A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind of Marina Tsvetaeva

Preface

Preface When I first encountered Marina Tsvetaeva a decade ago, I was a new college graduate studying for a semester in Soviet Moscow, entirely unsure what I wanted to ‘‘become’’ once I departed that magical, compelling never-never land. I remember my meeting with Tsvetaeva clearly: sitting in a friend’s dingy dormitory room at Moscow State University, I looked down at the open book he proffered. No matter that the room was drenched in chilly winter darkness, lit only by a feeble lamp; no matter that my Russian was still halting, or that Cyrillic characters clustered densely on a page still had a tendency to jump and dance before myeyes instead of resolving themselves smoothly into meaningful words and thoughts. Tsvetaeva’s poem ‘‘Gypsy passion for parting’’ [‘‘Tsyganskaia strast' razluki’’] went unfalteringly straight to my heart with its boldness, its courage, its exactitude, and its music. Sparks flew; a blinding stroke of lightning seemed to illuminate that dim mousehole of a room; and, to borrow an image from Tsvetaeva herself (who had borrowed it from Maiakovskii), a fire began to smolder in my soul. Or perhaps it was not quite like this; perhaps it is this way only in memory. In any case, Tsvetaeva has been with me from that point on like an incurable fever. The first poem of hers that I read that evening proved to be oddly fateful: Цыганская страсть разлуки! Чуть встретишь—уж рвешься прочь! Я лоб уронила в руки, И думаю, глядя в ночь: Никто, в наших письмах роясь, Не понял до глубины, Как мы вероломны, то есть— Как сами себе верны. [Gypsy passion for parting! You’ve just met—already you tear yourself away! I cup my forehead in my hands and think, gazing into the night: No onewho riffled through our letters could understand to the core how treacherous we are, meaning—how faithful to ourselves.] xi xii Preface In this poem of 1915 is contained, as it were, the kernel of my book. Here is the essence of Tsvetaeva’s poetic myth, which, though it modulates over time, never loses its basic features: namely, her oxymoronic ‘‘passion for parting,’’ and the epistolary renunciation of love that passion occasions, through which the mysterious self of the poet comes into being like a phoenix rising from the ash of incinerated dreams. These mythopoetic patterns, as I will argue, form the basis for Tsvetaeva’s creative imagination throughout her life. In ‘‘Gypsy passion,’’ too, is the quintessence of Tsvetaeva’s craft: her exquisitely wrought stanzaic forms, telegraphic style, unorthodox rhymes, and, permeating it all, her powerfully syncopated rhythms. Such craft balances out her paradoxical passion and belies interpretations of Tsvetaeva as an undisciplined Romantic. She herself claimed the eighteenth-century poet Derzhavin as one of her most important influences; indeed, there is a classical rigor to Tsvetaeva’s poetic forms, even as her myth making is informed by a remarkably complex and consistent—albeit idiosyncratic—rigor of thought. This book is an investigation into these rigorous patterns of thought and form that both held Tsvetaeva in their thrall and liberated her creative imagination. Truly, Tsvetaeva’s poetic activity—which, especially during the years of her emigration (1922–39), she experienced as a release from the drudgery of housework and daily life—appears strangely like a kind of spiritual servitude. Her work ethic is awesome and inspiring. Living at times in the most appalling conditions of poverty, with two small children and an ailing and unreliable husband to care for, she nevertheless rose before dawn each day to write for several hours before the rest of her household began stirring. In this way, she managed to churn out with astonishing rapidity masterpiece after poetic masterpiece through the years. Counterintuitive as it seems, Tsvetaeva thrived in conditions of adversity. Her temperament was such that she enjoyed the challenge; as she herself oncewrote, herconstitution was one of ‘‘monstrous endurance’’ (6:153).1 This phrase is fantastically apt as an expression of Tsvetaeva’s unique blend of courage and chutzpah. Just as the key to her poetic genesis is the coexistence of two contradictory stimuli—passion and renunciation—so, too, the key to her poetic energy is this seemingly unrealizable confluence of ferocity and forbearance . In writing this book, I have often envied Tsvetaeva’s remarkable creative vitality. The image of her stationed at her desk—elbows as though implanted in the wooden surface, forehead in hands, fingers drumming, pen scratching, her total immersion in the music and patterns of her words—has often been in my mind as I have struggled at times to sustain a state of concentration and inspiration resembling Tsvetaeva’s own tenacity of artistic purpose...