Selected Poems

by Marina Tsvetaeva, Elaine Feinstein (Translator), Elaine Feinstein (Introduction)

Overview

An acclaimed translation of the best work of the passionate Russian poet

An admired contemporary of Rilke, Akhmatova, and Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva was a witness to the political turmoil and the social devastation wrought by the Russian Revolution and a powerfully inspired chronicler of a difficult life and exile sustained by poetry. Pasternak "was immediately overcome by the immense lyrical power of her poetic form. It... had spring living from experience—personal, and neither narrow-chested nor short of breath from line to line but rich and compact and enveloping"

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140187595
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/01/1994
Series:	Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	363,864
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.72(h) x 0.45(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Marina Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow in 1892, the daughter of a pianist and a museum curator. After enjoying a relatively secure and comfortable childhood, she published her first poems in 1910 and in 1911 married fellow poet Sergei Efron. They had two daughters before the Russian revolution broke out, and it was at that time she began to experience the turmoil and brutality of early twentieth-century Russia. During the years of famine that ensued, she was forced to place her daughters in a State orphanage, where one of them died of malnutrition. Tsvetaeva later followed her husband to Czechoslovakia, where they lived in exile until Efron’s return to Russia in 1937. Efron subsequently was arrested and died in a labor camp. Tsvetaeva returned to Russia with their son in 1939 but was driven to despair by the difficulty of finding food for the both of them, and, in 1941, she hanged herself. Along with Pasternak, Mandelstam, and Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva stands as one of the four great Russian poets of this century and is one of the most important woman writers in the Western canon.

Elaine Feinstein is a prizewinning poet and novelist and the author of highly praised biographies of Alexander Pushkin, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Ted Hughes. She lives in London.

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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