Bibliography of secondary literature on Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia (V. Krestovskii)
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- Post-1917 criticism and scholarship
- Pre-1917 reviews and critical articles, arranged chronologically
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Post-1917 criticism and scholarship
Berezkina, E. P. “Khudozhestvennoe voploshchenie gendernoi oppozitsii feminnost’/maskulinnost’ v russkoi literature vtoroi poloviny XIX v. (na materiale romana N. D. Khvoshchinskoi ‘Bol’shaia Medveditsa’).” Vestnik Buriatskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 10 (2011): 116–21.
Berezkina, Elena Petrovna, and Vita Viktorovna Proiavina. “Motiv dukhovnogo poiska geroini v povesti N. D. Khvoshchinskoi ‘Pansionerka.’” Vestnik Buriatskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta: Iazyk, literatura, kul’tura 1 (2018): 37–43.
Chechneva, Anna. Soratnitsa velikikh. Ryazan: Izd-vo “Poverennyi,” 2003.
Gavrilov, Sergei V. “Fenomen N. D. Khvoshchinskoi-Zaionchkovskoi glazami istorika-narodnika V. I. Semevskogo.” Vestnik Kemerovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 21.4 (2019): 898–906. doi: 10.21603/2078-8975-2019-21-4-898-906.
Gheith, Jehanne M. Finding the Middle Ground: Krestovskii, Tur, and the Power of Ambivalence in Nineteenth-Century Russian Women’s Prose. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 2004.
Goriachkina, M. “N. D. Khvoshchinskaia (V. Krestovskii — psevdonim).” Introduction to Povesti i rasskazy, by N. D. Khvoshchinskaia, ed. Goriachkina. Moscow: Khudozh. lit., 1963. 3–32.
Hoogenboom, Hilde. “‘Я раб действительности’: Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia, Realism, and the Detail.” In Vieldeutiges Nicht-zu-Ende-Sprechen: Thesen und Momentaufnahman aus der Geschichte russischer Dichterinnen. Ed. Arja Rosenholm and Frank Göpfert. FrauenLiteraturGeschichte 16. Fichtenwalde: F. K. Göpfert, 2002. 129–47.
Iakushin, N. “‘Prichudlivo smeshalis’ svet i teni.’” Introduction to Serdtsa chutkogo prozren’em: Povesti i rasskazy russkikh pisatel’nits XIX veka. Ed. Iakushin. Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1991. 3–18. See especially pp. 14–15 on Khvoshchinskaia and p. 15 on “The Meeting” (Свидание, 1879).
Kozlov, A. E. “Formy i obrazy vremeni v proizvedeniiakh N. D. Khvoshchinskoi i V. A. Sleptsova.” Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta: Filologiia 41.3 (2016): 106–14. doi: 10.17223/19986645/41/10. Focuses on Khvoshchinskaia’s Free Time (Свободное время, 1856) and Sleptsov’s Hard Times (Трудное время, 1865).
Krężołek, Olga. “Nadieżda Chwoszczyńska (1824–1889).” Kieleckie Studia Rusycystyczne 5 (1992): 51–59.
Krenzholek, O. [Olga Krężołek]. “O stile romana N. D. Khvoshchinskoi 1850-kh godov.” In Problema stilia i zhanra v russkoi literature XIX veka. Ed. Iu. M. Proskurina et al. Sverdlovsk: Sverdlovskii gos. pedagog. institut, 1991. 68–80.
Krenzholek, O. [Olga Krężołek]. “Problemy literaturnoi pozitsii N. D. Khvoshchinskoi 1840–1860-kh godov.” Dissertation. Moscow, 1986.
Krupin, E. “Sof’ia, Nadezhda, Praskov’ia…” Riazanskii komsomolets (5 April 1988): 3. Argues from archival sources that Sof’ia Khvoshchinskaia was born in 1824, cited by many later researchers.
Lukashevich, M. [Marta Łukaszewicz]. “Roman V. Krestovskogo (Nadezhdy Khvoshchinskoi) ‘Bariton’ na fone literaturynoi traditsii izobrazheniia seminarista.” Vestnik RGGU: Seriia ‘Filologicheskie nauki. Literaturovedenie i fol’kloristika № 7 (69)/11 (2011): 133–46.
Mogilianskii, A. P. “N. D. i S. D. Khvoshchinskie.” In Istoriia russkoi literatury. 10 vols. Moscow: AN SSSR, In-t rus. lit., 1941–1956. 9:228–37. (Volume 9 was published in 1956.)
Pogrebnaia, V. L. “Facets of Female Emansipation [sic] in Life and Creation of N. D. Khvoshchinskaya.” In Modern Approaches to Philological Studies: Collective Monograph. Lviv: Liha-Pres, 2020. 192–215. doi: 10.36059/978-966-397-196-4/192-215.
Pogrebnaia, V. L. “N. D. Khvoshchinskaia kak kritik zhenskogo tvorchestva.” Derzhava ta regioni. Seriia: Gumanitarni nauki 1 (2012): 77–83.
Pogrebnaia, Viktoriia Leonidovna. Problemy emansipatsii zhenskoi lichnosti v russkoi kritike i romanakh N. D. Khvoshchinskoi: 60–80-e gg. XIX st. Zaporizhzhia: Zaporozhskii gos. universitet, 2003.
Pogrebnaia, V. L. “Tip ‘novoi zhenshchiny’ v tvorchestve N. D. Khvoshchinskoi.” Visnik Zaporiz’kogo derzhavnogo universitetu 1 (2002): 1–6.
Ponomareva, A. A. “Nabliudatel’ kak siuzhetnaia positsiia v poezii i proze N. D. Khvoshchinskoi.” Siuzhetologiia i siuzhetografiia 2 (2019): 24–32. doi: 10.25205/2410-7883-2019-2-24-32
Ponomareva, A. A. “Siuzhet ‘nachinaiushchaia pisatel’nitsa-provintsialka — izvestnyi literator’ v belletristike serediny XIX veka (roman N. D. Khvoshchinskoi ‘Vstrecha’).” Sibirskii filologicheskii zhurnal 3 (2019): 85–96. doi: 10.17223/18137083/68/8.
Reitblat, A. Ot Bovy k Bal’montu. Moscow: Izd-vo MPI, 1991. Rosneck (140) cites Reitblat (pp. 70, 88) to say that Khvoshchinskaia “received the third highest honorarium (paid in rubles per signature) for work published in the 1870s, ranked just behind Tolstoy and Turgenev. She received the twelfth highest maximum honorarium in the 1860s,” and that her work was sought after in schools and popular in libraries.
Rosenholm, Arja. “Auf den Spuren des Vergessens: Zur Rezeptionsgeschichte der russischen Schriftstellerin N. D. Chvoscinskaja,” Studia Slavica Finlandensis, vol. 4 (1989): 63–91.
Rosenholm, Arja. “Rasskazchitsa-pisatel’nitsa v protivorechiiakh ili vzgliad Kassandry.” In Russkie pisatel’nitsy i literaturnyi protsess v kontse XVIII – pervoi treti XX vv.: Sbornik nauchnykh statei. Wilhelmshorst: F. K. Gopfert, 1995. 91–114.
Rosenholm, Arja. “‘Svoe’ i ‘chuzhoe’ v kontseptsii ‘obrazovannaia zhenshchina’ i ‘Pansionerka’ N. D. Khvoshchinskoi.’ In “Svoe” i “chuzhoe” v literature i kul’ture: Studia Russica helsingiensia et Tartuensia. Vol. 4. Tartu: Tartu UP, 1995. 143–66.
Rosenholm, Arja. “The ‘Woman Question’ of the 1860s and the Ambiguity of the ‘Learned Woman.’” In Gender and Russian Literature: New Perspectives. Ed. and trans. Rosalind Marsh. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. 112–28.
Rosenholm, Arja. “Writing the Self: Creativity and the Female Author: Nadezhda Dmitrievna Khvoshchinskaya (1824–1889).” In Gender Restructuring in Russian Studies. Ed. Marianne Liljeström, Eila Mäntysaari, and Rosenholm. Slavica Tamperensia 2. Tampere, 1993. 193–208.
Rosenholm, Arja, and Hilde Hoogenboom, comp. “Ia zhivu ot pochty do pochty…”: Iz perepiski Nadezhdy Dmitrievny Khvoshchinskoi. FrauenLiteraturGeschichte 14. Fichtenwalde: F. K. Göpfert, 2001.
Rosenholm, Arja, and Irina Savkina. “‘How Women Should Write’: Russian Women’s Writing in the Nineteenth Century.” In Women in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Lives and Culture. Ed. Wendy Rosslyn and Alessandra Tosi. Open Book Publishers, 2012. 161–208. On N. Khvoshchinskaia see especially pp. 182–89.
Rosneck, Karen. “An Unfaithful Narrative: The Success and Failure of Justice in Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia’s Short Story ‘V sude.’” South Atlantic Review 73.1 (2008): 87–105.
Rosneck, Karen. Introduction to The Boarding-School Girl, by Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia, trans. Rosneck. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 2000. ix–xxx.
Rosneck, Karen. Understanding Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia’s Short Story Collection An Album: Groups and Portraits: The Literary Innovations of a Nineteenth-Century Russian Writer. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen P, 2010. 206 pp.
Sevast’ianova, A. A., and D. Iu. Filippov. “Novye materialy ob istorii sem’i Khvoshchinskikh v Riazani.” In Istoriia dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii: Mysl’, sobytiia, liudi: Sbornik nauchnykh rabot kafedry drevnei i srednevekovoi istorii Otechestva. Ed. N. N. Repin. Ryazan: Riaz. gos. ped. un-t im. S. A. Esenina, 2003. 111–20. About the writers’ father’s time as a civil servant and entrepreneur: accused of embezzlement after he retires from service in 1832, his property is sequestered until 1844 as the legal process drags on, and he is unable to fulfill a government contract, leading to his ruin. Includes three letters from Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia to her mother from May–July 1851.
Solomon, Karla Thomas. “Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia, (1824–1889).” In Russian Woman Writers. Ed. Christine D. Tomei. New York: Garland, 1999. 261–83.
Stroganova, E. N. “F. M. Dostoevskii i N. D. Khvoshchinskaia.” In Dostoevskii v dialoge s russkoi i mirovoi kul’turoi. Obrazy Rossii i Zapada. Poetika Dostoevskogo. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii “F. M. Dostoevskii v dialoge kul’tur.” Kolomna: Kolomenskii gos. ped. institut, 2009. 152–54.
Stroganova, E. N. “I. A. Goncharov i N. D. Khvoshchinskaia.” In Oblomov: Konstanty i peremennye: Sbornik nauchnykh statei. St. Petersburg, 2011. 156–64.
Stroganova, E. N. “K 200-letiiu Nadezhdy Dmitrievny Khvoshchinskoi: O date rozhdeniia pisatel’nitsy.” Kul’tura i tekst 45.2 (2021): 113–20. doi: 10.37386/2305–4077–2021–2–113-120.
Stroganova, E. N. Klassiki i sovremennitsy: Gendernye realii v istorii russkoi literatury XIX veka. Moscow: Litfakt, 2019.
Stroganova, E. N. “M. E. Saltykov i N. D. Khvoshchinskaia: Fakty i interpretatsii.” Shchedrinskii sbornik 3 (2009): [page numbers unknown].
