Peterburga v Moskvu (Journey from Saint Petersburg to Moscow, 1790 )
and in Pushkin’s Kapitanskaia dochka(The captain’s daughter, 1836 ) and
Boris Godunov( 1825 ). We can see the influence of the prichitanie on the
elegies of the Russian men poets we have been discussing—for example,
in Fet’s “Na smert’ Brazhnikova” (On the death of Brazhnikov, 1845 )—
but more markedly on those of Russian women.
Perhaps because, to paraphrase Susan Friedman, the prichitaniegranted Russian women cultural authority to express grief, these
women poets appear to have felt free to write elegiac poems even if they
avoided the classical title “Elegiia” (“Gender and Genre Anxiety,” 205 ).
Interestingly, two of the poems titled “Elegiia,” those of Lisitsyna ( 1829 )
and Shakhova ( 1849 ), are written in the three-stress line of the lament.
The influence of the lament can also be seen in Teplova’s poem “Na
smert’ docheri,” in which the speaker asks her dead daughter to tell
what angered her enough to leave.
The prichitanie may have influenced women’s elegiac verse on adeeper level as well. All elegies offer the poet (and the reader) consola-
tion by translating grief into art. But while the elegies that Sacks dis-
cusses, and that many of the men poets write, describe the direct con-
solations of inheritance and symbolic power, many of those written by
these women resemble the prichitaniein simply expressing grief. For
example, in Garelina’s “Gde ty, schast’e, skhoronilos’“ (Where have you
hidden yourself, Happiness, 1870 ), the speaker acknowledges that joy,
hope, and love no longer exist in her life. The speaker in Mordovtseva’s
“Vzglianula na sad ia” (I cast a glance at the garden, 1870 ) compares her
heart, which is bereft of hope and dreams, to a desolate garden in win-
ter. Nor does she find any comfort in the heavens. Unconsolable sorrow
also appears in Khvoshchinskaia’s “Net, ia ne nazovu obmanom”
(No, I will not call a deception, 1851 ) and “Shumit osennii dozhd’, noch’
temnaia niskhodit’“ (The autumn rain pounds, dark night falls, 1854 );
Pavlova’s “Da, mnogo bylo nas” (Yes, we were many, 1839 ) and “Byla ty
s nami nerazluchnoi” (We were inseparable, 1842 ); Zhadovskaia’s “Te-
per’ ne to” (Now it’s not the same, 1858 ), “Ia plachu” (I weep, 1858 ), and
“Uvy i ia kak Prometei” (Alas, I, too, like Prometheus, 1858 ); and in Ros-
topchina’s “Ne skuchno, a grustno” (It is not tedious, but sad, 1862 ) and
“Osennie listy” (Autumn leaves, 1834 ). I do not wish to suggest that only
women wrote such lamentlike elegies. We also find them among their
male contemporaries: Pushkin’s “Elegiia” “Bezumnykh let ugasshee
vesel’e” (The extinguished gaiety of mad years” 1830 ); Lermontov’s
“Elegiia” “O! Esli b dni moi tekli” (Oh, if my days flowed, 1829 );
80 Gender and Genre