Marina Tsvetaeva, Her Life in Poems - Rolf Gross

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Euridice – Orpheus Those condemned to their last rags Cover (not their mouth, not their cheeks! ..) Oh, are you not exceeding your powers Orpheus, while descending into Hades Those giving up their last connection to Earth ... On the bed of lies I committed a great dishonesty in contemplating - A deep sigh – an interview with a knife. I have paid all the same – for all this rose blood is a spacious style to cover Immortality... It's all the same in Lethe's head Beloved - I need a break Forgetfulness ... For in the ghostly house appeared Actually - your ghost, plain and real - I, was dead ... What should I tell you, except: - "That you didn't notice and left!" There is no alarm! No cause! No hands after all! No mouth, clinging to Lips! - Immortality, the bite of the snake Ends female passion. I have paid all the same – in vain my cries! - For this last insight. No need for Orpheus to follow Eurydice And a brother to disturb his sister. March 23, 1923, Prague, She sent the poem also to Pasternak – who, like Rodzevich, seems not to have understood it. Years later, in 1926 Pasternak in one of his letters to her quoted from this poem, and she realized his misunderstanding: Brothers disturb Sisters! The ghost had been Boris-Orpheus: The turn-around of Orpheus – is the handiwork of Eurydice. ("Hand" - across the corridor Hell!) The turn-around of Orpheus - is the blindness of her love, her command (soon, soon!) - Or - Oh, Boris, it's terrible – remember 1923, March, mountain, lines: No need to invoke Orpheus and Eurydice, and a brother to disturb his sister. Both are under orders - and lose. Everything in it is loved - the last memory, the shadow of the body, a 46
toe of the heart, not yet touched by the poison of immortality, remember - - - ...immortality, the bite of the snake ends female passion! All that is echoed in her female name. As it was, he - went after her, she could not return, though she may possibly no longer have wanted to. Thus, transformation and sublime, - Do not laugh - do not be afraid. M.Ts. - St. Gilles-sur-Vie, May 25, 1926 Oh, the mystifying vagaries of Marina's poetry! This inconspicuous poem is her farewell to all men she had lured into Hades: “soon, soon!” Pasternak was the only survivor. A meeting with him in Weimar came to naught. Even she sees the blessing in this failure. After 2 years they finally addressed each other by their first names: brother and sister in spirit. How much did Seryozha know of this correspondence In the relative calm of the truce between the two, Marina recovered her more earthly female aspects. She had wanted a son all her life. By the summer of 1924 she found herself pregnant. This child, Seryozha's child may have saved her life. Her erotic phantasies were transformed into an almost equally irresponsible idolization of the child she was carrying. It simply had to be a son, she had seen him in a vision already years ago! - And luckily it was! Georgy “Mur” Efron was born on February 1, 1925. The child nearly died at birth. Overconfident of her female strength she had not consulted an obstetrician. Alone in the house at the edge of the village, in the middle of a blizzard, a woman friend and a local physician performed a difficult breach birth. The umbilical cord nearly strangled the child. For weeks Seryozha and she argued about his name. Marina wanted to name him Boris – in honor of Pasternak, of course. - She relented in order not to have to explain her choice, and Seryozha's name of Georgy, the patron saint of Moscow, prevailed. She had addressed the growing child as “Mur” (after A. Th. Hoffmann's “The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr”) and that name remained with him for life. They had a christening on June 8. With mixed feelings Marina describes the lengthy Orthodox ritual (she, as mother, seems not to have been banned from the ceremony as is customary in Russia): “An exorcism of devils, you can feel their terrifying force, a real power struggle. And the church pushing with all its might against a dense mass, a living wall of sorcery and develry: “I forbid you! - Go away! - Depart!” Mur was quite charming during the whole ceremony... He looked handsome. Being five months old, he wasn't totally immersed – not one of the vast Czech laundry tubs would have been big enough. A boy like him could only have been totally immersed in the sea. [VS p. 249] Tsvetaeva wanted to leave Czechoslovakia for some time. She had never quite settled in rural Prague. She longed for the excitement, for the people of a lively urban environment. With the deteriorating freedom in Berlin the center of Russian émigré literature had shifted to Paris. There new literary journals were born every year. Efron's tubercolosis had recurred, and he had spent part of the summer of 1925 in a sanatorium. He may also have been lured by the hub of Russian politics in Paris. Prague 47
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 and 38: Berlin - Prague Ilya Ehrenburg Serg
Page 39 and 40: her and writes that “he had been
Page 41 and 42: etween her insatiable need for free
Page 43 and 44: Moscow. I don't want to write about
Page 45: Swan-like... - But what happened Li
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
show all

Marina Tsvetaeva, Her Life in Poems - Rolf Gross

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?