Tsvetaeva - all aspiration.
With arms outstretched forward, ready to rush after the persistent caller, but suddenly petrified in movement; outwardly frozen in order to perform an eternal flight under a calm cover. This is the easiest way to imagine Tsvetaeva.
People with her temperament, spiritual strength and intensity commit feats and crimes. They ascend to the scaffold, are burned at the stake, fanatically loyal, not even to an idea, but only to protest, rebellion, ex-pelvis.
A soul that knows no measure,
The soul of a whip and a fanatic,
Longing for the scourge.
. . . . . . . . . .
Like a tall rope of resin
Smoking under a hair shirt...
. . . . . . . . . .
- Savanarolova’s sister
A soul worthy of a fire!
She longs for real feat and sacrifice:
To be between sleeping students
For those who do not sleep in their dreams.
At the first stone thrown by the mob
No longer a cloak - but a shield!
(Oh, this verse was not arbitrarily interrupted!
The knife is too sharp!)
And - smiling with inspiration - the first
Climb onto your fire.
These dry lines contain condensed mystical ecstasy, spiritual voluptuousness, all the holiness of a huge, gloomy Catholic cathedral, ready to suddenly fall back.
Tsvetaeva's path is difficult and scary. Next to the prayerful “Poems to Blok” and “Separation” illuminated by pure fire, a sharp “Tsar-Maiden” could appear. But with “Craft” Tsvetaeva showed that she had found a way out for her spiritual explosion. She belongs to those great poets for whom there are no middle paths: either a complete fall upside down, or victory. Tsvetaeva defeated herself and others.
The poetess titled her book beautifully, although not everything included really has the right to bear the title “Crafts.” “Alleys” and several other works, judging by the nature of the entire book, are random. But next to them there are amazing works in which the strength in the depths of the tossing volcano was hidden under the external smoothness:
With such force in the chin hand
Grasping your mouth like a spasm,
Having understood the separation with such strength,
That, it seems, even death will not separate -
So the standard-bearer leaves the banner,
So on the platform to mothers: It's time!
So he looks into the night - with his last eyes -
Concubine of the last king.
How simply done: a figurative, unexpected beginning and several hauntingly vivid comparisons. Brief, condensed, fastened.
Behind all the daring, rude masculine manners and strength in Tsvetaeva lies an infinite amount of femininity, all her aspirations for sacrifice and heroism are purely feminine.
To be his eagle's dove!
To be more of a mother - Marina!
A messenger - a sentry - a messenger.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Flying silently like a black whirlwind,
Not to be a friend - to be handy!
Not to be alone - to be second!
How small and pale Akhmatova’s femininity and tenderness seems in comparison with Tsvetaeva’s love impulse. And she curses that woman who could not know love and pity.
The poems addressed to one’s youth are very good and characteristic. The muse “so distant” defeated mischievous and free youth.
Book publishing house "Helikon". Moscow/Berlin, printing house "Letter" G.m.b.H., 1923, 166 pp. In printed publisher's covers. The copy is printed on laid paper. Format: 18x11 cm.
Bibliographical sources:
1. The Kilgour collection of Russian literature 1750-1920. Harvard-Cambridge, 1959 - missing!
2. Books and manuscripts in the collection of M.S. Lesmana. Annotated catalogue. Moscow, 1989, No. 2441.
3. Library of Russian poetry I.N. Rozanova. Bibliographic description. Moscow, 1975 - missing!
4. Tarasenkov A. Russian poets of the 20th century, M., 1966, p. 395.
5. Tarasenkov A.K., Turchinsky L.M. Russian poets of the 20th century, M., 2004, p. 715.
Someday, lovely creature,
I will become a memory for you
There, in your blue-eyed memory,
Lost - so far, far away.
Will you forget my hook-nosed profile,
And the forehead in the apotheosis of a cigarette,
And my eternal laughter, with which I fool everyone,
And a hundred - on my working hand -
Silver rings, attic cabin,
My papers are in divine turmoil...
As in a terrible year, exalted by misfortune,
You were little, I was young.
On a dazzling sunny day on May 15, 1922, a Moscow train approached the Berlin station. From now on, Marina Tsvetaeva became an emigrant. Discovering the streets of Berlin, Ariadne was amazed at the cleanliness and order in the city, which contrasted with the diversity and bustle of Moscow. Her mother, on the contrary, did not even have time to notice that they were abroad, because it was Russia, Russia itself, that received her upon her arrival in the center of Germany. Still as prudent, Ilya Erenburg booked them a room in a family boarding house at 9 Trautenaustrasse, where he lived with his wife. Without giving her time to rest, Ehrenburg ushered the newcomer into a colony of exiles from Russia, where White Army officers coexisted with intellectuals fleeing persecution under Soviet rule and hesitant “tourists” who had not yet decided who to join. United by common misfortune and common nostalgia, socialist revolutionaries, monarchists, anarchists and opportunists took advantage of the disorganization of the German economy after the 1918 armistice to profit a little at the expense of a country ravaged by inflation. The influx of these refugees was such that the doors of numerous Russian publishing houses, Russian printing houses, Russian newspapers and magazines were immediately and wide open to them. The information-hungry public eagerly awaited everything that was published here. Exiles in love with literature gathered in their favorite quarter: on Pragerplatz in the Pragerdile cafe. At all the tables, buried in tobacco smoke, in the hall that smelled of beer, they talked about yesterday's Russia, about today's Russia, about tomorrow's Russia with such freedom that in Moscow or Petrograd would certainly lead to prison or to the wall. Having followed Ilya Erenburg into this atmosphere heated by controversy, Marina immediately felt at home. Everyone in Berlin knew her and admired her. As if welcoming in advance the Poet’s entry into the circle of political exiles, the Russian publishing houses of Berlin - “Ogonki” and “Helikon” - at the beginning of the year published almost simultaneously two of her collections: “Poems to Blok” and “Separation”. Both had tremendous success, and the “godfather” of the opuses was Ilya Erenburg. “Experts” placed Tsvetaeva on a par with Akhmatova.
