January 30, 1850
She died in St. Petersburg. Evdokia Golitsyna — the hostess of a literary salon, Pushkin's muse. "The Night Princess."
She was born in 1780 in Moscow, into the wealthy and noble Izmailov family (her mother was the sister of Prince Yusupov).
At 11, she was orphaned and raised by her uncle, a senator. Mikhail Izmailov He was in charge of all construction projects in the Kremlin and the restoration of the capital's monuments. She received an excellent education for a woman of that time. She was beautiful, distinguished by her extravagance and sharp tongue, and immediately made a splash in society.
At 19, under the patronage of the emperor Paul I, was forcibly betrothed to the prince To Sergei Golitsyn. At 20, due to the royal disgrace of her husband, she left with him to Dresden. After the death of Paul I, she refused to return with her husband to Russia and lived abroad for several years.
She is beautiful: black hair, black eyebrows and black eyes, strange teeth, a beautiful mouth and posture, although poorly held, only her nose is bad; the way she dresses, speaks, looks - everything is strange and not like the others. All Naples says about her: she is like the princess of my soul; all the beauties here have fallen and become despondent before her.
(diplomat Alexander Bulgakov, 1803)
During the War of 1812, she remained in Europe and was an ardent patriot: she was involved in charity work, printed brochures, and attended balls wearing a Russian sarafan and kokoshnik. She proposed erecting a monument to the heroes of the War of 1812 in Moscow.
May God protect us from internal turmoil, and then no foreign power will be able to shake our power.
In 1816, at 36, she returned to Petersburg and opened a salon, following the example of those in Paris. She didn't receive clients before ten o'clock in the evening, which is why she was called "princesse Nocturne" ("night princess"). According to one version, she was afraid of the night because a French clairvoyant predicted her death in a dream.
She greeted guests in attire reminiscent of ancient Roman scenes. Her home hosted a select circle of friends and many celebrities of the time. Among them were Pushkin, Zhukovsky, Karamzin, Batyushkov, Griboyedov, Vyazemsky.
Her beauty had its own uniqueness. I don't know what she was like in her first youth, but her second and third youths captivated with a certain freshness and chastity of virginity.
(Petr Vyazemsky)
The princess's conversations were characterized by great freedom and informality. Among her admirers was the future Decembrist. Mikhail Orlov. Karamzin called her Pythia (an ancient Greek priestess), and Pushkin sang her praises in poetry - at the time they met, he was 18, she was 37.
Where is the woman - not with cold beauty,
But with fiery, captivating, alive?
Where can I find a casual conversation,
Brilliant, cheerful, enlightened?
With whom can you be neither cold nor empty?
I almost hated my homeland -
But I saw Golitsyna yesterday
And reconciled with my fatherland
(Alexander Pushkin, 1817)
In her later years, she became interested in higher mathematics and metaphysics, made friends with scientists, but gradually lost her beauty.
Old and terribly ugly, she always wore dresses in bright colors, was reputed to be a scholar, and was said to have corresponded with Parisian academics on mathematical matters. To me, she seemed simply a boring bluestocking.
(music critic Wilhelm Lenz, 1830s)
The princess's published works on mathematics are a historian. Alexander Turgenev called it "utter madness," and some scientists agreed with him.
At that time, the very fact that a woman was publishing “scientific works” was incredible.
In the 1840s she left for Paris where she continued her studies in mathematics and philosophy and became interested in literature. In her final years, she returned to Russia and became very religious.
She lived to almost 70 and died, by the standards of her time, a very old woman. She died at night, as the fortune teller predicted.
