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

Examples of many such changes may be seen in the published ver-

sion of “Druz’ia, vam istinno, vam shchedro zhizn’ dana” (no. 76 in the

notebook, published in Literaturnaia gazeta,no. 39 [Sept. 25 , 1847 ])—one

of Khvoshchinskaia’s most powerful poems. (See the appendix for both

the manuscript and the published version.)

In line 1 Zotov broke up Khvoshchinskaia’s passionate oratory into

lumpy iambs.

Khvoshchinskaia: u,  

,    

h

(Friends, to you truly, to you generously life has been given.)

Published version: u !  

    

h

(My friends! To you all so generously life has been given.)

In line 3 he weakened Khvoshchinskaia’s “strast’mi moguchimi” (with

mighty passions) by changing it to “strast’mi sil’nymi” (with strong pas-

sions), and flattened Khvoshchinskaia’s “liubvi sviatoi toskoiu” (the sa-

cred anguish of love) to “liubov’iu i toskoiu.” (love and anguish). In line

4 , which sums up the first three lines, he changed the strong adjective

“roskoshnaia” (luxurious, splendid) to the weaker “prekrasnaia” (beau-

tiful, fine), moving “roskoshnaia” to the less emphasized second line.

While it would be tedious to discuss all of Zotov’s changes, I would

draw the reader’s attention to line 25 , in which he destroyed Khvoshchin-

skaia’s parallel syntax:

Khvoshchinskaia: ! u 



,      u   u

 

 



?

h

(Where here is activity, where here is the revelry for one’s energies?)

Published version: ! 



 u,      u   u

 

 



?

h

(Where is the activity here, where here is the revelry for one’s energies?)

and to the censored (and unintelligible) lines 35 and 36.

Khvoshchinskaia: 
, 

 

  

 ? "  

 

#

  

$!..  .

h

(What? Does it [the world] exist or not? Is it a god’s creation

Or peoples’ dream?... and he goes away.)

Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia 125