Some found her work even more exciting, original and “modern” than the work of the great poetess who remained in Russia. While Ariadne, intoxicated by the pleasure of eating an orange or drinking fresh, foaming beer, discovered these small joys of life, Marina discovered with no less pleasure that everyone around her was only trying to make her acquaintance with the West easier. Young Abram Vishniac, who ran the small publishing house “Helikon” (under this nickname Vishniac, by the way, appears both in Marina’s letters and in Ariadne’s memoirs), created a literally cult character out of her, erected her on such a pedestal that Marina was a sign gratitude - immediately fell in love with this ardent admirer of hers. While waiting for Sergei Efron, who was languishing in Prague, developing very problematic plans for a reunion with Marina, she sends Abram a whole series of fiery letters (she will later combine them into a collection called “Florentine Nights”), then several poems composed for other recipients, but re-dedicated - with one stroke of the pen. Her physical attraction to this newcomer was such that she expressed it in a letter without the slightest shame: “Wine releases the feminine essence in me (the most difficult and hidden thing in me). The feminine essence is a gesture (before you think!). Vigilance is not killed, but the blessed right to blindness is.” Ariadne watched her mother's love affairs with a mixed feeling of childish jealousy and feminine annoyance. But the girl was reassured by the fact that she quickly recognized in Abram a malleable person, easily influenced, while her mother was for her the height of energy and insight. “We always tear Helikon into two parts,” she wrote down even then, when she was ten years old, and published it many years later in “Pages of Memoirs,” “by life and soul. Life is the weight that keeps him on the ground and without which, it seems to him, he would immediately fly upward, like Andrei Bely. In fact, he may not be torn - he has little soul, since he needs peace, rest, comfort, and this is precisely what his soul does not give. When Marina enters his office, she is like that Soul that disturbs and takes away peace and lifts a person to herself, without descending to him. In Marina’s friendship there is no cradling or pushing into a cradle. She even pushes the child she is talking to out of the cradle, and is divinely sure that she is cradling him - and such cradling may not make him well. Marina with “Helikon” speaks like a Titan, and she is incomprehensible to him, like the North Pole to an Easterner, and just as tempting. From her words, he feels that in the midst of his everyday and difficult affairs there is a light and something not everyday. I saw that he was reaching out to Marina like he was reaching out to the sun with all his crumpled little stems. Meanwhile, the sun is far away, because Marin’s entire being is restraint and clenched teeth, and he himself is flexible and soft, like a pea sprout.” However, this literary idyll did not last long. Most of Marina's passions were as dazzling as they were short-lived. Her relationship with Ilya Ehrenburg, more than cordial at first, also very soon collapsed: if poetry united them, then politics divided them. Ehrenburg, who never really condemned the Bolshevik seizure of power, did not advise Tsvetaeva to publish “Swan Camp” because the poems included in this cycle seemed to him to be inspired by monarchical pseudo-archaism. Both excited and irritated by this criticism, Marina promised to hold back the publication of this work, once created in honor of the heroism of her husband’s comrades in arms. But when Andrei Bely arrived in Berlin, she perceived him as a constant friend, although she was not particularly close to him in Russia. White took this trip to meet his ex-wife, from whom he separated six years ago. Concerns about reconciliation with his wife, however, did not prevent him from closely following the events of literary life. He had just read “Separation” and never tired of praising this poetic work. “Let me express my deep admiration for the absolutely winged melody of your book... It’s been a long time since I had such aesthetic pleasure... all evening under the power of its spell,” Bely wrote to Tsvetaeva on May 16, 1922. Almost immediately after this letter, on May 21, his article, entitled “Poetess Singer,” appeared in the Berlin newspaper “Voice of Russia,” about the fact that the main thing in poetry is “impetuous gesture,” “impulse,” and that Tsvetaeva’s poems, like all Russian poetry, “from rhythm and image they clearly go back to melody, lost since the time of the troubadours.” And this article ended like this: “... if Blok is a rhythmist, if the plastic player is essentially Gumilyov, if the sound player is Khlebnikov, then Marina Tsvetaeva is a composer and singer - Marina Tsvetaeva’s melodies are persistent, persistent... I prefer melody to painting and the instrument; and that’s why I would like to listen to Marina Tsvetaeva’s singing in person... and especially since we can welcome her here in Berlin.” But the highest appreciation for Tsvetaeva was that her little book, by Bely’s own admission, returned him to poetry after a long break. Bely called the new collection, published in the same year 1922 in Berlin, “After Separation”; the last poem in it was dedicated to M.I. Tsvetaeva... A real miracle, which illuminated her life for years, came from Moscow: on June 27, Ehrenburg sent Tsvetaeva a letter from Boris Pasternak. Was it the voice of a loved one: a friend - a brother - a double? It was impossible to imagine that they had met since the time of “Musaget”, exchanged minor remarks, even heard each other’s poems - and remained indifferent. Ehrenburg more than once tried to “instill” Pasternak into her mind, but this had the opposite effect: she did not want to love what someone else already loves... Pasternak even came to her in Borisoglebsky - brought letters from Ehrenburg... At Scriabina’s funeral she went with next to him... But he also did not notice Tsvetaeva, “mistaken and missed” her poetry, as stated in his first letter. Now he read the second “Versts”, was shocked and admitted that some poems made him sob. Summing up his life, Pasternak recalled: “I was immediately captivated by the lyrical power of Tsvetaev’s form, deeply experienced, not weak-chested, sharply compressed and condensed, not out of breath on individual lines, covering entire sequences of stanzas with the development of their periods without breaking the rhythm. Some kind of closeness was hidden behind these features, perhaps the commonality of experienced influences or the sameness of incentives in the formation of character, the similar role of family and music, the homogeneity of starting points, goals and preferences. The feeling of each other's strength brought them together and helped them grow. In his first letter, Pasternak put Tsvetaeva on a par with the “unblemished talents” of Mayakovsky and Akhmatova. “My dear, golden, incomparable poet,” he addressed her. She responded two days later, allowing his letter to “cool down in itself,” and at the same time sent “Poems to Blok” and “Separation” - after all, Pasternak knew only one of her books. She has not yet seen the recently published collection “My Sister is Life.” But a week later, Tsvetaeva offered the editor of the Berlin magazine “New Russian Book” A. S. Yashchenko a review of “Sister”: “I just finished, about 1/2 printed, sheet. I can’t shorten it, I tell you in advance... Be nice, answer me as soon as possible, this is my first article in my life - and a combat one. I don’t want her to lie.” The review was indeed “combat”, written energetically, assertively, with many poetic quotes - in an effort to conquer the reader to Pasternak, whom she calls “the only poet.” Tsvetaeva defined Pasternak’s poetry as “Shower of Light.” Under the attack of the letter and the book, she writes her first poem addressed to Pasternak:
Life lies inimitably:
Beyond expectations, beyond lies...
