Pushkin's childhood. Brief summary of his memories

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

How to become a genius? Is genius the fruit of parental upbringing or a gift from God? What affects the non-standard thinking, the strength of the spirit, which make it possible to “blow up” society with your ideas and thoughts? What are geniuses like as children?

Pushkin's childhood

A summary of any biographical opus of a mediocre person may well fit into a few paragraphs, with this person it will not work. The boy was born in the family of a retired major of the Jaeger regiment. Alexander was the second child. He was born on May 26 (June 6), 1799, which was recorded in the church book of the Epiphany Cathedral in Yelokhovo on June 8. The parents moved to Moscow a year before the birth of the boy. My father received the position of commissioner at the Commissariat depot in 1798. By this time, the family of Lev Alexandrovich and Nadezhda Osipovna already had a daughter, Olga (b. 1797). In 1803 another boy, Leo, was born. In addition to these three children, five more were born later, but they did not manage to survive childhood. Only Olga, Alexander and Lev entered adulthood.

It's easy to describe childhood in a nutshellPushkin. A summary of the available sources, in particular the memoirs of his younger brother, give us an opportunity to assess the situation. Until the age of eleven, Alexander lived with his parents, burdened with their worries. The child was entrusted to the hands of frequently changing French tutors. For this reason, the boy began to speak Russian quite late, but he spoke French with dignity. By the age of eight, he was already keenly interested in his father's library, which, by the way, consisted mainly of French literary publications. As Brother Leo wrote, he simply devoured the books one by one. Having appreciated the merits of what he read, he began to write his own compositions, comedies, epigrams.

In Zakharovo

But Pushkin spent his childhood not only in his father's house. A summary of the letters of his maternal grandmother Marya Alekseevna gives us the opportunity to draw conclusions about the character of the young poet. Once a grandmother wrote that the boy simply does not have halftones or “middle”, he is either passive or too active. Careless in learning, but "greedy" for reading. Pushkin's childhood years, spent in his grandmother's house near Moscow, gave him not only knowledge of the Russian language, but also the opportunity to communicate in Russian (in his father's house he was deprived of this for the sake of fashion). Nanny Arina Rodionovna, uncle Nikita Kozlov and serf grandmothers were able to acquaint the boy with the Russian “spirit”, which formed the basis of the most picturesque creations released years later.

Lyceum

At that time, educating your children through tutors at home was considered the norm. But alsoprivileged educational institutions gave children excellent knowledge. The family decided to enroll eleven-year-old Alexander in the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, where he would study for six years. Thanks to his father's connections and passed exams, on October 19, 1811, the young poet began studying at an educational institution focused on training government officials.

Pushkin's childhood and youth passed in an ambiguous era. The war of 1812 could not pass without a trace for the young ardent imagination. Moreover, the teachers of the lyceum conveyed to the students the ideas of freedom and equality, patriotism. Already in the lyceum years, young Alexander joins the ranks of the Arzamas literary community, at whose meetings he actively defends his vision of literature and society as a whole. His first essay is published, and at graduation he reads his poem "Calmness".

It is with patriotic poems that Pushkin's youth and childhood are painted. The summary of his works of that time tells us about the passionate desire for change, about the desire to glorify the native language and culture. It was with such vivid impressions that the young author, familiar to us from childhood, entered the world.