Russian nanny. Her image can be found in the work and memoirs of many Russian figures. But how much is known about her?

Sometimes becoming a full-fledged member of the family, she always remains in the shadow of her pupils. Depriving herself of her own family happiness, the nanny gave all her love and affection to her wards, becoming the closest person for a child deprived of parental love due to conventions of etiquette. It was the nanny who formed the soul of her wards. Let her not be able to teach good manners, dont know foreign language, but instilled the main thing - love and respect for common man, Russian culture, word. We offer to see how Russian leaders remembered their nannies.

Arina Rodionovna

The most famous Russian nanny. Surprisingly, Pushkin never called her by name, even in letters, addressing her, he simply wrote “nanny”. But all his love and gratitude for his nanny, “the good friend of my poor youth,” poured out in his poems.

Arina Rodionovna went through all of Pushkin's work. From childhood, she instilled the poet's love for the Russian word, culture, telling fairy tales, which, as is commonly believed, subsequently formed the basis of his works. The nanny introduced Pushkin to Russian customs and rituals, showed the life of the simple Russian people. She did not leave him during his exile in Mikhailovsky, brightening up the days with her fairy tales. Arina Rodionovna was a kind of "literary nanny", becoming the prototype of Tatyana's nanny in " Eugene Onegin", the prototype female images in the novel "Arap of Peter the Great" and mother Xenia in "Boris Godunov".

Alena Frolovna

Fyodor Dostoevsky's nanny was hired from Moscow bourgeois women. She raised the whole family of the writer. Dostoevsky in his diary describes her as a forty-five-year-old woman with a clear cheerful character, telling "such glorious tales." Indeed, Alena Frolovna knew many fairy tales, games and songs. It was she who instilled in the writer a love for Russian culture. Once there was a fire in the house of the Dostoevskys, everything burned down: the huts, the barn, the barnyard, and grain reserves. Alena Frolovna, who had not taken a salary for several years, offered all her available money to the writer's family. Dostoevsky recalled that they never took the money from her.

For Goncharov, the nanny Annushka became the main source of knowledge of Russian folklore. The writer recalled how his nanny enthusiastically told him stories about the Firebird, Emel the Fool, the Bear on a wooden leg. “Story after story flowed. The nanny narrated with ardor, picturesquely, with enthusiasm, in places with inspiration, because she herself half believed the stories.

Her expressions and jokes can be seen in many of the writer's works. For example, in Oblomov's Dream, the author's personal impressions are clearly felt. “Why is it, nanny, it’s dark here, but it’s light there, but will it be light there too? Because, father, that the sun goes towards the moon and does not see it, it frowns; and already, as he sees from afar, he will brighten up. The nanny gives little Ilyusha a fabulous, mythological explanation of the world, which she herself is content with. At the same time, she develops imagination and a poetic worldview in the child. The image of the nanny went through all the work of the writer. In the essay “Russians in Japan in 1854,” Goncharov correlates the sensations from the events taking place with the impressions from the nurse’s stories: “I could not believe that all this was being done in reality. At some point it seemed to me that I was a child, that the nanny told me a wonderful tale about unheard of people, and I fell asleep in her arms and see all this in a dream.

Anna Ivanovna Katamenkova

Anna Ivanovna Katamenkova, the nanny of Nikolai Berdyaev, was ardently believing, kind and caring. She, like many nannies in Russian homes, was considered not a servant, but a member of the family. Berdyaev saw in her the embodiment of a classic Russian nanny.

“She was the classic type of Russian nanny. hot Orthodox faith, extraordinary kindness and caring, a sense of dignity that elevated her above the position of a servant and turned her into a family member. Nannies in Russia were a very special social stratum, coming out of the established social classes. For many Russians, the bar nanny was the only close connection with the people.

Katerinushka

Dmitry Likhachev's nanny was called Katerinushka. She had her own house in Ust-Izhora, but she lived for the most part in other people's families, helping them, not thinking about remuneration. “Katerina went down,” they said about her, when the nanny suddenly disappeared for a month or a year, leaving for another family where they needed her help.

Likhachev in his book "Memoirs" cites a funny incident related to his nanny. “I remember that she lived on Tarasov in the same room as me, and I was then six years old, and for the first time I discovered, to my surprise, that women have legs. The skirts were so long that only the shoes were visible. And here in the mornings behind the screen, when Katerinushka got up, two legs appeared in thick stockings of different colors (the stocking is still not visible under the skirt). I looked at these multi-colored ankle stockings that appeared in front of me and was surprised.

She was tall and thin, which led to her being called "long nanny". The nanny of the Russian Seasons ballerina Tamara Karsavina, Dunyasha, raised not only the dancer, but also her brother Lyova. The ballerina in her book Theater Street recalls that Dunyasha taught her to feel uncontrollable pity for all living creatures in trouble.

The nanny disapproved of the fact that her pupil began to study ballet. Dunyasha often told a story about an acrobat she knew, who “had broken all the bones” to make him flexible. Therefore, she looked with pity at those photographs of Karsavina, where she was taken, standing on pointe shoes. During the first debut of the ballerina at the Mariinsky Theater, Dunyasha was seized by such deep grief that she began to sob loudly, because of which she had to be taken away from the theater.

