troduction, 10 ; N. Alekseeva and Mary Zirin, “Mariia Sushkova,” in Dictionary
of Russian Women Writers,ed. M. Ledkovsky, C. Rosenthal, and M. Zirin, 628–
29.
18 .Belinskii, “Sochineniia Zeneidy R-voi,” in his Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 7 :
656. First appeared in Otechestvennye zapiski 31 , no. 11 ( 1843 ): 1–24.
19 .S.M. Zagoskin quoted in Filipenko, “Moskovskie literaturnye salony,” 52 ;
Khodasevich, “Grafinia E. P. Rostopchina,” 40 , 44.
20 .Pavlova also describes interactions in society as matters of life and death.
In her poem “My stranno soshlis’” (We came together strangely, 1854 ) she com-
pares a salon conversation between two people who have just met to a feud
(raspria). In her “Za chainym stolom” (At the tea table, 1859 ) she characterizes
the opening conversation between the Princess and Wismer as a “merciless
duel” between two “antagonists”—a “seasoned warrior” and “an Amazon”—
whose words are compared to “sword thrusts” (Karolina Pavlova, “At the Tea
Table,” trans. Diana Greene and Mary Zirin, in Anthology of Russian Women’s
Writing, ed. C. Kelley, 37 ). On the performative aspects of nineteenth-century Eu-
ropean society for both men and women, see Rhonda Garelick, Rising Star:
Dandyism, Gender and Performance in the Fin de Siècle(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1998 ); Jessica R. Feldman, Gender on the Divide: The Dandy in
Modernist Literature(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993 ). On the para-
doxes of nineteenth-century women’s performance of the female role, see Judith
Anne Rosen’s dissertation, “Performing Femininity in British Victorian Cul-
ture,” University of California at Berkeley, 1995.
21 .See Vitale’s account of Pushkin’s appearances at balls, salons, visits, and
parties in the months before his duel (Pushkin’s Button,218–19, 220 , 223 ).
22 .S. Sushkov, “Biograficheskii ocherk,” 1 : xi–xii; Khodasevich, “Grafinia
E. P. Rostopchina,” 45.
23 .V.F. Odoevskomu, 15 -go genvaria [sic] 1848 , in E. Rostopchina,
Stikhotvoreniia, proza, pis’ma, 338.
24 .L. Rostopchina, “Semeinaia khronika (fragmenty),” 408. On Ros-
topchina’s salon, see Filipenko, “Moskovskie literaturnye salony,” and Aronson
and Reiser, Literaturnye kruzhki i salony,199–202, 287–89.
25 .Quoted in the original French in Khodasevich, “Grafinia E. P. Ros-
topchina,” 45.
26 .Poety 1840–1850-kh godov,ed. B. Ia. Bukhshtab and E. M. Shneiderman,
474 n. 3. On Rostopchina’s translation of Pushkin, see V. Nepomniashchii,
“Sud’ba odnogo stikhotvoreniia,” Voprosy literatury 5 ( 1984 ): 144–61.
27 .“Vmesto predisloviia,” in Stikhotvoreniia grafini Rostopchinoi, 2 nd. ed.
(Sankt-Peterburg: Smirdin, 1856–57), 1 : 3–4.
28 .Interestingly, the only poem by Rostopchina that Belinskii ever praised
unreservedly was “Ravnodushnoi,” in which the narrator tells a young and
beautiful woman that her intention to take the veil is selfish because God has
ordered women to be men’s consolation and spiritual salvation. Belinskii wrote,
“Yes, suchthoughts and feelings prove that the talent of Countess Rostopchina
can find a wider and more worthy sphere for itself.” One wonders if Belinskii
would have found the poem as socially significant if the young woman had been
depicted as ugly (V. G. Belinskii, “Stikhotvoreniia grafini E. Rostopchinoi,” in
256 Notes to Pages 93–96