But by the trembling of everyone he lived
You can find out: life!
She continues the conversation about his poems, but conveys not an objective (although what an “objective” Tsvetaeva has!) impression, but the intimate sensations that “My Sister is Life” evoked in her. This is a meeting with a kindred spirit, penetrating her soul and bewitching her:
And don’t reproach me so much, friend.
We are enchanted, bodies,
Souls...
The November letter to Pasternak, already from the Czech Republic, serves as a commentary on the poems: “...“Words for sleep.” It was summer then, and I had my own balcony in Berlin. Stone, heat, your green book on your lap. (Sat on the floor). “I lived with her for ten days then, as if on the high crest of a wave: I gave in (obeyed) and did not choke...” Oh, how she needed just such a mutual meeting with her soulmate. With a soul equal to poetry, and with poetry equal to the soul. The most important thing was that he was not afraid of the heights and tensions of the relationship to which Tsvetaeva immediately and inevitably rose. They were equals in this friendship; we can say that Pasternak’s letter, received by Tsvetaeva in the summer of 1922 in Berlin, in some sense changed her life. Now she had an unlikely companion. Vishniac, Bely, Pasternak... Ehrenburg, whose friendship ended in internal dissolution... Meeting with Vladislav Khodasevich, who arrived shortly after Tsvetaeva... Acquaintance with Mark Slonim, in Prague which turned into a long-term friendship... Young artist Lyudmila Chirikova, who designed the Berlin edition of “The Tsar Maiden”... Aspiring writer Roman Gul, who wrote about Tsvetaev’s books, helped send her letters and books to Pasternak... Publisher S.G. Kaplun, who published Tsvetaev’s “The Tsar Maiden” and “After Separation” by Andrei Bely... Poets, prose writers, artists, publishers... Numerous literary enterprises were born and died: newspapers, almanacs, publishing houses, magazines, collections... Arose and Friendships, novels, families collapsed... “Russian Berlin” lived a tense, feverish life. It was full of people of various directions and aspirations. Political emigrants, for whom the path to Russia was cut off, coexisted with half-emigrants who stood at a crossroads: should they return to Soviet Russia? There were - more than ever - many Soviet soldiers released on business trips or to improve their health. There was a time of “change of leadership”; shortly before Tsvetaeva’s arrival, Smenovekhov’s newspaper “Nakanune” began publishing in Berlin, the literary supplement to which was edited by Alexei Tolstoy. Everyone published here - both emigrants and Soviets - but not Tsvetaeva. The first political scandal in which she took part is associated with “On the Eve”. On June 4, a letter from Korney Chukovsky to Alexei Tolstoy appeared in the Literary Supplement - from Petrograd to Berlin. Chukovsky spoke very unflatteringly about some Petrograd writers, his colleagues at the House of Arts, and even reported that they “scold Soviet power.” Along with immoderate enthusiasm for the writings of Alexei Tolstoy and calls to return, Chukovsky vilified “internal” emigrants, called them “scum” (in particular, Evgeniy Zamyatin - “clean”), and the Petrograd House of Arts - a cesspool. This publication caused a storm of indignation both against Chukovsky and against Tolstoy, who made his letter public. On June 7, the newspaper “Voice of Russia” published an open letter from Tsvetaeva to A. Tolstoy. Having not yet recovered from the “bloody fog,” Tsvetaeva was most outraged by the hints about the unreliability of writers living in her homeland. “Or are you really a three-year-old child,” she addressed A. Tolstoy, “not suspecting either the existence of the GPU (yesterday’s Cheka) in Russia, or the dependence of all Soviet citizens on this GPU, or the closure of the “Chronicle of the House of Writers,” not about much, much more... Let’s assume that one of the named persons, after 4 1/2 years of “doing nothing” (by the way, Blok also died from him) wants to be free, what role will your letter from the day before play in his departure? ? The New Economic Policy, which is obviously the promised land for you, is least of all concerned with questions of ethics: justice towards the enemy, mercy towards the enemy, nobility towards the enemy.” The immorality of K. Chukovsky’s letter and the fact of its publication for Tsvetaeva lay in his denunciation, covered with loud phrases of admiration for the Russian people and pain for Russian literature. The political change of leadership and the desire to curry favor with the Soviet government affected her much less. She ended her open letter to A. Tolstoy - an old acquaintance, the former Koktebel “Ali Khan”, a frequent guest of the Moscow “wrecker” - with the following story: “5 minutes before my departure from Russia (May 11 of this year), a man approached me: a communist , a casual acquaintance who knew me only from poetry. - “A security officer is riding in the carriage with you. Don't say too much." I shake his hand and don’t shake yours. Marina Tsvetaeva." Russian “passions” were in full swing in Berlin in German cafes favored by emigrants. At different times of the day, business, friendly and love dates were scheduled, not only the speculative “fate of Russia” was decided, but also the very specific fate of people and manuscripts. Tsvetaeva was cooked in this cauldron. And what about Seryozha? After all, it was for him that she left Moscow. Why is his name not on the pages dedicated to the beginning of her emigrant life? Sergei Efron managed to come to Berlin only in the first half of June, at the height of his wife’s dramatic relationship with Vishniac. How did they meet? How did you feel after almost five years of separation?
Hello! Not an arrow, not a stone:
I! - Liveliest of wives:
Life. With both hands
In your sleep-deprived sleep.
