Selected Poems

by Marina Tsvetaeva, David McDuff (Translator)

Overview

During the Stalin years Russia had four great poets to voice the feelings of her oppressed people: Pasternak, Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetayeva. The first two survived the terror, but Mandelstam died in a camp and Tsvetayeva was driven to hang herself in 1941. This comprehensive selection of Tsvetayeva's poetry includes complete versions of all her major long poems and poem cycles: Poem of the End, An Attempt at a Room, Poems to Czechia and New Year Letter. It was the first English translation to use the new, definitive Russica text of her work. It also includes additional versions ascribed to F.F. Morton which first appeared in The New Yorker: these rhyming translations are actually the work of Joseph Brodsky (who lived at 44 Morton Street in New York).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781852240257
Publisher:	Bloodaxe Books
Publication date:	08/27/1987
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.45(w) x 8.52(h) x 0.49(d)

About the Author

Marina Tsvetaeva (also Tsvetayeva and Cvetaeva) was born in Moscow in 1892. Her father was a professor and founder of the Museum of Fine Arts, and her mother, who died of tuberculosis when Marina was 14, was a concert pianist. At the age of 18 she published her first collection of poems, Evening Album. Tsvetayeva’s life coincided with turbulent years in Russian history. She married Sergei Efron in 1912; they had two daughters and later one son. Efron joined the White Army, and Tsvetayeva was separated from him during the Civil War. She had a brief love affair with Osip Mandelstam, and a longer relationship with Sofia Parnok. During the Moscow famine, Tsvetayeva was forced to place her daughters in a state orphanage, where the younger, Irina, died of hunger in 1919. In 1922 she emigrated with her family to Berlin, then to Prague, settling in Paris in 1925. In Paris, the family lived in poverty. Sergei Efron worked for the Soviet secret police, and Tsvetayeva was shunned by the Russian expatriate community of Paris. Through the years of privation and exile, poetry and contact with poets sustained Tsvetayeva. She corresponded with Rainer Maria Rilke and Boris Pasternak, and she dedicated work to Anna Akhmatova. In 1939 Tsvetayeva returned to the Soviet Union. Efron was executed, and her surviving daughter was sent to a labour camp. When the German army invaded the USSR, Tsvetayeva was evacuated to Yelabuga with her son. She hanged herself there on 31 August 1941. Bloodaxe publishes two editions of her work: David McDuff's translation, Selected Poems, first published in 1987 (when Tsvetayeva was the preferred transliteration), and Angela Livingstone's translation of her essays, Art in the Light of Conscience, first published in 1982 and republished by Bloodaxe in 2010 (as Tsvetaeva).

Table of Contents

Selected PoemsList of Collaborators
Introduction

POEMS

I know the truth
What is this gypsy passion for separation
We shall not escape Hell
Some ancestor of mine
I'm glad your sickness
We are keeping an eye on the girls
No one has taken anything away
You throw back your head
Where does this tenderness come from?
Bent with worry
Today or tomorrow the snow will melt
VERSES ABOUT MOSCOW
From INSOMNIA
POEMS FOR AKHMATOVA
POEMS FOR BLOK
A kiss on the head
From SWANS' ENCAMPMENT
Yesterday he still looked in my eyes
To Mayakovsky
Praise to the Rich
God help us Smoke!
Ophelia: in Defence of the Queen
Wherever you are I can reach you
From WIRES
Sahara
The Poet
Appointment
Rails
You loved me
It's not like waiting for post
My ear attends to you
As people listen intently
Strong doesn't mate with strong
In a world
POEM OF THE MOUNTAIN
POEM OF THE END
An Attempt at Jealousy
To Boris Pasternak

From THE RATCATCHER:
From Chapter 1
From Chapter 2: Dreams
From The Children's Paradise

From POEMS TO A SON
Homesickness
I opened my veins
Epitaph
Readers of Newspapers
Desk
Bus
When I look at the flight of the leaves
From POEMS TO CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Notes on Working Method: Angela Livingstone
Notes

Editorial Reviews

Although generally less well known here than Pasternak, Akhmatova and Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva is counted by some critics as the greatest of these four major poets of postrevolutionary Russia. However, as veteran translator McDuff indicates in his introduction, the sounds of Russian poetrywhich to this day remains formally traditional in its use of rhyme and metercan never be captured in English. Further, Tsvetaeva presents a particularly difficult problem to the translator because her transcendent reputation rests precisely on the aural values of her verse. That said, McDuff must be congratulated for his brave attempt to reproduce those formal qualities. If we cannot have Tsvetaeva herself, these stand on their own as creditable English-language poems. The selection represents the entire scope of her remarkable career from her simple and charming early lyrics, first published in 1910 when she was 18, through those recounting her privations and hardships during the years of upheaval in Russia, to the poignant poems written in exile after 1922. It includes all her major long poems, such as the stunning Poem of the End. Although it is unclear whether Tsvetaeva was officially ostracized on her own account or because of the political actions of her husband Sergey Efron, her poems are heart-rending in view of her tragic life and eventual suicide. Love, the loss of youth, poetry and the Motherland are the core subjects of her poems, which are infused with high passion and a heroic tenacity of spirit. For non-Russian speakers, this volume is a new window on poetry in the Stalinist era. (May)

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