Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (russian: Марина Ивановна Цветаева, p=mɐˈrʲinə ɪˈvanəvnə tsvʲɪˈtaɪvə; 31 August 1941) was a Russian poet. Her work is considered among some of the greatest in twentieth century Russian literature.
["Tsvetaeva, Marina Ivanovna" ''Who's Who in the Twentieth Century''. Oxford University Press, 1999.] She lived through and wrote of the
Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and ad ...
of 1917 and the Moscow famine that followed it. In an attempt to save her daughter Irina from starvation, she placed her in a state orphanage in 1919, where she died of hunger. Tsvetaeva left Russia in 1922 and lived with her family in increasing poverty in Paris, Berlin and Prague before returning to Moscow in 1939. Her husband
Sergei Efron
Sergei Yakovlevich Efron (russian: Сергей Яковлевич Эфрон; 8 October 1893 – 11 September 1941) was a Russian poet, White Army officer, and the husband of fellow poet Marina Tsvetaeva. While in exile, he was recruited by the ...
and their daughter
Ariadna
''Ariadna'' is a genus of tube-dwelling spider (family Segestriidae).
Species
, the World Spider Catalog accepted the following species:
*'' Ariadna abbreviata'' Marsh, Stevens & Framenau, 2022 – Tasmania
*''Ariadna abrilae'' Grismado, 200 ...
(Alya) were arrested on espionage charges in 1941; her husband was executed. Tsvetaeva committed suicide in 1941. As a lyrical poet, her passion and daring linguistic experimentation mark her as a striking chronicler of her times and the depths of the human condition.
Early years
Marina Tsvetaeva was born in
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
, the daughter of
Ivan Vladimirovich Tsvetaev, a professor of Fine Art at the
University of Moscow,
who later founded the Alexander III Museum of Fine Arts (known from 1937 as the
Pushkin Museum
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (russian: Музей изобразительных искусств имени А. С. Пушкина, abbreviated as ) is the largest museum of European art in Moscow, located in Volkhonka street, just oppo ...
). Tsvetaeva's mother, , Ivan's second wife, was a concert pianist,
highly literate, with German and Polish ancestry. Growing up in considerable material comfort,
[Feinstein (1993) pix] Tsvetaeva would later come to identify herself with the Polish aristocracy.
Tsvetaeva's two half-siblings, Valeria and Andrei, were the children of Ivan's deceased first wife, Varvara Dmitrievna Ilovaiskaya, daughter of the historian
Dmitry Ilovaisky
Dmitry Ivanovich Ilovaysky (; February 11/23, 1832, Ranenburg - February 15, 1920) was an anti-Normanist conservative Russian historian who penned a number of standard history textbooks.
Ilovaysky graduated from the Moscow University in 1854 a ...
. Tsvetaeva's only full sister,
Anastasia
Anastasia (from el, Ἀναστασία, translit=Anastasía) is a feminine given name of Greek origin, derived from the Greek word (), meaning "resurrection". It is a popular name in Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia, where it was the most ...
, was born in 1894. The children quarrelled frequently and occasionally violently. There was considerable tension between Tsvetaeva's mother and Varvara's children, and Tsvetaeva's father maintained close contact with Varvara's family. Tsvetaeva's father was kind, but deeply wrapped up in his studies and distant from his family. He was also still deeply in love with his first wife; he would never get over her. Maria Tsvetaeva had had a love affair before her marriage, from which she never recovered. Maria Tsvetaeva disapproved of Marina's poetic inclination; she wanted her daughter to become a pianist, holding the opinion that her poetry was poor.
In 1902, Tsvetaeva's mother contracted
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
. A change in climate was believed to help cure the disease, and so the family travelled abroad until shortly before her death in 1906, when Tsvetaeva was 14.
They lived for a while by the sea at
Nervi, near
Genoa
Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian ce ...
. There, away from the rigid constraints of a bourgeois Muscovite life, Tsvetaeva was able for the first time to run free, climb cliffs, and vent her imagination in childhood games. There were many Russian ''émigré'' revolutionaries residing at that time in Nervi, who may have had some influence on the young Tsvetaeva.
In June 1904, Tsvetaeva was sent to school in
Lausanne
, neighboring_municipalities= Bottens, Bretigny-sur-Morrens, Chavannes-près-Renens, Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Crissier, Cugy, Écublens, Épalinges, Évian-les-Bains (FR-74), Froideville, Jouxtens-Mézery, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, Lugrin (FR-74), ...
. Changes in the Tsvetaev residence led to several changes in school, and during the course of her travels she acquired the Italian, French, and German languages. She gave up the strict musical studies that her mother had imposed and turned to poetry. She wrote "With a mother like her, I had only one choice: to become a poet".
In 1908, aged 16, Tsvetaeva studied literary history at the
Sorbonne.
During this time, a major revolutionary change was occurring within Russian poetry: the flowering of the
Russian symbolist movement
Russian symbolism was an intellectual and artistic movement predominant at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It arose separately from European symbolism, emphasizing mysticism and ostranenie.
Literature
Influences
Primary ...
, and this movement was to colour most of her later work. It was not the theory which was to attract her, but the poetry and the gravity which writers such as
Andrei Bely
Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev ( rus, Бори́с Никола́евич Буга́ев, p=bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ bʊˈɡajɪf, a=Boris Nikolayevich Bugayev.ru.vorb.oga), better known by the pen name Andrei Bely or Biely ( rus, Андре ...
and
Alexander Blok were capable of generating. Her own first collection of poems, ''Vecherny Albom'' (''Evening Album''), self-published in 1910, promoted her considerable reputation as a poet.
