Marina Tsvetaeva, Her Life in Poems - Rolf Gross

“Pra”, Elena Ottobaldovna Voloshina
Maksimilian Voloshin
Every guest was enthusiastically greeted by Maximilian Voloshin and his mother “Pra,”
Yelena Ottobaldovna—the poetry of patronymics! Both dressed in long Tartar caftans,
barefoot. Max, he was only fourten years older than Marina, a corpulent, genial
philosopher. He wrote poetry and painted. His widowed mother, equally voluminous, was a
firebrand, the soul of their guest house. They charged next to nothing for their rooms. It
was not yet a fashionable tourist spot. The guests prepared their own meals or walked
three kilometers to a ramshackle Tartar café for food.
Koktebel, Seryozha and Marina in the door frame, Pra sitting, 1911
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