from The Two
- from The Two
Fate does not will it that strong and strongUnite with each other in earthly life.Therefore Brunhilde and Siegfried’s songEnds not in marriage but sword and strife.
Joined each to each in fraternal hatred—Yoked like two oxen!—or stone against stone—He quit the marital bed a stranger,She—a stranger—slept on alone.
Separate!—even in wedded slumber—Separate!—even clasped hand in hand—Separate!—in a tongue half-remembered—Too late and separate—that’s our bond!
But there’s another wound still more ancient:Amazon crushed beneath lion-like paws—Thus they failed to become acquainted:Son of Thetis and daughter of Mars.
O, bold Achilles, recall her contemptuousGaze! as an unseated knight uncowedMight gaze! but no longer from high Olympus—A gaze from the slush—yet still as proud!
So what if now he has one last care:Snatching his true love from death’s dark heat.Fate does not will it that peer with peerUnite . . . And so you and I won’t meet.
1924 [End Page 145]
Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941) was born in Moscow, although her family’s years abroad allowed her to learn Italian, French, and German. Among her translations are Russian versions of Goethe and Rilke, and French versions of Pushkin. Her affairs with the poet Sofia Parnok and with Konstantin Rodzevich inspired her two great cycles of love poems, “Poem of the Mountain” and “Poem of the End.” In addition to poetry, she wrote diaries, literary criticism, and verse dramas. Judged to be one of the most important writers of the era, she produced several celebrated collections, including Craft (1923) and After Russia (1928), as well as “The Ratcatcher” (1925), a satirical version of the Pied Piper legend in which Bolshevik rats gradually take on features of the German burghers they have ousted. After being evacuated from wartime Moscow, Tsvetaeva hanged herself. No one attended her funeral.
Alyssa Dinega Gillespie is Associate Professor of Russian Language and Literature at the University of Notre Dame. Her books include A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind of Marina Tsvetaeva (2001) and Taboo Pushkin: Topics, Texts, Interpretations (2012). A lapsed (or very occasional) poet, she has received several international prizes for her poetic translations from Russian, including first prize in the 2012 Compass Awards and joint third prize in the 2011 Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Translation Prize competition.
