No Love Without Poetry: The Memoirs of Marina Tsvetaeva's Daughter
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Tsvetaeva Marina
Earthly Signs
 List Price: Price: $14.80 You Save: $3.70 (20%) DescriptionMarina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) ranks with Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, and Boris Pasternak as one of Russia's greatest twentieth-century poets. Her suicide at the age of forty-eight was the tragic culmination of a life beset by loss and hardship. This volume presents for the first time in English a collection of essays published in the Russian émigré press after Tsvetaeva left Moscow in 1922. Based on diaries she kept from 1917 to 1920, Earthly Signs describes the broad social, economic, and cultural chaos provoked by the Bolshevik Revolution. Events and individuals are seen through the lens of her personal experience -- that of a destitute young woman of upper-class background with two small children (one of whom died of starvation), a missing husband, and no means of support other than her poetry.These autobiographical writings, rich sources of information on Tsvetaeva and her literary contemporaries, are also significant for the insights they provide into the sources and methodology of her difficult poetic language. In addition, they supply a unique eyewitness account of a dramatic period in Russian history, told by a gifted and outspoken poet. Customer Reviews"diaries" rather than poetryThe subtitle of _Earthly Signs_ is "Moscow Diaries, 1917 - 1922." I had taken this metaphorically, with the expectation and hope that Tsvetaeva's poems would be illuminated with a biography. Instead, the subtitle is literal, which was a disappointment; I had hoped for a different translation than Selected Poems (Tsvetaeva, Marina) (Twentieth-Century Classics), which I was unhappy with. Nonetheless, her diaries did give me some insight into the character and personality of the poet, as well as a micro-cosmic view into the chaos, uncertainty and fear that many Russians felt during the Russian Revolution and the Civil War, hence the three stars. Tsvetaeva was a melancholy woman. This is apparent in her poetry, but it is vividly shown in her dairy. Not caught up in the romance and drama of the revolution, Tsvetaeva instead was concerned with more basic things: safety, food, and the nagging worry of the safety of her family. This is a common thread throughout the diary as she travels from the Crimea to Moscow to elsewhere. The faces, conversations and concerns of those who cross her path are meticulously documented, along with her own reflections and thoughts. One passage in particular struck me, as Tsetaeva meditates on the grief that war inflicts, writing, "A daughter whose father has been killed - is an orphan. A wife whose husband has been killed is a widow. But a mother whose son has been killed?" This is fairly representative of thoughts that occupy the majority of the book. Much of the power of _Earthly Signs_ is the result of Tsvetaeva herself, to be sure. But I can't help but think that the translator and editor, Jamey Gambrell, also played a role in this. As Gambrell writes in the introduction, "Every translation, like every poem or novel, is a voyage of sorts. My hope is that I have managed to read these earthly signs well enough, to follow Tsvetaeva's path closely enough to repave enough of her singullar road, for English readers to be translated across the river." I believe these hopes have been realized. A pity, then, that Gambrell has not (at least yet), translated her poetry in addition to these diaries.
Bride of Ice: New Selected Poems
 List Price: Price: $21.95 DescriptionIntensely emotional and honest, this collection of searing poems about love, loss, jealousy, and fear, explores the literary and social landscape of post revolutionary Russia. Sharply addressing the conflicts between the life of a poet and that of a mother and wife, this enlarged volume, masterfully translated, includes five major poem sequences, one of which was written in 1915 for the poet's lover Sofia Parnok and another in response to poet Rainer Maria Rilke's death. Invoking Stalinist Russia as an underlying theme, this compilation also covers politics and history.
