igrannyi v Uiutnom 8 iul’ 1835 v den’ rozhdeniia M. M. Bakunina” [Pro-
logue performed at Uiutnyi on July 8 , 1835 on M. M. Bakunin’s (her fa-
ther’s) birthday], see appendix).^41 Although Teplova identifies herself
with nature in the two poems mentioned in this discussion, in “K char-
odeiu” (To the magician, 1832 ) she characterizes nature as Other and
male. Pavlova for the most part appears to have ignored or suppressed
the dilemma, or perhaps she was indifferent to it. Nature does not fig-
ure prominently in most of her poetry. While she uses such metaphors
as crossing deserts or climbing mountains to describe life’s difficulties,
the mountains and deserts are abstract, almost cardboard (“Strannik”
[The wanderer, 1843 ], “Zovet nas zhizn’“ [Life calls us, 1846 ], “Kogda
odin” [When alone, 1854 ], “Ne pora!” [It is not time! 1858 ]). In Dvoinaia
zhizn’she implies that for those of her class, nature, like the life of peas-
ants, is completely unknowable (Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, 260 , 262 ).
The most startling depiction of nature in these women’s poetry, how-ever, is not as feminine, masculine, or irrelevant, but as alien and indif-
ferent to humanity. In Pavlova’s “Nebo bleshchet biriuzoiu” (The heav-
ens sparkle turquoise, 1840 ), flowers bloom indifferently on graves. In
Mordovtseva’s “Vzglianula na sad ia, v sadu opustelom” (I cast a glance
at the garden, in the deserted garden, 1877 ), the sun and the sky cheer-
fully but indifferently regard the earth. In Zhadovskaia’s “Rusalka” (The
rusalka), an equally indifferent rusalkasteals a young woman’s flower
wreath. Woman and rusalkaseem to inhabit reflecting worlds that do not
touch; the young woman’s eyes, glittering with tears and sadness, are re-
flected by the rusalka’s eerily glittering eyes and spiteful laughter at the
end of the poem. Zhadovskaia’s “Sovet” (Advice, 1846 ) suggests that
there is no communication at all between people and nature, that the
only meaning we find in it is what we project onto it.
Such representations of nature, anticipating twentieth-century exis-tentialism, do not appear in the work of the men poets we have been con-
sidering. Even Tiutchev—who depicts nature as mysterious and having
a separate life from humanity—implies that a relationship is possible or
necessary, that the basic harmony between humanity and nature may be
apprehended, if only fleetingly, that humanity is part of nature, al-
though that unity may only become clear at death (“Ne to, chto mnite
vy, priroda” [Nature is not what you think, 1831–36], “Priroda—sfinks”
[Nature is a sphinx, 1869 ], “I grob opushchen uzh v mogilu” [And the
coffin already lowered into the grave, 1831–36], “Ot zhizni toi, chto bu-
shevala zdes’—” [From this life, which raged here, 1871 ]). Interestingly,
however, we do find a similar representation of nature in a poem by a
Literary Conventions 53