The image and role of a nanny in Diaghilev's life is well illustrated by Bakst's portrait "Portrait of S. P. Diaghilev with a nanny". The devoted nanny Dunya sits in the corner, and with love and awe looks at her pupil, proudly speaking in the foreground.

The nanny of Sergei Diaghilev did not leave her pupil even after he grew up. Faithful Dunya spent her whole life next to the great impresario. After he entered the university, she moved with him to St. Petersburg and became the full mistress of his apartment. Dunya was present at all meetings of the World of Art, a magazine, one of the founders of which was Diaghilev. Everyone who was at Diaghilev's house revered Dunya, considering her "one of their own", shaking her hand. Benois recalled that Dunya was a typical village old woman, with a wrinkled face and a kind of frozen expression in her eyes of questioning anxiety.

Au Pair is an international program that sends young people to work, in fact, as governesses or nannies: participants go to another country to help a strange family raise children and perform small household chores. In return, the family provides them with housing, food and pocket money - au pair work is usually not very well paid, but many participate in order to learn a language and live in another country. We talked to Elena Ershova, who worked as an au pair in France, and she talked about naughty children, hospitable families and why life in Paris wasn't as rosy as she imagined.

Before moving to France, I organized cultural events in Russia: photo exhibitions, concerts, festivals, city holidays. I can’t say that I didn’t like my work - rather, I wanted to go international, work in a foreign company or project, and just live in another country.

A good moment came in the fall of 2015, when I completed all the current projects and did not know at all what to do next. By that time, I was already learning French, but I could not advance beyond a certain level - there was no one to regularly communicate in the language with anyone. And then I remembered that a friend from Strasbourg told me about the au pair student program, with which you can move to Europe and whole year to live in a family, taking care of children - that is, to be a governess. I had little experience working with children at events, and I also helped raise a little niece, so I decided to give it a try. It seemed that this was a unique chance - to get into the family, to see with my own eyes how both the culture and the language of the nation are being formed.

How to get into a Parisian family

No one from my environment participated in such programs, so I was in complete ignorance. I started with the simplest: I typed in the name of the program in a search engine and began to study thematic forums and sites. Finally found convenient portal, which has been around for many years and really works. You create a profile there and you can view the profiles of families who are looking for governesses for their children.

At first, I considered only families from Paris, because I love megacities and an active city ​​life. But it soon became clear that few people were interested in such things in Paris - so the geography of my searches expanded first to the suburbs of the capital, and then I began to argue that it would be nice to live on the Cote d'Azur, and in Strasbourg, and even Lyon a good city. The second point that I paid attention to when searching was the number of children and age. I set myself the condition that there should be no more than two of them and they should be older than three or four years, so that I do not have to worry about diapers and difficult feeding.

But my own location played with me bad joke. The main obstacle was that I am from Russia. The Au Pair program has existed in Europe for almost fifty years, and Europeans, of course, do not need a visa: they simply conclude an agreement with their family and register upon arrival in France. I needed a special visa and a whole package of documents, including from the family: an agreement signed by both parties, motivation letters, a medical certificate, and much more. This is a complex bureaucratic procedure that takes a lot of time - most families were simply not ready to deal with it. They told me that they liked me more than other applicants, but as soon as it came to documents, nannies from Europe were preferred.

As a result, the process of finding a family and paperwork took me three whole months. When I received so many refusals due to a visa, I began to actively write to families who were looking for Russian-speaking girls. And this is where I got lucky. One of my messages was answered by Eleanor, a mother of two from Paris. We met her and her husband Philip when they arrived in Moscow and liked each other. They took my documents along with the signed contract, endorsed them in France and sent them to me. Immediately after the New Year, I received a special student visa and flew to Paris.

Life in France

I got into unique family, who was not just interested in Russia, but adored her, and not in the first generation. The family had two children - a girl of three and a half years and a boy of five - who went to preparatory classes for preschoolers and taught there three languages: French, English and Russian. One of the conditions of my stay was that I should only speak Russian to the children in order to help them learn it.

I remember very well that I flew to Paris on Saturday. I had only one free day that I spent with my family, and that's it - already on Monday I had to turn on the work mode. Eleanor, the mother of the family, helped me collect and take the children to school in the morning - the whole afternoon was on me. I had to pick up the children from school, feed, do homework, spend time with them before going to bed - in general, start making friends and chatting. From the very beginning, the children did not let me relax: on the very first day they started playing catch-up at home, screaming and completely ignoring my comments. It was hard work, and it took me a long time to gain credibility and learn how to stop their disobedience.

The rest received me incredibly warmly and cordially. Even at the first Skype interview, Eleanor warned me that they need not just an employee, but a person who will become a family member and want to spend time with them. free time: ride in country houses, participate in general gatherings and walks on weekends. I didn’t feel like a stranger at all - we spent all our free time together: evenings in the kitchen with a glass of wine, trips out of town on weekends, dinners and lunches with family and their friends and acquaintances. One day the children's grandmother - one of the most famous judges in France - took me to the Palace of Justice, where you can't just go. I also happened to attend a dinner to which ambassadors were invited different countries including from the Vatican. I really became part of the family, and even when I made friends in Paris, I often preferred family activities going to a club or a disco.

