Pavlova,” 33 ); Avdot’ia Panaeva in her memoirs, Vospominaniia (Moskva: Khu-
dozhestvennaia literatura, 1972 ), 136 ; and Rostopchina in a poem that made fun
of Pavlova’s exchange of open letters with Panaev in “Peterburgskie novosti,” 135.
(On Pavlova’s letter to Panaev, see also chapter 1 , note 7 .)
e
u
,
[.............]
( - ,
-
E
)h
(And she read from a Finnish poema with her Sanskrit translation
This lady publishes verses in Chinese or in Japanese)
(Stikhotvoreniia, proza, pis’ma, 372 )Pavlova’s husband attempted to turn Pavlova’s German background against
her when he expressed what Briusov describes as “hypocritical” concern to his
friends about the “German” education Pavlova was giving their son (“K. K.
Pavlova,” 286 ).
14 .The historian Petr Bartenev (1829–1912) wrote in his obituary of Pavlova:
“Nature did not endow her with physical beauty, although it did generously pro-
vide her with abilities, in particular for languages” (“Karolina Pavlova,” 119 ). The
Symbolist poet and future editor of a two-volume edition of Pavlova’s works, Va-
lerii Briusov, wrote, “Karolina was not beautiful. But in these [early] years she
could have been attractive in her youth and freshness” (“K. K. Pavlova,” 275 ).
The writer and journalist Aleksandr Herzen (1812–70) wrote of Pavlova that he
“did not like her voice, and... her physical appearance was not quite to her
credit”; the writer Dmitrii Grigorevich described Pavlova as “a bony lady of tall
stature, with a face reminiscent of an energetic man rather than a woman”; the
censor and memoirist Aleksandr Nikitenko (1804–77) described her as “offen-
sive with her ‘jabbering and obtrusiveness’” (Herzen, Grigorovich, and
Nikitenko in Sendich, “Life and Works of Karolina Pavlova,” 45 , 51 , 52 , respec-
tively; I have modified Sendich’s translations).
15 .Writers in love with Pavlova: Sendich, “Life and Works of Karolina
Pavlova,” 23 , 30. Briusov writes, “I. Kireevskii’s rapture about Karolina’s verses
gave cause to suspect him of a tender feeling for the already not so young fe-
male writer.” Kireevskii’s “rapture” consisted of the comment that he found in
Pavlova’s German poetry qualities increasingly rare in Russian women’s poetry:
originality and strength of imagination. Kireevskii also expressed the wish that
Pavlova would try writing poetry in Russian as well as in French and German
(Ivan Kireev, “O russkikh pisatel’nitsakh (pis’mo k Anne Petrovne Zontaga)”
[Zontag was Elagina’s sister], originally appeared in the al’manakh Podarok Bed-
nym, 1834. Also in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii Ivana Vasil’evicha Kireevskogo
(Moskva: Tip. P. Bakhmetev, 1961 ; reprint Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1983 ), 123.
16 .Elagina, in a letter to her husband (Sept. 6 , 1826 ), mentions that Jaenisch
had visited her three times in a few days (Bernstein, “Avdot’ia Petrovna Elag-
ina,” 225 , 226 ). See also Sendich, “Life and Works of Karolina Pavlova,” 29.
Notes to Page 141 271