37 .Michael Wachtel argues that this poem should be understood as a “re-
joinder to Pushkin’s [ballad] ‘Black Shawl’” (“Chernaia shal’,” 1820 ) (Development
of Russian Verse, 33 , 31–34).
38 .Other such examples of sexualized nature appear in “Noch’ svetla, mo-
roz siiaet” (The night is bright, the frost is radiant, 1847 ); “V lunnom siianii” (In
the lunar radiance, 1885 ); “Shepot, robkoe dykhan’e” (A whisper, timid breath-
ing, 1850 ); and “Kakoe schastie: i noch’ i my odni!” (What happiness: It’s night
and we’re alone! 1854 ).
As for nature as female Other in Tiutchev’s work, see also Pratt,Russian Meta-
physical Romanticism.Although Pratt does not discuss gender as a category, she
does mention Tiutchev’s gendering of nature as female ( 48 ), the Romantic par-
adigm of “metaphysical ‘marriage’ of man and nature” (41–42), and the image
of nature as mother ( 48 ). Pratt also cites Tiutchev’s “Ot zhizni toi, chto bushe-
vala zdes’” ( 1871 ), a poem that ends with the lines, “She [Nature] greets all her
children... equally, each in turn, with her omnivorous and pacifying abyss” ( 43 ,
translation Pratt’s). One need not be a Freudian or a Jungian to see here the im-
age of the devouring mother.
Noncanonical men poets also gendered nature as female or as a backdrop for
sexual encounters. For example, in Maikov’s “Vesna” ( 1880 ) winter, portrayed
as an old, ugly hag, must make way for spring, characterized as a young and at-
tractive woman. In “Pod dozhdem” ( 1886 ), the speaker celebrates the storm that
created the mood and the occasion for intimacy that resulted in a love affair.
39 .For the nightingale as poet, see Pushkin “Solovei i roza” (The nightingale
and the rose, 1827 ) and Kol’tsov, “Solovei” (The nightingale, 1831 ).
Regarding personifications of nature as male, in Lermontov’s “Pan” ( 1829 ),
Pan, the spirit of the woods, appears to the speaker with a wineglass in one hand
and his pipe in the other to teach him how to write poetry. A. P. Maikov in “Pan”
( 1869 ) depicts Pan asleep in the woods at noon surrounded by sleeping animals.
Other examples of nature personified as male include Fedotov’s “Ten’ i solntse”
(Shadow and sun) and “Pchela i tsvetok” (The bee and the flower, 1849 ), in which
the flower (tsvetok,gendered male in Russian) represents an impoverished man
artist.
Regarding the moon as luna(female gender) in noncanonical men poets (in
addition to those by canonical men poets cited in the preceding paragraph), see
Mil’keev “Luna” ( 1843 ) and “K lune” ( 1843 ). Fedotov uses krasavitsa lunato
ridicule the conventions of Romantic poetry, an indication of how widespread
was such a female personification (“K moim chitateliam, stikhov moikh strogim
razbirateliam” [To my readers, strict examiners of my verse, 1850 ]).
For Mesiatsversus luna,see Guber, “Mesiats” ( 1859 ). See also Miller’s use of
both mesiatsand lunain his “Rusalka: Ballada.” In the first stanza he uses mesi-
atsfor the moon when it is simply part of the landscape. In the eleventh stanza
he uses lunawhen the moon uncannily disappears behind a cloud “as if on pur-
pose,” allowing a rusalka(female nature at its most dangerous) to catch and kill
a Cossack.
40 .The notebook of Gotovtseva’s mostly unpublished poems is located in f.
46 , op. 2 , d. 426 RGALI. Rostopchina’s poem appears in Dnevnik devushki, 10 : iv
(219–20). The three examples from Khvoshchinskaia may be found in Literatur-
Notes to Pages 50–52 241