Reinventing Romantic Poetry

320 Pages·2003·1.03 MB·English

by  Diana Greene

Reinventing Romantic Poetry
Studies of the Harriman Institute
Reinventing
Romantic Poetry
Russian Women Poets of the
Mid-Nineteenth Century
h
Diana Greene
T h e U n i v e r s i t y o f W i s c o n s i n P r e s s
The University of Wisconsin Press
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Madison, Wisconsin 53711
www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/
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Copyright © 2004
The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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Printed in the United States of America
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-
ingmany 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