SOURCE: Briggs, Anthony D. “Twofold Life: A Mirror of Karolina Pavlova's Shortcomings and Achievement.” The Slavonic and East European Review 49, no. 114 (January 1971): 1-17.

In the following essay, Briggs alleges that Pavlova was extreme in both her accomplishments and her deficiencies, which are reflected in her novel Twofold Life; her work, he says, is original but meandering, uncertain in its purpose, and contains too much of the writer's personality.

I

Like several other poets of the mid-19th century who were connected with the theory of ‘pure art’ Karolina Pavlova (1807-93) has clung to her posthumous reputation with remarkable tenacity. She has run the accepted gauntlet. Laughed off the literary stage in her own day, she languished in near-obscurity for half a century and was rediscovered in the age of the Symbolists. Bryusov published her in two volumes in 1915 and, what is more surprising, Soviet editors have re-issued her...