I also had a lot of free time. I spent about two hours with the children in the morning, when I woke them up, fed them, dressed them, and took them to school. From half past nine to four in the afternoon I was absolutely free. At first, I had to attend compulsory French courses, but when they ended, I was left to myself for most of the day. In the afternoon - from four to nine - I was again with the children: we did homework, walked, often they played with each other, and I could do my own thing. After nine in the evening I was free and could spend time with family or friends.

About once a month I tried to travel from Paris to other cities in France. Since the family took on the costs of accommodation, food, travel around the city and insurance, my salary of four hundred euros was enough for everyday life with museums, coffee and croissants, and on trips around the country. By the way, this is very important point for everyone who is going to travel to Europe under the Au Pair program: carefully discuss all financial matters with the family - not only the monthly fixed payment, but also additional expenses Otherwise, you may encounter unexpected expenses. For example, I myself paid for the required courses French, although I later found out that the family was supposed to do it.

Ability to negotiate and compromise important qualities for such work. You need to understand that when you come to a strange family, surprises can await you: the rules of family life, and their behavior, and character. Even my wonderful family had clear, long-established rules of life, to which I had to adapt. For example, due to the fact that electricity, gas and water in France are several times more expensive than in Russia, the family could not wash their clothes separately in washing machine. I was told that one of the previous nannies did this all the time and threw literally a few things into the washing machine, as we used to do in Russia - at the end of the month the family received an electricity bill twice as much as usual. Heating in France is also very expensive. In fact, low-income families sometimes do not turn it on at all for the winter, although it is cold in the apartments. But even if you are allowed to adjust the temperature and turn the heating tap, unfortunately, you can turn it not on maximum value, but only half - you will be more or less comfortable, but you will not spend the entire family budget.

It was also unusual for me that people go home in what they came from the street. I did not understand how you can walk across the carpet, into the kitchen, into the bathroom in boots or a jacket. My French family laughed and told me that I was not the first Russian nanny who was trying to teach children to take off their shoes in the hallway instead of running straight to the kitchen in their shoes and climbing onto the sofa with their feet. But I still stubbornly forced the children to change their shoes. Parents chuckled, but treated it absolutely calmly.

One's own among strangers

I did not have an adaptation period, I immediately felt in my city, in my house, among my people and enjoyed this feeling from the first day. The crisis moment happened about five months later, when I began to learn more about the social and economic life of the country, about the problems of migration. It turned out that in France, too, there are issues that have not yet been resolved and that require a lot of effort and time to clarify.

For example, it was hard for me to come to terms with the attitude of people to the cleanliness of the city - Paris seemed to me very dirty; in this regard, Moscow can be considered an example of cleanliness and order. There are a lot of homeless people on the streets, and in the subway they can stick to you and start obsessively demanding money or food. I was surprised that many things in France are not organized as modern as in Russia. For example, the banking system is very bureaucratic, slow and unfriendly towards the client. Change the card from which the subscription fee is charged for mobile phone, is the whole story.

All this annoyed me and caused disappointment - I could not accept these realities. french life and decided that I didn’t want to stay here longer than the prescribed year: it seemed that in Russia it wasn’t so bad, and all our problems were at least familiar and understandable. But, as often happens, time passed, and I realized that I love the country, the city, and the people, and I am ready to live and join this culture. Despite all the prejudices and stories that the French treat people of other nationalities and cultures badly, this is not entirely true. If you are a person of another nation, but adore French culture, language, want to become your own and demonstrate it, it is very much appreciated. Although, for example, in a cafe, if you speak French poorly, you can be interrupted with an arrogant look and switch to English. This also occurs.

Future plans

According to the rules of the program, you can participate in it only twice, that is, you can work as a nanny in the country for two years. When my first year was coming to an end, my family invited me to stay, but I refused. First, I want professional development and career achievements. I understood that I could no longer afford the second year of such a life - it was time to use what I had accumulated and received. And secondly, I was too tired of the children with whom I studied, so at the end of the contract I returned to Russia.

For several months now I have been living at home, but this has not changed my decision to go to live and work abroad, to gain international experience, to actively use French, which has become my native language. I recently applied for competitive program to study in France, according to which it will be possible to work. In the middle of summer I will receive an answer. If everything works out, then I will leave, as I planned, if not, I will continue to look for new opportunities.

Russian nanny. Her image can be found in the work and memoirs of many Russian figures. But how much is known about her? Sometimes becoming a full-fledged member of the family, she always remains in the shadow of her pupils. Depriving herself of her own family happiness, the nanny gave all her love and affection to her wards, becoming the closest person for a child deprived of parental love due to conventions of etiquette. It was the nanny who formed the soul of her wards. Even though she could not teach good manners, she did not know a foreign language, but the main thing was to instill love and respect for the common man, Russian culture, and the word.

Arina Rodionovna The most famous Russian nanny. Surprisingly, Pushkin never called her by name, even in letters, addressing her, he simply wrote “nanny”. But all his love and gratitude for his nanny, “the good friend of my poor youth,” poured out in his poems.