This meeting poem was written on June 25, and although it does not have a dedication, it can be confidently considered addressed to Sergei Efron. And yet - “The main thing is: alive and found each other!” - as Ariadne Ephron writes. She remembered that on the day of her father’s arrival, for some reason they were late at the station and met him, leaving the platform on the station square: “Seryozha had already reached us, with his face distorted with happiness, and hugged Marina, who slowly opened her arms towards him, as if numb. They stood for a long, long, long time, tightly hugging each other, and only then began to slowly wipe each other’s cheeks, wet with tears, with their palms...” The happiness of the meeting was poisoned when Sergei Yakovlevich guessed about Tsvetaeva’s relationship with Vishniac. This is probably why he left Berlin so quickly and returned to Prague. It was decided between them that they would live there together: he studied at Charles University and received a scholarship. There was hope that Tsvetaeva would also be given the allowance with which the Czechoslovak government supported Russian emigrants - writers and scientists. It was something tangible that could hardly be counted on in Germany, devastated by the war and living under the threat of inflation. In Berlin, Tsvetaeva sold “The Tsar Maiden” to the publishing house “Epoch”, and “Helikon” - a collection of poems “Craft”, and began negotiations with him about publishing a book of her Moscow recordings. After her departure, “Epic”, published by Andrei Bely, published “Shower of Light” and poems. She began relationships with other almanacs and collections. But everything was unstable; the vigorous Russian book publishing activity in Berlin could stop any day. There were no human relationships left that she could value here. White left. The passion for Vishniac had exhausted itself without bringing joy. So exhausted that even the poems to him became unpleasant: “sick!.., disgust for poems in connection with the persons (never with feelings, for the feelings - I!) - that caused them.” The friendship with Ehrenburg broke down: it seems that it was based on his rejection of her “Russian” things. In his memoirs, he does not entirely accurately write that the controversy arose because of “The Swan Camp,” which he persuaded Tsvetaeva not to publish. But “Swan Camp” as a book did not yet exist; Tsvetaeva prepared it a year later and attempted to publish it. And Ehrenburg, who was working at that time on “The Life and Death of Nikolai Kurbov” (by the way, Tsvetaeva believed: “he intended to write the heroine from me”), there was no reason to dissuade her from “Swan Camp.” The crack in their relationship widened into something else, more personal. L. E. Chirikova, whom I asked about life in Berlin, answered in a letter: “... all life then was “at a turning point” and all the people too. I remember how I ran into Mark Slonim at the station, accompanying Marina to the Czech Republic, and locked horns with him in conversation and criticism of the literary society of that time. On the topic that they all lose their main thing and break their lives into “episodes”. For which Slonim called me “a relic of Turgenev’s woman.” It seems that one of these “episodes” wedged itself into Tsvetaeva’s literary friendship with Ehrenburg. We are talking about two couples - the Vishnyaks and the Ehrenburgs, among whom Tsvetaeva felt like a “fifth wheel”: “a lot of people, all in silence, all in front of our eyes, cross loves (not a single real one!) - all in Prager-Diele (the famous “Russian "cafe in Berlin), everything is a joke..." Tsvetaeva, with her frankness, felt out of place in such an environment: "Part-time work is like a law, a tragedy covered up as a joke, insults under the guise of "revelations"..." The Berlin episode is over, stay in It was becoming difficult for Berlin: “I escaped from Berlin as if from a heavy dream.” Even Pasternak's planned arrival did not delay her: now she preferred epistolary friendship. The person leaving Berlin was not quite the same Tsvetaeva who left Moscow two and a half months ago. A large piece of life remained behind me, but there was a lot of strength and hope ahead. This is how Mark Slonim saw Tsvetaeva in Berlin: “She spoke quietly, quickly, but clearly, lowering her large gray-green eyes and not looking at her interlocutor. Sometimes she raised her head, and at the same time her light golden hair, cut into a bracket, with bangs on her forehead, flew away. With every movement, the silver wrists of her strong hands rang, somewhat thick fingers in rings - also silver - squeezed a long wooden cigarette holder: she smoked continuously. A large head on a high neck, broad shoulders, a certain well-shaped thin, slender body and her whole demeanor gave the impression of strength and lightness, swiftness and restraint. Her handshake was strong, masculine.” Voloshin taught her this handshake in her youth. On August 1, Tsvetaeva and her daughter arrived in Prague and a few days later settled in Mokropsy - the city was beyond their means. For a little over three Czech years, the family changed several places: Dolnie and Gornie Mokropsy (“Mokrotopy, Mokrotopy...” - Tsvetaeva sneered), Ilovishchi, Vshenory. All of these were the holiday villages closest to Prague and each other, “occupied” by Russian emigrants in the early twenties. A long, everyday life began, full of small troubles and lack of money, a real emigrant life, often brightened by Maria Ivanovna’s numerous loves. One of these rays was Gronsky. According to Tsvetaeva, Gronsky came to her to ask for one of her books, probably “The Craft.” The poet graduated from the Russian gymnasium in Paris and studied at the university in the literature department. They lived next door in a Parisian suburb and knew each other by family (at the end of 1926-1927 they were even housemates in Bellevue). Gronsky's father, Pavel Pavlovich, a private associate professor of public law at St. Petersburg University, in Paris was an employee of the Russian newspaper "Last News", where Tsvetaeva was occasionally published, his mother, Nina Nikolaevna, was a talented sculptor, and his son helped her in the workshop. Oh, how she loved him... Her letters to him, Tsvetaev’s lines capture the poet’s breath, his heart breaking wide open: “My dear boy! I am in complete despair from everything that needs to be said to you: I will say one thing - if I don’t say everything - that means I won’t say anything - which means it’s worse: I’ll crush everything. Everything reduced by one, exchanged for “one” (“two”). After all, this is the only way to understand Tyutchev’s verse: when I am silent, I say everything, when I speak, I say one thing, which means not only not everything, but not that (one thing!) And yet I speak, because I am still alive, living. When we die, we will speak silently.” The relationship “fragmented” quite quickly. “He loved me first, and I loved him last. This lasted a year. Then the divergence of lives began, inevitable given my lack of freedom, and in the spring of 1931 they completely separated: completely,” Tsvetaeva summed up the denominator of the history of relations in December 1934. “My favorite type of communication is the otherworldly dream: seeing in a dream. And the second is correspondence. A letter as a kind of otherworldly communication, less perfect than a dream, but the laws are the same...” Tsvetaeva’s husband Sergei Efron understood that Marina was “a person of passions: much more so than before.” In a letter to Voloshin, he analyzed the character of his wife, ruthlessly dissecting with a pen, like a scalpel, Tsvetaeva’s attitude towards one of her lovers, Konstantin Rodzevich: “To surrender headlong to her hurricane has become a necessity for her, the air of her life. Who is the causative agent of this hurricane now does not matter. Almost always (now as before), or rather always, everything is built on self-deception. The man is invented, and the hurricane has begun. If the insignificance and limitations of the hurricane’s causative agent are quickly revealed, Marina indulges in hurricane-like despair. .. Today there is despair, tomorrow there is delight, love, giving oneself wholeheartedly, and a day later there is despair again... A huge stove, to heat which you need firewood, firewood and firewood...”
