men’s elegies—for example, of the ability to love, or of graphically de-
scribed sexual pleasure—appear infrequently in the women’s, as does
the consolation that there will be other lovers.^45 Nor did these women,
like Pushkin and Del’vig, write parodies of elegies.^46 Such themes
would have violated women’s gender role at the time and probably were
unthinkable. In addition, while several of the canonical and noncanon-
ical men wrote funerary elegies on the death of poets and other famous
men—never women—only two women did so: Teplova on Pushkin
(“Na smert’ A. S. Pushkina” [On the death of A. S. Pushkin, 1837 ]) and
on Lisitsyna (“V pamiat’ M. A. L-oi” [In memory of M. A. L-oi, 1842 ]),
and Rostopchina on Lermontov (“Pustoi al’bom” [The empty album,
1841 ]).^47 The women poets may have suffered from genre anxiety in re-
gard to funerary elegies, a genre traditionally concerned with “initiation
and continuity, inheritance and vocation,” rewards difficult or impossible
for women of the era to attain.^48
Conversely, some losses mourned in women’s elegies rarely or neverappear in those of their men contemporaries, for example, the death of
a child or a young woman: in Bakunina’s “Siialo utro obnovleniem” (The
morning shone with a renewal, 1840 ); Mordovtseva’s entire book of po-
etry dedicated to her son, who died in the Turkish war (Otzvuki zhizni
[Echoes of life, 1877 ]), as well as her “Pri smerti bol’nomu rebenku” (To
a mortally ill child, 1877 ); Lisitsyna’s “Smert’ iunosti” (Death of youth,
1829 ); Teplova’s “Na smert’ devy” (On the death of a girl, 1831 ), “Na
smert’ docheri” (On the death of my daughter, 1846 ); and Gotovtseva’s
“Na smert’ A. N. Zh-oi” (On the death of A. N. Zh-oi, 1825 ).^49 In contrast
to funerary elegies, in which death allows the poet to sum up the mean-
ing of the subject’s life, these elegies mourn lost potential. Interestingly,
the theme of lost potential finds its way into Teplova’s funerary elegy
on Pushkin. And, conversely, Fet’s elegy to his young nephew (“Na
smert’ Miti Botkina” [On the death of Mitia Botkin, 1886 ]) focuses
on the meaning of his life. It would appear that Tania Modleski’s re-
mark about twentieth-century U.S. popular culture also applies to
nineteenth-century Russian poetry: for men death reveals the mean-
ing of life, whereas for women it represents the end of all meaning
and hope (Loving with a Vengeance,88–89).
A second group of elegiac themes that appear more often in the workof these women poets is depression, unbearable emotional suffering,
isolation, and constraint: for example, Garelina’s “Vse pogiblo, vse
poteriano” (Everything has perished, everything is lost, 1870 ), Mor-
dovtseva’s “Byvaiut strashny, tiazhely mgnoveniia” (There are terrible,
Gender and Genre 77