functioned very differently for men than they did for women. For up-
per-class men poets, salons offered the opportunity to receive friendly
criticism from an audience of peers who shared their experience and
values. For nonaristocratic men writers—for example, Pogodin, Raich,
Kol’tsov, Nikitenko, Pavlov, and even Belinsky—salons offered an op-
portunity for social advancement and acceptance into an aristocracy
of merit. But aristocratic women as a rule were excluded from men’s
literary gatherings. Even women who hosted their own salons did not
often read their work there, with the exceptions of Pavlova, Rostopchina,
and Fuks, who, as we shall see, incurred ridicule for doing so.^38 Unlike
nonaristocratic men, nonaristocratic woman poets never found men-
toring in a salon. Nor are there any examples of a salon hostess organ-
izing a journal or an annual literary collection. In any case, it seems that
the role Russian women played as salon hostesses has been exagger-
ated. One collection of memoirs about Russian salons of the first half of
the nineteenth century described six hosted by women and forty-three
hosted by men.^39 In the list of over two hundred Russian literary asso-
ciations (literaturnye ob”edineniia) from the eighteenth century to the
1860 s, compiled by M. Aronson and S. Reiser, women appear as host-
esses of only eleven salons, three evenings, and one musical morning.
No women appear in connection with the more serious, although gen-
erally shorter-lived, literary circles (kruzhki), in which writers discussed
literary issues (Literaturnye kruzhki i salony,301–5). Aronson and Reiser
emphasize the difference between the two kinds of groups: “The circle
is more connected with the writer, the salon with the reader.... If the
circle helps us illuminate questions of literary production, then the sa-
lon illuminates for us questions of literary consumption” ( 37 ).
Another formative factor for men largely unavailable to women wastravel, whether through the army or civil service, living abroad, or in-
ternal exile. Such travel, although often involuntary, enriched the men’s
poetry; exotic places constituted an important theme in the Romantic
Age. Iazykov lived in Dorpat from 1822 to 1829 , Tiutchev in Germany
for twenty-two years, Baratynsky in Finland for six years. Pushkin trav-
eled to Kishinev, the Caucasus, and the south of Russia, Lermontov
to Georgia, and Kiukhel’beker to France, the Caucasus, and Siberia.
Among the noncanonical men writers Mil’keev and Kol’tsov traveled
several times to the two Russian capitals from Siberia and Voronezh, re-
spectively, and both Khomiakov and Maikov spent extended periods of
time in Europe. In contrast, none of the women poets traveled within the
Russian Empire or abroad, except Mordovtseva and Khvoshchinskaia
36 Social Conditions