It was well received, although her early poetry was held to be insipid compared to her later work.
It attracted the attention of the poet and critic
, whom Tsvetaeva described after his death in ''A Living Word About a Living Man''. Voloshin came to see Tsvetaeva and soon became her friend and mentor.
Family and career
![Ariadna](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Ariadna.jpg)
She began spending time at Voloshin's home in the
Black Sea
The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Roma ...
resort of
Koktebel
Koktebel ( uk, Коктебéль, russian: Коктебéль, crh, Köktöbel, formerly known as ''Planerskoye'', russian: Планерское) is an urban-type settlement and one of the most popular resort townlets in South-Eastern Crimea. K ...
("Blue Height"), which was a well-known haven for writers, poets and artists.
She became enamoured of the work of Alexander Blok and
Anna Akhmatova, although she never met Blok and did not meet Akhmatova until the 1940s. Describing the Koktebel community, the ''émigré''
Viktoria Schweitzer wrote: "Here inspiration was born." At Koktebel, Tsvetaeva met Sergei Yakovlevich Efron, a 17-year-old cadet in the Officers' Academy. She was 19, he 18: they fell in love and were married in 1912,
the same year as her father's project, the Alexander III Museum of Fine Arts, was ceremonially opened, an event attended by Tsar
Nicholas II
Nicholas II or Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov; spelled in pre-revolutionary script. ( 186817 July 1918), known in the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer,. was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Pola ...
.
Tsvetaeva's love for Efron was intense; however, this did not preclude her from having affairs, including one with
Osip Mandelstam, which she celebrated in a collection of poems called ''Mileposts''. At around the same time, she became involved in an affair with the poet
Sophia Parnok
Sophia Yakovlevna Parnok (russian: София Яковлевна Парнок, yi, סאָפיאַ פארנוכ; 30 July 1885 O.S./11 August 1885 (N. S.) – 26 August 1933) was a Russian poet, journalist and translator. From the age of six, ...
, who was 7 years older than Tsvetaeva, an affair that caused her husband great grief.
The two women fell deeply in love, and the relationship profoundly affected both women's writings. She deals with the ambiguous and tempestuous nature of this relationship in a cycle of poems which at times she called ''The Girlfriend'', and at other times ''The Mistake''. Tsvetaeva and her husband spent summers in the Crimea until the revolution, and had two daughters: Ariadna, or Alya (born 1912) and Irina (born 1917).
In 1914, Efron volunteered for the front and by 1917 he was an officer stationed in
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
with the 56th Reserve. Tsvetaeva was a close witness of the
Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and ad ...
, which she rejected.
On trains, she came into contact with ordinary Russian people and was shocked by the mood of anger and violence. She wrote in her journal: "In the air of the compartment hung only three axe-like words: bourgeois, Junkers, leeches." After the 1917 Revolution, Efron joined the
White Army
The White Army (russian: Белая армия, Belaya armiya) or White Guard (russian: Бѣлая гвардія/Белая гвардия, Belaya gvardiya, label=none), also referred to as the Whites or White Guardsmen (russian: Бѣлогв ...
, and Marina returned to Moscow hoping to be reunited with her husband. She was trapped in Moscow for five years, where there was a terrible famine.
She wrote six plays in verse and narrative poems. Between 1917 and 1922 she wrote the epic verse cycle ''Lebedinyi stan'' (''The Encampment of the Swans'') about the
civil war
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
, glorifying those who fought against the communists.
The cycle of poems in the style of a diary or journal begins on the day of Tsar Nicholas II's abdication in March 1917, and ends late in 1920, when the anti-communist White Army was finally defeated. The 'swans' of the title refers to the volunteers in the White Army, in which her husband was fighting as an officer. In 1922, she published a long pro-imperial verse fairy tale, ''Tsar-devitsa'' ("Tsar-Maiden").
The Moscow famine was to exact a toll on Tsvetaeva. With no immediate family to turn to, she had no way to support herself or her daughters. In 1919, she placed both her daughters in a state orphanage, mistakenly believing that they would be better fed there. Alya became ill, and Tsvetaeva removed her, but Irina died there of starvation in 1920.
The child's death caused Tsvetaeva great grief and regret. In one letter, she wrote, "God punished me."
During these years, Tsvetaeva maintained a close and intense friendship with the actress
Sofia Evgenievna Holliday, for whom she wrote a number of plays. Many years later, she would write the novella "Povest o Sonechke" about her relationship with Holliday.
Exile
Berlin and Prague
![Marina Tsvetaeva 140-190 for collage](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Marina_Tsvetaeva_140-190_for_collage.jpg)
In May 1922, Tsvetaeva and Ariadna left
Soviet Russia and were reunited in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
with Efron, whom she had thought had been killed by the Bolsheviks.
["Tsvetaeva, Marina Ivanovna" The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Edited by Dinah Birch. Oxford University Press Inc.] There she published the collections ''Separation'', ''Poems to Blok'', and the poem ''The Tsar Maiden'', much of her poetry appeared in Moscow and Berlin, consolidating her reputation. In August 1922, the family moved to
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
. Living in unremitting poverty, unable to afford living accommodation in Prague itself, with Efron studying politics and sociology at the
Charles University
)
, image_name = Carolinum_Logo.svg
, image_size = 200px
, established =
, type = Public, Ancient
, budget = 8.9 billion CZK
, rector = Milena Králíčková
, faculty = 4,057
, administrative_staff = 4,026
, students = 51,438
, undergr ...
and living in hostels, Tsvetaeva and Ariadna found rooms in a village outside the city. She writes "we are devoured by coal, gas, the milkman, the baker...the only meat we eat is horsemeat". When offered an opportunity to earn money by reading her poetry, she describes having to beg a simple dress from a friend to replace the one she had been living in.