The book of poems by Marina Tsvetaeva leaves a rather vague impression at first and, perhaps, there are not many readers who will patiently read all the hundred and fifty pages that make up it.
There are no living pictures or bright images here, the visible and tangible world seems to disappear, and we are immersed in something intangible and almost formless. This does not give the poems a philosophical character; there are few ideological plays in the collection. “The sun of the evening is kinder than the sun at noon”; “he who is thrown down does not look to the sky”; “Tomorrow’s sleeping wars are the Leader and yesterday’s, Silently stand double - the Black Tower” - these are the general thoughts of the poet captured at random.
And yet, there is attractiveness and great merit in many of the things that make up this volume. Its title may even give reason to think that the author himself treats them primarily as exercises for certain tasks that he set for himself. What exactly they are, these tasks, overcoming exactly what difficulties of versification was his goal - only he himself can tell about this. But these are the features of “The Craft” that you notice and remember when reading this book. The best plays by Marina Tsvetaeva in this collection do not tell anything, do not describe anything, but their poems flow and sing continuously. If you read only this stanza: “A - and - paradise. A - and - wey. - Rob. “Don’t beat me,” what can you take away other than an incomprehensible set of words? Meanwhile, if you say them in a chant, with appropriate accents and stops, a bright chant of some kind of spell immediately arises, which so perfectly continues with the following lines: “Apple is a yakhont, - Yablok is gold. “Whoever withers away, we know about that,” etc.
Here, for example, is a lovely New Year’s song, with the refrain “Rock, mug on mug”; This is one of the best examples of a drinking song in Russian:
Brothers! At the last hour Years - for Russian Our land, living in us! Exactly twelve times - Mug on mug!
Or here’s another great example of a funeral march:
And march forward already, They are blowing the trumpet. Oh how she gets up Oh how he gets up... -
where this stanza, serving as a refrain, marks the gradual dying, becoming shorter and shorter until only two words remain:
And march...
Often the whole point is to find the harmony in which the poem should be sung - and then it suddenly takes on color, lights up, blooms with colors.
How the beauty immediately rises, for example, of a poem to Anna Akhmatova, already beautiful and creepy:
Who is your stripe Will it make the most of it today? My little black kerchief! Warlock!
We have known for a long time that Anna Akhmatova is a “witch from the serpent’s lair”; but when you read these poems addressed to her, she seems simple, naive and uncunning next to Marina Tsvetaeva, who is familiar with all spells and submissive to all potions.
In the element of song that envelops her, Marina Tsvetaeva does not need, and coherent sentences with subjects, predicates and other parts of speech are often harmful. She breaks, crumples her tongue as she wants, throws out one word and another, compresses the phrase to one word, one sound.
The horse is chrome, the sword is rusty, Who is this? - Leader of the crowds.
Enemy. - Friend. - Turn. - Laurel. - Everything is a dream... - He. - Horse.
Hence a certain elation of tone that never leaves her.
Here is a portrait of Mayakovsky:
Above crosses and trumpets, - Baptized in fire and smoke, - Archangel heavy-footed, - Hello, forever Vladimir.
And here is the description of the eyes in the poem to M.A. Kuzmin:
Two glows! - There is no mirror! - No, two illnesses! - Two seraphic vents! Two black circles!
Or again, a few lines from the charming portrait of the prince. S.M. Volkonsky:
Some kind of sliding along, - Upwards - without the slightest pressure... - Oh, the elusive spirit - so - Stinging as invulnerable!
And now, the vague mood clears up. Now you see before you a creator who seems to be constantly struck by poetic fever. This amazing fertility - almost every day there is a poem; - these rushing lines, surpassing each other, the absence of stable phrases, the language breaking in the melody - an electric current constantly permeates the poet, radiates from him. Andrei Bely sometimes wrote and writes in this way; and there is something decadent in the disheveled nature of such poems.
This, perhaps, is their condemnation. But rarely does the Russian language reveal its flexibility, humility, melodiousness, as in the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. And this is their undoubted value.
Marina Tsvetaeva is a poet for the few, a fate that, although bitter, is worthy. This is the path of Delvig, Baratynsky, Tyutchev, Innokenty Annensky and Vladislav Khodasevich. Along with them, Tsvetaeva had a joyful and difficult lot - to take care of her word and love the world.
(page 33).
There will be no burden on these shoulders,
Except for the divine burden - peace.
I put my gentle hand on the sword,
On the swan neck of the lyre.
Tsvetaeva is dynamic by nature, and the world and existence in her poems are only a tireless perpetuum mobile (truly, “she only dreams of peace”), not stopping at any obstacles (even before the abundantly placed gateways and congestion of all-conquering love), a stormy and impetuous stream - eternally united and whole, where the coastal landscape is constantly changing: today the rebellious and fussy Vendée, tomorrow Moscow - typical, authentic, “Russian”, almost popular print; forty-forty and the Tsar Cannon; Today:
(page 66)
Child of revelry and separation,
I extend my hands to everyone... -
and tomorrow, in the Stendhal atmosphere of gloomily bowing pinnacles, in a stagecoach, over a glass of fizzy Asti, stanzas are composed for the only Oswald. And it’s impossible to guess where the image of the most talented poetess merged, with whom she was, with Donna Anna or with the drunken Mariula without wine, who hid in the daring of a colorful and noisy gypsy camp.
Unbalanced, she turns prayers to Blok, and gives Akhmatova solemn hymns. She is attracted to gorges and failures:
(page 14)
Velvet carpets are healthier -
Nails for young feet.
And even on a starless night
Under your feet - useful - abysses! -
and the smooth road is frightening, through the abyss, perhaps the shortest path:
(page 12)
To the land of Dreams and Loneliness, -
Where are we - Majesties, Highnesses... -
to the country where the poetess so zealously rushes.
