Reinventing Romantic Poetry Studies of the Harriman Institute Reinventing Romantic Poetry
Russian Women Poets of the Mid-Nineteenth Century h Diana Greene
The University of Wisconsin Press The University of Wisconsin Press 1930 Monroe Street Madison, Wisconsin 53711 www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Greene, Diana. Reinventing romantic poetry : Russian women poets of the mid-nineteenth century / Greene, Diana. p. cm.—(Studies of the Harriman Institute) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-299-19104-4 (alk. paper) 1. Russian poetry—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Romanticism—Russia. 3. Russian poetry—Women authors—History and criticism. 4.Women and litera- ture—Russia—History—19th century. 5. Rostopchina, Evdokiia, 1812–1858—Criti- cism and interpretation. 6.Krestovskii, V., 1824–1889—Criticism and interpretation. 7.Pavlova, Karolina, 1807–1893—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title: Russian women poets of the mid-nineteenth century. II. Title. III. Series. PG3051. G74 2003 891.71′309145′082—dc21 2003006491 For Milly
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 3 1. Social Conditions 21 2. Literary Conventions 38 3. Gender and Genre 57 4. Evdokiia Rostopchina 88 5. Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia 112 6. Karolina Pavlova 137 7. In Conclusion: Noncanonical Men Poets 167
Appendix 177 Notes 219 Bibliography 281 Index 297
vii
Acknowledgments
This book could not have been written without the generous help of many people, groups, and institutions. I am delighted to have this op- portunity to thank them. Responses that I received to early versions of this work greatly influ- enced its eventual scope and depth. My thanks to the Women in Slavic Culture and Literature group at the Summer Research Lab in Cham- paign-Urbana, to the participants in the Columbia University Seminar on Slavic History and Culture, to Katharina Brett, and Carol Ueland. Several people kindly took the time to read various chapters, provid- ing many valuable insights and ideas: Barbara Heldt, Eliot Borenstein, Charlotte Rosenthal, Natalie Dehn, Nancy Burstein, Randall Spinks, Ann Kleimola, Romy Taylor, and members of the New York University Scholarly Writing Group. I am particularly grateful to those who read the entire manuscript, offering structural, bibliographic, and other ex- pertise: Ron Meyer, Catriona Kelly, Sally Pratt, and especially Helena Goscilo for her transformative and exuberant comments on style as well as content. None of these people, of course, are responsible for the use I made of their suggestions. Jehanne Gheith and Karen Rosneck generously shared Khvoshchin- skaia materials with me. Elena Ermilovna Glafner at Rossiiskii gosu- darstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (RGALI) provided invaluable help with Khvoshchinskaia’s notebooks. I consider myself very fortu- nate to know Antonina Strizhenko, who helped me unstintingly and re- peatedly at Pushkinskii dom. Mikhail Fainshtein graciously opened doors for me in Saint Petersburg and Moscow on several occasions. Lina Bernstein kindly sent me material on Elagina. Irina Gordon gave generous, meticulous, and expert help with Russian. I am also very
ix x Acknowledgments grateful to Karina Melnikov and Irina Reyfman for advice on Russian, Claudine Verheggen on French, Ron Meyer on translation, and Masha Lykhina on Russian and Russian computers. Any mistakes that remain are my own. Thanks to Mary Zirin for inspiration and to Gloria Rohmann, a friend in need. Ann Kleimola, Clara Evans, Shirley Glade, Ann Kaslow, Lucy Morganstern, and Randall Spinks supplied steady and much appreci- ated encouragement while I wrote and revised. My work was greatly facilitated by two New York University Li- braries Goddard Faculty Support Grants and an International Research and Exchanges Board Short Term Travel Grant. Harvard University Press kindly gave permission to reprint part of “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” which appears in The Poems of Emily Dickinson. I wish to express appreciation to the University Seminars at Columbia University for their help in publication. Thanks to those most knowledgeable reference librarians of the Slavic Reading Room at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana for research help over several summers. Also to my supportive colleagues at NYU’s Bobst Library, who so effectively helped me with my reference questions, interlibrary loan requests, and com- puter problems, and to Chris Holden and the Bates College Library for making it possible for me to work there in very pleasant conditions. And, of course, my thanks to my parents, who made everything pos- sible. A Note on Transliteration, Punctuation, and Abbreviations
