gender” (Burden of Sufferance, 26 ). Modleski comments on the similar isolation
and excessive solitude of twentieth-century American housewives (Loving with
a Vengeance,89–90, 108 , 112 ).
61 .Poems of sitting by an open window at night: Garelina, “Vse v prirode
pozabylos’” (Everything in nature has forgotten itself, 1870 ); Gotovtseva,
“Noch’” (Night, 1829 ); Khvoshchinskaia, “U okna” (By the window, 1850 ),
“Kogda poroi v tumannyi dom” (When sometimes to the dull house, 1846 ),
“Shumit osennyi dozhd’, noch’ temnaia niskhodit” (The autumn rain whis-
pers, dark night falls, 1848 ); Lisitsyna, “K mesiatsu” (To the moon, 1829 );
Zhadovskaia, “V sumerki” (At twilight, 1844–47), “Ia liubliu smotret’ (I love to
watch, 1844–47), “Vechernie dumy” (Evening meditations, 1847–56), “Noch’...
vot, v sad tenistyi” (Night... there is the shadowy garden, 1847–56); Fuks, “Raz
s dushevnoiu toskoiu” (Once with a soulful sadness, 1834 ).
62 .Kol’tsov’s “Vopl’ stradaniia” (A cry of suffering, 1840 ), which starts with
the word naprasno,is a very unusual poem among the work of men poets. In-
terestingly, in A. N. Maikov’s “Ispoved’” (Confession, 1841 ) the words druz’ia,
naprasno,and tshchetnoall appear in the first two lines, but in the service of an
anacreontic theme. The speaker confesses to his (men) friends that he loses con-
trol of himself when he sees “a smile on the lips of a modest girl.”
63 .Unbearable isolation, despair, longing for death and transcendence:
Khvoshchinskaia in “Druz’ia moi! Vam vsem tak shchedro zhizn’ dana” (My
friends! To you all so generously life has been given, 1847 ) (See discussion in
chapter 5 ) describes a woman’s feelings of isolation, uselessness, and futility.
The speaker compares herself to a remote island away from any trade route, one
that a ship would only find by accident. Gotovtseva in “Tuda khochu” (I want
to go there, 1827 ) expresses a desire to transcend the pain of life by going to
heaven. See also Khvoshchinskaia “V sumerki” (At twilight, 1857 ); Gotovtseva
“To skorotechnoi, to lenivoi” (Sometimes flowing quickly, sometimes lazily,
1829 ) and “V toske zadumchivoi kak chasto ia mechtaiu” (In thoughtful melan-
choly so often I dream, 1829 ); Mordovtseva, “Byvaiut dni dushevnogo razlada”
(There are days of spiritual discord, 1877 ) and “Byvaiut strashnye, tiazhelye mg-
noven’ia!”(There are terrifying, painful moments!, 1877 ); Teplova, “Russkaia
pesnia” (Russian song, 1860 ), “Zabyt’e” (Oblivion, 1860 ), and “Pererozhdenie”
(Rebirth, 1835 ); Garelina, “Dushu nevinuiu, dushu blazhenuiu” (My innocent,
blessed soul, 1870 ).
64 .Some of the male canonical poets occasionally wrote poems to family
members. Pushkin in an early poem (“Sestre,” 1814 ) expressed his loneliness for
his sister. Baratynskii thanked his sister for visiting him during a difficult time
in “Sestre” (To my sister, 1822 ). Other such poems include Iazykov, “K bratu”
(To my brother, 1822 ), and Tiutchev, “Brat, stol’ko let soputstvovalshii mne”
(Brother, how many years having accompanied me, 1870 ). The noncanonical
men poets, however, wrote many more poems to family members. The first
poem in Guber’s Stikhotvoreniia ( 1845 ), serving almost as a dedication, is “Mogila
materi” (My mother’s grave). Guber also describes his mother in “Tri snovi-
deniia” (Three dreams, 1837 ). See also Miller, “Sonety” (Sonnets, 1872 ), about
his mother, and “Moei materi” (To my mother, 1872 ), a translation from the Ger-
252 Notes to Pages 8 4–85