1. Nekrasov, N. A., “Iz poemy ‘Mat’,” Polnoe sobranic stikhotvorenii v trekh tomakh, ed. Chukovskii, K. I. (Leningrad, 1967), 3 : 319 Google Scholar.

2. Outstanding works exemplifying this theme are “Rodina,” “Muza,” “Moroz krasnyi nos,” “Rytsar1 na chas,” “Orina Mat’ soldatskaia,” and “Sasha.” Large parts of Komu na Rusi shif khorosho? are also devoted to this theme.

3. For a circumstantial account of this relationship see Evgen'ev-Maksimov, V., Zhisn' i deiatel'nost’ N. A. Nekrasova, vol. 1 (Moscow and Leningrad, 1947), pp. 26–86 Google Scholar.

4. When we recall that before 1861 the sons of Russian landowners often received their sexual initiation from the serf women on the estate; that already as an adolescent Nekrasov had begun to show a penchant for dissipated diversions; and, finally, that as an adult his voluptuary tendencies were marked, the possibility that at the age of fifteen or sixteen he had affairs with some of the local peasant women must be reckoned good. Internal evidence moreover seems to support this assumption. Recollecting, presumably, the sordid atmosphere of his childhood and youth in “Podrazhanie Lermontovu” Nekrasov wrote : “Round and about me seethed filthy waves of depravity/… And of that ugly life upon my soul/ The coarse marks were stamped/… Suddenly, vehemently, boisterously overtaken [by this way of life], / I plunged into the turbid stream/ And madly my youth/ Was burned in ugly debauchery” ﹛Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, 1 : 116-17). The patently autobiographical “Rodina” expresses a similar opinion about the poet's “native home“ : “From my prematurely corrupted soul/ Blessed peace of mind so early disappeared, / And of the cares and desires alien to most children [ncrebiacheskikh zhelanii i trcvog﹜/ The exhausting fires burned my heart” (ibid., p. 107). Even when allowances are made for hyperbole, it is hard, under the circumstances, to believe that the debauchery and unchildlike desires referred to mean merely playing cards and visiting the local taverns. For a detailed description of Nekrasov's youth see Evgen'ev-Maksimov, Zhisn', pp. 86-129; also Charles Corbet, Nekrasov, I'homme et le poete (Paris, 1948), pp. 3-67.

5. Chukovskii even went so far as to assert that Nekrasov was “terribly similar“ to his father (quoted by Evgen'ev-Maksimov, Zhien', p. 412). The latter's attempt to whitewash Nekrasov is unconvincing.

6. Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, 3 : 434.

7. Nekrasov's failure to enter military service on his arrival at St. Petersburg, as he had apparently promised his father, had led to a rupture between the two, and it was not until the summer of 1841 that Nekrasov, having been informed that his mother was sick, returned to Greshnevo only to find that Elena Andreevna had died several days before.

8. Corbet expressed a similar view when he hypothesized : “Si elle [Elena Andreevna] aimait démesurément ses enfants, qui par la suite, lui vouerent un véritable culte, il ne semble pas qu'elle ait trouvé chez eux sur-le-champ cette affection … qui peut-etre l'efit payee de ses peines. Nicolas Alekséevič lui consacra une immense piété posthume, qui joue d'ailleurs le role d'une soupape de sûréte dans son mécanisme psychologique : mais de son vivant, il fit bien peu pour recompenser toutes les preuves de devouement qu'elle lui prodiguait” (Nekrasov, p. 12).

9. E. Kolbasin tells of young Nekrasov living off the earnings of a governess until her money ran out, and then leaving her (“Teni starogo Sovremennika,” Sovremennik, 8 [1911] : 228-30). Chukovskii quotes N. N. Vil'de (“Literatura i sovest',” Golos Moskvy, 1912, no. 221) to the effect that Nekrasov had once told Turgenev how during his early St. Petersburg years he tormented his young mistress, who was then working to support him, by prolonged periods of total silence (“Podrugi poet,” Mimivshie dni, January 1928, p. 12). Nekrasov himself would seem to have provided oblique confirmation for these allegations. In his uncompleted and posthumously published prose narrative Zhisn’ i pokhozhdeniia Tikhona Trostnikova, which reflects his experiences during the early penurious St. Petersburg years so obviously that Chukovskii does not hesitate to call it Nekrasov's “biography in the form of a belletristic tale” (Zhizn’ i pokhozhdeniia Tikhona Trostnikova, ed. V. Evgen'ev-Maksimov and K. Chukovskii [Moscow and Leningrad, 1930], p. 29), the young hero soon after arriving in St. Petersburg contracts a liaison with a young prostitute named Matilda (though at the time he is not aware of her profession). Later he consents to live for several months as a “kept man” with Maria Samoilovna, a corpulent and unattractive tavern keeper (kukhmeistersha) of forty years in exchange for room and board.

10. Quoted by Zhukovskaia, E. I., Zapiski (Leningrad, 1930), p. 236 Google Scholar. The fact that Nekrasov helped Meishin financially after the end of the liaison mitigates considerably the caddishness of his conduct.

11. The origin of the family legend according to which Elena Andreevna was a patrician Polish pant abducted from her native Warsaw by Nekrasov's father is unknown. Considering the myth-making faculty which often helps persecuted and lonely people bear their misery, it is possible that she made up the story herself. At all events it was repeated, though not believed, by her son, who, we may assume, did not dislike the idea of having an aristocratic Polish lady as a mother, and who may well have thought that to reject his mother's myth would be to impugn her memory. Elena Andreevna was in fact Ukrainian by birth and education and Greek Orthodox with respect to religion.

12. F. Smirnov quotes Nekrasov's reply when late in his life he was asked why he never got married : “A wife would get in your way in anything you tried. If you wanted to go hunting she wouldn't want it.” Quoted in N. A. Nekrasov : V vospominaniakh i dokumentakh, ed. E. M. Isserlin and T. Iu. Khmel'nitskaia (Leningrad, 1930), p. 156.

13. Characteristic of this attitude is a small detail mentioned by Chukovskii (“Podrugi poet,” p, 18), namely, that “Zina” customarily kissed her “master's” hand as a form of greeting.

14. The only important exceptions to this “rule” are “Esli, muchimyi strast'iu miatezhnoi,” and “Ty vsegda khorosho nesravnenno,” both of which are apparently addressed to a woman Nekrasov knew immediately prior to his liaison with Panaeva. The three poems which Nekrasov addressed to “Zina” during the last year of his life tend actually to confirm the “rule” for it was not until he was an emaciated, bedridden, and dying man—not until the physical aspect of his love for “Zina” was in eclipse—that she became the subject of his poems. It was not until “Zina” ceased to be his mistress that she became his Muse, and—not coincidentally—his wife. In this respect it is significant that the three poems in question are written in the distinctively hagiographical vein in which the verses to his mother were also written.

15. “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love” in The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans, and ed. James Strachey, vol. 11 (London : The Hogarth Press, 1957), pp. 180-83. In an article about a closely related psychological category, entitled “A Special Type of Object Choice Made by Men” (pp. 163- 76), Freud describes a type of male who is drawn to women providing the following conditions are met : (1) She must, because of a relationship which she is maintaining with some other man, not be completely free. (2) She must be sexually promiscuous or a prostitute. (3) She must be one of a long series of women in the man's life. (4) He must, somewhat paradoxically, feel an urge to save the women from even deeper degradation. Although all these conditions plainly do not obtain in each of Nekrasov's many liaisons, their relevance to his overall attitude toward women is self-evident.

16. Wilhelm, Stekel, “A Case of Sodomy and Sadism,” Sadism and Masochism, trans. Brink, Louise (New York, 1929), pp. 243–301 Google Scholar. Despite the title, the patient in question was not in practice a homosexual.

