tuals of nonaristocratic origins (raznochintsy). When a collection of
Pavlova’s poetry appeared in 1863 , radical critics ridiculed it as “frivo-
lous” and out of date, while inaccurately characterizing her as uninter-
ested in current social issues.^24
Ten years after Pavlova’s death the Russian Symbolists rediscoveredher work. Valerii Briusov in a 1903 biographical sketch of Pavlova noted
that while Baratynsky and many other well-known nineteenth-century
writers had praised her work enthusiastically, no serious critical study
of her poetry existed. In 1915 Briusov with his wife, I. M Briusova, pub-
lished a two-volume edition of Pavlova’s collected works, the first since
1863 , which in turn produced a flurry of Pavlova scholarship.^25
In the Symbolists’ rediscovery of Pavlova, too, several factors of lit-erary social capital played a part. Because of the Symbolists’ interest
in European literature (Ibsen, Nietzsche, Maetterlinck, Hauptmann,
D’Annuzio, the French Symbolists), Pavlova’s cosmopolitan European
background worked in her favor.^26 The Symbolists’ interest in the
Pushkin pleiad made Pavlova, who had close connections with Baratyn-
sky and Mickiewicz, a figure of importance to them, as did the fact that
several well-known literary men contemporaries had published mem-
oirs of her Moscow salon.^27 Perhaps because civic critics attacked the
Symbolists for engaging in art for art’s sake, the Symbolists championed
Pavlova, who had suffered similar attacks at the hands of Mikhail
Saltykov-Shchedrin and other radical critics. The Symbolists completely
ignored, however, the poetry of Khvoshchinskaia and Mordovtseva,
who lived in the provinces where they had no connections with the
Pushkin pleiad or skirmishes with civic critics. This is not to suggest
that Pavlova, who is a major poet, did not deserve to be rediscovered,
but her case does illustrate the influence of social factors on literary
reputation.
Unfortunately, the Symbolists in their recovery of Pavlova continuedthe same gender stereotyping and condescension that we find in earlier
nineteenth-century criticism. Briusov, for example, after the first para-
graph of his article, refers to Pavlova throughout by her first name,
something one cannot imagine his doing to a man poet. Sergei Ernst de-
picts Pavlova as having fled into an artificial poetic life because of her
unrequited love for Mickiewicz. He also characterizes her as having
written a great deal of mediocre verse, all of it monotonously melancholy
and depressing. Even Rapgof in his generally excellent biography of
Pavlova expounds on her suffering after the break with her husband
144 Karolina Pavlova