[Feinstein (1993) px]
Tsvetaeva began a passionate affair with , a former military officer, a liaison which became widely known throughout émigré circles. Efron was devastated. Her break-up with Rodziewicz in 1923 was almost certainly the inspiration for her ''
The Poem of the End
The ''Poem of the End'' (russian: поэма конца, 'poema kontsa') is the name of two poems by Russian poets of the early 20th century.
Poem of the End (usually given in English without an article) is the best known poem by Russian poet Vas ...
'' and "The Poem of the Mountain".
At about the same time, Tsvetaeva began correspondence with poet
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke (), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recogni ...
and novelist
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (; rus, Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к, p=bɐˈrʲis lʲɪɐˈnʲidəvʲɪtɕ pəstɛrˈnak; 30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, composer and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pa ...
.
Tsvetaeva and Pasternak were not to meet for nearly twenty years, but maintained friendship until Tsvetaeva's return to Russia.
In summer 1924, Efron and Tsvetaeva left Prague for the suburbs, living for a while in
Jíloviště
Jíloviště is a municipality and village in Prague-West District in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, i ...
, before moving on to
Všenory
Všenory is a municipality and village in Prague-West District in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 1,700 inhabitants.
Notable people
For a period in the 1920s, Všenory was home to the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva
...
, where Tsvetaeva completed "The Poem of the End", and was to conceive their son, Georgy, whom she was to later nickname 'Mur'.
Tsvetaeva wanted to name him Boris (after Pasternak); Efron insisted on Georgy. He was to be a most difficult child but Tsvetaeva loved him obsessively. With Efron now rarely free from tuberculosis, their daughter Ariadna was relegated to the role of mother's helper and confidante, and consequently felt robbed of much of her childhood.
In Berlin, before settling in Paris, Tsvetaeva wrote some of her greatest verse, including ''Remeslo'' ("Craft", 1923) and ''Posle Rossii'' ("After Russia", 1928). Reflecting a life in poverty and exiled, the work holds great nostalgia for Russia and its folk history, while experimenting with verse forms.
Paris
In 1925, the family settled in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, where they would live for the next 14 years.
At about this time Tsvetaeva contracted
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
. Tsvetaeva received a small stipend from the Czechoslovak government, which gave financial support to artists and writers who had lived in
Czechoslovakia
, rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי,
, common_name = Czechoslovakia
, life_span = 1918–19391945–1992
, p1 = Austria-Hungary
, image_p1 ...
. In addition, she tried to make whatever she could from readings and sales of her work. She turned more and more to writing prose because she found it made more money than poetry. Tsvetaeva did not feel at all at home in Paris's predominantly ex-bourgeois circle of Russian émigré writers. Although she had written passionately pro-
'White' poems during the Revolution, her fellow émigrés thought that she was insufficiently anti-Soviet, and that her criticism of the Soviet régime was altogether too nebulous.
She was particularly criticised for writing an admiring letter to the Soviet poet
Vladimir Mayakovsky. In the wake of this letter, the émigré paper ''
Posledniye Novosti
''Posledniye Novosti'' (russian: Последние новости, 'Latest News') was a Russian White émigré daily newspaper, organ of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Cadets). It was published in Paris
Paris () is the capital and ...
'', to which Tsvetaeva had been a frequent contributor, refused point-blank to publish any more of her work.
[Feinstein (1993) pxi] She found solace in her correspondence with other writers, including
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (; rus, Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к, p=bɐˈrʲis lʲɪɐˈnʲidəvʲɪtɕ pəstɛrˈnak; 30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, composer and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pa ...
,
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke (), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recogni ...
, the Czech poet
Anna Tesková, the critics
D. S. Mirsky
D. S. Mirsky is the English pen-name of Dmitry Petrovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky (russian: Дми́трий Петро́вич Святопо́лк-Ми́рский), often known as Prince Mirsky ( – c. 7 June 1939), a Russian political and lit ...
and
Aleksandr Bakhrakh
Alexander is a male given name. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history.
Variants listed here are Aleksandar, Al ...
, and the Georgian émigré princess
Salomea Andronikova, who became her main source of financial support. Her poetry and critical prose of the time, including her autobiographical prose works of 1934–7, is of lasting literary importance.
"Consumed by the daily round", resenting the domesticity that left her no time for solitude or writing, her émigré milieu regarded Tsvetaeva as a crude sort who ignored social graces. Describing her misery, she wrote to Tesková "In Paris, with rare personal exceptions, everyone hates me, they write all sorts of nasty things, leave me out in all sorts of nasty ways, and so on".
To Pasternak she complained "They don't like poetry and what am I apart from that, not poetry but that from which it is made.
aman inhospitable hostess. A young woman in an old dress." She began to look back at even the Prague times with nostalgia and resent her exiled state more deeply.
Meanwhile, Tsvetaeva's husband was developing Soviet sympathies and was homesick for Russia.
Eventually, he began working for the
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
, the forerunner of the
KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
. Alya shared his views, and increasingly turned against her mother. In 1937, she returned to the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
. Later that year, Efron too had to return to the USSR. The French police had implicated him in the murder of the former Soviet defector
Ignace Reiss
Ignace Reiss (1899 – 4 September 1937) – also known as "Ignace Poretsky,"
"Ignatz Reiss,"
"Ludwig,"
"Ludwik", "Hans Eberhardt,"
"Steff Brandt,"
Nathan Poreckij,
and "Walter Scott (an officer of the U.S. military intelligence)" ...
in September 1937, on a country lane near
Lausanne
, neighboring_municipalities= Bottens, Bretigny-sur-Morrens, Chavannes-près-Renens, Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Crissier, Cugy, Écublens, Épalinges, Évian-les-Bains (FR-74), Froideville, Jouxtens-Mézery, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, Lugrin (FR-74), ...
, Switzerland. After Efron's escape, the police interrogated Tsvetaeva, but she seemed confused by their questions and ended up reading them some French translations of her poetry. The police concluded that she was deranged and knew nothing of the murder. Later it was learned that Efron possibly had also taken part in the assassination of
Trotsky's son in 1936. Tsvetaeva does not seem to have known that her husband was a spy, nor the extent to which he was compromised. However, she was held responsible for his actions and was ostracised in Paris because of the implication that he was involved with the NKVD.
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
had made Europe as unsafe and hostile as the USSR. In 1939, she became lonely and alarmed by the rise of fascism, which she attacked in ''Stikhi k Chekhii'' ("Verses to Czechia" 1938–39).
Last years: Return to the Soviet Union
![Tarusa tsvetaeva stone](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Tarusa_tsvetaeva_stone.jpg)
In 1939, she and her son returned to Moscow, unaware of the reception she would receive.
In
Stalin's USSR, anyone who had lived abroad was suspect, as was anyone who had been among the intelligentsia before the Revolution. Tsvetaeva's sister had been arrested before Tsvetaeva's return; although Anastasia survived the Stalin years, the sisters never saw each other again. Tsvetaeva found that all doors had closed to her. She got bits of work translating poetry, but otherwise the established Soviet writers refused to help her, and chose to ignore her plight;
Nikolai Aseev
Nikolai Nikolayevich Aseyev ( rus, Никола́й Никола́евич Асе́ев, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ ɐˈsʲejɪf, a=Nikolay Nikolayevich Asyeyev.ru.vorb.oga; July 10, 1889 - July 16, 1963) was a Russian and Soviet Futu ...
, whom she had hoped would assist, shied away, fearful for his life and position.
Efron and Alya were arrested on espionage charges in 1941, Efron was sentenced to death. Alya's fiancé was actually an
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
agent who had been assigned to spy on the family. Efron was shot in 1941; Alya served over eight years in prison.
Both were exonerated after Stalin's death. In 1941, Tsvetaeva and her son were evacuated to
Yelabuga (Elabuga), while most families of the
Union of Soviet Writers were evacuated to
Chistopol. Tsvetaeva had no means of support in Yelabuga, and on 24 August 1941 she left for Chistopol desperately seeking a job. On 26 August, Marina Tsvetaeva and poet
Valentin Parnakh Valentin Yakovlevich Parnakh (russian: Валентин Яковлевич Парнах) (1891–1951) was a Soviet musician and choreographer, who was a founding father of Soviet Union, Soviet jazz. He was also a poet, and translated many foreign w ...
applied to the Soviet of Literature Fund asking for a job at the LitFund's canteen. Parnakh was accepted as a doorman, while Tsvetaeva's application for a permission to live in Chistopol was turned down and she had to return to Yelabuga on 28 August.
On 31 August 1941, while living in Yelabuga, Tsvetaeva
hanged herself. She left a note for her son Mur: "Forgive me, but to go on would be worse. I am gravely ill, this is not me anymore. I love you passionately. Do understand that I could not live anymore. Tell Papa and Alya, if you ever see them, that I loved them to the last moment and explain to them that I found myself in a trap."
[Feiler, Lily (1994). ''Marina Tsvetaeva: the double beat of Heaven and Hell''. Duke University Press. p264 ]
Tsvetaeva was buried in Yelabuga cemetery on 2 September 1941, but the exact location of her grave remains unknown.
Her son Georgy volunteered for the
Eastern Front of World War II and died in battle in 1944. Her daughter Ariadna spent 16 years in Soviet prison camps and exile and was released in 1955. Ariadna wrote a memoir of her family; an English-language edition was published in 2009. She died in 1975.
In the town of Yelabuga, the Tsvetaeva house is now a museum and a monument stands to her. The apartment in Moscow where she lived from 1914 to 1922 is now a house-museum. Much of her poetry was republished in the Soviet Union after 1961, and her passionate, articulate and precise work, with its daring linguistic experimentation, brought her increasing recognition as a major poet.
A
minor planet
According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term ''minor ...
,
3511 Tsvetaeva
3511 (three thousand, five hundred and eleven) is the natural number following 3510 and preceding 3512.
3511 is a prime number, and is also an emirp: a different prime when its digits are reversed.
3511 is a Wieferich prime, found to be so by N ...
, discovered in 1982 by Soviet astronomer
Lyudmila Karachkina
Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina (russian: Людмила Георгиевна Карачкина, born 3 September 1948, Rostov-on-Don) is an astronomer and discoverer of minor planets.
In 1978 she began as a staff astronomer of the Institute for ...
, is named after her.
In 1989, in
Gdynia, Poland, a special-purpose ship was built for the
Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across t ...
and named Marina Tsvetaeva in her honor. From 2007, the ship served as a tourist vessel to the polar regions for
Aurora Expeditions
Aurora Expeditions is an Australian company that runs cruises, expeditions and tours.
History
The company was founded in 1991 by Greg and Margaret Mortimer. It focuses on small groups of travelers. The company's main focus is cruises around Ant ...
. In 2011, she was renamed and is currently operated by
Oceanwide Expeditions as a tourist vessel in the polar regions.
