Knowledge of French was to some extent a hallmark of the Russian nobility of Pushkin time. Literary scholar Yuri Lotman also notes that it has often served as a kind of social password, allowing the upper strata of society to distinguish their own from the others. The presence of French literature in the library was therefore a mandatory feature of a 19th-century educated man.

The collection of the museum contains a book ‘The art of learning people by their appearance, gestures and gait; by Lavater; with thirty-two painted illustrations’. It was given to the poet by his mother, Alexandra, while YevgEny was studying in the Page Corps.

Evgeny Boratynskiy entered the Page Corps in 1812, when he was barely twelve years old. Boratynskiy’s relations with peers and teachers were not easy: “I had hoped to find friendship, but I got nothing but indifferent and insincere courtesy”, he complained in a letter to the mother.

Aleksandr Fedorovna got concerned and sent him a sort of a guide on human characters, a book by Johann Lavater, published in Paris in 1813. But, alas, the book did not help. In the spring of 1816, Evgeniy was expelled from the corps.

After reading books about noble bandits – Karl von Moor, Rinaldo Rinaldini -- Boratynskiy and his comrades were engaged only in mischief. Later his mother was surprised that her good-natured son could “forget himself” in Petersburg.

This book was kept in the family of the poet’s descendants and in 1976 it was transferred to the Kazan Museum of Boratynskiy. Lavater was a writer, theologian and poet. He became famous after the release of his book ‘Fragments of physiognomy’ about what connects ‘the internal and the external, the visible surface with what it conceals’. Lavater’s ideas greatly influenced European culture. His influence can be found in the works of Balzac, Dickens, Baudelaire, Hoffmann and Leo Tolstoy.