Marina Tsvetayeva: Selected Poems

Marina Tsvetaeva is simply amazing. Feinstein does a superb job here translating, considering Tsvetaeva is nearly impossible to translate out of Russian. This book is cheap, wonderful and most people I know end up getting a copy from me as a gift at some time.

I do not know Russian. I cannot comment on whether or not Elaine Feinstein has captured or missed completely the supposedly brilliant aural qualities of the original verse. What I can say is that reading these poems I have a sense of true poetry. There is a depth of feeling and a passion, a soul being revealed in depth, a life in its sufferings and straining for beauty. Perhaps more words are irrelevant, and I shall just give a few excerpts from the book. From ' I know the truth' 'The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew, the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet, And soon all of us will sleep under the earth,we who never let each other sleep above it. ' From 'What is this gypsy passion for separation' 'that no one turning over our letters has yet understood how completely and how deeply faithless we are, which is to say: how true we are to ourselves.' From ' You loved me' You loved me. And your lies had their own probity. There was truth in every falsehood Your love went far beyond any possible boundary as no one else's could. Your love seemed to last even longer than time itself. Now you wave your hand- and suddenly your love for me is over! That is the truth in five words."

Tsvetaeva's life was filled with tragedy (she lived through and in Revolutionary Russia (her husband fought for the White Army) and in Czechoslovakia during the German occupation) her heart shouted for a personal love the message which rings echoing through her words as she has deep philosophical understanding and awareness of her world which she rides over like gravel in fodder for her clinging to the personal loves of her heart which reigned supreme. She spat her poverty and desperation with pride at the shallow, whoever they might be, and challenged the dignity of heaven. She was a powerful poet who believed in living each moment for what it was and holding love at an undisputable high. Some of my favorite quotes from segments of the book...Because even more than Godhimself I love his angels.From: Bent with WorryHe is the one that mixes Up the cardsAnd confuses arithmetic and weightDemands answers from the school benchWho altogether refutes KantFrom: The PoetWe entered one another's eyesAs if they were oasesAll poets are JewsEverything that I love changes from an external thing into an inward one, from the moment of my love, it stops being external (from the Introduction).I can't attest to the authenticity of the translations, as I know little Russian, Reviews seem mixed; but Feinstein, for me, makes some engrossing connections of words that must ring true to some extent.

Read this book! and read about her life. She witnessed so much darkness and her words open up these experiences, lay them bare. I really wonder what her writing would have been if she had lived a different life, one without so much tragedy. She also recognized, as did Virginia Woolfe, that it is difficult for women to write amidst the responsibilities of everyday life -- "I have no time to think . . . I have only ever been myself in notebooks . . . for all my life I have been leading a child by the hand." Her work stays with you long after the book closes.

Marina Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow in 1892, published her first poems at 18, and was married with two children when the Russian Revolution began. She endured numerous hardships -- one of her children died of malnutrition -- and a period of exile. She returned to Russia in 1939, but was so beset by her circumstances that she committed suicide in 1941. These passionate and autobiographical poems are deep and important. I don't know Russian, so cannot comment on the translation. From them one learns about Tsvetaeva the artist: her subjects are love and transformation, nature, poetry, love, and her complicated, exasperating country -- and, later, the bleakness which enveloped her. Poetry was serious business in Russia, and this poet was one of the greats.