I use modified Library of Congress transliteration of Russian—in mod- ern orthography—with one exception: men’s names ending in -ii are written as such in the notes (Belinskii) but changed to the more familiar -y (Belinsky) in the text. The reader will notice that many of the poems cited include the Romantic device of suspension points—three un- spaced dots intimating the ineffable—which in the translations appear as three spaced dots without brackets. Suspension points should not be confused with ellipses—the three or four spaced dots in brackets indi- cating that I have left out part of the text. The following abbreviations are used for archival sources: PD Institut russkoi literatury RAN (Pushkinskii dom) RGALI Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva RNB(OR) Rossiiskaia natsional’naia biblioteka (Otdel rukopisei)
xi
Reinventing Romantic Poetry
Introduction
This study offers some preliminary suggestions toward rethinking Rus- sian Romanticism, issues of canonicity, and the place of mid-nineteenth- century women poets in the history of Russian literature. While the question of whether Russia had a Romantic movement has been de- bated,1 most scholars agree that Romanticism was a pan-European phe- nomenon with national variations, one of which was Russian. René Wellek has defined three underlying elements common to all national Romantic movements, Russia’s included: first, a view of poetry for which the imagination, rather than rationality, is central; second, a view of the world for which nature, rather than a mechanistic universe, is cen- tral; and third, a view of poetic style for which symbol and myth, rather than allegory, are central.2 Here I wish to consider the place of women poets in Romanticism. Several literary critics have characterized Romanticism as a masculine- gendered institution unfriendly to women.3 Certainly, what Bertrand Russell described as the “essential Romantic trait,” “titanic cosmic self- assertion,” would not have been easy for women of the time to develop and express in a society that demanded from them modesty, self- sacrifice, and devotion to the needs of others.4 Moreover, a closer look at Wellek’s three basic elements of Romanticism shows that in practice they, too, are gender-specific. Men poets, in expressing a “view of po- etry for which imagination is central,” personified imagination as a fe- male muse, often depicting her as sexual partner. The “view of the world for which nature is central” means that Nature—troped as silent, femi- nine, mother, and Other—served as an object of interpretation or as- similation by the man poet. The third element, a poetic style for which symbol and myth are central, meant in the case of several influential
3 4 Introduction
Romantic poets androcentric or even misogynist myths. For example, in Pushkin we find men engaged in oedipal struggles over the women who “belong” to powerful statues or generals (“Kamennyi gost’” [The stone guest], Evgenii Onegin [Eugene Onegin]). In Byron we find sexu- ally available harem girls (“The Giaour,” “The Corsair”). I suggest that mid-nineteenth-century Russian women poets had to find different ways to relate to the imagination, to nature and to myth and symbol. They had to transform male-defined traditions, genres, and themes in order to be able to address women’s experiences or even to rep- resent themselves as poets. That is, they had to reinvent Romantic po- etry. Ironically, men critics, rather than recognizing these women’s tremendous inventiveness in reworking literary forms, dismissed them as not “real” (that is, men) poets.5 This study, then, examines the poetic practices and achievements of mid-nineteenth-century women poets in relation to the gender-based issues they shared and their various responses to them.6 I base my generalizations on the poetic practices of fourteen significant but gen- erally unknown Russian women poets born between 1799 and 1824: Praskov’ia Bakunina (1810–80), Aleksandra Fuks (1805–53), Liubov’ Garelina (1824–85), Anna Gotovtseva (1799–1871), Nadezhda Khvo- shchinskaia (1824–89), Elisaveta Kul’man (1808–25), Mariia Lisitsyna (d. 1842), Anna Mordovtseva (1823–85), Karolina Pavlova (1807–93), Evdokiia Rostopchina (1811–58), Elisaveta Shakhova (1822–99), Ekate- rina Shakhovskaia (1814–36), Nadezhda Teplova (1814–48), and Iuliia Zhadovskaia (1824–83).7 I will focus on the work of three of these po- ets—Rostopchina, Khvoshchinskaia, and Pavlova—in greater detail. For comparison I refer to the poetic practices of seven prominent Rus- sian