Work
Tsvetaeva's poetry was admired by poets such as
Valery Bryusov,
,
Osip Mandelstam,
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (; rus, Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к, p=bɐˈrʲis lʲɪɐˈnʲidəvʲɪtɕ pəstɛrˈnak; 30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, composer and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pa ...
,
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke (), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recogni ...
, and
Anna Akhmatova. Later, that recognition was also expressed by the poet
Joseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (; russian: link=no, Иосиф Александрович Бродский ; 24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Russian and American poet and essayist.
Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), USSR in 1940, ...
, pre-eminent among Tsvetaeva's champions. Tsvetaeva was primarily a lyrical poet, and her lyrical voice remains clearly audible in her narrative poetry. Brodsky said of her work: "Represented on a graph, Tsvetaeva's work would exhibit a curve – or rather, a straight line – rising at almost a right angle because of her constant effort to raise the pitch a note higher, an idea higher (or, more precisely, an octave and a faith higher.) She always carried everything she has to say to its conceivable and expressible end. In both her poetry and her prose, nothing remains hanging or leaves a feeling of ambivalence. Tsvetaeva is the unique case in which the paramount spiritual experience of an epoch (for us, the sense of ambivalence, of contradictoriness in the nature of human existence) served not as the object of expression but as its means, by which it was transformed into the material of art." Critic
Annie Finch describes the engaging, heart-felt nature of the work. "Tsvetaeva is such a warm poet, so unbridled in her passion, so completely vulnerable in her love poetry, whether to her female lover Sofie Parnak, to Boris Pasternak.
..Tsvetaeva throws her poetic brilliance on the altar of her heart’s experience with the faith of a true romantic, a priestess of lived emotion. And she stayed true to that faith to the tragic end of her life.
Tsvetaeva's lyric poems fill ten collections; the uncollected lyrics would add at least another volume. Her first two collections indicate their subject matter in their titles: ''Evening Album'' (Vecherniy albom, 1910) and ''The Magic Lantern'' (Volshebnyi fonar, 1912). The poems are vignettes of a tranquil childhood and youth in a professorial, middle-class home in Moscow, and display considerable grasp of the formal elements of style. The full range of Tsvetaeva's talent developed quickly, and was undoubtedly influenced by the contacts she had made at Koktebel, and was made evident in two new collections: ''Mileposts'' (Versty, 1921) and ''Mileposts: Book One'' (Versty, Vypusk I, 1922).
Three elements of Tsvetaeva's mature style emerge in the ''Mileposts'' collections. First, Tsvetaeva dates her poems and publishes them chronologically. The poems in ''Mileposts: Book One'', for example, were written in 1916 and resolve themselves as a versified journal. Secondly, there are cycles of poems which fall into a regular chronological sequence among the single poems, evidence that certain themes demanded further expression and development. One cycle announces the theme of ''Mileposts: Book One'' as a whole: the "Poems of Moscow." Two other cycles are dedicated to poets, the "Poems to Akhmatova" and the "Poems to Blok", which again reappear in a separate volume, Poems to Blok (''Stikhi k Bloku'', 1922). Thirdly, the ''Mileposts'' collections demonstrate the dramatic quality of Tsvetaeva's work, and her ability to assume the guise of multiple ''dramatis personae'' within them.
The collection ''Separation'' (Razluka, 1922) was to contain Tsvetaeva's first long verse narrative, "On a Red Steed" ("Na krasnom kone"). The poem is a prologue to three more verse-narratives written between 1920 and 1922. All four narrative poems draw on folkloric plots. Tsvetaeva acknowledges her sources in the titles of the very long works, ''
The Maiden Tsar
''The Maiden Tsar'' (russian: Царь-девица) is a Russian folktale. It appeared in print in Alexander Afanasyev's three-volume collection ''Narodnye russkie skazki'', numbered 232 and 233.
Synopsis
A merchant and his wife have a son wh ...
: A Fairy-tale Poem'' (''Tsar-devitsa: Poema-skazka'', 1922) and "The Swain", subtitled "A Fairytale" ("Molodets: skazka", 1924). The fourth folklore-style poem is "Byways" ("Pereulochki", published in 1923 in the collection ''Remeslo''), and it is the first poem which may be deemed incomprehensible in that it is fundamentally a soundscape of language. The collection ''Psyche'' (''Psikheya'', 1923) contains one of Tsvetaeva's best-known cycles "Insomnia" (Bessonnitsa) and the poem The Swans' Encampment (Lebedinyi stan, Stikhi 1917–1921, published in 1957) which celebrates the
White Army
The White Army (russian: Белая армия, Belaya armiya) or White Guard (russian: Бѣлая гвардія/Белая гвардия, Belaya gvardiya, label=none), also referred to as the Whites or White Guardsmen (russian: Бѣлогв ...
.
Emigrant
Subsequently, as an émigré, Tsvetaeva's last two collections of lyrics were published by émigré presses, ''Craft'' (''Remeslo'', 1923) in Berlin and ''After Russia'' (''Posle Rossii'', 1928) in Paris. There then followed the twenty-three lyrical "Berlin" poems, the pantheistic "Trees" ("Derev'ya"), "Wires" ("Provoda") and "Pairs" ("Dvoe"), and the tragic "Poets" ("Poety"). "After Russia" contains the poem "In Praise of the Rich", in which Tsvetaeva's oppositional tone is merged with her proclivity for ruthless satire.
