Pushkin’s Trigorskoye as a Source of Myth-making: Fiction Versus Pragmatics

Abstract

In 1824 Pushkin was exiled to his mother’s estate Mikhailovskoye, where he was to stay until 1826. Then he was set free by the enthroned Tsar Nicholas I. Praskovia Alexandrovna Osipova-Vulf, the mistress of Trigorskoye, and her numerous family were Pushkin’s only neighbours during his exile period. A myth was gradually forming in the minds of Pushkin’s readers and admirers. According to this myth Pushkin depicted Trigorskoye in the village chapters of “Eugene Onegin,” Trigorskoye ladies and their mother became the prototype of the novel’s female characters, and Osipova’s son Alexey Wulf, then a student in Dorpat, became the prototype of Lensky. This myth, which in fact ignores the aesthetic self-value of a literary text, was started by M.I. Semevsky’s essay “A Trip to Trigorskoye,” as well as by Alexey Wulf’s own “Diary.” The paper deals with this myth evolution, considering how it subsequently rises from the realm of essays and memoirs to become a part of scholarly works and forms the concept basis of the museum space after the house-museum in Trigorskoye was founded. The appendix contains the minutes of a scientific meeting of the Pushkin’s Reserve’s staff in 1960, which reveals the mechanism of Trigorskoye mythologemes’ introduction into the museums space.

Keywords

• trigorskoe
• myth-making
• pushkin
• semevsky
• geichenko
• museum exposition