zhukovsky had received the rank of staff captain and the Order of St. Anna, Second Degree, for the war against Napoleon: that is, he had proven his loyalty not only in poetry but in action.

An imperial decree on December 30, 1816, was a formal response to the gift edition of Zhukovsky’s poems accompanied by a letter from the poet. The decree read: “To the minister of finances. Observing attentively the work and gifts of the prominent writer, Staff Captain Vassily Zhukovsky, who has enriched our literature with excellent works, many of which are devoted to the glory of the Russian forces, I order that as a sign of my good will and to provide him the financial security needed for his work to give him a pension of four thousand rubles a year from the state treasury. Alexander.”⁴

There was more. In 1817, Zhukovsky was asked to teach Russian to the bride of Grand Duke Nicholas (the future Emperor Nicholas I), the Prussian princess Charlotte, who upon converting to Russian Orthodoxy took the name Alexandra Fedorovna. Zhukovsky, who spoke German fluently, was expected to work with her for an hour every day on Russian language and literature. The rest of the time Zhukovsky was free, and his salary was 3,000 rubles from Alexander and 2,000 from the duke, as well as a free apartment in his palace.

And then came the crowning achievement of Zhukovsky’s service to the house of Romanov: in 1826, Nicholas I officially hired the poet as governor for his eight-year-old son Alexander (later Emperor Alexander II). By that time, Zhukovsky was practically part of the family. He accompanied Alexandra Fedorovna to Moscow, where she bore a son, and commemorated the festive occasion with a special poem, which, in particular, captured for us Nicholas’s rare display of emotion at the sight of mother and child (which the poet had witnessed):

Seeing the child, the young father knelt

Before the saved mother

And in the heat of love wept, at a loss for words.

Nicholas I already knew what a perfect pedagogue Zhukovsky could be for a blue-blooded child. There is a lively description of him in action in a letter to Pushkin from his friend the poet Anton Delvig: “Zhukovsky, I think, is lost irretrievably to poetry. He is teaching Grand Duke Alexander Russian, and I am not joking when I say that he is devoting all his time to creating a primer. For each letter he draws a little figure, and for syllables he draws pictures. How can you blame him! He is imbued with a great idea: to educate, perhaps, the Tsar. The possible benefit and glory of the Russian people consoles his heart.”⁵

Zhukovsky’s friends called him the “children’s Aristotle,” for he taught the heir not only Russian literature but also geography, history, and even arithmetic. True, Zhukovsky wrote poetry much less, but it sometimes seemed that he did not regret it: “I do know that the world of children is my world, and that I can act with pleasure in that world, and that I can find total happiness in it.”

There was a reason Zhukovsky spoke longingly of “total happiness” in the closed world of the Romanov family, living in their sumptuous residence, the Winter Palace, where he was given a spacious and comfortable apartment. He suffered a painful crisis in 1823, and the wound never healed for him.

In 1805, at the age of twenty-two, Zhukovsky first recorded in his diary words of love for Maria (Masha) Protasova, his stepsister’s daughter, aged twelve. It was a passionate but ultimately platonic feeling: despite the grown-up Masha’s love for him, her devout mother never gave her blessing for them to marry. In 1823, at the age of thirty, Masha died, after a few years of marriage to another man.

This sad story dominated Zhukovsky’s oeuvre for more than thirty years and imbued the poet’s worldview with religious and mystical tones. Both he and Masha had always talked and written to each other about “trusting Providence.” Zhukovsky’s “To Emperor Alexander” was also based on providential rhetoric. Perhaps that was what touched a secret string in the emperor’s soul, for he was always in search of trusted advisers and a word of spiritual approval.

This inclination toward mysticism increased sharply after Alexander’s victory over Napoleon. Napoleon’s fame as military leader was legendary, and so the inexperienced Russian tsar’s triumph could easily be interpreted as God’s will. The Bible was now always on Alexander’s bedside table, and he saw himself as the weapon of Providence. The goal of his state policy became the affirmation of Christian morality in international relations.

As leader of the anti-Napoleonic coalition, Alexander had enough power to attempt bringing those ideas into life. After the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), on Alexander’s initiative, the victorious nations—Russia, Austria, Prussia, and England—formed the Holy Alliance. Its purpose would be to instill Christian principles in the management of Europe.

We can imagine Alexander’s thinking: while the power-hungry Napoleon was celebrated for constant warfare, the pious Russian emperor would be remembered for the permanent peace that would come from following Christian ideals. To achieve this goal, Alexander made substantial foreign policy concessions and was extremely disillusioned by the cynical behavior of his Western partners, who stubbornly refused to be guided by “the commandments of love, truth, and peace,” as Alexander dreamed.

The Russian elite, first deliriously patriotic after the victory over Napoleon, sobered up gradually, and some people even began expressing dissatisfaction with their mystically inclined ruler. Reports of such ingratitude drove Alexander to melancholic despair that bordered on clinical depression.

Zhukovsky’s melancholy and mystical ballads were balm for Alexander’s soul. And the emperor may have