ABSTRACT
Biographers can provide no commentary for the majority of these poems beyond the bare information that they were never published in Alexander Pushkin’s lifetime. Pushkin drew more than thirty sketches of her face in his manuscripts, done at various times. Pushkin was a frequent visitor, coming both in an official capacity and as someone who felt at home. But on the days under discussion Elizaveta Vorontsova was living in the luxurious and spacious dacha which had been lent to her by Baron Jean Renault, a Frenchman, the owner of the hotel at the corner of Deribasovskaya and Rishelyevskaya streets (i.e., de Ribasse and Richelieu) streets, where Pushkin at one time lived as well. The ring with its Hebrew inscription on Pushkin’s hand, given to him at that farewell hour, was a symbol of Exodus. Not by accident had the subject of the slavery of the Jews and their escape from Egypt attracted Pushkin’s attention on many occasions.
