Последняя квартира А.С.Пушкина - [3]
Among these rooms the poet's study is of special value and interest. Its furnishings and objects are Pushkin's things that accompanied him tiiroughout his lifetime - a low desk at the sofa side for writing in a reclining posture, a Voltaire mechanical arm-chair (twilight would fall early in those winter days, one could bring the arm-chair closer to the window and go on working like that); a writing table standing almost in the middle of the room - large, comfortable, with telescopic boards on both sides which could be drawn out to put the necessary books and papers within easy reach; Pushkin's canes reminding of his walks; an Arzrum sabre on the wall; a travelling coffer that had once belonged to Pushkin's great-grandfather A. P. Gannibal, and a portrait of V. Zhukov-sky bearing an inscription: "To victorious pupil from vanquished teacher". In this study in the apartment on the Moika quay the poet prepared new books for the magazine "Sovremennik" ("The Contemporary"), completed his novel "The Captain's Daughter" and a preparatory test of "A history of Peter I" - the most important work he had done in those last months despite humiliation, insults and nagging sorrows that assailed his heart. Just on the eve of the duel, in the morning of January 27, Pushkin wrote a letter to a children's writer A. Ishimova. It ends with the words: "Today I chanced to open your "History in short-stories" and against my will I became engrossed in reading. This is the way one must write!" This is Pushkin's last letter - "a relic of the striking power с I moral courage".
Two weeks after the death of Pushkin his belongings and books were taken out of the apartment on the Moika quay and his family left St. Petersburg. New people moved in. A year later they celebrated here the wedding of the daughter of Benkendorf, the Chief of the Gendarmerie Corps. At the beginning of the 20th century the apartment on the Moika quay was assigned for stationing the Secret Political Police department.
It is after the October Revolution that in the house on the Moika quay amidst its frequently changed interior walls Pushkin's last apartment came back into existence, reviving the atmosphere which had reigned here in his living time nearly a century ago. After so many years of absence his belongings were returning home. Now the rooms in the apartment on the Moika quay have assumed their former appearance to remain for the coming generations an original memorial of Pushkin where every visitor would feel an eye-witness and a contemporary of the poet's last living days.
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