Marina Tsvetaeva, Her Life in Poems - Rolf Gross

Koktebel
Maximilian Voloshin's Haven in the Crimean
Seryozha
1911 - 1916
Koktebel, Voloshin's house, Marina with hat on cart, Max Voloshin standing on the right
1911
“Koktebel! Koktebel! We reached it the first time on a creaking cart passing the wilds of
the Eastern Crimean. Only eight kilometers from Feodosia, but a whole day's travel,"
wrote Marina. Asya would join her later. “The landscape became more barren along the
way until the earth was covered only by black volcanic rock, which, at noon, burned your
feet through the soles of your shoes. We arrived at Voloshin's house and behind it lay the
ink-blue sea. No green, no tree, no bush, only some tufts of high, bleached desert grass in
a few sandy places. Stranded on the rocks. Max Voloshin called it 'Homer's Island'. At
night the mythical heroes talked to us. We all went crazy, stricken by Greek madness.
Marina was nineteen and I seventeen when we spent our first summer in Koktebel. We
returned year after year before 1914.” Marina had found her world, as uncompromising
and as abstract as her poetry.
11