Justyna Beinek

Making Literature in Albums: Strategies of Authorship in Pushkin’s Day

Alexander Pushkin wrote in albums more than any other Russian poet of his time. Not only did he write twenty of his own album poems, he also copied other poets’ verse in two instances, wrote five prose album inscriptions, left numerous drawings in albums, and commented on the album phenomenon in his other writings.¹ For example, his tongue-in-cheek critique of albums took almost five stanzas of the fourth chapter of Eugene Onegin (1833), and it oscillated between admiration and distaste for albums, as exemplified by just two epithets, out of many, that he coined: “Splendid albums / A torture of fashionable rhymesters” (Velikolepnye al’bomy / Mucheniie modnykh rifmachei).² He sprinkled his prose with ironic one-liners on albums, such as the following quip from the short story “Egyptian Nights” (1835): “Should he [the poet] fall in love, his beloved will buy an album at the English store and expect an elegy.”³ Pushkin made such mocking pronouncements and simultaneously wrote profusely in the albums of high-society women and men, a contradiction that shows his ambivalent relation to the album, as well as his interest, both intellectual and creative, in this cultural artifact. Pushkin’s repeated mentions of albums also point to the album’s visibility on the literary and social scene of the early nineteenth century.

As early as 1817, on an occasion of writing in A. N. Zubov’s album, Pushkin called the album – “the leaves of recollection” (listy vospominaniia).⁴ In his famous 1830 lyric “Chto v imeni tebe moem” (What Good Is My Name to You?), originally written in Karolina Sobańska’s album, Pushkin saw an album page as “a page of souvenir” (pamiatnyi listok). These two examples show that he participated in the memory discourse that was central both to Romantic philosophy and – at a different level – to the practice of album writing and keeping.⁵ However, Pushkin extended the range of topics suitable for album poetry, of which memory and recollection were perhaps the most important ones, to include – what we would call today – ideas on authorship and on the professionalization of the writer figure. Although in the first line of his album lyric, “I. V. Sleninu” (To I. V. Slenin, 1828), Pushkin announces his dislike of albums: “I do not like fashionable albums (Ia ne liubliu al’bomov modnykh), toward the end of the poem he imagines the album – and thus perhaps also the realm of literature – as a “friendly, pleasant house” (druzheskii, priiatnyi dom), which he “enters as a true poet” (vkhozhu v nego priamym poetom).⁶ Thus in this album poem dedicated to a Petersburg publisher and bookseller, Pushkin uses such a metaphor of the album that allows him to explicitly call himself a “poet.” He claims the name of “author,” as if in a gesture defying Roland Barthes’s modern idea of the “death of the author” or Michel Foucault’s reconceptualizing “the author” into an “author function.”⁷ By proclaiming his status as a “poet” in a poem addressed to a man who prints and sells books, and therefore functions as a mediator between writers and the quickly growing book market, Pushkin assigns himself the identity of a professional writer, and he does that by writing an album poem in an album – a semi-private, semi-public outlet for claiming authorship.

By writing profusely in albums from his lycée days to the end of his life, and by referring to albums in his other writing, Pushkin in essence variously defined and interpreted the phenomenon of the album. In Pushkin’s day, albums were scrapbooks containing inscriptions in the form of poetry and prose, various visual materials from drawings to watercolors, as well as material objects from pressed flowers to locks of hair. Albums came into fashion as a cultural import at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After the initial stage of serving as centerpieces of aristocratic salons, they flourished in the first three decades of the nineteenth century among all literate social strata, finally becoming a phenomenon of mass culture. Besides Pushkin, all major Russian poets of the Golden Age such as Lermontov, Baratynsky, Zhukovsky, Iazykov, Viazemsky, and others, wrote in albums, following the example of Goethe, Byron, and Coleridge, as did poets of lesser caliber, and the literate public generally. As a new venue for writing and reading, albums allowed for an array of literary activities and experiments at both at the level of high and low culture, thus becoming fora for the practice and development of letters, literacy, and culture.⁸

It is paradoxical that albums accelerated the professionalization of literature and the rise of authorship in the Golden Age, although they were hand-written and thus a part of “non-print” and “not-for-profit” culture. The album – the often ridiculed accessory of fashionable women in search of amusement – was quite an important arena for poets who could put their work on display at a time when professional publishing was just beginning in Russia. Albums were frequently instrumental in establishing authorship. Album writing was helpful in rehearsing and performing authorial identities of many kinds, including those of the poet and the woman poet. Jürgen Habermas best summarizes the attitude of the court aristocracy toward writers at this time when being a writer was not yet a profession by saying that this aristocracy “was not really a reading public… it kept men of letters as it kept servants.”⁹ The phenomenon of the album was a small step in a series of events that eventually erased the system of patronage. The album allowed budding writers to show off their talents in a domestic, private or semi-public environment of salons, literary circles, and familiar groups. It nurtured the relationship between writer and audience: poems were read aloud and commented upon, often in an atmosphere of game-playing.

Such literary practices were an important part of what William Mills Todd III has called “incipient professionalization,” the process of writers’ becoming professional authors in Pushkin’s time.¹⁰ If we situate the album within Todd’s framework of three institutions that shaped the literary process at that time – the patronage system, the literature of familiar groups, and professionalization of literature (73) – this often belittled object clearly becomes a point of convergence, one that shows us how albums operated on a very concrete, palpable level. The private album fosters the rise of professional authorship; “kept servants” become professional writers through turning to the private, not public, space for support, if we see this process as non-linear “coming out” of a writer from the private into the public sphere.

Clearly albums also raise the issue of authorship, a notion that was undergoing major changes in early nineteenth-century Russia. In light of Roland Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author,” it appears that for a text written in an album, the author as authority and “owner” of a text was quite irrelevant: for example, poems were copied, rewritten and changed, without notifying or even acknowledging their creator. Therefore the album functioned as Barthes’ “multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings… blend and clash.¹¹” We might say that the existence of an author here is negligible, and it is rather the reader who becomes the point where the album’s “multiplicity is focused” (148); thus the album undermines the assumption of the importance of a unified author. On the other hand, a more or less defined assertion of authorship was crucial for aspiring writers, especially for young writers, writers from lower social classes or faraway places who tried to “make it” in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and women writers, for whom authorship was a problematic concept (and whose authorship was a problematic concept defying social norms. The album provided a space for the emergence of voices that lacked an alternative outlet for experimenting with literature, authorship, and identity.

Making Literature in Albums According to Pavel Iakovlev

Albums reached the peak of their popularity in the 1820s. While the great poets of the Golden Age were involved with albums by writing in them and often reflecting on the act of writing and the album itself, or by mentioning them in their other writings, they did not comment on albums in the form of essays or writing that could be even remotely classified as literary criticism. The first analysis of the Russian album as a cultural and literary phenomenon belongs to Pavel Luk’ianovich Iakovlev (1796-1835) – littérateur and contributor to such literary journals as Blagonamerennyi (The Benevolent One), Vestnik Evropy (Herald of Europe), and Syn Otechestva (Son of Fatherland), as well as an avid album writer and keeper. In 1820 and 1828, respectively, Iakovlev published two essays in which he defended the album, an object that was belittled as kitschy and merit-less in a jocular anonymous letter to the editor published in The Benevolent One, a letter that comically mocked albums by an anonymous critic.¹² The letter was signed by a fictional reader and writer whose “talking” name (“N. Virsheevskii,”) gave away his ignorance in matters of literature and whose farcical address – “the house of N. N. on a dirty street in Koltovskaia” – bespoke provincialism and lack of refinement.¹³ It seems that the letter served as a pretext for Iakovlev to write the first assessment of albums in Russian budding literary criticism. He may also have been the author or at least the instigator of the possibly orchestrated public conflict (in print) between the two “authors” – “N. Virsheevskii” and Iakovlev. The latter, whom Vadim Vatsuro has called a “tireless mystificator,” would have probably rejoiced at making the debate all the more engaging for the literary circles and the reading public.¹⁴

