an article with an invented name” (Bykov, Siluety dalekogo proshlogo, 186 ).
Khvoshchinskaia tried to prevent articles about her sister Sof’ia from be-
ing published after her death, and one surmises from one memoir, she
finally broke with her “mentor,” Vladimir Zotov, when he published an
obituary of Sof’ia against Khvoshchinskaia’s expressed wishes.^29 In this
context, it is significant that Khvoshchinskaia always signed her poetry
with her full name and freely used feminine grammatical endings in her
poems. Perhaps she felt more identification with her poetry than with her
prose, or perhaps she felt it was more acceptable for a woman to write
poetry.^30 Yet, if the latter is the case, why has her poetry disappeared? I
suggest it is because her poetry, too, violated gender norms.
Gatekeepers, Reception, Reputation
Khvoshchinskaia’s career as a poet, according to Praskov’ia Khvosh-
chinskaia, began in 1847 , when she was twenty-three. A friend of the fam-
ily arranged to have a notebook of Khvoshchinskaia’s poetry delivered
to Vladimir Zotov (1821–96), then editor of Literaturnaia gazeta.As dis-
cussed in chapter 1 , women writers, lacking the entrée into literature that
men enjoyed through salons and universities, found it difficult to make
the contacts with men necessary to get published. Those women writ-
ers who, like Khvoshchinskaia, lived far from Moscow and Saint Pe-
tersburg, where the periodic press was concentrated, experienced even
more difficulty. A few months later, Praskov’ia Khvoshchinskaia con-
tinues, Zotov, looking for something to put in the poetry column of the
newspaper, read the notebook. He published six of Khvoshchinskaia’s
poems in Literaturnaia gazeta, no. 38 (Sept. 18 , 1847 ) under an effusive
note in which the twice italicized “lady” marked his astonishment (or
perhaps his doubt) that a woman could have written this poetry:
Buried under bad poetry sent to us from all corners of verse-
loving Russia we were very pleasantly and unexpectedly sur-
prised by the verse delivered to us by a Miss N. D. Khvoshchin-
skaia. We found in it much true poetry and warmth of feeling,
heated by thought and originality. It is even more pleasant to ac-
quaint the readers of our newspaper with a new poet because this
poet is a lady.We have not read such wonderful and sonorous
verses in Russian for a long time. We sincerely thank their author
in particular on behalf of ourselves and the entire reading public,
which no doubt will justly appreciate the new poetic gift of a lady
who commands verse with more ease than many contemporary
men poets have attained.120 Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia