Marina Tsvetaeva, Her Life in Poems - Rolf Gross

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
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