That the conflict was made up and that “N. Virsheevskii” served as a virtual opponent is supported by the social and literary context in which Iakovlev’s essays appeared. In the early 1820s the literary activities of The Benevolent One coincided with both literature-making and the playful activities of Sofiia Dmitrievna Ponomareva’s salon and its related circle, the “Free Society of Lovers of Wisdom and Philology.” Iakovlev and his fellow contributors to the journal helped to create a space for polemics on contemporary literature and culture, in which the album as an “extra/literary fact” and an “institution of literature,” to use Iurii Tynianov’s and Todd’s frameworks, respectively, was critiqued from viewpoints as varied as aesthetics, ethics, and history, as well as – to use today’s parlance – gender and fashion studies.¹⁵ Most importantly for this study of how the album aided the literary process and how literature was literally and figuratively made in albums in Pushkin’s time, as early as 1820, Iakovlev evaluated the album as having strong impact on the progress of Russian literature and culture. He wrote:

Àëüáîì åñòü ëó÷øåå èçîáðåòåíèå – ïîñëå èçîáðåòåíèÿ òèïîãðàôèé, õîòÿ è òèïîãðàôèè è âðåäíû àëüáîìîâ.... Àëüáîì àðõèâ äðóçåé, çíàêîìûõ... à òèïîãðàôèè? Êîíå÷íî, ìû èì îáÿçàíû ðàñïðîñòðàíåíèåì ïðîñâåùåíèÿ... çà òî – ñêîëüêî ñóõèõ äèññåðòàöèé, ñêîëüêî ïðèòîðíûõ ðîìàíîâ, ñêîëüêî áåñòîëêîâîé ìèñòèêè ïîäàðèëè íàì ýòè æå òèïîãðàôèè?... Àëüáîìû ðàñïðîñòðàíèëè ó íàñ âêóñ ê ÷òåíèþ è ïèñüìó – ïðèîõîòèëè ê ëèòåðàòóðå... È ýòî ÿñíî!... Áëàãîäàðåíèå æåíùèíàì! Îíè ââåëè â óïîòðåáëåíèå àëüáîìû è äîñòàâèëè ïðèÿòíîå è ïîëåçíîå çàíÿòèå íàøèì ìîëîäûì ëþäÿì. ß äàæå óâåðåí, ÷òî ñî âðåìåíè ïîÿâëåíèÿ àëüáîìîâ ó íàñ ñòàëè ïèñàòü ëó÷øå, ïðèÿòíåå, âûðàæàþòñÿ ñâîáîäíåå, ïðèëè÷íåå, áëèæå ê îáùåñòâåííîìó ðàçãîâîðó.... ß âèäåë àëüáîìû, êîòîðûå äðàãîöåííåå âñåõ äèññåðòàöèé, êîòîðûìè ïîõâàëèòüñÿ ìîæåò ñ÷àñòëèâàÿ Ðîññèÿ ñî âðåìåí Òðåäÿêîâñêîãî äî íàøèõ äíåé, ÿ âèäåë àëüáîìû, â êîòîðûõ ïèñàëè ëó÷øèå èç íàøèõ àâòîðîâ, â êîòîðûõ ðèñîâàëè ëó÷øèå àðòèñòû íàøè!...

(The album is the best invention – after the invention of printing presses, although the printing presses are more harmful than albums…. The album is an archive of friends, acquaintances... and the printing presses? Of course, we are obliged to them for spreading enlightenment... but – how many dry scholarly dissertations, how many sickly- sweet novels, how much useless mysticism have these very same printing presses given us?.... Albums have spread a fondness for reading and writing in our society; they gave us a taste for literature... And this much is clear!.... Let us give thanks to women! They brought albums into use and provided our young people with a pleasant useful activity. I am even convinced that since the first appearance of albums, people have to write better, more pleasantly, and they have started to express themselves more freely, more decently, in a way that is closer to the conversation of the educated world.... I have seen albums more valuable than all the dissertations of which happy Russia could boast from Trediakovskii’s time to our days. I have seen albums in which the best of our writers wrote and in which the best of our artists drew...)¹⁶

In his album entry and article, Iakovlev practices what he preaches. His serious response to “scholars” who do not conceive of the album as having anything to do with literary activity, of whom Virsheeskii is a made-up example, was first handwritten in the album of Ekaterina Izmailova, the wife of his friend Aleksandr Izmailov who edited The Benevolent One.¹⁷ Iakovlev’s act of writing in her album speaks as loudly as the words of his assessment of albums. By writing his response in an album he endorses it; the handwritten inscription points to the uniqueness as well as to the singularity of the album as “container” of individual inscriptions. In his inscription, Iakovlev shuns the problematic, in his view, “printing presses” that churn out useless books (specifically kitschy novels, “dry” scholarship, and books on the occult). However, publication of his essay in a journal a few months after writing the essay in the album shows that rather than being two separate realms where different kinds of literature are made, the hand-written album and the printed book/journal are two stages of a manuscript, or two modes of its existence.

In his inscription/article, Iakovlev claims that albums occupy an important place in the evolution of the Russian language and culture in general. He sees the function of albums as both historical (because they advance the development of Russian letters and culture) and educational (because they are “pleasant and useful,” and thus fulfill Enlightenment criteria for literary merit). For Iakovlev, albums propelled the development of Russian society, not only its literature but also its manners, such as conversation skills. Thus, Iakovlev’s argument for the album is two-pronged: on the cultural and literary plane the album acts as a catalyst for the flourishing of literature and the arts (he mentions both writings and drawings as album materials of high value), while on the social plane album culture improves the overall level of education and savoir faire.

In his sequel to the 1820 piece, the essay “Albums” (1828), Iakovlev offers a retrospective view of the twenty years during which he had observed the growing popularity and evolution of albums’ external characteristics and contents:

×òî áûë àëüáîì 20 ëåò òîìó íàçàä? Êíèæêà â àëîì ñàôüÿíå â 32-þ äîëþ ëèñòà. ×òî íàõîäèëè â òàêèõ êíèæêàõ? Ïåñíè Õîâàíñêîãî, Íèêîëàåâà, êîíôåêòíûå áèëåòöû è ëþáîâíûå îáúÿñíåíèÿ. Òåïåðü! Î! òåïåðü, íå òî! Ïåðåïëåò÷èêè èçîùðèëè, èñòîùèëè ñâîå èñêóññòâî íà óêðàøåíèå ýòèõ êíèæåê. Òåïåðü àëüáîìû íå ïðÿ÷óòñÿ çà çàìêàìè òåïåðü ðåäêî íàéäåòå â íèõ âûïèñêè èç ïå÷àòíîãî èëè äóðíûå ðèñóíêè öâåòêîâ è äîìèêîâ.  íûíåøíèõ àëüáîìàõ õîòÿò èìåòü ðèñóíêè ëó÷øèõ àðòèñòîâ, ïî÷åðê èçâåöòíûõ ëèòåðàòîðîâ. Åñòü àëüáîìû, êîòîðûå ÷åðç 50 ëåò áóäóò äîðîæå öåëîé ðóññêîè áèáëèîòåêè.

(What was an album twenty years ago? A little book covered in scarlet morocco leather, formatted from the thirty-second part of a sheet. What was to be found in such little books? Songs by Khovanskii, Nikolaev, candy wrappings, and confessions of love. But now, oh, now it is all different! Bookbinders have become refined; they have devoted all their art to adorning these little books. Now albums do not hide behind clasps: now you will rarely find in them phrases copied out of printed works or silly drawings of flowers and little houses. In today’s albums, [their owners] want to have drawings by the best artists and the handwriting of famous littérateurs. There are albums that in fifty years will be more expensive than a whole Russian library.)¹⁸

Iakovlev sees albums as moving decisively away from being meaningless trifles filled with second-rate or copied (and thus unoriginal) writing, commonplace expressions of love, “silly drawings,” and – literally – trash (candy wrappings). For him the album exists on a continuum of the literary process: the marginal artifact from the beginning of the nineteenth century has become refined – both in terms of form and content – to the point of becoming a kind of public gallery in which “drawings by the best artists and the handwriting of the best littérateurs” are on display. Iakovlev thus notes that the album’s status has grown to the point of attracting the greatest writers: and indeed all the great poets of Pushkin’s day, including Pushkin himself, wrote album inscriptions. Finally, Iakovlev predicts higher “market values” for albums compared to an unspecified “Russian library,” a comparison that opens up the possibility of viewing albums themselves metaphorically as a kind of “library,” that is, as a physical space that instead of rows of books houses many forms of writing (poetry, prose, inscriptions in form of maxims, wishes, and compliments). Such a compilation – just like books in a library – can be perused or read separately or in a larger context, and forms a collection of reading materials, parts of which can be nonetheless selectively accessed. By considering the album’s role in the development of Russian letters in the 1810s-1820s, Iakovlev in effect examines the issue of professionalization of literature and the rise of authorship in Pushkin’s day, an issue that lies at the center of much recent scholarly interest.

