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Contributor

Marina Tsvetaeva

Contributor

Marina Tsvetaeva

Marina Tsvetaeva is widely acknowledged by critics and by Russian readers as a leading Russian poet of the twentieth century. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to Tsvetaeva in 1926: "You, poet, do you sense how you have overwhelmed me . . . I'm writing like you and I descend like you the few steps down from the sentence into the mezzanine of parentheses . . ." (Pasternak, Tsvetayeva, Rilke: Letters, Summer 1926. Translated by Margaret Wettlin and Walter Arndt. New York, 1985).

Marina Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow in 1892. Her father was a founder of the Moscow Museum of the Fine Arts, her mother a pianist. Marina published her first book of poems, Evening Album, at seventeen. After the revolution, while her husband, Sergei Efron, was fighting in the White Army, Tsvetaeva and her two small daughters were reduced to terrible poverty. Her youngest daughter died of hunger. In 1921 Tsvetaeva emigrated, first to Berlin, then to Czechoslovakia, and then to Paris to join her husband. Her collection of poems Mileposts I was published in Moscow in 1922, the year she emigrated, and was greatly admired by Boris Pasternak. In Prague Tsvetaeva wrote some of her finest poems, published in Paris in her collection After Russia. Other books she published during her emigré period include Parting (Berlin, 1921), Poems to Blok (Berlin, 1923), and Psyche (Berlin, 1923). The poverty Tsvetaeva had endured in postrevolutionary Russia followed her in her emigré years. Loyalty to her husband drove Tsvetaeva back to the Soviet Union. Two months after Tsvetaeva's arrival in Moscow, her daughter Ariadna was arrested; a month later her husband was arrested as well. When the Germans attacked Russia, Tsvetaeva was evacuated to Elabuga in Central Asia. Unable to find work for herself or food for her son, she hanged herself on August 31, 1941.

Articles by Marina Tsvetaeva

“To kiss a forehead is to erase worry.”
By Marina Tsvetaeva
To kiss the lips is to drink water. / I kiss your lips.
Translated from Russian by Ilya Kaminsky
Learn
[It is not fated that, in this world]
By Marina Tsvetaeva
It is not fated that, in this world,The strong join the strong.Thus, Siegfried parted from Brunhild,A sword stroke instead of a marriage.In the allied brotherly hatred–Like buffalos!–rock…
Translated from Russian by Nina Kossman
Trees VI
By Marina Tsvetaeva
Neither with paint, nor with a brush.Light is his kingdom: his hair is gray.The red leaves tell lies.Here light tramples color.Color is trampled by light.The heel of light crushes the chest of color.Isn’t…
Translated from Russian by Nina Kossman
Trees IX
By Marina Tsvetaeva
What revelations,What truthsWhat do you rustle of,The floods of green?With sacramentsOf what raving sibyl,What do you rustle of,What do you rave about?What’s in your fluttering?But I know–you…
Translated from Russian by Nina Kossman
[Bring to me all that’s of no use to others]
By Marina Tsvetaeva
Bring to me all that’s of no use to others:My fire must burn it all!I lure life, and I lure deathAs weightless gifts to my fire.Fire loves light-weighted things:Last year’s brushwood, wreathes,…
Translated from Russian by Nina Kossman
Trees VIII
By Marina Tsvetaeva
Someone’s heading for a fatal victory.Trees gesture like tragedies.Sacrificial dance of Judea!Trees flutter like sacramentals.This–a conspiracy against the era:Against weight, number, fraction,…
Translated from Russian by Nina Kossman