men poets born between 1798 and 1820: Evgenii Baratynsky (1800– 1844), Anton Del’vig (1798–1831), Afanasii Fet (1820–92), Nikolai Iazykov (1803–46), Mikhail Lermontov (1814–41), Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837), and Fedor Tiutchev (1803–73). However, since not every man poet of this generation became canonical, we also must consider the poetic practices of contemporary noncanonical men poets. I have cho- sen Pavel Fedotov (1815–52), Eduard Guber (1814–47), Aleksei Khomi- akov (1804–60), Aleksei Kol’tsov (1809–42), Apollon Maikov (1821–97), Evgenii Mil’keev (1815–46?), and Fedor Miller (1818–81), poets whose works have been anthologized but whom literary historians refer to as vtorostepenii (second rank or minor).8 A full discussion of the poetical practices of canonical and noncanonical men poets, however, lies out- side my scope. This study is not intended to be a general survey of Rus- Introduction 5 sian Romantic poetry. Rather, it is a corrective to scholars’ tendency in the past to neglect issues of gender—and gender as a category of anal- ysis—when looking at this period. The women poets—all members of the generation that produced Pushkin and the Golden Age of Russian literature—came from a wide variety of social classes and circumstances. Mariia Lisitsyna was the daughter of an actor; Elisaveta Kul’man, whose civil-servant father died when she was young, lived and died in extreme poverty; Nadezhda Teplova was the daughter of a merchant. Liubov’ Garelina, Anna Go- tovtseva, Karolina Pavlova, Evdokiia Rostopchina, Elisaveta Shakhova, Ekaterina Shakhovskaia, Iuliia Zhadovskaia, and Aleksandra Fuks be- longed to various levels of the aristocracy. Praskov’ia Bakunina and Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia were both déclassé: their fathers were dis- missed from government positions for embezzlement. The life span of these poets ranged from seventeen years (Kul’man) to eighty-six (Pavlova); some lived in Saint Petersburg (Kul’man, Rostopchina, Shakhova), some in Moscow (Bakunina, Lisitsyna, Pavlova, Shak- hovskaia, Teplova), and others in the provinces (Fuks, Gotovtseva, Khvoshchinskaia, Mordovtseva, Zhadovskaia). Their writings were equally varied. Many of them wrote prose works and plays, as well as poetry. Almost all of them wrote verse epistles, na- ture poetry, love lyrics, and folk poetry. In addition, their poetic genres included religious lyrics, visions, verse prologues for domestic theater, lullabies, anacreontic and other classical verse forms, fables, elegies, narrative poems (poemy), and verse tales (povesti v stikhakh), as well as otryvki iz poemy (excerpts or fragments from narrative poems, a genre in itself), ballads, epigrams, metaphysical poetry, civic poetry, and a novel in verse (roman v stikhakh).9 Yet despite their diversity, these women poets all faced common so- cial and literary-historical issues as women writers. Perhaps the most obvious and fundamental was their difficulty in getting their works published. A major part of the poetry of Bakunina, Gotovtseva, Khvoshchinskaia, Mordovtseva, and Teplova—in quality as well as quantity—still remains entombed in archives. Much of the poetry of the others has been lost entirely: most of Pavlova’s work after 1864, most of Kul’man’s original poetry (as opposed to her translations), much of Teplova’s early poetry and late prose, and all but three works by Shakhovskaia, one of which is a fragment of a larger work.10 Even when these poets managed to get their work published in jour- nals or—against all odds—as books, the published versions often did 6 Introduction not reflect their wishes. Pavlova’s only poetry collection to appear dur- ing her lifetime, published in Russia in 1863, after she was already liv- ing abroad, was badly edited by two Russian friends. Khvoshchinskaia strongly objected to having her poetry “edited” for publication by Vladimir Zotov (then editor of Literaturnaia gazeta), to Zotov’s amuse- ment. Similarly, Nadezhda Teplova, who was forced to work through ed- itor and Moscow University professor Mikhail Maksimovich, expressed annoyance at his attempts to improve her poetry.11 These difficulties, I suggest, are the effects of social conditions for women, discussed in the next chapter. This is not to deny that men writers also had trouble getting pub- lished and controlling their work. For example, Pushkin’s first poetry col- lection did not appear until 1825 because the friend to whom he en- trusted the manuscript in 1820 did not keep his promise to publish it. Guber’s first book of poetry, although passed by the censor, never ap- peared in print, and the badly edited