Arina Rodionovna went through all of Pushkin's work. From childhood, she instilled the poet's love for the Russian word, culture, telling fairy tales, which, as is commonly believed, subsequently formed the basis of his works. The nanny introduced Pushkin to Russian customs and rituals, showed the life of the simple Russian people. She did not leave him during his exile in Mikhailovsky, brightening up the days with her fairy tales. Arina Rodionovna was a kind of "literary nanny", becoming the prototype of Tatyana's nanny in "Eugene Onegin", the prototype of female images in the novel "Peter the Great's Moor" and Xenia's mother in "Boris Godunov".

Alena Frolovna Fyodor Dostoevsky's nanny was hired from Moscow bourgeois women. She raised the whole family of the writer. Dostoyevsky in his diary describes her as a forty-five-year-old woman with a clear cheerful character, telling "such glorious tales."

Indeed, Alena Frolovna knew many fairy tales, games and songs. It was she who instilled in the writer a love for Russian culture. Once there was a fire in the house of the Dostoevskys, everything burned down: the huts, the barn, the barnyard, and grain reserves. Alena Frolovna, who had not taken a salary for several years, offered all her available money to the writer's family. Dostoevsky recalled that they never took the money from her.

Annushka For Goncharov, the nanny Annushka became the main source of knowledge of Russian folklore. The writer recalled how the nanny enthusiastically told him stories about fire bird, Emela-fool, Bear on a wooden leg. “Story after story flowed. The nanny narrated with ardor, picturesquely, with enthusiasm, in places with inspiration, because she herself half believed the stories. Her expressions and jokes can be seen in many of the writer's works.

For example, in Oblomov's Dream, the author's personal impressions are clearly felt. “Why is it, nanny, it’s dark here, but it’s light there, but will it be light there too? Because, father, that the sun goes towards the moon and does not see it, it frowns; and already, as he sees from afar, he will brighten up. The nanny gives little Ilyusha a fabulous, mythological explanation of the world, which she herself is content with. At the same time, she develops imagination and a poetic worldview in the child. The image of the nanny went through all the work of the writer. In the essay “Russians in Japan in 1854,” Goncharov correlates the sensations from the events taking place with the impressions from the nurse’s stories: “I could not believe that all this was being done in reality. At some point it seemed to me that I was a child, that the nanny told me a wonderful tale about unheard of people, and I fell asleep in her arms and see all this in a dream.

Anna Ivanovna Katamenkova Anna Ivanovna Katamenkova, Nikolai Berdyaev's nanny, was ardently believing, kind and caring. She, like many nannies in Russian homes, was considered not a servant, but a member of the family. Berdyaev saw in her the embodiment of a classic Russian nanny. “She was the classic type of Russian nanny. An ardent Orthodox faith, extraordinary kindness and caring, a sense of dignity that elevated her above the position of a servant and turned her into a family member. Nannies in Russia were a very special social stratum, coming out of the established social classes. For many Russians, the bar nanny was the only close connection with the people.

Katerinushka Dmitry Likhachev's nanny was called Katerinushka. She had her own house in Ust-Izhora, but she lived for the most part in other people's families, helping them, not thinking about remuneration. “Katerina went down,” they said about her, when the nanny suddenly disappeared for a month or a year, leaving for another family where they needed her help. Likhachev in his book "Memoirs" cites a funny incident related to his nanny. “I remember that she lived on Tarasov in the same room as me, and I was then six years old, and for the first time I discovered, to my surprise, that women have legs. The skirts were so long that only the shoes were visible. And here in the mornings behind the screen, when Katerinushka got up, two legs appeared in thick stockings of different colors (the stocking is still not visible under the skirt). I looked at these multi-colored ankle stockings that appeared in front of me and was surprised.

Dunyasha She was tall and thin, which is why they began to call her "long nanny." The nanny of the Russian Seasons ballerina Tamara Karsavina, Dunyasha, raised not only the dancer, but also her brother Lyova. The ballerina in her book Theater Street recalls that Dunyasha taught her to feel uncontrollable pity for all living creatures in trouble. The nanny disapproved of the fact that her pupil began to study ballet. Dunyasha often told a story about an acrobat she knew, who “had broken all the bones” to make him flexible. Therefore, she looked with pity at those photographs of Karsavina, where she was taken, standing on pointe shoes. During the first debut of the ballerina at the Mariinsky Theater, Dunyasha was seized by such deep grief that she began to sob loudly, because of which she had to be taken away from the theater.

Dunya The image and role of a nanny in Diaghilev's life is well illustrated by Bakst's portrait "Portrait of S. P. Diaghilev with a nanny". The devoted nanny Dunya sits in the corner, and with love and awe looks at her pupil, proudly speaking in the foreground. The nanny of Sergei Diaghilev did not leave her pupil even after he grew up. Faithful Dunya spent her whole life next to the great impresario. After he entered the university, she moved with him to St. Petersburg and became the full mistress of his apartment. Dunya was present at all meetings of the World of Art, a magazine, one of the founders of which was Diaghilev. Everyone who was at Diaghilev's house revered Dunya, considering her "one of their own", shaking her hand. Benois recalled that Dunya was a typical village old woman, with a wrinkled face and a kind of frozen expression in her eyes of questioning anxiety.

