SOURCE: Greene, Diana. “Gender and Genre in Pavlova's A Double Life.” Slavic Review 54, no. 3 (fall 1995): 563-77.

In the following essay, Greene examines the mixture of prose and poetry in A Double Life, arguing that Pavlova's use of mixed genres was affected by gender issues.

The literary reputation of Karolina Pavlova (1807-1893) has fluctuated considerably over the years: she was praised in the 1830s, 1840s and early 1850s, reviled in the 1860s as unprogressive and consigned to oblivion from the 1870s until her death in 1893. At the turn of the century she was rediscovered by the Russian symbolists: Poliakov, Blok and Bely praised her, and Valerii Briusov edited a two-volume edition of her work (1915). Women poets of the time, such as Cherubina de Gabriak (Elisaveta Vasil'eva), Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva and Parnok, cited her and dedicated poems to her. After the revolution Pavlova was reconsigned to oblivion. Two scholarly editions of...