Goethe]); Khomiakov, “Elegiia na smert’ V. K(ireevskogo)” ( 1827 ), “K V. K[ireev-
skomu]” ( 1827 ); Guber, “Na smert’ Pushkina” ( 1837 ); Miller, “Na konchinu
F. N. Glinki” ( 1881 ); Maikov, “Na smert’ Lermontova,” “Na smert’ M. I. Glinki”
( 1857 ); Kol’tsov, “Les (Posviashcheno pamiati A. S. Pushkina)” (The forest [ded-
icated to the memory of A. S. Pushkin], 1837 ).
On Teplova’s relationship with Lisitsyna, see Vatsuro, “Zhizn’ i poeziia
Nadezhdy Teplovoi,” 18–19. Rostopchina appears also to have written a funer-
ary elegy for Pushkin, “ 29 ianvaria 1837 ,” that has never been found (see chap-
ter 4 , note 31 ). Stephanie Sandler considers Rostopchina’s “Chernovaia kniga
Pushkina” ( 1838 ) to be a funerary elegy (“The Law, the Body, and the Book: Three
Poems on the Death of Pushkin,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 23 , no. 3 (fall
1989 ): 298–311).
48 .New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 324. On genre anxiety, see
S. Friedman, “Gender and Genre Anxiety.”
49 .An unusual poem by a man poet mourning the death of a young girl is
Del’vig’s “Na smert’... (Sel’skaia elegiia)” (On the death of... [A village elegy],
1821–22), but unlike any elegy written by the women poets, Del’vig attributes
the girl’s death to unrequited love for a man.
Among noncanonical poets, poems about the death of young women or chil-
dren appear more frequently. Mil’keev’s “Pokoinitsa” (The deceased woman,
1843 ) compares to a bride a dead young woman whose friends are gathering
flowers for her funeral. On “the wedding of the dead,” a Russian folk ritual, see
Kononenko, “Women as Performers of Oral Literature,” 25 , 32 n. 40. A. N.
Maikov wrote a cycle of three poems on the death of his daughter (“Docheri”
[To my daughter], 1866 ), and Khomiakov wrote “K detiam” (To my children,
1839 ) on the death of his two sons. See also Miller, “Na mogile Klavdii M.” (At
the grave of Klavdia M., 1881 ).
50 .Mirsky, History of Russian Literature, 74.
Lidiia Ginzburg traces the druzheskoe poslanie(friendly epistle) to Horace,
Boileau, and Voltaire, as it combines elegiac and anacreonic motifs, freedom-
loving dreams, Voltairian skepticism, satire, and epigram as well as the Hora-
tian tradition of laziness and wisdom (O lirike, 198 , 23 , 40 ).
On the gendering of the druzheskoe poslanie,see also Stephanie Sandler and
Judith Vowles, “Beginning to Be a Poet: Baratynsky and Pavlova,” in Russian
Subjects: Empire, Nation, and the Culture of the Golden Age, ed. Monika Greenleaf
and Stephen Moeller-Sally (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1998 ),
152–63. Aleksandra Fuks’s “Poslanie Lize” ( 1834 ), rather than asking for conso-
lation from a woman friend, offers it.
51 .Sacks, English Elegy, 8. On women displacing desires to the afterlife, see
Walker, Nightingale’s Burden, 35 , 45. See Carol Gilligan on men’s and women’s
different attitudes toward attachment and separation, In a Different Voice,7– 9.
Among canonical poets Lermontov wrote two prayers “Molitva” ( 1837 ) and
“Molitva” (“V minuty zhizni trudnuiu,”) (Prayer [In a difficult moment of life],
1839 ). Iazykov also wrote two such poems (“Molitva,” [Prayer, 1825 ], “Molitva,”
[ 1825 ]), and Baratynskii one, “Molitva” ( 1842 or 1843 ). Noncanonical men po-
ets wrote a great deal more than canonical ones on the consolations of religion.
See Kol’tsov, “Pered obrazom Spasitelia” (Before an image of the Saviour, 1830 );
Notes to Pages 77–79 249