Tyragetia (Oct 2018)
The strength and weakness of Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova-Rosset (on the history of the origins of one of the women of the Pushkin era)
Abstract
Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova (06.03.1809, Odessa - 07.06.1882, Paris), nee Rosset, is a widely known personage, especially in the history of Russian literature. One of the outstanding women of the Petersburg secular society, the maid of honor of two empresses (Maria Feodorovna and Alexandra Feodorovna), the wife of a diplomat, she was distinguished by rare beauty, intelligence, education and independence of judgments. She was in close friendly relations with all the famous people of her era; Pushkin, Lermontov, Vyazemsky, Khomyakov, Rostopchina, Myatlev, and others sought her company and dedicated their poems to her. Her life is sufficiently illuminated in the scientific literature and journalism, so we do not set the task of repeating or rewriting the known events of her life. She became the object of our attention in the study of the topic of outstanding Moldavian women of the 19th century. In the works of Romanian historians already at the beginning of the 20th century there were notes in which her Moldavian origin was cultivated. Without any documentary evidence, this tradition is also shared by some contemporary colleagues.