Letters: Summer 1926 (New York Review Books Classics)
 List Price: Price: $14.96 You Save: $4.99 (25%) DescriptionThe summer of 1926 was a time of trouble and uncertainty for each of the three poets whose correspondence is collected in this moving volume. Marina Tsvetayeva was living in exile in France and struggling to get by. Boris Pasternak was in Moscow, trying to come to terms with the new Bolshevik regime. Rainer Maria Rilke, in Switzerland, was dying. Though hardly known to each other, they began to correspond, exchanging a series of searching letters in which every aspect of life and work is discussed with extraordinary intensity and passion. "An extraordinary correspondence.... Makes us weep for what seems a vanished golden age of European culture." -- John BayleyCustomer Reviewsthese letters should have been kept privatehere we have three great poets. sounds inviting, interesting, wonderful. instead boris writes like an infatuated 14 year old. marina is often hysterical. their ego's are so soft, constant reassurance seems to be the name of the game. a polite letter from a bored rilke has marina and boris delirious with happiness, too excited to sleep, pouring over every 'the' and 'and', looking, searching for 'deeper meaning.' if this book is read as letters by three unknowns, i doubt it would be published. boris is a cad. after one letter stating undying love for marina, he wishes to leave his wife, leave his child, pack his suitcase and live happily ever after with an also married marina. i guess their life partners are expendable when it comes to poetry, or, more like it, the rich and pathetic fantasy world of boris and marina. this is one of the most uninteresting books i have read. my advice - stick to the poetry and avoid these sickly sweet letters. A revelation, a model, for the possibility of human communication This book, the March/Sept. 2001 edition, is for me like a hot springs swimming pool for the tired body, what spring is to the birds, what rain is for parched meadows: a sensory experience that brings well-being to the sore human soul. The jacket cover comments by John Bayley and Mark Rudman give an accurate idea of what the correspondence was between these three writers 80 summers ago: yes, the letters among them are literature, and yes, reading them might make us weep for a vanished golden age of culture. But this collection of letters and poetry is for us today, addresses our global conflicts now; Rilke and Tsvetayeva knew that they were writing for the future; Pasternak knew that, too, but in these letters Boris comes across as more firmly rooted in the present moment (perhaps because he's best known as the author of a novel, Dr. Zhivago, immortalized by a David Lean film in the mid-1960s). I know nothing of the Russian and German languages and cannot judge the translation as a "correct" one, but the reader who benefits from this book is one who wonders what people felt and how they lived during a time when the Soviet government was ratcheting up the tension that led to the period of the commissars and Stalin. When I began reading this book, I knew little about Rilke and Pasternak, and had never heard of Marina Tsvetayeva. But these writers--as human beings--were no different than anyone else in that they were subjected to the same pressures as anyone living in poverty and fear. Rilke, Pasternak, and Tsvetayeva reacted to their circumstances with beautiful words. They have proven to me--beyond a doubt--that even under the worst governmental regimes, the intelligence we give to our emotions and the joy we have in verbal expression will triumph. Today, we merely die of complacency. Ultimately, this edition is Marina Tsvetayeva's book: her genius is evident in every phrase of her two essays inspired by the death of Rainer Maria Rilke--80 years ago, December 29, 1926--essays of lyrical prose-poetry translated beautifully by Jamey Gambrell, and appended to the end of the correspondence. The reader cannot simply turn to the back of the book and read Tsvetayeva's essay "Your Death"; one must read everything that comes before. This book also reminds me how indebted all writers and readers are to anyone who--often through extraordinary efforts--saved fragile paper documents, also the artistry and science of translators, archivists, and libraries, as well as the descendants and extended family of the writers. Thank you Alexandra Ryabinina, Yevgeny Pasternak and Yelena Pasternak, Konstantin Azadovsky, Margaret Wettlin and Walter Arndt for a truly astounding commitment to culture. In the Company of Angels Words have tremendous power, and reading the letters written from one person to another often helps us to know that person far more intimately than anythng else ever could. During the summer of 1926, three extraordinary poets (two Russian and one German) began a correxpondence of the highest order. These three extraordinary people were Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva and Ranier Maria Rilke. Rilke, who is revered as a god by both Pasternak and Tsvetayeva, is seen by them as the very essence