Marina Tsvetaeva, Her Life in Poems - Rolf Gross

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When Seryozha finally arrived in June, Marina was already passionately involved in the intrigues of the turbulent émigré scene in Berlin, and needlees to say, in new infatuations. They were late at the station and met Seryozha in the large hall. Alya recalls later: “He ran all the way up to us, his face distorted with happiness, and embraced Marina – who opened her arms to him very slowly, as though they had gone numb. They stood there for a long, long time in a tight embrace, and only then did they slowly move their hands down to each other's cheeks – which were wet with tears.” [VS p.226] For once Alya was not aware of the deep chasm between Marina and Sergey. Seryozha held a Czech scholarship at Prague University to study literature. Pretending that he had to be in Prague for the beginning of the new term, he left a few days later. They had agreed that Marina and Alya would live with him in Prague, but mother and daughter did not leave until August 1922. What kept her so long in Berlin She had no personal reasons to remain there. An affair with her publisher Visnyak had run its course. She had broken with Ehrenburg, seemingly over his disapproval of her poems on Russia. The tangle of relationsips she had created around herself were outside her control. Seryozha's abrupt departure must have added to her confusion. Her mood was one of livid despair. Standing on their balcony of the small hotel they now lived in, she contemplates her misery and once again suicide. Ach, to crash in a sheer fall - Down - into dust on the asphalt! The short span of earthly love Bathed in tears- for how long Balcony. With their salty downpour Come malicious kisses. And inescapable hatred A sigh: To expire in verses! Squeezed into a ball in one's hand - What: heart or handkerchief Batiste To such ablutions There is a name: - Jordan. Because this battle of love is Merciless and savage. To soar up from granite brows- Is to expire in death! June 30, 1922 At this critical moment appeared a new actor in this tragedy of errors, whose sudden entry from the wings even Seryozha may not have known about at the time. On June 27, 1922 arrived a letter from Boris Pasternak announcing a visit to Berlin. He wanted to meet 38
her and writes that “he had been captivated by the lyric power” of Marina's collection Mileposts, which had just been published in Moscow. “Something close to me lies behind the form of these poems, perhaps there is something similar in the experiences we have undergone that formed our characters...” [VS p.232] His words were like balsam for Marina's wounds: finally a Brother in Soul! After some hesitation she replied two days later. [Tsvetaeva's letters to Pasternak can be found in the internet, in Russian.] They had last met by chance at the funeral of Alexander Scriabin's widow in Moscow in April 1920. But Pasternak had vanished before she could talk to him. In her reply she recounts all their missed meetings, and begins for the first time to read his poetry in earnest. This exchange of letters was the beginning of a relationship that would last beyond the end of her life. Notwithstanding its intimacy it had been Pasternak who had initiated their correspondence not she, and he was not “a young boy with the longest eyelashes” whom she could smother like her own child. He was her equal. This may explain why Marina fled Berlin a day before Pasternak was to arrive – and that would, for one reason or another, remain the pattern of their friendship. Despite that they met only once or twice, hastily or by chance, Pasternak became her closest confidant, her twin brother. Marina and Alya arrived in Prague on August 1, 1922. A week later they moved to the village of Mokropsy in the suburbs, where a large colony of Russian émigrés lived. Marina was offered a writer's government stipend of 1000 crowns, her main subsistence during their years in the Democratic Republic of Czechoslovakia. Sergey retained the student room in Prague which was part of his 300-crown scholarship. He only spent the weekends with his family. Life in rural Czechoslovakia was primitive. Like in Moscow during the last years, Marina had to fetch water from a well, cook on a single-flame primus stove, and chop wood, but the first few months were peaceful. She was worn out from her whirlwind life in Berlin. Marina blowing poetic bubbles, E. Elevna (a friend), K. Rodzevich, Lelik, standing: Seryozha and N. Elenev, Outside of Prague 1923 But in the fall Marina “crashed” into Konstantin Rodzevich, apparently a friend and co- 39
Page 1 and 2: Marina Tsvetaeva A Life in Poems No
Page 3 and 4: poetic power like distress and - lo
Page 5 and 6: Childhood Moscow 8 Tryokhprudny Per
Page 7 and 8: children. In “Mother and Music”
Page 9 and 10: seventeen Marina began to smoke, a
Page 11 and 12: Koktebel Maximilian Voloshin's Have
Page 13 and 14: The motley crowd of greater and les
Page 15 and 16: did not concern her. My poems, writ
Page 17 and 18: Sofia Parnok Koktebel and Moscow 19
Page 19 and 20: She writes and a few days later des
Page 21 and 22: And I'll tell you: - All the same -
Page 23 and 24: orderly. Eventually he was drafted
Page 25 and 26: In December 1915 Marina was invited
Page 27 and 28: To Osip Mandelstam A strange anxiet
Page 29 and 30: Marina escaped on flights to the ot
Page 31 and 32: Love! Love! Even in convulsions, ev
Page 33 and 34: - Alya had these frequent attacks.
Page 35 and 36: ... Dead - and risen! Just enough f
Page 37: Berlin - Prague Ilya Ehrenburg Serg
Page 41 and 42: etween her insatiable need for free
Page 43 and 44: Moscow. I don't want to write about
Page 45 and 46: Swan-like... - But what happened Li
Page 47 and 48: toe of the heart, not yet touched b
Page 49 and 50: France 1925 - 1939 The Summer of 19
Page 51 and 52: German and Russian! In a postscript
Page 53 and 54: thus alien after all!) One more thi
Page 55 and 56: affirmation around a spring. Around
Page 57 and 58: horseman. Your penciled notation (i
Page 59 and 60: Boulevard de Crancy, 3 (not far fro
Page 61 and 62: in 1924 and 1925), hence my long so
Page 63 and 64: You are alive, I want to see you. A
Page 65 and 66: trug uns ein blinder Befehl durch d
Page 67 and 68: to feign halves. We, confined to ci
Page 69 and 70: German is deeper than French, fulle
Page 71 and 72: eflection when it appears in the wa
Page 73 and 74: asleep, fast asleep. I sound quite
Page 75 and 76: winter!... "You don't need to answe
Page 77 and 78: This letter became the last in thei
Page 79 and 80: France 1925 - 1939 The Lure of the
Page 81 and 82: Mur and Marina, 1936 Photo dommuseu
Page 83 and 84: In your family album! Children! You
Page 85 and 86: People are all the same to me, And
Page 87 and 88: go. But there was, of course, no ch
Page 89 and 90:
Marina Tsvetaeva, Golitsyno 1939 No
Page 91 and 92:
The idea of suicide is disturbing t
Page 93 and 94:
Marina Tsetaeva (1892 - 1941) Chron
Page 95 and 96:
August 1, move to Prague, where the
Page 97 and 98:
August 17, Marina and Mur evacuated
Page 99 and 100:
Marina Zwtajewa, “Mutter und die
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Marina Tsvetaeva, Her Life in Poems - Rolf Gross

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