Stroganova, E. N. “N. D. Khvoshchinskaia o N. A. Nekrasove: K voprosu o prizhiznennoi reputatsii poeta.” In Poeziia filologii, filologiia poezii: Sbornik po materialam konferentsii, posviashchennoi A. A. Iliushinu, kotoromu 12 febralia 2018 goda ispolnilos’ by 78 let. Vol. 2. Tver: A. N. Kondrat’ev, 2019. 146–52.
Stroganova, E. N. “Po povodu neudobnogo psevdonima: Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia, ona zhe V. Krestovskii.” In Dolg i liubov’: Sbornik filologicheskikh rabot v chest’ 65-letiia professora M. V. Mikhailovoi. Stat’i. Retsenzii. Esse. Publikatsii. Moscow: Krug”, 2011. 173–82. Reprinted in Klassiki i sovremennitsy: Gendernye realii v istorii russkoi literatury, by Stroganova. Moscow: Litfakt, 2019. 54–62.
Stroganova, E. N. “Portret pisatel’nitsy v nekrologe: Otkliki na smert’ N. D. Khvoshchinskoi.” Russkaia literatura 3 (2016): 182–88. Reprinted in Klassiki i sovremennitsy: Gendernye realii v istorii russkoi literatury XIX veka, by Stroganova. Moscow: Litfakt, 2019. 63–76.
Stroganova, E. N. “‘Prakh i sueta’: Zhenskoe tvorchestvo v otsenkakh Nadezhdy Khvoshchinskoi i ee sovremennits.” In Zhenskii vyzov: Russkie pisatel’nitsy XIX – nachala XX veka. Ed. Stroganova and E. Shore. Tver’: Lidiia Print, 2006. 120–137.
Stroganova, E. N. “‘Svetoch’. Neopublikovannyi otklik na smert’ N. D. Khvoshchinskoi.” Literaturnyi fakt 3 (2023): 91–107. doi: 10.22455/2541-8297-2023-29-91-107.
Tyminskii, A. I. “Poetika prozy N. D. Khvoshchinskoi.” Dissertation. Moscow, 1997.
Zirin, Mary F. “Women’s Prose Fiction in the Age of Realism.” In Women Writers in Russian Literature. Ed. Toby W. Clyman and Diana Greene. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 1994. 77–94. On N. Khvoshchinskaia see especially pp. 86–88.
Pre-1917 reviews and critical articles, arranged chronologically
(If there is triangle icon, you can expand for a summary.)
1851
[Druzhinin, A. V.] “Pis’ma inogorodnogo podpischika v redaktsiiu Sovremennika o russkoi zhurnalistike. XXII. — Dekabr’ 1850.” Sovremennik 25 (1851): otd. 6, pp. 82–106. Reprinted in Sobranie sochinenii A. V. Druzhinina. Vol. 6. St. Petersburg: Tip. Imperatorskoi akademii nauk, 1865. 436–59. On Khvoshchinskaia’s Sel’skii uchitel’ see pp. 438–41 (84–87 in original 1851 publication). Extremely positive review on aesthetic and philosophical grounds; Druzhinin says Khvoshchinskaia writes for the few, since not all readers can appreciate her subtle psychological analysis. He advises her to keep the same central character and write more about him.
1852
“Sovremennye zametki: Zametki i razmyshleniia novogo poeta po povodu russkoi zhurnalistiki.” Sovremennik 35.9 (1852): 89–109.
Dated August 1852 at beginning, 30 August at end of text. See pp. 103–07 on Khvoshchinskaia’s prose and poetry. Starting on p. 103, the author mentions Khvoshchinskaia’s poetry and “V. Krestovskii’s” prose juxtaposed in a way that seems to give away the identity of the writer behind the pseudonym without doing so explicitly. On p. 105 the author refers to “Mr. Krestovskii, or the person using this pseudonym.” Еще год is treated as a promising, though unremarkable prose work by a writer “not without talent and with a fairly good sense for language.” The poems are also called “not bad,” but Khvoshchinskaia is criticized for being too free with rhyme. The idea that Khvoshchinskaia’s works (or Shcherbina’s) could cause issues of Otechestvennye zapiski to be passed from person to person, as Lermontov’s poems once had, is treated as absurd exaggeration.1853
Grigor’ev, Apollon. “Russkaia iziashchnaia literatura v 1852 godu.” Moskvitianin 1 (1853): otd. 5, pp. 1–64. Reprinted in Sochineniia Apollona Grigor’eva. Vol. 1. St. Petersburg: Tip. Tovarishchestva “Obshchestvennaia pol’za,” 1876. 45–107. On Khvoshchinskaia’s poetry see pp. 51–52 of book, p. 8 of journal. Grigor’ev classifies her as a follower of Lermontov, who is talented and intelligent, but whose sad themes are untimely and borrowed from others. On Krestovskii’s prose (Grigor’ev does not seem to know they are the same person, and even wonders if there are two separate prose Krestovskiis publishing in Otechestvennye zapiski and Panteon) see p. 78 in book, pp. 34–35 in journal. He quotes and agrees with an earlier favorable review in Moskvitianin.
1854
“Derevenskii sluchai. Povest’ v stikhakh N. D. Khvoshchinskoi. SPb., 1853.” Sovremennik 1 (1854): 7–10. Reprinted in N. A. Nekrasov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem (Leningrad/St. Petersburg: 1981–2000): 12.2: 167–70. (text at lib.ru)
Unsigned. Sometimes attributed to Nekrasov and included under Dubia in his collected works.
Nekrasov, N. A. “Damskii al’bom.” In Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem (Leningrad/St. Petersburg: 1981–2000). 11.2: 100–12.
Unsigned, but attributed to Nekrasov. First published in the January 1854 issue of Sovremennik. Written in the form of a supposed letter to the editor of Sovremennik. On p. 103 the author remarks in passing that “in one line of Maikov’s [Анакреон] there is more poetry than in Miss Khvoshchinskaia’s entire thousand-line poem [Деревенский случай],” lamenting that Otechestvennye zapiski had praised Khvoshchinskaia and ignored Maikov’s 16-line poem.“Zametki i razmyshleniia Novogo Poeta po povodu russkoi zhurnalistiki.” Sovremennik 46.7 (1854): 62–81.
See pp. 78–80 on Испытание. The author says “the author of the novella A Trial undoubtedly belongs to the best belletristic talents in our literature” and promises to return to the work in the future.1856
Nekrasov, N. A. “Zametki o zhurnalakh za mart 1856.” In Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem (Leningrad/St. Petersburg: Nauka 1981–2000). 11.2: 239–53. (passage about Khvoshchinskaia at lib.ru)
On Khvoshchinskaia’s The Last Act of the Comedy see pp. 244–47. First published in the April 1856 issue of Sovremennik. Unsigned, but attributed to Nekrasov based on textual evidence and absence of evidence for other authors. The author refers to “V. Krestovskii” (Khvoshchinskaia’s masculine pseudonym), but immediately explains that it is the pseudonym of a woman author and starts calling her “Miss Krestovskaia” (г-жа Крестовская).1858
Grigor’ev, Apollon. “Kriticheskii vzgliad na osnovy, znachenie i priemy sovremennoi kritiki iskusstva.” Biblioteka dlia chteniia 1 (1858): 1–42. Reprinted in Sochineniia Apollona Grigor’eva. Vol. 1. St. Petersburg: Tip. Tovarishchestva “Obshchestvennaia pol’za,” 1876. 191–229. Krestovskii is mentioned on a footnote on pp. 27–28 of journal (p. 215 of book) as an example of a kind of writing based entirely on otritsanie and otpor, whose purpose is to clear away what is rotten and obsolete. Neither following the demands of aesthetic criticism nor creating something innovative and therefore strange, Krestovskii writes pieces (particularly Frazy) that are clearly made and not born, however honest and noble the idea behind them might be.
1859
Grigor’ev, Apollon. “I. S. Turgenev i ego deiatel’nost’ po povodu romana ‘Dvorianskoe gnezdo’ (Sovremennik, 1859 g., № 1). Stat’ia vtoraia.” Russkoe slovo 5 (1859): 20–41. On pp. 36–37 Grigor’ev expands on his critique of Frazy made in a footnote of his 1858 article. He contrasts Krestovskii to Pisemskii and remarks on critics’ different reactions to their similar negative portrayals of emancipated women (tolerance of Krestovskii’s, anger about Pisemskii’s). Krestovskii knows high society women better and can imitate their speech better than Pisemskii, but this isn’t what’s important. Krestovskii is doing not free art but Juvenalian satire (indignatio fecit versum), which has the ironic effect of making the reader mad at the author for attacking what deserves to be attacked.
“O sobranii sochinenii. Povesti i romany V. Krestovskogo. Pb., 1859.” Otechestvennye zapiski № 6 (1859): [pages include p. 106, cited in Krenzholek 1991].
Pisarev, D. “Bratets. V. Krestovskogo (‘O. Z.’, 1858 g., oktiabr’).” Rassvet 1 (1859): [Pages include 41–44]. Reprinted in Sochineniia D. I. Pisareva. Vol. 1. St. Petersburg: Tip. A. G. Farbera, 1903. 22–26.
1861
Krylov, R. Review of In Hope of Something Better. Moskovskii vestnik 1 (1861): 7–14.
Miliukov, A. P. “Mertvye dushi bol’shogo sveta (‘V ozhidanii luchshego’, roman V. Krestovskogo).” Svetoch 2 (1861). Reprinted in Otgoloski na literaturnye i obshchestvennye iavleniia: Kriticheskie ocherki (St. Petersburg: Tip. F. S. Sushchinskogo, 1875): 58–81. Summary of review in Stroganova 2011: “We find a comparison of Khvoshchinskaia and Goncharov in A. P. Miliukov’s article about her novel In Hope of Something Better, which was enthusiastically received by many readers. Miliukov was not entirely favorable in his evaluation of the artistic side of the novel, declaring that it lagged behind not only Gogol, ‘but even Goncharov and Turgenev.’ But Khvoshchinskaia’s very decision to depict the world of society, which was insufficiently investigated in literature, and ‘the author’s subtle, calmly ironic’ attitude toward the characters gave the critic reason to declare that the novel had ‘an incomparably greater significance’ than Oblomov or On the Eve. Such are the paradoxes of seeing things up close, of the direct reception of literary works by their contemporaries” (162).
Popov, V. “V ozhidanii luchshego. Roman V. Krestovskogo. Moskva. 2. ch. 1861.” Russkoe slovo 3 (1861): 81–89.
Tur, E. “Po povodu romana V. Krestovskogo — V ozhidanii luchshego.” Russkaia rech’ № 12 (1861): 181–86.
1862
Review of In Hope of Something Better. Russkaia rech’ 1 (1862).
1863
S. D. [P. D. Boborykin]. “Skromnoe imia. Za stenoi. Rasskaz V. Krestovskogo (Ot. zap. 1862 g. Oktiabr’).” Biblioteka dlia chteniia 2 (1863): 26–42.
Saltykov-Shchedrin, M. E. “‘Moia sud’ba’ M. Kamskoi. Moskva 1863 g.¨ Sovremennik № 4 (1864): 258–61.
