Reinventing Romantic Poetry : Russian Women Poets of the Mid-nineteenth Century

Romantic poets androcentric or even misogynist myths. For example,

in Pushkin we find men engaged in oedipal struggles over the women

who “belong” to powerful statues or generals (“Kamennyi gost’” [The

stone guest], Evgenii Onegin[Eugene Onegin]). In Byron we find sexu-

ally available harem girls (“The Giaour,” “The Corsair”).

I suggest that mid-nineteenth-century Russian women poets had to

find different ways to relate to the imagination, to nature and to myth

and symbol. They had to transform male-defined traditions, genres, and

themes in order to be able to address women’s experiences or even to rep-

resent themselves as poets. That is, they had to reinvent Romantic po-

etry. Ironically, men critics, rather than recognizing these women’s

tremendous inventiveness in reworking literary forms, dismissed them

as not “real” (that is, men) poets.^5

This study, then, examines the poetic practices and achievements of

mid-nineteenth-century women poets in relation to the gender-based

issues they shared and their various responses to them.^6 I base my

generalizations on the poetic practices of fourteen significant but gen-

erally unknown Russian women poets born between 1799 and 1824 :

Praskov’ia Bakunina (1810–80), Aleksandra Fuks (1805–53), Liubov’

Garelina (1824–85), Anna Gotovtseva (1799–1871), Nadezhda Khvo-

shchinskaia (1824–89), Elisaveta Kul’man (1808–25), Mariia Lisitsyna

(d. 1842 ), Anna Mordovtseva (1823–85), Karolina Pavlova (1807–93),

Evdokiia Rostopchina (1811–58), Elisaveta Shakhova (1822–99), Ekate-

rina Shakhovskaia (1814–36), Nadezhda Teplova (1814–48), and Iuliia

Zhadovskaia (1824–83).^7 I will focus on the work of three of these po-

ets—Rostopchina, Khvoshchinskaia, and Pavlova—in greater detail.

For comparison I refer to the poetic practices of seven prominent Rus-

sian men poets born between 1798 and 1820 : Evgenii Baratynsky (1800–

1844 ), Anton Del’vig (1798–1831), Afanasii Fet (1820–92), Nikolai

Iazykov (1803–46), Mikhail Lermontov (1814–41), Aleksandr Pushkin

(1799–1837), and Fedor Tiutchev (1803–73). However, since not every

man poet of this generation became canonical, we also must consider the

poetic practices of contemporary noncanonical men poets. I have cho-

sen Pavel Fedotov (1815–52), Eduard Guber (1814–47), Aleksei Khomi-

akov (1804–60), Aleksei Kol’tsov (1809–42), Apollon Maikov (1821–97),

Evgenii Mil’keev (1815–46?), and Fedor Miller (1818–81), poets whose

works have been anthologized but whom literary historians refer to as

vtorostepenii(second rank or minor).^8 A full discussion of the poetical

practices of canonical and noncanonical men poets, however, lies out-

side my scope. This study is not intended to be a general survey of Rus-

4 Introduction