Album Writing as Social Performance

How were things done with albums? How were they filled up? What did it involve to be an album owner and/or an album writer? The mechanics of producing albums’ contents in their social context can be gleaned from fragments of memoirs, diaries, letters, and notes that describe instances of owners giving albums to people and asking for inscriptions, as well as the writers’ responses to such requests, frequently tinged with symptoms of “anxiety of authorship.”¹⁹ These scattered snippets of information offer a commentary on how albums acquired their contents, as well as how writers perceived the album, its owner, and their own participation in the ritual of writing in the album. In particular, many poems and pieces of prose about the act of writing and an associated uneasiness reveal how emotionally charged album writing was, as was becoming a writer – an album writer for now, but frequently a published or professional writer later on.

Writing in an album was often a highly theatrical performance that involved the actor/author, an audience, and props: the album and a quill pen. The presence of the quill pen and ink amplified performance anxiety on the material level: one had to be careful not to ruin a page. The writer had to balance out his or her frequently intimate, personal address to the album owner in such a way that the entry would still be publicly appropriate – that is, so that it would adhere to the constraints operating in this kind of theater. The writer often unveiled or explored a facet of his or her identity, along with characterizing the addressee, both of which could be socially problematic and potentially transgressive acts. The album allowed both its owner and its writers to carry on a number of brief dialogues between the addresser and the addressee, as well as between writers and readers. The album also invited longer monologues (such as Iakovlev’s inscription/article in Izmailova’s album), and thus allowed the writer to address a larger audience. An additional layer of dialogue instigated by the album belonged to writers and literary critics (of whom Pushkin and Iakovlev are very good examples, respectively), who publicly debated the very value of album keeping while writing in an album.

Album writing in early nineteenth-century Russia involved almost exclusively the aristocracy and gentry of various ranks. The institutions of the salon and the familiar group were two main social niches for creating and utilizing albums. The higher echelons of its participants could be subsumed under the generous label of “polite society” (svetskoe obshchestvo) defined by William Mills Todd III as a malleable term, used by Pushkin, Zhukovsky, and others to mean a community of people united by “honor, intelligence (as wit), and education.”²⁰ For Todd, “polite society” is a “cultural formation…. [which] elevated its forms of communication – letters, conversations, social gatherings – to the aesthetic, and it cultivated literary forms that catered to its interest and limited attention span (‘album’ verse, bouts-rimés, epigrams)” (3). Todd asserts that album verse was a genre central to the workings of polite society (6). He also observes that participation in society required many roles, costumes, personae, and styles; versatility was a mark of intelligence and social skills. His focus on the theatricality of the epoch helps to understand how writing in an album could be one part of a larger performance for a member of “polite society.” Album writing can be seen then as a form of spectacle or performance, since, as Todd says, social gatherings in Pushkin’s day were “aesthetic forms” (7). The centrality of “talk” and the importance of quotations, proverbs, and asides, and their function in everyday performances of “polite society” (31), help to view albums as extensions and sometimes beginnings or endings of everyday salon conversations.

If a salon or any other group gathering in Pushkin’s day was a highly theatricalized event, then the album served as a prop in the performance. The idea of “theatricality,” theorized in three different ways by the sociologists Erving Goffman and Elizabeth Burns and by the literary critic Iurii Lotman, works in albums at several levels.²¹ Goffman proposes a model of social interactions whereby an individual conveys information about himself or herself through expressions that are given purposefully or involuntarily to an audience, which interprets the impressions it receives (1-12). Such blended performance is aimed at an audience (15-16). An important part of a performance is “front,” made up of “setting” (decor) and “personal front” (appearance and manner) (22-4). Performances often have a “back-stage” where they are “suspended” (75-105); a performance may succeed or not, and it can be disrupted by either the performer or the audience, if either one decides to stop interaction (208-37). Album writing involves all of the above terms: a writer has to perform in front of an audience, and his or her performance may be a success or a failure – hence the writer’s performance anxiety. The album keeper has something to be anxious about too: his or her album should fulfill the goal that the owner set for it, be it an impressive collection of autographs of the rich and famous, an “anthology” of the best writers’ poems, or a record of the album owner’s popularity as a love object. But he or she may retreat back-stage to regroup and reemerge with a redeeming poem, an oxymoronic “prepared improvisation.”

Burns’s idea of theatricality understood as a set of conventions shared by drama and everyday behavior (1-3) sheds light on the conventional character of album keeping and writing. A convention is a “mutual understanding about the meaning of action” (28); conventions coordinate social behavior without the burden of explicit agreements (40). The essence of theatricality in life lies, for Burns, in following the “special grammar of composed behavior”: for “it is when we suspect that behavior is being composed according to this grammar of rhetorical or authenticating conventions that we regard it as theatrical” (33). If we consider album writing in this context, it is subject to multiple conventions, and thus often theatricalized, both in terms of texts and the ways of putting an entry in the album. When writers break these conventions, new meanings often surface.

“Theatricality,” according to Lotman, arises when theater serves as a model for everyday behavior (269). In the Romantic period, “the sphere of art is seen as a collection of models and programs.... Life chooses art to be its example and hurries to ‘imitate’ it” (270). Lotman asserts that at that time the border between art and everyday behavior collapsed: “The epoch becomes theatricalized as a whole. Forms characteristic for a stage leave the theater and subjugate life” (272-7). The everyday life of the gentry functions according to clearly delineated conventions, which presuppose a prescribed model of behavior. Albums thus occupy a small niche with their own rules. Writing in albums was, of course, a convention, yet its specific form allowed for much play: transforming it into a creative act; turning it into a serious “scholarly” pursuit; or overturning it with a joke, thus perhaps creating what Lotman sees as a “break” in the otherwise strict semiotics of behavior (277).

Salons and familiar groups were sites for writing in albums; they constituted the “stage” Salons and familiar groups were sites for writing in albums; they constituted the “stage” of the performance. Aronson illuminates the nuanced differences between these different forms of social interaction, but also stresses their shared goals and ways of operating.²² The main distinction Aronson makes is that “a circle is more focused on a writer, a salon – on readers. The participation in the salon of people not connected with literature directly facilitates its work of disseminating ideas and tastes and circulating them in society” (37). The relative homogeneity of the different groups was conditioned by the fact that many of the same people attended the same Moscow and St. Petersburg salons in the 1820s (63). Aronson writes that salons and familiar groups were the place for “meetings among writers, as well as their meetings with representatives of other groups in society. Here... literature and social ideas assimilate; they are discussed, literary values are established, literary unions are sealed.” Salons and circles were places that fostered the exchange of ideas among writers, artists, and academics; they had their role in the creation of a writer, a work of art, and literary evolution. The “literary function” of circles and salons was to “correct the poems of a beginning poet.” Additionally, they also partially lifted the constraints on publishing caused by censorship. Circles and salons died out in the second half of the nineteenth century as a result of the development of the book industry, journalism, and literary professionalism in Russia (78-82).²³ “Albums of society’s beauties” (al'bomy svetskikh krasavits) fit into Aronson’s schema together with the obsession of early nineteenth-century society with verbal games, charades, epigrams, impromptus, and bouts-rimés. Album poems are thus one more proof and example of the “saturation of that society with literary culture,” and they “show the high level of poetic mastery proven by gentlemen in those times,” as they often served as places for “competitions of wit” and “poetic tournaments” (22-3).

The role of albums – both at the stage of the salon and literary circle as well as in the process of professionalization – was also briefly discussed by Boris Eikhenbaum, who linked the Russian literary process and domesticity. Eikhenbaum recalls Pushkin’s assessment (1837) that Russian literature had become professional only in the previous twenty years. He writes that in Pushkin’s times “literature escapes into everyday life – it becomes an intimate, domestic affair, concentrated in letters, album addresses, petits jeux... It is interesting that even journals of that time assume a shade of familiarity and a kind of directness.”²⁴ By the 1840s the “Russian writer becomes a professional littérateur and publisher” for whom “verbal culture” (slovesnaia kul'tura) of the 1820-30s is “foreign” and “unknown” (361-3). Eikhenbaum comments on the function of albums in salons and familiar groups, which he treats as central forces of the changing functions of literature at the beginning of the nineteenth century:

Domestic albums were filling up with poems, but these poems were not spreading outside albums. In the beginning of the nineteenth century those “domestic” forms of poetry are used for literary originality and as a new genre, in connection with a retreat from a courtly ode. This process also causes these forms of salon or familiar group interactions to acquire a meaning in terms of literature and everyday life. Album verse (al'bomnaia lirika) is the basic genre of the epoch, and the basic type of a litterateur is a poet-dilettante, who is no longer pursuing the position of a court “singer” but not yet desiring to have a public “stage.”