Satire
The satirist in Tsvetaeva plays second fiddle only to the poet-lyricist. Several satirical poems, moreover, are among Tsvetaeva's best-known works: "The Train of Life" ("Poezd zhizni") and "The Floorcleaners' Song" ("Poloterskaya"), both included in After Russia, and The Ratcatcher (Krysolov, 1925–1926), a long, folkloric narrative. The target of Tsvetaeva's satire is everything petty and petty bourgeois. Unleashed against such dull creature comforts is the vengeful, unearthly energy of workers both manual and creative. In her notebook, Tsvetaeva writes of "The Floorcleaners' Song": "Overall movement: the floorcleaners ferret out a house's hidden things, they scrub a fire into the door... What do they flush out? Coziness, warmth, tidiness, order... Smells: incense, piety. Bygones. Yesterday... The growing force of their threat is far stronger than the climax." ''The Ratcatcher'' poem, which Tsvetaeva describes as a ''lyrical satire'', is loosely based on the legend of the
Pied Piper of Hamelin
The Pied Piper of Hamelin (german: der Rattenfänger von Hameln, also known as the Pan Piper or the Rat-Catcher of Hamelin) is the title character of a legend from the town of Hamelin (Hameln), Lower Saxony, Germany.
The legend dates back to ...
. The Ratcatcher, which is also known as The Pied Piper, is considered by some to be the finest of Tsvetaeva's work. It was also partially an act of ''homage'' to
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of '' Lied ...
's poem ''Die Wanderratten''. The Ratcatcher appeared initially, in serial format, in the émigré journal ' in 1925–1926 whilst still being written. It was not to appear in the Soviet Union until after the
death of Joseph Stalin
Death is the Irreversible process, irreversible cessation of all biological process, biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whol ...
in 1956. Its hero is the Pied Piper of Hamelin who saves a town from hordes of rats and then leads the town's children away too, in retribution for the citizens' ingratitude. As in the other folkloric narratives, The Ratcatcher's story line emerges indirectly through numerous speaking voices which shift from invective, to extended lyrical flights, to pathos.
![Marina Ivanovna Tsvetajeva - Mijn verzen - Nieuwsteeg 1, Leiden](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Marina_Ivanovna_Tsvetajeva_-_Mijn_verzen_-_Nieuwsteeg_1%2C_Leiden.JPG)
Tsvetaeva's last ten years of exile, from 1928 when "After Russia" appeared until her return in 1939 to the Soviet Union, were principally a "prose decade", though this would almost certainly be by dint of economic necessity rather than one of choice.
Translators
Translators of Tsvetaeva's work into English include
Elaine Feinstein
Elaine Feinstein FRSL (born Elaine Cooklin; 24 October 1930 – 23 September 2019) was an English poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator. She joined the Council of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007.
Earl ...
and
David McDuff.
Nina Kossman
Nina Kossman (Russian: Нина Косман osman Osman is the Persian transliteration and derived from the Arabic masculine given name Uthman ( ar, عُثْمان, , link=no ''‘uthmān'') or an English surname. It may refer to:
People
* Osman (name), people with the name
* Osman I (1258–132 ...
born in Moscow, USSR) is a bilingual Russian-American author, short story writer, poet, memoirist, playwright, translator of Russian poetry, editor, and artist.
Life and career
Nina Kossma ...
translated many of Tsvetaeva's long (narrative) poems, as well as her lyrical poems; they are collected in three books, ''Poem of the End'' (bilingual edition published by Ardis in 1998, by Overlook in 2004, and by Shearsman Books in 2021), ''In the Inmost Hour of the Soul'' (Humana Press, 1989), and ''Other Shepherds'' (Poets & Traitors Press, 2020). Robin Kemball translated the cycle ''The Demesne of the Swans'', published as a separate (bilingual) book by Ardis in 1980.
J. Marin King translated a great deal of Tsvetaeva's prose into English, compiled in a book called ''A Captive Spirit''. Tsvetaeva scholar
Angela Livingstone has translated a number of Tsvetaeva's essays on art and writing, compiled in a book called ''Art in the Light of Conscience''. Livingstone's translation of Tsvetaeva's "The Ratcatcher" was published as a separate book. Mary Jane White has translated the early cycle "Miles" in a book called "Starry Sky to Starry Sky", as well as Tsvetaeva's elegy for
Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke (), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recogni ...
, "New Year's", (Adastra Press 16 Reservation Road, Easthampton, MA 01027 USA) and "Poem of the End" (The Hudson Review, Winter 2009; and in the anthology Poets Translate Poets, Syracuse U. Press 2013) and "Poem of the Hill", (New England Review, Summer 2008) and Tsvetaeva's 1914–1915 cycle of love poems to Sophia Parnok. In 2002,
Yale University Press
Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous.
, Yale Universi ...
published
Jamey Gambrell
Jamey Gambrell (April 10, 1954 – February 15, 2020) was an American translator of Russian literature, and an expert in modern art. She was an editor with the '' Art in America'' magazine, and was a winner of the Thornton Wilder Prize for Trans ...
's translation of post-revolutionary prose, entitled ''Earthly Signs: Moscow Diaries, 1917–1922'', with notes on poetic and linguistic aspects of Tsvetaeva's prose, and endnotes for the text itself.
Cultural influence
* 2017: ''Zerkalo'' ("Mirror"), American magazine in MN for the Russian-speaking readers. It was a special publication to the 125th Anniversary of the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, where the article "Marina Tsvetaeva in America" was written by Dr. Uli Zislin, the founder and director of the Washington Museum of Russian Poetry and Music, Sep/Oct 2017.
