Novikova, A. D. Baratynskaia, and the unidentified N. P. B-a ( 132 , 103 ,
134 , 540–41, 208 , 505 , 203 , 186 ). In addition, Pavlova dedicated Dvoinaia
zhizn’to young women who, like her heroine, experience the constraints
of women’s role in society:
u u
.
[.............]
! , "
,
,
u
!h
(Slaves of noise and vanity.
[.............]
All of you Psyches deprived of wings,
The mute sisters of my soul!)
( 231 )She also wrote about the friends of her youth, Joan of Arc, and the poets
Lucretia Davidson and Delphine Gay (500–503, 80 , 124–27). However, far
more of Pavlova’s poetry is addressed to men—Adam Mickiewicz ( 90 ,
93 , 118 , 136 ), Evgenii Mil’keev ( 75 , 185 ), Evgenii Baratynsky ( 112 ), N. M.
Iazykov ( 119 , 133 ), I. S. Aksakov ( 131 , 136 ), Nikolai Pavlov ( 149 ), the
unidentified S. K. N. ( 137 ), Boris Utin ( 153 , 154 , 155 , 157 , 169 ), A.K. Tol-
stoi ( 221 , 223 )—or treats male historical figures. This is not surprising,
as the dominant voices in the literary establishment of Pavlova’s day as
well as its gatekeepers were male.
Gender and Genre
Like other women poets of her generation, Pavlova confronted genres
not designed to tell women’s stories. And like many of her women con-
temporaries, she ingeniously adapted and transmuted these forms.
Even her early ballads and narrative poems, influenced by German and
Russian Romanticism, modify gender stereotypes to make women sub-
jects, not objects. In “Doch’ zhida” (The Jew’s daughter, 82–83) Pavlova
reworks the romantic motif made famous by Byron’s Eastern Talesand
Pushkin’s Bakhchisaraiskii fontan( 1822 ), the “pure” woman forced into a
harem. Pavlova’s Jewish captive, however, unlike her predecessors, does
not passively allow herself to be raped or murdered. Rather, she plans
to kill the emir with a concealed knife, calling on the memory of her
mother to give her courage. Perhaps Pavlova was thinking of such Old
Testament heroines as Judith and Jael.^33 In “Starukha” (The old woman,
85–88) an old and ugly woman casts a spell on a young and beautiful
148 Karolina Pavlova