Summary: Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot are talented, but “in their eyes life is a knot where every thread is tangled, and not by chance or through certain, sometimes quite dismaying, conditions, but artificially, with forethought, precisely so that people who get caught in this knot should have the pleasure of untangling it” (260). Since Russian society is still underdeveloped, it lacks the polished hypocrisy of Western Europe that makes such novels possible. Kamskaia’s novel is like a bad version of Brontë or Eliot, who are at least talented. It is perhaps because in Russian society there is “every sort of crudeness and the most intolerable ignorance, but very little hypocrisy” that Krestovskii, the author of В ожидании лучшего, “a woman writer very talented in her own right… but constantly lingering on the ground of psychological subtleties in her works, has here never enjoyed the success that belonged to her by right of talent, but has managed to acquire merely a respectable level of fame” (260). According to Karen Rosneck, “Khvoshchinskaia first met Saltykov when he was vice governor in Ryazan from 1858 to 1860. The two later developed a close, lifelong friendship” (140). On Saltykov-Shchedrin and Khvoshchinskaia see also Goriachkina 1963, pp. 29–30, and Stroganova 2009.1868
“Dolzhnoe vnushenie (V. Krestovskogo ego literaturnym vragam).” Peterburgskaia gazeta № 139 (1868). (Was this by Khvoshchinskaia? It is cited in this 1872 bibliography of Russian literature under #2017, and the index appears to attribute it to Krestovskii-psevdonim, not Vsevolod Krestovskii.)
1870
Shelgunov, N. “Zhenskoe bezdushie (Po povodu sochinenii V. Krestovskogo, psevdonima).” Delo № 9 (1870): 1–34. (text at lib.ru) Notoriously hostile piece remembered 20 years later.
Summary: Section I. The V. Krestovskii I’m going to talk about isn’t Vsevolod Krestovskii, but a provincial woman (this is no secret, since any reader can look up her real name in Toll’s encyclopedia or Bazunov’s catalog) (1). It makes a difference where a writer writes, since writers are affected most of all by the world around them (1). A Kyrgyz writer might be the most progressive of the Kyrgyz, but if they have only once been as far as the border town of Novouzensk, then they shouldn’t write about Russia (2). Painters can find more beauty than in Paris even in the tundra, but writers need people (2). If a writer looks at the progressive horizon from the distant swamps of the provinces, it means they don’t have anything to do with this horizon; if the Prussians decided to take Paris from Berlin, that wouldn’t be a war (3). Provincial people can do some modest good in their place, but the most gifted people always come to the capital, as Belinskii came from Penza to Moscow to St. Petersburg, where he did his best work (3–4). People who don’t strive to get to the top but drop anchor in the provinces are second-rate people even if they are models of all the Christian virtues (4).
Section II. Russians are meek and lazy by nature; they always favor moderation and the golden mean; we are more likely to allow ourselves to be beaten than to beat others, which is virtuous, of course, but painful and unprofitable (4). Once Russian journals were full of new ideas, on the level of Western Europe, but now Russians see that period as a time of youthful extravagance, and the best journal is The Herald of Europe, which has no political line and is ideal reading for idle people; though published in St. Petersburg, it is provincial (4–5). Readers of The Herald of Europe don’t enjoy contemplating an obvious reality that makes them uncomfortable, so they seek out a different one that’s easier to digest, but they should ask the young if they want to join them in this insipid center of theirs (5). When Krestovskii, pseudonym, published Ursa Major in The Herald of Europe, it merely meant he had finally found the right banner to stand behind (6). These wretched champions of the golden mean have a mental arsenal like a messy woman’s dressing table; the bouquet of their thoughts has a bit of everything except strength and passion; they would gladly agree to take Paris from Berlin but won’t go to Paris for fear of catching cold (6–7). They probably aren’t against heaven on earth, but they want it to be prepared by someone else and given to them; they want the historical arena to be a living room full of well-dressed guests; they see no farther than the gate of their town and are incapable of seeing the connection between local and distant events; Krestovskii, as a writer of provincial daily life, is inevitably like this too (7–8).
Section III. Krestovskii is talented if by talent you mean a gift for accurate and lively description, but his roots are in the distant past, not the present (8). Krestovskii likes to analyze every impulse and feeling, and in his analysis you see the processes in someone’s psyche clearly, but you see only the immediate action of the mechanism, not the root causes that made it move (8). Krestovskii takes people apart like watches and shows us the component parts, but we can’t live by our own and others’ psychological processes alone—that’s fine for rich people (8). Krestovskii’s characters’ spiritual agonies are for idle readers and derive from the fact that the characters themselves don’t have anything better to do (8). Krestovskii is like Goncharov, and Goncharov could have signed his name under Ursa Major, though Krestovskii would hesitate before signing his name to The Precipice, since Mark Volokhov is too unkempt for provincial society (8–9). In Krestovskii even vice goes about in kid gloves, and his works are safe reading for boarding school girls (9). Both Goncharov and Krestovskii waste their talent on trifles; while Goncharov positively attacks the young generation and their cause, Krestovskii does this by negative means, and does not openly come out for or against what is modern (9–10). Take away Krestovskii’s feminine modesty and give him masculine boldness and he could write The Precipice too (10). It is now 1870, and Krestovskii is still writing about life under serfdom in First Struggle (1869) and Ursa Major (1870); Krestovskii has failed to weigh in on the nihilists vs. realists, fathers vs. sons debates and even, although she is a woman, on the woman question (10–11). We have many women writers, but not one of them has studied the woman question and joined the arguments about it; is this not proof of woman’s inborn passivity (11)? Krestovskii is observant, but this observation is in service of self-restraint and teaching self-restraint to others; we don’t need this (11). Krestovskii is not a pro-progress idealist but a moralist who idealizes the past and wants to purify the present, not unlike the Slavophiles and Germanophiles who see their ideal in feudalism (11–12). Nothing can lead one astray as effectively as the impeccable but cautious virtue of a Krestovskii; with Goncharov’s The Precipice, at least everyone could see he was abusing his enemies, and all decent people turned their backs on him (12). Krestovskii’s kind of hidden evil should be fought against all the more forcefully; her philosophy is idiosyncratic, but it boils down to a feminine and delicate version of Tolstoyanism, which in the end preaches that the weak should be humble and submissive (12).
Section IV. Even though he is cut off from the questions of his time and has even renounced his sex, Krestovskii is a voice from Russia who has wandered his country gathering flowers; if the scent of his bouquet isn’t all that nice, it’s because he picked flowers in the swamps instead of those that grow in strong soil (12). After the fiction of the 1840s and 1860s there is nothing interesting about Krestovskii’s male characters, who may be different in the way that each brick in a hod is unique, but who cares (12–13)? If you took everyone who lived in Penza and brought them to Kaluga and vice versa, wouldn’t Penza still be Penza and Kaluga, Kaluga (13)? It’s different with female characters; we distrust male authors writing about women, like when Nikolai Solov’ev describes the pain of childbirth, but as a woman Krestovskii is a specialist in women (13). From his earliest works you can see that Krestovskii’s heroines are content with the crumbs they have inherited; they don’t go out seeking new things to feel and have even decided that some feelings are quite unnecessary (13). Krestovskii’s provincial women are usually like Lizan’ka, Sashen’ka, and Katen’ka from “Anna Mikhailovna,” who took from their boarding school little knowledge and also the conviction that all knowledge is useless (13). On the other hand they knew the art of selecting flattering clothes and turning heads; their life passed in outfits, embroidery hoops, receiving guests, eating, going visiting, reading the same French novel for months (13–14). In the novel In Hope of Something Better Krestovskii tells us that women’s education has made them think all learning is tedious pedantry; the pleasant, undemanding teachers who didn’t want to burden their pretty heads with dry science did such a good job convincing them that science was scary and women didn’t need it that many went on believing that (14). Women’s upbringing went to prepare them for an unending and merciless struggle—not the struggle for existence, but the struggle against love (14). They had two weapons: coquetry and immobility [неподвижность] (14). Krestovskii’s well-behaved heroines never put down this immobility as a sentry never puts down his rifle; they think every man is Mark Volokhov, every city is the Caucasus, and every room, especially if you’re alone with a man, can easily turn into The Precipice (14).
Section V. Boredom hangs over the provinces like a stone cloud and explains all the cards, clothes, amateur theatricals, etc., even in the midst of hunger; some provincial women cultivate boredom like an exotic plant (15). The provincial woman has dressed up boredom in a fancy uniform and called it the aristocratic way of life, which lets one avoid petty cares and calluses on the hands (15). A provincial woman’s life is organized idleness; the only exception are women of the people, but can a novelist be interested in them (15)? The best of Krestovskii’s provincial woman characters enjoy having a soul so much that they spend all their time creating Faust-or-Mephistopheles struggles within themselves, making their lives as complicated as possible (15–16). Torn between an unsatisfied striving toward the ideal and the facts of rural life, the provincial woman is the unhappiest of creatures; helpless in her weakness, she submits to circumstances and then suffers remorse, shame, self-hate (16). Even the best aren’t much good, like Anna Mikhailovna, who after her father’s death endured all kinds of insults at her uncle’s house and for a long time did nothing more than take refuge in her sense of her own rightness (eventually she does leave) (16). A non-provincial woman might have left Semen Semenych’s house earlier, but idealism, a compulsion to seek what does not exist, makes this impossible (17). Idealism has other consequences, as in “Polina” [apparently this means In Hope of Something Better — EM], where a young woman thinks she shouldn’t have to work because she’s pretty while her aristocratic acquaintances are less clever than her and rely on padded corsets (17). The provincial woman’s lot is egoism: kept between four walls, she does not care about the lot of anyone who lives outside those walls (17–18). Krestovskii goes after “provincial aristocratism” in every single work (albeit with pinpricks, not bayonets) and shows us why provincial women are so powerless: their education and childhood impressions ruin much, but beyond this watch idly as their fathers, husbands, and brothers work, expecting to be respected, cared for, and spoiled as if this were a quitrent men owed them, as in “Old Sorrow” (18). Maybe all this disappeared with serfdom? Who knows, Krestovskii doesn’t say (18–19). Sure, the provinces have changed in ten years, but not meaningfully: now the provincial woman plays at liberalism instead of playing at lofty feelings, but this is still just a toy, and self-sufficiency, freedom, independence, and labor are just dolls provincial women show themselves in the mirror and admire from afar (19).
Section VI. Provincial women’s education is a product of the wisdom of the ages, and the wisdom of the ages knew what it was preparing them for: marriage, the one route to full personhood for a Russian provincial woman (19–20). In the provinces even men don’t talk about serious questions (except perhaps a few seminarians or taciturn young people), and women are focused on the main goal of life: find a husband, ideally who is in government service with as few responsibilities and as high a salary as possible; she is certain that France would be calmer if French women attended to their feminine duties as assiduously as she does (20–21). Some women, like Polina in In Hope of Something Better, are more ambitious and want to marry a count (21). If marriage is the limit of a provincial woman’s ambitions, it is clear how important it is to guard against love; there is no contradiction here, as the goal is to guard one’s reputation, since no one is going to marry an incautious girl (21). Girls remember their mother’s admonition: first get him to propose, then you can fall in love; otherwise the specter of Mark Volokhov is everywhere; but is Mark Volokhov so new if Vera’s grandmother already knew about the danger of the “precipice” (21–22)?
Section VII.
1871
Petrov, K. Kurs istorii russkoi literatury. 7th ed. St. Petersburg: Tip. Morskogo ministerstva, 1871. On Khvoshchinskaia see pp. 317–18. Khvoshchinskaia is grouped with Zhadovskaia among women writers who took an interest in the woman question but were not as progressive as Marko Vovchok, L. A. Ozhigina, or Tsebrikova, instead continuing on lines set by Turgenev and Goncharov. She is described as writing about high society with knowledgeable but overly gentle (!) satire. The main work analyzed is In Hope of Something Better (1860). Iv. Vesen’ev (Sofiia Khvoshchinskaia) is briefly mentioned.