Music and songs
The Soviet composer
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, , group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich), First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throug ...
set six of Tsvetaeva's poems to music. Later the Russian-Tatar composer
Sofia Gubaidulina
Sofia Asgatovna Gubaidulina (russian: Софи́я Асгáтовна Губaйду́лина, link=no , tt-Cyrl, София Әсгать кызы Гобәйдуллина; born 24 October 1931) is a Soviet-Russian composer and an established ...
wrote an ''Hommage à Marina Tsvetayeva'' featuring her poems. Her poem "Mne Nravitsya..." ("I like that..."), was performed by
Alla Pugacheva in the film ''
The Irony of Fate
''The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!'' (russian: Ирония судьбы, или С лёгким паром!, literally: The Irony of Fate, or With A Light Steam; trans. ''Ironiya sudby, ili S lyogkim parom!''), usually shortened to ''The ...
''. In 2003, the opera ''Marina: A Captive Spirit'', based on Tsvetaeva's life and work, premiered from
American Opera Projects The American Opera Project (AOP) is a professional opera company based in Brooklyn, New York City, and is a member of Opera America, the Fort Greene Association, the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance, and the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (A. ...
in New York with music by
Deborah Drattell
Deborah Drattell (born 1954) is an American composer. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, and started her career in music as a violinist. Her compositions have been performed by the New York Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Tanglewood a ...
and libretto by poet
Annie Finch. The production was directed by
Anne Bogart and the part of Tsvetaeva was sung by
Lauren Flanigan
Lauren Flanigan (born May 18, 1958) is an American operatic soprano who has had an active international career since the 1980s. She enjoyed a particularly fruitful partnership with the New York City Opera, appearing with the company almost every y ...
. The poetry by Tsvetaeva was set to music and frequently performed as songs by
Elena Frolova
Elena Borisovna Frolova (russian: link=no, Елена Борисовна Фролова; born 1 October 1969, in Riga) is a Russian singer-songwriter, composer, and poet. She is author and performer of songs based on poems by many Russian poets o ...
,
Larisa Novoseltseva
Larisa Novoseltseva (russian: link=no, Лариса Новосельцева) is a Russian singer-songwriter, composer, performer of Russian and Ukrainian folk songs and romances, and creator of project ''Return of the Silver Age''. She is autho ...
,
Zlata Razdolina
Zlata Razdolina (Rozenfeld, russian: Злата Абрамовна Раздолина) is a Russian Jewish composer, singer-songwriter and music performer. She is best known as being the author of the music for Requiem by Anna Akhmatova, ''The Son ...
and other
Russian bards
The term bard ( rus, бард, p=bart) came to be used in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, and continues to be used in Russia today, to refer to singer-songwriters who wrote songs outside the Soviet establishment, similarly to folk sin ...
. In 2019, American composer
Mark Abel
Mark Abel (born April 28, 1948) is an American composer of classical music.
Background
After a brief stay at Stanford University in the late 1960s, Abel was active on the New York rock scene during the 1970s and early 1980s, leading his own gro ...
wrote ''Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva'', the first classical song cycle of the poet in an English translation. Soprano
Hila Plitmann
Hila Plitmann (born August 9, 1973) is an Israeli-American two-time Grammy Award-winning operatic soprano, songwriter, and actress specializing in the performance of new works.
Career
Education
*Juilliard School of Music: Bachelor of Musi ...
recorded the piece for Abel’s album ''The Cave of Wondrous Voice''.
Tribute
On 8 October 2015,
Google Doodle commemorated her 123rd birthday.
Translations into English
* ''Selected Poems'', trans.
Elaine Feinstein
Elaine Feinstein FRSL (born Elaine Cooklin; 24 October 1930 – 23 September 2019) was an English poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator. She joined the Council of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007.
Earl ...
. (Oxford University Press, 1971; 2nd ed., 1981; 3rd ed., 1986; 4th ed., 1993; 5th ed., 1999; 6th ed. 2009 as ''Bride of Ice: New Selected Poems'')
* ''The Demesne of the Swans'', trans. Robin Kemball (bilingual edition, Ardis, 1980) ISBN 978-0882334936
*''Marina Tsvetayeva: Selected Poems'', trans.
David McDuff. (Bloodaxe Books, 1987)
*"Starry Sky to Starry Sky (Miles)", trans. Mary Jane White. (
Holy Cow! Press
Holy Cow! Press is an independent publisher based in Duluth, Minnesota. Founded in 1977, they have published more than 125 books.
The press publishes between three and five new books each year, in genres including poetry, fiction, memoir, and b ...
, 1988), (paper) and (cloth)
*''In the Inmost Hour of the Soul: Poems by Marina Tsvetayeva '', trans.
Nina Kossman
Nina Kossman (Russian: Нина Косман osman Osman is the Persian transliteration and derived from the Arabic masculine given name Uthman ( ar, عُثْمان, , link=no ''‘uthmān'') or an English surname. It may refer to:
People
* Osman (name), people with the name
* Osman I (1258–132 ...
born in Moscow, USSR) is a bilingual Russian-American author, short story writer, poet, memoirist, playwright, translator of Russian poetry, editor, and artist.
Life and career
Nina Kossma ...
(Humana Press, 1989)
*''Black Earth'', trans. Elaine Feinstein (The Delos Press and The Menard Press, 1992) ISBN I-874320-00-4 and ISBN I-874320-05-5 (signed ed.)
*"After Russia", trans. Michael Nayden (Ardis, 1992).
* ''A Captive Spirit: Selected Prose'', trans. J. Marin King (Vintage Books, 1994)
*''Poem of the End: Selected Narrative and Lyrical Poems '', trans.
