Arina Rodionovna

6 hrs. 54 min.

Language Russian

Author Mikhail Filin

Narrator Pyotr Korshunkov

Description

Presented to readers is a science-and-art life account of Arina Rodionovna Yakovleva (Matveyeva; 1758–1828)—the celebrated “mammy” and “friend” of Alexander Pushkin. This serf old woman loved her “angel Alexander Sergeyevich” with devotion—and the poet not only returned her love, but also immortalized the nanny in many of his works. Arina Rodionovna was also respected by Pushkin’s circle: Prince P. A. Vyazemsky, Baron A. A. Delvig, A. P. Kern, N. M. Yazykov, and others. Her name appears in a number of memoirs of that unforgettable time. Later, in other epochs and under different circumstances, many of our famous people wrote movingly about this extraordinary woman—A. A. Grigoriev, I. S. Aksakov, F. M. Dostoevsky, Marina Tsvetaeva, S. L. Frank, and others. “Arina Rodionovna was the embodiment of Russian Music… And as long as in the underworld there lives even one poet, her legend will live on,”—for example, poet and Pushkin scholar V. F. Khodasevich asserted.

Reliable materials for a biography of Arina Rodionovna have survived in very small numbers. However, the historian and writer M. D. Filin, using fragments of the documents available and Pushkin texts, has managed to create a book about the life of the “little dove with fading years”—a book about “the beauty of the human soul, the soul that loves.”