and more understandable than the published versions. Beyond not gain-
ing recognition for her poetry, however, Khvoshchinskaia may have be-
come discouraged by seeing her poems published in mutilated form.
Perhaps, like Emily Dickinson, she eventually decided it was not worth
publishing them at all.^53
As to why Khvoshchinskaia’s poetry disappeared from literary his-tory, it seems likely that in addition to the factors already mentioned, her
subject matter in several cases made Zotov and other men editors un-
comfortable. These editors, in rewriting and repeatedly censoring such
poems, eventually destroyed them by making them unintelligible. More
generally, men publishers and anthologizers dismissed Khvoshchin-
skaia’s poetry, as they did most of the women’s poetry of her generation,
because they could neither make sense of its different perspective
nor identify with many of the experiences described. They assumed
Khvoshchinskaia’s poetry to be technically incompetent and her rhymes
faulty. I suggest that a closer look will reveal, rather, creative and dar-
ing experiments with prosody, as is also the case with Zhadovskaia’s
poetry, which was similarly criticized.
It is useful to compare Khvoshchinskaia’s poetic career with that ofEmily Dickinson. These two near-contemporaries—Dickinson was
born in 1830 , six years after Khvoshchinskaia—faced several common
problems but resolved them very differently because of different cir-
cumstances. Both women strongly felt their poetic vocation. Both sent
their work to conventional, limited men editors who did not understand
it and tried to improve it. Both had to make hard choices. Dickinson, de-
spite her ambition and awareness of her poetic gifts, renounced publi-
cation and fame, although not easily or happily, to live an entirely do-
mestic life.^54 In exchange she gained the freedom to continue writing
poetry. She was able to make this choice because she did not have to sup-
port herself and her family, and because she was temperamentally and
artistically suited to an isolated life; her poetry is inward and spiritual.
Khvoshchinskaia, given her temperament and the circumstances of her
life, had to choose otherwise. She was able and called upon to support
her family, cared about social and political issues, and very much
wanted to be in the world. She gladly left provincial Riazan’ for Saint
Petersburg, where she gained success as a prose writer and critic—but
at the cost of her poetry. We can only speculate how high that cost was
for Khvoshchinskaia personally and for Russian literature.
136 Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia