Vasily Zhukovsky in the fate of Alexander Reitern (Based on the letters of the 1840s to Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich)

The article reviews episodes of the biography of Alexander Reitern (1824-1879), a military, administrator and diplomat, that were covered in the letters of the 1840s from his brother-in-law Vasily Zhukovsky to Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich. Throughout almost his entire career, Reitern was a model of a personally loyal person who fully entrusted his fate to the monarch and was ready to perform any service he required. Reitern formed such an ethos in the 1840s, when he was an eighteen-year-old man who thanks to Zhukovsky's patronage joined the Russian military service. It was a peculiar gesture of gratitude to the royal family, who were patrons of the artist G.V. von Reitern's family since the mid-1820s. This was how Zhukovsky described this Reiterns' decision in a letter to the crown prince on May 18 (30), 1842, in which the young man was depicted as the ideal embodiment of the "family monarchy" based on the perception of the tsar and his subjects as members of one family. An important component here was also the "knightly" semantics. The path of service to the crown prince was drawn in Zhukovsky's letters in the form of a spiritual mission, and the career stages were the stages of confirmation and the epochs of personal construction. Such is the unpublished letter of September 2 (14), 1842, telling about Reiter's illness on his arrival in St. Petersburg. In the metaphorical writing system, it appears as part of a "knightly" plot of testing, according to which a paladin needs to undergo an initiation and bravely endure troubles and hardships. The efforts of the poet to create a knightly halo around the personality of Alexander Reitern did not disappear in vain, and, at the end of 1844, they culminated in an act of supreme patronage. In early December, Reitern was promoted to officer of the Life Cuirassier Regiment, whose chief was the heir to the throne. This, in turn, helped to build the next stage of the "knightly" plot, when personal patronage is embodied not only in signs of attention, but also in ensuring well-being - so that the noble, but poor paladin does not disgrace the suzerain (a letter of December 11 (23), 1844, previously unknown in print). The article first time publishes a number of fragments, excluded by P.I. Bartenev in the first publication of Zhukovsky's letters to the crown prince in the Russkiy Arkhiv journal, which tell about the further fate of Reitern during 1845-1850 - invariably in the halo of the knightly semantics. Such are the letters of April 7 (19), 1845, February 15 (27), 1846, February 16 (28), 1847, April 17 (29), 1847, with requests for the young man to visit his family and gratitude for the great prince's regular good deeds for him. The article concludes with previously unknown fragments of three letters between January 28 (February 9) and February 13 (25), March 1 (13), 1850, and June 14 (26), 1850, in which Zhukovsky tells about his brother-in-law's conflict with his chief M.I. Tumansky and appeals for the highest help: he asks to transfer Reitern from the Life Cuirassier Regiment to the army headquarters by the adjutant of the commander-in-chief I.F. Paskevich, which the crown prince did.

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