Nanny ... How much warmth and affection in this word ... Today it's hard to imagine perfect image a loving nanny and finding one is also quite difficult. Yes, and there is no particular need for this, because most of today's children go to kindergartens. But just over a century ago, children were brought up at home. As the famous song says:

They say that in the old days it was like this:
Many brothers and sisters had a lot of fun.
They drank milk together, ate dry food together,
Real kindergarten each had a hut!
(Yu.Entin, A.Rybnikov)

In the old days, educators were the parents themselves, nurses or nannies. “In old age, a nanny was assigned to the girl until her marriage and kept honorary title it's forever"- wrote V.I.Dal. Nannies in Russia had a special status. They were real members of the family, they ate with the gentlemen at the same table, received salaries and clothes. Good nannies were “passed down” from children to grandchildren. Many famous Russian writers, poets and other artists spoke warmly about their nannies. And largely thanks to the efforts of the nannies, many of them took place, as creative personalities. Today we also want to recall the most famous Russian nannies.

The most famous Russian nannies.

Arina Rodionovna.

Nanny of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, perhaps the most famous nanny in the history of Russia. How many warm words the poet dedicated to her in his poems. A simple serf peasant woman, it was she who instilled little Sasha love for the word, telling Russian fairy tales and introducing folklore. In addition to pupils from the Hannibal family, Arina Rodionovna herself had four children.

At little Sasha she was a nanny until the age of 7, and then an "uncle" and a tutor were assigned to him.

Arina Rodionovna died after a short illness at the age of 70 on July 29, 1828 in St. Petersburg, in the house of Olga Pavlishcheva (Pushkina).

Annushka.

Anna Mikhailovna.

It was thanks to his nanny that another writer took place - Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov. Annushka was for little Vanya a source of knowledge of Russian folklore. The writer recalled: “Story after story flowed. The nanny narrated with ardor, picturesquely, with enthusiasm, in places with inspiration, because she herself half believed the stories. Many of her stories formed the basis of some of the author's works (Son Oblomov, Russians in Japan, etc.)

It is a pity that we can say almost nothing about this obscure Russian Simbirian woman who put her soul into her "Vanya" and so fully, albeit namelessly, participated in the creation of "Oblomov", and other Goncharov's masterpieces

Kryukova Alena (Elena) Frolovna.

[OK. 1780, Moscow - 1850s, ibid.]

Nanny of Fyodor Dostoyevsky raised not only little Fedya, but his seven brothers and sisters. Unlike the serf Arina Rodionovna, Alena Frolovna was from the bourgeois class and was hired as a nanny. “She was a woman with a clear cheerful character. She told such glorious tales! .. "- Fedor Mikhailovich recalled the nanny.

After the death of M.F. Dostoevskoy Alena Frolovna lived in Darovoe together with M.A. Dostoevsky and then was an informant of the writer's brother A.M. Dostoevsky, telling him as an eyewitness about recent months father's life and circumstances of his death.

Dunyasha.

Dunyasha - nanny of the famous Russian ballerina Tamara Karsavina. She also raised her brother Lyova. Surprisingly, Dunyasha did not approve of her pupil's enthusiasm for ballet and was very sorry for Tamarochka. It seemed to her that ballet was very hard work (which, in general, is true). During Tamara Karsavina's debut performance at the Mariinsky Theatre, Dunyasha even burst into tears of pity!..

Katerinushka.

Ekaterina Ioakimovna.

Katerinushka - nanny of the famous Soviet philologist, culturologist and art critic Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev. "My nanny's name was Katerinushka," the scientist recalls. “The only thing that survived from Katerinushka is a photograph in which she was taken with my grandmother Maria Nikolaevna Konyaeva. The photo is bad, but typical. Both laugh to tears. Katerinushka nursed my mother, nursed my brothers. We wanted her to help us with our "runches" - Verochka and Milochka, but something prevented her. She had a lot of interference, moreover, unexpected ones. She helped literally everyone and did not think about remuneration.

Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote about nannies: “Nanny in Russia was a very special social stratum. The ardent Orthodox faith, extraordinary kindness and caring, a sense of dignity, elevated her above the position of a servant and turned her into a family member.

He himself was brought up by a nanny - Anna Katamenkova, whom he considered the embodiment of a classic Russian nanny.

Have you noticed how affectionately the pupils called their nannies? Annushka, Katerinushka, Dunyasha...
That is how their names have gone down in history.

Thank you dear nannies!

Arina Rodionovna Filin Mikhail Dmitrievich

II E. Poselyanin RUSSIAN NANNY

E. Poselyanin

RUSSIAN NANNY

"Ah, nanny, nanny, I yearn,

I'm sick, my dear

I'm ready to cry, I'm ready to cry! .. "

My child, you are not well;

Lord have mercy and save!

Let me sprinkle with holy water

You're on fire ... "I'm not sick,

I… you know, nanny… am in love.”

My child, the Lord is with you! -

And babysit the girl with a plea

Baptized with a decrepit hand.

