Bukhshtab and E. M. Shneiderman, 477 n. 19 ; Romanov, editor’s introduction,
19–20.
Rostopchina as seduced and abandoned: Khodasevich, “Grafinia E. P.
Rostopchina,” 47–48; Kiselev-Sergenin, “Taina grafini E. P Rostopchinoi,” 278.
Several of these biographies also denigrate Rostopchina by referring to her
childhood nickname, “Dodo” (Pedrotti, “Scandal of Countess Rostopcˇina’s
Polish-Russian Allegory,” 197 ; Khodasevich, “Grafinia E. P. Rostopchina,” 36 ,
37 , 38 , 39 ; Romanov, editor’s introduction, 13 ; Fainshtein, Pisatel’nitsy pushkin-
soi pory, 86 , 91 , 96 ), not a practice one encounters in biographies of men poets.
Rostopchina bores her guests: Berg, “Grafinia Rostopchina v Moskve,” 703 ;
Pogodin, “Grafinia E. P Rostopchina i ee vechera,” 401 ; Aronson and Reiser, Lit-
eraturnye kruzhki i salony, 288.
10 .Pogodin, “Grafinia E. P. Rostopchina i ee vechera,” 401 ; also quoted in
Afanas’ev, “‘Da, zhenskaia dusha,’” 12.
11. Berg, 696 , 700 , reprinted inSchastlivaia zhenshchina,391–403. These sex-
ualized physical descriptions have been cited and reprinted for over one hun-
dred years.
12 .On Pushkin’s relationship with his sister-in-law, see Serene Vitale,
Pushkin’s Button(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999 ), 68–69, 72 , 218 , 225.
On Tiutchev and Denisieva, see Jesse Zeldin, introduction to Poems and Political
Letters of F. I. Tyutchev(Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1973 ), 6.
13 .“[Rostopchin’s] instability appeared later.... From birth he had mani-
fested irascibility and harshness but had his disposition been restrained by a
more skillful hand it might have given his moral character a completely differ-
ent direction” (L. Rostopchina, “Semeinaia khronika (fragmenty),” 406–7).
“Evdokiia Petrovna’s marriage was unhappy... for many reasons, discussion
of which in print I recognize is pointless and indecent” [suspension points in
original] (S. Sushkov, “Biograficheskii ocherk,” 1 : vii: ). “[It is known that Ros-
topchin] was a person with some ‘peculiarities,’ that he thought little about his
wife, dividing most of his time between horse breeding and collecting pictures,
and that before 1836 they did not have children” (Khodasevich, “Grafinia E. P.
Rostopchina,” 39 ). Kiselev-Sergenin quotes an account claiming that Rostopchin
“for a long time kept an actress” (“Taina grafini Rostopchinoi,” 277 ). On Ros-
topchina’s two children by Andrei Karamzin, see Kiselev-Sergenin, “Taina
grafini Rostopchinoi,” 271 ; also Goscilo, “Evdokiia Petrovna Rostopchina,” in
Dictionary of Russian Women Writers, 541 ; I. A. Bitiugova, “Olga Andreevna
Golokhastova,” in Nikolaev, Russkie pisateli 1800–1917, 1 : 618–19. Khodasevich
implies that her first child, born in 1837 , also was not by Rostopchin (“Grafinia
E. P. Rostopchina,” 41 ).
14 .Kiselev-Sergenin, “Taina grafini Rostopchinoi.”
15 .For example, Romanov notes that the woman addressee of Rostopchina’s
book of poetry Zelenaia kniga has not been identified (Stikhotvoreniia, proza,
pis’ma, 410 ).
16 .D. Sushkov, “K biografii grafini E. P. Rostopchinoi”; S. Sushkov, “Bi-
ograficheskii ocherk,” 1 : v–vi.
17 .Nekrasova, “Grafinia E. P. Rostopchina,” 43–44; Romanov, editor’s in-
Notes to Pages 91–93 255