Reinventing Romantic Poetry : Russian Women Poets of the Mid-nineteenth Century

tional literature. (L. A. Ozerov, introduction to Stikhotvoreniia

[ 1970 ], 24–25)

Frank Kermode’s interesting study, Forms of Attention,illuminates this

contrast between the irrelevance that critics attribute to Rostopchina

and the eternal relevance they bestow on canonical writers. Kermode

writes that in literary, as in religious, canons “permanent modernity

is conferred on chosen works,” while “others are allowed to become

merely historical.” “To be inside the canon,” he continues, “is to be pro-

tected from wear and tear, to be credited with indefinitely large num-

bers of internal relations and secrets, to be treated as a heterocosm, a

miniature Torah.” Kermode observes that works can only become and

remain canonical through “continuity of attention and interpretation.”^49

In considering the history of Rostopchina criticism, one is struck by

the continuity of negative attention and disparaging interpretations of

her work—the sustained effort over time to show that Rostopchina does

not belong in the canon. But if she is truly irrelevant and merely histor-

ical, one might ask, why do these critics pay her so much attention?

Other Approaches

It is natural for readers to accept such repeated denigration of Ros-

topchina’s poetry over time as proof of its inferior quality. These nega-

tive opinions, however, could also be explained by the factors of class

politics and cultural misogyny described in the preceding discussion.

Rostopchina’s work, like her biography, is worth reconsidering with an

open mind.^50

We have noted critics’ use of the term poetessato disparage Ros-

topchina.^51 However, in reconsidering Rostopchina’s significance, we

must ask if she is a “poetess” in the well-defined European and Ameri-

can sense of the word.^52 Nineteenth-century American and European

literary scholars describe the poetess as a “sociomoral handmaiden”

(Ross, Contours of Masculine Desire, 192 ) who did not “demonstrate am-

bition,... [was] not to lecture on public issues or speculate on philo-

sophic or religious ones” (Ostriker, Stealing the Language, 31 ) or “[chal-

lenge] the status quo” (Walker, introduction to American Women Poets of

the Nineteenth Century,xxvi); who embodied the feminine “sphere of the

domestic affections, religious piety, and patriotic passions, and of the fe-

male (more particularly maternal) responsibility for binding these sen-

sibilities together.”^53 Such a poetic stance, if maintained consistently,

Evdokiia Rostopchina 105