There is a popular collection on the Internet about the subjective perception of people’s age—the facts it contains suggest rethinking the modern view of who is considered young and who is old. We have verified the accuracy of such publications.
Typically the selection looks like this: “Juliet’s mother was 28 years old at the time of the events described in the play.
Marya Gavrilovna from Pushkin’s “The Snowstorm” was no longer young: “She was in her twenties.”
Balzac's age is 30 years.
Ivan Susanin was 32 years old at the time of the feat (he had a 16-year-old daughter of marriageable age).
The old pawnbroker from Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment was 42 years old.
At the time of her death, Anna Karenina was 28 years old, Vronsky was 23 years old, Anna Karenina’s old husband was 48 years old (at the beginning of the events described in the novel, everyone was two years younger).
The old man Cardinal Richelieu was 42 years old at the time of the siege of the La Rochelle fortress described in The Three Musketeers.
From the notes of 16-year-old Pushkin: “An old man of about 30 years old entered the room” (it was Karamzin).
From Tynyanov: “Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin was older than all those gathered. He was thirty-four years old - the age of extinction.”
She left to cry".
It’s easy to find numerous publications including this or slightly modified versions of the collection on social networks. For several years she has been especially popular on VKontakte; in recent years, public pages with an audience of over a million subscribers have regularly posted her on their pages: "Literature", "Lifestyle", "Cynic", "Subtle Humor" and many others. Users of other platforms are not lagging behind, including Facebook And LiveJournal.
Although this collection in different versions continues to appear regularly on social networks to this day, the peak of its popularity has nevertheless passed. It went truly viral twice. In the first half of 2016, the collection was distributed mainly by large publics on VKontakte: for example, "Weird Humor", "Subtle Humor", "Schrodinger's Humor", "MHC", "Dark Corner", "Secrets of History", "The Art of Reality", "Leprosy" And "Leprosarium". At the time of publication of this material, each of them was subscribed to from 1.2 to 5 million people.
Five years earlier, the collection also became popular on VKontakte, but at that time it was distributed by individual users, which did not interfere with some posts dial almost 5000 likes each. Users contributed no less Twitter and especially “LiveJournal” - in 2011 (mainly in the spring) a selection published at least 400 times. If you believe alone from the posts, these facts about age in the summer of the same year were even used by Vladimir Zhirinovsky in his address to graduates, distributed by the LDPR in the form of brochures.
It was probably in the spring of 2011 that this collection appeared. The earliest mention of it in LiveJournal that we were able to find was dated March 28. As the primary source, a user under the nickname feelingod names a comment on obituary Elizabeth Taylor, written by Boris Paramonov. Someone Nikolai Kuznetsov posted this comment in the early morning of March 26, 2011. In what has become a standard set, two facts about age mentioned by the commentator disappeared: “Pushkin wrote the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” at the age of 19” and “The brilliant Evariste Galois made a great mathematical discovery at the age of 19 - the Galois group (at the age of 20 he was killed in a duel for political reasons). Galois was the youngest of the greats and the greatest of the young."
Over the course of almost 11 years, the viral collection has undergone some changes. Some publications present fewer facts, while others, on the contrary, present more. We will analyze the earliest version we have discovered, which contains 11 statements.
Juliet's mother was 28 years old at the time of the events described in the play.
The assumption about Senora Capulet's age was probably made on the basis of two of her lines in Shakespeare's tragedy. First she tells about his daughter, that she “is not yet fourteen years old,” and her birthday will come in just a few days. Next, the mother says to Juliet: “Well, now think about marriage. / In Verona there are respectable gentlemen, / Even mothers who are younger / than you, Juliet; and I myself / I was already a mother for a long time in those years / In which you remain a maiden.” Thus, it can be assumed that Senora Capulet was really about 30 years old at that moment. At the same time, a wedding and even the birth of the first child for a 15-year-old girl in Italy of the 15th century didn't count something extraordinary.
Marya Gavrilovna from Pushkin’s “The Snowstorm” was no longer young: “She was in her twenties”.
At the very beginning of one of Belkin’s Tales, the heroine characterized as "a slender, pale and seventeen-year-old girl." The action begins in 1811, and ends four years later - then Maria Gavrilovna turns 21 (the phrase “She was twenty years old” is not in the text at all). Throughout the story, Pushkin never describes her as “middle-aged.” On the contrary, in the scene of her escape from her parents’ house, the heroine is called a “young criminal”, and towards the end of the text the author writes: “This did not harm him (Burmin. - Ed.) in the opinion of Marya Gavrilovna, who (like all young ladies in general) gladly excused pranks that revealed courage and ardor of character.”
Balzac age - 30 years.
Probably, the creators of the collection made this conclusion based on the fact that Honoré de Balzac has a novel “A Woman of Thirty”, and some dictionaries tie up the origin of the ironic term is precisely with this text. At the same time, there is no strictly fixed age interval corresponding to Balzac’s age - usually called age from 30 to 40 years.
Ivan Susanin was 32 years old at the time of the feat (he had a 16-year-old daughter of marriageable age).
It is still possible to establish any exact date of birth of Ivan Susanin failed and it is unlikely that it will ever succeed. The same can be said about the daughter, who, however, the national hero really had - in 1619 in the letter of grant of Tsar Mikhail Romanovich mentioned “peasant Bogdashka Sobinin”, who is called Susanin’s son-in-law.
The old woman-pawnbroker from Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” was 42 years old.
