Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

And then came the crowning achievement of Zhukovsky’s service to the house of Romanov: in 1826, Nicholas I officially hired the poet as governor for his eight-year-old son Alexander (later Emperor Alexander II). By that time, Zhukovsky was practically part of the family. He accompanied Alexandra Fedorovna to Moscow, where she bore a son, and commemorated the festive occasion with a special poem, which, in particular, captured for us Nicholas’s rare display of emotion at the sight of mother and child (which the poet had witnessed):

Seeing the child, the young father knelt

Before the saved mother

And in the heat of love wept, at a loss for words.

Nicholas I already knew what a perfect pedagogue Zhukovsky could be for a blue-blooded child. There is a lively description of him in action in a letter to Pushkin from his friend the poet Anton Delvig: “Zhukovsky, I think, is lost irretrievably to poetry. He is teaching Grand Duke Alexander Russian, and I am not joking when I say that he is devoting all his time to creating a primer. For each letter he draws a little figure, and for syllables he draws pictures. How can you blame him! He is imbued with a great idea: to educate, perhaps, the Tsar. The possible benefit and glory of the Russian people consoles his heart.”⁵

Zhukovsky’s friends called him the “children’s Aristotle,” for he taught the heir not only Russian literature but also geography, history, and even arithmetic. True, Zhukovsky wrote poetry much less, but it sometimes seemed that he did not regret it: “I do know that the world of children is my world, and that I can act with pleasure in that world, and that I can find total happiness in it.”

There was a reason Zhukovsky spoke longingly of “total happiness” in the closed world of the Romanov family, living in their sumptuous residence, the Winter Palace, where he was given a spacious and comfortable apartment. He suffered a painful crisis in 1823, and the wound never healed for him.

In 1805, at the age of twenty-two, Zhukovsky first recorded in his diary words of love for Maria (Masha) Protasova, his stepsister’s daughter, aged twelve. It was a passionate but ultimately platonic feeling: despite the grown-up Masha’s love for him, her devout mother never gave her blessing for them to marry. In 1823, at the age of thirty, Masha died, after a few years of marriage to another man.

This sad story dominated Zhukovsky’s oeuvre for more than thirty years and imbued the poet’s worldview with religious and mystical tones. Both he and Masha had always talked and written to each other about “trusting Providence.” Zhukovsky’s “To Emperor Alexander” was also based on providential rhetoric. Perhaps that was what touched a secret string in the emperor’s soul, for he was always in search of trusted advisers and a word of spiritual approval.

This inclination toward mysticism increased sharply after Alexander’s victory over Napoleon. Napoleon’s fame as military leader was legendary, and so the inexperienced Russian tsar’s triumph could easily be interpreted as God’s will. The Bible was now always on Alexander’s bedside table, and he saw himself as the weapon of Providence. The goal of his state policy became the affirmation of Christian morality in international relations.

As leader of the anti-Napoleonic coalition, Alexander had enough power to attempt bringing those ideas into life. After the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), on Alexander’s initiative, the victorious nations—Russia, Austria, Prussia, and England—formed the Holy Alliance. Its purpose would be to instill Christian principles in the management of Europe.

We can imagine Alexander’s thinking: while the power-hungry Napoleon was celebrated for constant warfare, the pious Russian emperor would be remembered for the permanent peace that would come from following Christian ideals. To achieve this goal, Alexander made substantial foreign policy concessions and was extremely disillusioned by the cynical behavior of his Western partners, who stubbornly refused to be guided by “the commandments of love, truth, and peace,” as Alexander dreamed.

The Russian elite, first deliriously patriotic after the victory over Napoleon, sobered up gradually, and some people even began expressing dissatisfaction with their mystically inclined ruler. Reports of such ingratitude drove Alexander to melancholic despair that bordered on clinical depression.

Zhukovsky’s melancholy and mystical ballads were balm for Alexander’s soul. And the emperor may have appeared as the ideal personage of his poetry and certainly the constant object of Zhukovsky’s thoughts. Never before or since had tsar and poet been so close.

“He took Paris, he founded the Lycée.” Thus Pushkin summarized the almost quarter-century reign of Alexander I, equating the glorious historical event with the relatively modest educational project, one of many liberal initiatives of the early years of Alexander’s rule.