Selected Poems: Marina Tsvetaeva

By Marina Tsvetaeva

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).

'Tsvetayeva is one of the great poets of the century and David McDuff's translations are very good. This is all the more remarkable because, like the poems they translate, they rhyme. There are overlaps with Elaine Feinstein's excellent but unrhyming translations of the same poet, but not too many. McDuff conveys Tsvetyeva's commitment to poetry's musical force, Feinstein substitutes a beautifully nuanced syntax for music; Tsvetayeva shines and appals in both' - Martin Dodsworth, Guardian

'It must be said right away that those who want to have an inkling of what Tsvetayeva is actually like, and that includes her form, her rhyme, and the tone of that accompanies form and rhyme, will have to go to McDuff. His diligence with metre and rhyme is remarkably successful, and is the only proper tribute to the poet's linguistic virtuosity. Readers may find that Feinstein comes across more fluently, but that fluency is not Tsvetaevan. McDuff has caught her abruptness, her veering and tacking, and has tried to show something of the curious modern music this produces - "modern" not through free verse but by dint of straining traditional patterns to breaking point' - Cencrastus

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Jan 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781780372303

Marina Tsvetaeva

Marina Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow in 1892. Her father was a professor of art history at the University of Moscow and her mother, who died of TB when Tsvetaeva was fourteen, was a gifted pianist. Tsvetaeva's first poems, Evening Album, were self-published in 1910. In 1912 Tsvetaeva married Sergei Efron, with whom she had two daughters, Alya and Irina. During the Civil War Efron fought in the White Army while Tsvetaeva and the children endured the Moscow famine. Irina died of starvation in 1920. In 1922 the Civil War ended with Bolshevik victory and Tsvetaeva joined Efron in exile in Prague. It was here that she wrote some of her greatest poetry. In 1924 Tsvetaeva's son Georgy was born. The family moved to Paris in 1925. Tsvetaeva became isolated from Russian literary émigrés and, increasingly, from Efron and Alya, whose allegiances moved towards Communism. Both returned to Russia in 1937, Alya freely and Efron to avoid arrest for his involvement in the murder of a defector. Tsvetaeva followed him to Russia with Georgy in 1939, unaware of Stalin's Terror. Alya was arrested and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Efron was shot in 1941. In the same year, following the German invasion, Tsvetaeva and Georgy left Moscow for Yelabuga in the Tartar Republic. Tsvetaeva hanged herself there on 31 August 1941.

Reviews for Selected Poems

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold I know no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry." - Maria TsvetaevaWeariness and beauty permeate the poetry of Maria Tsvetaeva. She struggled with life and love, but endured, supported in part by fellow artists, most notably Mandelstam, Rilke and Pasternak. The poetry in this selection is arrayed in chronological order and ranges from the "starry nights, in the apple orchards of Paradise"(p 5) to the "muffled blow" of Epitaph (p 106). Inspiration from fellow poets Mayakovsky, Blok and Akhmatova impress upon the reader her poetic muse and mystery. I like the poetry infused with literary references, Shakespeare and others, as this is a type that I share with her - in my own humble way. She has a way of making the simplest image seem to embody meaning beyond the possibilities of a finite world. She suggests this and more in lines like:"a manifestly yellow, decidedlyrusty leaf--has been left behind on the tree." (p 120)

[wealhtheowwylfing · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I first fell in love with her "Poems for Akhmatova":
"Muse of lament, you are the most beautiful of
all muses, a crazy emanation of white night:
and you have sent a black snow storm over all Russia.
We are pierced with the arrows of your cries

so that we shy like horses at the muffled
many times uttered pledge--Ah!--Anna
Akhmatova--the name is a vast sight
and it falls into depths without name

and we wear crowns only through stamping
the same earth as you, with the same sky over us....

I stand head in my hands thinking how
unimportant are the traps we set for one another..."

This collection also contains her beautiful elegies for Moscow, her tender listing of beloved details, her heartfelt sarcasm.