vided the details of her sex life. Chernyshevsky claims that Rostopchina
wrote poetry in order to seduce men.^36 Another, citing a passage from
Neizvestnyi roman(An unknown romance, 1857 ), writes, “Here is how the
secret meetings went between Andrei Karamzin and his beloved [i.e.,
Rostopchina] according to Neizvestnyi roman” (Kiselev-Sergenin, “Taina
grafini E. P. Rostopchinoi,” 277 ). Other critics sexualize Rostopchina’s
work by suggesting that she became a poet only because of her sexually
unfulfilling marriage:
By nature she was created chiefly for happy connubial love and
a peaceful family life, but fate refused her just this happiness.
(Sergei Sushkov, “Biograficheskii ocherk” [ 1890 ], 1 : xlv)The subject of much of Dodo’s later poetry and prose is the life
of a neglected and misunderstood wife. (Louis Pedrotti, “Scan-
dal of Countess Rostopcˇina’s Polish-Russian Allegory” [ 1985 ],
197 )The marriage turned out to be unsuccessful. Evdokiia’s unreal-
ized expectations and dreams and undissipated feelings found
release in poetry. (V. V. Uchenova, Tsaritsy muz[ 1989 ], 418 )No one has ever suggested that Pushkin (or any other man poet) only
became a writer because of his inability to find a woman who could sex-
ually satisfy him.
Tr i vialization
Critics have trivialized Rostopchina’s poetry by denying it the status of
art. As women poets have frequently been considered incapable of cre-
ating personae (see chapter 2 ), so Rostopchina’s critics often describe
her poetry as a “diary,” assuming that every time she uses the first per-
son or even the third person in a work she refers directly to herself. Thus
the introductory essay to a 1986 collection of Rostopchina’s work is titled
“Evdokiia Rostopchina’s Lyric Diary.”^37 Critics do not similarly deny the
status of artist to men poets and writers who use autobiography in their
works or who dramatize their lives in poetry (Pushkin, Lermontov, Blok,
Thomas Wolfe, James Joyce).^38
Several critics triumphantly quote Rostopchina’s own words to provethat her writing should not be considered art. Four of them cite Ros-
topchina’s 1841 dedication to the empress: “This is not a book—it is a
completely sincere and feminine revelation of the impressions, memo-
ries, and enthusiasms of the heart of a young girl and a woman.”^39 One
100 Evdokiia Rostopchina