Zinaida Volkonskaya
Encyclopedia
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, singer, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, salonist
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
and lady in waiting
Lady in Waiting
Lady in Waiting is the 2nd album by American southern rock band Outlaws, released in 1976. -Track listing:#"Breaker-Breaker" – 2:59#"South Carolina" – 3:05#"Ain't So Bad" – 3:48...
. She was an important figure within the Russian culture life in the 19th-century. She was also an amateur opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
singer who performed in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
Biography
She was born in TurinTurin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
in the family of a Russian ambassador, Prince Alexander Beloselsky-Belozersky, and descended in the male line from the medieval rulers of White Lake City
Belozersk
Belozersk , known as Beloozero until 1777 , is a town and the administrative center of Belozersky District of Vologda Oblast, Russia, situated on the southern bank of Lake Beloye, from which it takes the name...
. Her mother was a Tatischev, also of Rurikid ancestry.
Zinaida was lady-in-waiting to Queen Louise of Prussia
Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
Duchess Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was Queen consort of Prussia as the wife of King Frederick William III...
in 1808 and was close to Emperor Alexander I of Russia
Alexander I of Russia
Alexander I of Russia , served as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825 and the first Russian King of Poland from 1815 to 1825. He was also the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania....
, who became her lifelong correspondent and, possibly, lover. To stem gossip, Zinaida married Alexander's aide-de-camp, Prince Nikita Volkonsky
Volkonsky
Volkonsky is a famous Russian, from Rurikid princely house. It inherited some Rurikid land along the Volkona river sometime in the dark centuries of Mongol disturbances in Russia and it is not totally clear what was the route of the inheritance. according to Almagro, Rurikid princes disputed for...
, in 1810. They were prominent during the Congresses of Vienna
Congress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars,...
and Verona
Congress of Verona
The Congress of Verona met at Verona on October 20, 1822 as part of the series of international conferences or congresses that opened with the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15, which had instituted the Concert of Europe at the close of the Napoleonic Wars....
.
She moved to Russia in 1817, and to Moscow in 1822. In the 1820s the "Corinna
Corinna
Corinna or Korinna was an Ancient Greek poet, traditionally attributed to the 6th century BC. According to ancient sources such as Plutarch and Pausanias, she came from Tanagra in Boeotia, where she was a teacher and rival to the better-known Theban poet Pindar...
of the North" hosted a literary and musical salon
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
on Tverskaya Street
Tverskaya Street
Tverskaya Street , known as Gorky Street between 1935 and 1990, is the main and probably best-known radial street of Moscow, Russia. The street runs from the central Manege Square north-west in the direction of Saint Petersburg and terminated at the Garden Ring, giving its name to Tverskoy District...
in Moscow, in a mansion later rebuilt into the Yeliseyev food store. Adam Mickiewicz
Adam Mickiewicz
Adam Bernard Mickiewicz ) was a Polish poet, publisher and political writer of the Romantic period. One of the primary representatives of the Polish Romanticism era, a national poet of Poland, he is seen as one of Poland's Three Bards and the greatest poet in all of Polish literature...
, Yevgeny Baratynsky, Dmitry Venevitinov
Dmitry Venevitinov
Dmitry Vladimirovich Venevitinov was a minor Russian Romantic poet who died at the age of 21, carrying with him one of the greatest hopes of Russian literature....
, and Alexander Pushkin frequented her house. Pushkin's verse epistle to her, "The queen of music and beauty", is well known.
After Alexander I's death her brother-in-law Sergey Volkonsky led the Decembrist Revolt
Decembrist revolt
The Decembrist revolt or the Decembrist uprising took place in Imperial Russia on 14 December , 1825. Russian army officers led about 3,000 soldiers in a protest against Nicholas I's assumption of the throne after his elder brother Constantine removed himself from the line of succession...
against his successor Nicholas
Nicholas I of Russia
Nicholas I , was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its historical zenith spanning over 20 million square kilometers...
. The Decembrists were exiled to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, and their wives decided to follow them. Zinaida threw a farewell party for these women, incurring the displeasure of Nicholas I. She also came under suspicion as a secret convert to Catholicism
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
and possible Jesuit agent.
These pressures led to Zinaida's moving to Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
in 1829. She was accompanied by her son and Stepan Shevyrev, the son's tutor. Among her lodgings in Rome were Palazzo Poli
Palazzo Poli
The Palazzo Poli is a palace in Rome, Italy, forming the backdrop to the Trevi Fountain. Luigi Vanvitelli gave it a monumental facade as a setting for the fountain. It was there that Princess Zenaǐde Wolkonsky threw her lavish parties in the 1830s. The central portion of the palace was demolished...
, Villa Wolkonsky
Villa Wolkonsky
Villa Wolkonsky is the official residence of the British ambassador Italy in Rome....
, and a smaller house in the Via degli Avignonesi. Her salon was frequented by Karl Brullov, Alexander Ivanov
Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov
Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov , 1806 – July 15 , 1858) was a Russian painter who adhered to the waning tradition of Neoclassicism but found little sympathy with his contemporaries....
, Bertel Thorvaldsen
Bertel Thorvaldsen
Bertel Thorvaldsen was a Danish-Icelandic sculptor of international fame, who spent most of his life in Italy . Thorvaldsen was born in Copenhagen into a Danish/Icelandic family of humble means, and was accepted to the Royal Academy of Arts when he was eleven years old...
, Vincenzo Camuccini
Vincenzo Camuccini
Vincenzo Camuccini was an Italian painter of Neoclassic histories and religious paintings. He was considered the premier academic painter of his time in Rome.-Biography:...
, Stendhal
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...
, and Sir Walter Scott. Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
wrote much of Dead Souls
Dead Souls
Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol...
at her villa.
Princess Volkonskaya died of pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
(apparently after giving her warm cloak to an old street woman) and was buried at Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio a Trevi
Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio a Trevi
Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio a Trevi is a Baroque church in Rome, the capital of Italy. Built from 1646 to 1650 to the design of architect Martino Longhi the Younger and located in close proximity to the Trevi Fountain and the Quirinal Palace, for which it served as parish church, it is notable as...
next to her daughter. An English-language biography by Maria Fairweather, Pilgrim Princess: A life of Princess Zinaida Volkonsky, made its appearance in 1998.
English translations
- The Dream: A Letter, (story), from An Anthology of Russian Women's Writing, 1777-1992, Oxford, 1994. ISBN 0198715056