(“Domesticity” as a literary and cultural orientation appears in some poets of that epoch in an exceptionally sharp and principal form. Iazykov is such a poet. His poems are about the most minute events of domestic life. Voeikova’s or Dirina’s albums are the main sites in which he writes... He is little interested in publishing his poems. When he needs to write something specially for publication, he does it with difficulty and lack of enthusiasm: “The thought that I have to write poetry to order for Almanacs may cool down my Muse.” To a new request he answers: “It is a pity that, for example, Voeikova is not here: then I could write something interesting even to order.” Concepts close to him and interconnected are “literature and family life.” After he receives a gift from his sister, he writes to his family: “I will thank Parasha for the bag with a poem: it is a gift of such importance that only poetry can be an answer. And I am glad to write poetry when there is an occasion for it.”)²⁵

Eikhenbaum focuses on the poet’s (Nikolai Iazykov’s in this case) dependence on domestic poetic themes. For him, albums as preferred sites of publication impede the poet from publishing in more professional almanacs and journals. However, it is possible to see albums as a link in the progression of literary processes from oral (toasts, speeches, wishes, poems read aloud) to written (albums, personal letters, diaries and journals). After the Enlightenment, there is a continuous turn toward the “personal,” and the album becomes a written record of interactions and self-explorations in poetry and prose, and thus a predecessor of the almanac and the journal. What goes on in a salon or a group of friends is for the first time recorded in a contextualized form (not a single ode, but a cluster of various genres and different “voices”) which has survived into our time. The album was inadvertently blazing the trail for professional publishing, and thus its existence was changing the status of both literature and the writer.

In Pushkin’s time, “writers were not yet the ‘authors’ they would later become,” writes Todd (105). With album poetry, essays, and other writings gradually leaving the realm of salons and domesticity for the venue of a printed book, journal, or almanac, albums played their small yet unique role in the process of professionalization of literature. They served as props in the construction of the new identity of an “author” that would be both public and private. Todd has shown that in early nineteenth-century Russia, the old system of patronage was being supplanted by a new system in which professional writers could enjoy a greater degree of creative independence, as their constraining financial reliance on patrons ceased to be a factor (51). Literature moved from the court to new locales: “Salons, circles, soirées... became the locus of an institutionalization of literature that differed in almost every respect from the patronage system” (55). These groups facilitated the growth of literature through friendly criticism and coauthorial relationships (56). Salons promoted social mobility and made “literary reputations”; they assumed functions like those of today’s professional critic (61).

As Todd writes, book production in the Romantic age was only beginning to come into existence and the “profession of letters” was in its “incipient” stage (83). We may say that the printed almanac was an early type of a book, one that grew out of the hand-written album. Almanacs were books for the educated public; they offered a mix of lyric poetry, essayistic prose, and vignettes (lyres, urns, wreaths). The almanac was like the album in that the dominant style of both was “mellifluousness” (79-80). Syncretism, attempts at satisfying every taste, and plenitude were general characteristics of these types of literature (95). The album can thus be viewed as a hand-written predecessor of the printed almanac, since they both privilege lyric poetry and vignette-type illustrations. The step of publishing albums’ hand-written, non-reproducible contents in printed almanacs that could be sold in many copies and thus disseminated was indeed an important one in the development of Russian literature.

Making Literature in the Album of Sofiia Ponomareva

The example of Sofiia Ponomareva’s (1794-1824) salon and its aforementioned twin literary organization – “Free Society of Lovers of Wisdom and Literature”– gives us specific information about how albums were used in salons and how they were linked to publishing, and thus to the process of professionalizing literature. Although each salon had its own characteristics, this case study is representative of many salons, familiar groups, and the albums they cultivated. The everyday activities of Ponomareva’s salon and the literary society the hostess created shed light on the album’s precise place on the axis stretching “from handwritten album page to print.” Vadim Vatsuro’s “step-by-step biography” of this salon – as he calls his project – provides ample data on how, when, where, and by whom entries were inscribed in Ponomareva’s albums and the albums kept by members of her salon.²⁶

A paradigmatic situation of a salon hostess asking a poet for a poem is narrated by Orest Somov, who was in March 1821 a new guest at Ponomareva’s salon. Ponomareva’s habit was to order the gathered poets to write verses on topics supplied by her. Somov wrote the following note next to his first poem “Eksprompt” (Impromptu), written for Ponomareva: “Â ïåðâûé äåíü çíàêîìñòâà íàøåãî Ñ. Ä. ïðèêàçàëà ìíå øóòÿ íàïèñàòü åé ýêñïðîìïò è âûõâàëüÿòü åå ìîðàëüíûå äîáðîäåòåëè” (“On the first night of our acquaintance, S. D. ordered me jokingly to write an impromptu and praise her moral virtues”). And this is Somov’s poem:

Âû íàïèñàòü ýêñïðîìïò ñåé ÷àñ ìíå ïðèêàçàëè
È äîáðîäåòåëè â íåì âàøèì âûõâàëÿòü;
Àõ! Åñëè á ìíå ïðåäìåò íå ñòîëü áîãàòûé äàëè,
Òîãäà áû ìîã ýêñïðîìïò ÿ íàïèñàòü.

(You ordered me now to write an impromptu
And to praise your virtues in it;
Ah! if only you did not give me such a rich topic,
Then I could write an impromptu.)²⁷

A few days later Somov redeemed his miserable first quatrain in the hostess’s album by writing another poem “Spor na Olimpe” (An argument on Olympus, March 31, 1821), dedicated to Ponomareva. Its plot involves the Greek goddess of wisdom and poetry, Minerva, winning over Aphrodite, a goddess of love, in an argument over which of them created Sof’ia. This was longer and more serious poem, full of erudite allusions to mythology and praise of its addresse’s attributes, such as “educated mind” (um obrazovannyi), “taste” (vkus), “knowledge” (znaniia), and “nobility” (blagorodstvo), inter alia.²⁸ By aligning Ponomareva with the goddess of wisdom and poetry, Somov quickly guessed the role she gave herself in her salon: that of a “source” of poetry generated by others. Like Minerva, she was imagined as the one who made poetry possible and facilitated its production. By writing this poem Somov finally responded to Ponomareva’s request, on a second try. The poem was published in The Benevolent One, together with Izmailov’s poems on a similar topic. Ponomareva’s request, although it may seem like a banal whim of a salon hostess, was in fact an act of generating materials for publication. Vatsuro suggests that Izmailov needed another poem on this topic and used Ponomareva and the new guest to get one.²⁹ The operation was fully successful.

Somov came back to write a new poem; he showed that he could, in fact, perform. At first, as a newcomer, perhaps he did not quite understand the rules of the game which required him to write publishable-quality verse, not “domestic” and “personal” trifles. Ponomareva immediately cast him in the role of a poet-contributor, although she did so using a coquettish request more fitting for a salon setting than a journal’s headquarters – which her salon really was. Somov’s quatrain shows his confusion: he responded to the salon hostess’s request as if her salon were located in a private sphere where literary trifles and lack of invention are forgiven if one’s poem shows adulation for the hostess, while Ponomareva’s salon was rather a public space where literature was being created, recorded, and later published. The miserable quality of Somov’s first poem can be justified perhaps by his performance anxiety since writing in an album on this particular occasion was similar to an initiation rite. The double meaning of the term “performance anxiety” is especially fitting in the case of Ponomareva’ salon which was steeped in love innuendo. Somov, in fact, was hopelessly in love with Ponomareva, who, after a few months of flirtation, rejected him.³⁰

