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

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both are by Aleksandra Zrazhevskaia: “Zhenshchina—poet i avtor (Otryvok iz
romana),” Moskvitianin,no. 9 ( 1842 ): 42–80, and “Devushka-Poet: Otryvok iz ro-
mana,” Moskvitianin,no. 2 ( 1844 ): 368–403. In both cases the heroine is doomed.
17 .In a short review of Teplova’s work the reviewer referred to it seven times
as milyi(sweet) (“Stikhotvoreniia Nadezhdy Teplovoi,” Severnaia pchela 175
[ 1834 ]: 697–98). In our day, too, prominent U.S. reviewers have praised as “mod-
est” Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Bogan, and even Adrienne Rich
and Sylvia Plath (Ostriker, Stealing the Language,3–4).
The 1851 journal article is Emil’ Montegiu’s “O zhenshchinakh poetakh v sev-
ernoi Amerike,” Biblioteka dlia chteniia 108 ( 1851 ): 124–33. This article appears to
be a translation from the French, an additional example of the importation into
Russia of Western attitudes toward women.
18 .See Belinskii, “No, never can a woman author either love or be a wife and
mother” (“Zhertva,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 1 : 226. Originally published in
Molva 10 ( 1835 ): 27–30).
19 .But see Osip Mandelshtam’s statement that Mayakovskii is in danger of
becoming a poetess (Boym, Death in Quotation Marks, 196 ) and Byron’s attacks
on Thomas Moore as feminized (Ross, Contours of Masculine Desire28–30).
20 .See Clements, “Introduction: Accommodation, Resistance, Transforma-
tion,” 1–13.
21 .For ultrafeminine depictions of women by Rostopchina, see “Sovet zhen-
shchinam” (Advice to women, 1838 ), “Kak dolzhny pisat’ zhenshchiny” (How
women should write, 1840 ), “Kak liubiat zhenshchiny” (How women love,
1841 ), and “Russkim zhenshchinam” (To Russian women, 1856 ). Rostopchina’s
poetic stance, however, is more complex and interesting than these poems
would suggest at first glance, as is discussed in chapter 4.
22 .Chernyshevskii,“Stikhotvoreniia grafini Rostopchinoi,” 1 : 249. I use here
and in chapter 4 Louis Pedrotti’s ingenious translation of “Ia bal liubliu! Otdaite
baly mne!” (I love a party! Give me parties!) See his “Scandal of Countess Ros-
topcˇina’s Polish-Russian Allegory,” 212 n. 1.
23 .Bakunina, “Rozhdenie nezabudki,” Maiak 15 ( 1841 ): 29–30; “Groza,” Ma-
iak 4 ( 1840 ): 33.
See also Praskov’ia Bakunina, “Otvet A.V. Zrazhevskoi na pis’mo
(Sokrashchenyi kurs knizhnoi zoologii) napechatannoe v pervom nomere Ma-
iaka 1842 g.,” Maiak 2 , no. 3 ( 1842 ): 14–17. On Zrazhevskaia, see Polovtsov et al.,
Russkii biograficheskii slovar’, 7 : 494–97, and Ledkovsky, Rosenthal, and Zirin,
Dictionary of Russian Women Writers,757–58.
24 .For attacks on Pavlova and Kul’man, see my “Nineteenth-Century
Women Poets: Critical Reception vs. Self-Definition,” in Women Writers in Rus-
sian Literature,ed. Toby Clyman and Diana Greene (Westport, Conn.: Green-
wood, 1994 ), 104–6, 97–99. For a survey of Kul’man’s classics-inspired work, see
Judith Vowles, “The Inexperienced Muse: Russian Women and Poetry in the
First Half of the Nineteenth Century,” in A History of Women’s Writing in Russia,
ed. Adele Marie Barker and Jehanne M. Gheith (New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2002 ), 69 – 71. On Gotovtseva’s epistle to Pushkin (which appeared in
Severnye tsvety[ 1829 ] with poems to her by Viazemskii and Pushkin), see
“Primechaniia” in Pushkin,ed. S. A. Vengerov (Sankt-Peterburg: Brokgauz-


230 Notes to Pages 27–29

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