Among those arriving from different places It was impossible for Russia not to hear the news of how Pushkin was commemorated on May 26 without stopping with a sympathetic smile and warm gratitude at the following words of a telegram from Kronstadt: In the absence of Pushkin's nanny, the city gave dinner to the old women of the almshouse.

Touching, dear Kronstadt!

How by this he was able to express well both the zeal for the memory of the poet, and the understanding of his life, and gratitude to that force - calm, powerful, to that Russian people, who carefully, without taking their eyes off him, stood under Pushkin in his childhood, stood under him in years of its ending heyday - years "Eugene Onegin" And "Godunova" and only then departed from it, when Pushkin grew to the full extent of the greatest national poet of Russia. After all, Arina Rodionovna was the personification and the main mediator between the soul of Pushkin and the Russian people.

This question is so important that it deserves discussion.

Pushkin's significance for Russia is infinite, and through him tremendous significance is communicated to everything that created his life and that contributed to the development of him exactly the person we know him to be. And among the most important components of forces like Pushkin, undoubtedly, is his nurse.

Fate itself put this root and outstanding, gifted artistic(unconsciously of course) Russian nature to the cradle of Pushkin. Those fairy tales that she knew, inexhaustibly rich in both memory and the gift of storytelling, sprinkled without measure with proverbs, jokes, sayings, all the treasures of apt, playful, lively Russian speech - these tales of Arina Rodionovna were Pushkin's first initiation into the world of poetry. He himself admitted this, saying that his muse, the muse of the lyceum days, had already appeared to him earlier in the form of an old woman. And in the image of this old woman, everyone recognizes Arina Rodionovna, transformed into a sorceress.

Confidante of magical old times,

Friend of fictions playful and sad,

I knew you in the days of my spring,

In the days of joys and initial dreams!

I was waiting for you. In the evening silence

You were a cheerful old woman

And she sat above me in a shushun,

In big glasses and with a frisky rattle.

You, rocking the cradle of a child,

Captivated my youthful ear with melodies,

And between the sheets she left a flute,

Which she herself enchanted.

The nanny was the first to instill in the sensitive child those moods that allowed him to exclaim about his first major work:

There is a Russian spirit ... there it smells of Russia! ..

And with her ingenuous letters during the separation from the pet, the nanny supported these moods in him.

She was his joy during his stay in Mikhailovsky, which he could never forget:

Friend of my harsh days,

My decrepit dove!

………………………………

…………… Good friend

My poor youth!

She was in his loneliness living soul, which perceived the impressions of his work. After all, if she did not understand them, Pushkin would not have read them in front of her. And he directly says:

... I am the fruit of my dreams

And harmonic plots

I read only to the old nanny,

Friend of my youth.

But, besides this significance for Pushkin as a poet, the nanny was priceless for him as a person. She loved her “dear friend, angel, father Alexander Sergeyevich” with that boundless warm love, which consists in giving everything without demanding or expecting anything, and which alone is real love. In her impassive heart was always for him warm house from all external afflictions, as for his inquisitive and courageous mind - rest in a conversation with an old woman who did not have boundless horizons, but had a strong, unshakable, thoughtful worldview of an intelligent Russian man from the common people that never changed her. She asked him to lead a life worthy of his soul ("live, my friend, well, - you yourself will fall in love"). She, perhaps the only one of the people, relentlessly prayed to God for him, and when she had already departed from him, perhaps there begged him for repentance and a Christian death.

All these merits are immortal, extraordinary!

"French, French!" - Pushkin was teased at first by his comrades at the Lyceum for his lively French speech, for which he became angry. He felt like a Russian, and his nanny Rodionovna kept him Russian.

Russia owes much to Arina Rodionovna alone. She is generally obliged to the Russian nanny.

These humble old women during the 19th century, in the days of the lively cultural struggle of Russian folk principles and the international moods of the West, had to play a major and outstanding role.

Precisely in order to preserve the “Russian spirit” in pets, fate left in Russia, among a society that greedily indulged in foreign influences, these Savelyichs and Rodionovnas, who, without realizing it, as their masters did not realize it, by their influence (of which never thought), contrary to the whole system, contrary to the obvious intentions and plans for educating the barchats - they kept the Russian soul alive in them, did not allow them to break with the people.

You can argue as much as you like, as if no matter how you lead a Russian person, he will still be Russian. This statement without any basis is an empty sound in the air. A person with his spiritual content does not pop out of the ground like a mushroom after rain. It is formed by the onslaught of successive impressions, and in order to grow up, Russians need consistent, from the cradle, impressions of Russian trends, Russian characters, the Russian way of life, they need a Russian environment - external and moral. And those who have nothing of the kind grow up as international, homeless renegades.

It was from this misfortune that uncles and nannies protected Russian children throughout the entire 19th century.

Russian literature noted these Old Testament types and put up Tatyana's nanny (in "Eugene Onegin") babysitter Lisa (in "Noble Nest") and Natalia Savishna (in "Childhood and adolescence" Count L. Tolstoy).