The prayers that sound in the book, such as “the world is not justified,” “the world has disappeared without a trace...”, etc., it seems, are nothing more than a tribute to instant seduction by the majestic pomp of the word. Tsvetaeva tasted too much of the sweetness of the world - her snow-white “Psyche” is a fairly clear guarantee of this - but isn’t this in itself enough for its complete “acceptance” and justification.
The collection includes poems by the poetess's seven-year-old daughter.
G. Struve
Rec.: Marina Tsvetaeva. Craft: Book of Poems
Berlin: Helikon, 1923;
Psyche. Romance. Berlin: Z. Grzhebin Publishing House, 1923
Of the Russian poets, Anna Akhmatova is undoubtedly the most recognized. Marina Tsvetaeva is still far from Akhmatova's glory. But there is no doubt that, despite all its shortcomings, Tsvetaeva’s poetry is more interesting, broader, and richer in possibilities than Akhmatova’s narrow-ranged lyrics. Akhmatova is a complete poet who created things that will remain forever. But the source of her creativity is already frozen or becoming impoverished. We don't feel any potential power in it. After the “Rosary” there was a deepening of the old riverbed, but there was no movement in width. Tsvetaeva, on the contrary, is all future potential. The only thing these two poets have in common is that they are both women and that their feminine essence finds outlet in poetry. Tsvetaeva’s attraction to Akhmatova, expressed in the dedication of an entire cycle of poems, is not poetic, but spiritual, human. They are opposite in everything. Whereas in Akhmatova there is rigor, clarity, measure, subordination of the verbal element to logical dictates, a gravitation towards classical meters, everywhere in Tsvetaeva, romantic extremity and excessiveness bursts and bursts from every line, words and phrases are raped, bent, broken for the sake of purely rhythmic tasks, and the rhythms dance and jump like crazy. Not poetry, but one continuous choking, one huge simultaneous (every moment is precious! don’t hesitate, don’t miss!) inhale and exhale:
In the poems of Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva, two lines of modern Russian poetry were clearly expressed: St. Petersburg and Moscow. St. Petersburg is, in addition to Akhmatova: Mandelstam, Kuzmin, Khodasevich, Rozhdestvensky and other young people. Moskovskaya is, in addition to Tsvetaeva: A. Bely, Yesenin, Pasternak, Imagists and Futurists, since they are poets, Ehrenburg. The Tsvetaevskaya gallery also includes Pushkin. Moscow - from the gut, from a folk song, from Stenka Razin. It is impossible that Tsvetaeva did not love and appreciate Pushkin, but she probably loves the romantic “Gypsies” (the name Mariula alone is worth it!) more than “The Bronze Horseman” or “Eugene Onegin.” And when Tsvetaeva acquires severity, it is not the severity of the embankments and avenues of Imperial Petersburg, but the magnificent severity of Byzantine icon painting.
I drink - I won't get drunk. Sigh - and a huge exhale,
. . . . . . . . . . . .
So at night, disturbing the sleep of David,
King Saul was choking.
Each poet has his own poetic pedigree, more or less obvious. Tsvetaeva doesn’t have it. Sometimes behind its lines, sometimes in a frenzied leap overtaking one another, sometimes in some kind of clumsy movement clinging to one another, but almost never flowing smoothly, one can imagine the faces of Derzhavin, Tyutchev, Blok, Ehrenburg. They will show up and hide. Not portraits, but ghosts. Not real: you can’t hang them in the gallery of your ancestors. Read “Sdrifts”, “The Khan’s Full”, “Lane Streets” - what do Derzhavin, Tyutchev, even Blok and Ehrenburg have to do with it? In the Tsvetaeva gallery there is room for only one face, but this one cannot be fixed on the wall: everything strives to leave. This is the face of Russia.
The only strong influence felt in Tsvetaeva's poetry is the influence of Russian folk song. Isn’t this where these uncontrollable rhythms come from? Tsvetaeva is rootless, but deeply rooted and organic. She seems to be aware of her own rootlessness when she says:
Homeland of my wide cheekbones,
Swearing, burlatsky fumes,
Or - along the embankment, stooping,
Whispers and stomps of the Tatars.
In “Craft” (here are the poems most recent in time: 1921–22), the folk-song bias of Tsvetaeva’s poetry was reflected with particular force. In terms of rhythmic richness and originality, this is a completely unsurpassed book, despite the presence of bad, tasteless poetry (Tsvetaeva lacks a sense of proportion, and her taste often suffers from this). But, it seems to me, Tsvetaeva’s future path does not lie here, not in the area of solving purely rhythmic problems. Many of the poems in The Craft seem to be simply experiments; The “hour of apprenticeship” has not yet passed and the “hour of loneliness” has not yet arrived, that is, the greatest poetic maturity.
No letters, no forefathers,
Not a clear falcon.
It goes - comes off -
So far away!
…………………………………
The hem is unmatched,
The scrap is grinning.
Not evil, not good,
And so-so: distant.
Tsvetaeva has another hint of kinship - with the romantics. In the book “Psyche” she collected poems from different times, mostly earlier than in “Craft” (there is also 1916), uniting them on the basis of “romance”. And this is perhaps the best of what Tsvetaeva has written. The romantic current is the main one in her work. It can also be felt in “The Craft”, where, however, the internal romanticism is overshadowed by the external orgy of rhythms. But in “Psyche” it appears clearly. What makes Tsvetaeva in common with the romantics is her very extremeness, the desire to flow into another reserved element - the permeation of poetry with the spirit of music. Tsvetaeva's romantic poems invariably touch and excite - not only stun, like some of her rhythmic experiments - isn't this the most that can be said about poetry? The cycles “Cloak”, full of genuine romance, “John”, “Daniel”, “Poems to my Daughter” are especially good.
Tsvetaeva's further path is lost in the fog, but she enters it with a rich baggage of poetic possibilities. We look forward to her future books with interest.
Both books are well published, especially The Craft.