posthumous edition of his works (1859), according to the Soviet scholar E. M. Shneiderman, cannot be considered a reliable text. As for problems with artistic control, Osip Senkovsky, the editor of Biblioteka dlia chteniia (Library for reading), was notorious for reworking all authors’ texts without their permission.12 Nonetheless, most of the canonical and noncanonical men poets, as we shall see, not only enjoyed the help of powerful mentors at the begin- ning of their careers but also might themselves become publishers or ed- itors of journals and al’manakhi (annual literary collections), thus gain- ing control of literary “means of production.” I do not intend to suggest that the literary careers of the canonical men poets were typical for all men poets of their generation, but rather that social constraints made such achievements impossible for any woman. A related issue for these women poets consists in the long interrup- tions we find in their careers, what Tillie Olsen calls “silences.” Olsen ob- serves that while men writers also fall silent for external reasons, women additionally have had to contend with social and family demands that make sustained writing especially difficult (Silences, 17, 23, 38–39). In her enumeration of silences, Olsen mentions writers “never coming to book form at all” (6), a term that describes Khvoshchinskaia, Bakunina, and Gotovtseva. Khvoshchinskaia published a great deal of poetry in tolstye zhurnaly (“thick” journals) and newspapers but never collected it in book form (although she did publish books of her prose). Bakunina and Gotovtseva may have “chosen” not to publish the notebooks of their po- etry that still remain in archives, but that choice was probably condi- Introduction 7 tioned by their society’s images of the woman writer.13 Olsen also men- tions “one-book silences” (9), a term that describes Lisitsyna, Shakhovskaia, Garelina, and Mordovtseva.14 (Here, as elsewhere, I am referring to books of poetry, not of prose.) Lisitsyna and Shakhovskaia each published a book early and then fell silent. Garelina and Mor- dovtseva, on the other hand, are examples of what Olsen calls “fore- ground silence before the achievement” (10, italics hers), having pub- lished their one book at the age of forty-three and fifty, respectively. In the context of such interrupted careers the accomplishments of Fuks, Pavlova, Rostopchina, and Shakhova, who each published several books of poetry, are all the more impressive.
Canons
Historically, these women poets have been excluded from the canon of Russian literature—that collection of authors and works generally con- sidered central to the understanding of literature, as reflected in teach- ing and scholarship.15 In the nineteenth century, men canon builders and gatekeepers—critics, book reviewers, editors, book and journal publishers—dismissed women’s poetry because of prejudices against women writers (see chapter 1), but also because these men defined po- etry in terms of male voice, viewpoint, values, experiences, and tastes, as well as male themes and use of genres.16 Twentieth-century Russian literary scholars similarly underrepresented or omitted women from anthologies and studies of Russian Romantic poetry.17 Another factor that may have contributed to the exclusion of all women and some contemporary men poets from the canon is their lack of “literary social capital.”18 For the majority of Russian women of this generation expected to attract a husband and then run a household— that is, women of all classes except the peasantry—social capital pri- marily consisted of the size of their dowries, their fathers’ social stand- ing, and their physical attractiveness to men. In the male realm of literature, however, I would suggest that, along with wealth and social standing, social capital also included education, mentors, location— whether one lived in the provinces or the capitals—and personal connections with literary gatekeepers and opinion makers: in John Guil- lory’s terms, “access to the means of literary production and consump- tion” (Cultural Capital, 17). I further suggest that such access often played a large part in a writer’s literary reception and subsequent repu- tation. In the last chapter we shall see the importance of literary social 8 Introduction capital in the lives of canonical and noncanonical men poets. Gender, however, also appears to have been an important component of a poet’s literary social capital. Thus, for reasons that will be discussed in chap- ters 1 and 2, even well-to-do women poets who lived in Moscow or Saint Petersburg commanded less literary social capital than their men con- temporaries.
