Karolina Pavlova

Karolina Karlovna Pavlova (; ; – ) was a Russian poet and novelist.

Biography Karolina Karlovna Pavlova (; ) was born on , in Yaroslavl. She was welcomed into the world by her mother Elizaveta, a former singing teacher, as well as her father Karl Ivanovich Jaenisch a professor of physics and chemistry at the School of Medicine and Surgery in Moscow. This introduction extended Pavlovas’ literary connections, eventually leading to her attending the illustrious salon of Princess Zinaida Volkonskaia.

She was married in 1837 to Nikolai Filippovich Pavlov, who admitted he married her for her money. Pavlova had a son, Ippolit. For years they ran a literary salon in Moscow Pavlova's husband gambled her inheritance away and began living with her younger cousin in another household he had set up. She went to Saint Petersburg, where her father had just died in a cholera outbreak. From there she went to Dorpat (now Tartu, Estonia) to live with her mother and son. There she met Boris Utin, the "profoundest love of her life." Pavlova died in Dresden in 1893.

Although Pavlova's poetry was poorly accepted by her contemporaries, it was rediscovered in the 1900s by the symbolists. Even when they admired her poetry her literary friends composed condescending memoirs, articles or private letters condemning Pavlova. Her poetry was heavily criticized in The Contemporary, and she was forced to leave her native country because of the overwhelming, negative criticism of her poetry. In a letter written in response to the criticism, Pavlova explains that "a woman-poet always remains more woman than poet and authorial egotism in her is weaker than female egotism."

A Double Life Karolina Pavlova finished her only novel, A Double Life (Russian: Двойная жизнь), in 1848. It is a ten-chapter novel that mixes prose and poetry to illustrate the duality of women and of members of high society. The heroine of the novel is Cecily von Lindenborn. While Cecily has an undeniable, secret yearning for poetry, women poets were "always presented to her as the most pitiable, abnormal state, as a disastrous and dangerous illness." The poetry is symbolic of the inner world of Cecily. She is lured into the respectable yet meaningless life of a woman of high society and into marriage by the people that are closest to her, yet, her dreams, which come to her in the form of poems, have warned her.