Nina Kossman
Nina Kossman (Russian: Нина Косман osman Osman is the Persian transliteration and derived from the Arabic masculine given name Uthman ( ar, عُثْمان, , link=no ''‘uthmān'') or an English surname. It may refer to:
People
* Osman (name), people with the name
* Osman I (1258–132 ...
born in Moscow, USSR) is a bilingual Russian-American author, short story writer, poet, memoirist, playwright, translator of Russian poetry, editor, and artist.
Life and career
Nina Kossma ...
(Ardis / Overlook, 1998, 2004) ; Poem of the End: Six Narrative Poems, trans.
Nina Kossman
Nina Kossman (Russian: Нина Косман osman Osman is the Persian transliteration and derived from the Arabic masculine given name Uthman ( ar, عُثْمان, , link=no ''‘uthmān'') or an English surname. It may refer to:
People
* Osman (name), people with the name
* Osman I (1258–132 ...
born in Moscow, USSR) is a bilingual Russian-American author, short story writer, poet, memoirist, playwright, translator of Russian poetry, editor, and artist.
Life and career
Nina Kossma ...
(Shearsman Books, 2021) ISBN 978-1-84861-778-0)
*''The Ratcatcher: A Lyrical Satire'', trans. Angela Livingstone (Northwestern University, 2000)
*''Letters: Summer 1926'' (Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva, Rainer Maria Rilke) (New York Review Books, 2001)
* ''Earthly Signs: Moscow Diaries, 1917–1922'', ed. & trans. Jamey Gambrell (Yale University Press, 2002)
*''Phaedra: a drama in verse; with New Year's Letter and other long poems'', trans. Angela Livingstone (Angel Classics, 2012)
*"To You – in 10 Decades", trans. by
Alexander Givental and Elysee Wilson-Egolf (Sumizdat 2012)
*''Moscow in the Plague Year'', translated by
Christopher Whyte
Christopher Whyte (''Crìsdean MacIlleBhàin'') is a Scottish poet, novelist, translator and critic. He is a novelist in English, a poet in Scottish Gaelic, the translator into English of Marina Tsvetaeva, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Rainer Maria ...
(180 poems written between November 1918 and May 1920) (Archipelago Press, New York, 2014), 268pp,
*''Milestones (1922),'' translated by Christopher Whyte (Bristol, Shearsman Books, 2015), 122p,
*''After Russia: The First Notebook,'' translated by Christopher Whyte (Bristol, Shearsman Books, 2017), 141 pp,
*''After Russia: The Second Notebook'', translated by Christopher Whyte (Bristol, Shearsman Books, 2018) 121 pp,
*"Poem of the End" in "From A Terrace in Prague, A Prague Poetry Anthology", trans. Mary Jane White, ed. Stephan Delbos (Univerzita Karlova v Praze, 2011)
*''Youthful Verses'', translated by Christopher Whyte (Bristol, Shearsman Books, 2021), 114 pp, ISBN 9781848617315
*''Head on a Gleaming Plate: Poems 1917-1918'', translated by Christopher Whyte (Bristol, Shearsman Books, 2022), 120 pp, ISBN 9781848618435
*''Poems'', trans. Alyssa Gillespie (Columbia University Press, forthcoming)
Further reading
* Schweitzer, Viktoria ''Tsvetaeva'' (1993)
* Mandelstam, Nadezhda ''Hope Against Hope''
* Mandelstam, Nadezhda ''Hope Abandoned''
* Pasternak, Boris ''An Essay in Autobiography''
References
External links
* . One of the most famous Tsvetaeva's poem performed by
Alla PugachevaAnother version
* . Dramatic reading in English with artistic video. Includes download link.
"Marina Tsvetaeva, ''Poet of the extreme''"by Belinda Cooke from
''South'' magazine #31, April 2005. Republished online in the
Poetry Library
The National Poetry Library is a free public collection housed at Royal Festival Hall in London's Southbank Centre. Situated on the fifth floor of the Royal Festival Hall, overlooking the river Thames, the library aims to hold all contemporar ...
's Poetry Magazines site.
A small site dedicated to TsvetaevaMarina Tsvetaeva biographyat
Carcanet Press
Carcanet Press is a publisher, primarily of poetry, based in the United Kingdom and founded in 1969 by Michael Schmidt.
In 2000 it was named the '' Sunday Times'' millennium Small Publisher of the Year.
History
''Carcanet'' was originally a li ...
, English language publisher of Tsvetaeva's ''Bride of Ice'' and ''Marina Tsvetaeva: Selected Poems'', translated by
Elaine Feinstein
Elaine Feinstein FRSL (born Elaine Cooklin; 24 October 1930 – 23 September 2019) was an English poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator. She joined the Council of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007.
Earl ...
.
Heritage of Marina Tsvetayeva a resource in English wit
a more extensive version in Russian
Тоска по родине / Nostalgiaan
four more poemsfrom the book "To You – in 10 Decades", translated by
Alexander Givental and Elysee Wilson-Egolf and provided by Sumizdat, the publisher.
"She Means It When She Rhymes: ''Marina Tsvetaeva: Selected Poems''."Review from ''Thumbscrew'' #17, Winter 2000/1, of works translated by Elaine Feinstein.
The Poemsby Marina Tsvetaeva
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tsvetaeva, Marina
1892 births
1941 suicides
20th-century Russian women writers
Poets from the Russian Empire
Soviet emigrants to Germany
German emigrants to Czechoslovakia
Diarists from the Russian Empire
Women poets from the Russian Empire
Suicides by hanging in the Soviet Union
University of Paris alumni
Women diarists
Writers from Moscow
Russian LGBT poets
20th-century Russian poets
20th-century Russian diarists
Soviet diarists
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Female suicides