handwriting) still exist, one comprising 197 poetic works, the other 9 ,
both located in RGALI, the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art.
The larger notebook bears the inscription from her father on the inside
front cover, quoted earlier in this chapter.^37 The second, in which
Khvoshchinskaia wrote nine later poems, comes from France and has
“Album buvard.” (Blotter-album) stamped on the cover.^38 It has pockets
in the back for correspondence, printed French poems in the front, and
blank blotting pages in the middle, on which Khvoshchinskaia wrote her
own poetry.
The larger notebook has a table of contents in which 72 of the 197poem titles are underlined, apparently to indicate publication. Under the
text of each of these poems a different hand identifies the issue and year
of the newspaper or journal in which it appeared. Most, but not all, of
this information is correct. By my count, 85 poems from both notebooks
appeared in print. Also in the larger notebook a few vertical strokes in
the left-hand margin indicate lines of poetry that did not appear in the
printed versions. In a few cases lines are crossed out and rewritten in
the same second hand. While it is tempting to see this second hand as
Zotov’s, that would not appear to be the case. Zotov did write in a mem-
oir that he had received “an entire notebook from Riazan’“ but describes
it as having “more than half a hundred poems,” not 197. And at the end
of his life he wrote of having 120 of Khvoshchinskaia’s poems.^39
A comparison of the poems in these notebooks with the publishedversions shows many of Zotov’s editorial changes to be gratuitous and
others to spoil the poems. For example, it is difficult to see how Zotov
improved the poem, “Dolzhna b ia vchera poplakat’“ (I should have
cried yesterday, no. 121 in the notebook, published in Literaturnaia gazeta,
no. 35 [Sept. 2 , 1848 ]) by changing in line 8 Khvoshchinskaia’s “i chto
zhe?” to the synonymous “a chto zhe?” Equally arbitrary appears to be
his change of Khvoshchinskaia’s “sozdan’ia” (creation) to the synony-
mous “tvoren’ia” in lines 23 and 30 of “Melodiia (O daite mne pole, shi-
rokoe, gladkoe pole!)” (Melody [O give me a field, a wide, smooth
field!], no. 49 in the notebook, published in Literaturnaia gazeta,no. 39
[Sept., 25 1847]). Nor is it clear for what reason he added the word “ves’“
(all) to the last line of “Segodnia vsiu noch’“ (Today all night, no. 124 in
the notebook, published in Panteon,no. 1 [Jan. 1854 ]), changing Khvosh-
chinskaia’s “Chtob s pesneiu mir obletet’“ (So as to fly around the world
with a song) to “Chtob s pesn’iu ves’ mir obletet’“ (So as to fly around
the whole world with a song). Or how he improved “V gostinoi ubran-
noi roskoshno” (In a luxuriously decorated drawing room, no. 120 in the
Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia 123