Dostoevsky really calls her heroine is an old woman, but she is much older than 42 years: “She was a tiny, dry old woman, about sixty years old, with sharp and angry eyes, a small pointed nose and simple hair. Her blond, slightly gray hair was greased with oil.” The description of the pawnbroker can be compared with the description of the main character’s mother, whom the author does not consider an “old woman”: “Despite the fact that Pulcheria Alexandrovna was already forty-three years old, her face still retained remnants of her former beauty, and besides, she seemed much younger than her years, which almost always happens with women who have retained clarity of spirit, freshness of impressions and honest, pure warmth of heart into old age. Let’s say in parentheses that preserving all this is the only way not to lose your beauty even in old age.”
At the time of her death, Anna Karenina was 28 years old, Vronsky was 23 years old, Anna Karenina’s old husband was 48 years old (at the beginning of the events described in the novel, everyone was two years younger).
The only thing we know for sure is text novel about the age of the Karenins, their age difference. This is known thanks to Stiva Oblonsky’s remark in a conversation with Anna: “You married a man who is twenty years older than you. You married without love or without knowing love.” Unlike Stiva and some other characters, Tolstoy does not name the exact age of the Karenins and Vronsky. We can only establish the minimum age of Anna - she has an eight-year-old son born in a legal marriage, and in the Russian Empire of that time girls could to get married at the age of 16, that is, the title character of the novel is at least twenty-four. At the same time, Tolstoy himself describes her appearance and behavior as follows: “Anna did not look like a society lady or the mother of an eight-year-old son, but would have been more like a twenty-year-old girl in the flexibility of her movements, freshness and the animation established on her face, which was striking either a smile or a look, if not for the serious, sometimes sad expression of her eyes.” Karenin is not called an old man in the text.
The old man Cardinal Richelieu was 42 years old at the time of the siege of the fortress of La Rochelle described in The Three Musketeers..
The siege of La Rochelle, against the backdrop of which part of the events of Dumas’ novel develops, started in September 1627, shortly after the 42nd birthday Cardinal Richelieu. The confrontation ended in October 1628, when the cardinal was already forty-three. At the same time, apparently, the author of the selection already considered him an old man, because Dumas, at the first appearance of Richelieu in the novel describes him completely differently: “Standing by the fireplace was a man of average height. Proud, arrogant, with a piercing gaze and a wide forehead. The thin face was further lengthened by a pointed beard, over which a mustache curled. This man was hardly more than 36-37 years old, but there was already gray in his hair and beard. <...> This man was Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu, not the way we usually portray him, that is, not a bent old man, suffering from a serious illness, relaxed, with a faded voice, immersed in a deep armchair, as if in an untimely grave, living only by the power of his mind and supporting the fight against Europe with one tension of thought, but as he really was in those years: dexterous and a kind gentleman, even then weak in body, but supported by the indomitable strength of spirit, which made him one of the most remarkable people of his time.”
From the notes of 16-year-old Pushkin: “An old man of about 30 years old entered the room” (it was Karamzin)
Discover this quote in diaries, letters and other personal texts of Pushkin, we were unable to do so. Moreover, 16-year-old Pushkin, in principle, could not see 30-year-old Karamzin - Alexander Sergeevich was born in 1799, and Nikolai Mikhailovich in 1766, thirty-three years earlier. When Pushkin was sixteen, Karamzin’s age was already approaching fifty, so such a description, if it had actually been given, would rather have been a compliment to the author of “The History of the Russian State.”
From Tynyanov: “Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin was older than all those gathered. He was thirty-four years old—the age of decline.”
In the novel “Pushkin” by the Soviet writer Yuri Tynyanov, There is such a phrase. At the same time, the author further writes: “There were no wrinkles yet, but coldness appeared on his elongated, white face. Despite his playfulness, despite his affection for ticklers, as he called the young ones, it was clear that he had experienced a lot. <…> His heart was broken by the beautiful woman whose friend he was. After traveling to Europe, he became colder towards his friends.” Note that Tynyanov wrote his novel in 1935–1943, therefore, drawing any conclusions about the perception of Karamzin’s age by his contemporaries on the basis of this phrase is groundless - the writer could well have used such wording solely for literary purposes.
Pushkin wrote the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” at the age of 19
Reliably known, that Pushkin read fragments of the still unfinished poem at the last meeting of the Arzamas circle on April 7, 1818, two months before his 19th birthday. Published “Ruslana and Lyudmila” only two years later. Pushkin wrote at least some fragments at the age of 18, but the final version was ready for printing later.
The brilliant Evariste Galois made a great mathematical discovery at the age of 19 - the Galois group (at the age of 20 he was killed in a duel for political reasons). Galois was the youngest of the greats and the greatest of the young.
Galois was born in 1811 and was able to enter the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1830 - at the same time in France there was July Revolution. The next year, Galois, who was an opponent of the monarchy, was expelled for political reasons, and the young man was twice imprisoned. In 1832, even before his 21st birthday, the mathematician was killed in a duel, the details of which remain unknown. Galois's few works were not understood by his contemporaries, but were subsequently developed thanks to Bernhard Riemann and other mathematicians who lived later.
Mostly not true
- A. S. Pushkin. Blizzard
- F. M. Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment
- L. N. Tolstoy. Anna Karenina
- Myths and truth in Dumas’ novel “The Three Musketeers”
- Is it true that Dumas the Father is Pushkin who faked his death?
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