An album inscription could sometimes help with or impede the development of a romantic interest. The situation of writing in a salon setting was therefore akin to an improvised theatrical performance, regardless of whether the inscription was supposed to be improvised on the spot; whether the writer could take the album home and inscribe an album poem there; or whether a guest brought his album with him (for example, Iakovlev brings his album when he goes to visit Ponomareva, who writes in it at her own house [85]). The stakes were high because they depended on a final judgement rendered by the writer’s circle as to his or her artistic talent and also social ability. To use Goffman’s terms, no matter how painfully the poet toiled “back-stage” (at home), getting ready for writing in an album, he had to preserve the “front” of a smooth improvisation. However, a salon hostess could circumvent the expectation of performing, as she was usually the “collector” of entries which made up her album. Ponomareva almost never wrote original poetry or prose. She excelled at vague aphorisms such as “Ñòðàñòè íå èìåþò çàêîíîâ” (Passions have no laws).³¹ If she wrote anything, she never cited her sources, thus leaving it up to the imagination of the albums’ readers whether she was a great thinker, well-read or both. She also “wrote” in Iakovlev’s album by having her words written down by someone else. For example, Baratynsky put the following entry in this album: “ßêîâëåâ, - ñêàçàëà Ñîôèÿ Äìèòðåâíà, - ðàñïîëîæèëñÿ æèòü â ñâåòå, êàê áóäòî ó ñåáÿ äîìà, è ïîçàáûë, ÷òî æèçíü åñòü îäíî ìå÷òàíèå ïóñòîå” (“Iakovlev, Sofiia Dmitrievna said, made himself comfortable in the world, as if he were at home, and he forgot that life is but an empty dream).³² In this way Ponomareva inserted her words into Iakovlev’s album without writing them down. She used a writer for the task of writing down her words.

Ponomareva’s albums show how poems were often rehearsed, copied, and rewritten. For example, Nikolai. Gnedich wrote his poem to Batiushkov, “Druzhba” (Friendship), in 1810 and copied it into Ponomareva’s album in 1814.³³ This example shows us how interchangeable the adressees of album poems were. But in a case like this one it can be unclear whether Gnedich is referring to his “friendship” with Ponomareva or Batiushkov or both in Ponomareva’s album. Gnedich’s decision to inscribe a poem about his friendship with the idol of poets of that time could have been a sign of his seeking an outside authority who would lend him some esteem in his new circle of friends. A poem could be written as if it were appearing in an album, but in fact it could be meant for publication from the start. In this case, the poet would write in the genre of album address but not in an album, a practice that elevates the album verses to a well-defined, recognizeable genre. A case in point is Evgeny Baratynsky’s “V al’bom (Vy slishkom mnogimi liubimy)” [In an album (You are loved by too many)], written and published in 1821, a poem to Ponomareva that was not included in her album but published and subsequently known as a poem dedicated to her. Likewise, Vatsuro asserts that “Primankoi laskovykh rechei...” (Enticing with sweet words...,1821) was never written in Ponomareva’s album, though it was written about and for her. Baratynsky first read the poem in Ponomareva’s salon, published it for the first time in 1823 and later several other times under five different titles.³⁴ The poet put an additional twist on the history of the poem by actually inscribing it in A. V. Lutkovskaia’s album, thus letting it perform “double duty,” as Stephanie Sandler and Judith Vowles have observed.³⁵ This practice of using one poem for different albums, sometimes with slight changes (for example, changing the name of the album’s owner), was in fact widespread. Poems were also copied and sometimes changed in the process without acknowledging the name of the author.

Such practices resonate with Michel Foucault’s questioning of the notion of an individualized “author.” Foucault quotes Beckett’s line “’What does it matter who is speaking,’ someone said, ‘what does it matter who is speaking,’” and Romantic albums show that indeed it did not always matter.³⁶ The “time when the texts that we call today ’literary’... were accepted, put into circulation, and valorized without any question about the identity of their author” is not, in the Russian case, the Middle Ages (Foucault’s reference),³⁷ but the early nineteenth century. The suspension of the author-function in albums also allows for a display of “plurality of self”³⁸ by a single author, for example, when he or she writes variations on one poem in many albums. However, there are times when the name of the author, for example, Pushkin’s signature, is present in the album, a poem can be valorized differently than when it is absent. The status of the poem, the album, and the album’s owner may change depending on this signature, since the name “mark[s] off the edges of the text, revealing, or at least characterizing, its mode of being.”³⁹ A case in point is aforementioned Pushkin’s poem “Chto v imeni tebe moem” which mocks Sobańska’s insistence at adding Pushkin’s inscription and signature to her album which was a collection of autographs of the rich and famous.⁴⁰

The absence of the signature of the author allows the reader to come to the fore in the case of such texts as albums. Paraphrasing Roland Barthes, we may say that when a writer puts a poem into an album, “the author enters into his own death” and “writing begins.⁴¹” Album poems are stolen, rewritten, mutilated, improved, and creatively reworked. Thus the reader often becomes an author. The album’s character, moreover, undermines his or her authorship because the album is made up largely of what Barthes calls imitated gestures, “always anterior, never original”; the album’s basis is largely a “ready-formed dictionary.” Many album writers are Barthes’s “scriptors” whose writing draws from such a “dictionary” of emblems and recognizable topoi. But while for Barthes that means scriptors’ departure from emotions as source of creative impulses, in albums we see both the writers’ reliance on the shared Romantic discourse of images and themes, and their attempts at expressing emotions “sincerely” and “from the heart,” as pronouncements of love and friendship in albums would require. And indeed, they produce what we could call after Barthes “a writing that can know no halt.”⁴²

If a writer wanted to avoid copying texts but dreaded being put in the limelight when writing on the spot, she or he might have prepared poems before inscribing them in an album. Vatsuro writes that Izmailov’s poem “Eksprompt (V al’bom S. D. P.)” (Impromptu [In S. D. P.’s album]) is known from the poet’s manuscripts but cannot be found in any album, and he concludes that an album may have been lost (41-2). It is also possible that a poet “prepared” himself before going to a salon but may have for various reasons never put a poem in the album. V. I. Panaev’s three “intimate” poems to Ponomareva were not written to her and were not addressed to her, Vatsuro reports. Panaev had already read them at two literary meetings elsewhere; he “wrote in the album a literary novelty; a fruit of his poetic creativity, already judged by and accepted by the echelons of Petersburg littérateurs.”⁴³ This shows how the album was not only a place of rehearsals but a place of premieres: once Panaev’s poems were positively assessed by fellow writers, they could have their first night in Ponomareva’s salon and album without much risk of the author’s being ridiculed.

Like Ponomareva, many salon hostesses left writing in albums to their guests and did not have to face constant performing. For example, A. O. Smirnova-Rosset, a well-known salon hostess, “was friends with writers... with Pletnev, Gogol, and her album, according to her own memoirs, was always lying on a table, open for constant guests.”⁴⁴ What differentiates Ponomareva from other album owners, such as Smirnova-Rosset, is that her goal was to publish the “proceedings” of her salon and the “Free Society”; her albums had a direct link to the world of print. Izmailov’s journal The Benevolent One was the main place of publication for the literature generated by the salon members. The rather informal journal contained references to the salon’s members and evenings; it quoted members’ idiosyncratic expressions, their names, and events from salon life.⁴⁵ Ponomareva was serious about her literary society’s goals and obligations, which she made explicit in various written addresses to the members of the society, signed with a male pseudonym “Motyl’kov” derived from the Russian word for a “moth.” Poems were edited, and some of them had to be thrown out; they had to pass peer review before they could appear in print. She distributed topics and established deadlines.⁴⁶ It seems that Ponomareva, who displayed a childish, capricious persona as a salon hostess, acquired a new persona as president and founder of her literary group; using a male pseudonym and writing official-sounding documents in a stylized chancellary language (put in her albums) made her more “authoritative.” The albums played a role in the shaping of her curious “authorial” identity. Although there was certainly an element of game-playing in her actions, Ponomareva made her own idiosyncratic contribution to the development of Russian letters through her salon and its two “channels” of publication: the album and the almanac. Her position of salon hostess enabled her to exert an influence on the literary scene of her time, since, as Lina Bernstein writes, “Salon hostesses constituted the primary audience for both emerging and established writers, who sought out and valued these women’s judgements... The role of the salon hostess was multifaceted: she was an inspiration, model, critic, and umpire, and sometimes a patron and a close friend.”⁴⁷

Ponomareva’s editorial activities continued, as it were, after her death in 1824. But it was not her “documents” and the letters that she wrote as the president of the society that were published posthumously, but rather the salon members’ verses, once written to her. Izmailov and Iakovlev published the almanac Kalendar' muz na 1826 god (The Calendar of the Muses for 1826), in which Izmailov collected his own and others’ old album poems and other materials written for Ponomareva during her life, as well as one poem written after her death. Vatsuro comments, “Izmailov hurried to publish everything he had ever written for Ponomareva”; two issues of Nevskii Almanac (1825) contained more of his verses.⁴⁸ That Ponomareva’s death made Izmailov fervently publish illustrates an unusual path leading from domestic verse production into print. Still, even after her death, or maybe because of it, her salon and albums encouraged Izmailov’s newfound editorial energy.

Making Literature in the Album of N. D. Ivanchin-Pisarev

Nikolai Dmitrevich Ivanchin-Pisarev’s (ca. 1794-1849) album-keeping provides a contrasting example of how the album aided in the process of the professionalization of the writer figure outside the world of the salon, in which the salonière asked for inscriptions and writers obliged, thus generating literature. N. D. Ivanchin-Pisarev’s album is a record of how album writing took place in his social milieu of (mostly male) writers, prospective writers, and publishers. While Ponomareva’s albums refract the history of her salon, the goals Ivanchin-Pisarev had for his album were completely different. Unlike Ponomareva, for whom the salon and the album were game-like endeavors with literary activities joyously and jokingly woven into general socializing, Ivanchin-Pisarev was a professional littérateur and critic interested mainly in gathering entries from literary figures. Ivanchin-Pisarev published poetry and prose from the mid-1800s to the 1840s in a variety of journals and almanacs, such as, for example, The Son of the Fatherland, Severnaia Pchela (The Northern Bee), Moskvitianin (The Muscovite), and Aglaia; he authored three volumes of poetry and a number of essays on literature and history. As an album keeper documenting the literary life in which he participated, he was also a collector of autographs – even if he did not know the celebrities very well – an interest absent from Ponomareva’s album keeping. While Ponomareva’s albums are more of a haphazard record of the life of her salon and her romantic conquests (the two being closely interconnected), Ivanchin-Pisarev’s album and its inscriptions offer a solemn narrative about how Ivanchin-Pisarev imagined himself as a writer and the ways in which he attempted to craft this persona through keeping an album.⁴⁹

This contrast between the two album owners and two album keeping styles is very much in the spirit of Lotman’s comments on the theatricalization of life in the period. Ponomareva and Ivanchin-Pisarev chose their emploi, that is, “genre of behavior” (zhanr povedeniia), out of styles available to them at their historical moment (261), as salon hostess and littérateur, respectively. By doing that, they attempt to define their identities, because, according to Lotman, having a defined “genre of behavior” has a twofold advantage: it organizes one’s behavior and it helps to formulate a clearer self-definition (259).⁵⁰ Culture and society offered two different “genres” and identities to Ponomareva and Ivanchin-Pisarev, both of whom had literary inclinations: she could be a salon hostess, he could write; she could treat literature as a salon game, he could try on the identity/costume of a professional writer. Their albums were part of their roles, or rather, with their style and content, recorded and reflected the kinds of “selves” each of them adopted from available models and reworked to make them fit.

For a salon hostess, the album was a prop different than what it was for a man of letters. Ponomareva’s album received its inscriptions through poetry competitions among members of her salon and their improvisations, more or less sincere. Ivanchin-Pisarev did not run a salon, so he had to ask writers for inscriptions differently, which affected the album. The fact of being invited to write in an album was considered of special importance, as we can see from the following examples. Dmitrii Shelokhov writes in Pisarev’s album on January 27, 1819: “Í. Ä. Èâàí÷èíó-Ïèñàðåâó. Îòâåò íà ïðåäëîæåíèå ïîìåñòèòü ñòèõè å åãî Àëüáîì ìåæäó çíàìåíèòûìè ïåñíîïåâöàìè“ (“For N. D. Ivanchin-Pisarev. In answer to his proposal to put my verse in his Album, among illustrious Poets”).⁵¹ There are several places where, under the album poems, writers and/or the owner systematically wrote: “âïèñàíî â àëüáîì“ îr “çàïèñàíî â àëüáîì“ (“written in the album”), a notation accompanied by an exact date. This practice turned the album into a chronicle. The word “album” was very often spelled with a capital first letter, which highlights the respect and authority that this object was supposed to evoke.

Ivanchin-Pisarev kept the notes that came with some album entries, as he often gave or sent the album, or even just separate pages, to people with a request, a practice that we can deduce from these very notes. For example, Vasilii L’vovich Pushkin wrote an album poem in 1819. The album also contains a letter from him in which he mentions the circumstances of writing in Pisarev’s album: “Ïîçäðàâëÿþ âàñ ñ ïîëó÷åíèåì ëèñòêîâ âàøåãî Àëüáîìà. Óâåäîìüòå ìåíÿ î ïîëó÷åíèè îíûõ“ (“Congratulations on the occasion of receiving pages of your Album. Let me know when you receive them.”)⁵² Baratynsky wrote a note with a fragment of his poem “Eda” in the album: “Ïîñûëàþ âàì âàø àëüáîì, Ëþáåçíûé Ïîýò. ß ïðîâåë ó âàñ òàêèÿ ïðèÿòíûÿ ìèíóòû ÷òî æåëàíèå äðóãèõ ïîäîáíûõ âî ìíå íå óäèâèòåëüíî” (“I am sending you your album, Dear Poet. I had such a good time with you that my wish to repeat it is not surprising…”)⁵³ An album entry is thus almost a form of repaying hospitality which can be extended thanks to the album-writing custom; the entry serves as a coda to the time spent visiting.

An album entry could also be an element in a more complex exchange, as is the case with the curious situation of Ivanchin-Pisarev’s asking his censor and a less than mediocre poet, A. F. Merzliakov, for an entry. In the case below it appears that asking for an album entry is also a pretext for contacting the censor about a manuscript that Ivanchin Pisarev needed back. Given the uneven power relationship between censor and writer, it is possible that asking for an entry functioned as flattery and thus was intended to garner a warmer response for the manuscript or to help it move faster through the censorship office.

Îäíàæäû ÿ òðåáîâàë îò íåãî ñêîðåéøåãî äîñòàâëåíèÿ è ìîåé ðóêîïèñè, áûâøåé ó íåãî â öåíñóðå, è åãî Ïàñòóøêà â ìîé àëüáîì, ïåñíèþ, ïðîñëàâèâøóñÿ â ëó÷øèõ îáùåñòâàõ è â íàðîäå. Çíàâ åãî çàáûâ÷èâîñòü, ÿ íå äàë åìó àëüáîìà, à îòäåëèë ëèñòèê. Îí çàáûë èëè ïîòåðÿë è ýòîò, è, íà îñîáåííîì ëèñòèêå äðóãàãî ôîðìàòà íàèñàâ ñâîþ ïåñíèþ, ïðèñëàë êî ìíå öëåäóþùåþ ïðèïèñêîþ ß ñâîå äåëî óæå äàâíî êîí÷èë... Çà ïðèÿòíåéøåå óäîâîëüñòâèå, êîòîðîå ÷óâñòâîâàë ÿ ïðè ÷òåíèè âàøèõ ñî÷èíåíèé, ïëà÷ó âàì, ïî æåëàíèþ âàøåìó, íè÷òîíåçíà÷óùåþ áåçäåëêîþ.
                 Âàø è ïðî÷. À. Ìåðçëÿêîâ"
1818 ãîäà Äåêàáðÿ

(Once I needed him to give me back my manuscript, which he was censoring, as soon as possible, as well as his Shepherdess to put it in my album, a song that had gained fame both in high society and among simple folk. Knowing his forgetfulness, I did not give him the album but separated a page. He forgot about or lost it, but he wrote his song on a separate piece of paper of a different format, and he sent it to me with the following note: “I finished my job a long time ago... For the most pleasant satisfaction which I felt when I read your work, I am paying you, as you requested, with a meaningless trifle.
                Yours, etc. A. Merzliakov"
December of 1818)⁵⁴

This story shows the practice of giving a person a piece of paper on which he or she was supposed to write; the loose leaf which would subsequently be attached to the album proper (in the same way autographs were sometimes inserted into an album). This scenario is quite different from the typical salon situation of improvising on the spot, and certainly allows for many rehearsals on the side of the writer. But the situation described by Ivanchin-Pisarev is also unusual because the album writer-to-be is a censor, not a friend, celebrity, or family member – the usual suspects of album production. Lack of anchoring the album in the tight circle of house guests allowed for enriching the album’s contents, as even relative strangers could be asked for a poem. Again, in this case there is a sense of “payment” or exchange of services and gifts. In the note that Merzliakov sent with the album page, he writes that he is “paying” Ivanchin-Pisarev for the “pleasure” he felt upon reading his poems. On the other hand, he calls his album verses “a meaningless trifle” (nichtoneznachushchaia bezdelka) in a typical self-demeaning gesture which was part of album savoir faire. Thus he gets caught up in a paradox of these two album conventions: he cannot pay meaningfully with something that he calls “meaningless,” yet he has to devalue his album entry in order to maintain decorum.

Album writing was frequently a dialogue between the album owner and the writer; the former could comment on the latter’s inscription. Such dialogue could undoubtedly be used to create a sense of authorship on the part of either one or both parties. For example, Prince Ivan Mikhailovich Dolgorukov wrote his original poem in Ivanchin-Pisarev’s album on the occasion of the latter’s reading his play aloud. As in the case of Baratynsky’s and Merzliakov’s “payments,” there is an element of exchange here: although Dolgorukov does not refer to the play, he does say that writing in an album gives him a chance to praise the playwright’s poetic skill, and through presenting them both as poets, to create a kind of literary community in which they can both participate:

 àëüáîì ïèñàòü ñòèõè – ìîå ëè ïðàâî äåëî?
Òû òðåáóåøü òîãî – ÿ ïîñòóïàþ ñìåëî.
Íî ÷òî ïèñàòü ê òîìó, êòî òàê âçðîñòèë êàê òû
Íåóâÿäàåìû ïîýçèè öâåòû,
Êòî ñìåë (òâîè ñëîâà) áëèçü àíãåëà ìîëèòüñÿ,
È ñ îáðàçîì åãî îò ñâåòà óäàëèòüñÿ*
...
Ïóñêàé ñìååòñÿ ñâåò ñèè ÷èòàÿ ñòðîêè,
×òî ñòàðûé õðåí êàê ÿ äàåò ëþáâè óðîêè:
...
Çàêîí äóøè ìîåé â àëüáîì âìåùàþ òâîé:
Êòî ëþáèò òîò â ðàþ; êòî ìèë – òîò áîã çåìíîé.
12 àïðåëÿ 1822.

*Îòíîñèòñÿ ê îäíèì èç ñòèõîâ Õîçÿèíà Àëüáîìà.
                 Èâàí÷èí-Ïèñàðåâ.

(To write poems in an album – do I have this right?
You want this – I bravely do it.
But what can one write for a person who, like you,
Has grown unwilting flowers of poetry,
Who dared (these are your words) to pray near an angel,
And left the world with his image.*
....
Let the world laugh upon reading these stanzas
That an old goat like me still lectures about love:
....
I bravely place the law of my soul in your album:
He who loves is in heaven; the loved one is a god on earth.
12 April 1822.

*It refers to one of the poems by the Host of the Album.
                Ivanchin-Pisarev.”)⁵⁵

The footnote provided by Ivanchin-Pisarev himself is of special importance: he also wants to create a community of literati, however tenuously, even within the context of Dolgorukov’s heavy-handed verses. The owner of the album footnotes inscriptions put there by others, and through this unusual self-referencing gesture, places himself in an imagined canon of poets. The gesture is scholarly; footnoting does not belong in an album. By providing the footnote, Ivanchin-Pisarev stresses both his erudition (he “caught” an allusion) and also directs potential readers to his works. He provides an interesting name for himself: “The Host of the Album,” that reveals his self-definition in the album game. He is khoziain (a host, a landlord, someone in charge), and therefore he is authorized to footnote his materials, treating his album as an anthology of sorts, which contains a medley of authors, his commentary, and even his own poem, inserted into the pages of the album.⁵⁶ The process of “self-fashioning,” to use Stephen Greenblatt’s term, is quite transparent.⁵⁷ We see how Ivanchin-Pisarev earned the fame of an “erudite person and collector,” as Vatsuro called him, although his writings are half-forgotten.⁵⁸ There may be, of course, legitimate reasons for assigning Ivanchin-Pisarev such names, but his album also shows us a carefully-crafted persona of a scholar and writer.

Greenblatt’s term “self-fashioning” resonates with a description of such practices of keeping and writing in albums: “self-fashioning derives its interest precisely from the fact that it functions without regard for a sharp distinction between literature and social life. It invariably crosses the boundaries between the creation of literary characters, the shaping of one’s own identity, the experience of being molded by forces outside one’s control, the attempt to fashion other selves.”⁵⁹ The word “fashion” brings to mind stylization and role-playing, and in this sense it is very close to the concepts of life-as-theater and performance. Indeed, identity and performance have been ingeniously linked by scholars such as Judith Butler. Her theory of performativity, whose primary focus is gender, may be extended to encompass other facets of identity. In a nutshell, Butler asserts that “gender is a performance” and that it is an “identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts.”⁶⁰ Authorial identity can be subject to a similar interpretation. In the case not only of Ivanchin-Pisarev, who serves as one striking example, but also in the cases of a great number of writers who were on their way to professionalism, there is certainly a stylization, a repetition, and a multitude of acts whose goal is to establish a literary self that leaves the private realm and transports the newly minted writer into the realm of public recognition. This process is visible, among other places, in albums.

By referencing his own poem in the album Ivanchin-Pisarev pronounced himself an author. The fact that poets such as Pushkin wrote in the very same album most likely was supposed to lend credibility to such a claim. Ivanchin-Pisarev writes about the circumstances of receiving Pushkin’s inscription in his album:

 1828 ãîäó ÿ ÷àñòî âñòðå÷àëñÿ ñ Ïóøêèíûì, è îäíàæäû ïðåäëîæèë åìó âïèñàòü ÷òî-íèáóäü èç ñâîèõ ñòèõîâ â ìîé àëüáîì. Îí ïðè ìíå âïèñàë èçâåñòíûå ñòèõè: Ìóçà. Íà âîïðîñ ìîé: îò ÷åãî ýòè ïðèøëè åìó íà ïàìÿòü ïðåæäå âñÿêèõ äðóãèõ? - “ß èõ ëþáëþ“, îòâå÷àë Ïóøêèí: “îíè îòçûâàþòñÿ ñòèõàìè Áàòþøêîâà.“

(In 1828 I often met with Pushkin and once I asked him to write one of his poems into my album. In my presence, he wrote the famous poem “The Muse“ in my album. When I asked why this poem came to his mind and not any other, he answered: “I like it; it has echoes of Batiushkov’s poetry.)⁶¹

Pushkin and Ivanchin-Pisarev knew each other for quite some time and this familiarity facilitated the album owner’s access to the famous poet. The interesting part of the story is that Pushkin in this case did not write a poem addressed to the owner, as he did on numerous occasions when he wrote in women’s albums: instead, he quotes from himself. He copies his well-known poem “The Muse” (first published in 1821). His action is unusual enough to trigger Ivanchin-Pisarev’s question about Pushkin’s rationale for writing this particular poem, and the answer points to the poet himself, not to the album’s owner as an addressee of flattery or gratitude. Pushkin chooses a poem because “he likes it,” thus purposefully overlooking or ignoring the etiquette of album writing, which would have him pay more attention to the addressee than to his own person. His freedom to do so shows us both his stature in the world of letters and his own sense of independence. By choosing to write this particular entry, Pushkin seems to be saying that he is free do whatever he wants, at least in the universe of the album and, by extension, literature. It may be seen as a compensatory gesture that liberates him from social constraints, a gesture in the spirit of a rebellious Romantic hero/writer.

But Pushkin’s choice of the poem also suggests that perhaps another poet – Batiushkov in this case – can be a kind of addressee of the inscription. By writing a poem about a muse, Pushkin is more involved in a dialogue with himself and his predecessor than he is with the album’s owner. At the same time, Pushkin writes in the album, although he could have chosen not to (if he wanted to exercise his independence from social conventions fully), and he writes seriously, as if pointing prospective readers’ attention toward good poetry, inviting them to reflect on the figure of the muse, issues of poetic inspiration, and intertextuality.⁶² Pushkin wrote his poem “The Muse” also in Anna Shipova’s album, which she started keeping in 1826, most likely around the same time when he inscribed it in Ivanchin-Pisarev’s album, according to B. L. Modzalevskii.⁶³ Pushkin’s choice of poem certainly did not stem from his inability to improvise a lyric in which the album owner would be mentioned – he wrote many of those – but it is possible that he “fitted” the kind of poem to the “serious” character of the album and his relationship with the owner. Shipova’s album most likely already contained Vassily Zhukovsky’s poem addressed to her in 1825 and although most inscriptions in this album are not dated, the album contains verses written by Ivan Krylov, Iazykov, and Victor Hugo for Shipova, as well as autographs and fragments of letters and notes by Ivan Dmitriev, Petr Viazemsky, Nikolai Karamzin, Gavrila Derzhavin, and Denis Davydov, among others.⁶⁴ In Shipova’s album, Pushkin symbolically joins this pantheon of established writers by choosing to copy his own poem in which he presents himself as a born poet, playing with and being taught by the muse even in his infancy. By his own admission, the muse loved him (ona menia liubila, 80); as a beloved of the very source of poetic inspiration, Pushkin asserts his “natural” right to being a poet.

