over twenty years, from the mid- 1820 s until the end of the 1840 s. The
attendees, who included such luminaries as Zhukovsky, Karamzin,
Pushkin, Gogol, Ivan and Petr Kireevsky, Chaadaev, Baratynsky, Vi-
azemsky, Odoevsky, Venevitinov, Iazykov, Herzen, Samarin, Sergei and
Konstantin Aksakov, Ogarev, Shevyrev, Pogodin, M. A. Maksimovich,
and Vigel’, were, in fact, a network of Elagina’s relations and friends.
Elagina grew up with Zhukovsky, who was her mother’s half-brother and
her tutor. She corresponded with him for many years, acting as confi-
dant in his romance with her cousin Mar’ia Protasov and advising him
on his poetry. According to one source, Zhukovsky, who acted as men-
tor to Pushkin, brought him to Elagina’s salon. Iazykov lived with the
Elagins. Several attendees were linked by marriage. Khomiakov married
Iazykov’s sister; Karamzin’s second wife was Viazemsky’s half sister.
Elagina’s sons by her first marriage, to Vasilii Ivanovich Kireevsky, were
Ivan Kireevsky (1806–56), an architect of Slavophilism and editor of
theEvropeets(1831–32), and Petr Kireevsky (1808–56), a prominent
Slavophile and collector of Russian folk songs. Baratynsky was a good
friend of Ivan Kireevsky and first read his poetry in Elagina’s salon.
Through these ties Elagina commanded a great deal of influence in lit-
erary circles, although her literary activity consisted of translating, ed-
iting journals, and writing familiar letters rather than writing poetry or
prose fiction.^10
What sources of literary social capital, then, did Pavlova enjoy, and how
did they affect her literary reception? Her family background consti-
tuted an equivocal asset. Unlike most upper-class Muscovites, de-
scended from old Russian families, Pavlova traced her roots to Western
Europe. Her father, Karl Ivanovich Jaenisch, was a German-educated
doctor of German descent. Her mother, a former singing teacher, was
French and English on her father’s side. Pavlova, who became an only
child after the death of her seven-year-old sister in 1816 , received an ex-
cellent European education at home. By the age of eighteen she not only
spoke Russian, French, English, and German, as well as some Italian and
Polish, but also knew these national literatures.^11 In some ways this un-
usual background—and perhaps the fact that Pavlova was a practicing
Lutheran rather than Russian Orthodox—worked to her social dis-
advantage, alienating her from her contemporaries. The opening of
Pavlova’s Dvoinaia zhizn’,in which two men discuss the heroine, Cecilia,
may reflect the attitudes Pavlova herself encountered: “’They say she
isn’t stupid, but who’s stupid nowadays?... But she must have a dash
140 Karolina Pavlova