Marina Tsvetaeva, Her Life in Poems - Rolf Gross

poetic power like distress and - love. One “affair” follows the other, with women as well as
with uncounted men, poets, actors, writers, famous and infamous, worthy and unworthy.
Sergey watches quietly from the wings, knowing that after every crash she will return to
him. Her “immorality” and her self-centredness seem to be two of the reasons why certain
people hate her. - Tsvetaeva has nerver denied or replied to any of the often abusive
attacks on her [VS p.268-273]. They were below her level.
The severe criticism of her personal conduct is in part based on a misunderstanding.
Only two or three of her “affairs” were consummated. Despite her search for new loves in
her exalted poems, sex is not the object of her dreams. – Imminently Russian, she longs
for an Empyrean that will transport her out of the misery of daily existence, that might
conjure-up a kindred soul with whom she can share her spiritual loneliness. She is not
religious in the conventional sense, “I never obeyed the commandments and never went to
confession...” - Yet the beauty of her imaginary, transcendental “Other World” recalls the
golden domes of the churches that rise equally other-worldly from the drab Russian
landscape.
Tsvetaeva's morality – in the conventional sense – and her ideological position
between the two Russian emigrant camps is best explained by Russians. An enlightening
conversation on the subject has been recorded by Solomon Volkov in his “Conversations
with Joseph Brodsky: A Poet's Journey Through the 20th Century, 2002” [VB p.40-47]. It
pits young Volkov's summary dislike of her against Brodsky's superior understanding of the
moral (ideological) dilemma of Tsvetaeva. An excerpt of this interview is available online
through Google Books.
Late in Tsvetaeva's torrential life Boris Pasternak befriended her. The only man who
did not run scared from the on-surges of her emotions. Together they lived through the
summer of 1926 and the stellar meeting with Rilke – all by letter! Prevented by fate and
mutual reluctance, the two would not meet until 1940 in Moscow. During Marina's most
difficult émigré years she turned him into the last god of her imaginary world, her first
equal love. Notwithstanding, that she disjoins herself from Pasternak in an attack of
jealousy and haughty disdain, when he divorced his wife and married a mutual friend of
theirs. He remains spiritually faithful to her beyond her death. - The above poem was
written at the height of their relationship.
A detailed knowledge of the circumstances associated with her poems may help in
understanding, but is of little use in translating them. Her verses are inherently difficult to
translate, especially into English. The grammatical structure of Russian – five cases, a
complex system of inflections of the verb, and the lack of articles and personal pronouns –
poses nearly unsurmountable difficulties. To make things worse, Tsvetaeva has a way of
making-up or using archaic words, which are not found in dictionaries. The poem to
Pasternak is an example of that.
However, the lexicographic hurdles are but one obstacle to the appreciation of
Tsvetaeva's poetry. The beauty of her verses, especially her late poems, lies in their sound
when recited in Russian. Her musical rhythms cannot be reproduced in another language.
Her poems need to be heard - in Russian. To this effect I included the Russian texts in my
selection of her poems and added a number of links to audio readings in an appendix.
Antokolsky's reading of the Pasternak poem is attached above. Listen to it, its resounding
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