1872
Skabichevskii, A. M. “Volny russkogo progressa. ‘Romany i povesti’ V. Krestovskogo (psevdonim), 8 tomov. Spb. 1859 g. ‘Bol’shaia Medveditsa’, roman V. Krestovskogo (psevdonim) 1 t. Spb. 1872 g.” Otechestvennye zapiski № 1 (1872): 1–41.
1873
Gerbel’, Nik. Vas. Khrestomatiia dlia vsekh: Russkie poety v biografiiakh i obraztsakh. St. Petersburg: Tip. imp. Akad. nauk, 1873. On Khvoshchinskaia see pp. 580–83.
1875
Skabichevskii, A. M. “Nasha sovremennaia bezzavetnost’. ‘Al’bom — gruppy i portrety’. Khvoshchinskoi. (Sm. ‘Vestnik Evropy’ № 12, 1874 g., i №№ 2 i 10, 1875 g.).” In Sochineniia A. Skabichevskogo: Kriticheskie etiudy, publitsisticheskie ocherki, literaturnye kharakteristiki. 2 vols. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. St. Petersburg: Izdanie F. Pavlenkova, 1895. 69–102.
1878
Markov, Vasilii. “Mishurnaia filantropiia. ‘V glushi’. Roman Marka-Vovchok. Chast’ vtoraia (‘Otech. Zapiski’, avgust).” In Na-vstrechu, ocherki i stikhotvoreniia. St. Petersburg: Tip. i Lit. A. E. Landau, 1878. 202–09.
Article probably first published in 1875. Favorably compares “Miss Krestovskaia’s” ideas and talent to Marko Vovchok’s, but says Krestovskaia’s ideas are not especially clear-cut, as ”in them is felt a certain mixture of the romanticism of the 40s with the realist/progressive ideas of the 60s” (203).
Markov, Vasilii. “Lichnaia volia.” In Na-vstrechu, ocherki i stikhotvoreniia. St. Petersburg: Tip. i Lit. A. E. Landau, 1878. 209–18.
Article probably first published in 1875. See pp. 214–18 on “Ridneva” with a comparison to Ursa Major.
Markov, Vasilii. “Chelovecheskaia lichnost’ v iskusstve: ‘Dolgo li?..’ Povest’ P. Boborykina.” In Na-vstrechu, ocherki i stikhotvoreniia. St. Petersburg: Tip. i Lit. A. E. Landau, 1878. 239–48.
On Khvoshchinskaia see p. 246.
Mikhailovskii, N. K. “Al’bom. Gruppy i portrety. V. Krestovskogo (psevdonim). Spb. 1879 g.” Otechestvennye zapiski 243, № 3 (1879): 80–85. Reprinted here.
Summary:V. Krestovskii-pseudonym’s recent book Album gives the impression of a talented musician playing their instrument with no audience present, not afraid of repeating variations on a beloved theme and sometimes stopping just where an audience would want more (80). There is something at once touching and severe in these short stories by the woman writer who uses the pseudonym V. Krestovskii (80). Music and literature are different: music can never achieve the power and specificity of the word, and Robinson Crusoe on his island probably would have sung and played if he had instruments, but he definitely wouldn’t write novellas (80–81). Writers need an audience (81). We don’t want to imply that the respected author of Album is like a poet singing about the nightingale and the rose (81). Writers are hungry for applause, and the poet who makes a show of scorning the mob (Pushkin’s “The Poet and the Mob” is quoted here), and is indifferent to the mob’s well-being, needs the mob perhaps more than others (81). We can’t know what was in the mind of the author of Album, but she produces the opposite impression, that of a writer indifferent to applause who does care about the welfare of the mob (81). She wasn’t trying to please anyone: the plots are flimsy or nonexistent, the same themes are repeated over and over, there are no “heroes,” it is sketch-like work; but once you pick up Album you won’t put it down, because the hand of a master is obvious in every careless brushstroke (81). A certain Aiarov (we don’t know who he is) learns that a certain Novosedov in the town of N. has lost his wife, and he goes there almost mechanically, since he loved and still loves the dead woman (81). He decides to have a picture of her grave taken and goes to a photographer, but he slightly knows the photographer, who is the kind of person that makes Aiarov unwilling to tell him what he wants; while there, he meets another old acquaintance, Mme Begusheva, and her daughter (81–82). Aiarov is awash in vulgar wit and frivolous talk about serious things (Nekrasov’s “Knight for an Hour” is quoted here); he is the only one thinking about the dead woman; he asks the photographer for her picture and leaves (82). This is the plot of “At the Photographer’s,” which we started with because it’s first in the book, but all the stories are constructed on the same principles: we start with the private, intimate concerns of an ordinary person who is merely sketched with little detail, and then it turns out that the center of gravity of the story is not these intimate concerns, but the crushing ennui or sorrow or loneliness felt in a crowd of those idly talking and (yes, sometimes literally) washing their hands in blood (82). A young man, Kopylov, who is madly in love with his wife, learns that she is cheating on him for money; he kills her lover and is sentenced to 20 years’ hard labor; this is the plot of “In the Courtroom” (82). Again, the point is not this well-worn plot, but the crowd surrounding Kopylov, washing their hands in his blood; the murder happens offstage, and you feel sympathy for Kopylov less for the tragic story of his love than for his terrible aloneness (82–83). In “Ridneva” a young woman by that name dies by suicide; she is not a heroine, and indeed she is a completely frivolous woman, which the author hides from neither herself nor her readers (83). This plot is perhaps not so common as the one before, but it still isn’t fashionable (83). Ridneva suffers many blows of fate, including many trivial setbacks that only such a frivolous woman could have; we feel sympathy for her because the author has artfully put her in the same position of being isolated in the middle of a morally bankrupt crowd, and she, for all her faults, is a sincere, living human being (83). All of Album is just variations on the theme of being isolated amid the crowd, always with the structure of people who were once close but then lost track of each other being brought back together by fate amid changed circumstances (83). They are not complete strangers, and this is the problem: it might be unpleasant to be alone in a crowd of people who have nothing to do with you, but it’s awful to be alone in a crowd of people you once shared joys and sorrows with (83). The author doesn’t do anything fancy to put people in this situation—more than once, a character returns to their hometown and has chance meetings with former acquaintances—but despite this monotony, or even because of it, this set of works turns into something great, broad in its scope, subtle in its execution, oppressive in the impression it leaves (83). Apostates stand out in the crowd (Nekrasov’s “Self-satisfied talkers” is quoted) (83–84). In general it’s good if bad people don’t pollute good ideas by even verbally pretending to believe in them, but if you personally knew someone who once claimed to believe in good things and now mocks you for continuing to believe in “noble words,” it’s painful, and this is something several characters in Album must endure (84). By focusing on apostates, the author of Album makes it clear exactly what generation her lonely people belong to (84). The narrator of “Lucky People” says “people talk about ‘men of the forties’ and ‘men of the sixties’; between them there is a gap: that is my generation, people my age” (84). The description of this generation makes it clear that their ideals were a bit hazy and dreamy, but the Stebloviches (“Between Friends”) and Kubetskiis (“Lucky People”) who mock the corresponding “noble words” do more than fall short of these vague ideals (84). They put themselves forward as a breed of “new men,” ones who are practical and sober, but their beliefs are no newer than people’s respect for their own bellies (84). In such company, it’s not just the generation in between the 40s and the 60s that feels isolated, but all decent people irrespective of age (84). This means that the author’s “groups and portraits” have an even broader meaning than she gives them (84). But isolation is possible without apostates; in the cases of Kopylov and Ridneva, apostates played no role or only a small one (84–85). Here we see the kind of mutual misunderstanding that makes people coldly, or with feigned sympathy, poke around in their fellows’ spiritual wounds without realizing it is painful (85). All this adds up to such a terrible picture of universal isolation and separation that the unhappy idealist’s Alekseev’s cry, which serves as the final chord resolving Album, is easy to understand (85). It is clear that no theoretical ideals or moral teaching can bring people together; only life and events can do this the way a storm gathers a dispersed herd of sheep into one bunch (85).
Boborykin, P. D. “Belletristy staroi shkoly. V. Krestovskii (psevdonim). Al’bom. Gruppy i portrety V. Krestovskogo (psevdonima), Spb. 1879. Svidanie — Rasskaz (Otechestvennye Zapiski, fevral’, 1879).” Slovo № 7, otd. 2 (1879): 1–52. Signed “B. D. P.” Shares issue with Ol’ga Shapir, Nadson, Goncourt, and a response to John Stuart Mill.
Summary:section I (pp. 1–4): It’s time to take a new look at the underrated writers of the 1840s and 1850s, including a woman who has been writing for over 25 years under a pseudonym that caused her to be confused with Vsevolod Krestovskii in the early 1860s and whom I will call “Miss Krestovskaia” (1). Krestovskaia is from the generation on the line between the people of the 1840s and the people of the 1860s; though she started at the same time as Dostoevskii, Grigorovich, and Druzhinin, no one thinks of her as an 1840s writer (1). Critics considered her a second-tier novelist as recently as the late 1860s, but in the 1870s she has suddenly begun being mentioned as one of our most talented writers, perhaps because of Album. Groups and Portraits (1–2). Album is not a haphazard collection; it continues the author’s best moral and aesthetic aspects; despite starting in the 1840s, she is in tune with critics of the 1870s (2). A critic [Mikhailovskii earlier in 1879—EM] compares Album to a musical improvisation where you hear both talent and depth of feeling even though the musician makes no effort to find a good theme, striking effects, or even a virtuoso performance (2). This critic says she is like a musician playing alone, without thinking of an audience; Album has random or nonexistent plots, unfinished pictures/scenes (kartiny), repetitions of the same theme and figures, sketch-like work, minor events from everyday life, a lack of “heroes”; it is as if the author was not trying to make anyone like her or win anyone over, yet few will be able to put down Album once they pick it up (3). The critic says the stories are about the sorrow of being alone in a crowd, and many repeat the same simple setup: a lonely person returns to their hometown, meets old acquaintances, but feels only superficially connected to them; still, the stories give one the feeling of something big, broad in its conception, subtle in its execution, and sorrowfully oppressive in the impression it leaves (3–4). We find it hard to disagree with the critic’s basic points, though what he says seems incomplete to us; we mention it here to show 1) how a journal that recently considered Miss Krestovskaia a second-rate talent now admires her talent as a writer, not just the positions she takes, and 2) how the tone of the stories in Album has conquered the generation to whom this critic apparently belongs: 1870s readers like how she can create in each reader a genuine spiritual pain at the thought of the gulf between good people and the hypocritical cultured crowd (4).
