First English translation of Tsvetyaeva's crowning achievement in verse drama (1927), written during a period of intense communication with Pasternak and Rilke. Its high-voltage trio of central female characters and shimmering variations of rhythm and assonance make this an outstanding poetic treatment of the Phaedra legend.
An admired contemporary of Rilke, Akhmatova, and Mandelstam, Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva bore witness to the turmoil and devastation of the Revolution, and chronicled her difficult life in exile, sustained by the inspiration and power of her modern verse. The poems in this selection are drawn from eleven volumes published over thirty years.
The collection features translations of Marina Tsvetaeva's lyric poetry from her entire oeuvre, showcasing her evolution as a Modernist Russian poet. Notable inclusions are translations of her significant long poems, "Poem of the End" and "Poem of the Mountain," which highlight her profound emotional depth and innovative style. Translated by Michael M. Naydan and Slava I. Yastremski, this anthology captures the essence of Tsvetaeva's work across different periods of her life.
Tsvetaeva always regarded the narrative poem as her true challenge, and she created powerful and intensely original works in this genre. They can be seen as markers of various stages in her poetic development...
Elaine Feinstein's ground-breaking translations of one of the most celebrated Russian poets of the twentieth century, reissued as a Carcanet Classic.
Exploring the intense correspondence with Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva's final collection reveals deep emotional layers and connections. Tender poems reflect on émigré critic Alexander Bakhrakh, while her tumultuous affair with Konstantin Rozdevich is notably understated. As the collection progresses, Tsvetaeva increasingly embraces references to Russia and its culture, culminating in poignant tributes to a Russian peasant woman and Pasternak, which provide a powerful conclusion to her exploration of identity and longing.
This is a reissue of a classic text on poetry and art first published in English translation in 1992 and published by Bristol Classical Press in the UK and Harvard University Press in the USA.
Set against the backdrop of 1916, the final year of Tsarist Russia, this collection serves as a lyrical diary reflecting the complexities of a young woman's life. At 23, she navigates the challenges of motherhood and marriage, explores themes of love, sexuality, and friendship, and confronts her relationship with Orthodox traditions while embracing her own instincts. The work captures her burgeoning talent within a vibrant literary landscape, making it a significant milestone in Tsvetaeva's poetic career.
Exploring profound themes of anguish and alienation, this collection showcases Marina Tsvetaeva's lyrical mastery through evocative imagery and technical experimentation. The poem sequence 'Trees' reflects her affection for the Bohemian landscape, while 'Wires' symbolizes the emotional and geographical distance from Boris Pasternak. Tsvetaeva's work captures her struggles with suicidal thoughts and a deep sense of exclusion from love and companionship, marking a poignant high point in her poetic output.
Written during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow famine that followed, these poems are suffused with Tsvetaeva's irony and humor, which undoubtedly accounted for her success in not only reaching the end of the plague year alive, but making it the most productive of her career. We meet a drummer boy idolizing Napoleon, an irrepressibly mischievous grandmother who refuses to apologize to God on Judgment Day, and an androgynous (and luminous) Joan of Arc. Represented on a graph, Tsvetaeva's work would exhibit a curve - or rather, a straight line - rising at almost a right angle because of her constant effort to raise the pitch a note higher, an idea higher ... She always carried everything she has to say to its conceivable and expressible end. In both her poetry and her prose, nothing remains hanging or leaves a feeling of ambivalence. Tsvetaeva is the unique case in which the paramount spiritual experience of an epoch (for us, the sense of ambivalence, of contradictoriness in the nature of human existence) served not as the object of expression but as its means, by which it was transformed into the material of art. --Joseph Brodsky While your eyes follow me into the grave, write up the whole caboodle on my cross! 'Her days began with songs, ended in tears, but when she died, she split her sides with laugher!' --from Moscow in the Plague Year: Poems