17. Panaeva was the daughter of the professional actor la. G. Brianskii. Since it was extremely rare for a bona fide member of the dvorianstvo to take up acting as a career in early nineteenth-century Russia, it may be assumed that she was of nongentry origins.

18. Sometime in the late 1840s when Maria L'vovna Ogareva, the divorced wife of the poet N. P. Ogarev, was living abroad, she drew up a letter of procuration authorizing Panaeva, an old friend, to act as her agent in an eventually successful effort to collect 200, 000 rubles in alimony from her ex-husband. But although Panaeva and a legal agent named N. S. Shanshiev received the full amount, nothing at all was sent on to Ogareva in France. After the latter's death in 1853, her former husband instigated an inquiry, i the embezzlement was uncovered, and Panaeva was condemned in 1859 to return the full amount to Ogarev. By then she and Shanshiev had spent the entire sum, and Nekrasov was obliged to make reimbursement. It is plain from a fragment of a letter which he wrote Avdotia that he had been privy to his mistress's theft. But there is no evidence that he instigated, approved, or, directly at least, profited by it. For a detailed account of the affair see la. Cherniak's, Z. Ogarev, Nekrasov, Chemyshevskii v spore ob Ogarevskom nasledstve (Moscow and Leningrad, 1933)Google Scholar.

19. Nekrasov's rude and boorish treatment of Panaeva during their final years together was attested by Chernyshevsky. See Chukovskii's article “Panaev i Nekrasov, “ which serves as a preface to the Soviet edition of Panaev's novella , Semeistvo Tal'nikovikh (Leningrad, 1928), pp. 7-8, 19. Another eyewitness, E. I. Zhukovskaia (Zapiski, p. 235), claimed that during the final years of their liaison Nekrasov was receiving other women into their home and expecting Panaeva to act as housekeeper for his concubines.

20. Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, 1 : 128. Like “Tak eto shutka? Milaia moia” and “Da, nasha zhizn1 tekla miatezhno,” both of which were sent to Panaeva when she was traveling in western Europe, this poem was written in 1850. On the basis of internal evidence I am assuming that it was written before Panaeva's trip, since it seems unlikely that Nekrasov would refer to an imminent separation from her if she had just returned to him.

21. There was of course no rule which prohibited Russian poets from using active adjectival participles in their verse. However, insofar as nineteenth-century Russian literature is concerned, this form is found far more often in prose—and in particular in expository prose—than in poetry.

22. Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, 1 : 128.

23. The two poems are roughly equal in length, With an irregular rhyme scheme, an irregular stanzaic pattern, and a shifting four-, five-, or six-foot iambic line.

24. Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, 1 : 126.

25. Ibid., p. 130.

26. The clarifying vincula between the two apparently conflicting statements are missing. Emended and expanded a paraphrase would read : “Although we are absurd people and our flareups are frequent, nonetheless these scenes give us an emotional relief which is necessary to us.“

27. Polnoe sobranic stikhotvorenii, 1 : 156-57.

28. Ibid., 3 : 439.

29. Several poems in Nekrasov's adolescent collection, Mechty i zvuki, were called “sonnets“; but it is characteristic of his shaky knowledge of the formal aspects of poetry that none conform strictly to the sonnet form.

