well as her husband’s, Nikolai Pavlov’s, journalistic connections. Atten-
dees at the salon included such literary figures as the Aksakovs,
Baratynsky, Belinsky, Berg, Fet, Gogol, Granovsky, Grigoriev, Herzen,
Iazykov, Khomiakov, Kol’tsov, Lermontov, Nikitenko, the Panaevs,
Pogodin, Shevyrev, and Viazemsky. The benefit of the salon to Pavlova’s
career becomes clear when we realize how many of her guests edited or
published the periodicals in which her work appeared: Panaev and
Nikitenko (Sovremennik), Grigorev, Ivan Kireevsky, Pogodin, Shevyrev
(Moskvitianin), Ivan Aksakov (Den’), Herzen (Russkaia potaennaia liter-
atura XIX stoletii). Pavlova’s guests also appear to have helped place her
poetry, along with their own, in several al’manakhiand collections:
Odesskii al’manakh na 1840 god, Literaturnyi vecher( 1844 ), Moskovskii
uchenyi i literaturnyi sbornik na 1847 ,Kievlianin( 1850 ), Raut ( 1851 , 1854 ),
and Nezabudochka ( 1853 ).^21
In contrast to Khvoshchinskaia, who lacked all these sources of liter-ary social capital, Pavlova was well known, influential, and widely pub-
lished. Yet Pavlova, like Khvoshchinskaia, incurred criticism and
ridicule from her contemporaries because she, too, violated gender
norms by taking herself seriously as a poet. One memoirist wrote dis-
approvingly of her, “She imagined herself a genius in a skirt.”^22 Here ge-
nius not only is gendered as male, as discussed in the introduction, but
it also dresses in men’s clothes. A woman genius thus constitutes an oxy-
moron, and Pavlova can be dismissed as both unnatural and presump-
tuous. In addition, as Barbara Heldt has shown, Pavlova’s male con-
temporary poets never fully accepted her, considering her gender more
significant than any poetic talent she possessed. In 1852 , instead of sup-
porting Pavlova’s protests against her husband’s behavior—Pavlov was
squandering her estate in ruinous card games and had established a sec-
ond household with a relative of Pavlova’s, Evgeniia Tanneberg, by
whom he eventually had three children—these poets closed ranks
against her for daring to question male prerogatives. When, as a result
of Pavlova’s father’s complaint to the governor of Moscow about Pavlov’s
financial dealings, Pavlov’s papers were searched and he was arrested
for having in his library books forbidden by the censorship. Pavlova’s fel-
low poets attacked Pavlova and hailed Pavlov as a martyr. Driven from
Moscow, Pavlova eventually settled near Dresden, where she died in
poverty and obscurity in 1893.^23
After Pavlova left Russia in the 1850 s her social capital and literaryreputation virtually disappeared as literary power shifted from the sa-
lons run by aristocrats to the “thick journals” edited by radical intellec-
Karolina Pavlova 143