The author of the book, published in 1999 by the publishing house "Russian Dictionaries", is a linguist who was lucky enough to listen to lectures by the famous literary critic - Pushkin writer Sergei Mikhailovich Bondi as a student and communicate with him for many more years. This determined N. A. Eskova's interest in the Pushkin theme.

The book is basically structured as follows: the author draws attention to the familiar Pushkin lines and points out in them the stumbling block that not only ordinary readers stumble over, but sometimes literary critics as well. Here is a textbook: "Winter!.. The peasant, triumphant, / On firewood renews the path...". In "Walks with Pushkin" Andrey Sinyavsky remarked: "What a triumph on a small occasion!" Academician D. S. Likhachev also reflected on this "triumphantly". He considers the occasion for celebration insignificant and explains the triumph of themes. that the snow that fell saved the winter crops from destruction. However, Pushkin used to celebrate in the meaning now lost by this verb: "to celebrate, to celebrate some event." "Dictionary of the Pushkin language "(which, of course, A. Sinyavsky could not use while in the camp) reports that in this old (for us) meaning, the word triumph occurs in the poet 8 times. Moreover, this verb acted as a transitive, i.e. requiring addition in the accusative case. N. A. Eskova gives examples: "In the old days, they were triumphant / In their house these evenings... "("Eugene Onegin"), " Who among us in our old age will have to celebrate the day of the Lyceum alone?" ("October 19").

The late T. G. Vinokur drew the attention of the author of the book to the fact that the archaic meaning of this verb is preserved in the noun celebration: cf. celebration on the occasion of the defense of a dissertation, anniversary, assignment of a title, etc.

In the eighth chapter of Eugene Onegin, there are two lines that are known to all those who have graduated from high school: "Old Derzhavin noticed us / And, descending into the coffin, blessed us." N. A. Eskova strongly disagrees with the opinion that here Pushkin resorted to the "formula of modesty". No, "us" is precisely "us" - the poet and his muse. The author justifies this conclusion first of all by references to Pushkin's texts, and then by understanding these lines by P. I. Bartenev (in a biographical sketch published in 1854) and Yu. Eichenwald in the book "Silhouettes of Russian Writers".

N. A. Eskova shows how ignorance of the old meaning of the word lampada not least motivated one of the literary critics

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to attribute Pushkin's parody of the image of Pimen from Boris Godunov by Eugene Onegin: "dandy parodies an anchorite, a monk", " Byron's portrait in front of a darkened lamp with the humorous logic of a consistent parody takes place... icons in front of a lighted lamp, " the literary critic argued. The word lampada is found in Pushkin 37 times, of which only in eight cases it means "a device lit in front of the icon in the form of a cup with a wick dipped in oil for burning", and 29 times the poet used it as "poetic names of a lamp, lighting device", i.e. in the meaning of "lamp". And when Pimen says: "He will light up his lamp like I do - / And, having dusted off the dust of centuries from the charters, / He will rewrite true tales...", and Pushkin says about himself: "I write, I read without a lamp...", and Tatiana in Onegin's study sees "... a table with a darkened lamp", all this is about a lamp, where you can read and write.

It is regrettable that the" School Dictionary of Obsolete words of the Russian language based on the works of Russian writers of the XVIII-XX centuries "(Moscow, 1996) included a lampada in a different, not outdated meaning. N. A. Eskova ironically notes: "It is strange that the authors of the dictionary considered the word lampada in this meaning obsolete. As" obsolete " they obviously perceived the subject designated by this word; but by the time the dictionary was published, it had become "less outdated"...".

The author of the book tells about the misadventures of the last three lines of "Arion". They are often cut off, and the last line remains: "Washed ashore by a thunderstorm." This happens even when they mention portraits of the Decembrists and images of the gallows by the poet's hand in the margins of manuscripts, when they talk about the meaning of the last words of "Arion". N. A. Eskova writes: "... one should not be surprised when such a "surgical operation" is performed... an author who holds a different view of Pushkin's attitude to the Decembrist movement, reflecting modern "trends"." Yes, these "trends"! Free-thinking shifters who have already expressed their original views on the role and personalities of the Decembrists, Herzen, Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky and have not yet miraculously reached Radishchev, will they stop before truncating some three lines that do not fit into the Procrustean bed of their concept? In the episode with three Pushkin lines cut off, you should refer to information from the history of Russian syntax. As N. A. Eskova shows and proves, it is not the predicate that is thrown out, but a part of a separate participial phrase ("only I, the mysterious singer, was thrown ashore by a thunderstorm, I sing the hymns of the past..."). Therefore, you can not put a period after "thrown out", arbitrarily eliminating the author's participial phrase. In modern speech, full forms of participles are used in participial turns (thrown out by a thunderstorm, covered with bowls, etc.), but compare Pushkin's Eugene Onegin: "Covered with bowls all around, / Glitters magnificent

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home...", " Cherished in the eastern bliss, / On the northern, sad snow / You left no trace..."

At the end of the book, in the form of an appendix, errors in statements about Pushkin that occur in print, on radio and television are given. For example: "Yevtushenko said: "A poet in Russia is more than a poet." But what if the poet is Pushkin, who, according to Dostoevsky, is "our everything"? "(Science and Life. 1996). In fact, as N. A. Eskova rightly notes, the statement "Pushkin is our everything" belongs to Apollo Grigoriev. "Obshchaya Gazeta" in the same year: ""What a charm these fairy tales are!" - young Pushkin once exclaimed. At that time, he was not yet the "sun of Russian poetry" - just a playful child...". However, it is known that this exclamation about fairy tales was contained in a letter to his brother, which A. S. Pushkin wrote in November 1824, while in exile in Mikhailovsky.

I believe that N. A. Eskova's book will be interesting and useful for all readers of Pushkin.

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