A. Sventitsky
Rec.: Marina Tsvetaeva
Tsar-Maiden: Poem-fairy tale / Fig. D. Mitrokhina. M.: Gosizdat, 1922
Apparently, a fairy tale for young children - both the beginning of the poem and Mitrokhin’s pictures suggest this idea, but already on page 11, after reading:
Like a young wife - and an old husband,
The muzzle is like a pumpkin, lives like a ball, breathes - the tower is shaking...
and the further you go, the more intensely, the more frankly, you can be convinced that this fairy tale is not for children, but for adults. What is Tsvetaeva talking about on 159 pages of her book? And about the fact that the king’s young wife fell in love with her powerless stepson (it is described in detail how “the prince does not want women”); about the vain love of the Tsar-Virgin. Spells and enchantments follow one after another, witches fly with eagle owls, “folk hares” ring. Epithets replace the motifs of ditties. When, after all this chaos, we come to page 151 and an elegant vignette with the inscription “the end”, we are left with a question of bewilderment - what, in fact, did Tsvetaeva want to say with her poem and why was this strange afterword, which talks about peasants, attached? that they came to “smack the Tsar’s belly.”
Can I lie down next to you?
The bed is narrow!
If it really is narrow, I’ll curl up into a tube.
My talkative silks, I’ll take off my skirt -
“Yes, Tsar Kumach, we are Red Rus'” - is this a tribute to the revolutionary spirit or just a duty on goods. But in the end, the point is not that M. Tsvetaeva writes fairy tales for adults, but that this popular popular work of hers was published not by some private publishing house in Berlin, but by the State Publishing House in Moscow. For years, manuscripts of proletarian writers lie waiting in line, and we publish Tsvetaeva, and this is all the more sad because today Tsvetaeva, bowing to someone, for some reason will write at the end of her book - “we are Red Rus',” and tomorrow , no, even at the same time, he will send a poem to the emigrant newspaper Segodnya.
There, next to the articles by the Amphitheater-Kadashevs and Teffi, we will find poems about God, John and Christ (“Today”, December 24, 1922, No. 291. Riga) by this same Marina Tsvetaeva, whose book was so well published by Gosizdat . Tsvetaeva, of course, has fun, and most importantly, it’s profitable to work here and there, but Gosizdat should be sad: publishing a book by an employee of a White Guard organ.
R. Gul
Rec.: Marina Tsvetaeva
Psyche. Romance. Berlin: Z. Grzhebin Publishing House, 1923
Marina Tsvetaeva. Until recently, this name was little known. Now many people know him. “Versts” - “Separation” - “Poems to Blok” - “Tsar-Maiden” - “Craft” - the talented poetess released one after another. The last one is Psyche, the best of the books.
The subtitle says “romance.” Knowing Tsvetaeva, the subtitle is somewhat confusing; isn’t Tsvetaeva’s blood too violent and seething for a “blue flower”? But Tsvetaeva’s romance is unique, it was not born from thinness and transparent cheeks. There are few typically “romantic” poems in the book and they refer to bygone years. In most cases, Tsvetaeva’s “Psyche” is a violent Psyche!
Akhmatova’s verse is strict and musically complete in its melody. There is always tranquility in the feeling of poetry. Tsvetaeva’s verse is unbridled - it bursts into crazy rhythms, and the feeling in it is restless, sharp, almost masculine. Therefore, Tsvetaeva’s frequent preference is a short line. The pressure of rhythms and feelings in a short line (“Craft”) is at times tiresome. This is not the case in Psyche. Next to the typically Tsvetaevsky:
There are other poems that are calm in their music:
I love hands
Kiss and love
Give out names
And one more thing - to reveal
DoorsWide open! - on a dark night!
Squeezing my head
Listen like a hard step
Somewhere it's getting easier
How the wind blows
Sleepy, sleepless
Forest. -
Divided into sections, Psyche is very good. Among the departments, its best are “John” and “Mariula”. The attached excerpts from the “daughter’s poems” might not be worth printing. And not because they are not interesting. Some explanatory notes to the verses are also not needed.
After a sleepless night, the body weakens
Becomes cute and not your own - no one's
The arrows still whine in the slow veins
And you smile at people like a seraph...
Overall, the exuberant “Psyche” speaks of the great talent of its author. The book was published nicely.
F. Cup
Poetry of revolutionary Russia
<Отрывок>
A very interesting phenomenon of Russian poetry is the young poet Boris Pasternak, translator of Kleist, lyricist of Lermontov style (“My Sister is My Life”). His latest collection, Themes and Variations, leans towards expressionism. Pasternak perceives the everyday as eternal. His poetry is organically connected with the philosophy of mind. His poems are characterized by skepticism and prudence. Because of this, from a literary, historical and philosophical point of view, they lose a lot.
Marina Tsvetaeva is the complete opposite of Boris Pasternak. She is all - feeling, fairy tale, tradition, passion. She is musical and sensual. She loves Blok's Russia and Andrei Bely's musical dreams. Not only sings the beauty of the historical past, but also lovingly reaches out to the luminous present. The Kremlin of royal glory is behind every verse, its literary culture is saturated with Byron and French decadence. Marina Tsvetaeva combines the noble aristocratic tradition with the passionate anarchism of the simple Russian soul. She is immersed in music and memories, in quiet melancholy, she is proud and wise. Above the craving for white and red for her is the craving for Rus'. Her patriotism grows with suffering.
Tsvetaeva published small collections of poems: about suffering Moscow, about love for a man and a child. The last book appeared in 1923 - already during her stay in Prague. Marina Tsvetaeva is a romantic for whom poetry is relaxation, confession and peace of mind.
S. Parnok
B. Pasternak and others
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<…>Pasternak and Bryusov, and Aseev, and Tretyakov, and Ehrenburg, and Tikhonov, and Antokolsky - these consonances are more or less piquant, and even then more in a psychological than in a literary sense.
But here are two consonances that cannot but excite: Pasternak and Mandelstam, Pasternak and Tsvetaeva.