section II (pp. 4–9): on a recent argument in Slovo and Russkie Vedomosti about the nature of literary talent, including a bit about Edgar Allen Poe
section III (pp. 10–15): “At the Photographer’s” is mentioned; Russian criticism has paid insufficient attention to form; on what makes Miss Krestovskaia’s prose so good
section IV (pp. 15–20): on “Ridneva”; if not for the author’s signature, no one with a man’s prejudices would have thought it was written by a woman’s pen; in the past Miss Krestovskaia overused authorial intrusions, but not anymore
section V (pp. 20–28): “Ridneva” is “the most talented and brilliant” of the stories in Album, but “In the Courtroom” also contains excellent examples of her present manner
section VI (pp. 28–33): it is harder for women to master objective techniques, since in addition to their organic inclinations, they have to put too much effort into obtaining human rights; this is why Miss Krestovskaia’s dialogue is insufficiently typical and she too often has the author speak directly (28)
section VII (pp. 33–39): Now we’ll look at the author’s ability to depict living people (types, characters, personalities) (33–34). Even before Album there was proof Miss Krestovskaia was good at creating characters and types, as in In Hope of Something Better and Ursa Major (33–34). In recent years Miss Krestovskaia has prioritized motifs over people; she depicts people to the extent they are needed to illuminate her present moral theme (34). Previously her female characters were always very different from her male ones and were artistically stronger; as with women writers in Europe, Miss Krestovskaia knew women better than men (34). She focused on her male characters’ spiritual lives in the narrow sense, skipping over realistic details that were important to her contemporaries (34). Turgenev uses a similar technique, omitting details and sketching characters with a few brushstrokes, but his are clearly the strokes of a man’s brush; he knows the life of men better, as seen with Bazarov in Fathers and Sons (34). Miss Krestovskaia is nearly incapable of working with the kinds of male types favored by Goncharov and Count Tolstoi (34). In the last 10–15 years, Miss Krestovskaia has begun painting men with more accuracy and less lyricism (34). The male characters who truly exemplify the movement made up of educated Russians since the late 1850s were created by other authors, and Miss Krestovskaia at best creates male characters who are variations of already existing species (34–35). Her strength is female characters, where her knowledge is too deep for any male writer to match (35). Count Tolstoi flaunts how well he knows certain details of women’s lives, but his virtuosity cannot compare to Miss Krestovskaia’s deeper and subtler knowledge (35). No one can do the undercurrents in conversations between women like she can, as in “Behind the Wall” (35). Miss Krestovskaia has dozens if not hundreds of lifelike female characters, but here too, as with the male characters, she is prone to prioritizing a motif or theme above the creation of a type (35). A critic for whom truly real creative work must not be mixed with any personal element has the right to ask 1) does Miss Krestovskaia treat her female characters as fully real [vpolne li real’no otnositsia… k svoim zhenshchinam], and 2) what does the realism of the way she depicts people amount to (35)? Second question first (it was partially answered above): Miss Krestovskaia has long studied the private lives of women of the nobility and middle class, be they young or old, prominent or obscure, stupid or smart—studied them by living among them, not even thinking about being a writer (35). She knows the good society of the provincial capital, of Moscow, of the rural estate; to some extent she knows provincial raznochintsy, but most of all she knows the educated class of the provincial capital (36). However guilty our novelist might be of lyricism and playing the raisonneur, she still presents lots of facts and unimagined details that do not serve her theme but are valuable in themselves as reflecting life and are pleasant (36). Or these facts can go the other way and serve as material for oblichenie, for exposing vice, for protest, including exposing women’s wrongdoing (36). She is impartial to neither her positive female characters nor the negative ones, being either too severe or too sympathetic, with few in the middle (36). You can’t call her a reflexive advocate of women’s superiority over men; indeed no Russian or Western novelist has more negative female characters (36). Almost all of them are artistically strong, but they would be even better if Miss Krestovskaia were not constantly putting them on trial (36). No male Russian novelist has gone after women’s vanity, hypocrisy, lack of sympathy (sukhost’), and egoism as relentlessly as Miss Krestovskaia (36). One of her best stories, “Empty Words” (Frazy), contains the prototype of all her later depictions of female hypocrisy (36). The essence of all Miss Krestovskaia’s works is a contrast between righteous and deceptive feminine natures, with little middle ground; in Album, this contrast extends to male characters too (36). She has either predators or victims, with almost nothing in between (36). This pattern is truer than ever in Album and her latest piece, The Meeting (36–37). In “At the Photographer’s,” the victim has died, but her memory is reproduced in the contrast between two women, a mother and a daughter, to whom the author added a third woman, another victim but of a lesser sort, a fading maiden that the other two keep by them as a poor relation (37). We have already said that Miss Krestovskaia can’t keep her negative female characters speaking in a realistic way: she makes them meaner, more talkative, or even more intelligent than they would really be (37). But the negative characters often come out more vivid and lifelike than the sympathetic women, as is the case in “At the Photographer’s” (37). We see the same contrast in “Ridneva,” though the predator character, the wife of the notary Eshetskii, only appears episodically (37). And perhaps the heroine of this story is the simplest and most real of all: she is neither victim nor predator, but a flesh-and-blood product of her environment who is not subservient to a theme (37). In “Veriagin” the antinomy between female predator and victim is even more striking, with Veriagin’s mother and her ward on one side and his sister on the other (37). The best character here is the mother, though she only appears in flashbacks and authorial digressions; the positive young woman is much less lifelike, and the mean sister is more a collection of details and set phrases than a living being (37). In “Among Friends” there is no contrast between the women: Tenitsyn’s mother and wife are both practical egoists (37). We see the same priorities: these characters are needed for a certain theme, and the realism of details fails to make them lifelike (37). The contrast in The Meeting is yet more striking and artistically better (37). How mercilessly the author exposes her heroine, if you can call that old maid who has finally found a suitable husband a heroine (37). Nothing is left out: we see her living arrangements, her toilette, the way her thoughts are directed toward the cult of her own comfort, her own feminine predatoriness (37). The victim is less lifelike, but the device is the same; it is as if Miss Krestovskaia was doomed to construct her works this way in recent years (37). Her female characters would have been immeasurably more unified and artistic if they had not been made to defend a particular theme (37). All these new stories have ten or so female characters, and out of all of them only Ridneva feels taken from life, without any ulterior motive on the part of the oblichitel’ and moralist, and even she is cut up into a series of separate moments (37–38). In Album plus the similar The Meeting, these same authorial idiosyncrasies extend to the male characters too: there are victims and predators (38). But the male characters remain sketches, drawings, not portraits in oil; they are not a tenth as individual and distinctive as the female characters (38). The main character in “At the Photographer’s” is overly generic, and opposite him the photographer, a “contrary commonplace,” as Bazarov would say, feeds him the predator’s standard lines (38). The main character of “In the Courtroom” is also made up of motifs and is not painted in a lifelike way (38). His predator wife is better (though the reader sees little of her directly, the image of her is completed by some well-handled information from provincial gossips), but all in all the husband is too noble and direct, and the wife elicits too much antipathy, for this study to feel true (38). We don’t see full male portraits in “Ridneva” either, but here the outlines of men fit well with the overall mood of the provincial capital; they are masterfully brought out through the purely personal feelings of a young woman (38). After this we have three consecutive stories where the principal characters are men (38). “Veriagin” is an artfully, intelligently, even brilliantly done study, but it remains a “study”; it’s not like a complete genre painting, but sooner a scheme into which the novelist inserted her moral protest (38). Veriagin’s backstory is full of effective and stylistically unified details, but when the final version of Veriagin the careerist comes to the provincial capital, he has again transformed into a set of isolated feelings and conversations, into a motif (38). The author juxtaposes him briefly to a sympathetic female character, and this young woman, though treated with too much sympathy, nevertheless is a more vivid creation than Veriagin himself (38). And then the predators and victims of three stories (two in Album plus The Meeting) are merely two themes, the same type cast repeatedly, not even variations but identical (38–39). It is the same motif divided into two antinomies (39). The traveler Odoev speaks and feels exactly like the author in passages of “Lucky People,” and on the other side of the ledger are three careerist predators, one called Steblovich, one Kubetskii, and the other Altasov (39). The first two are lawyers, the last a writer, but they share the same image, the same conversations, the same practical philosophy, and worst of all, the author has the same attitude of protest toward these characters, who are not living people but composite sketches (39). We see little of them; they are brought out just to say or do reprehensible things in front of us (39). This isn’t enough; we should have seen these people as they live day to day, not in a single concentrated story told by a not impartial author, but fully and completely (39). The best of them is Altasov from The Meeting: he is newer and fresher; Steblovich and Kubetskii are purely superficial figures, who are painted quite artfully but suffer from too great a dose of the author’s attitude toward them (even in the way they talk), and moreover they are too similar to each other (39).
section VIII (pp. 39–46): Miss Krestovskaia constantly writes about provincial towns, either not drawn to directly observe other spheres (though she obviously has the talent to observe any sphere) or not easily able to follow where a man can effortlessly go (39–40)
section IX (pp. 46–52): women’s writing, at least Miss Krestovskaia’s, is more autobiographical than men’s; example from “The Fortunate People” (46–47). Unlike George Sand, Miss Krestovskaia is often harsher to female characters than male ones (50). Miss Krestovskaia’s literary talents have developed so much in recent years that she still has it in her to write a few pieces taken from life that combine her old note of lyric protest with new work on the objective manner; this is surely the wish of all who believe that there is not another writer like Miss Krestovskaia even in Western Europe, with the exception of George Elliot (52).
Mikhailovskii, N. K. “Eksperimental’nyi roman: ‘Parizhskie pis’ma’, E. Zola (‘Vestnik Evropy’). — ‘Brat’ia Zemganno’. Roman Edm. Gonkura (‘Slovo’). — ‘Bariton’. Roman V. Krestovskogo (psevdonim). SPb. 1879.” In N. K. Mikhailovskii, Sochinenii, vol. 6 (St. Petersburg: Izd. El. Zauer, 1885): 1–31. Dated September 1879 at end of text. On Khvoshchinskaia’s The Baritone see pp. 28–31. Mikhailovskii calls The Baritone a less than brilliant work and complains that it overly idealizes the seminary.
[Lesevich, V. V.] “Pervaia bor’ba. (Iz zapisok) V. Krestovskogo (psevdonim). Spb. 1879.” Otechestvennye zapiski 11 (1879): 44–49. (text at lib.ru)
1880
Nikitin, P. [Petr Nikitich Tkachev]. “Gnilye korni.” Part one: Delo № 2 (1880): 315–44. Part two: Delo № 3 (1880): 283–324. Discusses Недавнее, В ожидании лучшего, Первая борьба, Баритон per subtitle of article.
Summary of part 1: The author who hides behind the pseudonym of the uhlan scribbler V. Krestovskii but has nothing in common with him has long enjoyed a not brilliant, but even and consistent level of success (315). Everyone tacitly acknowledges his talent, and everyone, including critics, journals, and readers of every political persuasion, likes his works; no one loves or hates them (315–16). He has many friends who admire him not because he is an exceptional talent or a useful social activist, but because he is “a good person it’s nice to spend time with” (316). You’ve probably met good people like these who are good in that they don’t force you to question your worldview—such a person is a mediocrity, but an honest and sincere one (316). This explanation of Mr. Krestovskii’s success must seem ridiculous to the respectable critics who like to lament the decline of aesthetic criticism (317). They believe a writer who is widely read must be talented to some degree, and they think a critic’s job is to measure the degree and dimensions of that talent, not this people-just-like-him-because-he-comes-off-as-a-good-person stuff (317). I’d go along and do some measuring to please them, but I have no idea what yardstick to use for Mr. Krestovskii, the author of Recent Times, Ursa Major, Album, The Baritone, etc. (317). Try measuring his talent with the yardsticks of classicism, romanticism, naturalism, or realism, and you’ll find that it’s microscopic (318). Even the eclectic aesthete who mixes these schools’ theories together won’t find much to like (318). Some aesthetes believe that a representation of reality can excite aesthetic pleasure only when it shows reality in its most generalized and typical form; others hold that it must on the contrary show us a rude and unmediated reality in all its gritty detail; but you can’t find either thing in Mr. Krestovskii’s novels (318). His characters are either maximally ordinary people, or, when their ordinariness needs to be muted, human mannequins; none of them are a general type of anything, and you don’t remember them when you’re done reading the novel, just as you don’t remember this kind of person after you meet them in real life (318–19).
