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Acknowledgments This is an exciting time in Tsvetaeva scholarship; nearly 110 years since the poet’s birth, the study of her works, long delayed by official disfavor and prejudices of various kinds, is belatedly coming of age at last. I am thrilled and honored that myown book is a participant in this explosion of serious Tsvetaeva scholarship; at the same time, my study is deeply indebted to the perceptive and provocative insights into Tsvetaeva’s poetry on the part of earlier scholars too numerous to name. This book has profited from the financial support of a number of different organizations. My research was assisted by a grant from the Eurasia Program of the Social Science Research Council with funds provided by the State Department under the Program for Research and Training on Eastern Europe and the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (Title VIII), as well as by a Foreign Language and Area Studies Graduate Fellowship and a Detling Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin–Madison during earlier stages of the project. I am also grateful to the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame for a generous subvention grant to the University of Wisconsin Press, which helped to underwrite the cost of this book’s publication. My literature professors during my undergraduate years at Brandeis University helped to shape my thinking about writing and inspired me to follow in their academic footsteps; Allen Grossman, Karen Klein, Alan Levitan, Paul Morrison , and Robert Szulkin each left a particularly vivid imprint on my mind. My tireless college Russian teacher, Inna Broude, first introduced me to the beauties of Russian as a poetic language.What knowledge I have of Russian literature is thanks, first and foremost, to the generously shared expertise of my graduate professors at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; their excellence has been an inspiration to me, and their encouragement of my work has been a stimulus over the years. In particular, I am thankful to the members of my dissertation committee—David Bethea, Yuri Shcheglov, Judith Kornblatt,Gary Rosenshield, and Cyrena Pondrom—whose thoughtful comments have guided me during the process of transforming my dissertation into this book. xv xvi Acknowledgments In this book, all translations from the original German or Russian are my own unless noted otherwise. Citations from prose are given only in English translation (with occasional interpolations of fragments from the original text given in brackets whenever necessary); citations from poetry are given both in the original language and with accompanying English translation. I make no attempt to reproduce the poetic qualities of the original (rhythm, rhyme, soundplay, etc.); rather, my translations are straight prose renderings of the texts’ meanings on the most fundamental level and, as such, are best used as a comprehension aid in tandem with a careful reading of the original. Although I take full responsibility for any inaccuracies in my translations, their quality has been enhanced by two careful proofreaders: Yuri Shcheglov read the translations from Russian of Tsvetaeva’s poetry, while Jan Lüder Hagens read the translations from German of Tsvetaeva’s and Rilke’s writings cited in chapter 3. I was fortunate to have the benefit of these scholars’ meticulous attention to detail and nuance. A numberof people have read and commented helpfullyon parts of my manuscript or, more generally, on my approach to Tsvetaeva at various stages; these include David Bethea, Clare Cavanagh, Catherine Ciepiela, Caryl Emerson, Sibelan Forrester,Olga Peters Hasty, Stephanie Sandler, David Sloane, Alexandra Smith, Susan St.Ville, and David Woodruff. In particular, Stephanie Sandler and Caryl Emerson, manuscript readers for the University of Wisconsin Press, far exceeded the call of duty and responded eloquently to my manuscript with pages and pages of clear-sighted reaction, queries, and suggestions for revision. It is largely thanks to their efforts that I have managed during the past months to tug and coax my unkempt dissertation into what I hope is a fully groomed and polished book. I also thank Catherine Ciepiela for sharing with me a chapter of her work in progress, which helped me greatly in formulating my own discussion of Tsvetaeva’s ‘‘On a Red Steed’’ in chapter 1. Throughout the final stages of work on this manuscript, my colleagues at the University of Notre Dame have provided companionship and an environment conducive to concentrated work and writing. My student aide, Andrea Shatzel, has assisted with last-minute editing tasks. This study could...

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