Writer Nikita Eliseev will talk about Pushkin’s serf love

In the St. Petersburg art space mArs (Marsovo Pole, 3) on Tuesday, April 25, a meeting with the writer Nikita Eliseev “Pushkin’s Serf Love: Olga Kalashnikova, or How Life Becomes a Play, a Fairy Tale, a Tale” will take place. The event will be held as part of the “Kvartirnik” project. The start is at 19:00.

Ilya Selvinsky said that a biography for a poet is no less important than his poems. Without a biography there will be no poetry. Yuri Tynyanov argued that biographical facts, by and large, are indifferent to texts of one quality or another. The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle.

“Following the thoughts of a great man is the most entertaining science,” Alexander Pushkin argued on the pages of the historical novel “Arap of Peter the Great.” It is no less entertaining and instructive to follow the life of a great man, knocking thoughts and texts out of him. Olga Kalashnikova – the daughter of the manager in Mikhailovsky, Pushkin’s serf love – was ignored by Pushkinists. Although it is in the “Don Juan list” compiled by the poet himself. But this is where it gets overlooked.

And in vain. In addition to the fact that she and everything connected with her knocked out at least one brilliant work from the poet’s soul: the drama in verse “Mermaid” (no one will argue with this), she and everything connected with her turned out to be some kind of a fork in the road, some version of a different fate. However, this is an area of ​​absolutely unverifiable assumptions.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to tell about her and what she became for Pushkin. It is in vain that the Pushkinists, with the exception of Pavel Shchegolev and Vladislav Khodasevich, have not yet done this and are not doing it. Let’s fill this gap to the best of our ability and ability.

Tickets for the event can be purchased on TimePad or at the box office before the event.