1883
E[katerina] N[ekrasova]. “Bol’shaia medveditsa. Roman v piati chastiakh. Krestovskogo (psevdonim). Dva toma. Izdanie tret’e, vnov’ peresmotrennoe avtorom. S.-Pb. Izdanie Suvorina. 1883 goda.” Russkaia mysl’ 9 (1883): 80. (text at lib.ru)
“Povesti V. Krestovskogo (psevdonim). IV. Idealy i frazy. SPb. 1884 g.” Delo 12 (1883): 44–46. (text at lib.ru)
1884
Golovin, K. “Pis’ma iz Peterburga o sovremennoi russkoi literature. III.” Rus’ 7 (1 April 1884): 55–62. After a few words about Ostrovskii’s Guilty without Guilt, Golovin discusses Khvoshchinskaia’s “A Farewell” on pp. 56–62. Attacking the story’s politics from the right, he finds it lachrymose and either unintentionally comic or a sly parody, though he thinks it actually represents the views of both the author and the entire journal National Annals. See also Golovin’s 1897 book on Russian literature.
1885
Arsen’ev, K. K. “Sovremennyi russkii roman v ego glavnykh predstaviteliakh. — I. — V. Krestovskii (psevdonim). — I–II.” Vestnik Evropy 20.1 (January 1885): 330–61. Includes “I. ‘The Provinces in Days of Old’” (331–46) and “II. A Gradually Growing Talent” (346–61). A footnote to the title says this series of articles continues previous series of articles on the contemporary novel in Germany and France published in Vestnik Evropy in 1879, 1880, and 1882. Arsen’ev wrote about other Russian novelists at other times, but this series on the main contemporary Russian novelists does not seem to have been continued under this title after the three 1885 articles on Krestovskii, which were reprinted in an 1888 collection of Arsen’ev’s literary criticism.
Arsen’ev, K. K. “Sovremennyi russkii roman v ego glavnykh predstaviteliakh. — I. — V. Krestovskii (psevdonim). — III.” Vestnik Evropy 20.2 (February 1885): 739–63. Includes “III. New Times, New and Old Songs.”
Arsen’ev, K. K. “Sovremennyi russkii roman v ego glavnykh predstaviteliakh. — I. — Krestovskii (psevdonim). — IV. — Okonchanie.” Vestnik Evropy 20.3 (March 1885): 342–69. Includes “IV. The Last Decade.”
1888
Arsen’ev, K. K. “V. Krestovskii (psevdonim).” In Kriticheskie etiudy po russkoi literature. 2 vols. St. Petersburg: Tip. M. M. Stasiulevicha, 1888. 1: 255–350. First published over three issues of Vestnik Evropy in 1885 under the title “The Contemporary Russian Novel in Its Chief Representatives. — I. — V. Krestovskii (pseudonym).” A fairly exhaustive treatment of her early and late works organized chronologically and within chronological sections by types of characters. Includes an introduction (pp. 255–56), I. The Provinces in Days of Old (256–74), II. A Gradually Growing Talent (274–91), III. New Times, New and Former Songs (291–318), IV. The Last Decade (319–43), and a conclusion that includes comparisons to Sand, Eliot, C. Brontë (343–50).
Garshin, Evgenii. “Russkaia literatura za 1886 god.” In Kriticheskie opyty, by Garshin. St. Petersburg: Tip. I. N. Skorokhodova, 1888. 103–256. On Khvoshchinskaia see pages 108 and 135. She is listed with Grigorovich, Polonskii, Maikov, Fet, Ostrovskii, Danilevskii, and Pleshcheev as talented writers who are still active but no longer have anything new to say (108). She is described as the only major writer to sign on with Severnyi vestnik in its bid to replace Otechestvennye zapiski and other departed thick journals, but her novel Obiazannosti, still in progress, is said to be “thus far remarkable only for its unusually pale and indistinct images and personalities, the not entirely natural situations of its cast of characters, and perhaps it will be only at the end of the work that the author will reveal the full strength of her true talent” (135).
“Obiazannosti. Roman V. Krestovskogo (psevdonim). Spb., 1888 g. Izd. A. S. Suvorina. Tsena 1 r. 25 k.” Russkaia mysl’ 3 (1888): 111–13. (text at lib.ru)
Khvoshchinskaia dies in June 1889
1889Chuiko, V. V. “Krestovskii-psevdonim (Kriticheskii ocherk).” Nabliudatel’ (August 1889): 37–60.
Summary of section 1 (pp. 37–40): Khvoshchinskaia is always called the Russian George Sand or the Russian George Eliot, but this is silly, since generations of Russians know Khvoshchinskaia’s works well and those of Sand and Eliot incompletely. Now, in 1889, no one reads Sand (a phenomenon of the 1840s) or Eliot (a phenomenon of the 1860s). Khvoshchinskaia is not political like Sand or religious/philosophical like Eliot. In this she is typical of the Russian tradition of Dostoevskii, Turgenev, and Lev Tolstoi, who wrote on social but not political themes and did not express consistent philosophical systems in their fiction. The Russian mind in general dislikes philosophy with its abstractions; the exceptions that prove the rule (Chaadaev, the Kireevskiis, Gertsen, Ap. Grigor’ev) merely followed Western doctrines. Khvoshchinskaia’s womanly mind was instead a perceptive observer of detail. She followed Turgenev, deeply influenced by his Rudin. She strove for his kind of social synthesis from her early “Anna Mikhailovna” all the way through Bol’shaia Medveditsa, Obiazannosti, and “V’iuga.” Where Turgenev took on Russian society of the 1840s (Rudin), the 1850s (A Nest of the Gentry), the 1860s (Fathers and Sons), and the 1870s (Smoke and Virgin Soil), Khvoshchinskaia got stuck on the superfluous man of the 1850s and went no further. This was her strongest period, when she was in touch with real social upheavals. Her flawed novel Bol’shaia Medveditsa [1870, but set in 1855–58] sums up her literary worldview and will be discussed in the rest of the article. [Chuiko may have written this article before Khvoshchinskaia’s death and does not seem to know she has died.]Zotov, V. “Nadezhda Dmitrievna Khvoshchinskaia (Iz vospominanii starogo zhurnalista).” Istoricheskii vestnik 10 (1889): 93–108.
Golitsyn, N. N. Bibliograficheskii slovar’ russkikh pisatel’nits. St. Petersburg: Tip. V. S. Balasheva, 1889. Entry on N. Khvoshchinskaia, pp. 262–65. Includes a bibliography of her works and works about her. Golitsyn notes that her pseudonym V. Krestovskii should not be confused with “V. V. Krestovskii, the well-known novelist, or with N. Krestovskii, the pseudonym of the vaudeville writer N. Kulikov” (262–63), but Golitsyn’s own bibliography seems to incorrectly include works by Vsevolod Krestovskii (for example, the 1861 poem “Van’ka-kliuchik: Ballada”).
1890
Ia[zykov, D. D.]. “N. D. Khvoshchinskaia — V. Krestovskii-psevdonim (Bibliograficheskii ocherk).” Russkaia mysl’ 11.7 (1890): 191–95. (text at lib.ru) A detailed bibliography including poetry and translations from French and Italian. According to E. N. Stroganova, this “Ia.” was literary historian D. D. Iazykov (1850–1918).
Semevskii, V. I. “N. D. Khvoshchinskaia-Zaionchkovskaia (V. Krestovskii—psevdonim).” Russkaia mysl’ 11.10–12 (1890). Part 1 of the article in Russkaia mysl’ № 10 (1890): 49–89. Part 2 is available on lib.ru, first in Russkaia mysl’ № 11 (1890): 83–110. Part 3 appeared in Russkaia mysl’ № 12 (1890): 124–48.
1891
“Nadezhda Dmitrievna Khvoshchinskaia, V. Krestovskii-psevdonim.” Russkaia starina 22 (January 1891): 227. Two-paragraph notice giving the date of the author’s death and announcing a portrait of her in this issue, while promising an overview of “the life and literary career of this talented woman writer” in the next issue. Title page says “God dvadtsat’ vtoroi” (22nd year), but the Google Book says it is volume 69 of Russkaia starina.
Semevskii, V. I. “Nadezhda Dmitrievna Khvoshchinskaia-Zaionchkovskaia: V. Krestovskii-psevdonim.” Russkaia starina 22 (February 1891): 449–65. Footnote on first page says this article is an abridged version of Semevskii’s three-part article in Russkaia mysl’ in October–December 1890. Title page says “God dvadtsat’ vtoroi” (22nd year), but the Google Book says it is volume 69 of Russkaia starina.
Shelgunov, N. “K stat’e ‘N. D. Khvoshchinskaia-Zaionchkovskaia.’” Russkaia mysl’ 12.2 (1891): 182–85. (text at lib.ru) Shelgunov looks back at his own hostile article critiquing Khvoshchinskaia from 1870 in light of Semevskii’s 1890 remarks on it.
Ponomarev, S. I. “Nashi pisatel’nitsy. ‘Bibliograficheskii Slovar’ russkikh pisatel’nits, kniazia N. N. Golitsyna. Spb. 1889. VI i 308.” Sbornik otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk 52.7 (1891): 1–78. [The longer title that mentions Golitsyn’s catalog is on p. 1; on the title page of this journal or book only the short title Nashi pisatel’nitsy appears, under the journal or series title Sbornik otdeleniia… I’m treating Ponomarev’s piece as a journal article rather than a monograph, but this makes it the only article in volume 52, number 7. — EM.] On Khvoshchinskaia see pp. 60–71. Includes a short introduction (pp. 60–61), bibliographies of Khvoshchinskaia’s works (pp. 61–69) and of obituaries and reminiscences about her (pp. 69–70), and six numbered paragraphs of “notes” about her (pp. 70–71). In note 4 Ponomarev is surprised that not only “the Sovremennik party (Annenkov, Nekrasov, Chernyshevkii, Dobroliubov),” but also “Orest Miller, Avdeev, Avseenko” seemed to ignore her, and “even Miss Tsebrikova” wrote little about her while she was alive, despite writing about Russian women writers in 1876 (71). He says an unnamed editor called Khvoshchinskaia “the Baba Yaga of Russian literature” without identifying her by name (71).
Protopopov, M. “Zhenskoe tvorchestvo.” Russkaia mysl’ 1 (1891), 2 (1891), 4 (1891). The first article in the series mentions Khvoshchinskaia only briefly. The second is devoted to Kochanovskaia (sections 1–2) and Khvoshchinskaia (section 3). The main works discussed are “Prikhodskii uchitel’” (which is mocked for having its provincial teacher characters sound unrealistically educated) and Obiazannosti. Protopopov says that Semevskii in 1890 misattributed a negative review of Obiazannosti to someone else, but it belonged to him, Protopopov. The third article doesn’t mention Khvoshchinskaia by name.
