46 .Rastianutyi:Ranchin, editor’s introduction, 9 ; Bannikov, Russkie poetessy
XIX veka, 44. Zatianuty:Romanov, editor’s introduction, 24. Her brother Sergei
Sushkov ( 1 : xxvi) deplores the “slishkom obil’nom kolichestve eia pozd-
nieishikh proizvedenii” (the too abundant quantity of her late works). Ernst, in
“Karolina Pavlova i gr. Evdokiia Rastopchina,” uses the word slishkom(too
much) at least five times in relation to Rostopchina.
47 .Rostopchina’s popularity because of women: Khodasevich, “Grafinia
E. P. Rostopchina,” 46 : “Readers, especially women, were carried away with ad-
miration”; Bykov, “Russkie zhenshchiny-pisatel’nitsy,” 240 : “She had particu-
larly warm admirers among women”; Druzhinin, “Stikhotvoreniia grafini Ros-
topchinoi,” 7 : 157 : “Countess Rostopchina has the most passionate worshippers
among women”; S. Sushkov, “Biograficheskii ocherk,” 1 : ix: “All Russian intel-
ligent society was carried away by admiration [for her verses], in particular, the
representatives of its beautiful half”; Romanov, editor’s introduction, 16 : “Her
verse was widely read and copied (especially by ladies).” An example of the
charge that her work lacked universality can be found in Ernst, “Karolina
Pavlova i gr. Evdokiia Rastopchina,” 34.
48 .Kline, “Baratynsky,” in Handbook of Russian Literature,ed. Victor Terras,
39 , 40.
49 .Kermode, Forms of Attention, 72 , 74 , 76 , 90. This is not to ignore the fact
that the reputations of canonical writers can suffer periods of eclipse, as did
Pushkin’s at the end of his life and immediately following his death.
50 .For example, Rostopchina’s daughter suggests that Belinskii, Russia’s
most influential critic, only started attacking Rostopchina’s work because she
would not receive him in her salon (L. A. Rostopchina, “Pravda o moei
babushke,” 95 : 868.
Also very influential was the condescending introduction of Rostopchina’s
brother Sergei Sushkov to the 1890 edition of her works, which he edited.
Sushkov was a political conservative, an officer in the Caucuses, and later in
Paris editor of the Russian Orthodox L’Union chrétienne(“Biograficheskii
ocherk,” ix, xliv). During Rostopchina’s lifetime he tried to prevent her from
publishing her “Doch’ Don Zhuana” (Don Juan’s daughter) because he consid-
ered it indecent. See A. F. Koni, “Iz portfeli starogo zhurnalista,” Russkii ark-
hiv 3 , no. 257 ( 1909 ). In his introduction Sushkov criticized Rostopchina’s writ-
ing style, attributed her literary success to her looks and to the fact that she was
a woman, and claimed she wrote “Nasil’nyi brak” “under the influence of false
and stupid gossip she heard abroad” (x, xvi). In general, it is worth comparing
this edition of Rostopchina’s work with the 1856–57edition that Rostopchina
herself oversaw. There are significant differences.
On the inhospitableness of Soviet ideology and socialist realist criticism to
women’s experience, see the introduction. Also Norma Noonan, “Marxism and
Feminism in the USSR: Irreconcilable Differences?” Women and Politics 8 , no. 1
( 1988 ): 31–49; Helena Goscilo, “Paradigm Lost? Contemporary Women’s Fic-
tion,” 205–28.
51 .See chapter 1 for the development in the first third of the nineteenth cen-
tury of the image of the poetess along with domestic ideology.
52 .Among the several studies and anthologies of American and British po-
260 Notes to Pages 103–105