of poetry, itself. None of these three correspondents is having a good year: Pasternak is still living in Moscow, attempting to reconcile his life to the Bolshevik regime; Tsvetayeva has been exiled to France with her husband and children and is living in the direst financial straits, with each day presenting a new hurdle in the struggle to simply "get by;" Rilke's situation is perhaps the worst of all...he is dying of leukemia in Switzerland. Pasternak and Tsvetayeva have already exchanged years of letters filled with the passion and romance of poetry, itself. Although Pasternak saw Rilke briefly in 1900, Tsvetayeva has never laid eyes on her idol. These three poets are, however, connected by a bond far stronger than the physical. They are kindred spirits, and each find repetitions and echoes of himself in the other. Tsvetayeva quickly becomes the driving force of this trio. This is not surprising given her character. She's the most outrageous of the three, the boldest, the neediest, the one most likely to bare her inner soul to its very depths. Tsvetayeva's exuberance, however, eventually has disatrous effects. Although Pasternak and Tsvetayeva consider Rilke their superior by far, these are not the letters of acolyte to mentor, but an exchange of thoughts and ideas among equals. If you've ever read the sappy, sentimental "Letters to a Young Poet," you'll find a very different Rilke in this book. Gone is the grandiose, condescending Rilke. In his place we find an enthusiastic Rilke, one filled with an almost overwhelming "joie de vivre," despite his sad circumstances. As Susan Sontag says in her preface, these letters are definitely love letters of the highest order. The poets seek to possess and consume one another as only lovers can. But even these lovers haven't suspected that one of their trio is fatally ill. Pasternak and Tsvetayeva are both shocked and devastated when Rilke dies. Love, many people will argue, is best expressed when the people involved are able to spend time together. There is, however, something to be said for separateness, for there is much that can only come to the surface when the lover is separated from the beloved. These letters can teach us much about Rilke, Pasternak and Tsvetayeva. They can also teach us much about the very depths of the soul...both its anguish and those sublime, angelic heights...areas not often explored by anyone, anywhere, at any time.
Selected Poems (Tsvetaeva, Marina) (Twentieth-Century Classics)
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DescriptionElaine Feinstein is a poet of lyrical directness. That clear, passionate voice which she brought to her celebrated translations of Marina Tsvetayeva's poetry is her own. She writes about love, loss, jealousy, the fear of abandonment. Her powerful rhythms flow down the page, seeking to draw a coherent shape out of the inner uncertainties. She also writes with tenderness about an ageing father, a child on a swing, old films, a flowering cactus. Hers is a poetry which can contain and welcome. The rare landscape poems are always peopled, and the considerable narrative and dramatic skills of a major novelist give urgency to her evocation of the classical figures of Dido and Eurydice. She has also found a poignant lyricism in writing of the inhabitants of her local streets and the ordinary pleasures of daily life. The poems in this selection are drawn from eleven volumes published over thirty years.Customer ReviewsDisappointed with the translation rather than the poetA contemporary of Akhmatova, Blok and Rilke, Tsvetaeva is not well known outside her native Russia. She was apparently demanding, difficult, and hard to get along with. One certainly gets a sense of this from her writing. Her poetry, given the time she wrote (the collection here spans from 1916 - 1936) is dark and melancholy, as one would expect. From this translation alone, I would consider her a second-rate poet, far behind Akhmatova. To do so, however, would be to do Tsvetaeva (and her legion of fans) a great disservice. Simply put, this translation is clunky. The images, meter, even the enjambment of the poems simply doesn't resonate. My Russian is admittedly weak; even so, comparing the original with the translations here presented a striking difference in substance. To be fair to the translator Feinstein, translation is extremely difficult, especially so with poetry. Yet it *can* be done well, capturing the flavor, emotion and (in exceptional cases) the sense of word-play that is so critical to this art form. I was disappointed, then, that in this instance, Tsvetaeva's voice was not captured as well as it deserves to be. I have not given up on this poet - but I cannot recommend this particular edition. Feinstein Admits She Doesn't Know Russian Check out exceprts from the New York Review of Books on this atrocity of a "translation" (see below). Lack of verbal, literary, and source-language-ability is no excuse for this travesty of a translation! You know *less* about Tsvetayeva after reading this translation, because even if you had no knowledge to begin with, you'd