Mandelstam and Tsvetaeva on their way to Pasternak! Why this flight? Lovers who, in the midst of love, escaped from the blissful hands of their beloved. Why, where does this amazing distrust of art come from? How could they, so generously rewarded by poetry, doubt it and their eternal beginning? Which pie in the sky dared to be flattered by - they, who were born with a tit in their hands? What deserted paths will the crafty haze lead them to the deceptive coolness of imaginary springs and will it return them again to the spring that gave them drink? I value these poets too much to suspect them of empty gourmandism: Pasternak is not a quirk of their taste, but a terrible and, who knows, perhaps fatal temptation. Of course, neither Mandelstam nor Tsvetaeva could simply “take up the task of reflecting modernity” - they are too aware of a different game, but they are possessed by the same impulse, the same epidemic anxiety about the inconsistency of art with the present day. They are frightened by loneliness, they feel safer with Pasternak, and they cling to Pasternak with their whole being.<…>
S. Bobrov
Rec.: Marina Tsvetaeva
Tsar-Maiden: Poem-fairy tale. M.: Gosizdat, 1922;
Craft: Book of Poems. M.-Berlin: Helikon, 1923
Perhaps, only with these two books does the serious history of M.I. Tsvetaeva as a poet begin. Her first, almost childish performance (“Evening Album”), despite all its naivety, immediately amazed with its extreme freshness, the volatile temperament of the melody and good study in French. If we are not mistaken, her main teachers were the beautiful, although little known to us, French poetess Marcelina Debords-Valmore (1785–1859), P. Verlaine placed her in his time in his series “Cursed Poets”, next to Villiers de Lisle -Adam and Arthur Rimbaud), and a somewhat worse, not first-rate, of course, author - E. Rostand. The duet, of course, is a little strange, but Tsvetaeva is generally characterized by such very inconsistent and mutually contradictory attachments. Her second book, “The Magic Lantern,” as very often happens with authors of our time, showed a somewhat lowered and fundamentally weakened transition from descriptions of “all the impressions of the first days” choking on youthful greed to some disappointment in entering life as it is. That youthful effort, girlish agility, eyes on the whole world at once, everything that was very touching in the first book became somehow inflated, artificial, false in the second book. Some things cooled down and arose again for the author solely as a result of some hard-to-understand inertia, without significant internal justifications, and therefore turned into something quite annoying. The desire for sincerity, for the exhaustion of the experience, turned precisely to that very sincerity about which Wilde chuckled that it was “a pose, and the most unbearable of poses.” The exoticism of the props, the crimson romance itself, the terrible unevenness, the inability to control either oneself or the verse - all this made one approach Tsvetaeva with great distrust. And on the ruins of these buildings, a certain Russian style of completely unknown origin arose - neither give nor take the Kozak Duma. We had to see some of Tsvetaeva’s manuscripts during the revolution - and all of this (a huge number of poems; Tsvetaeva, it seems, generally suffers from long-winded writing) was so bleak that we got the impression that there was nothing more to expect here. Now here are two new books: one dates back to 1920 (according to the time of writing), the other (“Craft”) covers the year from April 1921 to April 1922.
It is precisely this said Russopetism that is the main speech of the author. The aesthetics of the “World of Art” accustomed us to the Russian style, tinted with various Bartrams, Polenovs, and Abramtsevo handicrafts. Roerich then followed this path almost to the Stone Age: everything was so solid, seriously staged, not without mystagogical tricks and pedestals. Tsvetaeva took on this matter from a completely different angle: her Russian style is a woman’s howl, as if wailing for a dead person, with decorations of the simplest kind in this style: something like the most simple cockerels and roses. Into this suddenly bursts a verse sung by the Symbolists (isn’t it Bryusov?), with such a good, dandy finish, with the durable varnish of Bryusov’s first things.
Another time (what I had to see in manuscripts in 1920) Marina developed a craving for Akhmatovism that was completely alien to her, to her whole nature, to her class of taste, to the significance of her aspirations,
Rec.: Marina Tsvetaeva
Craft: Book of Poems. Berlin: Helikon, 1923 (57)
Tsvetaeva - all aspiration.
With arms outstretched forward, ready to rush after the persistent caller, but suddenly petrified in movement; outwardly frozen in order to perform an eternal flight under a calm cover. This is the easiest way to imagine Tsvetaeva.
People with her temperament, spiritual strength and intensity commit feats and crimes. They ascend to the scaffold, are burned at the stake, fanatically loyal, not even to an idea, but only to protest, rebellion, ex-pelvis.
A soul that knows no measure,
The soul of a whip and a fanatic,
Longing for the scourge.
. . . . . . . . . .
Like a tall rope of resin
Smoking under a hair shirt...
. . . . . . . . . .
Savanarolova's sister
A soul worthy of a fire!
She longs for real feat and sacrifice:
To be between sleeping students
For those who do not sleep in their dreams.
At the first stone thrown by the mob
No longer a cloak - but a shield!
(Oh, this verse was not arbitrarily interrupted!
The knife is too sharp!)
And - smiling with inspiration - the first
These dry lines contain condensed mystical ecstasy, spiritual voluptuousness, all the holiness of a huge, gloomy Catholic cathedral, ready to suddenly fall back.
Tsvetaeva's path is difficult and scary. Next to the prayerful “Poems to Blok” and “Separation” illuminated by pure fire, a sharp “Tsar-Maiden” could appear. But with “Craft” Tsvetaeva showed that she had found a way out for her spiritual explosion. She belongs to those great poets for whom there are no middle paths: either a complete fall upside down, or victory. Tsvetaeva defeated herself and others.
The poetess titled her book beautifully, although not everything included really has the right to bear the title “Crafts.” “Alleys” and several other works, judging by the nature of the entire book, are random. But next to them there are amazing works in which the strength in the depths of the tossing volcano was hidden under the external smoothness:
With such force in the chin hand
Grasping your mouth like a spasm,
Having understood the separation with such strength,
That, it seems, even death will not separate -
So the standard-bearer leaves the banner,
So on the platform to mothers: It's time!
So he looks into the night - with his last eyes -
Concubine of the last king.
How simply done: a figurative, unexpected beginning and several hauntingly vivid comparisons. Brief, condensed, fastened.
Behind all the daring, rude masculine manners and strength in Tsvetaeva lies an infinite amount of femininity, all her aspirations for sacrifice and heroism are purely feminine.
To be his eagle's dove!
To be more of a mother - Marina!
A messenger - a sentry - a messenger.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Flying silently like a black whirlwind,
Not to be a friend - to be handy!
Not to be alone - to be second!
How small and pale Akhmatova’s femininity and tenderness seems in comparison with Tsvetaeva’s love impulse. And she curses that woman who could not know love and pity.
The poems addressed to one’s youth are very good and characteristic. The muse “so distant” defeated mischievous and free youth.
