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Sun 19 Jan, 2003 10:35 am
The greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century, Marina Tsvetaeva, was born in 1892 and died in 1941 after a tragic life that included exile, the death of her child, a return to Soviet Russia, and ended in her suicide. Tsvetaeva was a friend of Rilke's, the lover of Osip Mandelsstam, another great Russian poet killed by Stalin, and the confidante of Pasternak. She wrote short lyrics as well as book-length poems and, later in life, haunting autobiographical prose. Poet Joseph Brodsky said "nobody wrote better than her, in Russian, in this century."
If there is any interest I will post a short poem by Tsvetaeva on this board.
We've been reading Anna Akhmatova on another poetry forum, Hail Poetry. Why don't you go ahead and post some Tsvetaeva poems... you don't need to ask! It will be interesting to compare the two. Akhmatova also had a very tragic life and lived at about the same time.
POEM OF THE END #5 (excerpted)
by Marina Tsvetaeva, translated by Elaine Feinstein
I catch a movement of his
lips but he won't
speak--You don't love me?
--Yes, but in torment
drained and driven to death
(he looks round like an eagle)
--You call this home? It's
in the heart? What LITERATURE!
For love is flesh, it is a
flower flooded with blood.
Did you think it was just a
little chat across a table
a sntached hour and back home again
the way gentlemen and ladies
play at it? Either love is
--A shrine?
or else a scar.
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