based this discussion of noncanonical men poets on the following sources: I. E.
Andreevskii, ed., Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’;Ia. D. Leshchinskii, Pavel Andreev Fe-
dotov: Khudozhnik i poet(Leningrad: Iskkusstvo, 1946 ) (regarding Fedotov);
Mirsky, History of Russian Literature;Nikolaev, Russkie pisateli 1800–1917;Terras,
Handbook of Russian Literature;Mark Azadovskii, Neizvestnyi poet-sibiriaka: E.
Mil’keev(Chita: Izd. Istoriko-literaturnogo kruzhka pri Gos. Institut narodnogo
obrazovaniia, 1922 ) (regarding Mil’keev).
2. Belinskii did champion Kol’tsov. He also reviewed some of Maikov’s
works favorably but considered him narrow and best suited to writing antho-
logical poetry.
3. Regarding aristocratic backgrounds, the only partial exception is Fet, who
was raised as an aristocrat until age fourteen, when he was declared illegiti-
mate. Fet, however, during his ultimately successful fight to have his noble sta-
tus restored, attended Moscow University for six years, traveled abroad, was
friends with Turgenev, Goncharov, and Lev Tolstoy and in the course of his
lifetime published six editions of his poetry. See Richard F. Gustafson, The
Imagination of Spring: The Poetry of Afanasy Fet(New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1966 ), 3–10, 247–49, and Whittaker, “Fet [Shenshin], Afanasii
Afanas’evich,” 7 : 193–202.
Debreczeny notes that the “special élite institutions” of the Lyceum at
Ts arskoe Selo and the Cadet Corps “counted more than the university” (Social
Functions of Literature, 103 ). This was not the case for Fedotov. Although he at-
tended the Cadet Corps he soon left military life with a very reduced pension
to become an artist who satirized the upper class and documented social in-
equities.
4. The women generally lived longer. Pavlova, Bakunina, Gotovtseva, and
Shakhova died in the their seventies or eighties; Garelina, Mordovtseva, and
Khvoshchinskaia in their sixties; Zhadovskaia, Fuks, and Rostopchina in their
forties; Shakhovskaia, Teplova, and probably Lisitsyna (see Vatsuro, “Zhizn’ i
poeziia Nadezhdy Teplovoi,” 18–19, 21 ) in their thirties; and Kul’man at seven-
teen. As mentioned in the introduction, most of these women came from vari-
ous strata of the aristocracy and were comfortably off. The exceptions were Kul’-
man, who lived and died in poverty; Mariia Lisitsyna, the daughter of an actor;
Teplova, who came from a merchant background; and Khvoshchinskaia, who
struggled with poverty for most of her life.
5 .Nicholas I rewarded Maikov for one poetry collection with 1 , 000 rubles
and a leave to travel abroad. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the
beginning of his literary career Maikov saw his pension raised from 1 , 750 to
3 , 500 rubles, and received a promotion to the rank of tainyi sovetnik (confiden-
tial advisor).
For Maikov’s critics: Mirsky, History of Russian Literature, 231 ; Entsiklopedi-
cheskii slovar’,ed. I. E. Andreevskii (Sankt-Peterburg: F.A. Brokgaaz, I. A. E.,
1890–1907), 35 : 371 (the article is signed by the influential religious philosopher
and poet Vladimir Solov’ev).
6. This is not to suggest that the canonical poets wrote no such poems. Sev-
eral wrote prayers. For example, in Baratynskii’s “Molitva” ( 1842 or 1844 ) the
278 Notes to Pages 168–170