Didn't the old nanny, who guarded the girl's childhood with a cross and holy water, raise in Tatyana, who spoke Russian poorly, that moral fortress that makes her one of the best representatives of Russian women? Only once in critical moment letters to Evgeny, Pushkin brings out this nanny ... But look at the concentrated beauty, at the meek tenderness that the lines of the stanza set in the epigraph breathe "Onegin": what a charming power of care and sympathy!.. In this one stanza, a whole huge phenomenon of Russian life is fully reflected.

And if this picture conquers so much, it is because this is not the first time the author "Onegin" with a heart beating with gratitude, he painted the face of a Russian nanny. Did he not bring here, to Tanya's bed, an old woman, very akin to another, familiar to him, decrepit girlfriend of youth? And that soft, quiet, tear-causing light that illuminates this image of a nanny is the same light that shines with the chronicler Pimen: something too dear, bloody sweet ...

Pushkin mentions the nanny only once more, at an even more important moment, at the moment of Tatyana's apotheosis, where Tatyana appears in all her moral grandeur, in her last answer to Onegin, when she remembers and

... a humble cemetery,

Where is now the cross and the shadow of the branches

Over my poor nanny.

Nanny is no more. Quietly fulfilling her great deed, which consisted in the fact that "she saved the fire of the lamp," preserved in man living soul, a humble old woman lay down in the cemetery among the same, like her, truthful, believing, ordinary people.

But her case is obvious - the high truth of Tatiana, and unconsciously, perhaps, but with amazing inspiration, Pushkin's inspiration evokes the shadow of an old woman who sympathized with the love of her Tanya, at the moment of Tatyana's moral victory over this love.

If Eugene had not grown up in the hands of a Frenchman, and even “wretched” in thoughts, and feelings, and knowledge, and spirit, but in the hands of a devoted and uncle who had his own views on life, like Grinev’s Savelich, who knows, with its excellent properties and rich inclinations(we insist on this), not lost by him without a trace and with such a blatant upbringing, would something come out of him that is not inferior, perhaps, to Tatyana? ..

But then there would be no romance "Eugene Onegin" and Tatyana would be the happiest of women!

Nanny Agafya and Liza Kalitina brought up by her ("Noble Nest") are among those phenomena that cannot be approached except with a bare head.

The vocation of the Russian nanny - to preserve the Russian type in the children of the cultural class - is expressed with particular clarity in Agafya.

Indeed, Liza not only sympathetically should stretch out her hand, separated from her by three centuries, the noblewoman Morozova (from « Prince of Silver»), but also to bow before her, as before the highest. And this is complete agreement with such a historically distant high incarnation Ancient Rus' is based on the fact that both of them - both Agafya and Liza - are wholly grown up by the Church, which does not change over the centuries, which does not pass away in the creations of its spirit.

If Tatyana seems to be the apotheosis of a Russian worldly woman, then the image of Lisa stands on the threshold between the life of such a good woman of the world and the life of a saint.

In the person of Liza Turgenev brought the development literary type Russian woman to the limit where the reflection of life ceases human art and the Divine begins secret.

Final chapter « noble nest», where, over the full of youth, self-confidence, earthly hopes, the life of the Kalitinsky house, in which another one once developed, secret life, with other, deepest, feelings - now the image of Liza, who has gone alive from the world to God, is now worn by a bright shadow - this chapter will be the only one in the history of literature.

We owe the beauty of this image to the Russian nanny.

Remember the secret matins, the quiet stories about the martyrs and the flowers that grew out of their blood (“Wallflowers?” the girl asked), and let's hope that not all of this has completely disappeared from us.

Natalya Savishna, nanny maman from "Childhood and adolescence", akin to those two old women, which have just been mentioned. The same disinterested, free affection in a serf woman, but Count Tolstoy enveloped her whole image with even greater warmth.

Natalya Savishna stands in her character between Tatyana's nanny and Liza's nanny. She somehow seems stronger in the spirit of Tanya's nanny, but does not have Agafya's strict asceticism in herself. In addition, in terms of the size of Tolstoy's talent, Natalya Savishna is brighter, more visible to us, and from the two chapters where she is described (chapter XIII - "Natalya Savishna" and head XXVIII - "Last sad memories»), appears before us all, with the slightest shades of his feelings.

If by the charm of your maman "Childhood and adolescence", by the power of love, by some sad tenderness, should be named first, best type mothers in our literature, surpassing even those created by the same Tolstoy touching images Princess Dolly ("Anna Karenina") and Countess Marya Rostova (Bolkonskaya) "War and Peace" then Natalya Savishna also holds the primacy among the nannies depicted in Russian literature.

“Since I can remember myself, I also remember Natalya Savishna, her love and caresses; but now I only know how to appreciate them - then it never occurred to me what a rare, wonderful creature this old woman was. Not only did she never speak, but she did not seem to think about herself: her whole life was love and self-sacrifice. I was so used to her unselfish, tender love for us that I did not imagine that it could be otherwise, I was not at all grateful to her and never asked myself questions, but what, is she happy? is it enough?

It used to happen that you would run from a lesson to her room, sit down and start dreaming out loud, not at all embarrassed by her presence. She was always busy doing something: either knitting a stocking or writing underwear, and listening to all the nonsense that I said, like “When I am a general, I will marry a wonderful beauty, buy myself a red horse, build a glass house and write out relatives Karl Ivanych from Saxony,” etc., she would say: “Yes, my father, yes.”

