of her father’s German blood in her. I can’t stand all these German and
half-German women.’“^12 Indeed, Pavlova’s linguistic abilities drew
some envious ridicule from her contemporaries.^13 Yet her background
also provided a prestigious connection to European culture at a time
when it strongly influenced the Russian literary establishment and aris-
tocracy. Throughout the 1830 s and 1840 s, for example, the thick journal
Biblioteka dlia chteniialisted all books published in France, Germany, and
England, in addition to running a column on literary life in these coun-
tries. Most thick journals regularly reviewed European books, and even
Zvezdochka (1842–63), a journal for girls up to age fourteen, included
many children’s texts in French, German, and English, as well as Russian.
Pavlova also turned her German background into Russian literary cap-
ital by sending her first translations to Goethe, whose letter praising her
work she included in her album. As we shall see, Pavlova’s cosmopoli-
tan European background became an even greater asset posthumously,
when it brought her work to the attention of Russian Symbolists and
German Slavists.
Another equivocal social asset for Pavlova, as for every woman poet,consisted in her attractiveness to men. Although hostile male contem-
poraries focused on and disparaged Pavlova’s appearance and man-
ner,^14 the Pavlova scholar Munir Sendich quotes accounts indicating that
Ivan Kireevsky and Nikolai Iazykov were in love with her, and that
Mickiewicz’s friend, Cyprian Daszkiewicz, killed himself because of his
unrequited love for her. As mentioned previously, a woman’s pleasing
physical appearance could serve as an excuse for men critics to trivial-
ize her work. And at least one literary historian—Valerii Briusov—
seemed to assume that any critic who reviewed Pavlova’s work favorably
did so because he was sexually attracted to her.^15
In any case, Pavlova’s literary connections constituted an unambigu-ous source of literary capital. Thanks to her father’s, Karl Jaenisch’s,
friendship with Avdot’ia Elagina, Pavlova in the mid- 1820 s received an
invitation to read her poetry at Elagina’s salon.^16 Pavlova not only became
a constant attendee, meeting many important literary figures of her day,
but also through Elagina’s sons, Ivan and Petr Kireevsky, she gained en-
trée into the even more socially prominent salon of Zinaida Volkonskaia.
Again the brilliance and success of Volkonskaia’s salon can be attributed
to her connections—specifically, her affair with Alexander I.^17 At Vol-
konskaia’s salon Pavlova met Pushkin and Adam Mickiewicz, the ex-
iled Polish national poet. It can only have increased Pavlova’s social cap-
ital when Mickiewicz, with whom she was studying Polish, proposed
Karolina Pavlova 141