end by being poisoned with a complete and utter misrepresentation of the poet that Tsvetayeva IS and WAS. Avoid, avoid, avoid. NYR Books Volume 29, Number 6 · April 15, 1982 Poet of Sacrifice By David McDuff Selected Poems of Marina Tsvetayeva translated by Elaine Feinstein "Elaine Feinstein's translations of Marina Tsvetayeva's poetry have been widely praised since they first appeared in 1971. The present volume contains an additional twenty-four pages of poems. These are welcome, though one might have hoped that a substantial revision and expansion of the book would have made room for poems which are not to be found in the Soviet editions of Tsvetayeva's poetry. As it is, the additions--mostly chosen from Tsvetayeva's later work--come without exception from the "Soviet canon" of Tsvetayeva and do nothing to counter the officially accepted Soviet view of the poet: as an émigré, miserably unhappy amid the evils of life in the West, and inexorably drawn toward her homeland ("Home-sickness"). It cannot be denied that the initial impression to be gained from the experience of hearing Feinstein's versions read aloud is that of a faithful rendering into the English of the meaning of the original poems. Yet unfortunately this initial impression is misleading. If one studies Feinstein's book carefully, reading both introduction and notes, not only does one discover that Feinstein knows no Russian; she also makes, it would appear, substantial claims for her translations, maintaining that they are "transformations" (she borrows the term from Octavio Paz) of the original, achieved through the reworking of literal versions. In her "Note on Working Method" at the end of the book, Angela Livingstone asserts that "All this material [i.e., semantic, phonetic, and metrical description of the Russian text prepared for Feinstein's use] was... changed into poetry by Elaine Feinstein." Changed into what kind of poetry, may one ask? Tsvetayevan, or Feinsteinian? Joseph Brodsky in a recent interview suggested that "if you could conjure up a combination of Hart Crane and Hopkins, that would be something like Tsvetayeva."[7] There is no evidence in Feinstein's translations that she has made even the slightest attempt in this direction. If her versions are meant as literal guides to the sense of Tsvetayeva's poems, well and good. If they claim to have the status of poetry, then one must insist that with a poet of the uniqueness and greatness of Tsvetayeva they must make at least some gesture in the direction of the formal and prosodic qualities of the original. This, with the possible exception of an eccentrically indented preservation of Tsvetayeva's stanzaic patterns (minus the rhymes), Feinstein's versions singularly fail to do. And no matter how pleasing the result to English or American ears, one must again, out of respect for Tsvetayeva, insist that this result has little to do with Tsvetayeva's art, that it is a deception: not a willful one, perhaps, but a deception nevertheless. For although Feinstein's versions may look and sound like the kind of poetry to which English and American readers are accustomed, they contain almost nothing of what Kassner calls "Grösse des Mythischen" ("greatness of the mythical")--to which Tsvetayeva gave ecstatic utterance. Tsvetayeva's art is one of poetic music--of rhythm, assonance, meter, and above all, rhyme. She wrote to Pasternak: This world contains its rhymes. Prise them apart, it trembles. The importance of rhyme to Tsvetayeva, both symbolically and as a technical device, cannot be overstated. To overlook it is to ignore the very heart, the central meaning, of this artist's titanic work. Tsvetayeva's poems are a blend of metaphysical cunning and daring with a profound tonal dexterity, the like of which I have not found in any other poet. For the nearest aesthetic equivalent to the effect in the original of Tsvetayeva's collection Posle Rossii ("After Russia," 1928), one has to turn to the work of a composer: Stravinsky's neoclassical compositions of the 1920s. It is hard to see how any non-Russian-reader studying Feinstein's translations could even begin to guess at such a connection. The argument is frequently raised that what is possible or acceptable in Russian rhyme and meter is not similarly available in English. Thus, Angela Living-stone asserts that "Marina Tsvetayeva's [voice] is particularly difficult to capture... because her consistent adherence to rhyme and to metrical regularity would, if copied in the English poems, probably enfeeble them." This seems a dubious claim--surely it is at least worth the effort to try? The fact is that rhyme and meter are unfashionable now among English and American poets. That is altogether another matter. Unusual rhymes and shifting meters (which are much more characteristic of Tsvetayeva than is "adherence to rhyme and to metrical regularity") are just as available in English as they are in Russian. It is the motivation among poets and translators to go and look for them that is missing. On at least one important occasion, Feinstein's lack of Russian and her