And here is an amazing picture - Natalya Savishna and Nikolenka are talking about the just dead, but not yet buried maman.

“She folded her arms across her chest and looked up; her sunken, moist eyes expressed great but calm sadness. She firmly hoped that God would briefly separate her from the one on whom all the power of her love had been concentrated for so many years.

Yes, my father, how long ago, it seems, I still nursed her, swaddled her, and she called me Natasha. It happened that he would come running to me, wrap his arms around me and begin to kiss and say:

My nashik, my handsome man, you are my turkey.

And I used to joke - I say:

It's not true, mother, you don't love me; let's just grow big, get married and forget ours.

She used to think. No, he says, I'd rather not marry if you can't take Ours with you; I will never leave ours. But she left and did not wait. And she loved me, dead woman. But who did she not love, to tell the truth! Yes, father, you must not forget your mother; it was not a man, but an angel from heaven. When her soul is in the kingdom of heaven, she will love you there, and there she will rejoice in you.

Why do you say, Natalya Savishna, when will in the kingdom of heaven? I asked. - After all, I think she is already there.

No, father, - said Natalya Savishna, lowering her voice and sitting closer to me on the bed, - now her soul is here.

And she was pointing up. She spoke almost in a whisper and with such feeling and conviction that I involuntarily raised my eyes upwards, looked at the cornices and searched for something.

Conversations with Natalya Savishna were repeated every day; her quiet tears and calm, pious speeches gave me joy and relief.

But soon we were separated, and I never again saw Natalya Savishna, who had such a strong and beneficent influence on my direction and development of sensitivity.”

Description last days Natalia Savishna, her preparations for death, her orders - how she handed over the chests according to the inventory and bequeathed four pieces of the master's dress to young gentlemen, a description of her death - all these are the treasures of poetry ...

What impression did she leave on herself in a man who was ten years old at her death?

She did - finishes gr<аф>Tolstoy, her story about her - the best and greatest thing in this life - died without regret and fear.

“She was buried, at her request, not far from the chapel, which stands on the grave of her mother. The hillock, overgrown with nettles and burdock, under which she lies, is fenced with a black lattice, and I never forget to approach this lattice from the chapel and bow.

Sometimes I silently stop between the chapel and the bars! The thought comes to me: did Providence really only connect me with these two beings in order to make me forever regret them? .. "

Tell me now: can people who have had a childhood warmed by such people morally perish in life?

After all, a person is formed, mainly, according to how much love was poured out on him in his childhood.

Natalya Savishna, Savelyich, Evseich (Bagro's grandson's uncle) only added their share of heartfelt warmth to the power of love that surrounded their mother's children. And in such houses as the Pushkins, as the Larin family, where we do not see the moral closeness of Tanya with her mother, as the family of Marya Dmitrievna Kalitina, a dry-hearted woman, despite her enthusiasm, done - there nannies and uncles replaced for children what they did not enough in parental feelings, understanding life, like Natalya Savishna, only as one selfless love.

And that charming world of Russian children's, which S. T. Aksakov painted so warmly and tenderly, Khomyakov sang. In this world, Russian mothers, Russian uncles and nannies, in the long nights, begged for the happiness of children before the family icons, dark from time to time, in the radiance of the lamp. There, those chicks of the old noble nests gained real strength and irreplaceable impressions of their homeland, who, despite the fact that later they learned Europe, its languages ​​​​and books better than now, were primarily Russian people and most of all valued that.

And therefore they served their land with a real tangible service, with the inspiration of creativity, like the "eagles of Catherine", like the Karamzins, Pushkins, Muravyovs. They could serve the earth in the forefront of the people and lead it in such a way that the people in the world would follow them together, and in battle they would follow them without fear, to death or victory against ten times the strongest enemy, because they knew this people and they themselves were people. There were some views, some feelings, one mood, one unconditional faith with him; and all the people, all the earth in a unanimous, elusive voice of feeling, passionately, recognized them, as, for example, Kutuzova, as her own and demanded them to be her leaders.

It was all like this...

Now languishes - and not to our happiness, alas - the poetry of Russian children, among parents indifferent to the faith, indifferent to the children of the clerks, who are quickly replaced. Children grow up not in the legends of antiquity, ascending in a continuous chain to past centuries - the centuries of saints, centuries of boundless faith and heroic feelings - but in a jura, somehow, preparing to multiply the bleak ranks of one who has nothing to do with their homeland, who does not understand their people and them incomprehensible, groundless crowd.

The Russian type is growing pale in educated people.

Torn off for the most part from the village, that is, from the land and the people, developing in the cities, in the hands of impersonal parents, otherwise under the supervision of educators or foreigners, or “all-humans” - how can the children of the educated classes gain the Russian spirit?

There are fewer and fewer people about whom it could be said that something beats vitally in them that is best expressed in words. "forever Russian",- and people of a purely Russian warehouse should go round and round among themselves, as in a dense forest.

It was this living force of the people that had saved the children of the higher Russian strata for so long, and should have been honored in the person of Arina Rodionovna, the most lively representative of the “Russian nannies” ...