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

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(Don’t touch the Parnassian pen

Don’t touch it, my comely, sprightly ones!

There is little good in it for beauties

And Cupid has given them other toys

Will you really consign love to oblivion

For pitiful rhymes? They will laugh at rhymes

The currents of Lethe [the river of forgetfulness] will carry them away

And ink will remain on your little fingers.)^12

Such disparagement escalated during the 1830 s and 1840 s in the Rus-

sian periodic press. Now women writers were depicted not only as lu-

dicrously incompetent but also as destroyers of their families, murder-

ers of their children, women “asking” to be raped, unattractive bores, or

sexual objects, as can be seen from three literary works with nearly the

same title.^13

In “Zhenshchina pisatel’nitsa” (The woman writer or The authoress,

1837 ), a povest’ (tale) by Rakhmannyi (pseud. N. N. Verevkin), a woman

writer carelessly drops her child, causing it irreparable injury. During

the child’s long decline, only his father cares for him while the mother

pursues her writing career. When the child finally dies, the mother is too

busy at a performance of her play to go home to kiss him farewell. Her

play, of course, is a failure.

A second depiction of a woman playwright destroying her family

may be found in a play, similarly titled Zhenshchina-pisatel’nitsa( 1848 ),

apparently based on Rakhmannyi’s story. Ironically the author was a

woman, Mar’ia Korsini (1815–59). In Korsini’s work the protagonist,

Glafira Platonovna, not only fails as a playwright and almost demol-

ishes her family but also barely escapes being raped by a man writer be-

fore being saved by her husband. Korsini, however, provides a happy

ending: Glafira Platonovna renounces her foolish desire to be a writer

to return to her proper role as wife and mother.

A third work, a story, again called “Zhenshchina-pisatel’nitsa,” pres-

ents two women writers. The first, an unattractive bore, literally puts the

male narrator to sleep when she reads from her work. The second

woman writer, in contrast, embodies the narrator’s ideal. She is brilliant,

beautiful, dislikes other women, and although surrounded by admiring

Social Conditions 25