But what constitutes canonicity in Russian Romanticism and what ac- counts for the absence of women poets? Pushkin, Russia’s national poet, occupies what can be thought of as the first circle or the top of a hier- archy. Just below him we find his poet associates (Baratynsky), poet friends (Del’vig), and those whose work appeared in his journal, Sovre- mennik (The contemporary). The poets whom Pushkin mentored (for example, Iazykov) and Pushkin’s “self-appointed successor,” Lermon- tov, who suffered political consequences for his outraged elegy on Pushkin’s death, also occupy ranks near the top.19 Women poets who had personal contact with Pushkin (Rostopchina, Pavlova, Fuks), however, did not thereby enter the canon since Pushkin did not mentor—or re- spect—women poets and generally thought very little of women’s in- tellectual and aesthetic capabilities.20 Nor did critical attitudes toward Pushkin’s women contemporaries improve during the rest of the nine- teenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, with the exception of a short-lived Pavlova revival among the Symbolists (see chapter 6). The Soviet era perpetuated negative attitudes toward women and women poets on a political and nationalistic basis. While, according to a Soviet slogan, the Revolution had “resolved the woman question,” women’s actual needs and concerns remained a low priority for the So- viet government, which fostered a paramilitary atmosphere in order to industrialize the country with all possible speed. Writers were expected to help build socialism by promoting and celebrating in literature these heroic goals—a literary climate unpropitious not only to the depiction of women characters but also to the reputations of women writers.21 So, for example, K. D. Muratova’s 1962 index, Istoriia russkoi literatury XIX veka: Bibliograficheskii ukazatel’ (History of Russian literature of the nineteenth century: A bibliographic index) lists only two post-1917 ar- ticles about Rostopchina, one published in Irkutsk. In 1965 V. S. Kiselev pronounced her a forgotten poet. In the case of Karolina Pavlova, now the best-known woman poet of her generation, we find shorter articles about her in the 1955 and 1975 Bol’shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia (The great Soviet encyclopedia) than about her husband, Nikolai Pavlov, a littéra- Introduction 9 teur whose entire literary output consisted of six povesti (tales). Pavlova is described in these encyclopedias as “Pavlov’s wife” and an “author- ess” (pisatel’nitsa). As late as 1991 a Soviet publication identified Pav- lova as a “poetess”—although one of “surprisingly varied themes and genres”—to whom several well-known men poets dedicated poems.22 Soviet ideology appears to have promoted and even encouraged a condescending attitude toward women’s writing. Collections appeared with such titles as Serdtsa chutkogo prozren’em. . . : Povesti i rasskazy russkikh pisatel’nits XIX v. (With the insight of a sensitive heart. . . : Tales and stories by Russian authoresses of the nineteenth century, 1991), Moskovskaia muza (The Moscow muse, 1998), and Ts aritsy muz: Russkie poetessy XIX veka (Queens of the muses: Russian poetesses of the nine- teenth century, 1989). No collection of Russian men’s poetry bore the title “The Moscow Muse” or “Kings of the Muses.” Several Soviet scholars in studies of nineteenth-century women poets referred to them by their first names, something one cannot imagine them doing to male literary figures.23 Nor were women poets even included in the minor canon known to literary specialists. In the scholarly Biblioteka poeta (Poet’s li- brary) series of the Soviet period only one nineteenth-century woman poet, Pavlova, had a volume entirely devoted to her work.
Methodological and Theoretical Considerations
Some methodological and theoretical issues should be clarified before we proceed. First, I have included women poets in this study on the ba- sis of the quality and quantity of their poetry. Most published at least one book of poetry, a feat in itself for a Russian woman at this time; a few left notebooks of unpublished poems.24 Second, I have chosen to consider the work of these women poets in relation to that of their male contemporaries. Gynocritical studies that look at women writers in their own terms have been essential for re- covering forgotten women writers, defining women’s literary traditions, and developing “interpretive strategies” appropriate to their work.25 However, many critics have realized the importance of eventually treat- ing men and women writers together. Indeed, such a comparative ap- proach is necessary in order to answer fully the question that Elaine Showalter calls central to feminist criticism: “What is the difference of women’s writing?”26 Although, as I intend to show, the women poets of this generation 10 Introduction approached poetry differently from the men, they also responded to and polemicized with men’s poetry. A comparative approach, then, will have the additional advantage of illuminating specific poems through- out this study. For example, Iuliia Zhadovskaia’s poem “P[erevleskomu] (Naprasno ty sulish’, tak zharko slavu mne)” (To Perevlesky [In vain do you so warmly promise me glory], 1847) appears at first glance to be a typical example of what Anne Mellor calls the “modesty topos” (Ro- manticism and Gender, 8), in which women denigrated their own work, hoping to forestall attacks by men critics.27 Readers, Zhadovskaia writes, do not respond to her bednyi, grustnyi stikh (poor, sad verse) and, she concludes, u u , u , , . h (I will flash in the world like a falling star Which, believe me, not many will notice).28
Zhadovskaia’s poem, however, seems a great deal less self-effacing if read against Baratynsky’s well-known classical ode “Osen’” (Autumn, 1837), in which the following lines appear: