Yelena Andreyevna Hahn

Background

Yelena Andreyevna Hahn was born on January 11, 1814, in Kiev, Kyyivs'ka Oblast', Ukraine. Her parents were Andrei Fadeyev, privy councilor and governor of Saratov, and Princess Yelena Pavlovna Dolgorukaya, a member of the princely House of Dolgorukov.

Career

In 1835 Yelena Andreyevna made a partial translation of the Bulwer-Lytton novel Godolphin, which was published in Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya. In 1837 her first novel, The Ideal, was serialized under the pseudonym Zeneida R-va.

While traveling in the Caucasus in 1837 Yelena Andreyevna met exiled Decembrists, an experience which would inform in Memoirs of Zheleznovodsk and Utballa and Jellaleddin, published in 1838. In 1842 she authored Idle Gift, published in Otechestvennye Zapiski. Her collected works were published in Saint Petersburg in 1843 and republished in 1905.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

Ivan Turgenev wrote: "In this woman there was ... both a warm Russian heart and the experience of female life, as well as the passion of conviction."

Vissarion Belinsky wrote: "There are writers who live a separate life from their creations, and there are writers whose personality is closely related to their works. Reading the first, you enjoy the divine art without thinking about the artist; reading the second, you enjoy the contemplation of a beautiful human being, think about her, love her, and want to know the details of her life. Our gifted Zeneida R-va belongs to this second category."

Connections

At the age of sixteen, Yelena Andreyevna Hahn married Captain Pyotr Alekseyevich Hahn (Peter Hahn von Rottenstern; 1798-1873), a military man almost twice her age, descended from an old Baltic German family. They would have three children, including future writers Helena Blavatsky (born 1831) and Vera Zhelikhovskaya (born 1835).