reliance on literal versions let her down badly. "Poema kontsa" ("Poem of the End") contains, in its ninth section, the following chilling sequence: Ya ne bolee chem zhivotnoye, Kem-to ranennoye v zhivot. Feinstein renders this as: I am no more than an animal that someone has stabbed in the stomach. This is literally correct, although perhaps "wounded" would be more faithful to the original than "stabbed." Literal correctness, however, is not enough in this, as in many other poems by Tsvetayeva. What Tsvetayeva has written is a pun on the root zhiv ("alive"); zhivotnoye means "an animal," and zhivot, a word whose close relation to the one for "animal" cannot escape even those who know no Russian, means "a stomach." A conscientious translator might attempt to make some play with two similarly related English words such as "animal" and "anima." "Wounded in the anima" is, after all, what Tsvetayeva means. As an introduction to Tsvetayeva's poetry, Elaine Feinstein's Selected Poems goes perhaps halfway to being successful. There is much of Tsvetayeva's poetry that remains to be translated: "The New Year's Letter" to Rilke, the "Attempt at a Room," the "Poem of Air," to name but a few long and important poems. But, above all, what cries out to be translated is the rhyming language of Tsvetayeva's poems. Without that, we miss what is distinctive and great about her work. Notes [3] My translation. [4] Rudolf Kassner, "Erinnerungen an Rilke" in Buch der Erinnerung (Eugen Rentsch Verlag, Zurich, 1954). [5] Translated by Elaine Feinstein. [6] My translation. [7] Quarto, No. 24, December 1981, p. 10. Criminally under read. Marina Tsvetaeva is simply amazing. Feinstein does a superb job here translating, considering Tsvetaeva is nearly impossible to translate out of Russian. This book is cheap, wonderful and most people I know end up getting a copy from me as a gift at some time. This sounds like true poetry I do not know Russian. I cannot comment on whether or not Elaine Feinstein has captured or missed completely the supposedly brilliant aural qualities of the original verse. What I can say is that reading these poems I have a sense of true poetry. There is a depth of feeling and a passion, a soul being revealed in depth, a life in its sufferings and straining for beauty. Perhaps more words are irrelevant, and I shall just give a few excerpts from the book. From ' I know the truth' 'The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew, the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet, And soon all of us will sleep under the earth,we who never let each other sleep above it. ' From 'What is this gypsy passion for separation' 'that no one turning over our letters has yet understood how completely and how deeply faithless we are, which is to say: how true we are to ourselves.' From ' You loved me' You loved me. And your lies had their own probity. There was truth in every falsehood Your love went far beyond any possible boundary as no one else's could. Your love seemed to last even longer than time itself. Now you wave your hand- and suddenly your love for me is over! That is the truth in five words." Reigning love Tsvetaeva's life was filled with tragedy (she lived through and in Revolutionary Russia (her husband fought for the White Army) and in Czechoslovakia during the German occupation) her heart shouted for a personal love the message which rings echoing through her words as she has deep philosophical understanding and awareness of her world which she rides over like gravel in fodder for her clinging to the personal loves of her heart which reigned supreme. She spat her poverty and desperation with pride at the shallow, whoever they might be, and challenged the dignity of heaven. She was a powerful poet who believed in living each moment for what it was and holding love at an undisputable high. Some of my favorite quotes from segments of the book... Because even more than God He is the one that mixes We entered one another's eyes All poets are Jews Everything that I love changes from an external thing into an inward one, from the moment of my love, it stops being external (from the Introduction). I can't attest to the authenticity of the translations, as I know little Russian, Reviews seem mixed; but Feinstein, for me, makes some engrossing connections of words that must ring true to some extent. Tsvetaeva Marina News
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Marina Tsvetaeva
Tsvetaeva, Marina
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Moscow NewsLate night at the museumsA lot of writers, including Alexander Pushkin, Marina Tsvetayeva and Mikhail Lermontov, lived in the Arbat area. With its cafes and pedestrian streets, it would be great for a house-museum crawl. The Archaeological Museum, on Manezhnaya Ploshchad,
Libero-News.itIl piccolo Boris tra Rilke e TolstojRipeto, l'introduzione vale la spesa, per scoprire il poeta prodigioso (giudizio lampeggiante di Marina Cvetaeva: «Ogni poeta lirico nell'albero riconosce se stesso; Pasternak invece si sente albero»), il figlio del grande disegnatore Leonid,