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

With a wreath of yellow hops

And her glowing cheeks

Like the rose’s bright crimson

And her mouth in which melts

Purple grapes—

Everything entices me to fury

Pours fire and poison into my heart

I run after her. She ran

More lightly than a young antelope

I overtook her. She fell!

And the timbrel under her head!

The priestesses flashed past us

with a loud wail.)

(Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie

sochinenii, 7 : 227–28)

Batiushkov’s poem reworks an original by Parny. One scholar has noted

that while Parny’s bacchante is an incarnation of Venus who chooses the

speaker, Batiushkov’s is a mortal woman whom the speaker pursues

and violates (Brown, History of Russian Literature of the Romantic Period,

1 : 251 ). In addition, Batiushkov’s speaker implies that not he, but the

woman’s provocative appearance is responsible for his actions.

Access to Latin would have enabled the women poets of this genera-

tion to challenge the misogynist classical themes and genres extolled as

art, to modify androcentric classical forms, and to look for gynocentric

traditions within the classics—as did Elisaveta Kul’man, who knew

both Latin and Greek. Kul’man, however, exerted little influence in Rus-

sia because of her early death and her orientation to German classicism

rather than to contemporary Russian literature.^32

The university, another male institution, played a central role in the

development of such poets as Iazykov, Lermontov, Tiutchev, Fet, Kho-

miakov, and Maikov. Several Moscow and Saint Petersburg University

professors used their editorial positions to help their men students pub-

lish their works. For example, Aleksandr Nikitenko (1803–87) and Petr

Pletnev, both professors of Russian literature at the University of Saint

Petersburg, also at various times worked as editors of Sovremennik (The

contemporary). Osip Senkovsky, professor of Near Eastern languages at

Saint Petersburg University, edited Biblioteka dlia chteniia(Library for

reading). Mikhail Pogodin, professor of history at Moscow University,

edited Moskovskii vestnik(Moscow messenger) and Moskvitianin (The

Muscovite). N. I. Nadezhdin, professor of arts and archeology at

Moscow University, edited Teleskop(Telescope). Semen Raich, who

taught at the Moscow University Gentry Pension, published Novye

Social Conditions 33