Is the story true about how Georges Dantes called Maxim Gorky to a duel?

For many years, a bike has been walking on the network about how, in old age, the killer of Pushkin challenged Alexei Peshkov, the future classics of Russian literature. We checked how much this legend corresponds to reality.

According to the plot of this story, at the end of the 19th century the young but already popular writer Maxim Gorky (real name is Alexei Peshkov) in one town near Paris was represented by an elderly senator, who turned out to be Baron de Heckeren - thereby Georges Dantes, the author of the fatal shot in Pushkin on a duel in 1837. Gorky refused to betray a hand to the killer of his idol, which caused the wrath of the Frenchman, and after the exchange of Kolkovo it was decided to go to a duel. However, the next morning, Gorky received a letter from Dantes, in which he reported that he got acquainted with the works of Gorky and the poetry of the writer was delighted. “I hesitated and realized that I could not deprive the Russian poetry of its rising sun! In this regard, I ask us to consider our conflict exhausted! " - Allegedly wrote Dantes, and since then Maxim Gorky quit writing poetry.

The writers reported at different times about this case Grigory Gorin And Max Fryas well as TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov. The history is periodically published by users social networks.

If we trace the chronology of the spread of legends about Gorky and Dantes over the last quarter of a century, it is easy to notice that the traces lead to the story of Grigory Gorin, published in the Internet publication "Gazeta.ru»In February 2000. IN heading “Incredible stories of Grigory Gorin” The writer introduced readers to interesting bikes, told by the representatives of the older generation. At that time, none of the storytellers were alive, and Gorin himself doubted the veracity of each of the plots, so he turned to readers with a request to share additional information if possible, writing to him by e -mail. Unfortunately, this initiative did not receive development - only it turned out Four stories, and on June 15 of the same year, Gorin died suddenly. Whether the writer received some important comments from readers about the story of Dantes and Gorky is unknown.

Gorin writes that he heard her around 1970 at the seminar of young writers in Yalta from the writer and literary critic Viktor Shklovsky. Maxim Gorky himself allegedly told about the case from his biography. Indeed, Shklovsky has been friends with Gorky since 1915, he has been at his house many times and repeatedly mentioned a colleague in his memories And literary work. However, in no publication of Shklovsky’s works, including Collected works, “Verified” did not find mentions of the case with Dantes. There are no them in 25-volume complete works Maxim Gorky.

Consider some details appearing in Gorin's story.

Indeed, the French officer George Charles Dantes, Pushkin’s Sobesk, was sentenced to death for the murder of the poet, which was then replaced expulsion With the gendarme abroad. He lived in his homeland A long lifethat has a glorious political career - membership in the Constituent Assembly, the title of commander Order of the Honorary Legion And the honorary senator. However, contrary to Gorin’s story, there is no reliable information that Dantes after a duel met with Natalia Goncharova or her second husband Lansky (for him the widow of Pushkin was only seven years after the death of the poet), because he was arrested and arrested and arrested and Sent From the country, and subsequently became in Russia Persona Non Grata. Even relatives did not come to see his wife Ekaterina Goncharov. In one of the Russian newspapers printed The interview of the son of Dantes, who allegedly once witnessed the accidental meeting of his father with Natalya Goncharova on Paris Street, but the conversation did not take place then. There is also no information about Dantes returned to Dantes.

There is unconfirmed legend The fact that in 1887 Pushkinist Alexander Onegin met with Dantes. Only one thing is reliably known: the last years of life Georges Dantes Spent In his house in Sules, in the north-east of France, which after the Franco-Prussian war retreated to Germany. There he died in 1895 at the age of 83 after a long illness. The story of Gorin claims that about that year, a memorable conversation of Dantes and Gorky took place.

However, Maxim Gorky his first trip abroad committed Only in February 1906 through Finland on behalf of the revolutionaries. By 1895 he is completely I was not “Popular Russian writer”-at that time, the 27-year-old writer printed only a few stories, essays and short stories, and his poems were not published at all, except for the poem published in the same year in the prose “Song of the Falcon”. Gorky into foreign languages Started only a few years later, and the Russian language Dantes I practically did not know, therefore, I could not get acquainted with Peshkov’s work. Until 1895, the Russian writer did not even have the opportunity to visit restaurants near Paris and meet with senators, and even with a personal translator-he somehow earned bread with articles and feuilletons in Volga newspapers.

“Verified” did not find any traces of mentioning the story of Dantes and Gorky to the publications of Grigory Gorin. Even if Viktor Shklovsky really told him this story, it is still its main statements are refuted by the facts from the biographies of two main defendants. Shklovsky was known in the writer's environment as an inventor - for example, to him attributed authorship of the expression "Hamburg account" with the corresponding history About the terminology of fighters allegedly heard live. Apparently, here we are dealing with literary hoax.

Photo on the cover: collage from Wikimedia Commons

Fake

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