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

approached poetry differently from the men, they also responded to

and polemicized with men’s poetry. A comparative approach, then, will

have the additional advantage of illuminating specific poems through-

out this study. For example, Iuliia Zhadovskaia’s poem “P[erevleskomu]

(Naprasno ty sulish’, tak zharko slavu mne)” (To Perevlesky [In vain do

you so warmly promise me glory], 1847 ) appears at first glance to be a

typical example of what Anne Mellor calls the “modesty topos” (Ro-

manticism and Gender, 8 ), in which women denigrated their own work,

hoping to forestall attacks by men critics.^27 Readers, Zhadovskaia

writes, do not respond to her bednyi, grustnyi stikh(poor, sad verse) and,

she concludes,

     

u 

u ,

u, 

,  

.

h

(I will flash in the world like a falling star

Which, believe me, not many will notice).^28

Zhadovskaia’s poem, however, seems a great deal less self-effacing if

read against Baratynsky’s well-known classical ode “Osen’” (Autumn,

1837 ), in which the following lines appear:

u

 [.. .]

[.......]



    

 

;

u

 

   u

:

 u   u ,

 



 u 

!

      



 .

h

(Let [.. .]

[.....]

A star of the heavens fall into bottomless darkness;

Let another begin to blaze in its place:

The loss of the first will not be apparent to the earth,

Its falling cry

Will not strike the ear of the distant world.)

Baratynsky’s image of the falling star refers to Pushkin, an allusion that

readers would have understood, as the poem appeared in Sovremennik,

the journal he had edited, just a few months after his death.^29 I suggest

that Zhadovskaia knew Baratynsky’s poem and consciously or uncon-

sciously appropriated Baratynsky’s reference to Pushkin for herself, an

10 Introduction