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

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n. 426 , poem no. 1 , RGALI]) is a similar male-voiced meditation on the impor-
tance of the eternal. Pavlova wrote three cross-gendered poems: “Strannik” (The
wanderer, 1843 ), “Vezde i vsegda” (Everywhere and always, 1846 ), and “Sput-
nitsa feia” (The fairy traveling companion, 1858 ). See chapter 6 for discussion of
her use of gender marking in her poetry. Other cross-gendered poems include
Lisitsyna’s “Pesn’ syna nad mogiloi materi” (A son’s song at his mother’s grave,
1829 ), “K nevernoi” (To an unfaithful woman, 1829 ), “Kozak k tovarishcham”
(A Cossack to his comrades, 1829 ), and “Byl’” (A true story, 1829 ); and Fuks’s
“Pavel i Virginiia” (Paul et Virginie, 1834 ) and “Schastlivye druz’ia! primite moi
sovet” (Lucky friends! Take my advice, 1834 ). Kul’man in Pamiatnik Berenike
(Monument to Berenike, 1839 ) wrote poems in the personae of ten classical men
poets, but with no attempt to hide her gender.
Regarding cross-gendered poems by men poets, see, for example, Pushkin,
an early draft of “Dioneia,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 1 : 200 ; 2 : 684. It has been
suggested that Tatiana’s letter to Onegin could be considered a cross-gendered
poem. However, it is presented through the additional persona of a narrator—
albeit one whom Vladimir Nabokov has described as “a stylized Pushkin”
(translator’s introduction to Eugene Onegin, 1 : 6 ). On Pushkin’s cross-gendered
experiments in prose, “Roslavlev” (the beginning of a novel) and “Otryvok iz
neizdannykh zapisok damy ( 1811 god)” (Excerpt from unpublished memoirs of
a lady, 1811 ), which appeared in his Sovremennikin 1836 , see V. Brio, “Pushkin o
vozmozhnosti zhenskoi literatury,” 187–200.
Cross-gendered poems by other men poets include Del’vig’s “Russkaia pes-
nia (I ia vyidu l’ na krylechko)” (Russian song [And I will go out on the porch],
1828 ) and “Russkaia pesnia (Kak za rechen’koi slobodushka stoit)” (Russian
song [As the suburb stands beyond the rivulet], 1828 ); Fet’s “Zerkalo v zerkalo,
s trepetnym lepetom” (Mirror into the mirror with trembling babble, 1842 ), “Ia
liubliu ego zharko: On tigrom v boiu” (I love him passionately: He is like a tiger
in battle, 1847 ), “Ne divis’, chto ia cherna” (Don’t be surprised that I am black,
1847 ), “Sestra” (Sister, 1857 ), and “Vsiu noch’ gremel ovrag sosednii” (All night
the neighboring ravine roared, 1872 ); Tiutchev’s “Ne govori menia on, kak i
prezhde, liubit” (Don’t tell me that he loves me as he formerly did, 1851–52);
Kol’tsov’s “Pesn’ rusalki” (Song of the rusalka, 1829 ), “Kol’tso” (The ring, 1830 ),
“Russkaia pesnia (Ia liubila ego.. .)” (Russian song [I loved him], 1841 ), and
“Pesnia (Chto on khodit za mnoi.. .)” (Song [Why does he follow me], 1842 );
Miller’s “Russkaia pesn’” (Russian song, 1872 ) and “Ionna d’Ark Shilleru” (Joan
of Arc to Schiller, 1849 ); and Maikov’s “Ia b tebia potselovala” (I would kiss you,
1860 ). On Tiutchev’s poem, see Sarah Pratt, “Obverse of Self,” 228–234. In con-
trast to women’s cross-gendered poems, in which the speaker is generally the
author’s social equal, in men’s cross-gendered poems the speaker is generally a
peasant or an “Eastern” woman. On Russian Orientalism, see Greenleaf, Pushkin
and Romantic Fashion,especially chapter 3 , “The Foreign Fountain: Self as Other
in the Oriental Poem.”
Men’s translations of female-voiced poems may also be considered a kind
of cross-gendered poem. For example, in Miller’s “Plach Iaroslavnyi (iz Slovo
opolku Igoreve)” (Iaroslavna’s lament [from The Lay of Igor’s Host], 1848 )
Iaroslavna, Prince Igor’s wife, laments on the city walls that her husband has been


238 Notes to Page 46

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