Ivanchin-Pisarev brings up another instance of asking a celebrated writer and translator, Gnedich, for an inscription in the form of a fragment of his work. The act of album writing shows interesting interactions with the addressee and exposes the mechanisms that governed choices of material and reactions to it.

 1831 ãîäó ìû ÷àñòî âèäåëèñü íà Ìîñêîâñêèõ ìèíåðàëüíûõ âîäàõ. Îí ïðîñèë ó ìåíÿ êíèãó Îòå÷åñòâåííàÿ Ãàëëåðåÿ, áûâøóþ åùå â ðóêîïèñè, à ÿ ó íåãî ñòèõîâ èç Èëèàäû â ñâîé àëüáîì. Âî âñå ýòî âðåìÿ, çà êîèìè òàê ñêîðî ïîñëåäîâàëà åãî êîí÷èíà, îí áûë â ñàìîì óíûëîì ðàñïîëîæåíèè äóõà, è âîçâðàòèë ìíå àëüáîì ñ ñëåäóþùåþ çàïèñêîþ: “Ìíå ðàâíî áûëî ïðèÿòíî ïðèîáðåñòü çíàêîìñòâî âàøå, ëèòåðàòîðà è ÷åëîâåêà... Íå èìåÿ ñ ñîáîþ ïåðåâîäà Èëèàäû, à íàèçóñòü íèêîãäà íè÷åãî íå ïîìíÿ, âïèñûâàþ â àëüáîì âàø òî, ÷òî ìíå íà ýòîò ðàç äîñòàâëÿåò áåäíàÿ ïàìÿòü; ÷åì áîãàò, òåì è ðàä. Ñ ñîáåð. ïî÷. Í. Ãíåäè÷ Ìîñêâà Èþíèÿ 1831.” Âïèñàííûå ñòèõè áûëè âçÿòû èì èç åãî Ïîñëàíèÿ ê Êðûëîâó... Íå ïðèâîæó âñåé ñòðàíèöû, ïîëàãàÿ, ÷òî ýòî ñòèõîòâîðåíèå áûëî ãäå-íèáóäü íàïå÷àòàíî. Æåëàòåëæíî áûëî áû óãàäàòü, îò ÷åãî îí ïðèïîìíèë ýòè ñòèõè âìåñòî ñâîèõ, Îìèðîâñêèõ îò òîãî ëè, ÷òî â ïîåýìå òðóäíî íàéòè êðàòêèé ýïèçîä, ñâîéñòâåííûé àëüáîìó, - èëè òóò òîðæåñòâî Ëîìîíîñîâñêèõ ñòîï íàä ãåêçàìåòðàìè è àìôèáðàõèÿìè, êîòîðûõ òðóäíåå óäåðæàòü â ïàìÿòè, - èëè, êàê îí ñêàçàë, ÷åì áûë áîãàò, òåì áûë è ðàä...

(In 1831 we often met at the Moscow spa. He asked me for a book, Gallery of the Fatherland, which I still had in the form of a manuscript, and I asked him for verses from The Iliad for my album. At that time, which was soon followed by his death, he was in the most depressed state of mind. He returned the album to me with the following note: “For me it was equally nice to meet you as a littérateur and a person... Not having with me the translation of The Iliad, and never remembering anything by heart, I am writing in your album what presents itself to my poor memory; I am glad to share what I have. With the greatest respect, N. Gnedich Moscow, June 30, 1831.” The verses Gnedich inscribed he took from his poem addressed to Krylov... I do not quote the whole page because I assume that this poem has been published somewhere. I wish I could guess why Gnedich inscribed these poems in place of his own verses from Homer. Was it because it is difficult to find a short episode, typical for an album, in a long poem? Or was it the loftiness of Lomonosov’s meter over hexameters and amphibrachs, which are harder to remember? Or, as he said, he was glad to share whatever he remembered?..)⁶⁵

In many stories of album inscriptions there is such an element of exchange. Ivanchin-Pisarev presents both himself and Gnedich as writers who exchange their works. Ivanchin-Pisarev knows exactly what he wants – a fragment of Gnedich’s translation of The Iliad – not allowing Gnedich the same freedom of choice as Pushkin had. Instead of the wished-for Homeric verses, Gnedich writes his own poem to another poet, Krylov, thus establishing a writers’ “triangle” of sorts. His inscription makes Ivanchin-Pisarev wonder about his choice of album material: he is surprised that the verses are not Gnedich’s “own” (svoi), that is, more personal. Gnedich’s entry in his fellow writer’s album is very different from the light, flirtatious verses he wrote for Ponomareva. In a dramatically different persona altogether from the one he presents in her salon, he responds in a serious tone to Ivanchin-Pisarev, whom he considers a peer in terms of the literary professional. He knows at least two album writing codes: one for women and the salon milieu, one for male fellow writers.

Imagining Herself as a Writer in Anna Bunina’s Album Verse and Album-Keeping Practice

Such conventions were part of an on-going spectacle of album writing, embedded both in salon life and interactions among writers. As Lotman put it, early nineteenth-century culture was a “real theater – with stable and regularly repeated performances and texts.”⁶⁶ But what happened when the actor tried to break out of his or her role? Among the very few women who wrote in Ivanchin-Pisarev’s album was Anna Bunina, who penned an original poem:⁶⁷

 



        Âåäîìûé Ãåíèåì ê ïîòîêó Èïîêðåíû

	Èäè ñ áåçïå÷íîñòüþ ñòåçåé ñâîåé

            È òåðíîâ íå ðîáåé:

	Òåáÿ íå ïðèêîñíóòñÿ òåðíû!

	Ïðèðîäà èì â óäåë íàçíà÷èëà ìåñòà,

	Êîòîðûõ Ôåáîâà íå ãðååò òåïëîòà.  

				Àííà Áóíèíà.



	(Led by Genius to the stream of Hippocrene

	Go carefree along your path

		   And do not be afraid of thorns:

	Thorns will not touch you!

	Nature allotted them places

	Not warmed by Phoebus’ fire.

					Anna Bunina.)68

   

	Ñòèõè òâîè ïðèÿòíû, çâîíêè

        Ïîêàçûâàþò óì íàì òîíêèé

	È íðàâÿòñÿ òåì âñåì,

	À áîëåå íè÷åì.

 

       (Your poems are nice, melodious

       They show us a subtle mind

       And they are liked because of all that		

       And nothing else.)73

 

     Îò ïðåëåñòåé òâîèõ ñòèõîâ

	       Âñå, âñå áåç îáîðîíû;

     Òàê êàðêíåì æå õîòü ïàðó ñëîâ

	       È ìû, âîðîíû.

     Íàì êàæåòñÿ, òû òî ìåæäó ëþäåé,

	      ×òî ìåæäó íàìè ñîëîâåé.



     (No one, no one, can find defense

	     From the wonder of your poems;

     We, crows, would like to croak

	     At least a few such words.

     It seems that you are among people,

	     What a nightingale is among us.)74

     Íà òîé ñêðèæàëè,

     Íà êîåé íà÷åðòàëè

     Íåáåñíûÿ ñëîâà Áîæåñòâåííûì ïåðñòîì

     Âåëèêèå ïðîðîêè

     È ÿ íà ïàìÿòü... ñòðîêè

     Ãóñèíûì íàïèñàë ïåðîì...

		              Ðàè÷.

     Âïèñàíî â àëüáîì 30 Äåêàáðÿ 1828 ã. 



     (On this tablet

     On which great prophets

     Engraved heavenly words

     With God’s finger

     I wrote also for memory’s sake... verses

     With a goose quill...

		            Raich.

     Written in Album on 30 December 1828.)75