1892
“Sobranie sochinenii V. Krestovskogo (psevdonim). S portretom avtora. Spb., 1892 g. Izdanie A. S. Suvorina. Tsena po podpiske za piat’ tomov 12 rub., za peresylku 3 rub.” Russkaia mysl’ 7 (1892): 297–99. (text at lib.ru)
1893
“Sobranie sochinenii V. Krestovskogo (psevdonim), tom I–V. S.-Peterburg 1892 goda, izdanie A. S. Suvorina.” Severnyi vestnik 1 (1893): [pages unknown]. (text at lib.ru)
1897
Golovin, K. Russkii roman i russkoe obshchestvo. St. Petersburg: Izd,. A. A. Porokhovshchikova, 1897. On Khvoshchinskaia see part 3 (“The Era of Sturm und Drang”), chapter 9 (“Pessimist Writers,” which includes Sheller/Mikhailov and Khvoshchinskaia/Krestovskii), in particular pp. 239–49. This review calls Golovin’s book yet another attack on the 1860s by a conservative critic.
Gorlenko, V. “Krestovskii-psevdonim (Vospominanie).” Russkii arkhiv 1 (1897): 658–63.
Reminiscences of Khvoshchinskaia in St. Petersburg in the early 1880s.Summary: Only a few articles have been dedicated to the author of In Hope of Something Better and Ursa Major, Krestovskii-Khvoshchinskaia (658). A few articles appeared when she died, including a one-sided piece by V. Semevskii (658). The purpose of these notes is to precisely convey the thoughts and words of one of the most outstanding Russian women writers; they are founded on personal recollections (658). I first met Khvoshchinskaia in St. Petersburg in 1880 at the house of my acquaintance, the civil servant Z., whom Khvoshchinskaia had educated in his childhood and youth in Ryazan and with whom she stayed when she came to Petersburg (658). Once Z. came to the office of the newspaper The Voice (Golos), where I was then on the editorial board, with a large album of beautiful photographs which had been taken by the recently deceased Karrik (a photographer-artist well-known to artists and amateurs) of paintings by contemporary Russian artists (658). Karrik’s family, with whom Khvoshchinskaia was close, was in a difficult situation, and some hopes were placed in relieving the pressures on them by publishing this album (658). It would make a difference to have a review (otzyv) in a newspaper like The Voice, so Z. asked me to write one; after it appeared, Khvoshchinskaia sent a message through Z. that she wanted to see me (658). I went to see her at Z.’s small apartment where he lived with his young wife; the novelist had taken an interest in Z. since his childhood, and now it was as if she had the final chapter of a novella before her eyes, with a happy ending (658). Khvoshchinskaia was short and somewhat awkwardly put together (neskol’ko nepravil’no slozhena) (658). Her dresses and hairstyle were old-fashioned (658). The initial impression she made was a bit strange, but it vanished once she started talking or looked at you, since there was so much intelligence and soul in her eyes, so much kindness and thoughtfulness in her speech (658). Before you was a remarkable woman whose conversation sparkled with intelligence and feeling as it went from sincere notes and deep sympathies to childlike humor, without the slightest hint of the pedantry or affectation that literary celebrities are sometimes guilty of (658–59). “Thank you for the piece (zametka) about the album; I could never have written it myself,” she said as soon as we had been introduced (659). We all laughed, me first of all, since I knew she had no intention of saying anything cutting or mean, especially since I didn’t deserve anything of the kind (659). We talked about literature, about the provinces (Nadezhda Dmitrievna had lived year-round in Ryazan with her blind old mother and her sister in a modest house inherited from her father), about mutual acquaintances at The Voice: the Kraevskii family, the recently deceased Zotov, our secretary, and others N. D. knew well because of her long history as a contributor to National Annals (Otechestvennye zapiski) (659). The young mistress of the house, who would die soon afterward, served us tea, and N. D. admired her kind bustling attention, kissing her on the head occasionally (659). From Z.’s house N. D. moved to the house of some old friends a few days later, and I saw her there; this was the house of a high-ranking official, and I had to go through many formally furnished rooms to get to hers; I think she was less comfortable here than she had been in the small apartment of the young civil servant, where the tea might not have been served on silver, but everything was warmed by the youth and happiness of two people she was close to (659). Soon after this N. D. went back to Ryazan, but she came back to Petersburg the next winter to stay for longer (659). She took a furnished room on New (Pushkin) Street, which was on the fourth floor, small, and uncomfortable, but her means did not permit her to take a better one (659). To live by the pen one must first and foremost write a lot (659). She wrote slowly and little, and our journals pay by the printed sheet (659). The old editions of her works had been sold for pennies and were in the hands of publishers (Stellovskii, Glazunov); Krestovskaia, who doesn’t know how to lie, told me herself that the owner of the rights to her works of the 1850s, who had bought them for a trifle, demanded payment from her when she went to the store to get a copy of her own works to give to some acquaintances (659). That winter Suvorin began publishing new editions of her works; some criticized her for working with him, but they said nothing when Saltykov’s works came out with the same publisher and he, in his inimitable way, said that “all publishers are equal before the Lord God” (659). I was often in the little room on New Street, and if I couldn’t come for a week or two, I would get a note like the following one that I kept: “Wednesday 22 April ’81. A book will be delivered to you, V. P. They say this is done with editorial boards to elicit a few ‘kind words.’ I am not asking for that, but I do send you a firm reminder that you seem to be forgetting the way to New Street…” (659–60). Once I received an urgent message asking me to save her from cruel toska, from spending a whole evening alone with a great admirer of hers, the critic Ts. [this must be Tsebrikova, I think? — EM] (660). N. D., who had created so many wonderful female characters, who was so deeply devoted to true enlightenment, liked to see in a woman an actual woman with all her traits, and she found it hard to endure sexless creatures like the worthy Ts. (660). She thought that trying to be like a man said little in favor of women’s independence, that a short haircut over an aging, unattractive female face was ugly and proved nothing, and that focusing all one’s energy on criticism and opinion journalism (publitsistika) was an anomaly for a feminine nature and that literary work requires, in addition to a political point of view (napravlenie), talent and the hard work of editing, and that the influence a work has depends on the scale of these factors (660). The hundred-pood weight of Miss Ts.’s articles repelled her, and their political line was not enough to give them value (660). I unfortunately could not be at Nad. Dm.’s that evening, and she had to drink the bitter cup (660). That winter saw the premiere of Tchaikovsky’s opera The Maid of Orleans in Petersburg (660). N. D., a great lover of music and an admirer of Joan of Arc as she was depicted by [Jules] Michelet, was looking forward to the first performance, but she was quite disappointed, as can be seen from her article that appeared in The Cause (Delo) at the time (660). Preparing for this article, she read all the literary works where the Maid of Orleans appears (660). When she was nearly finished, I got her a copy of J[ules] Barbier’s play where Joan of Arc is depicted in a truthful and historically accurate, but pale and colorless way (660). She was almost displeased with this discovery, being a harsh judge in literary matters and intolerant of mediocrity even in the name of virtue (660). Krestovskaia’s literary tastes were definite and corresponded to her nature and showed the signs of the time when she had come of age (660). She had an obvious and unconcealed preference for the Romantics who had created their works around the social movements of the late 1840s (660). She idolized Hugo and George Sand and preferred them to all later stars of French literature (660). She had even made her peace with Hugo’s wordiness and excess (660). At that time his L’Âne came out, and she was delighted with it too (660). Among Russian writers I often heard her speak admiringly of Belinskii, whose articles on the theater she considered the peak of perfection (660). Of the two great Russian poets she liked Lermontov better (660). Her view of Gogol was idiosyncratic and founded on a misunderstanding (660). She found his civil servant and landowner types to be caricatures and said that she, having spent her whole life in the provinces and begun to be aware of things around the time Gogol was writing, could not recognize in his characters any of the traits of life that were familiar to her (660–61). This misunderstanding, shared by others, can in our view be explained by the fact that Gogol’s characters truly do not have an entirely Great Russian appearance, and for natives of the North they may seem strange and unlike what they have seen (661). The civil servants of The Inspector General, many characters from Dead Souls, like Korobochka, Pliushkin, to some extent Chichikov, really are more like the provincial Little Russians that Gogol knew so well than Great Russians, they were different in certain details of their spiritual makeup and in their very language (661). Khvoshchinskaia was also unfair to Turgenev; she found him saccharaine, and the master’s tone he had along with his time in Paris let her join several Petersburg journalists in calling him Jean de Paris (661). That was when his “Song of Triumphant Love,” “Clara Militch,” and Poems in Prose were coming out, works which did not fit, or try to fit, the mood of the moment (661). Those works have lasted and will be reread for a long time, and how many of the topical works of the time will remain in the public consciousness (661)? Belles lettres is considered an easy form, but Krestovskaia considered it the hardest one and said that images and faces never simply appeared to her, but that it took great effort to create them (661). She did not like quotations and insisted that ideas be expressed in one’s own words (661). Out of her contemporaries she especially liked Shchedrin, and I think her affection for the author was mixed with affection for him as a person; she liked his directness, fearlessness, and sparkling wit; she liked his family, where she was accepted as a friend, and his children (661). Saltykov treated her as a kind, respected comrade and friend and reproached her for not writing enough (661). Her novel Times Past (Byloe), which had started being published in National Annals, was stopped in its early chapters for “circumstances beyond their control” (661). For a while she worked on translations: she translated George Sand’s Horace and several things by Italian writers (De Amicis, Barili [?], Farina), whose value she somewhat exaggerated (661). She wrote a longer novella in the last years of her life [does this mean Obligations/Obiazannosti? — EM], but at the time this memoir is about she was publishing only short sketches, always in National Annals (661). When one of them, “After the Flood” (Posle potopa) appeared, she proposed this experiment: I was to give her my review of this sketch in a sealed envelope, and she would give me her own review of it the same way (661). After we exchanged envelopes and I went home, I read the following: “‘After the Flood’ (15 January 1881, now finished). Fervently conceived, executed very limply. The language is very bad. Young people will like it out of sympathy, and women because of its effektnost’. It is drawn out where it should be brief and vice versa. The only part that is at all decent (the appearance of the condemned man’s mother on the porch) is repeated so many times that it produces no effect and is merely dull. The final scene is entirely composed of wholly unnecessary details. Let us suppose that any substance (sut’) should be said briefly and forcefully so that what is said might be long remembered, but here this substance is not spoken, but smeared in paint; short, but pale. Overall conclusion: very bad. The author.” (661–62). Khvoshchinskaia loved all the arts, considering them related to each other, but especially music and painting (662). Her musical taste was not much like what the times demanded: she remained true to [Bellini’s] Norma, to Meyerbeer, to the previous Italian performers with their superb school, but she also liked Wagner and everything that was deep and raised the spirit (662). She considered the famous