30. The logical incoherences of these lines may be specified as follows.. First, to suspect, as the poet does in line 9, that “life” (that is, subsequent events) has proved that Avdotia's early love letters were false is as illogical as to suppose that a wife's request for divorce proves that her original marriage vows were made in bad faith. It is an ex post facto judgment. Second, plainly the “No” in line 11 applies to this momentarily held suspicion, namely, that the letters were insincere. In other words, having momentarily hesitated about their sincerity the poet decides in favor of their honesty. But what then are we to make of the statement in line 10 that “life has shaken [my] faith in them“? If the “No” repudiates line 9 it must repudiate this statement too. Yet the latter is not couched as a conjecture (like line 11) but as a fact. Third, immediately following the poet's denial that the letters were insincere comes the assertion that they were burned in hate, a confusing non sequitur, since the hate which accompanied their destruction cannot obviously confirm the sincerity of their original creation. To make completely logical sense the sentence would have to read : “No! That hand which burned them in hate wrote them in love.“

31. The use of the verb diktovaf alone would not necessarily evoke office life. But taken in conjunction with the word pis'ma the secretarial overtones are unavoidable. The fact that Avdotia did in fact work in the offices of the Sovremennik for a while may unconsciously have suggested the image.

32. Symptoms of the disease appeared in 1853, but it did not take full effect until two or three years later.

33. Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, 1 : 191-92.

34. For an interesting comparison of the two love cycles see Gukovskii's, G. A. “Nekrasov i Tiutchev,” Nauchnyi biulleten’ Leningradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 16-17 (1947) : 51–54Google Scholar.

35. See Freud, New Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis (New York, 1933), p. 1933 Google Scholar.

36. Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, 1 : 226-27.

37. In addition to the obvious similarity in situation one notes that the poems share a common lexical stock : shchadit', ushasnyi, prekrasnyi, bezumnyi, and the initial tiazhelyi.

38. They may well have been Avdotia's accusers in the “Ogareva Affair” (see note 18).

39. The pattern of escalation is of course not absolutely consistent if one assumes, as I have (see note 20), that “la ne liubliu ironii tvoei” was written before Panaeva's trip abroad.

40. Since the chief interest of this pale little lyric is that it is one of the two poems (the other is “Davno otvergnutyi toboi,” 18SS) which Nekrasov wrote to Panaeva in a more or less “Pushkinian” vein, I have omitted discussing it and its congener. It may be worth pointing out, however, that both of these conventionally “poetic” pieces—in the former he asks Panaeva to remember the happy not the melancholy moments of their love, in the latter he compares his present rejection by her with a similar moment in the long distant past—are poems of separation. It is when the lovers are together that as a rule the bitterness arises.

41. Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, 1 : 241.

42. It is interesting to note that as the poems become more bitter Nekrasov uses the third person for himself or for Avdotia with increasing frequency (for example, “O pis'ma zhenshchiny, nam miloi,” “Tiazhelyi krest dostalsia ei na doliu,” “Kak ty krotka, kak ty poslushna“). It is almost as if, unconsciously shrinking from the painful intimacy of the first and second persons, he took refuge in the more impersonal third person form.

43. The converse was, as already noted, also true. During the years when Nekrasov's love for Panaeva was at its height he spoke of it to no one : “But I did not want to share them [my dreams of love]/ With my idle friends…/ I admitted no one/ Into the sanctuary of my modest soul” (“Vliublennomu,” Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, 1 : 227).

44. Ibid., 2 : 101-2. Lines 11-33 have been omitted.

45. Ibid., p. 399.

46. Nekrasov may, again, have had in mind the “Ogareva Affair” (see note 18).

47. For the details of its genesis and publication see Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, 2 : 674-75.

48. Ibid., 3 : 327.

49. This figure includes rough drafts, fragments, and poems which Nekrasov declined to publish (or republish) during his lifetime.

50. See note 43.

51. Tiutchev's “Deniseva Cycle” of poems, which also reflects a deteriorating love affair and was written over almost exactly the same span of years (1850-64) presents a striking parallel with the “Panaeva Cycle” (see note 34). But the petty, sordid aspects of domesticity are never emphasized by Tiutchev, who in his verse always remained the gentleman. In the English language, George Meredith's sonnet sequence “Modern Love“ (1862), a powerful psychological description of a deteriorating marriage, presents certain general points of comparison with Nekrasov's poems. But it will be noted that Nekrasov's poems were for the most part written well before Meredith's.