In characterizing Pavel Fedotov, Eduard Guber, Aleksei Khomiakov,Aleksei Kol’tsov, Apollon Maikov, Evgenii Mil’keev, and Fedor Miller as
noncanonical I have taken several indicators into account.^1 Like their
women contemporaries, these poets generally are not found in course
surveys of nineteenth-century Russian literature or as subjects of re-
search. They appear only very briefly, when at all, in such Russian liter-
ature reference works as Victor Terras’s Handbook of Russian Literature.
Two major canon builders of Russian literature, Belinsky and Mirsky,
generally ignored or dismissed them.^2 In addition, two of them are not
identified primarily as poets: Fedotov is known as an artist, and Kho-
miakov as an architect of Slavophilism. All of these noncanonical poets,
however, have some poetic status. Four of them appear in an anthology
that is part of the prestigious Biblioteka poeta series, Poety 1840–1850-
kh godov,while Khomiakov, Kol’tsov, and Maikov are the subjects of their
own Biblioteka poeta editions.
Social Conditions for Canonical Poets
One conclusion we can draw from this admittedly miniscule sample of
three groups of poets—canonical men, noncanonical men, and non-
canonical women—is that some correlation exists between canonicity
and literary social capital. As mentioned earlier, literary social capital
for the poets we have been discussing included such factors as social po-
sition, education, location in Moscow or Saint Petersburg, mentors, and
personal connections with literary gatekeepers and opinion-makers.
The canonical poets of this generation whom we have considered
(Pushkin, Del’vig, Baratynsky, Iazykov, Lermontov, Tiutchev, Fet) all
came from privileged, aristocratic backgrounds and received excellent
educations.^3 In addition to being tutored at home, Pushkin and Del’vig
graduated from the prestigious Tsarskoe Selo Lyceum; Lermontov,
Tiutchev, and Fet attended Moscow University; Baratynsky attended
the Corps of Pages, an aristocratic military school, and Iazykov spent
many years at the university at Dorpat (Tartu). They all lived in the cen-
ter (Saint Petersburg and/or Moscow), as opposed to the periphery (the
provinces), for significant periods of time, and as noted in chapter 1 ,
they all benefited from close connections with the literary establish-
ment. They also enjoyed male privilege, which included access to a clas-
sical/university education, study groups and literary circles, mentors
as opposed to literary guardians, and the possibility of editing a journal
or al’manakh. As we have seen, no women poets—not even aristocrats
168 In Conclusion: Noncanonical Men Poets