tenor [Julián] Gayarre, whose success was attenuated by the fact that he was quite ugly, a model singer (662). You can see how developed Khvoshchinskaia’s feeling for painting was from her story “Old Portrait, New Original” (Staryi portret — novyi original), where the portrait of Rembrandt’s mother found in the Hermitage is described in the first part (662). On the subject of painting I am reminded of the following episode as well (662). Having started talking about how interesting it is to see an artist’s studio, where their sketches and unfinished works bring us so close to their private world, we decided to go to the Academy of Arts the next day, where I knew two famous professors of landscape painting (662). At the studio of the landscapist O. we found a few unfinished canvases that he was working on; he received us without putting down his brush and told me in short sentences about a property he had recently bought and shared his ideas about where it is best to put one’s money, in land or in investments (renta) (662). He did not know Krestovskii-pseudonym’s works well (662). Not long before he had received Mme Adan, who accompanied P. P. Demidov, in his studio, and he was probably more welcoming with them (662). The artist K. had a more generous nature; he cooked his “Sunsets,” “Sunrises,” “Winters,” and “Autumns” like pancakes to get money for card games and sprees, and thus represented another kind of talented craftsman (662). His studio was calculated to produce an effect, with velvet and silk and little tables with expensive cigars and wine; he had visitors when we arrived; he ran around with his palette mechanically repeating the awful Gallicism “do like at home” (faites comme chez vous) (662). Despite their unquestionable talent, these fin de siècle artists were not to the taste of an incorrigible idealist like Khvoshchinskaia (662). She compared them to [Aleksandr] Ivanov, whom she idolized, who had worked all his life in a monk’s cell of a studio, and to Briulov, who had such strict views on art, and to the Italians of the Renaissance era (662–63). Out of contemporary artists she was very sympathetic to Kramskoi (663). On a commission for Tret’iakov, Kramskoi was in Ryazan and painted Khvoshchinskaia’s portrait (663). In the collection of Kramskoi’s letters published by Mr. Stasov can be found his letters from Ryazan, which unfortunately contain one harsh and inaccurate assessment of her (663). As I walk past her portrait in the Tretyakov Gallery (hung, by her wish, only after her death), I recall that assessment and think that it is good that Kramskoi’s letters, which were published with such tactless frankness, came out only after Khvoshchinskaia’s death, which spared her an additional occasion to become disillusioned in people (663). Our trip to the Academy of Arts was an exception; N. D. was embarrassed about her clothes and old-fashioned appearance and rarely went anywhere (663). Once I saw her at a literary event that attracted a large crowd because both Turgenev and Dostoevskii took part (663). I saw how they smiled in the seats when the writer modestly went past to take her place (663). A liberal and “conservative” (okhranitel’naia) crowd is always a stupid crowd (663). These same people who were mocking this strange old woman would have shouted until they were hoarse if someone told them her famous name, and they would have greeted her glory, that is, her success and significance, or more simply her strength, with a meaningless and servile ecstasy (663). Nadezhda Dmitrievna would reluctantly go to Ryazan in the spring (663). Her crowd there had dispersed (663). She very much loved her old mother and her sister (Praskov’ia Dmitrievna, known in literature as Zimarova), but while there she missed the intellectual life of the capital (663). Of her two [no mention of Liubov’ — EM] sisters she had been especially close to the second, who had died long before, who was a talented writer in the 1860s under the name Vesen’ev (663). I have seen a picture where they were photographed together, then young, embracing each other and looking at each other (663). At her dying sister’s bedside she met a Polish exile, Doctor Zaionchkovskii, whom she married, though only for a short time, as Zaionchkovskii himself fell ill with consumption and soon passed away in Switzerland (663). In her final years, after her mother’s death, Khvoshchinskaia spent most of her time in Petersburg, living first on Maksimilianovskii Alley and then on Admiral’teiskaia Embankment (663). Literary work had been the source of her material support since she was young (663). But in her last years she was unable to write much and died in the summer of 1890 [!] in Peterhof without any means (663). She was widely acknowledged to be the most prominent woman writer in Russia (663). The Literary Fund covered the cost of her funeral, and a subscription was taken up to purchase a modest monument for her grave (663).
Mikhailovskii, N. K. “Smert’ Zaionchkovskoi. Proekt g. Shcheglova.” In Sochineniia N. K. Mikhailovskogo. Vol. 6. St. Petersburg: Tipo-Litografiia B. M. Vol’fa, 1897. 652–63.
Articles in this section of the collection are dated 1888–1892 as a group. Since Khvoshchinskaia died in 1889, this article presumably came out in 1889 or 1890. On Khvoshchinskaia see pp. 652–57. Works mentioned: Bol’shaia medveditsa (654), Pervaia bor’ba (655–57).
Tsebrikova, M. “Ocherk zhizni N. D. Khvoshchinskoi-Zaionchkovskoi (V. Krestovskogo psevdonima).” Mir bozhii № 12 (1897): 1–40.
1899
Karrik, A. “Iz vospominanii o N. D. Khvoshchinskoi-Zaionchkovskoi (V. Krestovskii-psevdonim).” Zhenskoe delo № 9 (1899): 3–19, № 11 (1899): 36–53, № 12 (1899): 59–83. On p. 2 of the September issue, facing the first page of Karrik’s memoir, is a full-page photograph with the caption “N. D. Khvoshchinskaia-Zaionchkovskaia (V. Krestovskii-pseudonym). Born 1824, passed away 1889.”
1900
Tsebrikova, M. “Khudozhnik-psikholog (Romany i povesti V. Krestovskogo-psevdonima).” Part 1 (sections I–IV) Obrazovanie № 1 (January 1900): 17–34. Part 2 (sections VI (typo for a repeated IV?), V, VI again, VII, VIII) Obrazovanie № 2 (February 1900): 37–54.
1901
Nalimov, A. “Russkaia pisatel’nitsa-pionerka: Stat’ia pervaia.” Ezhemesiachnye sochineniia № 5 (1901): 29–39. Nalimov goes through Khvoshchinskaia’s works of the 1850s and early 1860s in chronological order, starting with “Anna Mikhailovna” and ending with Recent Times, in this first article.
Nalimov, A. “Russkaia pisatel’nitsa-pionerka: Stat’ia vtoraia.” Ezhemesiachnye sochineniia № 6 (1901): 125–36. Nalimov deviates from chronological order to talk about Ursa Major first, a discussion that includes quotes from or comparisons to “Lucky People” and The Boarding-School Girl (125–29). Then the chronological survey resumes with Two Memorable Days (129–30). Next The Meeting (“Svidanie”) is favorably compared to 1901 humorists, but it is misdated 1868 (actually 1879) (130). After this: The First Struggle (130–31), The Meeting (“Vstrecha”) (131–33), “Lucky People” (133), “Among Friends” (133), “After the Flood” (134), “The Farewell” (a single sentence on p. 134), “The Teacher” (134–35), Responsibilities (135–36).
1913–14
Gippius, Vladimir. “Zhenskii vyzov.” Publ. E. Stroganova. In Zhenskii vyzov: Russkie pisatel’nitsy XIX–nachala XX veka. Ed. Stroganova and Elizabet Shore. Tver: Liliia Print, 2006. 308–13. Intended for the journal Damskii mir for the 25th anniversary of Khvoshchinskaia’s death (actually 1889, but given as 1888 in the article; the 1913 or 1914 date comes from adding 25 to either 1888 or 1889).
Summary: women writers are to this day considered as a special category; readers approach even world-famous women authors seeking a special feminine psychology, and often in a condescending way (309). Meanwhile, literature written by men since the time of the Sentimentalists has focused on the feminine (309). Women in Pushkin, Turgenev, Tolstoi are stronger than men (310). Wagner’s women might be a reflection of Germanic folk tales, but Ibsen’s women are a rebuke to European culture which is perhaps so petty in its meshchanstvo because it is only masculine (310). Khvoshchinskaia is one of our best writers (not just women writers), though few know her name and many confuse her pseudonym V. Krestovskii with Vsevolod Krestovskii, whose work just barely counts as literature; to avoid associations with him we should remember her by her maiden name Khvoshchinskaia, not by her pseudonym or by her married name Zaionchkovskaia (her marriage was brief) (310). Ursa Major is her longest and most artistic novel (310). She spent most of her life in Ryazan and knew provincial Russia well (310). Provincial Russia was the theme of her earliest novels, which were written in the 1840s (310–11). The provinces are merely a backdrop for her most striking works, those of the 1860s (311). Under Nicholas I, the best writers on provincial mores were Pisemskii and Salytkov-Shchedrin; neither of them could be called feminine, but Khvoshchinskaia is closer to them than she is to Turgenev or Goncharov (311). Khvoshchinskaia wrote about good people who were ruined by the actions of bad people or were saved from them only by chance; she exposed wrongdoing and was angry instead of accepting reality (311). She was angry about the same things as Saltykov and Pisemskii and before them Gogol: poshlost’, meanness, pettiness (311). Gogol = the Kingdom of Heaven + Russia’s ugly mug (311). Saltykov-Shchedrin = human society standing for truth and the Russia of Glupov and Poshekhon’e (311). Pisemskii = petty-minded nonentities passing themselves off as grand heroes (311). Khvoshchinskaia = a society with no place for a woman which has a revolting name (In Hope of Something Better) or is picturesquely called a magpie’s nest (First Struggle) (311). Men either make the magpie’s nests (in First Struggle) or sit in magpie’s nests where ladies who have taken control of them put them (311). Khvoshchinskaia is an equal opportunity oblichitel’ (311). Revolting products of a revolting society: young ladies who long to become kept women, or mothers who long to become real ladies by having their daughters buy a respectable social position by selling themselves so respectably that no one would call it prostitution (311–12). Men who at 13 already know how to blackmail the wealthy female relatives whose secrets they have eavesdropped on, and who by 18 give themselves to girls who love them for financial reasons (312). This is the content of Khvoshchinskaia’s two most significant novels, In Hope of Something Better and First Struggle (312). Both men and women are awful, as both are chicks from the magpie’s nest; the only people who are people are the ones who are far from the nest, but they perish, both men and women (312). Society is to blame, and the culture that created all these bad men and women is a masculine culture, not a feminine one (312). You made us like this for your own needs; you wanted it this way, so we make magpie’s nests for you (312). This is women calling out male culture [Eto zhenskii vyzov muzhskoi kul’ture] (312). It is called out more lyrically, mildly, and femininely in Ursa Major (312). Katerina is not a victim; this is feminine passion longing for the masculine as capable of faith and action (312). But the Verkhovskiis are solidly ensconced in the nests where they have been put to raise a brood of new chicks for this wretched society (312). Women are prostitutes by their nature… (312). What has happened in recent decades to this feminine calling out of masculine culture, this destructive dream with which women then answered the dream of men (312)? Times have changed; the idea of women’s liberation is not gone, but it has been converted from a civic dream to an erotic one: we now dream of a sacred hetaerism (312–13). Women answered men’s dream of the “eternal feminine” with the idea of the awakening of female individuality, of women’s liberation, but they did not stop at the point of denouncing evils (313). Under Ursa Major, Katerina hears Verkhovskii’s voice, but doesn’t respond; she goes off to teach the peasant children who have long been waiting for her (313). How will Woman now answer Man’s dream of sacred hetaerism—or has she already given her answer (313)?
1915
Nalimov, A. “Trudy riazanskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi komissii. T. 26-oi. Vyp. 1. Riazan’. 1914. Str. 126+32. Tsena 1 rub. 25 kop.” Istoricheskii vestnik 141 (1915): 263–64. Review ends with a brief note on family history: “For our part we were interested in this part of the ‘Necropolis’: ‘the Khvoshchinskii family, Sof’ia Dmitrievna, 1828–1865, Dmitrii Kesarevich d. 1856; Iuliia Vikent’evna, d. 1884.’ // These must be relatives [rodnye] of that late well-known writer of ours, N. D. Khvoshchinskaia-Zaionchkovskaia, Krestovskii-pseudonym (who died in 1889).”
XIX век 